Mayo Clinic guide: Home remedies can do the trick

Mayo Clinic guide: Home remedies can do the trick

By Janice Lloyd, USA TODAY

In this age of rising medical costs and growing demands on our time, a trip to the doctor is something we hope to avoid.

But how do you keep yourself healthy enough to stay away? And how do you know what illnesses you can treat at home and which need professional attention?

Enter the Mayo Clinic's Book of Home Remedies, a 200-page guide for treating more than 100 common conditions. Savvy parents looking for quick advice and good bedside manner get both from author Philip Hagen, who discusses alternative and conventional approaches to healing, cautions about when to seek medical help and offers advice about how to stay healthy.

"This book reflects our experience in working with people who come to the doctor when there may be something that they can do at home," says Hagen, who specializes in internal and preventive medicine.

"We looked at conditions that had a broad impact on the population for which there seemed to be some reasonable home remedies. Then we asked the experts at Mayo to see if there might be reasonable scientific explanations for them and to determine that they're safe."

The need for families to stretch dollars wasn't overlooked by Hagen and his colleagues at Mayo. "The timeliness of this book is in no small part brought about by increasing medical costs," Hagen says.

The kinds of remedies addressed are as diverse as gentle stretching for back pain, swallowing a teaspoon of sugar for hiccups, trying ginger for morning sickness and using Tylenol for teething. And there are instructions for performing lifesaving moves such as CPR and the Heimlich maneuver.

Allergies

"The best way to approach managing allergies is to know and avoid your allergy triggers," Hagen says.

The most common allergens are inhaled — such as pollen, dust, mold and pet dander. At this time of year, when weed pollen is at its worst, people sensitive to pollen can be particularly miserable. He advises:

•Close windows and doors.

•Don't hang laundry outdoors.

•Use an allergy-grade filter on your heating system.

•Rinse out your sinuses with a nasal lavage.

Insomnia

Insomnia disturbs more than one-third of adults at some point, Hagen says. He suggests lifestyle changes — including getting exercise and taking a warm bath one to two hours before bedtime — before resolving to find other ways (antihistamines, sleeping pills) to improve sleep.

•Try gentle exercise like stretching to relax.

•Take a warm bath one to two hours before bedtime.

•Limit naps to 20 or 30 minutes.

Heartburn

Prevention is the key. If you can follow the drill, you won't need a remedy. Still get hit with heartburn? Over-the-counter remedies such as antacids and Pepcid will help.

•Maintain a healthy weight.

•Avoid food and drink that can trigger heartburn. These include fatty foods, alcohol, peppermint and tomato products.

•Don't eat two to three hours before bed.

Influenza

If you get the flu, rest, drink plenty of fluids, try chicken soup — which the authors say helps break up sinus congestion — and consider pain relievers, "but remember, they only make you feel better and can have side effects." Best to take preventive steps:

•Get a flu shot in October or November.

•Wash your hands.

•Eat right and sleep tight.

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health ... 5_ST_N.htm

A friend of mine beat cancer on his own that the Mayo clinic could not cure. He stopped eating all sugar, all processed food, only drank distilled water, and also drank Sauerkraut juice. He is now cancer free and is training to ride his bike across the US at age 65.

Aspirin may boost prostate cancer treatment, study finds

Patients who took anticoagulants were far less likely to die of cancer

Reuters
updated 10/25/2010 3:04:58 PM ET 2010-10-25T19:04:58

WASHINGTON — Cheap, easy-to-take aspirin tablets may help men being treated for prostate cancer live longer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Prostate cancer patients who had been treated with either surgery or radiation, and who took aspirin or other anticoagulant drugs such as warfarin, were far less likely to die of cancer, the researchers said.

Those who took the drugs had a 4 percent risk of dying from prostate cancer after 10 years, compared to 10 percent for men who did not take anticoagulants.

Men with high-risk prostate cancer benefited the most, the researchers said ahead of an American Society for Radiation Oncology meeting, which starts next week in San Diego.

"Evidence has shown that anticoagulants may interfere with cancer growth and spread," Dr. Kevin Choe of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas said in a statement.

"If the major effect of anticoagulants is preventing metastasis (tumor spread), this may be why previous clinical trials with anticoagulation medications produced mixed results, since most patients in these trials already had metastasis. If the cancer has already metastasized, then anticoagulants may not be as beneficial."

Choe's team looked at a study of 5,275 men whose cancer had not spread beyond the prostate gland. Of the men, 1,982 were taking anticoagulants.

Those taking aspirin or other drugs to reduce clotting were far less likely to have the prostate tumors pop up elsewhere in their bodies and were less likely to die, Choe's team said in materials published ahead of the meeting.

Story: Daily aspirin may cut colon cancer, study says

"The benefit was most prominent with aspirin use over other anticoagulants," Choe told a news briefing.

