Stacy Tessler Lindau and Natalia Gavrilova of the University of Chicago analyzed data about health and sexual activity collected by two nationally representative surveys. The surveys involved 3,032 adults aged 25 to 74 and 3,005 adults aged 57 to 85 between 1995 and 2006.

Men were more likely than women to be sexually active, report a good quality sex life and be interested in sex, the researchers said in a paper published online by a British medical journal called BMJ. Those gender differences increased with age and were greatest among those aged 75 to 85. In that group, nearly 39 percent of men but less than 17 percent of women were sexually active and nearly 71 percent of men and less than 51 percent of women who were sexually active reported having a good quality sex life.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR THE WASHINGTON POST:

The Checkup – Maintaining a sex life.

Clotie Robinson has tried for four years to buy health coverage for her 8-year-old daughter who suffers from depression and other mental illnesses, but she’s been consistently rejected by insurance companies.

As a result, Robinson has been unable to pay for some medicines and medical tests her daughter needs.

The DeSoto, Texas, mom had hoped the new health overhaul law that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday would immediately stop insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing medical conditions.  Several speeches by Obama and explanations of the bill issued by congressional Democrats left the impression the law would do just that.

But health advocates and some insurers say the law does not clearly state that such protection starts this year. If it doesn’t, uninsured children with pre-existing conditions might not get help until 2014, when the law requires  insurers to issue policies for all applicants regardless of health condition. There is no doubt that for children who are enrolled in insurance plans, the new law bars insurers from excluding coverage of any pre-existing conditions.

TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR KAISER HEALTH NEWS

Coverage For Sick Kids Under Question In New Law – Kaiser Health News.

Americans may not be collectively doomed to die in their recliners after all, one hand in the chips bag, the other stretching for the remote. Obesity levels seem to be leveling off or slowing across most of the population, according to two new comprehensive studies of the nation’s heft.

The assessments, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a welcome respite from the seemingly endless reports of Americans getting fatter and fatter. The latest of several to find an obesity plateau, they suggest that those earlier findings were not aberrations but that Americans may truly have turned a corner.

But it’s not time to reach for the cookie jar yet. Though abundant messages about eating smaller portions and getting regular exercise may finally be registering, health experts say there’s more to be done before the fattening trend is not merely halted but reversed — more policy changes, community programs and support groups.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: U.S. obesity rates reaching a resting point, studies show – latimes.com.

Body Pump went beyond body sculpting and incorporated strength training with REAL weights (we actually used barbells, not dumbbells). It would involve a circuit of exercises that would target all major muscle groups for a full hour. This was when my love affair with weight training began. After teaching the class for a couple of months, I started to see my body transform into a leaner, more sculpted one. I fell in love with the muscles I developed and felt sexier and stronger. Today, although I’m not teaching anymore, weight training is core to my exercise regimen.

When I see women and men running endlessly on the treadmill and then complain that they don’t look the way they want, the first thing I tell them is that they are overdoing the cardio and should stop running so much! It is a myth that cardio is the best way to lose weight and to maintain a healthy weight. Here is why strength training is the secret weapon to weight loss and overall health:

1. Increases Lean Body Mass: Strength training helps to keep our body fat to lean body mass ratio lower. This means we look better and feel stronger. But even more importantly, it impacts our metabolism…the speed at which we burn calories.

2. Increases Your Metabolism: Average adults see a 2% – 5% reduction in metabolic rate every 10 years. This makes it more and more difficult to keep unwanted weight off. As we mentioned above, however, strength training increases muscle mass which makes your muscles stronger. Stronger muscles, in turn, take up and burn blood sugar more efficiently and for a longer period of time than does cardio.

3. Reduces Risk of Injury: Strength training increases muscular and bone strength, and also improves function of tendons, joints and ligaments. All of this increased strength in your musculoskeletal system enhances your balance, flexibility and functional ability. This leads to a decreased chance of sustaining an injury that can be painful, debilitating and costly.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS, CLICK THIS LINK FOR HEALTHY LIVING: The Secret Weapon of Weight Loss and Physical Health | Healthy Living on Sheer Balance.

That is what my patients tell me every day. They go from being ill or just okay to experiencing UltraWellness.

