Posts in category: Health

Being under stress can cause your blood pressure to spike briefly. But researchers aren’t sure whether stress can cause blood pressure to rise long-term.

Experts do know that exercising 3 to 5 times a week for 30 minutes can lower stress. For people with high blood pressure, doing activities that help manage stress and improve health can help lower blood pressure.

Reactions to stress can affect blood pressure

The body releases a surge of hormones when under stress. These hormones cause the heart to beat faster and the blood vessels to narrow. These actions increase blood pressure for a time.

There’s no proof that stress by itself causes long-term high blood pressure. But reacting to stress in unhealthy ways can raise blood pressure and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Behaviors linked to higher blood pressure include:

• Drinking too much alcohol or caffeine.
• Eating unhealthy foods.
• Eating too much.
• Not moving enough.

Heart disease also might be linked to certain health conditions related to stress, such as:

• Anxiety.
• Depression.
• Being cut off from friends and family.

There’s no proof that these conditions are directly linked to high blood pressure. But the hormones the body makes when under emotional stress might damage arteries. The artery damage might lead to heart disease. And symptoms of depression and anxiety might cause some people to forget to take medicines to control high blood pressure or other heart conditions.

Stress can cause a steep rise in blood pressure. But when stress goes away, blood pressure returns to what it was before the stress. However, short spikes in blood pressure can cause heart attacks or strokes and also may damage blood vessels, the heart, and the kidneys over time. The damage is like the damage from long-term high blood pressure.

Stress-reducing activities can help lower blood pressure

Although people with high stress and high blood pressure would generally see blood pressure go down after controlling stress, reducing stress might not lower blood pressure in everyone. But managing stress can help improve health in other ways. Learning how to manage stress can lead to healthy behavior changes — including those that lower blood pressure.

Here are some ways to manage stress:

• Adjust your schedule. If you have too much to do, look at your calendar and to-do lists. Ask others to do some things. Schedule less time for activities that aren’t important to you. Say no to things you don’t want to do.
• Breathe to relax. Taking deep, slow breaths can help you relax.
• Exercise regularly. Physical activity eases stress. Before starting an exercise program, get your healthcare professional’s OK. This is even more important for those with high blood pressure.
• Try yoga and meditation. Yoga and meditation help you relax.
• Get enough sleep. Too little sleep can make problems seem worse than they are.
• Change how you see challenges. Accept your feelings about a situation. Then find ways to solve it.

Learn what works for you. Be willing to try new things. Get the health benefits, which might include lowering blood pressure.

Victoria announces $14M EMR expansion

The Victorian government is investing A$21.4 million ($14 million) more to replace paper-based patient medical records systems in several public health settings. 

In a statement, state health minister Mary-Anne Thomas said four health services will be supported to transition to electronic records: The Royal Eye and Ear Hospital, Eastern Health (Victoria’s second largest health service with 65 facilities), the 15-service Hume Rural Health Alliance, and Grampians Rural Health Service with eight health services. 

Implementation of a “connected and standardised” EMR system at these healthcare facilities will be supported by Hospitals Victoria and the Department of Health.

Two years ago, the Gippsland Health Alliance,  comprised of 11 hospitals and 6 bush nursing centres, completed its deployment of an EMR system provided by Altera Digital Health. 

NALHN, Peninsula Health to adopt digital patient flow management platform

Northern Adelaide Local Health Network in South Australia will implement a digital platform for managing end-to-end patient flow. 

The “interoperable, multi-facility digital health platform” will be delivered over five years by ASX-listed Alcidion under a A$4.5 million ($2.9 million) contract. 

Based on Alcidion’s corporate disclosure, its platform – to be integrated with SA Health electronic patient record and other applications – will provide a near-real-time and streamlined view of each patient’s journey across NALHN settings, including Lyell McEwin and Modbury Hospitals.  

A demand management and capacity planning solution will be initially deployed.

NALHN is also in the midst of digitising its patient pathways as part of a statewide project with another technology provider, Personify Care.  

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Peninsula Health in Melbourne, Victoria has also contracted Alcidion to implement the same patient flow management platform. 

The digital platform, which shows demand, capacity, and predicted availability and tracks both admitted and emergency patients, will be delivered across 13 sites over the next five years, as stated in its A$3.7 million ($2.4 million) contract.

Clinical ultrasound training at Edith Cowan University 

Edith Cowan University Australia is set to offer short courses for healthcare professionals on clinical ultrasound training.

It has recently signed a partnership with global health tech company Philips to develop a comprehensive curriculum on ultrasound. A series of short theoretical and practical courses will be created, featuring Philip’s ultrasound devices. 

