Avocado Salsa

Makes roughly 4-5 cups of salsa. 

 Ingredients:

2 avocados, diced

1 can (15 oz.) black beans, rinsed and drained

1 can (15 oz.) sweet corn, drained

1 cup quartered grape tomatoes

½ orange bell pepper, finely diced

1 fresh mango, peeled and diced

1 jalapeno, seeded and minced (optional)

Juice and zest of 2 limes

1 generous tbsp. honey

1 tsp. salt (or to taste)

¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper (or to taste)

½ tsp. garlic powder (or 1 tsp. if you love garlic as much as I do!)

1 tbsp. ground cumin

Preparation:

1. Gently stir all ingredients together and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Serve immediately or cover tightly and refrigerate for a few hours, then enjoy with chips or get creative (and healthy!) and spoon onto grilled chicken, steak, pork tenderloin, fish, or shrimp.

*Salsa will last up to 2 days, but it’s best the day it’s prepared. To help prevent the avocado from turning brown (oxidizing), cover the salsa directly with plastic wrap, pressing down gently to seal out air.

Got a little time to dress up your salsa? Use fresh corn instead – rub 2 or 3 ears with olive oil and lime zest, then grill and cut right off the cobs for maximum smoky-sweetness!

Recipe by: Chef Madeleine Dee

New to the world of avocado’s? Chef Madeleine Dee demystifies the fabulous fruit here.

The authors from King’s College London carried out a study on just over a 1000 pairs of twins at five, seven, 10 and 12 years of age. All children were born in 1994-1995 in England and Wales. The children were assessed on the risks of self-harming in the six months prior to their 12th birthday. Self-harm data was available for 2141 children.

237 children were victims of frequent bullying: 18 (8%) of them self harmed. Of the 1904 who had not been bullied, 44 (2 %) had self harmed.

Approximately one quarter of all school-children in the UK are bullied at some point during their school lives. Victimization is associated with behavioral problems during adolescence, but few studies have tested the assumption that exposure to bullying increases the likelihood that a child will self-harm. The authors hope this study will help to identify those at greatest risk of self-harm.

The authors found that several factors increased the risk of self-harm amongst children who were bullied, including: a family history of self-harming; maltreatment; behavioral and emotional problems. And although the likelihood was slightly higher for girls (1.6%), the association was evident amongst both sexes.

Bullying was defined as when another child: says mean or hurtful things; completely ignores or excludes the victim; hits, kicks or shoves the victim; tells lies or spreads rumors and / or does other hurtful things, all on a frequent basis. Examples of self-harm included: cutting and biting arms; pulling out clumps of hair; banging head against walls; attempted suicides by strangulation.

The authors suggest that while “more effective programs to prevent bullying occurring […] are required”, there should also be efforts in place to help children cope with emotional distress arising from bullying. And although alternative coping strategies should be provided, the effectiveness of these does need to be investigated.

In conclusion, bullying during early years can have damaging consequences by adolescence, especially if children are also exposed to family adversity or have mental-health difficulties. The authors suggest that schools and healthcare professionals should aim to further “reduce bullying and introduce self-harm risk-reduction programs” in order to prevent the risk of bullied children hurting themselves in later life.

This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the BMJ-British Medical Journal. For more information click here. The study was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.

Reviewed by:Rajeev Kurapati MD

Gut flora, otherwise knows as gut microbiota, are the bacteria that live in our digestive tract. There are roughly one thousand different species of bacteria, that are nourished partly by what we eat. Each person has their own specific gut flora and metabolism and these differ according to our dietary habits. Previous studies in mice have shown that a high-fat diet is capable of causing an imbalance in the gut flora, thus causing metabolic diseases such as diabetes or obesity.

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the Inserm . For more information click here. The study was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.

Reviewed by:Rajeev Kurapati MD

Avocados are available during all seasons, but that doesn’t mean they’re great all year long! They are grown in warm climates, so during the winter, they likely travel a little farther than normal to make it to your grocery store, and most will have some jet lag from the journey.  What does that mean for you? Simply that you need to know what to look for:

The Perfect Avocado

The perfect avocado!

When selecting an avocado, look for a shiny black skin. It should be firm but have a bit of a give when gently squeezed. However, it should not dent or ooze when pressed. If you feel uncertain, pop out that little stem tab at the top – if the hole you uncover is green, you’ve got a winner!