Most people don’t know how poorly they feel until they feel better. In fact, most of us don’t recognize that fatigue, digestive problems, aches and pains, allergies, headaches, and more aren’t just annoying symptoms. They are early clues to impending diseases that can disable and kill us.

Most heart disease starts in the womb. You can detect brain changes in teenagers that can predict the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Blood tests in children can predict who will develop diabetes later in life. Most cancers take more than 30 years to grow to the size where they can be detected.

How can we address problems that we don’t even know we have?

There is an answer. It lies in the revolution that is happening in medicine today. That revolution is called functional medicine. I call it UltraWellness, and that is what you are going to learn about today …

How I Found the Real Cure for Chronic Illness

One in three Americans has some type of chronic disease — and most of the rest of us are headed toward one. Most of us don’t feel as well as we should or could if only we understood how to care for and feed our bodies the way they were designed.

Conventional medicine helps at the very end stages of disease. If you are very sick, have an emergency, break a bone or have a raging infection, then, yes, conventional acute care medicine is the right solution. As former emergency room doctor and the husband of an orthopedic surgeon, I am glad we have this care when we need it.

But when I worked in the emergency room, I felt I was saving people just before (or sometimes after) they were washed DOWNSTREAM and over the waterfall to their death.

I began to wonder what led them to this point — what happened UPSTREAM in the process of disease and illness. What were the real causes of disease? If I could answer that question, then I thought I might be able to help prevent disease in the first place.

The early influences on my thinking–from Asian philosophy, to nutritional biochemistry, to the study of ecology and ecosystems — all helped me form new and different view of health and disease.

I am one doctor who is part of a movement that is on the cutting edge of an entire shift in our scientific model of disease. It is called systems medicine, or functional medicine.

It provides a way of understanding all the influences on our biology that are at the root of illness and how our lifestyle and environment interact with our genes to create the imbalances or balances that are the real determinants of disease or health.

This medical view does not reduce symptoms and diseases to their component parts and traditional specialties, but studies the entire ecology of the body and its environment.

I have practiced this model for over 15 years and seen miracle after miracle, day after day. People don’t only get relief from symptoms, they get truly well. That is why I have called this approach to health UltraWellness.

It is the answer to the crisis we find ourselves in — an increasing epidemic of chronic disease and an impending economic collapse as more of our resources are put toward caring for the chronically ill.

Today, medicine is in a serious predicament. The way we understand health and disease no longer reflects biological reality or the biological laws of nature. We need to understand that diseases are not fixed things that you catch or that just show up out of context, but are related to the environment, your diet, genes, and lifestyle.

Dr. Mark Hyman: The 7 Keys to UltraWellness: Discover Why You are Sick and How You Can Heal.

The small study included five members of the Stanford women’s tennis team. For two to three weeks, the athletes maintained their regular schedules, sleeping and working out as usual. They took part in sprinting and hitting drills to measure their performance. Then the players were told to extend their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks.

After increasing sleep, the athletes performed better on all the drills. Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds. Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits.

The findings were presented last week at the Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. The study was small, and some of the improvement may have been the result of additional practice time. However, the size of the change suggests the athletes received a direct benefit from more sleep.

The study’s lead author, Cheri Mah, a researcher at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory at Stanford University, said the athletes who took part in the study also felt better and realized for the first time the real effect sleep could have on performance.

Katherine Hobson, who writes the “On Fitness” column for U.S. News and World Report, said she decided to hang up her running shoes and catch up on sleep during a recent vacation.

I expected my first run back in Brooklyn to be a death march. Instead, I felt the best and went the fastest that I have in weeks. One possible explanation came to mind: I erased my chronic sleep debt on vacation, thanks to sleeping in as long as I wanted in the mornings and napping most afternoons, which made me extremely well rested when I took that run.

Over at Runner’s World, Mark Remy notes that many runners focus on “carb-loading” before a race, but perhaps they should also try “sleep-loading.”

We runners obsess over speed work, long runs, tempo runs, hill runs, lactate threshold, resting heart rate, carbs, protein, recovery drinks, stretching, massage, ice baths, shoes, technical fabrics, gels, and about a hundred other variables.

But most of us, I bet, don’t give sleep a second thought. It’s crazy, if you think about it. How can we expect to run well if we can’t stop yawning?