Based on a press release, these include courses on improving vascular access and fistula cannulation during dialysis; 3D advanced quantification and image quality optimisation; echocardiography in structural heart disease; and courses on advanced liver and pelvic imaging, musculoskeletal imaging, and pediatric scanning.

Once developed, they plan to extend these courses throughout Asia-Pacific, starting in Australia.

Workshops and training sessions are also expected to be held at Philips’ Medical Sonography Simulation Lab at the university’s Joondalup Campus.

“Hello! I said to myself today that if I do five handstands and flip over it will be an excellent year and I did!” Thus, unceremoniously, began the 41-volume (and counting) story of my life. It was 1984 and I was 14, fumbling through adolescence in a scarlet beret. My likes, according to a list on the front page, included jacket potatoes and graveyards. My new year resolutions were to “see how long I can go without cake” and “improve my character.”

I haven’t missed a day’s entry since that 1 January. My past crams two bookshelves in rows of page-a-day journals. It’s startling how little four decades seems when it’s represented by slim, stacked spines.

I have little idea of the tales they tell. Most of the entries have lain unread since I wrote them. Yet every morning, I hunt down my fountain pen (life must be recorded in a pen that takes itself seriously!) and write up the previous day. If ever I were to miss one, it would seem it had never happened; if my diaries were lost, I’d feel my foundations had buckled. Journalling is a chore and a panacea, and yet I still can’t fathom why I do it.

There are many reasons, according to Fiona Courage, director of the Mass Observation Archive that collects personal records of everyday life in the UK. “Some people want to leave something of themselves to posterity,” she says. “Some find it therapeutic. Virginia Woolf’s diaries were a way of practising her writing.” Courage says that the habit soared during the Covid lockdowns as people realised that they were living through history. “Diaries give you the ability to distil your experiences and make sense of them,” she says. “For historians they are priceless as they record social trends, layers and details that wouldn’t make it into the history books. They plug a gap in the everyday.”

I had no inkling of what I’d started when I recorded that first New Year’s Day. My mother, a local historian, had nagged me for years to keep a diary so that future generations might learn what a 20th-century teen did for fun and ate for dinner. It was more an urge to write that motivated me to begin. I did not, I had sadly discovered, have a novel in me. There was a point, I like to think, when it dawned on me that life is its own story. A series of chapters, an evolving cast of characters, a thickening plot and an unguessed ending.

Those future generations will have a very misleading idea of the 20th-century teen. Doris Day provided the soundtrack of my youth. My recreation was climbing trees. While classmates danced at discos, I was in bed with Anne of Green Gables. Adolescent passion passed me by entirely. My heart was broken by the deaths of prewar film stars, announced in lurid felt tip in the page margins, rather than boys.

Over the years, the entries evolved from a record of school lessons and domestic routines to confessional and reportage. And I can chart my startled ageing: “I’m much too young to be so old so soon.” I marvelled on my 21st birthday.

On my 30th: “My face is lumpen, my body stale and my hair like tinned sardines. Feel every inch of 30.”

When 40 arrived: “My haemorrhoids are growing and my brain is shrinking. However, I am quite contented to be 40, if a little awed by my antiquity. I have always known that middle age would suit me and feel qualified now to march about in large hats berating miscreants.”

Now, when I look back on them, those volumes do read like a story. A chronicled life seems more like a plot with a sense of direction than a puzzle of random events. The darkest times – the night my mother was run over and the long years of her recovery; two unexpected redundancies – are, reading back, no longer isolated intrusions, but part of a developing narrative. I can read the chapters with a God-like omniscience. I’ll know, if I follow that misfit teenager through four years of school, how things turned out. Which hopes came good, which friendships lasted; how, now and then, foes became benefactors.

I could trace how becoming a university sacristan at 20 to please a dishy chaplain began a chain of events that led, seven years later, to my husband. Or, further back, how a crush on my new German teacher at 14 inspired me to study German at university where I encountered that dishy chaplain. I know that the self that celebrated the arrival of 1996 as a sorry singleton (“While the others waltzed, J and I washed up and reflected mournfully on our unloved state. It’s a condition that has landed us the worst bedroom behind the wellington boot depot. No one brings us tea in bed and no one dances to the Pogues with us”) would meet at a ceilidh, before the year was out, the man I was to marry: “I found myself paired with a priest. I was instructed to ‘grab his left’ and do a Doozy Doo. He kept coming back for more, so we ‘stripped the willow’ successfully together and later I found myself contemplating the pros and cons of marriage to a curate.” And I can confirm that five handstands and a flip ensured that 1984 was “not at all bad, despite Orwell’s ominous predictions.”

