Health Tip: Wear and Tear on the Knees
Published: 04/28/08
(HealthDay News) -- Knee joints can wear as you age, or after years of high-impact exercise.
Here are ways to help minimize damage to knees, courtesy of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons:
Published: 05/19/08
(HealthDay News) -- It's important to practice good bone health when you're young, to prevent problems later in life.
The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers these guidelines for people of different ages:
Published: 05/07/08
WEDNESDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- Want your teenage daughter to have strong bones? Steer her to soccer or other impact sports, experts suggest, and you may help her prevent low bone density later in life.
Sports such as soccer -- with the combination of weight-bearing exercise and repetitive, "impact-loading" from jumping and running -- have been shown to build bone mineral density in adolescent girls better than some other activities.
Building bone density during the teen years is considered crucial for healthy bone development, helping to ward off osteoporosis, the disease that causes bones to become brittle and break later on in life. Peak bone mass is typically achieved by age 30, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation.
"It's those years of adolescence, and early teens to late 20s, that are most important" for bone building," said James W. Bellew, an associate professor of physical therapy at Louisiana State University Health Science Center-Shreveport.
Bellew and his colleagues compared the effects of soccer, weight-lifting and swimming on the bone mineral density of teen and pre-teen girls, ages 10 to 17. The groups included 29 swimmers, 16 soccer players and 19 weightlifters.
Soccer players had the best bone density, followed by the weight-lifters and then the swimmers. Bellew's team compared the groups' average bone mineral density to what is considered the norm for a 25-year-old woman.
Soccer players' bone density was significantly greater than the norm, and the weight-lifting group was equal to the norm. The swimmers were lower than the norm. Still, that's not cause for alarm, he said, because the girls were still in their teens and have time to accrue bone density.
Soccer and other "impact" sports expose the body to repeated impact, and that activity is thought helpful to bone health. "Basketball and volleyball may very well do the same" as soccer in building bone, he said. Jogging and tennis may also be good, he added.
The study results, published in the journal Pediatric Physical Therapy, don't surprise Susan Randall, senior director of education at the National Osteoporosis Foundation. "Swimming is not a weight-bearing exercise," she said. "Soccer increases the loading on the bone which actually stimulates bone production."
Bellew isn't discouraging those who love swimming to give up the sport. "The odds are the swimmers' density [in the study] will be fine, because they are active, but our data suggest they aren't accruing as much bone as those who do weight-bearing exercise."
"If your primary objective is to increase bone mass, swimming is not the best," he said. "But in terms of weight maintenance, it's good."
Besides exercise, Bellew suggests teens can boost their bone health by reducing their soda intake and increasing their milk consumption. "Genetics is probably the largest factor," he added, so those with a family history of osteoporosis may want to pay even more attention to bone-building exercise.
Randall agreed that families should pay even closer attention to their children if a parent or grandparent suffers from low bone density. And parents can emphasize a healthy diet for their sons as well as daughters. While men are less likely than women to suffer osteoporosis, they still need to build bone, she said.
One of the first foods teen girls often abandon are dairy products, Randall said, because they perceive them as fattening. Parents should be sure their children get the recommended 1,300 milligrams of calcium a day. That's roughly the amount of calcium in four glasses of milk. And the milk can be low-fat, she said.
THURSDAY, July 19 (HealthDay News) -- Vitamin D deficiency is a common problem that can lead to a number of serious health conditions, but it can be prevented, says one expert.
People get vitamin D from sun exposure, diet and supplements. Yet vitamin D deficiency is all too common.
In utero and in childhood, not getting enough vitamin D can cause growth retardation, skeletal deformities and increase the risk of future hip fractures. In adults, too little vitamin D can lead to or exacerbate osteopenia, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, fractures, common cancers, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and cardiovascular diseases.
In the July 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Michael Holick, director of the General Clinical Research Center at Boston University School of Medicine and director of the Bone Healthcare Clinic at Boston Medical Center, published an overview of his work on vitamin D.
According to Holick, it has been estimated that one billion people in the world are vitamin D deficient or insufficient.
Without vitamin D, only 10 percent to 15 percent of dietary calcium and about 60 percent of phosphorus is absorbed by the body. This can have a direct effect on bone mineral density.
There is evidence that people who live at higher latitudes -- where the angle of the sun's rays is not sufficient to produce adequate amounts of vitamin D in the skin -- are more likely to develop and die of Hodgkin's lymphoma, colon, pancreatic, prostate, ovarian, breast and other cancers. And there is an association between low levels of vitamin D and increased risk for type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Holick says that the current recommended adequate intake for vitamin D needs to be increased to 800 to 1,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D3 per day.
"However, one can not obtain these amounts from most dietary sources unless one is eating oily fish frequently. Thus, sensible sun exposure (or UVB radiation) and/or supplements are required to satisfy the body's vitamin D requirement," Holick said in a prepared statement.
Holick added, "The goal of this paper is to make physicians aware of the medical problems associated with vitamin D deficiency. Physicians will then be able to impart this knowledge to their patients so they, too, will know how to recognize, treat and most importantly, maintain adequate levels of this important vitamin."
Published: 05/17/08
FRIDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) -- Low levels of vitamin D and high levels of a hormone secreted by the parathyroid glands may increase the risk of depression in older adults, according to a new report.
The Dutch study, published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, supports previous speculation by researchers that vitamin D, depression and other psychiatric illnesses are linked, according to background information in the article.
Underlying causes of vitamin D deficiency -- such as less sun exposure due to decreased outdoor activity, different housing or clothing habits, and decreased vitamin intake -- may be secondary to depression, but depression may also be the consequence of poor vitamin D status, the article's authors wrote. Moreover, poor vitamin D status causes an increase in serum parathyroid hormone levels.
Symptoms of depression often appear when the parathyroid glands are overactive, then disappear after the gland condition is treated.
Since both low vitamin D levels and high parathyroid hormone levels can be treated by increasing vitamin D or calcium in the diet and boosting exposure to sunlight, the findings could bring hope to depressed seniors, the researchers say. About 13 percent of older individuals have symptoms of depression.
Researchers at VU University Medical Center, in Amsterdam, found the vitamin D levels were 14 percent lower in test subjects diagnosed with major and minor depression compared with those non-depressed participants.
Parathyroid hormone thyroid levels were an average of 5 percent higher in those with minor depression and 33 percent higher in those with major depressive disorder than in those who were not depressed.
The researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D and parathyroid hormone among 1,282 community residents over the age of 65. They also assessed symptoms of depression, diagnosing 26 with a major depressive disorder, 169 with minor depression and 1,087 as not depressed.
Additional studies are needed to determine whether changes in levels of vitamin D and parathyroid hormone precede the onset of depression or follow it, the authors said.