What do you think? Have you noticed a difference in your workouts depending on how much or how well you sleep?  Reporting by Tara Parker-Pope for the New York Times.  For more news and information, click the link below for the www.nytimes.com.  Support your local newspaper and the New York Times.

via To Improve Fitness, Try Sleep – Well Blog – NYTimes.com.

By the afternoon, the World Health Organization had raised its threat level of a pandemic alert, and markets in Europe and Asia had been unnerved by the concerns.

In raising its threat level to 4 from 3, a decision likely to prompt more travel warnings, the W.H.O. emphasized that “a pandemic is not considered inevitable.” But the new threat level was an acknowledgment that containment of swine flu now moot, and mitigation is its main concern. “The situation is fluid and will continue to evolve,” it said in a statement.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,600 people in 17 states across Mexico were believed to have been sickened by the virus. Officials in Mexico City had already canceled hundreds of public events and closed many public venues, and in Tijuana, soccer officials canceled the remainder of the qualifying tournament for North and Central American teams to get into the Under-17 World Cup.

Mexico City officials have urged people with possible symptoms — headache, cough, sore throat, nausea, fever, dizziness — to stay home. But Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said officials would discuss a further shutdown, which could include public transportation.

As Mexico struggled to contain its outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans forgo all “nonessential travel” to Mexico. The agency also reported that the number of confirmed cases in the United States had doubled, rising from 20 to 40. Among the 40 is a cluster of 28 students at a high school in New York City, where officials suspect that at least 17 additional students may have been infected.

Mexican officials said they had traced the origins of the outbreak to a rural area known as La Gloria in the southeastern state of Veracruz, the site of several major pig farms. Officials had initially suspected that the outbreak began in Oaxaca, in the southwestern part of the country. The United States and Canada have confirmed cases, but no deaths.

C.D.C. teams are in Mexico to help the authorities there gather data and run diagnostic tests, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, said on Monday afternoon.

John Brennan, the White House homeland security adviser who appeared at a news conference with Ms. Napolitano, said Mexican officials had been “exceptionally cooperative and forthcoming” in keeping Washington up to date.

Despite assurances from medical authorities that a person cannot catch the flu from eating pork, China and Russia banned imports of pork and pork products from Mexico and three American states that have reported cases of swine flu, according to The Associated Press. Indonesia said it was banning all pork imports, and Lebanon said it was banning all pork and pork products, with the exception of some canned goods.

In Washington, Ms. Napolitano said her department was working closely with the government of Mexico and Canada in a “trinational approach” to the flu outbreak. Ms. Napolitano said the department is activating a national stockpile of anti-viral drugs and planning other steps in coordination with private interests “should this erupt into a full-fledged pandemic — which it has not yet, by the way.”

Earlier on Monday, the European Union’s health commissioner urged Europeans to avoid traveling to the United States or Mexico if doing so was not essential.

The warning came as health officials in Spain confirmed that a man hospitalized in eastern Spain had tested positive for swine flu, becoming what appeared to be Europe’s first case of the disease. Health authorities were also testing 17 other suspected cases across Spain, a major hub for travel between Mexico and Europe.

And in Scotland, Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said tests “conclusively” confirmed swine flu in two people recovering in a hospital in Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, after a trip to Mexico. Seven other people who had been in contact with these two have developed mild symptoms and are being treated, Ms. Sturgeon.

Britain and other European Union nations had already issued travel advisories for those traveling to Mexico, but the European Union’s health commissioner went a step further in urging Europeans to avoid nonessential trips. Europeans, she told reporters in Luxembourg, “should avoid traveling to Mexico or the United States of America unless it is very urgent for them.”

Dr. Richard Besser, the acting C.D.C. director, called the advisory against traveling to the United States unwarranted, saying that only a small number of cases had been diagnosed in the country, just one of which required hospitalization.

“We are looking very hard for cases of swine flu,” he told CNN early Monday. “I expect we’re going to find some, and we’ll find some of increasing severity and more of the mild cases. At this point I would not put a travel restriction or recommendation against coming to the United States.”

On Sunday, Hong Kong — scarred by the SARS epidemic in 2003 — called for residents to avoid all travel to Mexico and to try to avoid travel to cities with confirmed cases in the United States.

