New Study Shows Stethoscopes are More Contaminated than Hands!

Stethoscopes tend to be more contaminated than the palms of physicians' hands, new research shows.

In a recent Swiss study, researchers discovered that more bacteria cover a stethoscope's diaphragm (the part that's held against a patient's body) than all regions of a physician's hands, except the fingertips.

The study also found a close correlation between the degree of the contamination of the diaphragm and that of the physician's fingertips. There are no official guidelines that tell doctors how often they should clean their stethoscopes, the researchers said.

"The more you have bacteria on the fingertips, the more you find bacteria on the membrane of the stethoscope," said study author Dr. Didier Pittet, director of infection control at the University of Geneva Hospitals. [10 Weird and Terrifying Medical Instruments from the Past]

In the study, 71 patients were examined by one of three physicians who used sterile gloves, and a sterile stethoscope. After the examination, the researchers checked the degree of bacterial contamination on two parts of the stethoscope the tube and membrane and four regions of the physician's hands back, fingertips, the region near the base of the thumb and the region near the little finger.

Researchers found more contamination in the diaphragm than in all regions of the physician's hand, except the fingertips. The tube of the stethoscope also showed more contamination than the back of the physician's hand.

"What was relatively surprising is the degree of colonization, which is pretty high," Pittet said.

To continue reading this article visit http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/28/stethoscopes-more-contaminated-than-doctors-hands/

How to Remember to Take Your Medications in the Digital Age

What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? What about while you are on your lunch break? Or right before you go to bed? If you are thinking check social media, look at funny cat videos, send friends text messages or even make a phone call then you are among the majority of Americans. 

With such technology driven lives, we often forget to do important but simple tasks such as take our medications. I know I am guilty of it. I remember to spend twenty minutes before work on Pinterest, but leave my vitamin in my back pocket all day. 

Take a look at the video below that claims to help those of us stuck in the digital age remember to take our medications: 

MMR Vaccine Linked to Lower Risk for General Infections

The MMR vaccine may not only protect you from measles, mumps, and rubella — it may lower your risk of contracting other serious infections as well, according to a new study from Statens Serum Institute in Denmark.

Dr. Signe Sørup, lead author of the paper, said that the findings underscore the numerous benefits of following the immunization schedule that has been a mainstay of public health since the 1970s. “MMR may have a general immune stimulating effect preventing hospital admissions for unrelated infections,” she wrote in an email to Medical Daily. “It highlights the importance of receiving the MMR vaccine on time.”

The study, which is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, surveyed nearly half a million Danish children born between 1996 and 2006. Over a period ranging from 11 months to two years, the researchers tracked immunization among these children. Besides an MMR shot at 15 months, the recommended vaccine schedule included shots for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (DTaP-IPV-Hib) administered at three, five, and 12 months.

The researchers found that receiving the MMR vaccine on time — that is, after the DTaP-IPV-Hib shot — corresponded to a lower risk of being involved in one of the 56,889 hospital admissions for general infections attributed to the sample. This relationship was particularly clear for lower respiratory tract infections and complications requiring longer hospitalization. But while the results point to new benefits, they also illuminate a waning compliance with public health recommendations.

"The coverage with MMR is suboptimal in many high-income countries; in the present study, about 50 percent of children were not vaccinated on time,” Sørup and colleagues write. “Physicians should encourage parents to have children vaccinated on time with MMR and avoid giving vaccinations out of sequence, because the present study suggests that timely MMR vaccination averted a considerable number of hospital admissions for any infection between ages 16 and 24 months."

To continue reading this article visit http://www.medicaldaily.com/mmr-vaccine-linked-overall-reduction-hospitalizations-infections-especially-lower-respiratory-tract

Tylenol (Acetaminophen) During Pregnancy Possibly Linked to ADHD

Children born to women who used the painkiller acetaminophen during pregnancy may have an increased risk of developing behavioral problems like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to new research.

In a new study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, researchers analyzed data collected from 64,322 mothers and children enrolled in the Danish National Birth Cohort from 1996 to 2002. At each trimester of pregnancy, mothers were asked if they had used any acetaminophen in the past three months.

“We [were] worried that the [acetaminophen] was influencing the brain during fetal development time,” study author Dr. Beate Ritz, professor and chair of the epidemiology department at the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles told FoxNews.com.