You pay more attention to the world when you know you’ll be writing it up. I pen character sketches of strangers I meet – a pony-tailed sheet metalworker from Avonmouth who revered Prokofiev, the substantial matron in a waiting room “who described to me her knicker situation”. I want to do justice even to the dullest day because life is a privilege and the mundane of today will be tomorrow’s history.

I recorded my first sight of a mobile phone, wielded from a pulpit as a spiritual aid, in 1985: “‘Can anyone tell me what this is?’ asked Father R, holding up what looked like a bendy grey banana.” In July 1996, I sent my first email “all on my own”: “This,” I marvelled, “could become an addictive device. [My colleague] and I spent the morning pinging simpering messages to each other across the desk like toddlers with toy phones, but they take up to an hour to arrive so I shall still prefer faxes.”

In the privacy of a diary, ego can take precedence over world events. Wars raged, governments came and went while I focused on domestic headlines. “Today, I threw out the old Boden catalogue,” began 20 January 2009. “Barack Obama was inaugurated president also, so one had a vague sense of historic-ness as one flossed and hoovered, but the former event seemed to me more significant!”

It’s never too late to start a journal and a life is never too dull to record. As the years pass and memory fades, I find it a comfort to know that I can dip at will into childhood or child-rearing and that milestones are preserved. I imagine my future self in a care home, faculties slipping, reliving my first property purchase: “I examined my feelings at being a flat owner, but it didn’t seem real. I must buy some hyacinths and cats.”

My first date: “I wish I hadn’t said my beer tasted of pus; he must now think I suck boils!”

My first born: “All of a sudden E was holding a large, pink, alert baby of a size quite unfeasible given the manner of exit. It didn’t seem remotely real that this was mine.”

I feel that if I were to read from the first entry to the last, I might find an answer to a question I can’t articulate. But time travel can become unhealthily consuming so I do it sparingly. The past still lives on in those pages and I can feel it closing over me if I linger there.

In lockdown, I read every day of my university years. It was like reading a novel about someone else. I read in suspense of predicaments I no longer recalled and of dramas whose endings I’d forgotten. Unremembered griefs were disinterred; dormant grievances rekindled. Long-lost friends jived to Abba in my student room and long-dead voices spoke again. When I closed the volumes, I emerged blinking into a different century, a different home and a different family and marvelled at the chain of successive days that had brought me here.

But some things are constant. It’s simultaneously reassuring and dispiriting that I remain recognisably the same me from 40 years ago. I continue to transcribe my likes at the front of each diary and jacket potatoes and graveyards reliably top the list. I remain faithful to Doris Day and still wear a red beret.

It’s a weighty business recording a life, yet it’s taught me not to take myself too seriously. When painful moments are written down I can more easily let them go. Seeing life as a story with an unknown number of chapters left to write is both exciting and daunting. My children are already alarmed at the space my life will take up on their shelves when it’s over, but I plan to chronicle the days until I can no longer hold a pen. The only part of the story I’ll never get to write is the ending.

Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered healthcare suite plans to “shape a healthier future” through advances in everything from medical imaging to nursing workflows, painting a rosy picture of better patient care. Meanwhile, major health systems and medical schools from Yale to Harvard to the University of Michigan are exploring or rolling out AI initiatives to enhance care delivery and improve access.

Yet, as we stand at this technological crossroads, it’s worth asking whether our enthusiasm for AI in healthcare might be outpacing our ability to navigate its potential pitfalls.

As a physician, I’ve seen both the benefits and limitations of AI-assisted triage. In my emergency department, we use AI to prioritize patients based on admission likelihood. While it helps with patient flow, it can miss complex cases, like an elderly patient on blood thinners with a head injury. For now, medical staff maintain significant oversight, meticulously double-checking AI-generated recommendations.

Most published AI research in medicine is still in its infancy, focusing on simple validation rather than large-scale, real-world implementation. But with 950 AI medical devices authorized by the FDA as of August 2024, AI’s influence on critical medical decisions, from diagnosis to treatment planning, appears poised to grow substantially.

The FDA currently approves AI medical tools as devices rather than drugs. This distinction matters because it shapes how thoroughly these AI tools are evaluated and monitored before they’re used in patient care. Medical devices, including AI tools, often undergo a different and sometimes less extensive approval process compared to drugs, which may leave gaps in our understanding of how well they work in real-world healthcare settings — or how they work at all.

Many AI systems are “black boxes,” meaning their decision-making is hard to understand. Like a (hypothetical) AI that only sees you in a red dress and assumes “red” defines you, healthcare AI may fixate on misleading patterns, giving results that seem correct but are based on faulty reasoning, making it harder for doctors to spot errors.

