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- SATURDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) — To prevent injuries to
your eyes while playing sports, you need to go pro — as in protective
eyewear, advises the American Optometric Association (AOA).

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With spring here and more people heading outside for fun and exercise,
the association noted that about 600,000 documented sports-related
injuries are reported annually in the United States. Roughly 13,500 of
these injuries result in permanent loss of sight.

Even non-contact sports such as tennis, golf and fishing pose a
moderate to high risk of eye injury because of flying objects, such as
balls, racquets and hooks.

“Eye protection should be of major concern to all athletes, especially
in certain high-risk sports,” Paul Berman, AOA optometrist and sports
vision specialist, said in a prepared statement. “Thousands of children
and adults unnecessarily suffer sports-related eye injuries each year.
Every thirteen minutes, an emergency room in the United States treats a
sports-related eye injury, and nearly all could be prevented by using the
proper protective eyewear.”

Everyday prescription eyewear or sunglasses probably won't do the trick
as most conventional frames and lenses fail to meet minimal impact
requirements for most sports, an AOA advisory cautioned.

Sports-protective eyewear, however, is tested to meet rigid standards,
and some have been independently verified and received the AOA Seal of
Acceptance.

Going to an optometrist for an eye exam is the first step and a crucial
one for amateur athletes as well as professionals.

“Doctors of optometry work with their patients to provide unique,
advantaged eyewear solutions in order to protect vision and improve
performance in athletics,” Berman said. “I encourage you to visit your
local optometrist to discuss options for vision protection, correction and
enhancement.”

More information

The American Optometric Association has more about sports and
vision.

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- SATURDAY, April 19 (HealthDay News) — Pregnancy has long been
considered a kind of gastronomical free-for-all. After all, a pregnant
woman has to nourish two bodies with the food she eats, right?

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The problem is, the baby's nutritional needs are only around 300
calories a day, and extra weight gain can increase the risk of pregnancy
complications for both mother and child.

And, weight concerns don't stop after the baby is born, because extra
weight gain after pregnancy increases the risk of complications in
subsequent pregnancies, even if a woman never gains enough to be
considered overweight.

“Women think they have carte blanche to eat whatever they want during
pregnancy, but that's not a good idea,” said Dr. Miriam Greene, a clinical
assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University
Medical Center and the author of the book, Frankly Pregnant: A Candid,
Week-by-Week Guide to the Unexpected Joys, Raging Hormones, and Common
Experiences of Pregnancy.

“If you eat for two, you'll end up with complications you didn't need
to take on. Eat what your appetite tells you to eat, and eat slowly, so
you can tell when you're full,” advised Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, an
obstetrician at MacDonald Women's Hospital at Case Medical Center,
University Hospitals in Cleveland, and author of the book, The Working
Woman's Pregnancy Book.

During pregnancy, an average-weight woman should gain about 25 to 35
pounds, according to Greene. “You don't want your weight gain to be less
than 15 or greater than 40,” she said.

But many women aren't heeding that advice. A recent report from the
Institute of Medicine (IOM) found that about one-quarter of American women
gain more than 40 pounds during their pregnancy. The IOM is currently
reviewing its guidelines on pregnancy weight gain and expects to issue new
guidelines during the summer of 2009.

In the meantime, the IOM recommends that women with a body mass index
(BMI, a ratio of weight to height) of less than 18.5 should gain 28 to 40
pounds during pregnancy, while women with an average BMI — 18.5 to
24.9 — should keep weight gain between 25 and 35 pounds. Overweight
women with BMIs of 25 to 29.9 should try to gain between 15 and 25 pounds
throughout their pregnancy, and obese women with BMIs over 30 need only
gain 15 pounds.

Gaining too much weight during pregnancy puts both baby and mom at risk
of complications, such as gestational diabetes and high blood pressure,
labor complications, stillbirth and delivery of a large-for-gestational
age baby, according to the March of Dimes.

