This week we are going to look at some short updates regarding all types of health issues.
More and more women who have been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer are rejecting chemotherapy in favour of alternative treatments. A new study has found that up to 87 per cent of women are turning, instead, to vitamins/supplements and mind-body therapies in the first year following diagnosis.
After a year, the vast majority of women started chemo because it was considered essential, although 11 per cent never did. The take-up was much less in women whose chemotherapy treatment was discretionary.
Overall, women who turn to alternative therapies are less likely to ever use chemotherapy for their breast cancer, say researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who reviewed the way that 685 women responded to their diagnosis. All the women were aged under 70 and with non-metastatic (not spreading beyond the breast) breast cancer.
The researchers say that the use of alternative treatments for cancer has grown over the past 20 years. The most popular therapies are dietary supplements and vitamins and mind-body practices, and the vast majority of women use two therapies at the same time (JAMA Oncol., 2016).
Standing up at your desk can make you more productive and effective in the office. Giving up the chair also reduces back pain and discomfort, a new study has found.
It can boost your productivity by nearly 50 per cent, as well as help you burn more calories and improve your overall attention and thinking. Researchers found that productivity levels rose dramatically when they compared two groups of employees at a call centre, half of whom stood regularly for six months, while the rest carried on sitting at their desks. After six months, the standing employees had been around 45 per cent more productive.
The two groups were about the same during the first month. However, differences started to appear from the second month onwards, said researchers from Texas A&M Health Science School of Public Health.
The standing employees were allowed to sit when they got tired or uncomfortable, but on average, they sat for around 1.6 hours less per day than their seated colleagues.
The use of alternative treatments for cancer has grown over the past 20 years
Earlier studies found that standing at desks helped burn calories and made students more attentive and improved their thinking. I tried this myself last year for about four months and it certainly has an effect on your work and your alertness.
It is known that moderate physical activity is a good way to lower your risk of heart disease. However, researchers have now discovered that it also protects against 13 types of cancer. Exercise cuts the risk more than just losing weight. People who reduce their body mass index lower their risk for just three of the 13 cancers, and then only slightly. However, those who exercise moderately or intensely in their leisure time are far less likely than sedentary people to develop 13 of the 26 cancers monitored in the study.
On assessing exercise levels and rates of cancers in 1.4 million participants, researchers, led by the US National Cancer Institute, found that exercise had the most protective effects against cancer of the gullet. It reduced the risk by 42 per cent, followed by liver (27 per cent), lung (26 per cent) and kidney (23 per cent) cancers.
It is believed that 51 per cent of Americans and 31 per cent of people worldwide lead sedentary, inactive lives (JAMA Intern. Med., 2016).
There is still a lot we don’t understand about Alzheimer’s. However, sticky plaques (which medicine has believed cause Alzheimer’s disease and dementia) could actually be protecting the brain during infection, new research has found. This means that the Alzheimer’s drug therapy used for the past 30 years has been wrong.
Amyloid-beta proteins, which is what sticky plaques are made up of, are widely seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. However, it has now been found that they are a natural antibiotic that protects the brain against infection from, for example, salmonella.
It was thought that the plaques were causing the brain problems, but researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital believe they have a positive role. If this is true, dementia and Alzheimer’s could even be the end result of infection.
“This widely-held view (that sticky plaques cause Alzheimer’s) has guided therapeutic strategies and drug development for more than 30 years, but our findings suggest that this view is incomplete,” said lead researcher Robert Moir.
Nevertheless, the researchers have been criticised, as their research has so far been restricted to animal models, particularly genetically modified mice and worms (Sci. Transl. Med., 2016).
Finally, let’s look at keyhole surgery for hip pain. Apparently, new research has found that 35 per cent of the procedures fail and a complete hip replacement is eventually required. The keyhole procedure known as ‘arthroscopic surgery’ is often inappropriate for any patient aged over 60, or suffering from arthritis. The rate of hip arthroscopies increased 600 per cent between 2006 and 2010 in the US alone. It is easy to see why; it is none-invasive and can be done on an outpatient basis, so a hospital stay is not required.
However, it doesn’t always solve the problem, say researchers from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Tracking the outcomes of more than 7,000 keyhole procedures carried out in Florida and California, they found that more than a third of operations performed in patients aged between 60 and 69 had failed. A total hip replacement was needed within two years. Arthritis and obesity were other complications which further increased the rate of failure (Arthroscopy, 2016).
kathryn@maltanet.net