Managing Your Health

When it comes to preventing and treating high blood pressure, one often-overlooked strategy is managing stress. If you often find yourself tense and on-edge, try these seven ways to reduce stress. 1. Get enough sleep. Inadequate or poor-quality sleep can negatively affect your mood, mental alertness, energy level, and physical health. 2. Learn relaxation techniques. Meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, deep breathing exercises, and yoga are powerful relaxation techniques and stress-busters. 3. Strengthen your social network. Connect with others by taking a class, joining an organization, or participating in a support group. 4. Hone your time-management skills. The more efficiently you can juggle work and family demands, the lower your stress level. 5. Try to resolve stressful situations if you can. Don't let stressful situations fester. Hold family problem-solving sessions and use negotiation skills at home and at work. 6. Nurture yourself. Trea

Salt is essential to the body. The sodium in salt helps transmit nerve impulses and contact muscle fibers. It also works with potassium to balance fluid levels in the body. But you need only a tiny amount of salt to do this -- less than one-tenth of a teaspoon per day. The average Americans gets nearly 20 times that much. The body can generally rid itself of excess sodium. In some people, though, consuming extra sodium makes the body hold on to water. This increases the amount of fluid flowing through blood vessels, which can increase blood pressure. Most of the salt that Americans consume comes from prepared and processed foods. The leading culprits include snack foods, sandwich meats, smoked and cured meats, canned juices, canned and dry soups, pizza and other fast foods, and many condiments, relishes, and sauces - for starters. But enough of it comes from the salt shaker at home that it's worth finding alternatives. Here are five ways to cut back on sodium when cooking or

It's May and here in the Northeast, front-of-the-pharmacy aisles are filled with myriad brands and types of sunscreen. While sunscreen is essential to lowering your risk for skin cancer, there are other simple, over-the-counter options you can incorporate into your summer skin protection routine. Nicotinamide may help prevent certain skin cancers Nicotinamide is a form of vitamin B3 that has been shown to reduce the number of skin cancers. In a randomized controlled trial performed in Australia (publised in the New England Journal of Medicine), the risks of basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma were significantly reduced -- by 23%. Nicotinamide has protective effects against ultraviolet damage caused by sun exposure. The vitamin is safe and can be purchased over the counter. We recommended starting the vitamin (500 mg twice a day) to all our patients with a history of a basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma, or with extensive skin damage to sun exposure. On

Despite the name, heart failure does not mean the heart has failed completely. Instead, it means the heart isn't pumping efficiently enough to meet the body's need for blood. When the body first detects that it's not getting an adequate blood supply, it tries to compensate. Stress hormones rise, pushing the heart to beat faster and harder. Blood vessels narrow in effect to keep blood pressure stable. To keep blood flowing to the heart and brain, the body diverts blood away from less important tissues. The body also retains sodium and fluid in an attempt to supplement the volume of circulating blood. In the short run, these fixed enable the heart to deliver a near-normal level of blood to the tissues. But over time, these compensatory measures can't keep up, and the heart weakens further. Heart failure symptoms: More than "just getting old" Heart failure causes two major problems for the body: (1) the tissues and organs don't get enough oxygen, and (2)

Many people with anxiety disorders have trouble sleeping. That's a problem. Too little sleep affects mood, contributing to irritability and sometimes depression. Vital functions occur during different stages of sleep that you leave you feeling rested or energized or help you learn and forge memories. Sleep usually improves when an anxiety disorder is treated. Practicing good "sleep hygiene" helps, too. Here are some steps to take: • Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on weekends. • Daylight helps set sleep patterns, so try to be outdoors while it's light out for 30 minutes a day. • Exercise regularly (but not too close to bedtime). An afternoon workout is ideal. • Keep naps short - less than an hour - and forgo napping after 3 p.m. • Avoid caffeine (found in coffee, many teas, chocolate, and many soft drinks), which can take up to eight hours to wear off. You may need to avoid caffeine entirely if you have panic attacks; many people who exper

No one is "perfect." Yet many people struggle to be, which can trigger a cascade of anxieties. Perfectionism can be a strong suit or a stumbling block, depending on how its channeled, as clinical psychologist Jeff S. explains. "The core of all perfectionism is the intention to do something well," says Dr. Szymanski. "If you can keep your eye on intention and desired outcome, adjusting your strategy when needed, you're fine...But when you can't tolerate making a mistake, when your strategy is to make no mistakes, that's when perfectionism starts veering off in the wrong direction." In its most severe form, perfectionism can leave you unable to complete any task for fear of making a mistake. To help your prioritize the projects and activities that mean the most to you and keep your personal strategy in line, Dr. Szymanski has shared the following exercise: What do you find valuable in life? What would you want 50 years of your life to repres

To date, official recommendations on when and how often a women should have a screening mammogram, have been based on risk factors (such as age, a family history of breast cancer, a personal history of radiation to the chest), genetic testing (the BRCA test, for example), or troubling results from a previous biopsy. Race and ethnicity have not officially factored into the equation - yet. Does race matter when it comes to screening mammograms? A recenty study by Harvard doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital reinforces prior data suggesting that race and ethnicity can be a separate risk factor for breast cancer, and should be taken into account when advising women on when and how often to have a screening mammogram. The authors stupid almost 40 years of data in a massive, publicly available US research information bank called the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, and identified over 740,000 women ages 40 to 75 with breast cancer. They wanted to know if t