In a recent newsletter from Beth Israel Hospital, NYC, Elizabeth Palillo, PharmD, Clinical Pharmacy Manager stresses that at least once a year we need to go through our medicine cabinets and do the following:

• Throw out expired products.
• Discard prescription medications we don’t use anymore.
• If the cold and flu season is over, throw that medicine out. The cough medicine bottle is probably contaminated because someone drank right from the bottle.
• Throw out last year’s sunscreen as sunscreen degrades after being exposed to heat.
• Restock first aid products.

Ms. Palillo offers the following advice about storing and disposing of medicine:

• Find another place than the bathroom to store medicine as there is too much heat and steam in this room on a regular basis. Better places are: nightstands, a kitchen cabinet or a desk.
• Take care disposing of your medicines. Dump pills and liquids in a tin can that can be sealed, such as a coffee can and mix with something non-edible such as kitty litter or powdered detergent. Duct tape the lid to the can and dispose of in the garbage.

• Be environmentally friendly and don’t flush medicine down the toilet. Exceptions to the no-flush rule are narcotics and painkillers. The reason for suggesting flushing these medications is there is potential for them to be found in the trash and abused.

According to an article published in women’s health.gov, those of us who are not getting enough sleep may be consuming more than 500 extra calories each day.

These findings are the outcome of a recent small study in which healthy young men and women were studied for eight nights.

Half of the participants got their normal amount of sleep (control group) while the other half got only two-thirds of their typical amount of sleep (sleep-deprived group).

All the participants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted during the study.

Those in the sleep-deprived group slept one hour and 20 minutes less each night than those in the control group, and consumed an average of 549 additional calories per day.

Both groups burned about the same amount of energy for activity, which suggests that those in the sleep-deprived group didn’t burn additional calories.

Lack of sleep was associated with increased levels of leptin and decreased levels of ghrelin, both of which are appetite-associated hormones. These changes were more likely a result of overeating, rather than the cause of overeating, according to the study, which was presented last week at an American Heart Association (AHA) meeting.

“Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night,” study co-author Dr. Andrew Calvin, a cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, said in an AHA news release.

Although this study suggests sleep deprivation may be an important and preventable cause of weight gain and obesity, it was a small study and does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, the researchers noted.

“Larger studies of people in their home environments would help confirm our findings,” Calvin said.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, March 14, 2012

In a recent health tip from National Institutes of Health nutritionist Janet de Jesus talks about eating plans rather than short-term diets.

Ms. de Jesus weighs in on the problems associated with short-term diets, stating that, “People often make goals to go on diets, but they are often short lived.” She prefers eating plans to make long term lifestyle changes.

Ms. de Jesus says.“Changing the way you eat and also increasing your physical activity is really worth it for your health. Give it a try and don’t get too frustrated. We all stumble. Keep it up throughout the year.”

De Jesus recommends two stellar eating plans from  the National Institutes of Health – DASH and TLC.

These eating plans were designed to promote blood pressure and blood cholesterol control, but experts rank them as very good ways to have complete, balanced nutrition with the right calorie counts.

U.S. News and World Report ranked them as the number-one and number-two eating plans.

Unlike some other eating plans, they’re free.

For a comprehensive overview of the DASH Eating Plan go to http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/dash/

For more information on the TLC Eating Plan go to http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/cgi-bin/chd/step2intro.cgi

The Center’s for Disease Control(CDC) wants you to know that there’s too much sodium in many common foods.

The CDC Vital Signs program is a call to action each month concerning a single, important public health topic. For American Heart Month, the February edition of CDC Vital Signs focuses on the amount of sodium in Americans’ diets and what we can do to reduce it.

About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet.

Too much sodium increases a person’s risk for high blood pressure. High blood pressure often leads to heart disease, stroke, and other vascular diseases.

Key Messages

• About 90% of Americans aged 2 years and older eat too much sodium.
• Reducing the sodium Americans eat by 1200 mg per day on average could save $20 billion a year in medical costs.

• Most of the sodium we eat comes from processed foods and foods prepared in restaurants.

• 44% of the sodium we eat comes from 10 types of foods.
• Different brands of the same foods may have different sodium levels. For example, sodium in chicken noodle soup can vary by as much as 840 milligrams (mg) per serving so be sure to read the labels on foods.
• Over 800,000 people die each year from heart disease, stroke and other vascular diseases, costing the nation $273 billion health care dollars in 2010.

What to Do About It:

• Check the sodium content listed on  he nutrition label on everything you buy.
• Check the menu information as to sodium content in the restaurants where you eat before you make your selection
• Don’t salt your food at the table

We all know that carrying extra pounds carries health risks, but did you know weight gain can directly effect your lower back, even play a role in disc degeneration?

Past studies of Body Mass Index(BMI) link carrying extra pounds around with low back pain. A new study, links weight gain to lumbar disc degeneration.

The new study, done in southern China, included more than 1,000 men and nearly 1,600 women aged 21 and older.  Overall, 73 percent of the participants had lumbar disc degeneration, but the condition was more common in men than women (76 percent vs. 71 percent) and more prevalent among older people, according to the study in the new issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Seven percent of the study participants were underweight, 48 percent were in the normal weight range, 36 percent were overweight and 9 percent were obese, the investigators noted.

“Research confirms that with elevated Body Mass Index (BMI) there is a significant increase in the extent and global severity of disc degeneration in the back. In fact, end-stage disc degeneration with narrowing of the disc space was more pronounced in obese individuals,” said Dr. Dino Samartzis, of the University of Hong Kong in a journal news release.

Study authors suggest that as people gain weight, disc degeneration may begin to occur due to physical loading on the disc. In addition, fat cells may play a role by causing chronic low-grade inflammation.

“Since overweight and obesity are worldwide concerns whose prevalence continues to rise, our study’s findings have considerable public health implications. If these issues continue to plague society, they can further affect spine health leading to low back pain and its consequences,” Samartzis said.

Back disc degeneration is a complex process and future studies that investigate risk factors for the condition should take into account the effects of being overweight or obese, the researchers recommended.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases has more about back pain.

(SOURCE: Arthritis & Rheumatism, news release, Jan. 30, 2012)