Managing Stress

Stress can hit you when you least expect it—before a test, after an accident, or during conflict in a relationship. While everyone experiences stress at times, a prolonged bout of it can affect your health and ability to cope with life. That’s why social support and self-care are important. They can help you see your problems in perspective…and the stressful feelings ease up.

Sometimes stress can be good. For instance, it can help you develop skills needed to manage potentially threatening situations in life. However, stress can be harmful when it is severe enough to make you feel over­whelmed and out of control.

Strong emotions like fear, sadness, or other symptoms of depression are normal, as long as they are temporary and don’t interfere with daily activities. If these emotions last too long or cause other problems, it’s a different story.

Symptoms of Stress

Common reactions to a stressful event include:

• Disbelief and shock
• Tension and irritability
• Fear and anxiety about the future
• Difficulty making decisions
• Being numb to one’s feelings
• Loss of interest in normal activities
• Loss of appetite
• Nightmares and recurring thoughts about the event
• Anger
• Increased use of alcohol and drugs
• Sadness and other symptoms of depression
• Feeling powerless
• Crying
• Sleep problems
• Headaches, back pains, and stomach problems
• Trouble concentrating

The best ways to manage stress in hard times are through self-care:

• Avoid drugs and alcohol. They may seem to be a temporary fix to feel better, but in the long run they can create more problems and add to your stress—instead of take it away.
• Find support. Seek help from a partner, family member, friend, counselor, doctor, or clergyperson. Having a sympathetic, listening ear and sharing about your problems and stress really can lighten the burden.
• Connect socially. After a stressful event, it is easy isolate yourself. Make sure that you are spending time with loved ones. Consider planning fun activities with your partner, children, or friends.
• Take care of yourself.
  • Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet
  • Exercise regularly
  • Get plenty of sleep
  • Give yourself a break if you feel stressed out—for example, treat yourself to a therapeutic massage
  • Maintain a normal routine
• Stay active. You can take your mind off your problems by giving—
  helping a neighbor, volunteering in the community, even taking the dog on a long walk. These can be positive ways to channel your feelings.

Reference:  www.cdc.gov

Cancer Prevention Starts in Childhood

Reduce your children's risk of getting many types of cancer later in life. Start by helping them adopt a healthy lifestyle with good eating habits and plenty of exercise to keep a healthy weight. Then follow the tips below to help prevent specific types of cancer.

Sun Safety: The Key to Skin Cancer Prevention

Most skin cancers can be prevented if children and teens (and adults, too) are protected from ultraviolet (UV) rays.

Just a few serious sunburns can increase your child's risk of skin cancer later in life. Kids don't have to be at the beach to get too much sun. Their skin needs protection from the sun's harmful UV rays whenever they're outdoors.

To protect yourself and your family—

• Seek shade, especially during midday hours.
• Cover up with clothing to protect exposed skin.
• Wear a hat with a wide brim to shade the face, head, ears, and neck.
• Wear sunglasses that wrap around and block as close to 100% of both UVA and UVB rays as possible.
• Put on sunscreen with sun protective factor (SPF) 15 or higher, and both UVA and UVB protection.

The UV rays from tanning beds and sunlamps are as dangerous as the UV rays from the sun. Don't let your children or teens use them. Many states restrict the use of tanning beds by children and teens.

A Vaccine to Prevent Cervical Cancer

Human papillomavirus (HPV), a common virus that can be passed from one person to another during sex, is the main cause of cervical cancer. The same virus also is linked with many vaginal, vulvar, penile, anal, and oropharyngeal cancers.

A vaccine to prevent HPV infections is available. It protects against the types of HPV that most often cause cancer. The vaccine is given in a series of three shots and is recommended routinely for 11- and 12-year-old girls and boys. The vaccine also is recommended for girls and women aged 13 through 26 years and boys and men aged 13 through 21 years who did not get any or all of the shots before. The vaccine can be given beginning at age 9.