Other nations also imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers over the weekend as additional confirmed cases appeared in Mexico and Canada, and at least 10 suspected cases appeared in New Zealand.

In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference on Monday that there was only one reported cluster of swine flu in the city, at the 2,750-student St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens. In addition to the 28 confirmed cases at the school, health officials have classified an additional 17 as probable cases of swine flu. But Mayor Bloomberg added that there was no evidence of a wider outbreak in the city.

“Four to five days after seeing the first signs of the swine flu in Queens, we are still dealing with a single cluster of swine flu cases, all associated with this one school,” he said.

Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be more than month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.

“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”

Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.

President Obama, said Monday that the outbreak was “a cause for concern” but not alarm. Speaking at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, he promised that “Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Centers for Disease Control will be offering regular updates to the American people so that they know what steps are being taken and what steps they may need to take.”

While in the United States, the Dow finished down 51.29 points, off 0.64 percent, concerns about the potential economic impact of the outbreak sent stocks tumbling elsewhere, hitting travel-related companies particularly hard. Most Asian and European markets were down by the end of trading Monday, with tourism and airline industry stocks leading the decline. In Spain, the Ibex 35, a benchmark stock index, was off 2.5 percent. A health official there said that the man who tested positive had been hospitalized in Almansa, in eastern Spain, but was not seriously ill. The other suspected cases were scattered around the country, with 10 in the northeastern region of Catalonia and cases in Madrid, Valencia and the Basque regions.

Normally, there are about two dozen flights between Spain and Mexico each day.

Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases, including in New Zealand. Health officials there said that nine students and their teacher had tested positive for influenza A after returning to Auckland from a trip to Mexico. The W.H.O. was conducting tests to determine if the virus was in fact swine flu. In the meantime, airport workers in Auckland were stepping up their screening of people traveling from North America.

On Sunday, at a news conference in Washington, Ms. Napolitano had called the United States’ emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”

“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”

American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.

The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.

The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.

Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.

“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Besser said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano on Sunday. “But we view this as a marathon.”

He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.

The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.

“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.

Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.

Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.

Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.

There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.

Reporting was contributed by Donald G. McNeil, and Sewell Chan from New York, Victoria Burnett from Madrid, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David Stout from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.  Article by By MARC LACEY and ANAHAD O’CONNOR

via Avoid Mexico, Travelers Are Told, as Swine Flu Toll Mounts – NYTimes.com.

At a White House press conference, Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ensured Americans that the administration is taking aggressive steps to control the outbreak, but that more cases are likely to expect to emerge in the near future.

“Flu viruses are very unpredictable. Outbreak of infectious diseases are very unpredicatable,” Besser said. “We view this more as a marathon. We think this will continue to spread but we are taking aggresive action.”

There is no vaccination for the swine flu strain, which is a combination of pig, bird and human strains. But officials said they have ramped up medical surveillance around the country and as part of the emergency declaration, freed up state and federal resources for prevention. Officials also emphasized the importance of individual care and good hygenic pratices.

The news came on the heels of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens were confirmed to be infected with the swine flu. About 100 students reported flu-like symptoms at the school, which will be closed on Monday and Tuesday.

“The numbers here are not important, what’s important is that at the school we have a confirmed cluster of swine flu,” New York Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said. “It’s obviously concerning to have a new strain. It’s obviously concerning the size of the number of students affected at the school … However, it’s reassuring that every case … has been mild. Many already improving and with careful looks at the intensive care units in the city we have not identified an increase in severly ill people who may have this infection.”

Eight people have been confirmed diagnosed in New York City, one in Ohio, two in Texas and seven in California.

Officials dusted off the idea of a bio-terrorist threat. “There is nothing we have seen in our work that would suggest anything but a naturally occuring event,” Bresser said.

Bresser confirmed that the virus found in Americans is the same as that in Mexicans, but that they have not been able to determine why the impact of the flu has been more severe in Mexico, where 81 people have died from the disease. In the U.S., only one person infected had to be hospitalized. Officials stressed they are taking an aggressive approach to tackling the issue — 12 and half million of Tamiflu has been made available to states — but used cautious language in descrbing whether it could be contained.

