Alzheimer’s screenings often left out of seniors’ wellness exams in US
Diabetes type 2 risk could be lowered by making some diet or lifestyle changes. One of the best diet plans to prevent high blood sugar symptoms and signs has been revealed and it could even help patients with weight loss, express.co.uk wrote.
Diabetes is a common condition that affects around 3.8 million people in the UK, and 90 percent of all cases are caused by type 2 diabetes.
The condition is caused by the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the body not reacting to insulin. Without enough insulin, the body struggles to convert sugar in the blood into useable energy. You could lower your risk of developing high blood sugar by following a low-carb diet plan, it’s been claimed.
Cutting back on the amount of carbohydrate in your diet could help to prevent blood sugar spikes, according to medical website diabetes. co.uk.
Having high blood sugar means the body needs to produce more insulin, or the patient needs to take more insulin.
But, lowering the need for insulin could Society has become health obsessed. Gym memberships, Fitbit purchases, health apps and clean eating are evidence of this drive to be well.
While, in general, this health and wellness boom is a positive shift, all the talk about perfect health is accompanied by obsession, pressure and anxieties, irishtimes.com reported.
Somebody obsessed about becoming ill is exposed to health information overload in our culture.
People with this condition used to be referred to as hypochondriacs. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders no longer includes hypochondriasis.
Currently, illness anxiety disorder or health anxiety refers to the obsessional preoccupation with physical sensations and harmless symptoms. These are misinterpreted as worst case health scenarios, causing panic and distress.
The ultimate fear may be cancer, HIV or having a heart attack.
A headache is misinterpreted as a sign of a brain tumor.
People afflicted with health anxiety are triggered by their bodies, conversations, something they read, or Dr. Google. They tend to engage in excessive body checking, scanning and visits to the GP. Some avoid medics altogether for fear of having their worst fears confirmed. Anxiety about the health of their children or those close to them often features in conjunction with their self-related fears.
In many cases, the elephant in the room is death anxiety.
Awareness of the inevitability of life ending can underlie the fear of one’s health being attacked. Aetiology is a culmination of factors including inheriting parental health worries, past experiences of illness, witnessing or hearing of others who are ill or dying, or just having a nervous disposition. After all, anxiety can attach to reduce insulin resistance, and may help people to reverse their type 2 diabetes, it said.
“Many people with diabetes are following a low-carb diet because of its benefits in terms of improving diabetes control, weight loss and being a diet that is satisfying and easy to stick to,” said Diabetes.co.uk.
“Low-carb diets are flexible and can be followed by people with different types of diabetes.
“The diet has allowed many people with type 2 diabetes to resolve their diabetes, that is to get their blood sugar levels into a nondiabetic range without the help of medication.
“Carbohydrate is the nutrient which has the greatest effect in terms of raising blood sugar levels and requires the most insulin to be taken or be produced by the body.
“Insulin is also the fat storage hormone in the body, so reducing insulin in the body with a low-carb diet can help with losing weight.”
A low carbohydrate diet includes eating less than 130 grams of carbs in a single day, it said. But, it is still important to choose a level of carbohydrate that works for you.
Someone with type 2 diabetes and needs to being psychological. For the majority, its obsessive nature was impairing daily functioning, work and relationships. Seeking constant reassurance from family, friends and the medical profession is also featured.
One person used to wake up every morning lose weight may consider following a verylow carbohydrate diet, it claimed.
But it is absolutely crucial that you speak to a doctor before significantly cutting back on the amount of carbohydrate in your diet. This is especially important if you are on diabetes medication that could lead to low blood sugar — including insulin.
If you have diabetes, there aren’t any foods that you should actively avoid, but it’s important to limit the amount of sugar, fat and salt in your diet, said the UK National Health Service.
Instead, make sure you eat a healthy, balanced diet, and do regular exercise. Everyone should do at least 150 minutes of moderateintensity activity every week.