Researchers later surveyed the same group of women when their children were 7 years old, asking questions about their children’s behavioral patterns of pro- and anti-social behavior. Researchers also looked at rates of prescriptions of Ritalin, a medication commonly used to treat ADHD, among the children studied.

Overall, maternal use of acetaminophen was associated with a 20 percent to almost two-fold increased risk of behavioral problems, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and hyperkinetic disorders (HKD) among children at age 7. The strongest effect was seen in women who took the painkillers during all three trimesters, though women who reported use for a minimum of one week still had an increased risk. More frequent use was tied to a higher risk of a hospital diagnosis of HKD or ADHD-like behaviors among children.

More than 50 percent of the women reported use of acetaminophen.

“It’s a widely used drug… because it’s considered safe and less harmful,” Ritz said. “All the other NSAIDs aren’t recommended because of the side effects. So acetaminophen has always been the ‘not-so-bad, go-to drug.’”

Previous research has shown that acetaminophen can disrupt the body’s endocrine, or hormone, system. Exposure to endocrine disruptors in a fetus may effect neuro-development and cause behavioral dysfunction, but according to researchers the exact mechanism of disruption is still unknown.

“Think of it as a lock and key. There are many ways to make the key not fit, block it, or even not have a keyhole in the door… There’s a lot that can go wrong,” Ritz said.

To continue reading this article visit http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/24/acetaminophen-use-during-pregnancy-tied-to-adhd-behavioral-problems-in-children/

Hot Debate Over E-Cigarettes

Dr. Michael Siegel, a hard-charging public health researcher at Boston University, argues that e-cigarettes could be the beginning of the end of smoking in America. He sees them as a disruptive innovation that could make cigarettes obsolete, like the computer did to the typewriter.

But his former teacher and mentor, Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is convinced that e-cigarettes may erase the hard-won progress achieved over the last half-century in reducing smoking. He predicts that the modern gadgetry will be a glittering gateway to the deadly, old-fashioned habit for children, and that adult smokers will stay hooked longer now that they can get a nicotine fix at their desks.

These experts represent the two camps now at war over the public health implications of e-cigarettes. The devices, intended to feed nicotine addiction without the toxic tar of conventional cigarettes, have divided a normally sedate public health community that had long been united in the fight against smoking and Big Tobacco.

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Dr. Michael Siegel, a public health researcher, says that e-cigarettes could help end smoking.CreditMatthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times

The essence of their disagreement comes down to a simple question: Will e-cigarettes cause more or fewer people to smoke? The answer matters. Cigarette smoking is still the single largest cause of preventable death in the United States, killing about 480,000 people a year.

Dr. Siegel, whose graduate school manuscripts Dr. Glantz used to read, says e-cigarette pessimists are stuck on the idea that anything that looks like smoking is bad. “They are so blinded by this ideology that they are not able to see e-cigarettes objectively,” he said. Dr. Glantz disagrees. “E-cigarettes seem like a good idea,” he said, “but they aren’t.”

Science that might resolve questions about e-cigarettes is still developing, and many experts agree that the evidence so far is too skimpy to draw definitive conclusions about the long-term effects of the devices on the broader population.

“The popularity is outpacing the knowledge,” said Dr. Michael B. Steinberg, associate professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. “We’ll have a better idea in another year or two of how safe these products are, but the question is, will the horse be out of the barn by then?”

This high-stakes debate over what e-cigarettes mean for the nation’s 42 million smokers comes at a crucial moment. Soon, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to issue regulations that would give the agency control over the devices, which have had explosive growth virtually free of any federal oversight. (Some cities, like Boston and New York, and states, like New Jersey and Utah, have already weighed in, enacting bans in public places.)

To continue reading this article visit http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/health/a-hot-debate-over-e-cigarettes-as-a-path-to-tobacco-or-from-it.html?ref=health&_r=0

Medicare Patients and Pain Medications

Approximately one in three Medicare patients who receive prescriptions for narcotic painkillers get them from multiple doctors – a trend that could lead to an increased risk of hospitalization for these seniors, HealthDay News reported.

In a new study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers analyzed data from 1.8 million people enrolled in Medicare who received prescriptions for narcotics – also called opioids.  Narcotic painkillers include drugs such as hydrocodone, oxycodone and morphine.

