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By HealthWatch, August 7, 2009

You can usually tell how old someone is by looking at their eyes. They’re more than just ‘Windows To The Soul’ but also a way to show your age. Why is this so? Your area around your eyes will typically be the first to start sagging and becoming wrinkled which is natures sign of aging. You have to keep in mind that the body has three main types of skin on it. The skin around your eyes is the thinnest, most delicate skin. The skin on your face is more like the paper found in business cards and the skin on the rest of your body is more like file folder paper.

Think about how easily tissue paper is damaged or wrinkled. The very same type of thing happens to the thin skin around your eyes, which is why you should not treat the skin around your eyes the same way you would treat the skin on the rest of your face, or especially the skin on the rest of your body! Have no fear, there are simple routines that are easy to start and if you do them often (once a day is recommended) you can prevent and even reverse some of these signs of aging!

1. Do not rub your eyes!!. Rubbing your eyes either with your fingers or a wash cloth can wrinkle the skin around your eye area. When your are touching your eye area, use the pad of your ring finger, which is the weakest, softest finger on your hands and pat the area, instead of rubbing it. This holds true for applying moisturizer, concealer, or any other eye product. Eye makeup should ideally be applied with an appropriate cosmetics brush. When removing your eye makeup, use a cotton ball to prevent the pulling and tugging that may occur with a wash cloth or your fingers.
2. No Regular Soap For The Face. Most soaps are made to clean the “file folder” skin on your body and are not always gentle enough for your eye area. In addition, many soaps have a high ph, which can lead to irritation or dryness for normal to dry skin or even increased oil for combination to oily skin. Many soaps also contain lards or fats that can block pores and lead to increased acne. Be sure to use a gentle cleanser, specific to your skin type on your face and an eye makeup remover formulated specifically for your eye area.
3. Apply daily moisturizer around the eye area daily. It’s important to use a moisturizer on your face to help trap the moisture so your skin looks more like a firm grape than a weathered tennis ball! Since the skin around your eyes is so thin and doesn’t have much fat, it’s important to use an eye cream that not only moisturizes, but strengthens and firms the skin in that area and also encourages collagen and elastin production. Your body stops producing any significant amount of collagen on it’s own after the age of 16, but thankfully, there are moisturizers on the market that can actually help this process along and diminish and prevent wrinkles. If you already have poor skin try using something like Res-V Youth, it’s been promoted on many popular TV programs as a relatively inexpensive way to get rid of wrinkles and other signs of aging.
4. Get your beauty sleep. Researchers say that your body ideally needs 8 hours of sleep per day. While your sleeping, your body is working to repair sick and damaged skin cells. So, the more sleep you get, the more time you’re giving your body to naturally fight the signs of aging. It is literally the least expensive, most natural way to get that fresh, relaxed glow we’re all after.

These basic tips, if followed, can help reverse (also prevent) the area around your eyes from a lot of the damage that time will cause. The “Before” picture in this article is a picture of my eyes when my daughter was 4 months old, I wasn’t getting enough sleep and I wasn’t taking care of my skin. Flash forward to the “After” picture, just 8 months later on my daughter’s first birthday. This was taken after I’d been fully rested and happily back on my daily skin-treatment routine. If I can do it, anyone can!  Start following these 4 simple steps and I guarantee you will notice a difference. This is safe for all ages, all skin tones, all body types! Don’t show your age!

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By HealthWatch, August 3, 2009

The latest treatment in the prevention of chronic migraine headaches might surprise you. No, it’s not some sort of drug you’ll have to be prescribed, nor is it a new form of exercise or diet. To participate in this new medical breakthrough you’ll have to do something that you probably never thought to associate with a cure for anything other than old age, you just have to go get a facelift.

Using cosmetic surgery (or in most cases just Botox injections) to correct migraine is a fairly new idea to hit the scientific community.

According to WebMD, some 30 million Americans suffer from migraines with a large number of them being women.

