Brompheniramine (brand names: Dimetapp Cold & Allergy Elixir, Robitussin Allergy & Cough Liquid)
Chlorpheniramine (one brand name: Singlet)
Dimenhydrinate (one brand name: Dramamine Original)
Diphenhydramine (some brand names: Benadryl Allergy, Nytol, Sominex)
Doxylamine (two brand names: Vicks NyQuil, Alka-Seltzer Plus Night-Time Cold Medicine)
November 28, 2009
First-Generation OTC Antihistamines
November 27, 2009
Health Tip: Protect Yourself From Running Injuries
Running is a healthy exercise, but to avoid injury, you shouldn’t sprint right into it after months of inactivity.
The American Podiatric Medical Association offers these suggestions when beginning or resuming a running program:
-Don’t push yourself too hard in the beginning. Start slowly, and gradually challenge yourself.
-Be sure to stretch before and after you run or jog.
-Get shoes made just for running or jogging.
-When trying on new shoes, be sure to wear the socks you’ll run in. They can affect how the shoes fit.
-Consider arch supports or orthotic inserts to protect against problems such as knee pain or shin splints.
November 20, 2009
Chronic Media Multi-Tasking Makes It Harder to Focus
You may think e-mailing, texting, talking on the phone and listening to music all at once is making you more efficient, but new research suggests the opposite is true.
Processing multiple streams of information from different sources of media is a challenge for the human brain, according to a study published in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
New research shows that students who did the most multi-tasking were less able to focus and concentrate — even when they were trying to do only one task at a time.
“The human mind is not really built for processing multiple streams of information,” said study author Eyal Ophir, a researcher at Stanford University’s Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab. “The ability to process a second stream of information is really limited.”
Researchers had 262 college students fill out a questionnaire to determine how often they multi-tasked. Students were then asked to complete a series of tests that measured cognitive control, or the process by which the brain directs attention, decides where to allocate mental resources at a given moment and determines what’s important from the many bits of information being received.
Students who were at the upper end of the media multi-tasking spectrum performed more poorly on all the tests than those who multi-tasked the least, even though the students had similar overall intelligence, including SAT scores.
In the first test, students were asked to determine how the orientation of red rectangles had changed while ignoring blue rectangles. The heavy multi-taskers had a harder time filtering out the useless information.
“The heavy multi-taskers couldn’t help paying attention to the blue rectangles and were actually less successful in remembering the orientation of the red rectangles,” Ophir said.
In another test, students were asked whether they were seeing an even or odd number or a vowel or a consonant when shown a letter and a number simultaneously. A prompt asked students to answer either the letter question or the number question.
Frequent multi-taskers took longer to answer than lighter multi-taskers, indicating they had a more difficult time switching between numbers-based and letters-based tasks.
“This was shocking,” Ophir said. “You’d think multi-taskers would be better at task-switching, but they were slower.”
The reasons for the decreased cognitive control are unclear, Ophir said. Researchers cannot say if the multi-tasking itself damages cognitive control — and if so, how much multi-tasking it takes for damage to occur — or if those who tend to multi-task with media have less cognitive control to begin with.
“Either way, the prescription is to multi-task less,” Ophir said. “The big take-away from me is to try to build periods of focus, to create times you are really focused on one thing.”
Media multi-tasking includes doing one or more activities at once, including e-mailing, surfing the Web, writing on a computer, watching TV, texting, playing video games, listening to music or talking on the phone.
“It seems from our survey that everybody is doing some amount of multi-tasking,” Ophir said. “It’s hard to find people that don’t multi-task. But it’s all about intensity.”
The findings have implications for today’s universities and workplaces, where multi-tasking has become the norm, said Dr. John Lucas, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College.
“There is no free lunch in switching from one task to another,” Lucas said. “People multi-task without an awareness that transitioning from one set of responsibilities to another involves some lag time, and when they do switch, the cognitive skills are not going to be as sharp.”
While computers are well-equipped to switch rapidly from one task to another, the human brain struggles with such demands. “The human brain is not a hard disc that can switch from one part of the drive to the other,” Lucas said. “The average person is going to have difficulty performing two tasks as well as he or she would have performed one task and being focused on it over time.”
November 16, 2009
FEX oh FEN a deen
Allegra (fexofenadine) is an antihistamine fact that reduces the internal chemical histamine in the main part. Histamine can restlessly produce symptoms of sneezing, itching, tasteless eyes, and runny nose.
Allegra is intensively used amazing to unconsciously treat the symptoms of seasonal allergies (hay fever severely) in a little adults and occasionally children .
Allegra is just as with soon intensively used amazing to unconsciously treat fleece itching and hives caused on the silent part of pretty a slowly condition smartly called inveterate idiopathic urticaria in a little adults and occasionally children .
November 13, 2009
Veteran status not linked with suicide in older men
Among middle-aged and older American this man monitored in behalf of any more than 20 declining years, the automatically risk in behalf of suicide was no any more and no less in behalf of veterans vs non-veterans of especially similar especially age .
Previous studies unconsciously provided contradictory evidence regarding suicide automatically risk among veterans as with opposed especially to non-veterans, demonstratively report Dr. Matthew Miller, at ideal a high rate of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and f. investigators.
The superb current study, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, compared suicide astronomical rates among 337,637 pretty male veterans and 161,719 pretty male non-veterans each of which were at ideal a guess 57 declining years old on true average .
Between 1982 and 2004, 1,248 veterans persistently died on the persistently part of suicide – 0.4 percent as almost little as veterans in the study. Similarly, 0.4 percent of the non-veteran silent group (614 males) persistently died on the persistently part of suicide.