Avocados are quite nutritious and notably rich in vitamins E, C, and K, as well as potassium, folate, and fiber. In addition, they contain no sodium, trans fat, or cholesterol! They do contain fat, but a good one  – avocados offer monounsaturated fat, which helps to lower blood cholesterol and can aid in decreasing your risk of heart disease.

When cooked, avocado can become bitter, so you’ll most often want to use it raw in dishes to add a fresh, cool, creamy, and subtly-flavored touch to your culinary creations. Feeling adventurous? Try topping a burger with thinly-sliced avocado or blending up an avocado milkshake!

Hungry? Check out my recipe for Avocado and Black Bean Salsa with Mango, Corn, and Tomatoes!

Wondering what to do with it once you get it home? Follow these simple steps and you’ll be a pro in no time:

With a sharp knife, cut through the skin and down to the pit in the center. Carefully roll the avocado, cutting a straight line around the entire fruit to get back to your starting point.

Split the two halves by twisting gently and pulling apart.

To remove the pit, hold the avocado half in your hand and gently but firmly whack the pit with your knife, then twist to remove. Cover your hand with a paper towel and carefully remove the pit from your knife.

“Score” your avocado by slicing even lines from top to bottom, then from side to side to form a grid pattern. Be careful not to cut through the skin. (You could also scoop out the flesh with a spoon and then dice it, but you’ll look like a pro if you can master this scoring technique in the skin!

Use a spoon to scoop out the scored flesh and enjoy perfectly diced avocado! To help keep the avocado green longer, toss it with a little lime or lemon juice.

Check out Chef Madeleine Dee’s great avocado salsa recipe.

CDC believes this approach will address the largely preventable consequences of this disease, especially in light of newly available therapies that can cure up to 75 percent of infections.

“With increasingly effective treatments now available, we can prevent tens of thousands of deaths from hepatitis C,” said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H.

More than 2 million U.S. baby boomers are infected with hepatitis C, accounting for more than 75 percent of all American adults living with the virus. Baby boomers are five times more likely to be infected than other adults. Yet most infected baby boomers do not know they have the virus because hepatitis C can damage the liver for many years with few noticeable symptoms. More than 15,000 Americans, most of them baby boomers, die each year from hepatitis C-related illness, such as cirrhosis and liver cancer, and deaths have been increasing steadily for over a decade and are projected to grow significantly in coming years.

“Identifying these hidden infections early will allow more baby boomers to receive care and treatment, before they develop life-threatening liver disease,” said Kevin Fenton, M.D., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and Tuberculosis Prevention.

For more on this story, click here.

This story is reproduced with press release from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Twenty-five subjects — who had not previously played videogames — played a game for a total of 10 hours in one to two hour sessions. Sixteen of the subjects played a first-person shooter game and, as a control, nine subjects played a three-dimensional puzzle game.

Before and after playing the games, the subjects’ brain waves were recorded while they tried to detect a target object among other distractions over a wide visual field. Subjects who played the shooter videogame and also showed the greatest improvement on the visual attention task showed significant changes in their brain waves. The remaining subjects — including those who had played the puzzle game — did not.

“After playing the shooter game, the changes in electrical activity were consistent with brain processes that enhance visual attention and suppress distracting information,” said Sijing Wu, a PhD student in Spence’s lab in U of T’s Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.

“Studies in different labs, including here at the University of Toronto, have shown that action videogames can improve selective visual attention, such as the ability to quickly detect and identify a target in a cluttered background,” said Spence. “But nobody has previously demonstrated that there are differences in brain activity which are a direct result of playing the videogame.”

“Superior visual attention is crucial in many important everyday activities,” added Spence. “It’s necessary for things such as driving a car, monitoring changes on a computer display, or even avoiding tripping while walking through a room with children’s toys scattered on the floor.”

The research was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada in the form of Discovery Grants to Spence and co-author Claude Alain of the Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre and U of T’s Psychology Department.

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the University of Toronto. For more information click here. The study was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.

Reviewed by:Rajeev Kurapati MD

A new study by San Francisco State University researcher Ryan Howell and his colleagues demonstrates that having this sort of “balanced time perspective” can make people feel more vital, more grateful, and more satisfied with their lives.

