As we head into November and the brisk cold weather I thought
it would be a great time to feature some tips on how to prevent
the common cold. Enjoy today’s issue!

Be Well,
Kris

So Soft, You Have To Feel Them To Believe It…
http://pd.gophercentral.com/r/186/a/100119/l/1d7p94

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VIDEO CORNER: Obesity 101
Current Rating 2.4
The obesity epidemic is expanding at an incredibly rapid rate
and it’s no small matter for Americans.

http://evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=8678

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HEALTH TIP: 10 Tips to Prevent The Common Cold

The common cold is arguably the most common illness in humans.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), it is also one of the most common causes of work and
school absenteeism, with up to 22 million school days lost
each year in the U.S. Colds are caused by viral infections.
Over 200 different viruses can cause cold symptoms of varying
severity.

Viruses that cause colds are spread from person to person
through tiny droplets of mucus that enter the air from the
nasal passages of infected persons and are inhaled by others.
Colds can also be spread by touching surfaces that have been
contaminated by contact with infected persons and then touching
your mouth, nose, or eyes.

While it is impossible to completely prevent the spread of
colds, there are steps you can take to reduce your and your
family’s chances of becoming infected with a virus that causes
colds:

- Wash your hands often. This is probably the single best
measure to prevent transmission of colds. Especially after
shopping, going to the gym, or spending time in public places,
hand washing is critical. Frequent hand washing can destroy
viruses that you have acquired from touching surfaces used by
other people. You can also carry a small tube of hand sanitizer
or sanitizing hand wipes when visiting public places. Teach your
children the importance of hand washing too.
- Avoid touching your face, especially the nose, mouth, and eye
areas, if you are around someone with a cold or have been touching
surfaces in a public area.
- Don’t smoke. Cigarette smoke can irritate the airways and increase
susceptibility to colds and other infections. Even exposure to
passive smoke can make you (or your children) more vulnerable to
colds.
- Use disposable items if someone in your family is infected.
Disposable cups can be thrown away after each use and prevent
accidental spread of the virus from sharing of cups or glasses.
This is particularly important if you have young children who may
try to drink from others’ cups.
- Keep household surfaces clean. Door knobs, drawer pulls, keyboards,
light switches, telephones, remote controls, countertops, and sinks
can all harbor viruses for hours after their use by an infected
person. Wipe these surfaces frequently with soap and water or a
disinfectant solution.
- If your child has a cold, wash his or her toys as well when you are
cleaning household surfaces and commonly-used items.
- Use paper towels in the kitchen and bathroom for hand washing. Germs
can live for several hours on cloth towels. Alternatively, have
separate towels for each family member and provide a clean one for
guests.
- Throw tissues away after use. Used tissues are sources of virus that
can contaminate any surface where they are left.
- Maintain a healthy lifestyle. While there isn’t direct evidence to
show that eating well or exercising can prevent colds, maintenance of
a healthy lifestyle, with adequate sleep, good nutrition and physical
exercise can help ensure that your immune system is in good condition
and ready to fight infection if it occurs.
- Control stress. Studies have shown that people experiencing emotional
stress have weakened immune systems and are more likely to catch a
cold than their calmer counterparts.

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Salk Institute reports stem cell advance…

LA JOLLA, Calif., — U.S. scientists say they significantly
increased the efficiency involved in reprogramming adult
human cells back into so-called induced pluripotent stem
cells. The original reprogramming method created a stir when
introduced, the scientists said, but they noted the process
was woefully inefficient. Now, a team of researchers led by
Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies has succeeded in boosting the repro-
gramming efficiency more than 100-fold, while cutting the
time it takes in half. They said their new method not only
provides a practical and simple alternative for the gener-
ation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells but also
spares patients invasive procedures to collect suitable
starting material, since the process only requires a single
human hair. “Having a very efficient and practical way of
generating patient-specific stem cells — which unlike human
embryonic stem cells, wouldn’t be rejected by the patient’s
immune system after transplantation — brings us a step
closer to the clinical application of stem cell therapy,”
said Belmonte, director of the Center of Regenerative Med-
icine in Barcelona, Spain. The research is reported ahead
of print in the online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

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Microparticles may bolster heart function…

ATLANTA, — U.S. medical scientists say they’ve developed
tiny polymer, drug-embedded microparticles that might aid
patients who have suffered a heart attack. Researchers at
Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology
said the tiny polymer beads can slowly release anti-inflam-
matory drugs and break down into non-toxic components. When
injected into rats’ hearts after a simulated heart attack,
the drug-embedded “microparticles” reduced inflammation and
scarring, they said. The scientists found injecting the
particles could cut the area of scar tissue formed after the
heart attack in half and boost the ability of the heart to
pump blood by 10 percent weeks later. The research that in-
cluded Assistant Professors Michael Davis and Niren Murthy
and graduate student Jay Sy is reported in the October-
November issue of Nature Materials.

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New ALS research findings are reported…

BALTIMORE, — U.S. scientists say they’ve found transplanting
a new line of stem cell-like cells in rat models of amyotro-
phic lateral sclerosis can help sustain breathing. Johns
Hopkins researchers said targeted cell delivery to the cerv-
ical spinal cord is a promising strategy to slow loss of
motor neurons in ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The scientists said such stem cell-like transplants in the
rat models clearly shifted key signs of neurodegenerative
disease in general and ALS in particular, slowing the ani-
mals’ neuron loss and extending life. The finding, the sci-
entists said, supports the hypothesis that artificially out-
numbering unhealthy cells with healthy ones in targeted parts
of the spinal cord preserves limb strength and breathing and
can increase survival. The research is reported online in
the journal Nature Neuroscience.

