Daily Health Tips: Trusted Medical Information, Health Tips and Advices

Need weight-loss help? This will make a big belly difference: Start your day with a high-protein breakfast (think eggs, maybe in a frittata). This shifts your appetite into neutral, where it will idle happily till lunch. Add some fiber to the meal, such as whole-wheat toast, and you'll curb afternoon cravings. Imagine getting halfway through a day of healthy weight loss without needinged any willpower! That’s because having plenty of protein and fiber early keeps you fueled and full for hours. ( Discover why breakfast makes you happier as well as slimmer. ) Not an egg lover? Have oatmeal topped with walnuts (make it overnight in the slow cooker), or smear peanut butter on your whole-wheat toast. Ready to just grab the toast solo as you zoom out the door? Think again. You'll be elbow-deep in the candy bowl before lunch. Block Snack Attacks with Protein News flash: If you don't get a certain amount of protein each day, but especially in the morning, your ap...

That bowl of cereal you have for breakfast each morning? It just might be giving you an all-day edge when it comes to feeling happy. Compared with cereal abstainers, people who regularly ate cereal had more energy, thought more clearly, and felt less stressed and depressed in a recent study. Flaky Fan Be it flakes, clusters, or toasted O's, cereal may have something more than fiber going for it. When researchers compared people who got equal amounts of fiber from cereal or from fruits and veggies, only the cereal eaters experienced improved well-being. And even though increased fiber intake was proved to benefit bowels, the results didn't account for the feel-good effects.    A Better Breakfast The feel-good feelings may have something to do with energy levels. The cereal eaters in the study reported about a 10 percent bump. And that energy surge comes from the breakdown of cereal in the gut. Cereal is broken down into short-chain fatty acids, which supply ab...

Researchers Say Men Are Often Not Included in Studies About Binge Eating Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are more common among women than men. Binge eating, however, occurs at similar rates among both sexes. Yet men are rarely included in research studies on binge eating and its consequences and treatments, a study shows. The researchers analyzed data from 21,743 men and 24,608 women who participated in a health risk self- assessment. Binge eating in the past month was reported by 7.5% of men and 11.19% of women. The study is published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders . Binge eating disorder is marked by: Frequent episodes of eating large amounts of food in short periods of time Feeling like you have no control over your eating Eating when not hungry Eating in secret Many people feel ashamed and/or disgusted by their binge eating. Health Risks of Binge Eating There are serious health risks associated with binge eating. These includ...

Study Suggests Benefits to Taking Blood Pressure Drugs Before Going to Sleep Taking at least one blood pressure medicine at bedtime cuts the risk of heart problems, according to new research. The study also shows that participants taking at least one blood pressure pill at bedtime had lower blood pressure while asleep. Earlier studies have suggested that bedtime dosing of at least one blood pressure medication may help control blood pressure. But the new study is believed to be the first to look at whether the timing makes a difference in terms of heart attacks, strokes, and death. Ramon C. Hermida, PhD, director of the bioengineering and chronobiology labs at the University of Vigo in Spain, studied 661 people with both high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease. "Taking blood-pressure-lowering medication at bedtime, compared to [taking] all medication upon awakening, not only improved blood pressure control, but significantly reduced the risk of card...

Practice is an essential part of gaining excellence in a specific skill, but to become truly great other qualities must come into play, such as IQ or working memory, according to researchers who studied how practice affects the success of chess players. For the study, published in the October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science , the researchers also considered earlier research and noted that practicing harder or longer doesn't compensate for the lack of other important traits relevant to a certain activity. The study authors pointed out that there is a theory that people will do better in areas such as sports, music and chess if they practice more. "But the thing is, of the people that achieved the master level, there are people that achieved it in 3,000 hours. Other people did, like, 30,000 hours and achieved the same level. And there are even people that practiced more than 30,000 hours and didn't achieve this," Guillermo ...

Worried about losing muscle mass as you shed weight? The solution may be to add more protein to your diet. Women naturally lose muscle and strength as they age, more so than men. For older women who are on a diet, consuming more protein may help preserve muscle mass and foster a better muscle-to-fat body composition. Protein Pick-Me-Up In a recent study, 31 postmenopausal women were divided into two groups, with each group on a 1,400-calorie diet. One group consumed a powdered whey protein supplement twice a day, while the other group received a placebo containing carbohydrates. Everyone in the study was encouraged to do light exercise, such as walking and stretching.    Researchers assessed the women’s strength, balance, and ability to do physical tasks, such as getting up from a chair and lifting a book above shoulder height, before and after the study. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to gauge the muscle volume of each woman’s right thigh...

