Sugary Drinks and a link to Heart Disease

This week we have been learning about the circulatory system, so I found this article very interesting in relation to what we have been learning about the heart and about diseases of the heart. This article described how they tested a group of men ranging from the ages of 40 to 75 every four years to see what the risk of drinking beverages that were high in sugar had on the relation to heart disease and heart attacks. In this study the researchers controlled for factors such as family history, smoking, and exercise. The study showed that men who drank sweetened drinks were about 20 percent more likely to have heart attacks then those who do not. The study showed that there was a risk of about 19 percent of one daily serving of a sugar sweetened beverage that would increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/health/research/sugar-sweetened-drinks-linked-to-heart-disease.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=heart%20disease&st=cse

New Technology To Revolutionize Hearing Aids

There have been digital advances made that have caused great improvements to be made in the area of hearing aid use. The devices are now smaller and smarter or more technologically advanced then they have been in the past. There is research going on at many institutions including Arizona State and Cornell to work on the push to create the next big thing in the hearing aid world as well as to reduce the cost of the devices. This is being done just in time being that there are millions of baby boomers entering that age were hearing aids could become possibilities. Some of the new advances that are being made the hearing aids is that they are now able to amplify the voices for the listener and while muting out all other noises around them.When many people think of hearing aids they think of the huge things that grandma or grandpa would wear, but not any more. Now the devices are being made small enough that they are almost invisible, that will work better as well. One of the biggest challenges that are facing the hearing aid companies is the inability of the device to pick up which way the sound is coming from as well as the large expense for development.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2012/03/12/20120312science-digital-echnology-revolutionizing-hearing-aids.html

Parkinson's disease and a possible new way to prevent?

This week in class we learned about Parkinson's and the different possible treatments, and symptoms that are present. The article that I found on foxnews.com is very interesting and describes the possibility of taking drugs to lower one's cholesterol could help to prevent Parkinson's disease. The study suggests that the use of the Cholesterol medications could help to prevent the development of Parkinson's especially in individuals under the age of sixty. The new study that showed that people who took the cholesterol lowering medications had a 26 percent chance of not developing Parkinson's over a 12 year time span. The risk was reduced by 69 percent for those individuals who were under the age of 60. The studies were not very conclusive. This is because there are other factors that could be causing the condition such as if a person is smoking, and people who were taking these certain kinds of cholesterol lowering medications could be taking other medications as well. It was said by one of the researchers that the cholesterol medications or the statins could help to lower the possibilities of Parkinson's because the statins would lower the inflammations that occur in the brain.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/13/cholesterol-drugs-may-help-ward-off-parkinsons/

Important to use muscles as they age

In this last week of class we have been learning about muscles, bones and cartilage and what happens to these areas as they age. One of the many interesting articles that I found was on muscles and was called More Than an Exercise in Vanity. This article was interesting because it talked about a man who had been lifting wights and working out since he was the age of 12 and now at the age of 60 and a Doctor of Cardiology and a marathon runner he was now a small man with not a muscle bulging on him. The article discusses how researchers talk about how the healthy muscles are the muscles that have been worked to the fullest extent and so they have enough strength to get through life especially as one ages and continues to get older. The article also discussed how muscles of the elderly population who don't use their muscles will atrophy and they will be unable to lift themselves up and brace themselves which leads to many of the falls that the elderly encounter. This article also discussed how the elderly population especially could gain muscles, by lifting weights and doing resistance training, as some of the ways of working out muscles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/health/13muscles.html?_r=1