The study enrolled 75 patients with moderate to severe migraine headaches. Migraine trigger sites in the forehead, cheek and back of the head/neck were identified, then injected with the face-lifter Botox to see if the drug “disarmed” them.

If the trigger sites responded to the Botox, which lasts about six-to-eight weeks, then the patients underwent surgery to remove the trigger areas.

Forty-nine patients were randomized to receive “real” surgery and 26 to “sham” surgery.

The surgeries differed depending on the trigger points.

“For the patients with forehead headaches, we removed the frowning muscles. That’s why they look better, more cheerful,” explained Dr. Bahman Guyuron, lead author of the study and professor and chairman of the department of plastic surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland.

Those with temple headaches underwent an operation on a small nerve, which also lifted their eyebrows.

And, for those with a back-of-the-head trigger, Guyuron replaced a small amount of muscle around the occipital nerve with fatty tissue to shield the nerve from being squeezed by the muscle.

After one year, almost 84 percent of patients receiving actual surgery reported a reduction in migraines of 50 percent or more while slightly more than 57 percent said that their migraines had completely disappeared, versus 57.7 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively, in the sham group.

Some patients did experience temporary numbness in parts of the face, said Guyuron, but it usually went away.

“One thing that’s impressive is the migraine-free rates,” Lipton said. “The other thing that was impressive is they did a year of follow-up. Usually, everything is placebo-responsive but those responses are usually short-lived. A year is really impressive.”

Guyuron believes the procedure, which he has already performed on more than 400 individuals, could benefit a wide range of migraine sufferers. “It really is not invasive surgery. It takes about an hour to do the operation for each trigger site, three-and-a-half hours is the maximum,” he said. “They go home right after the surgery and go back to work within a week.”

But Lipton wants to see another study, and feels surgery should be reserved for the most intractable cases.

“This is obviously not for everyone. This is for people who are really suffering, who’ve had adequate trials of medical therapy and who have an identifiable trigger point and get better following a Botox injection,” Lipton said. “There are a lot of hurdles someone would have to jump over before I would send them for surgery.”

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By HealthWatch, July 28, 2009

According to a medical research study released yesterday, overweight Americans spend close to 42% more on health care than your average “normal-weight” citizen.

Consumer as well as corporate spending on weight-loss related treatments is projected to top over $147 billion a year in 2008, according to the new study which started in 2006 to track both a series of test patients as well as national consumer spending trends. That figure accounts for almost 10 percent of all medical spending in the USA for this year!

Overweight and obese Americans spend close to $1,429 more on health care each year than the roughly $3,400 spent by those Americans who fall within the “normal-weight” range.

Most of the excess spending is for prescription drugs needed to manage obesity-related conditions, said Eric A. Finkelstein, one of the study’s authors and the director of the public health economics program at the Research Triangle Institute, a nonprofit research organization.

The results were presented on Monday at the first Weight of the Nation conference, which was held in Washington by officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they’re getting worse rapidly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said.

The average American consumes 250 more calories per day than just two decades ago, Dr. Frieden noted, and don’t forget that thanks to advances in modern technology, the average time spent exercising has decreased compared to that same time period. This could be part of the blame for our rising obesity rate which currently represents the single greatest contributor to the over-all increase in diabetes cases reported in the US. Time spent exercising includes both strenuous physical activity as well as physical labor.

According to a medical research study released yesterday, overweight Americans spend close to 42% more on health care than your average “normal-weight” citizen.

Consumer as well as corporate spending on weight-loss related treatments is projected to top over $147 billion a year in 2008, according to the new study which started in 2006 to track both a series of test patients as well as national consumer spending trends. That figure accounts for almost 10 percent of all medical spending in the USA for this year!

Overweight and obese Americans spend close to $1,429 more on health care each year than the roughly $3,400 spent by those Americans who fall within the “normal-weight” range.

Most of the excess spending is for prescription drugs needed to manage obesity-related conditions, said Eric A. Finkelstein, one of the study’s authors and the director of the public health economics program at the Research Triangle Institute, a nonprofit research organization.