Every year you lose something -- and we're not talking about your mind, or even your hair. We're talking about your lean body mass. It's what pretty much everything in your body (except fat) is made of, meaning your skin, bones, and parts of your organs and muscles. Once you hit the not-so-ripe-old-age of 40, your lean mass starts to shrink by 8% each decade. Fast forward to your 70s, and the shrinkage nearly doubles to 15% per decade. The result: less muscle, more flab, and a metabolism that becomes slower than a tortoise swimming through sludge. Unless you do something about it. Time to do something about it! And you can, because this loss, like memory loss, is not inevitable. You lose lean body mass (known in med-speak as sarcopenia ) for two reasons: First, your body starts making less protein, the stuff lean mass is made of. Second, it starts breaking down the protein you do have. So the first step to staying lean and mean is feeding yourself enough prot...

  The world is full of numbers, and full of sex for that matter. When it comes to intimacy, it’s generally all about the facts of life, not facts and figures (apart from the naked kind!). So you may be surprised to find out the following sex statistics as often these matters don’t make it out of the bedroom. We’ve peeled the sheets on 10 of the most surprising sex figures. What’s your number? According to a Durex survey, men across the globe have had an average of 13 sexual partners throughout their lifetime, while women have had seven. Guys and girls often shy away from honesty when it comes to discussing their number; too low and they fear embarrassment, too high and they face being judged. But there’s never going to be a happy medium, as a Cosmopolitan survey found. According to the survey just 66 per cent of people are content with their ‘number’, while 22 per cent wish they’d slept with less people and 12 per cent would have liked to have slept with more. Pop...

Not sure about how to diet, or of the best way to lose and maintain your weight? Well, here are a few do's and don'ts to help you on the road to fitness. Do Eat regularly Re-fuelling when you are hungry is a good idea, but make sure that you snack on the right things. Good snacks are fruit, vegetable sticks and low fat dips, scones (watch the butter), sandwiches, toast, smoothies and low fat or diet yogurt. Take a walk at lunchtime Just small changes make a big difference over time. Offer to make the coffee at work or wash up, just walking over to the kettle every day for a few weeks counts! Or could even exercise at your desk. Go shopping with a list There is nothing worse than standing in the chocolate aisle with a growling stomach, it makes it all the more tempting to grab foods that are high in fat and sugar. Make sure you do your food shopping with a list — and not when you are hungry too. Don’t be conned by marketing Low fat does not necessarily mean low ca...

Are you a TV addict? Try this: When your favorite show breaks for commercial, get off the couch and step in place. Too much time watching The Real Housewives or ESPN contributes to weight gain and obesity because it often replaces pursuits that burn more calories. Experts at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, hypothesized that having people get up and step in place during all the commercials would help address that. The researchers measured the calories that 23 adults burned while resting, sitting, standing, stepping in place, and walking on a treadmill at 3 miles per hour. Then the participants watched TV for an hour while lounging and for another hour while stepping during commercials. Participants burned no more calories while sitting and watching TV than they did just resting. But when they stepped in place during commercials, they racked up an average of 25 minutes of physical activity and 2,111 steps to burn 40 calories per hour -- all without breaking a ...

CSI  fans (and NASCAR nuts), take note: Prolonged sagging and slumping on the sofa while you watch your favorite show may be almost as bad for your back muscles as an injury. When muscles aren't used (they're not holding you up; the sofa is), they can actually waste away, setting you up for low back pain. Yes, you: Eight out of ten people will have back pain at some point in their lives. But plopping your butt on an exercise ball engages those muscles almost constantly, since even the littlest moves require small shifts and rebalances. Bonus: You won't snooze through the part where they figure out whose DNA really was at the crime scene. While you're on the ball, you might as well work on your abs during commercials (it beats grabbing a snack, for so many reasons). Use the ball to do these crunches. They'll give you even stronger muscles than if you did them on the floor. 1.  Sit on the exercise ball, feet flat on the floor, knees hip-width apart and bent at a 90-d...