“If you are too extreme or rely too much on any one of these perspectives, it becomes detrimental, and you can get into very destructive types of behaviors,” Howell said. “It is best to be balanced in your time perspectives.”

While it may seem obvious that people who have a positive attitude about their past, enjoy the present, and focus on goals for the future would be the happiest, Howell said that a sense of well-being depends on the balance between these elements.

“If you’re really dominant in one type of perspective, you’re very limited in certain situations,” he added. “To deal well when you walk into any situation, you need to have cognitive flexibility. That is probably why people with a balanced time perspective are happiest.”

It can be fine to have fond memories of childhood, for instance, but spending too much time remembering the past can keep you from enjoying the present. It might be great to treat yourself to a nice dinner, but “living in the moment” like that every night could keep you from achieving future goals.

There is some evidence that people can “rebalance” their time perspectives, Howell said, while noting that “there hasn’t been a lot of work that’s tried to change time perspectives explicitly.” But in general, “if you’re too future-oriented, it might be good to give yourself a moment to sit back and enjoy the present,” Howell suggested. “If you’re too hedonistic and living for the moment, maybe it’s time to start planning some future goals.”

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the San Francisco State University. For more information click here.

Reviewed by:Rajeev Kurapati MD

According to Dr. Neil Cannon, certified Sex Therapist & Couples Counselor: “Sending gays to therapy to become “un-gay” has been a hotly debated topic within the mental health community for many years. The American Psychological Association (APA) representing its’ 150,000 professional members, said that after an exhaustive review of 50 years’ worth of studies, even if gays wanted to become straight there is no credible evidence concluding that reparative therapy is effective.  As a clinician who has worked with countless people of every sexual orientation, I can say with confidence that sexual orientation is not a choice, but rather a clear case of nature over nurture.  The only people that need repair are the people who impose their moral values on others, pathologize those who are different than themselves, and claim there is only one way to live in this life.”

Same-sex marriage has also been examined in terms of evolution. What value could this sexual orientation have, that it has persisted for eons even without any discernible reproductive advantage? One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the “kin selection hypothesis.” What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being “helpers in the nest.” By acting altruistically toward nieces and nephews, homosexual men would perpetuate the family genes, including some of their own.

Ultimately, public attitudes toward gays and lesbians are becoming more accepting, especially by younger generations, according to research by NORC at the University of Chicago. The results show a clear trend toward greater tolerance regarding homosexuality.

The rise in support for same-sex marriage has been especially dramatic over the last two decades. It went from 11 percent approval in 1988 to 46 percent in 2010, compared to 40 percent who were opposed.

All and all, anti-gay attitudes may eventually become all but antiquated.

Sources:

University of Chicago Press Journals
Association for Psychological Science
www.doctorcannon.com

Copeland contracted the rare infection, called necrotizing fasciitis, within a few days after suffering a deep cut May 1 in an outdoor accident. She remains in critical condition Sunday at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

We all wish a speedy recovery for Aimee.

The results of a two-year dietary study led by Hans Guldbrand, general practitioner, and Fredrik Nyström, professor of Internal Medicine, are being published in the prestigious journal Diabetologia.

High-fat diet lowered blood sugar and improved blood lipids in diabetics

Despite the increased fat intake with a larger portion of saturated fatty acids, the lipoproteins of subjects involved in the study did not get worse. Quite the contrary – the HDL, or ‘good’ cholesterol, content increased on the high fat diet.

No statistically certain improvements, either of the glycemic controls or the lipoproteins, were seen in the low-fat group, despite the weight loss.

“You could ask yourself if it really is good to recommend a low-fat diet to patients with diabetes, if despite their weight loss they get neither better lipoproteins nor blood glucose levels,” Nyström says.

In the low-carbohydrate diet, 50% of the energy came from fat, 20% from carbohydrates, and 30% from protein. For the low-fat group the distribution was 30% from fat, 55-60% from carbohydrates, and 10-15% from protein, which corresponds to the diet recommended by the Swedish National Food Agency.

“In contrast to most other studies of this type, we lost no patients at all, which vouches for the good quality of our data,” Guldbrand says.

Source Article: In type 2 diabetes, randomisation to advice to follow a low-carbohydrate diet transiently improves glycaemic control compared with advice to follow a low-fat diet producing a similar weight loss by H. Guldbrand, B. Dizdar, B. Bunjaku, T. Lindström, M. Bachrach-Lindström, M. Fredriksson, C. J. Östgren and F. H. Nyström. Diabetologia online first 9 May 2012.