Major Causes of Lung Cancer

Smoking. Tobacco use is the major cause of lung cancer in the United States. The best way to prevent lung cancer is by never starting to smoke, or quitting if you do smoke. It is important to prevent adolescents from starting to smoke.

In 2011, 44.7% of high school students reported that they had at least tried smoking. One in five high school students was a current smoker.

Talk to your children about why you don't want them to smoke.

Secondhand smoke. Smoke from other people's cigarettes ("secondhand" smoke) can cause lung cancer. There is no safe level of secondhand smoke for nonsmokers. Don't expose your children to secondhand tobacco smoke.

In your own home, establish a smoke-free policy.

Reference: www.cdc.gov

Hand Washing Will Never Be Out of Fashion

Hand washing is easy to do and it's one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of many types of infection and illness in all settings—from your home and workplace to child care facilities and hospitals. Clean hands can stop germs from spreading from one person to another and throughout an entire community

When should you wash your hands?

• Before, during, and after preparing and eating food
• Before and after caring for someone who is sick
• After using the toilet
• After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet
• After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
• After touching garbage

What is the right way to wash your hands?

• Wet your hands with clean running water (warm or cold) and apply soap.
• Rub your hands together to make a lather and scrub them well; be sure to scrub the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
• Continue rubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds.
• Rinse your hands well under running water.
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry. 

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce the number of germs on them. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in some situations, but sanitizers do not eliminate all types of germs.

For more information on handwashing, please visit CDC's hand washing website. You can also call 1-800-CDC-INFO, or email cdcinfo@cdc.gov for answers to specific questions.

Reference:  www.cdc.gov

Pulse Oximetry Screening for Congenital Heart Defects

Based on studies, about 4,800 babies born each year have one out of seven critical congenital heart defects (CCHDs) in the United States.

Listed is the seven defects classified as critical congenital heart defects (CCHDs):  hypoplastic left heart syndrome, pulmonary atresia (with intact septum), tetralogy of Fallot, total anomalous pulmonary venous return, transposition of the great arteries, tricuspid atresia, and truncus arteriosus.

Babies with one these CCHDs are at significant risk for death or disability if their heart defect is not diagnosed and treated soon after birth. The good news is, these heart defects among some babies can be potentially detected using pulse oximetry screening.

Pulse oximetry newborn screening can detect some infants with a CCHD before they show any signs. Once identified, babies with a CCHD can be seen by cardiologists and can receive specialized care and treatment, which may include medications and surgery, and could prevent death or disability early in life.

The procedure called pulse oximetry is a simple bedside test to determine the amount of oxygen in a baby's blood and the baby's pulse rate. Low levels of oxygen in the blood can be a sign of a CCHD. The test is done using a machine called a pulse oximeter, with sensors placed on the baby's skin. The test is painless and takes only a few minutes.

Screening is done when a baby is 24 to 48 hours of age. If the baby is to be discharged from the hospital before he or she is 24 hours of age, screening should be done as late as possible before discharge.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary's Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (SACHDNC).

SACHDNC was authorized by Congress to provide guidance to the HHS Secretary about which conditions should be included in newborn and childhood screening programs. SACHDNC also advises the Secretary on how systems should be developed to ensure that all newborns and children are screened and, when necessary, receive appropriate follow-up care.

SACHDNC recommended that the HHS Secretary add pulse oximetry screening for CCHDs to the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel.

In September 2011, HHS Secretary Sebelius approved adding screening for CCHDs to the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel and outlined specific tasks assigned to National Institutes of Health (NIH), CDC, and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

Reference:  www.cdc.gov

Epithelial–Mesenchymal Transition in the Prostate Caused by Androgen Deprivation

Currently, there is a well-known therapy for prostate cancer in the United States – the deprivation of androgen!  Though this process is proven to effectively fight androgen-dependent diseases, lack of androgen often results in an androgen-independent mechanism that could lead to worst cases.