Greene said about two-thirds of her patients manage to stay within the
guidelines. And those who don't are very disappointed at how hard the
weight is to get off afterward.

She recommends that her pregnant patients eat well-balanced diets and
that they don't give in to every food craving. “It's not healthy to gain
weight eating pints of ice cream,” she said.

Greenfield is also a fan of most exercises during pregnancy. Not only c
an exercise help you stave off pregnancy weight gain, it improves overall
well-being as well, she said.

“Pregnancy is a special time when a lot of women will take better care
of themselves to take care of the baby. It's a golden opportunity to take
care of yourself, and you may have an impact on your health and your
baby's health in the long run,” Greenfield noted.

And, it's not just during pregnancy that women have to be concerned
about extra pounds. A recent study found that every one or two point
increase in a woman's BMI between pregnancies translated to an increased
risk of gestational diabetes, high blood pressure and delivering a large
baby by 20 percent to 40 percent. Women who increased their BMI more than
three points between pregnancies had a 63 percent increased risk of
delivering a stillborn baby.

The increases in the risks of complications held true even if the BMI
changes didn't place a woman into the overweight or obese category, the
study found.

More information

To learn more about weight gain during pregnancy, visit the American Pregnancy Association.

- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments,
compiled by editors of HealthDay:

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Katrina's Legacy Still Haunts, Studies
Find

From alcohol abuse to the loss of a home, new research continues to
assess the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and the toll it
extracted from its victims.

In a study presented this week at the Population Association of
America's annual meeting in New Orleans, University of Michigan
researchers reported that Katrina survivors were more than three times
likelier to exhibit alcohol abuse after a stress experience. And if the
survivor experienced a trauma, they were five times more likely to become
alcohol dependent.

The difference between a stress and a trauma is one of degree, said
study co-author Sandro Galea, an associate professor at the university's
School of Public Health. An example of stress might be dealing with
insurance companies or contractors; a trauma is losing a loved one, he
said.

Another paper found that New Orleans residents who lost their homes in
the 2005 storm were more than five times more likely to experience serious
psychological distress a year after the disaster than those who did not.

The study, by University of Michigan researcher Narayan Sastry and
Tulane University's Mark VanLandingham, examined the mental health of
pre-Katrina New Orleans residents in the fall of 2006 — one year after
the hurricane. In all, about 66 percent of the respondents reported that
their homes were badly damaged or unlivable.

“Our findings suggest that severe damage to one's home is a
particularly important factor behind socioeconomic disparities in
psychological distress, and possibly behind the levels of psychological
distress,” Sastry said. “These effects may be partly economic, because,
for most families who own their home, home equity is the largest element
of household wealth.

—–

When It Comes to Happiness, It Really Is a
Shade of Gray

Oh to be young again? Not so fast, says a new study that found that
older Americans tend to be happier than younger ones.

The University of Chicago study also found that baby boomers aren't as
content as other generations, blacks are less happy than whites, women are
happier than men, and as people age, their happiness increases.

“Understanding happiness is important to understanding quality of life.
The happiness measure is a guide to how well society is meeting people's
needs,” study author Yang Yang, an assistant professor of sociology, said
in a prepared statement.

The study was based on data from the General Social Survey of the
National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Yang
charted happiness across age and racial groups and found that among
18-year-olds, white men are the happiest, with a 33 percent probability of
being very happy, followed by white women (28 percent), black women (18
percent) and black men (15 percent).

But curiously, those differences vanish over time. Black men and black
women have slightly more than a 50 percent chance of being very happy by
their late 80s, while white men and white women are close behind.

The increase in happiness with age is consistent with the “age as
maturity hypothesis,” Yang said.

—–

Network Offers Experimental Treatments to
Dying Cancer Patients

Great Britain has opened a government-run network of cancer clinics
that will provide experimental treatments to dying cancer patients and may
also speed up the drug testing process, the Associated Press
reported.