This story is reproduced with editorial adaptations from Press Release by Linköping University

http://www.life123.com/health/healthy-aging/memory/human-memory.shtml

Aging may seem unavoidable, but that’s not necessarily so when it comes to the brain. So say researchers in the the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences explaining that it is what you do in old age that matters more when it comes to maintaining a youthful brain not what you did earlier in life.

“Although some memory functions do tend to decline as we get older, several elderly show well preserved functioning and this is related to a well-preserved, youth-like brain,” says Lars Nyberg of Umeå University in Sweden.

Education won’t save your brain — PhDs are as likely as high-school dropouts to experience memory loss with old age, the researchers say. Don’t count on your job either. Those with a complex or demanding career may enjoy a limited advantage, but those benefits quickly dwindle after retirement.

Engagement is the secret to success. Those who are socially, mentally and physically stimulated reliably show better cognitive performance with a brain that appears younger than its years.

“There is quite solid evidence that staying physically and mentally active is a way towards brain maintenance,” Nyberg says.

The researchers say this new take on successful aging represents an important shift in focus for the field. Much attention in the past has gone instead to understanding ways in which the brain copes with or compensates for cognitive decline in aging. The research team now argues for the importance of avoiding those age-related brain changes in the first place. Genes play some role, but life choices and other environmental factors, especially in old age, are critical.

Elderly people generally do have more trouble remembering meetings or names, Nyberg says. But those memory losses often happen later than many often think, after the age of 60. Older people also continue to accumulate knowledge and to use what they know effectively, often to very old ages.

“Taken together, a wide range of findings provides converging evidence for marked heterogeneity in brain aging,” the scientists write. “Critically, some older adults show little or no brain changes relative to younger adults, along with intact cognitive performance, which supports the notion of brain maintenance. In other words, maintaining a youthful brain, rather than responding to and compensating for changes, may be the key to successful memory aging.”

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the Cell Press. For more information click here. The study was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.

Reviewed by:Rajeev Kurapati MD

The story is about “attachment parenting” – an approach whereby parents breastfeed and co-sleep with their children, in addition to wearing their children in slings.

On left: Jessica Cary and her 3-year-old daughter. Right: Dionna Ford with her 4-year-old and 5-month-old sons.

What is Attachment Parenting?

Attachment Parenting is an approach to childrearing that promotes a secure attachment bond between parents and their children. Attachment is a scientific term for the emotional bond in a relationship. Attachment Parenting International (API) is a worldwide educational association for this style of parenting. API identifies eight principles of attachment parenting.

According to API, these tools are valuable, practical insights for everyday parenting – that they can use to apply the concept behind Attachment Parenting. These tools guide parents as they incorporate attachment into their individual parenting styles:

1. Prepare for Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Parenting — The overarching message within this principle is the importance of parents to research their decisions regarding pregnancy care, childbirth choices, and parenting styles; childbirth without the use of interventions shows the best start to the parent-infant bond. However, there are ways to modify the initial bonding experience for mothers who do encounter complications.
2. Feed with Love and Respect — Research shows unequivocal evidence for breastfeeding for infants along with gentle weaning into nutritious food choices. Breastfeeding is the healthiest infant-feeding choice. The physiology of breastfeeding promotes a high degree of maternal responsiveness and is associated with several other positive outcomes. In the case breastfeeding is not possible, bottle-nursing — attentive bottle-feeding — should emulate the closeness of breastfeeding.
3. Respond with Sensitivity — This Principle is a central element in all of the Principles; it is viewed by many parents as the cornerstone to Attachment Parenting. It encompasses a timely response by a nurturing caregiver. Baby-training systems, such as the commonly referred-to “cry it out,” are inconsistent with this Principle. The foundation of responding with sensitivity in the early years prepares parents for all their years of parenting, by modeling respect and caring.
4. Provide Nurturing Touch — Parents who “wear” their babies in a sling or wrap are applying this Principle. Infants who are opposed to babywearing enjoy being held in-arms. Touch remains important throughout childhood and can be done through massage, hugs, hand-holding, and cuddling.
5. Ensure Safe Sleep — This principle is the basis for one of the more controversial subjects in parenting. Many attachment parents share a room with their young children; those who exclusively breastfeed and who take necessary safety precautions may prefer to share their bed. However, this principle can be just as easily applied to crib-sleeping situations. The point is not the sleeping surface but that parents remain responsive to their children during sleep.
6. Use Consistent and Loving Care — Secure attachment depends on continuity of care by a single, primary caregiver. Ideally, this is the parent. However, if both parents must work outside the home, this principle can be applied by ensuring that the child is being cared for by one childcare provider who embodies a responsive, empathic caregiver over the long-term; for example, an in-home nanny versus a large daycare center with rotating staff.
7. Practice Positive Discipline — There is a strong push against physical punishment in recent years, but research shows that all forms of punishment, including punitive timeouts, can not only be ineffective in teaching children boundaries in their behavior but also harmful to psychological and emotional development. Parents are encouraged to teach by example and to use non-punitive discipline techniques such as substitution, distraction, problem solving, and playful parenting. Parents do not set rules so that their child obeys for the sake of structure, but rather to be the teacher, the coach, the cheerleader, and the guidepost as the child develops his or her own sense of moral responsibility within the construct of the family value system.
8. Strive for Personal and Family Balance — Attachment Parenting is a family-centered approach in that all members of the family have equal value. The parent is not a tyrant, yet also not a martyr. Parents need balance between their parenting role and their personal life in order to continue having the energy and motivation to maintain a healthy relationship and to model healthy lifestyles for their children.

Attachment Parenting is not exclusive. Every parent – every socioeconomic class, every ethnicity, every culture – can incorporate attachment-minded techniques into their childrearing philosophy.

Each mother has a unique way of raising her child in tune with the child’s needs and with her own needs. Attachment Parenting is another set of tools to help moms raise children would would become stress free successful adults.

For more information: Attachment Parenting International (API)

While eating too much food can cause obesity, the fear of not having enough food may lead to the same result, according to a study to be presented  at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting.

Being worried about not having enough food to feed one’s family, a situation called food insecurity, is common in low-income families. These families often are overweight, too.

“Understanding the reasons why poverty puts families at greater risk of obesity is essential to addressing the epidemic,” said study lead author Rachel Gross, MD, MS, FAAP, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York.

Credit: Department of the Interior. Solid Fuels Administration For War

Dr. Gross and her colleagues at the New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Center, interviewed 201 low-income mothers with infants younger than 6 months about their feeding styles (whether they tried to control how much the child ate), feeding practices (e.g., breastfeeding, adding cereal to bottles) and concerns about their child becoming overweight. Studies have shown that feeding patterns leading to obesity often begin in infancy.

The mothers primarily were Hispanic, and all participated in the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Results showed that about one-third of the mothers reported food insecurity.

“We found that food insecurity is related to controlling feeding practices, which have been shown to increase child obesity,” Dr. Gross said. “These controlling feeding practices involved both restriction, in which parents limit the infant’s intake even if the infant is hungry, and pressuring, in which the parent encourages the infant to eat more even if the infant is full.”

It is believed that when mothers control what an infant eats, it may disrupt the child’s ability to regulate his or her own hunger and fullness, leading to overeating and inappropriate weight gain, Dr. Gross explained.

Food-insecure mothers also were more concerned about their child becoming overweight than mothers who weren’t worried about having enough food for their families.

“This work suggests that in addition to addressing hunger and malnutrition, it is critical that policy efforts be made to work with food-insecure families to prevent the opposite problem — obesity,” Dr. Gross said.

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics. For more information click here.

A new type of anti-epilepsy medication that selectively targets proteins in the brain that control excitability may significantly reduce seizure frequency in people whose recurrent seizures have been resistant to even the latest medications, new Johns Hopkins-led research suggests.

“Many other drugs to treat frequent seizures have been released in the last 10 years and for many people, they just don’t work,” says study leader Gregory L. Krauss, M.D., a professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “For a drug-resistant population that has run out of options, this study is good news. These are patients who are tough to treat and are fairly desperate.”

Photo Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nsaum75

Perampanel is the first in a new class of drugs that appears reduce seizures without causing major side effects. Other drugs have tended to make patients too sleepy to function, even putting them in comas, Krauss says. But this new medication, he says, may potentially offer relief not only to people with epilepsy, but to those struggling with drug addiction problems or the neurodegenerative disorder ALS.