In addition, most AI models learn to identify patterns and make predictions from large datasets, but their accuracy depends on the quality of the data. For example, a 2018 study found that an AI tool for detecting skin cancer performed poorly on darker skin tones because it was mostly trained on lighter-skinned patients. Medical data can also reflect historical biases — if women are underdiagnosed for heart disease, for example, AI might misjudge their risk.

To ensure AI in healthcare is safe and fair, we need stronger rules and oversight. The FDA should require ongoing reporting on AI performance in real-world settings, not just during the initial approval process. Currently, manufacturers must report serious incidents, but the FDA is still developing a regulatory framework for AI devices that balances safety with the evolving nature of the technology.

Developers should also make AI more transparent by providing tools for clinicians and regulators to understand how AI makes its recommendations. Healthcare institutions must track AI performance in actual clinical use to spot issues that may not show up in testing. A new HHS rule holds healthcare organizations responsible for making “reasonable efforts” to identify and lower risks of discrimination in AI tools they use. That’s a good start, but smaller hospitals will need support, and everyone needs clearer guidelines on what “reasonable efforts” means.

A public database of approved AI medical devices that shows their efficacy and reports any problems is key to building trust and ensuring accountability. Like the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System for medications, an AI reporting database would provide transparency for AI in healthcare. While the FDA lists AI tools through its Digital Health Center of Excellence, this resource is incomplete. A dedicated AI database would offer comprehensive, real-world insights into device performance, protecting patient care.

Implementing these changes will require additional resources. For instance, the FDA commissioner recently suggested that the agency may need to double its workforce to effectively manage the increased oversight responsibilities associated with new regulations. Funding could come from various sources, including congressional budget allocations, small fees on AI-enabled devices, and contributions from AI companies to a shared regulatory fund.

AI promises to revolutionize healthcare, much like the steam engine once launched the Industrial Revolution. But we aren’t there yet. To lean into the analogy, we haven’t yet built the factories that will simultaneously increase productivity and create miserable working conditions and poor health outcomes. Now is the time to act to promote the former while preventing the latter through oversight and regulation.

Patients and concerned citizens should educate themselves about AI in healthcare. Doctors should inform patients about how it’s used in their care. We should continue to closely monitor AI’s clinical diagnoses or treatment recommendations, and report any concerns to our medical facility or the FDA if the AI tool is FDA-approved.

By staying engaged, we’re not just protecting ourselves — we’re helping shape a healthcare system where AI is used responsibly. Our active participation can promote better rules and safeguards, ensuring AI advances within medicine in a way that’s safe, fair, and beneficial for all.

Cristiana Baloescu, MD, is an emergency physician and assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven. She engages in artificial intelligence research for ultrasound devices, and is a Public Voices fellow of Yale and The OpEd Project.

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How do people lower the chances of getting cancer? There’s plenty of advice. But at times, advice from one study seems to go against advice from another. And researchers keep looking into new ways to prevent cancer.

But experts know that certain lifestyle choices can affect the chances of getting cancer. Try these lifestyle tips to help prevent cancer.

1. Don’t use tobacco

Smoking has been linked to many types of cancer. This includes cancer of the lung, mouth, throat, voice box, pancreas, bladder, cervix, and kidney. Even being around secondhand smoke may raise the risk of lung cancer.

But it’s not only smoking that’s harmful. Chewing tobacco has been linked to cancer of the mouth, throat, and pancreas.

A great way to help prevent cancer is to not use tobacco. If you want to quit tobacco, ask a healthcare professional about products that can help you stop smoking and other ways of quitting.

2. Eat healthy foods

Eating healthy foods isn’t a sure way to prevent cancer. But it might lower the risk. Try to:

• Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Focus on fruits, vegetables and other foods from plant sources, such as whole grains and beans. Limit foods high in calories, fats and added sugars. Limit red meat, processed meats, refined grains, and saturated and trans fats.
• Drink alcohol only in moderation, if at all. Alcohol raises the risk of various types of cancer, including cancer of the breast, colon, lung, kidney and liver. The risk goes up the more you drink.

People who eat a Mediterranean diet have a lower risk of breast cancer. The Mediterranean diet focuses mostly on plant-based foods, such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts. People who follow the Mediterranean diet choose healthy fats, such as olive oil, rather than butter. And they eat fish instead of red meat.

3. Stay at a healthy weight and be physically active

Being at a healthy weight might lower the risk of some types of cancer. These include cancer of the breast, pancreas, liver, colon, and kidney.

Physical activity counts too. Besides helping control weight, physical activity on its own may lower the risk of breast cancer and colon cancer.