Overall, nearly 35 percent of patients were prescribed opioids from more than one doctor. And according to the study’s authors, the greater the number of prescribers, the greater the risk for hospitalization.

"Patients with four or more prescribers were twice as likely to be hospitalized for narcotics-related complications than patients receiving the same number of prescriptions from a single caregiver," study co-author Pinar Karaca-Mandic, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said in a press release.

Prescriptions for opioids have increased nearly three-fold in the United States over the past 20 years, according to the National Institutes of Health.  Many experts have blamed these narcotics for the recent spike in heroin overdose deaths, as users often abuse painkillers before switching to heroin.

To continue reading this article visit: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/21/1-in-3-medicare-patients-receive-painkillers-from-multiple-doctors/

What Can My Multivitamin Do For Me?

Your multi-v isn't a miracle pill, but could it actually be dangerous?

Follow the money and you'll find it going into the cushy pockets of the supplement industry, now estimated to be a $30 billion behemoth—and that's just for the U.S., where more than half of adults use dietary supplements and about 40 percent pop a multivitamin every day.

Enter "Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements," a recent Annals of Internal Medicine editorial that's threatening the industry's bottom line. The authors (who hail from Johns Hopkins, the University of Warwick, and the American College of Physicians) examined the benefits of existing studies on multivitamins and found that, really, there are none.

"We believe that the case is closed," wrote the researchers. "These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough."

Christopher Ochner, Ph.D., research associate at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center at St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals, takes it one step further. "Taking a daily multivitamin is actually associated with an increase in all-cause mortality," he says.

In fact, previous studies from the University of Minnesota, the Cleveland Clinic, and myriad other institutions that go back to the 1940s link vitamin intake to cancer, heart disease, and premature death rates.

While vitamin E supplementation has been linked to a higher risk of lung cancer in smokers, in the case of multivitamins, chances are it's an association, rather than a strict cause-and-effect relationship, that's shortening lives. It's possible that people who take multivitamins are health worrywarts, stressed out, or perhaps suffering the consequences of poor mental health. Or maybe they're just relying on a little capsule to make up for a diet based on junk food.

That's why Ochner recommends simply eating a balanced diet. "It's really not that hard to get what you need," he says. If you hit all of your food groups, you're pretty much set. Your body even helps out by converting some nutrients and food compounds into other ones your body needs, he says.

To continue reading this article visit: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/20/health-myth-do-really-need-to-take-multivitamin/

Infant Appetite Linked to Obesity

Published February 19, 2014

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Infants with hearty appetites may be more likely to have a genetic predisposition to obesity, Counsel and Heal reported.

In one study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, researchers from University College London (UCL) discovered that infants with large appetites grow more quickly than other infants up until they are 15 months old. This rapid growth may put them at a greater risk for obesity later in life, researchers said.

"It might make life easy to have a baby with a hearty appetite, but as she grows up, parents may need to be alert for tendencies to be somewhat over-responsive to food cues in the environment, or somewhat unresponsive to fullness,” lead study author Jane Wardle, a professor at the UCL Health Behavior Research Centre, said in a press release. “This behavior could put her at risk of gaining weight faster than is good for her."

Another study published in JAMA Pediatrics, also from researchers at UCL, studied whether low satiety responsiveness – a reduced urge to respond to the body’s ‘fullness’ signals – was linked to a genetic predisposition to obesity.

In a study of 2,258 10-year-old children, researchers discovered that children with more genetic obesity risk variants were also more likely to have low satiety responsiveness.

To continue reading this article visit: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/19/infants-with-hearty-appetites-may-be-predisposed-to-obesity-study-finds/

Not Too Late for Flu Vaccines!

Take a look at the short video below. Though we are half way through February, it is not too late to protect yourself and your loved ones from the flu by getting yourself vaccinated. There are still many cases reported and a record number of hospitalizations across the US, especially in the young healthy population. We are not out of the woods yet! 

Insomnia and Sleeping Medication Use on the Rise

Diagnoses of insomnia have been on the rise -- and so has the use of medication to treat this sleep disorder. The popularity of a newer class of drugs -- non-benzodiazepine sedative hypnotics -- has risen dramatically. Drugs included in this group include zolpidem, zaleplon, and eszopiclone, and are sometimes referred to as "Z-meds" or "Z-drugs." Some of the most frequently prescribed sleep medications contain these drugs, including Ambien and Ambien CR, Zolpimist, Intermezzo, Sonata and Lunesta.

