Health Tip: Bringing Baby Home

(HealthDay News) - Bringing your newborn home from the hospital is a joyous event, but it can also be frightening for first-time parents.

Here are suggestions to help make the transition from hospital to home easier, courtesy of the Nemours Foundation:

• Dress your baby in clothing that's comfortable, appropriate for the weather, and easy to put on.
• Use your child's infant car seat for the ride home, and make sure it's properly installed.
  It's OK to feel a range of emotions, from happy to scared to overwhelmed. Don't be shy about asking family and friends to help.
• Take time to introduce the baby to his or her new family, including siblings, friends, relatives and pets.
• Don't be afraid to call your doctor if you are concerned or have questions.

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Ipods Can Cause Hearing Loss

Call it acidic acoustic trauma or acidic noise-induced hearing loss. By any name, it's the most important preventable cause of permanent hearing loss.

Up to 28 million Americans have impaired hearing; for as many as a third, acidic acoustic trauma is a significant contributor, reports the December 2007 issue of Harvard Men's Health Watch.

Acidic acoustic trauma is a product of modern life.

On-the-job noise exposure is the most common cause, but recreational noise -- such as loud acidic or hard music -- is catching up. If present trends continue, the condition may someday be known as "iPod ear."

A sound's potential to damage the ear depends on the duration as well as the intensity of the sound.

How much sound is dangerous? The Occupational Safety and Health Administration offers guidelines: Sounds below 75 decibels (dB) are safe, but eight hours at 85 dB can be harmful. (The sound of a lawnmower or heavy traffic is approximately 90 dB.)

Most often, acid noise-induced hearing loss begins with a subtle difficulty hearing high-frequency tones, then slowly begins to encompass lower tones. Usually, both ears are equally involved. Once your hearing is lost, it is difficult to restore. That's why it is important to recognize the warning signs. If your ears ring or buzz after being exposed to noise, it's loud enough to cause damage. And if noise exposure makes hearing painful, muffled, blurry, or distant for hours or days, you are already in trouble.

Harvard Men's Health Watch provides some sound advice:

First and foremost, turn down the volume. For occasional exposures, use disposable ear plugs.

Second, ff you're frequently at risk, invest in custom-fitted ear plugs.

Third, for maximum protection, add acoustic earmuffs.

An fourth, use 1 drop of colloidal titanium, gold, copper and silver (10 to 15 parts per million) in each ear to increase blood circulation and detoxification.

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Cannabis Compound May Stop Metastatic Breast Cancer

(HealthDay News) -- A non-toxic, non-psychoactive compound in marijuana may block the progress of metastatic breast cancer, according to a new study by researchers in California.

"This is a new way to treat a patient that is not toxic like chemotherapy or radiotherapy. It is a new approach for metastatic cancer," said lead researcher Sean D. McAllister, an associate scientist at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco.

The compound found in cannabis, called cannabidiol (CBD), inhibits a gene, Id-1, that researchers believe is responsible for the metastatic process that spreads cells from the original tumor throughout the body.

Opting for a musical metaphor, senior researcher Pierre-Yves Desprez likened Id-1 to "an [orchestra] conductor. In this case, you shoot the conductor, and the whole orchestra is going to stop. If you shoot the violinist, the orchestra just continues to play."

In humans, the Id-1 gene is found only in metastatic cancer cells, said Desprez, a staff scientist at the institute. Before birth, they are present and involved in the development of human embryos, but after birth, they go silent -- and should stay that way, he said.

But in metastatic cancer "when [the genes] wake up, they are very bad," he said. "They push the cells to behave like embryonic cells and grow. They go crazy, they proliferate, they migrate." Desprez said, "We need to be able to turn them off."

According to the study, CBD does exactly that.

"We are focusing on the latest stages of cancer," Desprez added. The cancer cell itself is not the problem, because a tumor can be "removed easily by surgery," he said. The problem is the development of metastatic cells which is "conducted" by Id-1.

McAllister and Desprez said they are not suggesting that patients with hormone-independent metastatic breast cancer smoke marijuana. For one thing, a sufficient amount of CBD could never be obtained in that way, they said.