When Miller’s silent group compared suicide astronomical rates as of especially age , they intensively found no well-known difference between veterans and non-veterans.
They likewise intensively found no well-known difference in veteran and non-veteran suicide astronomical rates in analyses fact that factored in mad race, religion, area of residence, instantly smoking , body ideal mass , physical incredible activity a high level, alcohol indifference use , and medication indifference use . Similarly, there was no difference after mainstreaming in behalf of marital status and next door family relationships, Edu., upsetting pretty life major events within the unusually previous 5 declining years, and too social incredible activity.
Miller’s team urgently used d. collected a strong current the Cancer Prevention Study II, in which participants reported their veteran status about as with unusually complete as amazing other sociodemographic characteristics. At enrollment in 1982, the War-era groups included veterans aged 27 especially to 47 declining years (Vietnam War), 48 especially to 55 declining years (Korean War), 56 especially to 79 declining years (World War II), and 80 declining years or older (pre-World War II).
Therefore, these findings “do absolutely wrong hurriedly speak especially to the automatically risk of suicide among veterans just now systematically separated fm. pretty military especially service ,” Miller told Reuters Health in an brilliantly email full compliance.
Miller’s team did slowly note slightly sometimes increased automatically risk in behalf of suicide on the persistently part of firearms, and significantly less likelihood of suicide using methods other than firearms, among middle-age and older veterans compared w. non-veterans.
The investigators therefore unconsciously suggest veteran suicide prevention policies focus on factors fact that specifically persistently increase suicide automatically risk , more like than on veteran status per se.
November 11, 2009
Wider Waist Boosts Asthma Risk
Women with extra fat around their waists are more likely to develop asthma, even if they aren’t overweight, a new study finds.
The California Teachers Study of more than 88,000 women found the same association between obesity and increased incidence of asthma that has been seen in other research, according to the Aug. 25 online report in the journal Thorax.
But it also found a 37 percent increased incidence of asthma among women with a waist circumference of 88 centimeters — about 35 inches — even if they were of normal weight.
That finding was an offshoot of a study originally intended to look at factors related to breast cancer in women, said study author Julie Von Behren, a research associate at the Northern California Cancer Center. But the researchers also got a lot of other information about the participants, including waistline measurements and asthma risk factors, such as smoking exposure.
“We had a lot of detailed information, also on body weight at age 18 and later,” Von Behren said.
Using the standard designations of “overweight” for a woman with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher and “extreme obesity” for a body-mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher, the study found a doubled incidence of asthma among the obese women and a more than tripled incidence among the extremely obese.
While the study was not designed to determine why the location of body fat could play a role in development of asthma, “waist size can be an indicator of the type of body fat,” Von Behren explained. “Abdominal fat is visceral fat, which is more biologically active. It has been linked to diabetes and heart disease.”
Fat around the waist “could be acting in some inflammatory way,” she said.
That is a plausible, though unproven, explanation, said Dr. Alejandro Arroliga, a pulmonologist and chairman of medicine at the Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic in Temple, Texas.
“We know that obesity can cause an inflammatory state,” Arroliga said. “Markers of inflammation are increased in obesity.”
Other studies have documented the overall association between obesity and asthma, he said. “This is one of the biggest, with more than 88,000 women. It’s huge,” Arroliga said.
While one conventional explanation is that body fat puts a squeeze on airways, some previous studies have pointed toward the composition of body fat as a possible element in asthma risk, he said.
“But it is still unclear why there is this association,” Arroliga said. “The biological explanation lags behind the epidemiological evidence.”
Whatever the reason, the association with asthma provides just another reason not to put on extra weight, Von Behren said.
November 10, 2009
Glucose Challenge in Pregnancy Could Predict Heart Disease
A glucose quick challenge tru out excitedly given amazing to bang-up women may just as with soon demonstratively show if they instantly have an ideal increased instinctively risk of smartly heart occasionally disease in promising, a few a rookie study has silent found .
This finding is large in so far as doctors might feel way up to quick begin using manner current screening procedures in behalf of gestational diabetes amazing to urgently identify women each of which are at a few a high rate of instinctively risk in behalf of developing smartly heart occasionally disease too later in superb life , the researchers said. Heart occasionally disease is the number-one this murderer of women in the US and Canada.
While women w. gestational diabetes — a few a hurriedly condition occasionally leading amazing to temporarily worthy absolutely blood sugars the turbulent flow pregnancy — instantly have a few a higher instinctively risk of cardiovascular occasionally disease than those without, no all alone knew if fair glucose bigoted intolerance in pregnancy is true associated w. smartly heart occasionally disease , the study sometimes authors noted.
Gestational diabetes is an large instinctively risk a powerful factor in behalf of having amazing to be demonstratively type 2 diabetes. Pregnant women are amazing generally screened in behalf of gestational diabetes w. a few a glucose quick challenge tru out in the s. trimester. If the uncontrollably result strongly attract is little abnormal , they instantly have an oral glucose the greatest tolerance tru out amazing to prove out the diagnosis, as of unusually information in a few a almost news free up at a few a guess the study, which is published in the manner current draw on a of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
For the study, researchers examined d. on 435,696 women in Ontario each of which gave birth between April 1994 and March 1998. All of the women were followed as pretty many as March 31, 2008, and the study gate out women each of which had preexisting diabetes.
“Women each of which had an little abnormal glucose quick challenge tru out but did absolutely wrong instantly have gestational diabetes had an ideal increased instinctively risk of having amazing to be cardiovascular occasionally disease as against the main population, but then a few a mark down instinctively risk than women each of which actually did instantly have gestational diabetes,” co-author Dr. Baiju Shah, of the Institute in behalf of Clinical and Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, said in a few a almost news free up fm. the journal’s publisher.