The results were presented on Monday at the first Weight of the Nation conference, which was held in Washington by officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they’re getting worse rapidly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said.

The average American consumes 250 more calories per day than just two decades ago, Dr. Frieden noted, and don’t forget that thanks to advances in modern technology, the average time spent exercising has decreased compared to that same time period. This could be part of the blame for our rising obesity rate which currently represents the single greatest contributor to the over-all increase in diabetes cases reported in the US. Time spent exercising includes both strenuous physical activity as well as physical labor.

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By HealthWatch, July 14, 2009

A drink a day may keep dementia away it seems.

In a study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers followed 3,069 people 75 and older for six years. At the start of the study, 482 of them had all been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment.

The study showed that people who drank one to two alcoholic drinks a day were 37% less likely to develop dementia than those who abstained from it. Also to note: it didn’t matter whether the patient chose beer, wine or hard liquor, the results were still the same.

Now before you rush out to find the nearest bottle of wine, the reduction in risk is very similar to that associated with exercising three times a week or more, Sink says. So think twice before changing your drinking habits.

Among people who had mild cognitive impairment at the start of the study, those who drank more than two drinks a day were nearly twice as likely to develop dementia, compared with nondrinkers.

The Scientists took into account the test patient’s education, history of depression and smoking as well as other factors that can affect the risk of forming dementia.

Sink says no one should start imbibing in an effort to ward off dementia. “But older adults who are already drinking moderately don’t necessarily need to cut back if they’re cognitively normal,” she says.

The study doesn’t prove cause and effect. It could be alcohol itself or some other lifestyle factor shared by moderate drinkers that is responsible for the protective effect, Sink says.

But other research has suggested moderate drinking might protect against dementia by increasing levels of good cholesterol and preventing blood platelets from sticking together. It may also stimulate the release of acetylcholine, a chemical that’s important for memory, Sink says.

So why didn’t it help people with mild cognitive impairment? Sink says any benefits from alcohol may not have been strong enough to slow the degenerative disease process that’s already kicked in with people who have mild cognitive impairment.

“Moderate drinking may be protective for healthy adults, but once there are memory problems, it may be very important to curtail that,” says Maria Carrillo, PhD, director of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association.

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By HealthWatch, May 26, 2009

The American College of Sports Medicine just released a new list of the most healthy cities in the United States. At the top of the list is, and I couldn’t believe it either, our capital city Washington, D.C.

Using a variety of data comprised from sources including The U.S. Department of Agricuture, the Trust for the Public Land (non-profit), The U.S. Census Bureau and the CDC, the ranking was based on various personal traits. These ranged from the percentage of residents who are obsese, are smokers, eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables per day and on the resources local to the cities inhabitants, such as the number of parks, farmer’s markets and health facilities. They also took into account larger issues like crime and poverty rate. To learn more about the actual metrics involved in this study, checkout the American Fitness Index.

Here’s the list:
1. Washington, D.C.
2. Minneapolis-St. Paul
3. Denver
4. Boston
5. San Francisco
6. Seattle
7. Portland, Ore.
8. San Diego
9. Austin
10. Virginia Beach
11. Hartford, Conn.
12. Sacramento
13. San Jose
14. Cincinnati
15.Atlanta
16. Pittsburgh
17. Milwaukee
18. Buffalo 1
19. Baltimore
20. Raleigh, N.C.
21. Kansas City, Mo., Ks.
22. New York City
23. Tampa
24. Cleveland
25. Chicago
26. Nashville
27. Philadelphia
28. Jacksonville
29. Columbus, Ohio
30. Los Angeles
31. Miami
32. Phoenix
33. St. Louis
34. Charlotte
35. Dallas
36. Indianapolis
37. Memphis
38. Louisville
39. San Antonio
40. Riverside, Calif.
41. Houston
42. Las Vegas
43. Birmingham, Ala.
44. Detroit
45. Oklahoma City

Some cities that were not ranked because community/environmental data were not available: Orlando; Providence; Richmond, Va.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Salt Lake City.