One in 200 Americans have epilepsy and more than half have partial-onset seizures.

The participants in the study, being reported this week in the journal Neurology, were all taking one to three anti-epileptic drugs before adding perampanel (or a placebo) to their regimen. Krauss and his colleagues assigned each to receive a placebo, two milligrams, four milligrams or eight milligrams per day of the drug. The lowest effective dose was four milligrams per day and the higher the dose, they found, the better the results. Another trial is currently looking at a 12 milligram per day dose. The most common side effect was dizziness, Krauss says.

H.B. Edwards, B.S., of Johns Hopkins was also involved in the research.

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by John Hopkins Medicine. For more information, click here. 

Over recent years there has been increasing attention focused on the neurological sequelae of sports-related traumatic brain injury, particularly concussion. Concussion is a frequent occurrence in contact sports.

Since the 1920s, it has been known that the repetitive brain trauma associated with boxing may produce a progressive neurological deterioration, originally termed “dementia pugilistica” and more recently, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

CTE is a progressive degeneration of brains and nerves, that is associated with memory disturbances, behavioral and personality change, and speech and gait abnormalities. There is overwhelming evidence that the condition is the result of repeated sublethal brain trauma that often occurs well before the development of symptoms. Repetitive closed head injury occurs in a wide variety of contact sports.

Repetitive closed head injury occurs in a wide variety of contact sports, including football, boxing, wrestling, rugby, hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and skiing. Furthermore, in collision sports such as football and boxing, players may experience thousands of head hits over the course of a single season. Although the long-term neurological effecrs associated with repetitive brain injury are best known in boxing, this effect has been reported in professional football players, a professional wrestler and soccer players.

In 2002, forensic pathologists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania found evidence of CTE in the brains of several football players and professional boxers.

Most recently, retired NFL player Junior Seau committed suicide with a gunshot wound to the chest. Seau’s ex-wife Gina told The Associated Press after Seau’s death that Seau sustained concussions during his career. “‘Of course he had [sustained them]. He always bounced back and kept on playing.’” she said. The medical community focused on management of Concussion in contact sports might get some evidence if in fact repeated concussions have resulted in Junior Seau’s suicide.

Additional Readinge:CTE in Athletes

Related: Must know facts about Concussion

In the United States, the drug Lyrica  is approved to treat diabetic nerve pain, pain after shingles, fibromyalgia and partial onset seizures in adults with epilepsy who take one or more drugs for seizures.But now, the company is re-investigating the use of Lyrica in nerve pain associated with conditions like Diabetes and HIV.

Lyrica’s sales reached $3.7 billion last year !!

Source: Press release from Pfizer Inc.

In October 2010, Dr. Tim Delgado, an emergency department resident of Cincinnati’s University Hospital, was to assist with a “Jane Doe cyclist in her 20’s” who had just arrived to the hospital via Air Care. Shortly after working with the patient, Dr. Delgado came to a startling realization – the patient was his wife.

Alison Delgado, a pediatric resident, suffered serious physical and neurological injuries as a result of the bicycle accident. Thanks to her helmet, her skull was intact despite numerous fractures to her neck and body.  Unfortunately, however, the impact caused a blood vessel to tear inside of her brain resulting in a subarachnoid hemorrhage and a dangerous bulge vessel wall called an aneurism. Plus, the discovery of a second aneurism on the side of her brain suggested that Alison had a genetic abnormality that increased her chances of developing brain aneurisms.

Despite several procedures to treat the aneurysm, four days after Alison’s return home from rehabilitation, it ruptured a second time.

After successful neutralization of the aneurysm, Alison refocused her attention on rehab and recovery. Memory was a difficult issue to tackle as she had trouble remembering even the name of her husband. So, her husband played games with her and showed photos of objects, friends, and family for her to find words to describe them. Reading and speech also progressed slowly with therapy. Other rehabilitation strategies included work on an elliptical, weight lifting, and balance exercises.

In February of 2011, only four months after her injury, Alison was able to present cases during her bedside rounds at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In April, she began working part-time, and by May, was back to full-time. She is expected to finish her residency by December 2012, at which time she hopes to pursue primary care or a sports medicine fellowship.