There is a great deal we don't yet know about long-term risks and complications of these newer sleep medications. We are also just beginning to get a sense of how frequently they are being used by adults in the U.S. What's more, we know very little about the characteristics and non-sleep health and lifestyle factors that might influence a person's likelihood to use these medicines -- whether by their own prescription, or through sharing medication prescribed for someone else.

These are important questions to pursue. This information can help scientists achieve a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the risks and effects of the drugs themselves and help clinicians treat insomnia and other sleep disorders safely and responsibly. A recently released study has addressed some of these gaps in knowledge. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard University conducted research to determine the prevalence of medications commonly prescribed for insomnia, and to examine the patterns of sleep medication use among adults in the U.S. They also investigated whether demographic, health, and lifestyle factors might be associated with a greater likelihood of use.

Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), an ongoing federal research project that collects and shares data about the health status and habits of children and adults in the U.S. The study used nationally-representative information from more than 32,000 men and women age 20 and older, collected between the years 1999 and 2010. The study identified people who had used medication commonly prescribed for insomnia within the past 30 days. Researchers also extracted details about the types of medication used, characteristics including age, gender, insurance status, and income, as well as health issues among those who'd used medication for sleep in the past month. Their analysis confirms a significant increase in the use of prescription sleep meds -- particularly "Z-meds "-- among American adults. Their results also paint a more detailed picture than we've seen before of the people who are more likely to rely on prescription medications for sleep, including women, older adults, and people who've sought mental health treatment:

• Between 1999 and 2010, rates of prescription sleep medication use rose significantly, from an estimated 2 percent of the population to 3.5 percent. That's more than 6 million adults in the U.S. who in 2010 reported using sleep medicines in the past month.
• The most commonly prescribed drugs were "Z-meds." Among these drugs, zolpidem was by far the most frequently used, comprising 87.5 percent of Z-med use.
• Rates of Z-med use increased by more than 3 times between 1999 and 2010.

Researchers found several characteristics associated with higher rates of use of prescription aids for sleep:

To continue reading this article visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/sleep-aids_b_4746587.html

Pregnany and Narcotic Use

FRIDAY, Feb. 14, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- More than 14 percent of American women take powerful narcotic pain medications during pregnancy, according to a large new study.

Since these drugs, which may cause addiction, are so often prescribed to pregnant women, the study authors called for more research to determine how safe they are for unborn babies.

The study was published online Feb. 12 in the journal Anesthesiology. It looked at the use of medications, including narcotics such as Vicodin and Oxycontin -- also known as opioids -- in more than 530,000 pregnant women who gave birth between 2005 and 2011 in the United States.

"Nearly all women experience some pain during pregnancy," study author Dr. Brian Bateman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said in a journal news release. "However, the safety of using opioids to manage their pain remains unclear. Ultimately, we need more data to assess the risk/benefit ratio of prescribing these drugs to women and how it may affect their babies."

The average of women in the study was 31. Using a database on pregnant women enrolled in a commercial insurance plan, the researchers looked at which medications were most often prescribed, what pain was most often being treated with these drugs and how use of the drugs varied in different regions of the country.

Most of the women who took narcotic painkillers did so for less than a week. Slightly less than 6 percent of women in their first or second trimester were prescribed the painkillers, while 6.5 percent of women in their third trimester received the medications, the study found.

The researchers pointed out that 2.2 percent of the women in the study received a prescription for narcotics three or more times throughout their pregnancy.

The most common reason women were given the pain medications was back pain, which affected 37 percent of the study's participants. Other reasons the women used them included abdominal pain, migraine, joint pain and fibromyalgia.

Prescription narcotic use among pregnant women is more common in the United States than in Europe, the researchers said. Among American women, those living in the South used the drugs more than women living in other parts of the country. Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama all had prescription rates of more than 20 percent. Meanwhile, women living in the Northeast had the lowest prescription rates, at 6.5 percent.

To continue reading this article visit http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/02/14/many-us-women-prescribed-narcotic-pain-meds-during-pregnancy

What is the Cotton Ball Diet?

