healthy body tips

Shortchanging yourself on sleep could shave years off your life if you are a man.So claims a new study that establish men who reported having insomnia or who slept for short periods of time were much more likely to die over a 14-year period.
"Sleeplessness has potentially very severe side effects," said study co-author and sleep researcher Edward Bixler. "It wants to be treated, and more effort needs to be put into sorting out better treatments."
Female insomniacs could be suffer the same fate, but the researchers only followed them for 10 years and researchers didn't notice any significant difference in mortality rates.Previous research has looked at sleep's effects on life span, but the new study is unique because it takes into report both people's perceptions about how much sleep they're getting (which can be wrong) and the actual amount of sleep they got in a laboratory.
Bixler and his colleagues recruited more than 1,700 people from central Pennsylvania and followed the men (average age 50) for 14 years and the women (average age 47) for a decade. The participants answered questions and exhausted a night in a sleep laboratory.
The researchers report their findings in the Sept.1 issue of the magazine Sleep. About a fifth of the men died through the study period, while 5 percent of the women did. The difference may be because women live longer than men and the study followed women for a shorter period, said Bixler, a professor of psychiatry at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.
Even after adjusting their statistics so they wouldn't be scared out of your wits off by factors such as the prevalence of sleep apnea, the researchers found that self-described male insomniacs who slept fewer than six hours in the sleep lab were several times more likely to die during the 14-year period compared to "good sleepers."
Among men, about 9 percent of "good sleepers" died during the study period, compared to more than half   51 percent of insomniacs with small sleep duration. As for women, they aren't in the clear, Bixler said. Since they live longer, it may take a study of a longer period to figure out whether they suffer from a similar effect, he noted.
And there's another complicating factor, said J. Todd Arnedt, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Michigan. Whereas he said the study was "well-conducted," the men appear to have been sicker than the women, potentially throwing off the results.

Shortchanging yourself on sleep could shave years off your life if you are a man.So claims a new study that establish men who reported having insomnia or who slept for short periods of time were much more likely to die over a 14-year period.
"Sleeplessness has potentially very severe side effects," said study co-author and sleep researcher Edward Bixler. "It wants to be treated, and more effort needs to be put into sorting out better treatments."
Female insomniacs could be suffer the same fate, but the researchers only followed them for 10 years and researchers didn't notice any significant difference in mortality rates.Previous research has looked at sleep's effects on life span, but the new study is unique because it takes into report both people's perceptions about how much sleep they're getting (which can be wrong) and the actual amount of sleep they got in a laboratory.
Bixler and his colleagues recruited more than 1,700 people from central Pennsylvania and followed the men (average age 50) for 14 years and the women (average age 47) for a decade. The participants answered questions and exhausted a night in a sleep laboratory.
The researchers report their findings in the Sept.1 issue of the magazine Sleep. About a fifth of the men died through the study period, while 5 percent of the women did. The difference may be because women live longer than men and the study followed women for a shorter period, said Bixler, a professor of psychiatry at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.
Even after adjusting their statistics so they wouldn't be scared out of your wits off by factors such as the prevalence of sleep apnea, the researchers found that self-described male insomniacs who slept fewer than six hours in the sleep lab were several times more likely to die during the 14-year period compared to "good sleepers."
Among men, about 9 percent of "good sleepers" died during the study period, compared to more than half   51 percent of insomniacs with small sleep duration. As for women, they aren't in the clear, Bixler said. Since they live longer, it may take a study of a longer period to figure out whether they suffer from a similar effect, he noted.
And there's another complicating factor, said J. Todd Arnedt, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Michigan. Whereas he said the study was "well-conducted," the men appear to have been sicker than the women, potentially throwing off the results.

There are eight signs, symptoms or test consequences that could improve early diagnosis of some cancers, British doctors said,
The researchers focused on changes that gave a one in 20 or higher chance of rotating out to be cancer.
The symptoms contain:

• Coughing up blood.

• Rectal blood.

• Breast lump or mass.

• Difficulty swallowing.

• Post-menopausal bleeding.

• Abnormal prostate tests.

• Anemia.

• Blood in urine.

In certain age and sex groups, the eight symptoms or findings point to the require for urgent examination by family doctors, Dr. Mark Shapley and colleagues from Keele University (halfway between Manchester and Birmingham) said in Friday's online issue of the British Journal of General Practice.
The conclusion was based on an study of 25 studies from the U.K., U.S., Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Denmark and Germany.
The age of the patient is significant, said Dr. Kevin Barraclough, a GP from Stroud.
"Iron deficiency anemia in a 21-year old female is really unlikely to be due to colorectal cancer, whereas in a 60-year old male, cancer is likely," Barraclough wrote in a journal editorial accompanying the study.
The red flags support the importance of encouraging patients to discuss worrying symptoms early with their GP, said Prof. Amanda Howe, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which publishes the magazine.

There are eight signs, symptoms or test consequences that could improve early diagnosis of some cancers, British doctors said,
The researchers focused on changes that gave a one in 20 or higher chance of rotating out to be cancer.
The symptoms contain:

• Coughing up blood.

• Rectal blood.

• Breast lump or mass.

• Difficulty swallowing.

• Post-menopausal bleeding.

• Abnormal prostate tests.

• Anemia.

• Blood in urine.

In certain age and sex groups, the eight symptoms or findings point to the require for urgent examination by family doctors, Dr. Mark Shapley and colleagues from Keele University (halfway between Manchester and Birmingham) said in Friday's online issue of the British Journal of General Practice.
The conclusion was based on an study of 25 studies from the U.K., U.S., Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Denmark and Germany.
The age of the patient is significant, said Dr. Kevin Barraclough, a GP from Stroud.
"Iron deficiency anemia in a 21-year old female is really unlikely to be due to colorectal cancer, whereas in a 60-year old male, cancer is likely," Barraclough wrote in a journal editorial accompanying the study.
The red flags support the importance of encouraging patients to discuss worrying symptoms early with their GP, said Prof. Amanda Howe, honorary secretary of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which publishes the magazine.