Want to lose weight fast, without changing what you eat? Quit multitasking. That's right. Sitting at your computer and catching up on e-mail and the latest video of crazy cat antics (yes, we like those, too) while you eat lunch could be making you fat. Not only do you eat more when you're in front of the screen (any screen), but you also eat more sweet stuff later. Why? According to a new study, the problem seems to be that if you're distracted while you munch your meal (the folks in this study played video solitaire), you have a fuzzier memory of what you ate. So you feel less full afterwards -- and hungry for dessert. Thirty minutes after lunch, the computer-solitaire players ate twice as many cookies as the distraction-free group. (Another study found this dessert craving 2.5 hours later, too. And several previous studies have found similar overeating patterns in people who ate while watching TV.) Here's how to lose weight the easy way:  No peeking at small screens....

Start with a 15-minute walk. Afterward, climb stairs for 5 minutes. Then, do just 4 minutes of wall push-ups and chair squats. Finish with a 1-minute stretch. Excuse-Proof Exercise It's a total "anytime, anywhere" workout that covers all of the major muscle groups and has a healthy mix of cardio and body building to boot. Best of all, it doesn't require any special equipment or clothes, and you're done in just 25 minutes. Here's  Good Housekeeping's  breakdown on each step: Walk anywhere.  Pace the halls, circle the block, or walk in place for 15 minutes. This will get your blood pumping and your metabolism fired up. And, as a bonus, it will burn about 60 calories. Stair-step it.  Climbing stairs for 5 minutes will tone and tighten your leg muscles. Push the wall.  Stand 2 feet away from the wall, feet shoulder-width apart. While keeping your back straight, place your palms against the wall, and lean your body in for a count of three, then push back fo...

Study Shows Importance of Doctors' Recommendation in Boosting HPV Vaccination Rates Doctors need to recommend the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to help increase the number of girls getting immunized, according to CDC researchers. Two vaccines against human papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted infection, were licensed for use in the U.S. in 2006 and 2009. The vaccines target the main types of HPV that cause cervical cancer. Each HPV vaccine consists of three doses, with the first two doses given one or two months apart (depending on which vaccine is given), and the third one given six months after the first. In 2006, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that girls get vaccinated at age 11 or 12, before they become sexually active and are exposed to HPV. The committee also recommended that older teens and women up to age 26 who haven't been fully vaccinated receive "catch-up" vaccinations. But an analysis of 2008 and 2...

Want to live a long, vigorous life? Add to your other healthful habits theMediterranean diet. You’ve probably heard about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. New research reveals that combining this way of eating with three other healthful lifestyle behaviors may boost longevity, especially in women. Food for Thought Dutch researchers followed more than 120,000 men and women for a decade to track their habits and mortality rates. People who ate a Mediterranean diet, didn’t smoke, maintained a healthy weight,  and  exercised regularly lived the longest. And for women, following the Mediterranean diet was significantly related to lower mortality. Going Greek Sometimes called “the world's healthiest cuisine,” the Mediterranean diet emphasizes lots of plant proteins, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, and heart-healthy monounsaturated fat, along with nuts and moderate alcohol consumption. (Yes, you can have a glass of wine with dinner.) It’s also low in re...

  IQ, the standard measure of intelligence, can increase or fall significantly during our teenage years, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust, and these changes are associated with changes to the structure of our brains. The findings may have implications for testing and streaming of children during their school years. Across our lifetime, our intellectual ability is considered to be stable, with intelligence quotient (IQ) scores taken at one point in time used to predict educational achievement and employment prospects later in life. However, in a study published October 20 in the journal Nature , researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) and the Centre for Educational Neuroscience show for the first time that, in fact, our IQ is not constant. The researchers, led by Professor Cathy Price, tested 33 healthy adolescents in 2004 when they were between the ages of 12 and 16 years. They then repeated ...

Study Shows Benefits of Adding Radiation Therapy to Breast-Conserving Surgery Women with early breast cancer often consider breast-conserving surgery in which a doctor removes the tumor but spares the rest of the breast. But they may worry that their cancer is more likely to come back if they don't remove the entire breast. New research shows that adding radiation therapy to breast-conserving surgery halves the chance that cancer will come back and reduces the risk of dying from breast cancer, when compared to the breast-conserving surgery alone. The study is published in  The Lancet . Breast cancer experts tell WebMD that the new findings should provide some peace of mind for women with early breast cancer who choose breast-conserving surgery plus radiation over mastectomy -- the complete removal of the breast or breasts. In 2011, an estimated 230,480 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. About 39,520 women wi...

