Staying Healthy Archive

Therapy, exercises, and changes in eating habits will help keep you safe.

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It used to be so easy to munch a handful of nuts: chew, swallow, enjoy. Now, you avoid them or make sure there's a glass of water nearby when you eat nuts or any other foods that seem to get stuck in your throat. "It's normal to have some age-related changes with swallowing or occasional difficulty swallowing. What's not normal is when food or liquids get into the lungs regularly," says Semra Koymen, a speech-language pathologist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Causes and symptoms

Treatment

A study published online Aug. 8, 2016, by BMJ Open found that volunteering seems to confer greater benefits for general well-being in middle and older age than earlier in life. 

About one in three adults has nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, an often-silent condition closely linked to heart disease.

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The largest organ inside your body, your liver performs hundreds of vital functions. It converts food into fuel, processes cholesterol, clears harmful toxins from the blood, and makes proteins that help your blood clot, to name a few. But an alarming number of Americans have a potentially dangerous accumulation of fat inside their livers. Known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), this condition is a leading cause of chronic liver disease in the United States—and an increasingly recognized contributor to heart disease.

"NAFLD increases the risk of heart disease independent of other traditional risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol," says Dr. Kathleen Corey, director of the Fatty Liver Disease Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital. Among people with NAFLD, heart disease is the top killer, accounting for more than 25% of deaths.

People who eat more plant-based proteins from beans, nuts, and grains may have a lower risk of dying from heart disease or any cause, compared with people who eat more animal-based proteins such as meat or eggs. 

Sitting for more than eight hours a day and exercising very little has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease and early death. An hour of moderate-intensity exercise may lessen that risk. 

There is no conclusive evidence that fish oil supplements reduce inflammation. Diets rich in omega-3 fatty acids are a better bet.

Nasal irrigation using a neti pot was more effective than inhaling steam in relieving chronic sinus symptoms in a large randomized study.

Some simple preventive measures can keep antibiotic-resistant bacteria at bay.

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Although the Zika virus got more publicity throughout the summer, another—and even scarier-sounding—microbe also made headlines. Dubbed a new "superbug," strains of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin were found in the United States. Colistin is a drug often used when others fail to control a bacterial infection. Fortunately, the bacteria weren't resistant to other antibiotics, which cleared the infections. "Although this particular case of antibiotic resistance may not be as dire as the media made it sound, in general these increasingly high-level resistances are an enormous problem," says Dr. Sarah Fortune, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Why superbugs are such a problem

Like other forms of life, bacteria are always evolving to become stronger and survive longer. One of the ways they increase their chances of survival is to acquire genes that help them resist threats—including natural enemies like viruses and man-made weapons like antibiotics. These genes can spring up within a bacterium through mutations and are passed down to subsequent generations of the microbe. In addition, they can be found on rings of DNA called plasmids, which can be transmitted to other types of bacteria, enabling the resistance to spread wider and faster. The E. coli strains discovered in 2016 raised concern because they carry the colistin-resistance gene on plasmids and thus have the potential to transfer the plasmids to bacteria that are already resistant to several other antibiotics.