Such type of cancer, specifically castration-resistant prostate cancer, poses a major challenge in the field of medicine. Furthermore, the processes in this castration resistance mechanism are not yet fully well grasped. Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a major developmental process and has been identified as the major factor in cancer metastasis and resistance to therapeutic processes recently.  Until today, the various factors that may contribute to EMT in human cancers are still unclear.

There was this experiment which showed that both the normal mouse prostate tissue and human LuCaP35 prostate tumor tissue display an EMT.  It further shows increased stem cell-like features in prostate tumors from patients given androgen-deprivation therapy. 

To sum it all, this experiment shows for the first time that androgen deprivation induces ENT either in normal prostate or in prostate cancer.  This recent experiment clinically reveals an important consequence of a standard-of-care treatment for prostate cancer.

Reference:  www.cdc.gov

Always Forgetting Something? Your Brain Might Be Out of Sync

Have you always forgotten something lately? Leaving your things anywhere and later trying to look where they are?  You’re running late for work and you can't find your keys?  This might be because the brain systems involved in the task of remembering things are working at different paces, with the system responsible for perception unable to keep up.  So says Grayden Solman and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Prior to this, Solman's team created a simple computer-based task that involved searching through a pile of coloured shapes on a computer screen. Volunteers were then instructed to find a specific shape in a stack as quickly as possible, while the computer monitored their actions. "Between 10 and 20 per cent of the time, they would miss the object," says Solman, even though they picked it up. "We thought that was remarkably often."

To further investigate, the team developed a number of thorough experiments. To check whether volunteers were just forgetting their target, they gave a new group a list of items to memorize before the search task, which they had to recall afterwards.

The idea was to fill each volunteer's "memory load," so that they were unable to hold any other information in their short-term memory. Although this was expected to have a negative effect on their performance at the search task, the extra load made no difference to the percentage of mistakes volunteers made.

To check that the volunteers were paying enough attention to the items they were moving, Solman's team created another task involving a stack of cards marked with shapes that only became visible while the card was being moved. Again, they were surprised to see the same level of error.

Finally, the team analysed participants' movements as they were carrying out a similar search task. They discovered that volunteers' movements were slower after they had moved and missed their target.

Solman's team proposed that the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up. While you are looking for something you lost, you might not be giving your visual system enough time to work out what each object is. 

Reference:  www.cdc.gov

The Dangers of Too Much Heat

Getting too hot can make you sick. You can become ill from the heat if your body can't compensate for it and properly cool you off. Heat exposure can even kill you: it caused 8,015 deaths in the United States from 1979 to 2003.

 

These are the main things affecting your body's ability to cool itself during extremely hot weather:

• High humidity. When the humidity is high, sweat won't evaporate as quickly, which keeps your body from releasing heat as fast as it may need to.
• Personal factors. Age, obesity, fever, dehydration, heart disease, mental illness, poor circulation, sunburn, and prescription drug and alcohol use can play a role in whether a person can cool off enough in very hot weather.

Here are some facts about which people are at greatest risk for heat-related illness and what protective actions to take to prevent illness or death:

• People who are at highest risk are the elderly, the very young, and people with mental illness and chronic diseases
• But even young and healthy people can get sick from the heat if they participate in strenuous physical activities during hot weather.
• Air-conditioning is the number one protective factor against heat-related illness and death. If a home is not air-conditioned, people can reduce their risk for heat-related illness by spending time in public facilities that are air-conditioned.

 

You can take these steps to prevent heat-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths during hot weather:

• Drink plenty of fluids.
• Stay in an air-conditioned indoor location.
• Wear loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing and sunscreen.
• Schedule outdoor activities carefully.
• Pace yourself.
• Take cool showers or baths to cool down.
• Check on a friend or neighbor and have someone do the same for you.
• Do not leave children in cars.
• Check the local news for health and safety updates.

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Reference:  www.cdc.gov