“Even if this outbreak is a small one we can’t anticipate we wont have follow up outbreaks,” said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

In Mexico, more than a thousand people have been infected, a reported 81 people have died from it. The Mexican government has advised people to stay homebound, and the government has indicated those infected could be isolated. In the country’s deserted capital, public events were cancelled for the next week or so. Sales of masks have soared as people try to prevent themselves from the potentially deadly disease.

Killer Virus or Just a Threat?

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering raising its threat level from three to four. But while it characterized the situation as serious, officials said they are not yet convinced that the swine flu is a pandemic — meaning that it is easily transmitted from person to person and can cause large outbreaks.

“If we move the pandemic threat, want to make sure on pretty good solid ground. Such a move would be a big signal to the world. We already have several countries involved (with positive cases), but we know in current global situation that cases can occur in many places without ever taking hold. We have decided to wait and get more information,” said Dr Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general ad. interim for Health Security and Environment at WHO.

WHO officials said so far, the virus has only been confirmed in Mexico and the United States, and that the transmissability is limited and the outbreak is small. WHO officials said are working on a vaccine and testing and identifying this particular never-seen-before virus.

The severity of the flu is still unknown. Some U.S. doctors say they do not trust information from Mexico, but WHO officials said they do not believe that Mexico created any delays in reporting the outbreak.

Several countries have reportedly announced measures to test American visitors and imposed travel warnings for Mexico. The United States has not yet imposed a travel advisory to and from Mexico, with officials only suggesting to Americans to reevaluate their plans if visiting the country.

American Airlines, US Airways and Continental are waiving fees for flight changes to Mexico. They are not cancelling flights, and American Airlines said it’s only received a handful of calls seeking changes in travel plans.

Katherine Andrus, an attorney for the Air Transport Associated, told ABC News that the organization is taking this seriously and employing prudent measures, but at this point it would be an extreme measure to restrict any flights.

Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., said doctors like him have been advised by the CDC and state health department to set up a system that would test patients with flulike symptoms and help define how widespread this outbreak is. He said the severity of the virus is hard to gauge because of the wide discrepancy in how it has affected Mexicans and Americans, and because it is occuring in places that are warm, which is very unusual.

“The genetic make up of this virus has influenza experts scratching their heads,” he said. “One of the things that has us worried is that could this be a virus that could continue to make mischief during the warmest parts of the year. That would be a big thing. For a respiratory virus to be active during the summer months” would be very unique.

Emergency Departments Make Swine Flu Preparations

The escalation in the swine flu situation on Saturday underscored concerns by international, federal and local health agencies over the threat of the new virus, even as government health officials said much remains unknown.

But if one thing is clear about the spread of this virus, it is that containment is no longer an option.

“It’s clear that this is widespread,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

“We do not think that we can contain the spread of this virus,” Schuchat added. “Having found virus where we have found it, we are very likely to find it in other places. … We are not at a point where we can keep this virus in just one place.”

The cases further demonstrate that health officials do not know where else the virus might turn up. Details of swine flu’s spread in Mexico also remain murky. A team sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now on the ground there seeking clues on the origin and spread of the disease.

“What we still don’t know is how widespread it is,” said Schaffner. “The question is: How long have things been going on in Mexico, and how attentive have they been in terms of what’s going on in their country?”

Meanwhile, emergency departments in affected areas are preparing for what they said could be a rise in cases.

“It is quite conceivable that it could escalate fairly rapidly,” said Dr. Richard Bradley, chief of the Division of EMS and Disaster Medicine at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston. “If we are seeing a flu epidemic in Mexico, we should expect an uptick fairly quickly in Texas, where I am, and in California.”

Still, Bradley said that the situation thus far has been relatively fortunate.

“Right now, we are in the increased awareness phase — we don’t yet know how this is going to develop,” he said. “Fortunately, right now the cases in California and in Texas seem to be milder than the cases we’ve seen in Mexico. We hope that this trend continues in the U.S.”

Emergency departments in other areas of the country also are stepping up efforts to control the virus should it surface.

Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, professor and chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Bellevue Hospital in New York City said that though no cases have been detected in his emergency department yet, any patient who comes in with a cough and a fever or a rash and a fever is isolated for a nasal swab to detect influenza — a test that takes about an hour.

The possible outbreak in the New York area suggests the measures may be warranted.

A Delay in Action?

Another question that remains is whether health agencies reacted quickly enough to the initial reports of swine infections in Mexico, first reported in mid-March.