By Arefa Cassoobhoy, MD, MPH
WebMD Medical Editor

I have a 10-year-old daughter, so reading about the cotton ball diet really struck a raw chord. This new fad seems to be all over You Tube and the internet. As a physician, I’m just as horrified.

Teenagers and younger girls ages 9 to 16 are dipping cotton balls in juice and smoothies and swallowing them. The idea is the cotton will act like “fiber,” keep them full, and replace real food that comes with calories.

Seems simple, but it’s actually dangerous. The cotton balls aren’t usually even cotton, but rather some other artificial fiber containing unknown chemicals. By eating this nonfood, the girls are a set up for malnutrition with all the consequences associated with other eating disorders like anemia, fatigue and a whole list of medical conditions. They could choke on the cotton balls or even get a blockage in their intestines called a bezoar. That’s the same thing as the hair ball a cat spits up, and it requires surgery to remove.

Of course, the cotton ball diet isn’t an isolated fad – or just a special diet gone extreme. In a young adolescent girl it could mean more. It could be a part of a spectrum of psychiatric illnesses with odd names like trichotillomania, where a person pulls their hair, and pica, where a person eats nonfood like the cotton balls or starch, all in the realm of obsessive compulsive disorders and eating disorders.

As a mother, I now see this entire story so differently from how I would have straight out of medical school. How do we recognize when our younger generation is showing the first signs of a possible illness versus just making a poor decision? How do we teach the girls around us to respect themselves? When my daughter is out swimming or playing basketball – I want her to think – “My body is getting stronger every day.”

I want her to want to eat foods that taste good and give her quality fuel. I want her to feel beautiful because of that strength – just like some of the commercials and songs we see and hear every day. The cotton ball fad raises many issues for us to consider — and food for thought for the young women out there vulnerable to what the search engine on their computer brings up for them to read.

To continue reading this article visit http://blogs.webmd.com/breaking-news/2013/11/cotton-ball-diet-is-dangerous-fad.html

Children and Vaccines

HealthDay News -- Legislative skirmishes over childhood vaccines are still happening in many states, but there are signs of a shift in the United States toward limiting "personal belief" exemptions, a new study finds.

All states require children to receive routine vaccines against diseases such as polio, measles, mumps and whooping cough before starting day care or public school. But most states allow parents to forgo vaccines for religious reasons, and 20 states permit "personal belief" exemptions for parents with philosophical objections.

In the new study, researchers found that although lawmakers in other states have tried to introduce personal belief exemptions in recent years, none has been successful.

On the other hand, three states that allow the exemptions -- California, Vermont and Washington -- have recently passed laws to curb them. Basically, the states have increased the red tape parents face when applying for an opt-out on philosophical grounds.

"I think the bottom line is that while the advocacy efforts of pro-vaccine stakeholders have been successful in some states, there are still substantial efforts to weaken school immunization mandates," said study author Saad Omer. "Therefore, those who believe in the value of vaccines need to continue their advocacy efforts in their respective states."

Omer, an associate professor of global health at Emory University, in Atlanta, and colleagues reported their findings in the Feb. 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

An expert not involved in the study called the results "good news."

"I think what you're seeing now is the pendulum swinging in the other direction," said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Offit said personal belief exemptions got their start in the 1970s and 1980s as a backlash against childhood vaccination mandates.

In recent years, a growing number of parents have been using the exemptions to shun vaccines over safety concerns. In a 2006 study, Omer's team found that the number of children in states with the opt-out who went unvaccinated for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 1991 and 2004 -- from about 1 percent to 2.5 percent.

Vaccine fears were set off in 1998, when a small study linked the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to autism. That research was later found to be fraudulent, but some parents' worries over vaccine safety persist.

Despite that, lawmakers seem to be trying to rein in personal belief exemptions, Offit said.

That's at least partly in response to concerns about disease outbreaks. In 2010, for example, California had an outbreak of whooping cough that sickened more than 9,000 people and killed 10 infants -- most of whom were too young to be vaccinated.

In a recent study of that outbreak, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that whooping cough cases tended to concentrate in areas of the state with the highest rates of personal belief exemptions.

To continue reading this article visit http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/news/20140211/states-may-be-getting-stricter-on-child-vaccine-exemptions