There are clinics in France, Italy and the Netherlands that offer
experimental treatments to cancer patients, but Britain is the only
European country with a national network of clinics. Currently, only a few
hundred patients with late-stage cancer in Britain have access to
experimental drugs, but officials hope the new network of clinics will
soon benefit thousands of patients.

Expanding drug tests for terminal cancer patients preys on their
desperation, according to some critics of the program, the AP
reported. But the process is fair as long as patients are told about
potential side effects, counter some ethicists.

In the United States, cancer patients can sign up for experimental drug
treatment, but there's no official national program to help them enroll.
About 80 percent of American cancer patients are treated in community
hospitals, while most drug trials are conducted at academic medical
centers, the AP reported.

—–

Chemical in Plastic Changes Breast Cell Gene
Activity: Study

A new U.S. study says that trace amounts of bisphenol A — a chemical
used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins lining most tin
cans — can alter the activity of genes in normal breast cells in ways
similar to what's seen in deadly breast cancers.

This link “is highly supportive of the concept that overexposure to BPA
and/or similar compounds could be an underlying factor in the
aggressiveness, if not in the causality” of breast cancers, study lead
author Shanaz Dairkee, a senior scientist at the California Pacific
Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, said in an e-mail,
Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reported.

For this study, Dairkee and colleagues took small samples of normal,
non-cancerous cells from the unaffected breasts of eight women who already
had breast cancer. The cells were placed in test tubes and exposed to the
BPA.

The findings were published in the journal Cancer Reserach,
which designated the study a “priority report,” the Globe and Mail
reported.

—–

Institute Seeks to Use Stem Cells to Heal
Wounded Soldiers

A new U.S. research institute will try to develop methods to help
wounded soldiers use their own stem cells to regenerate skin, muscle and
even limbs, Agence France-Presse reported.

The $250 million Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine will
fund and direct research by a number of universities and hospitals. The
Pentagon will provide $85 million over five years, $80 million will come
from participating universities and hospitals, and $100 million will be
provided by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“The new institute will work to develop techniques that will help to
make our soldiers whole again,” said Lieutenant General Eric Schoomaker,
the army surgeon general. “We'll use the soldiers' own stem cells to
repair nerve damage, to re-grow muscles and tendons, to repair burn
wounds, and to help them heal without scarring.”

The institute will also attempt to develop ways to salvage and
reconstruct damaged limbs, hands, fingers, ears and noses, and to
reconstruct damaged craniums, AFP reported.

—–

New Food and Drug Safety Measures
Proposed

New fees for drug and food companies and increased Food and Drug
Administration oversight of food and drug plants are among the proposals
included in draft legislation designed to improve food and drug safety in
the United States.

The first hearing on the draft legislation, created in response to a
number of recent food and drug scares, is scheduled for April 24, USA
Today reported.

Among the proposals:

• U.S. food production facilities and those exporting food to the United
  States would have to pay $2,000 per facility per year to register with the
  FDA. That would generate about $600 million a year, more than doubling the
  agency's current food safety budget.
• The FDA would be required to inspect food plants — and the plants'
  food safety plans — every four years. Currently, food plants are
  inspected about once every 10 years, according to lawmakers.
• Drug and medical device makers, as well as companies that import those
  products, would also have to pay registration fees to the FDA.
• The FDA would have to inspect domestic and foreign drug manufacturing
  facilities every two years.
• Food and drug makers would have to list on drug labels where active
  ingredients are made.
• The FDA would have the power to order food and drug recalls.

NEW YORK - Two years ago, Aida Torres rushed her feverish daughter to the emergency room. Doctors at the Brooklyn hospital tried telling Torres that her mentally retarded daughter, Madayeli, needed surgery for an ovarian cyst, but the scared mother didn’t understand them because she doesn’t speak English.

Frustrated and desperate, the native of the Dominican Republic sought help from a Spanish-speaking hospital maintenance worker. He wasn’t able to help either; Torres eventually asked a friend to leave work to interpret.

