Hot MedFax

Finally!  It's okay to gain a few pounds.  In fact, it's even recommended! For older folks, that is.  A new study has found that some overweight older adults don’t need to lose weight to extend their lives, but they could risk an earlier death if they pack on more pounds. So it's not all good. But as I've observed with both my parents, my dad who's always been overweight, and my mother, who was not, each began losing a lot of weight in their 80s. My mother even became thinner than I ever remembered her.  The same thing happened with my grandmother, always a round little thing.  In her 80s, right before she died, she was down to skin and bones. Is it because elderly people don't care about eating anymore?  Or, as in my grandmother's taste, they lose their sense of taste and smell?  It's not clear. But the nationwide study found that people who were slightly overweight in their 50s "but kept their weight relatively stable were the most likel...

Thinking of having an echocardiogram to ferret out those chest pains?  Or an annual pap smear, if you're a 30-to-65-year-old woman?  Or a CT scan of your son's head after he falls off his bike? Fuhgaddeaboutit.  A new study has found that doctors are saying that everything from using feeding tubes in people with advanced dementia to CT scans for minor head injuries is not necessary and should not be done, according to a story by Bruce Japsen at forbes.com. He writes that doctors themselves recognize the lack of necessity for many tests that have been routinely done for decades.  In fact, Japsen writes, they've come up with 90 tests that we're all better off not having. On the same topic, flu shots arenot working in patients over 65, the most vulnerable age group.  Mike Stobbe of the Associated Press reports that, "the vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this sea...

If you know where this comes from ("Lost in Space," remember?), this epidemic applies to you. Listen all you Baby Boomers out there.  The next epidemic won't be measles or mumps.  Experts are predicting it will be Alzheimer's. That's because the disease primarily hits people in their 70's and older, and we're getting there.  A story at USA Today notes that by 2050, the affliction rate will have tripled, striking 1 in 85 people by this date.  (Of course, how many of us will be alive then?!) But it's something to think about, for our children.  Though doctors know how it develops, and now may be able to definitively diagnose it when we're still alive, no one knows why.   The symptoms are more than forgetting your keys, which I do all the time, or forgetting a word, like fork, which I also do.  Amnesia, the inability to communicate, difficulty with tasks, confusion about time or place, are all part of the disease. It's important to remembe...