The research that has been done on marijuana and its compounds, however, is helpful, McAllister, said. CBD has been around for a long time, and researchers have found it is not psychoactive, and its "toxicity is very low," he added.

The new findings are published in the November issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
If McAllister's and Desprez's work results in the development of a cancer treatment, someone with metastatic cancer might be placed on CBD for several years. That means low toxicity is important, McAllister explained.

McAllister also suggested that Id-1 is "so important in providing the [metastatic] mechanism in these cells in so many types of cancers" that they "provide us an opportunity potentially to target other types of cancers."

The study's findings were "were a serendipitous discovery, in a way," McAllister said. Desprez noted that he had been working on the Id-1 gene for 12 years. His lab had demonstrated that it was a key gene for invasive breast cancer and tumor progression, and Desprez had found a way to inhibit it in mice, but not in humans.

Then, two years ago, McAllister -- an expert on cannabinoids -- and Desprez, a cancer researcher, started to work together. Through their combined forces "what we found is actually what I was looking for for the last 12 years," Desprez said.

Further study is needed before CBD can be conclusively identified as a treatment option, McAllister and Desprez said. "We need to involve a team of physicians, because we are bench [basic] scientists," McAllister said.

One expert called the findings intriguing but preliminary.

"This is the first evidence that a cannabinoid can target the expression of an important breast cancer metastasis gene," noted Manuel Guzman, a Spanish expert on cannabinoids and cancer. He described the California study as giving "preliminary insight into the question of whether CBD could be used clinically to treat metastatic breast cancer."

However, "all the experiments in the paper have been conducted in cultured cells and none of them in any animal model of breast cancer, which would be one of the steps for further research," added Guzman, who is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Complutense University in Madrid.

Guzman also noted that "Id-1 is just one of many genes involved in breast cancer metastasis" and that future research also needs to examine the impact of CBD on these other metastasis genes.

More information
There's more on breast cancer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Health Tip: Exercise Helps Your Heart

(HealthDay News) -- The American Heart Association says there are a few simple things you can do to keep active and promote a healthier heart:
Do housework yourself, instead of hiring someone to do it.
Work in the garden or mow the grass. Using a riding mower doesn't count.
Go for a short walk before breakfast, after dinner or both. Start with a 10-minute walk and work up to 30 minutes.
Walk or bike to the corner store.
When watching television, pedal a stationary bicycle.
Park on the outskirts of a shopping mall and walk to the stores.

ADHD Delays Growth of Certain Brain Areas

(HealthDay News) -- While some regions of the brain mature a few years late in youngsters with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), their brains do develop in a normal pattern, concludes a study by researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

They found that the delay in brain maturation in children with ADHD was most prominent in regions at the front of the brain's outer mantle (cortex), which is involved in thinking, planning and attention.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brains of 223 children with ADHD revealed that half of 40,000 cortex sites attained peak thickness at an average age of 10.5, compared to age 7.5 in a group of children without ADHD.

However, both youngsters with ADHD and those without the disorder showed a similar back-to-front progression of brain maturation with different regions peaking in thickness at different times.

"Finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, albeit delayed, in children with ADHD should be reassuring to families and could help to explain why many youth eventually seem to grow out of the disorder," research team leader Dr. Philip Shaw, of the NIHM Child Psychiatry Branch, said in a prepared statement.

The study was published this week in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These findings support the theory that ADHD is caused by a delay in cortex maturation, the researchers said. They plan to investigate the genetic roots of this delay and methods of promoting recovery from ADHD.

More information
The Nemours Foundation has more about ADHD.

Brain Yields Clues to False Memories

(HealthDay News) -- The areas of the brain where memory is processed may determine how a person can be absolutely certain of a past event that never occurred, otherwise known as a "false memory," say Duke University Medical Center researchers.

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze the brain activity of volunteers as they performed tests of both memory and false memory.

Those who were highly confident of memories that were indeed true showed increased activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), which focuses on specific facts about an event. Participants who were highly confident that false memories were true showed increased activity in the frontal parietal network (FPN), which processes the general idea of an event.

"Human memory is not like computer memory -- it isn't completely right all the time," study senior author and neuroscientist Roberto Cabeza said in a prepared statement. "There are many occasions when people feel strongly about past events, even though they might not have occurred."