“I think that the laboratory testing capabilities for this type of virus were not fully in place and this accounts for some of the delay,” said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean of the Graduate Program in Public Health at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. “They were not routinely testing for this type of influenza virus.”

Still, other infectious disease experts said that there should have been quicker action.

“I concur that the ‘one-month lag’ between case identification and reporting was too long,” said Ed Hsu, associate professor of Public Health Informatics at the University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences and School of Public Health. “[It is a] good thing that the CDC now decides to have a daily briefing on the swine flu, but it will still need to bring the transparency of reporting in other high-risk countries up to speed on this.”

And despite the actions by the World Health Organization with regard to the swine flu outbreaks, no decision has yet been made to increase the pandemic threat level from its current status of phase 3 to phase 4 on the six-point scale. A virus isn’t considered to be pandemic until it reaches phase 6.

WHO did announce, however, that it has sent a team of experts to Mexico to further study the outbreaks.

Still Too Early to Worry?

Despite the action being taken by national and international health organizations, some infectious disease experts say it is far too early to fear the worst — a global flu pandemic.

“The current swine flu only marginally meets only one of three of pandemic tests: effective person-to-person transmission,” Hsu said, adding that the other tests — susceptibility and no natural immunity or vaccine — remain to be satisfied.

Hsu further noted that compared to the H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus — commonly known as bird flu — the current H1N1 swine flu strain is still a relative lightweight. Since 2003, he said, bird flu has garnered a 60 percent case fatality rate, and it never attained pandemic status. Meanwhile, the current swine flu strain still has fewer than 1,000 reported cases and only about 60 fatalities to its name.

“If not [a pandemic] then, why now?” he asked.

Swine Flu Vaccine Would Be Months in Making

But if more cases did arise, Schaffner said that a vaccine for the illness would not be available for months.

“It would be an Olympic sprint for vaccine manufacturers, starting today” to have a usable vaccine ready even by October, he said.

“If this is a virus that is sufficiently new — and that has not been entirely determined yet — we may need two doses of the vaccine to get protection,” Schaffner said. “That, of course, would put additional strain on the vaccine production and delivery services.” Article by Huma Khan for ABC News. ABC News’ Dan Childs and Matt Hosford contributed to this report. For more news, information and video, click the link below for www.abcnews.com

Please leave your comments below.

U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency, Confirms 20 Cases Around the Country – ABC News.

While those are some of the obvious steps you can take to age well, researchers have discovered that centenarians tend to share certain traits in how they eat, move about, and deal with stress—the sorts of things we can emulate to improve our own aging process. Of course, getting to age 100 is enormously more likely if your parents did. Still, Thomas Perls, who studies the century-plus set at Boston University School of Medicine, believes that assuming you’ve sidestepped genes for truly fatal diseases like Huntington’s, “there’s nothing stopping you from living independently well into your 90s.” Heck, if your parents and grandparents were heavy smokers, they might have died prematurely without ever reaching their true potential lifespan, so go ahead and shoot for those triple digits by following these 10 habits.

1. Don’t retire. “Evidence shows that in societies where people stop working abruptly, the incidence of obesity and chronic disease skyrockets after retirement,” says Luigi Ferrucci, director of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. The Chianti region of Italy, which has a high percentage of centenarians, has a different take on leisure time. “After people retire from their jobs, they spend most of the day working on their little farm, cultivating grapes or vegetables,” he says. “They’re never really inactive.” Farming isn’t for you? Volunteer as a docent at your local art museum or join the Experience Corps, a program offered in 19 cities that places senior volunteers in urban public elementary schools for about 15 hours a week.

2. Floss every day. That may help keep your arteries healthy. A 2008 New York University study showed that daily flossing reduced the amount of gum-disease-causing bacteria in the mouth. This bacteria is thought to enter the bloodstream and trigger inflammation in the arteries, a major risk factor for heart disease. Other research has shown that those who have high amounts of bacteria in their mouth are more likely to have thickening in their arteries, another sign of heart disease. “I really do think people should floss twice a day to get the biggest life expectancy benefits,” stresses Perls.

