Ideal Health Doctor

There’s no question that regular attendance at religious services can improve your sense of spiritual well-being but a new study says going to religious services can also improve your mental health as well and could even extend your life.

The research is relevant to midlifers because it is based on an observational study of more than 92,000 postmenopausal women over 50. They were an ethnically and religiously diverse group who participated in the Women’s Health Initiative, a massive federally funded study that looked at the effects of hormone therapy on heart disease, among other things.

In the study, to be published this week in the Journal of Religion and Health, older women who attend services frequently were 56 percent more likely to be optimists than those who don’t attend regular services.

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If you’re sitting down, you might want to stand up after reading this: Nearly 100,000 cases of cancer could be prevented in the U.S. each year if we all spent less time sitting in our cars, at our desks and on our couches. Even people who exercise daily can increase their risk of cancer by remaining sedentary for extended periods of time, researchers said Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Institute for Cancer Research focused on food, nutrition and physical activity. Using data from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, researchers estimated that up to 49,000 cases of breast cancer and 43,000 cases of colon cancer each year are tied to lack of physical activity. “S Read more…

As if Americans needed any reminder that weight loss is hard and maintaining weight loss even harder, a study has found that for at least a year, subjects who shed weight on a low-calorie diet were hungrier than when they started and had higher levels of hormones that tell the body to eat more, conserve energy and store away fuel as fat. The report, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, helps explain why roughly 4 in 5 dieters wind up gaining back lost pounds within a year or two of losing them and, sometimes, pack on a few extra pounds for good measure. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this report said Meridia was an over-the-counter medication. Read more…

Well, I’ve just been photocopied. Er, sorry, I’ve just had a bone density scan in at Auckland City Hospital. It really sounded just like a photocopier as it glided over my body. Apparently the machine is called a bone densitometer, which sounds like something you’d find in Batman’s Batcave. It was utterly painless and something I’ve been meaning to do, as there is a bit of osteoporosis in my family. It being Better Bones Week this week, I thought I’d have a check-up.

Thankfully, the diagnosis is that I am completely normal for a woman my age in both my spine and hips. But just wait until menopause, I’m told by the technician, Lauren Purvis, from the Bone and Joint Research Group.

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