Many people may be living with diabetes without even realizing it, because the symptoms do not necessarily make you feel unwell.
Common diabetes symptoms include feeling very tired, passing more urine than normal and having blurred vision.
Speak to a doctor if you’re worried about the signs of diabetes, or if you think you may be at risk. back clear and more than 10 false alarm heart attacks, he remained unconvinced that his heart was in good shape. He described a little voice in his head telling him that the doctors missed something or that he was a rare medical case. Even the mention of someone having Primary care doctors in US are really good at checking seniors’ cholesterol levels and blood pressure but often fail to use tests that could detect dementia.
Fewer than half of primary care doctors surveyed said they routinely test patients 65 and older for problems with memory and thinking, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association, Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the US, www.npr.org reported.
And just 16 percent of older patients surveyed said they receive regular cognitive assessments during routine health checkups, the report said.
In contrast, 91 percent of seniors said their annual visits include a blood pressure check, and 83 percent said they include a cholesterol test.
“This cognitive assessment should be part of every senior’s annual wellness visit,” said Keith Fargo, the director of scientific programs and outreach for the Alzheimer’s Association.
“But we’re seeing that it’s simply not happening.”
A cognitive assessment typically takes a few minutes and may include questioning the patient or the patient’s family, observing the patient’s interactions or using short verbal or written tests.
Yet because doctors often skip the evaluation, many seniors are diagnosed only when they are severely impaired, Fargo said.
As a result, it is often too late for the patient to plan for the future or enter a clinical trial.
“The first person who gets a drug that stops their Alzheimer’s disease will get that drug in the context of a clinical trial,” Fargo said.
“And that’s only going to happen to someone who knows they have cognitive decline.”
The report found that 82 percent of seniors think it’s important to have their thinking and memory checked out regularly. And 94 percent of primary care physicians said it’s important to assess every patient 65 and older for cognitive impairment.
Yet many doctors remain hesitant to broach the subject of cognitive testing with their older patients, said Joanne Pike, the chief program officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.
“Usually what we’re seeing is that physicians are waiting for the senior to bring any concerns to them,” Pike said.
And seniors rarely do that, for a variety of reasons, Pike said.
“Some of it could be fear, some of it could be stigma and some of it could be a little bit of, unfortunately, people believe that there’s not a benefit to knowing about the disease or dementia,” Pike said.
One common fear among doctors is that they will harm an older patient by doing an assessment that reveals a cognitive problem, said Nicole Fowler, an assistant professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine — the US — and a scientist with the Regenstrief Institute’s — the US — Center for Aging Research.
So Fowler and a team of researchers did a study to see whether patients were harmed.
“And what we found actually in that study is that there wasn’t any harm, so there was no increase in rates of depression or anxiety in older adults who were screened,” she said.
Even so, it can be hard to get seniors who have a cognitive problem to see a specialist and get the right sort of care and counseling, Fowler said.
At least half the time, she said, patients refuse to act on the results of a cognitive assessment.
The solution is to have the medical system take a more active role in keeping in touch with people who’ve had a screening test.
“We would never send somebody for a mammogram and then never follow up with them,” she said.
Some primary care doctors resist performing routine cognitive screening because studies haven’t shown a clear benefit, said Dr. Sheryl Sun, chief of internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California, the US.
The US Preventive Services Task Force, for example, says the current evidence on cognitive screening is insufficient to assess whether it does more harm or good.
So it is hard to justify spending valuable time during a patient’s visit to do a cognitive assessment, Sun said.
“If you spend time doing things of questionable value, you might not get to the things that are of proven value,” like screening for heart disease or diabetes, she said.
“Also, primary doctors who know their patients well don’t need formal tests to detect cognitive problems,” Sun said.
“We will notice a change within a few minutes of walking in the exam room.”
Cognitive tests make sense when a doctor suspects a problem, Sun said.
But they probably won’t become routine until researchers develop an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.