3. Move around. “Exercise is the only real fountain of youth that exists,” says Jay Olshansky, a professor of medicine and aging researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It’s like the oil and lube job for your car. You don’t have to do it, but your car will definitely run better.” Study after study has documented the benefits of exercise to improve your mood, mental acuity, balance, muscle mass, and bones. “And the benefits kick in immediately after your first workout,” Olshansky adds. Don’t worry if you’re not a gym rat. Those who see the biggest payoffs are the ones who go from doing nothing to simply walking around the neighborhood or local mall for about 30 minutes a day. Building muscle with resistance training is also ideal, but yoga classes can give you similar strength-training effects if you’re not into weight lifting.

4. Eat a fiber-rich cereal for breakfast. Getting a serving of whole-grains, especially in the morning, appears to help older folks maintain stable blood sugar levels throughout the day, according to a recent study conducted by Ferrucci and his colleagues. “Those who do this have a lower incidence of diabetes, a known accelerator of aging,” he says.

5. Get at least six hours of shut-eye. Instead of skimping on sleep to add more hours to your day, get more to add years to your life. “Sleep is one of the most important functions that our body uses to regulate and heal cells,” says Ferrucci. “We’ve calculated that the minimum amount of sleep that older people need to get those healing REM phases is about six hours.” Those who reach the century mark make sleep a top priority.

6. Consume whole foods, not supplements. Strong evidence suggests that people who have high blood levels of certain nutrients—selenium, beta-carotene, vitamins C and E—age much better and have a slower rate of cognitive decline. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that taking pills with these nutrients provides those antiaging benefits. “There are more than 200 different carotenoids and 200 different flavonoids in a single tomato,” points out Ferrucci, “and these chemicals can all have complex interactions that foster health beyond the single nutrients we know about like lycopene or vitamin C.” Avoid nutrient-lacking white foods (breads, flour, sugar) and go for all those colorful fruits and vegetables and dark whole-grain breads and cereals with their host of hidden nutrients.

7. Be less neurotic. It may work for Woody Allen, who infuses his worries with a healthy dose of humor, but the rest of us neurotics may want to find a new way to deal with stress. “We have a new study coming out that shows that centenarians tend not to internalize things or dwell on their troubles,” says Perls. “They are great at rolling with the punches.” If this inborn trait is hard to overcome, find better ways to manage when you’re stressed: Yoga, exercise, meditation, tai chi, or just deep breathing for a few moments are all good. Ruminating, eating chips in front of the TV, binge drinking? Bad, very bad.

8. Live like a Seventh Day Adventist. Americans who define themselves as Seventh Day Adventists have an average life expectancy of 89, about a decade longer than the average American. One of the basic tenets of the religion is that it’s important to cherish the body that’s on loan from God, which means no smoking, alcohol abuse, or overindulging in sweets. Followers typically stick to a vegetarian diet based on fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts, and get plenty of exercise. They’re also very focused on family and community.

9. Be a creature of habit. Centenarians tend to live by strict routines, says Olshansky, eating the same kind of diet and doing the same kinds of activities their whole lives. Going to bed and waking up at the same time each day is another good habit to keep your body in the steady equilibrium that can be easily disrupted as you get on in years. “Your physiology becomes frailer when you get older,” explains Ferrucci, “and it’s harder for your body to bounce back if you, say, miss a few hours of sleep one night or drink too much alcohol.” This can weaken immune defenses, leaving you more susceptible to circulating flu viruses or bacterial infections.

10. Stay connected. Having regular social contacts with friends and loved ones is key to avoiding depression, which can lead to premature death, something that’s particularly prevalent in elderly widows and widowers. Some psychologists even think that one of the biggest benefits elderly folks get from exercise the strong social interactions that come from walking with a buddy or taking a group exercise class. Having a daily connection with a close friend or family member gives older folks the added benefit of having someone watch their back. “They’ll tell you if they think your memory is going or if you seem more withdrawn,” says Perls, “and they might push you to see a doctor before you recognize that you need to see one yourself.” Article by Deborah Kotz for Yahoo health. For more helpful tips click the link below for Yahoo.com.

10 Health Habits That Will Help You Live to 100 on Yahoo! Health.

“These trees are 5 feet wide and 150 feet tall,” said Dello, 43. “They still have another 150 feet to grow and are going to stick around for another 1,000 years. When I thought about that, I’m just a flea on the bark. It’s unbelievable.”