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Study: New bacteria causes bone infections…

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, — Danish medical scientists have found
some bone infections are caused by a newly discovered species
of bacteria that are related to the tuberculosis pathogen.
The researchers led by Didi Bang from the Statens Serum Ins-
titute in Copenhagen, Denmark, said their finding might help
improve the diagnosis and treatment of similar infections.
The scientists noted some rare genetic diseases can make
patients susceptible to infections with Mycobacterium spec-
ies, the bacteria that, among other diseases, cause tubercu-
losis and leprosy. Those patients often suffer from recurring
mycobacterial infections throughout their lives. “We isolated
an unknown species of bacteria from a 7-year-old child who
has a genetic immune defect,” said Bang. “The infection had
caused bone lesions and this is where we found the newly
described bacteria. “Initial tests suggested we had found a
Mycobacterium. By sequencing some of the bacterium’s genes
we showed that we had discovered an undescribed species,”
Bang added. “We called the bacterium Mycobacterium arosiense.”
The name comes from Arosia, the Latin name of the city of
Aarhus in Denmark, which is where the bacterium was found.
The research is detailed in the International Journal of
Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

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Increase in Rheumatoid Arthritis Among Women: Can Yoga Help?

San Francisco’s Moscone Center is this years’ host to the
annual American College of Rheumatology/Arthritis-Related
Healthcare Professionals Scientific Meeting, which is
expected to draw about 14,000 rheumatologists and health
professionals. Over the course of the nearly weeklong
conference, some 2,000 scientific papers will be presented,
covering therapies in the works and advances into a complex
disease that occurs in dozens of forms. Several of the first
studies to be released focused on one of the most crippling
forms—rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that
affects approximately 20 million people worldwide, including
1.2 million Americans. RA causes chronic inflammation of the
joints, the tissues around the joints, as well as in other
organs in the body, causing pain and permanent disability
if left untreated.

In the United States, the incidence of RA had steadily
declined in both men and women from 1955 to 1994. That
10-year trend led researchers to assume that the incidence
of the disease was continuing to drop in recent years. But
when Dr. Sherine E. Gabriel, a professor of medicine and
epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic, and her team looked at
more recent data, they found that from 1995 to the beginning
of 2005, the number of American women with RA increased by
nearly half from 36.4 per 100,000 in the previous 10 years
to 54 per 100,000. Over the same two decades, the incidence
for men remained virtually unchanged, going from 28.6 to
29.5 per 100,000. The rate of RA in the overall population
increased from 0.85 to 0.95 percent. “These rates would
apply to the entire U.S. population,” said Hilal Maradit-
Kremers, M.D., associate professor of epidemiology at the
Mayo Clinic and study co-author. “Based on this new data,
the estimated number of people with RA in the U.S. is
probably higher than 1.2 million.”

The researchers aren’t sure what is causing the increase,
but suspect that environmental or possibly hormonal factors
may be playing a role. Studies have shown a strong link
between smoking and an increased risk for RA, while other
studies suggest an association between the disease and diet,
alcohol consumption, coffee intake, and body mass index
(BMI), but a causal relationship hasn’t been proven. Many
researchers believe the disease may be triggered by one or
more infectious agents, though none have been identified.
“This is a significant finding and an indicator that more
research needs to be done to better understand the causes
and treatment of this devastating disease,” said Dr. Gabriel.

Continued below….

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More news from the conference includes a study by Swedish
researchers that confirms previous findings suggesting
that RA raises the risk of heart attacks. Marie Gunnarsson,
a graduate student at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm,
Sweden, and colleagues used data on 7,954 patients in Sweden
who were newly diagnosed with RA and matched them with 38,913
people in the general population. For over 10 years, the
researchers followed the two groups, collecting information
on heart attacks, heart-related deaths and deaths from other
causes. After adjusting for other conditions, such as high
blood pressure and diabetes, they found that before their RA
diagnosis, neither group was more likely than the other to
have a heart attack. But after the diagnosis, the heart risks
for the RA patients rose steadily. During the first 10 years
with the disease, RA sufferers had almost double the number of
heart attacks and heart-related deaths. “The fact that there is
no increased risk prior to RA diagnosis suggests that there is
something in the RA disease itself, such as inflammatory
processes, that lead to this increased risk,” Gunnarsson said
in a statement. She said measures to reduce inflammation, which
has long been linked with heart disease and heart attack risks,
may help reduce the heart risks in this population as well.

On a more positive note, scientists from John Hopkins University
in Baltimore have discovered that people with RA can greatly
benefit from a program of yoga poses, breathing and relaxation.
For their study, researchers divided a group of 30 sedentary
adults with RA into two groups: one group participated in an
eight-week yoga program and the other was put on a waiting
list and served as the control. Those in the yoga group took
two one-hour classes per week, with the traditional yoga poses
being modified to accommodate for limitations due to RA. Also
included in the sessions were deep breathing, relaxation and
meditation techniques.

Those who participated in the yoga program had significantly
fewer tender and swollen joints than they did before beginning
the class. The waiting list group saw no significant changes
in their tender and swollen joint counts. “We have previously
reported that yoga helps people to feel better, and we wanted
to make sure it wasn’t harmful to arthritic joints. So, we
were glad to find that there actually seems to be improvement
in joint symptoms for RA patients,” said Steffany Haaz, MFA,
and recipient of the Arthritis Foundation grant that funded
the study. “The next big question is figuring out how and why
yoga might be having this effect, since it is such a multi-
faceted activity.”