Doing any amount of physical activity is good for your health. But for the most benefit, get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of hard aerobic activity. More is better. You can combine moderate and hard activity.

4. Protect yourself from the sun

Skin cancer is one of the most common kinds of cancer and one of the easiest to prevent. Try these tips:

• Limit time spent in the sun. This is especially true between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. when the sun’s rays are strongest.
• Stay in the shade. When outdoors, be in the shade as much as you can. Sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat help too.
• Cover your skin. Wear clothing that covers as much skin as possible. Wear a head cover and sunglasses.
• Use plenty of sunscreen. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30, even on cloudy days. Put on a lot of sunscreen. Put it on again every two hours. Use it more often if you’re swimming or sweating.
• Don’t use tanning beds or sunlamps. These can do as much harm as sunlight.

5. Get vaccinated

Protecting against certain viral infections can help protect against cancer. Talk to a healthcare professional about getting vaccines to prevent the following:

• Hepatitis B. Hepatitis B can raise the risk of getting liver cancer. People at high risk are those who have sex with more than one partner, people who have one sexual partner who has sex with others, and people with sexually transmitted infections.

  Others at high risk are people who inject illegal drugs, men who have sex with men, and healthcare or public safety workers who have contact with infected blood or body fluids.

• Human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer and other genital cancers. It also can lead to squamous cell cancers of the head and neck. The vaccine can protect children as young as 9 and young adults who were not vaccinated during childhood.

6. Stay away from risky behaviors

Some behaviors carry a high risk of infections that can raise the risk of getting cancer. To help prevent cancer:

• Practice safe sex. Limit how many sexual partners you have. Use a condom. The more sexual partners you have, the greater the chances of getting a sexually transmitted infection, such as HIV or HPV.

  People who have HIV or AIDS have a higher risk of cancer of the anus, liver and lung. HPV is most often linked to cervical cancer. But it also might raise the risk of cancer of the anus, penis, throat, vulva and vagina.

• Don’t share needles. Using drugs with shared needles can lead to HIV. And it can lead to hepatitis B and hepatitis C, which can raise the risk of liver cancer. If you need help with drug misuse or addiction, talk with a professional who specializes in those areas.

7. Get regular medical care

Do regular self-exams. Get screenings for cancers, such as cancer of the skin, colon, cervix and breast. These efforts raise the chances of finding cancer early. That’s when treatment is most likely to work. Ask a healthcare professional about the best cancer screenings for you.

CommonSpirit will extend the University of Utah Health’s capacity to provide care to more people along the Wasatch Front, the two organizations announced this week.

WHY IT MATTERS

The clinical alliance will increase access to medical care closer to home, CommonSpirit Health and U of U Health said Wednesday. 

To improve population health and care delivery across a wide spectrum of patient needs, U of U Health providers will work with the CommonSpirit hospitals, explained Andrew Gaasch, CommonSpirit Mountain Region president.

“At CommonSpirit, our mission calls us to relentlessly innovate so we can provide the highest standard of compassionate care to every person, including the most vulnerable,” Gaasch, said in a statement.

The university, the state’s only academic health system, has provided medical care to patients and training to providers in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Nevada since its founding in 1965.

THE LARGER TREND

Two years ago, CommonSpirit Health was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted medical operations across 140 facilities in several states, affecting its electronic health record systems and exposing the personal information of some patients, family members and caregivers.

That year, cybersecurity breaches in healthcare continued to skyrocket, though some argue that hospital mergers and acquisitions leave larger, combined organizations attractive to threat actors vulnerable to flaws in older legacy systems. 

After the 2017 merger of DignityHealth and Catholic Health Initiatives, the combined CommonSpirit system became the second-largest non-profit hospital chain, with more than 350 hospitals nationwide. 

The nonprofit healthcare organization purchased the five Utah hospitals in Davis, the Jordan Valley, Mountain Point and Salt Lake in 2023. 

ON THE RECORD

“We keep the patient at the center of everything we do and are proud to partner with CommonSpirit’s exceptional teams and hospitals to extend access for people in our communities and region,” said Dr. Michael L. Good, University of Utah Health CEO and senior vice president for health sciences. “Working together, we will do what we all trained in healthcare to do – improve health and quality of life.” 

Stuck for what to buy everyone for Christmas? You won’t be for long … From gifts for fitness fans and gardeners to presents for pets (and their adorable owners), teens and beauty lovers, we’ve got all bases covered.

Best of all, they’re hand-picked from the experts themselves: we’ve taken out the guesswork and asked the kids, chefs, cyclists and more to tell us what they actually want this year. Merry Christmas!

Stocking fillers

A selection of little treats for all ages