The trip offered Dello, who worked in the auto repossession business, and his wife a chance to come to terms with the diagnosis in August 2008, and to scratch the trip to the redwood forests off his life “to do” list while he was still relatively healthy.

He died four months later.

The idea that dying well is as important as living well gained cultural currency last year when Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, delivered a final lecture a month after learning that his pancreatic cancer had spread and was inoperable. The lecture was viewed millions of times on the Internet and adapted into a best-selling book.

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt,” Pausch, who died in July at age 47, told his audience, “just how we play the hand.”

“Die the way you live”

It’s easy, experts say, for terminally ill patients and their loved ones to focus so much on their medical care and other important practical matters, including funerals and wills, that a “good” death eludes them. Health permitting, a trip like the one Dello took with his wife can help, as can visits from friends and family.

“You’re going to die the way you live,” says Fran Moreland Johns, a former hospice volunteer and author of “Dying Unafraid.” “Laughter, music, all of the things that have been important in your life — if you put them to work for making your end times better, you can actually affect your dying days.”

“That’s where Randy Pausch has set a wonderful example. He brought all of his skills to bear on living until the moment he died.”

Tony Wallace, a retired foreign service officer from Arlington, Virginia, went on a Caribbean cruise with his wife, Susan, after he learned in September 2004 that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. As his illness progressed, Wallace, a former adjunct professor of public policy at George Mason University, put his teaching and writing skills to work by starting a blog, “Navigating Through ALS,” and using it as a platform to help others suffering from the disease.

“I’m not a compiler of life lists of things I never got to do and places I never got to visit,” Wallace wrote in December 2007. “I look back on my life to date and view it as a well-judged race — like a NASCAR race in which you don’t set the speed record, but you don’t crash, handle the curves well, and deliver a respectable performance.”

Wallace died September 4, 2008 at age 67. Susan Wallace, a part-time editor, says her husband’s illness, while painful and difficult, offered an opportunity of sorts.

“If I had to choose between a long-term illness and an immediate death, I think I would go for a long-term illness, although it was hard on both of us,” she says. “But the last four years have been incredible years, probably the best years of our marriage. We became closer than we ever were.”

For friends and family

Friends and family can help tremendously simply by showing up, says Kathy Brandt, vice president of professional leadership, consumer and caregiver services for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Often, she says, people worry so much about what to say to someone with a terminal illness — or about saying the wrong thing — that they just stay away.

“We need to put aside our selfish fears,” says Brandt. “That may sound a little harsh, but it’s not really about us.”

One way to avoid saying the wrong thing is to steer clear of cliches, she says.

“‘God has a reason’ or ‘tomorrow will be another day’ — those kinds of things are trite, but they’re also impersonal,” says Brandt.

“If the person wants to chat and talk, then just ask a question or two and let the person talk. If the person’s not physically well enough to do a lot of talking, ask if they’d like to hear a story about something that happened at work, or saying, ‘Would you like me to read a story to you?’ It’s all about figuring out where the person is at and meeting them where they are.”

Visits can be used to tie up loose ends or resolve old conflicts, says Brandt.

Susan Wallace says her husband had time to repair one particularly nagging rift before he died, and Dello also took opportunities to resolve disputes with friends and former co-workers.

“Most people at the end of their life need closure,” says Brandt. “If they’ve offended someone or had an argument with somebody, they can say they’re sorry. Oftentimes they like the opportunity to say goodbye to people. They may not say those words, but that’s what those visits can be with friends and loved ones.”

In Johns’ view, the biggest hurdle for most people is overcoming their fear of the unknown and realizing that, for most, death “is not the worst thing that’s going to happen.”

“We don’t know what dying is,” says Johns. “Whatever your religious background, it’s easier for us to ignore death and pretend that it doesn’t happen than to accept it as an unknown with all the other unknowns — in this day and age there are a lot of them — and deal with what we can and not be so spooked.”

For related articles, information and video, click the link below for CNN.com

Article by William Lamb for CNN.com and Lifewire. LifeWire provides original and syndicated content to Web publishers. William Lamb is a staff writer for The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Dwell, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Philadelphia Inquirer and at USATODAY.com.

‘You’re going to die the way you live’ – CNN.com.