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The New York Immigration Coalition and other groups released a report this week on the availability of language assistance at city hospitals for non-English-speaking patients — a vexing problem in a city where roughly 2 million people speak little or no English.

The report says that such help at hospitals seems to have improved since 2006, when state health officials began regulating communication between hospitals and their non-English-speaking patients, but more still needs to be done, particularly regarding languages such as Korean, Haitian Creole, Russian, Arabic and Bengali.

For people who don’t speak English, the language barrier makes it difficult for them to explain symptoms, understand doctors’ diagnoses and navigate the insurance system, advocates said. The barrier can lead to misdiagnoses and even death, they said. Mistaken amputations, sterilizations and abortions have resulted from such barriers, they said.

Forcing patients to rely on hand gestures or relatives, friends or other patients to translate medical information can lead to miscommunication, violates privacy laws and can traumatize, say, a child relaying to a parent that the parent has cancer.

“It is simply impossible to provide quality health care unless patients can communicate their symptoms clearly, understand their diagnosis and knowingly consent to medical procedures,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, a civil rights organization that participated in the report.

The report, “Now We’re Talking,” was based on surveys conducted between October 2007 and February of this year of 617 patients who speak Spanish or Korean but not English. Officials stressed that the study wasn’t scientific and provided only a snapshot.

It showed that 79 percent of patients said they received help in their native language compared to the 29 percent who said during a survey before the 2006 regulations that they communicated with hospital staff in their native language.

Before the regulations, which require private and public hospitals in the state to provide skilled interpreters, translate important hospital forms into common languages and ensure patient care isn’t delayed because of language issues, it wasn’t uncommon for hospitals to tell non-English-speaking patients to bring their own interpreters.

According to the new report, only 5 percent of patients reported being told to bring their own interpreters.

“Hospitals have made real strides and have figured out how to communicate with Spanish speakers,” said Adam Gurvitch, the coalition’s director of health advocacy.

But there’s “a real disparity” when it comes to hospitals serving speakers of other foreign languages, he said.

“There’s some progress there, but not nearly enough,” he said.

Nisha Agarwal, a staff attorney with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, which advocates for such patients, said language assistance in hospitals appears to have improved since 2006 and she doesn’t get as many calls from patients.

Claire Pospisil, a spokeswoman for the state Health Department, said the agency is constantly working to ensure that language assistance is provided to New Yorkers at hospitals.

She said the agency’s hospital complaint line receives more than 10,000 calls each year; of those calls, there were only 20 complaints about language translation in 2006 and 10 last year.

KABUL, Afghanistan - As many as 10 people have died in western Afghanistan from a rare liver disease believed to be caused by contaminated wheat, officials said Saturday.

At least 161 people were also hospitalized with Gulran disease although estimates were as high as 200 affected in Herat province, on the Iranian border, said Peter Graaff, resident representative of the U.N. World Health Organization.

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A toxic weed called charmak, which grows in the area, contains alkalines that affect the liver causing Gulran disease, which is named after the affected district in Herat. Graaff said the disease is not new but rare, and has killed as many as 10 people in recent weeks.

Abdul Hakim Tamana, the director of the Herat public health department, said 112 Gulran cases have been recorded in the province’s clinics, and six people died.

“It has spread all over Gulran district, including several villages,” Tamana said.

It was unclear exactly how the people became ill. The WHO is sending an epidemiologist from Geneva to Afghanistan next week to investigate.

Graaff said charmak may have contaminated wheat grown in the region, flour or other foods.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society received $14,000 to purchase new wheat to replace suspect supplies in the district as a precautionary measure, said Graziella Leite Piccolo, a spokeswoman in Kabul for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Tamana said Gulran disease has affected people in the area over the past 40 years, and several people died in 1999 and 2001 from it.

____

Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

- FRIDAY, April 18 (HealthDay News) — Exercise may help improvefatigue caused by cancer and its treatments, new research says.

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