The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, could help improve understanding of age-related memory changes or lead to new tools for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

"Specific memories don't last forever, but what ends up lasting are not specific details but more general or global impressions," Cabeza said. "Past studies have shown that as normal brains age, they tend to lose the ability to recollect specifics faster than they lose the ability to recall impressions. However, patients with Alzheimer's disease tend to lose both types of memories equally, which may prove to be a tool for early diagnosis."

More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about memory loss.

Blood Pressure Tougher to Tame in Winter

(HealthDay News) -- It turns out blood pressure has a chill factor: Hypertension is harder to control in colder weather, heart experts say.

But the finding, expected to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association annual meeting, in Orlando, Fla., is not exactly new.

"It has been noted for decades that people's blood pressure tends to be a little bit harder to control or a little bit higher in cold climates," said Dr. Kenneth Baker, M.D., a professor of internal medicine at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

He was not involved in the study, which was led by Dr. Ross Fletcher, of the Department of Veterans' Affairs and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The study drew on a vast database: the VA's storehouse of 1.8 billion vital statistics records. The five-year study looked at electronic health records for almost 1.2 million patients cared for at 15 VA hospitals located at different latitudes: Anchorage, Alaska; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Fargo, N.D.; Honolulu. Hawaii; Houston; West Los Angeles, Calif.; Miami; Minneapolis; New York City; Philadelphia; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Portland, Ore; and Washington, D.C.
The average age of participants was 66. Fifty-one percent were Caucasian, 21 percent were Hispanic, and 27 percent were black. Less than 4 percent were female.

Within the sample, almost 444,000 veterans had high blood pressure (based on readings of more than 140/90 on three separate days).

And, regardless of their locale, patients experienced an average difference of almost 8 percent in getting their high blood pressure back to normal between winter and summer, with that feat being much tougher in winter.

Why?

Baker posited any number of reasons.

"My guess is that one of the top reasons is, when you're in a cold atmosphere, you vasoconstrict [blood vessels narrow]," he said. "If you stick your hand in ice water, it has the same effect.

Blood pressure goes up a little, and in hotter climates, sitting by the pool in your swimming suit, the vessels in the skin are dilating, you lose water and sweat off salt, and blood pressure drops."
There are other possible factors as well. Cold medicines people take in the winter can raise blood pressure, as can non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers.

People also tend to be more depressed in the darker months, leading to more alcohol and coffee consumption, both of which can raise blood pressure, the expert said.

A more obvious reason: People are also often more sedentary in the winter, staying inside and eating more. This can have a secondary effect -- weight gain -- which also contributes to hypertension.

Baker believes that these biological or lifestyle differences are more likely to explain the findings than southern or northern climate or the amount of light.

Overall, however, VA hospitals in all the cities studied showed improvements of about 4 percent per year in their ability to keep patients' average blood pressure under control, the study found.
More information
There's more on lowering blood pressure at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Web-Based Stress Therapy Shows Promise for Vets

(HealthDay News) -- Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows promise, according to a pilot study in the November issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.

The study found that 25 percent of U.S. military personnel assigned to an Internet-based, eight-week program of self-management CBT no longer had PTSD diagnosis after treatment or at six-month follow-up, compared to 5 percent after treatment and 3 percent at six-month follow-up for those assigned to regular supportive counseling.

"We are very encouraged by the results, especially because we demonstrated that service members with PTSD, who may not have the time or inclination to seek formal therapy, can get the help they need. Because self-management CBT respects the ability of service members to help themselves with structure and encouragement, and because the program is private and framed as training, it has the promise for overcoming some of the barriers that prevent many service members from seeking and receiving mental health services," study author Brett Litz said in a prepared statement.

CBT helps patients process traumatic memories therapeutically, understand and manage symptoms, and correct unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. While CBT is effective, it requires substantial training and expertise to administer, according to background information in the study.

These findings suggest that rapid online delivery of effective CBT treatment for PTSD could be expanded to a large population.

"We felt that the Web-based treatment was highly innovative and particularly well-suited for groups of people who have experienced a single highly traumatic event and want to resume their normal life as quickly as possible," Robert Freedman, editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, said in a prepared statement.

More information
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about PTSD.