"Findings from this study are promising. However, further studies are necessary before the addition of aspirin to prostate cancer therapy becomes standard treatment," he added.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39835786/ns ... ns_health/

Daily aspirin may cut colon cancer, study says

Researchers find that taking baby aspirin could greatly reduce cancer deaths

By MARIA CHENG
The Associated Press
updated 10/21/2010 7:20:08 PM ET 2010-10-21T23:20:08

LONDON — A low dose of aspirin may reduce colon cancer cases by a quarter and deaths by a third, a new study found.

But experts say aspirin's side effects of bleeding and stomach problems are too worrying for people who aren't at high risk of the disease to start taking the drug for that reason alone.

Previous studies have found a daily dose of at least 500 milligrams of aspirin could prevent colon cancer, but the adverse effects of such a high dose outweighed the benefits. Now, researchers say a low dose, equivalent to a baby or regular aspirin, also appears to work.

European researchers looked at the 20-year results of four trials with more than 14,000 people that were originally done to study aspirin's use in preventing strokes. They found people taking baby or regular aspirin pills daily for about six years reduced their colon cancer risk by 24 percent and that deaths from the disease dropped by 35 percent. That was compared to those who took a dummy pill or nothing. There seemed to be no advantage to taking more aspirin than a baby-sized dose.

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The study's conclusion that even low doses of aspirin can reduce colon cancer suggests the drug is inching its way toward being used for cancer prevention, though people should not start taking aspirin daily without consulting their doctor.

The studies used European baby aspirin of 75 milligrams and regular aspirin, 300 milligrams. US. baby aspirin is 81 milligrams and regular aspirin, 325 milligrams.

If taken in high doses over a long period, aspirin can irritate the stomach, intestines and bowel, causing lesions and major bleeding.

Some researchers said the drug would benefit certain people.

"Anyone with any risk factors such as a family history (of colon cancer) or a previous polyp should definitely take aspirin," said Peter Rothwell, a professor at the University of Oxford and one of the paper's authors. The finding also "tips the balance" for anyone considering aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes, he said.

No funding was provided for the study and it was published online Friday in the journal Lancet. Rothwell and some of his co-authors have been paid for work by several drugmakers who make anti-clotting drugs like aspirin.

The trials analyzed in the Lancet paper were done before the widespread introduction of screening tests like sigmoidoscopies and colonoscopies, which cut a person's chances of dying from colon cancer from about 40 to 70 percent. Rothwell said taking aspirin would still help, because the drug seems to stop cancers in the upper bowel, not usually caught by screening tests.

The studies compared people who took a low dose of aspirin to those who took a placebo or nothing. Researchers followed the patients for almost 20 years and observed who got cancer by checking cancer registries and death certificates in Britain and Sweden, where the studies were done. Of 8,282 people taking a low dose of aspirin, 119 died of colorectal cancer. Among the 5,751 people who took a placebo or nothing, 121 died of the disease.

Scientists think aspirin works by stopping production of a certain enzyme linked to cancers including those of the breast, stomach, esophagus and colon.

Other experts warned against aspirin for the general population. "It's not for everybody," said Robert Benamouzig, of Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny, France, who co-authored a commentary in the Lancet. He said he would advise some of his high-risk patients to take aspirin, but only after explaining its side effects.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cancer in developed countries, and there are about 1 million new cases and 600,000 deaths worldwide every year. The average person has about a 5 percent chance of developing the disease in their lifetime.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39780384/ns ... lth-cancer

Study: Alzheimer's risk spikes 157% with heavy smoking

By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY

Heavy smoking in midlife more than doubles your odds of developing Alzheimer's disease, a Kaiser Permanente study said Monday.

The study is the first to examine the long-term consequences of heavy smoking on Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, says the study's principal investigator, Rachel Whitmer, a research scientist with Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.

SMOKING: It doesn't just lead to dementia

From 1994 to 2008, researchers evaluated the records of 21,123 men and women in midlife and continued following them, on average, for 23 years. Compared with non-smokers, those who had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day increased their risk of developing Alzheimer's by more than 157% and had a 172% higher risk of developing vascular dementia — the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's. The research is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Though the study was observational, the authors have theories about what might being going on, Whitmer says. "People who smoke have increased inflammation, and we know inflammation also plays a role in Alzheimer's," she says.

Dementia experts say the Kaiser research is strong.

"This study is particularly good because it separates out vascular dementia and Alzheimer's," says William Thies, the Alzheimer's Association's chief medical and scientific officer, who notes that some early studies on smoking and dementia suggested a protective effect.

"The other novel aspect of it is that they've got a large enough sample to look at different ethnic groups, and it shows smoking's effect on dementia does not differ based on race," says Brenda Plassman, director of the program in epidemiology, at Duke University's Dementia Department of Psychiatry.

A key question for worried smokers: If I quit, will I lower my risk for dementia? The answer is unknown, but Whitmer says researchers are planning a follow-up study to find out.

The bottom line: "If there's somebody out there who hasn't heard smoking's bad for you, they must live in a cave somewhere," Thies says. "This is another good reason not to smoke."

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health ... 3_ST_N.htm