Online CPR Certification Blog

According to PubMed Health (U.S. National Library of Medicine) a deficiency of vitamin B12 may be linked to dementia in elderly people. A study of 121 people found that participants with lower vitamin B12 levels did worse on cognitive tests and had smaller brain volumes, as shown by MRI scans. Other studies have shown that decreased brain volume is linked to dementia.

Improving the food and drink options that our nation’s children have access to in school is an important step towards reducing the obesity epidemic throughout the country. New reports show that major headway has been made on this front over the last several years in terms of sugary beverages.

In the general population, about 11% of children are bullied. Being bullied is linked to higher levels of depression, loneliness, anxiety, and decreased academic performance. Unfortunately, a survey of parents suggests that nearly half of all teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder are harassed at school.

Researchers have found that teenagers who suffer from metabolic syndrome do not perform as well academically.  A study looked at 111 teenagers, 49 of whom had metabolic syndrome and 62 who did not, and found that the teens with metabolic syndrome performed 5 to 15% worse on academic tests than their healthy counterparts.

Exercise is extremely important to a healthy heart, but you don’t have to perform an excessive amount of exercise every day in order to reap the benefits of a fitness routine. In fact, recent studies have shown that exercising too much may actually be bad for the heart.

Researchers looked at marathon runners and other endurance athletes who push their bodies to the limit.  Of the 100 participants in the study, 12% had signs of heart arrhythmias (scarring). That rate is three times higher than the rate of runners who do not partake in marathons. Another study has shown that extreme sports can lead to a buildup of calcium within an artery’s wall which can narrow the arteries, potentially causing heart problems.
Doctors are quick to note that being an extreme endurance athlete is certainly much healthier than not exercising at all, though exercising at intense levels for such a long period

A recent study from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has found that exercise during pregnancy is good for both the mother and the baby. In years past women have worried that exercise puts their baby at risk, but this study found that regular exercise actually has a positive effect on the fetus.

The researchers monitored fetal heart rate and blood flow through the umbilical cord in pregnant women who performed about 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day, pregnant women who exercised regularly but not vigorously, and pregnant women who did not exercise. The results showed that the babies of women who exercised vigorously had the lowest resting heart rates, a strong indicator of heart health.  Researchers noted that the study looked only at women who had pregnancies free from complications.

According to a study which followed female coffee drinkers for over ten years, women who consume more than one cup of coffee daily have about a 25% lower chance of having a stroke than women who do not drink as much coffee. The study could not confirm that coffee is necessarily good for the heart, but the strong correlation between a cup of joe and lower incidence of stroke shows that, at the very least, coffee isn’t bad for you.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) have reported that this year’s outbreak of West Nile virus could be the largest ever. According to the CDC, more people have been diagnosed with West Nile virus at this point in 2012 then at the same point in any previous year since the disease was discovered in 1999.

A new study out of Australia shows that environmental factors including viruses and toxins are at play in the development of type I diabetes. The study, which was published in the Diabetes Care Journal, looked at each new case of type I diabetes in Western Australia over the last 25 years and found a strong cyclical pattern.

About every five years, a mini-epidemic of type I diabetes would appear, and then the occurrence would drop off again in a cyclical pattern. The difference between peak years and low years was sometimes as high as 20%. This significant swing in the outbreak of diabetes shows that environmental causes play a major role in the development of type I diabetes. According to the data, the Australian researchers believe that the next mini-epidemic of type I diabetes will occur this year.

A new study by the Massachusetts General Hospital has found that increasing a child’s vitamin D intake can help reduce the amount of colds that the child gets per year. While adults average two to three colds per year, pre-schoolers get around nine colds annually, and children in kindergarten can get as many as twelve colds per year says WebMD.