Older Adults Willing to Change Lifestyle to Avoid Fracture

A new study has found that older patients who know they are at risk of fractures will make positive lifestyle changes to avoid them, such as exercising, wearing proper footwear and taking supplements.

The findings are important, according to Dr. Joanna Sale, a researcher at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, and lead author of the study. She says much previous research in bone health has focused on medications or found that people make negative lifestyle changes such as reducing housework or leisure activities because they are afraid of falling.

Half of all women over the age of 50 and one in five men over 50 will have a fracture after falling from standing height or lower. Having one such fracture doubles a person's risk of having another. Dr. Sale, a clinical epidemiologist, said her research was aimed at finding ways to prevent those repeat fractures, particularly hip fractures, because about half of all hip fracture patients die or end up in long-term care facilities. Dr. Sale's study, published online in the journal Osteoporosis International, looked at patients over 65 who participated in the Osteoporosis Exemplary Care Program at St. Michael's Fracture Clinic.

Research participants were interviewed about their perceived fracture risk, recommendations they received about their bone health, results of bone density tests and any lifestyle or behavioral changes they made since their last fracture. Many said they didn't want to think about the possibility of a future fracture and felt they had little control over risk factors such as age – yet they all engaged in a number of daily behavioral strategies to manage their fracture risk. Most were concerned about being careful, such as using handrails or wearing proper shoes.

Faster Parkinson’s Detection Could Lead to Better Control

Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder that affects a half million people in the United States, with about 50,000 newly diagnosed cases each year. And, it normally strikes those past age 60.

Shaky hands, tremors, rigid muscles, slower movements are all the symptoms most often associated with Parkinson’s disease.

There is no cure and, until now, no reliable method for detecting the disease. An encouraging glimmer of hope exists, though. A research team from Michigan State has developed an innovative detection method they say is a major breakthrough in diagnosing Parkinson’s in early stages – the point at which treatment to control symptoms is most effective.

The method of detection, developed in part by Rahul Shrivastav, professor and chair of MSU’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, involves monitoring a patient’s speech patterns, specifically movement patterns of the tongue and jaw. Shrivastav says Parkinson’s affects all patients’ speech and changes in speech patterns are detectable before other movement and muscles are affected by the disease.

The new early detection method has proved to be more than 90 percent effective and is noninvasive and inexpensive. Requiring as little as two seconds of speech, monitoring can be done remotely and in telemedicine applications. Since there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, early detection is particularly important because the treatments currently available for controlling symptoms are most effective at that stage.

Shrivastav hopes that by designing tools to capture those changes, which are very small, inaudible changes, neurologists and other health care providers will have a way to make a diagnostic decision that isn’t possible otherwise.

For more about this study, visit http://msutoday.msu.edu/360/2013/detecting-parkinsons-for-better-treatment/.

Binge Drinking Tied to Insomnia, Study Reveals

A new study finds that for older people there appears to be a clear link between binge drinking and insomnia. Researchers found adults ages 55 and older who binged on average more than two days a week had an 84 percent greater odds of reporting an insomnia symptom compared with non-binge drinkers.

According to the authors, this is the first study to their knowledge that examines binge drinking (four or more drinks) and its association with insomnia symptoms in older adults.

Results show that overall, 26.2 percent of participants had two or less binge drinking days per week, on average, and 3.1 percent had more than two days per week, on average. Adjustment for demographic variables, medical conditions, and elevated depressive symptoms were made for participants.

“It was somewhat surprising that frequent binge drinking (more than two binge drinking days per week, on average), but not occasional binge drinking (less than two binge drinking days per week, on average) had a significant association with self-reported insomnia symptoms,” said lead author Sarah Canham, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in Drug Dependence Epidemiology, John Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Mental Health in Baltimore, Md.

Insomnia is not the only risk. This report comes on the heels of 2012 research, which found that adults 65 and older who binge drink at least twice a month are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer cognitive and memory declines, compared with seniors who don’t binge drink, according to research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

For more about binge drinking, visit http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/alcohol/seniors-who-binge-drink-more-likely-to-suffer-cognitive-decline.

New Report: Seniors Vulnerable to Extreme Heat

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging people – senior citizens in particular – to prepare themselves for the extreme heat of summer after releasing a report showing the U.S. averages 658 deaths a year from this heat. That’s more deaths than from tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined. In this new report, more than two-thirds of the deaths (69 percent) occurred at home, and 91 percent of those homes lacked air conditioning. Most of those who died were unmarried or living alone, and 72 percent were male.

“Taking common sense steps in extreme temperatures can prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths,” says Robin Ikeda, MD, MPH, acting director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The CDC is urging Americans to stay cool, hydrated and informed. Extreme heat affects everyone, but the elderly, children, the poor or homeless, persons who work or exercise outdoors, and those with chronic medical conditions are most at risk.

Extreme heat can lead to very high body temperatures, brain and organ damage, and even death. People suffer heat-related illness when their bodies are unable to compensate and cool themselves properly.

A study released recently in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that 7,233 heat-related deaths occurred in the United States from 1999 to 2009. And, an analysis of 2012 data indicates that deaths are on the rise. In a two-week period in 2012, excessive heat exposure resulted in 32 deaths in four states – four times the typical average for those states for the same two-week period from 1999-2009.

http://www.cdc.gov/extremeheat/seniors.html