Studies Show Flu Vaccine Is Safe and Effective for Pregnant Women Pregnant women are more likely to get a flu shot than they were a few years ago, and for good reason: Evidence continues to mount that the vaccine safely protects both mother and newborn from influenza and its complications. One new study shows that pregnant women who get a flu shot are no more likely to miscarry. A second, small study shows that babies of moms who received the vaccine retain some immunity for two months after birth. In a third study, more than half of the pregnant women surveyed were immunized in the 2010-2011 flu season. Historically, the figure has hovered at a dismal 15%, researchers say. "We're building a large and consistent body of evidence regarding the benefits and safety of flu vaccination in pregnancy," says Kathleen Neuzil, MD, MPH. She is a member of Infectious Disease Society of America's (IDSA) pandemic influenza task force and director of the influenza vaccine projec...

Don't mind cutting calories, but hate to exercise? Toss your running shoes back in the closet and throw a swimsuit in your gym bag. Wet workouts may change how you feel about exercise. In a recent study, people who did twice-weekly aqua-jogging sessions dropped both body fat and waist size -- without going on a calorie-restricted diet. Wet and Wonderful Weight Loss During the 6-week study, the pool joggers went from feeling embarrassed, reluctant, or afraid of suffering an exercise-induced injury to enjoying exercise. Other benefits included a big drop in appetite, along with perceived improvements in fitness, self-esteem, confidence, and quality of life. Some folks were even moved to start a healthier, calorie-restricted diet, in addition to their new workout routine.  A Little is a Lot Bottom line: Even if it nets only minimal weight loss, a small amount of exercise can cause dramatic drops in many common obesity-related health risks, including high blood pr...

Finding it hard to squeeze in your workout or your walk this time of year? Don't sweat it. Sometimes, less still cuts the mustard. As long as you pick up the pace, that is. In a study, people who cut back on their walks but turned up the burn when they did get out there still boosted their cardiovascular endurance. Keeping the Pace Sure, frequent exercise is still better for you -- for a bunch of reasons, ranging from better cholesterol levels to better weight control. But the new research shows that you can cut back a little on frequency and still keep yourself in pretty good shape if you make some adjustments. And it's a good idea to do so, because then your body will be ready, willing, and able to do more when you get more time. No Time? No Excuse Why should you care about your cardiovascular endurance, anyway? Because a 5-year study showed that a mere 10 percent improvement lowered people's risk of mortality by 15 percent, compared with no cardioresp...

Next time you're headed to the office vending machine, skip the chips and instead grab yourself a bag of almonds. Your heart will sing. Besides offering an abundance of fiber, magnesium, polyphenols, and good-for-you monounsaturated fats (MUFAs), almonds may wrestle two known heart disease risks to the ground: insulin resistance and bad-for-you LDL cholesterol. Heart-Lovin' Nuts At least, that's what happened to people with prediabetes in a recent study. Eating just 2 ounces of almonds a day for 2 weeks helped lower their LDL cholesterol and improve their insulin resistance -- two healthy changes that could help halt the progression of prediabetes and protect the heart from the ravages of high cholesterol. But you don't have to have high blood sugar to gain heart-protective benefits from almonds. Plenty of related findings suggest the nuts also help lower inflammation and LDL cholesterol in folks with normal blood sugar levels. (Related: Steady high b...

It's a bit early to call but it seems that we finally might have an  effective   vaccine   against malaria ! Joe Cohen , a GlaxoSmithKline research Scientist told reporters that after 24 years of research and trial   they have developed a vaccine that halved the risk of children getting Malaria. Even though this vaccine won't end malaria on it's own, it's a major step forward in conquering this deadly   disease. Malaria is caused by a parasite carried in the saliva of mosquitoes. It kills more than 780,000 people per year, most of them babies or very young children in Africa. Cohen's vaccine goes to work when the parasite enters the bloodstream. By stimulating an immune response, it can prevent the parasite from maturing and multiplying in the liver. Without that immune response, the parasite re-enters the bloodstream and infects red blood cells, leading to fever, body aches and, in some cases, death According to Cohen, if all...