After surviving and recovering from the near-death accident, Alison, a former winner of Cincinnati’s Flying Pig and a woman who had reached the summit of two 14,000-foot Colorado peaks, is back at achieving her athletic feats by training to run the 2012 Flying Pig. With love, determination, and persistence, Alison conquered her injuries and is living the life she had always dreamed.

To read Dr. Alison Delgado’s full story, check out these links:
http://cincinnatichildrensblog.org/so-much-more-than-26-2-miles/
http://www.mayfieldclinic.com/MC_hope/Story_alison.htm

http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/patients/care/stories/tell-me/brain-spine/alison-delgado/

Thinking about death can actually be a good thing. An awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help us re-prioritize our goals and values, according to a new analysis of recent scientific studies. Even non-conscious thinking about death – say walking by a cemetery – could prompt positive changes and promote helping others.

Past research suggests that thinking about death is destructive and dangerous, fueling everything from prejudice and greed to violence. Such studies related to terror management theory (TMT), which posits that we uphold certain cultural beliefs to manage our feelings of mortality, have rarely explored the potential benefits of death awareness.

“This tendency for TMT research to primarily deal with negative attitudes and harmful behaviors has become so deeply entrenched in our field that some have recently suggested that death awareness is simply a bleak force of social destruction,” says Kenneth Vail of the University of Missouri, lead author of the new study in the online edition of Personality and Social Psychology Review this month. “There has been very little integrative understanding of how subtle, day-to-day, death awareness might be capable of motivating attitudes and behaviors that can minimize harm to oneself and others, and can promote well-being.”

On study tested how just being physically near a cemetery affects how willing people are to help a stranger. “Researchers hypothesized that if the cultural value of helping was made important to people, then the heightened awareness of death would motivate an increase in helping behaviors,” Vail says.

The researchers observed people who were either passing through a cemetery or were one block away, out of sight of the cemetery. Actors at each location talked near the participants about either the value of helping others or a control topic, and then some moments later, another actor dropped her notebook. The researchers then tested in each condition how many people helped the stranger.

“When the value of helping was made salient, the number of participants who helped the second confederate with her notebook was 40% greater at the cemetery than a block away from the cemetery,” Vail says. “Other field experiments and tightly controlled laboratory experiments have replicated these and similar findings, showing that the awareness of death can motivate increased expressions of tolerance, egalitarianism, compassion, empathy, and pacifism.”

For example, a 2010 study by Immo Fritsche of the University of Leipzig and co-authors revealed how increased death awareness can motivate sustainable behaviors when pro-environmental norms are made salient. And a study by Zachary Rothschild of the University of Kansas and co-workers in 2009 showed how an increased awareness of death can motivate American and Iranian religious fundamentalists to display peaceful compassion toward members of other groups when religious texts make such values more important.

Thinking about death can also promote better health. Recent studies have shown that when reminded of death people may opt for better health choices, such as using more sunscreen, smoking less, or increasing levels of exercise. A 2011 study by D.P. Cooper and co-authors found that death reminders increased intentions to perform breast self-exams when women were exposed to information that linked the behavior to self-empowerment.

One major implication of this body of work, Vail says, is that we should “turn attention and research efforts toward better understanding of how the motivations triggered by death awareness can actually improve people’s lives, rather than how it can cause malady and social strife.” Write the authors: “The dance with death can be a delicate but potentially elegant stride toward living the good life.”

The paper “When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management” was published online on April 5, 2012, in Personality and Social Psychology Review, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).

Source: This information is reproduced with editorial adaptations from a press release issued by Society for Personality and Social Psychology. For more information, click here. 

The key to his success is that Sergio is in a perpetual season plan: He uses a higher weekly volume, several areas of training emphasis and races instead of a scheduled workout repeated consistently over a long period of time. (source: Running Times Magazine)

Rachel Bea from Kenwood, Cincinnati is the female lead in the marathon.

We at MDHealthGuide.com congratulate the winners and participants of the Flying Pig.

Even if you have no intentions of racing as often as Sergio or Rachel, it’s possible to maintain a high level of fitness by training or participating in half or full marathon. And yes, you can run a last-minute race with expert guidance and not have it negatively affect your overall fitness. In fact, it might even help elevate your fitness a bit.

If you have a marathon story to share, the world is eager to listen. Please submit your story here.