Hip flexor muscles can help you stand up to pain

When you stand up from your chair at work and your lower back starts grumbling. And then you decide to take a walk down the hall and before you know it, your knees ache, too. What gives?

The answer is little to do with your back or knees. The pain could be connected to your hips, a group of muscles called the hip flexors that are in use when we climb stairs, run, dance and play soccer and even do resistance training. Also known as the iliopsoas, they help the in leg movement and stabilize the spine cord. They are located in your abdomen and upper thigh and are among the strongest in the body.

"When we sit all day, the hip flexors get shorten," says Jim Thornton, president of the National Athletic Trainers' Association and head athletic trainer at Clarion University in Clarion, Pa. "When they're shortened it impacts how we perform and can cause all kinds of problems from our lower backs down to our feet."

The older you are the more they shorten, and it's not just sitting that leads to problems. Lie in a fetal position at night or when napping? That also shortens them.

Unfortunately, Thornton says, many training programs overlook the hip flexors and focus on the hamstrings and quadriceps. But tight flexors will prevent the rest of the kinetic flow from working properly, he adds. Here's one example of what can misfire:

"Let's say you're going for a walk or jog and your hips are tight," he says. "When you strike your heel on the ground, the muscles that control the arch of the foot are going to be inhibited because the hips are tight. As your foot rolls forward, it will pronate (roll inward). That can cause shin splints and plantar fasciitis (inflammation in the arch). If you get that, you feel like and walk like a 99-year-old person."

Chances are many of us probably have tight hip flexors. Government statistics suggest that almost half of us report sitting more than six hours a day; 65% say they spend more than two hours a day watching TV.

Sitting is taking a toll on our health in other ways. A recent study showed that if people spent less than three hours a day sitting, it would add two years to the average life expectancy. And research has linked sitting too much to increased risks of diabetes and death from cancer, heart disease and stroke.

"The most important thing is you actually get up off the couch and do something," says Thornton. "There's all kind of exercises people can do to get a workout in, but most important thing is to get up and do it."

But warm up first. "Don't go right into a class," he says, or start a program on a DVD cold. "One of the biggest problems is people will go and get injured in the first couple visits and get discouraged."

When it comes to warming up the hips, he recommends gentle stretches such as lunges with one knee bent in front and the other leg straightened behind you. In yoga, this stretch is called the warrior pose. As you push forward with the back leg you'll feel the hip flexors starting to relax in the back leg. Keep your back straight and toes pointing forward. Hold for 15 to 30 seconds and repeat three times. Switch sides.

He also suggests using a foam roller, which sells for about $15 and offers the same benefits as sports massage. They come in different sizes, but a good one for the legs and hips need only be 24 inches long by 6 inches in diameter. In addition to stretching muscles and tendons, they also break down soft tissue and scar tissue.

"Our players use them all the time," he says. "People can either do it and not get injured or not do it and get injured. Proper warmup is as much a part of workout as workout is itself."

In The Athlete's Book of Home Remedies, author and sports medicine physician Jordan Metzl recommends warming up the hip flexors by lying face down on the floor with the foam roller positioned above your knees and your elbows on the floor for support. Roll back and forth toward your hips. When you're comfortable with that move, cross one leg over your other leg and rest it behind the ankle. Roll back and forth on the straight leg. You might have to tilt inward onto the flexor. Then switch sides.

"They're seriously underrated muscles," Metzl says. "But they're very important in everyday movement as well as explosive athletic movements."

Hayfever vaccine study raises hopes for new allergy treatment

Researchers are developing a new vaccine for hayfever which could be more effective, less invasive for patients and less expensive than vaccines already available to patients on the NHS.

Scientists at Imperial College London and King's College London have carried out a study that showed a significant reduction in skin sensitivity to grass pollen that was associated with an increase in "blocking antibodies" in the bloodstream. The results are so encouraging that King's has today launched a clinical trial in collaboration with Guy's Hospital, working together as part of King's Health Partners. The trial is funded by the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research via the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programme, and will further investigate the vaccine as a potential new hayfever treatment.

The researchers say the approach defines a completely new concept in treating allergies and in the future could have an impact on treating other conditions such as asthma and food allergies.

Hayfever affects one in four people in the UK. An allergic reaction to grass pollen triggers a blocked or runny nose, sneezing, itchy eyes and in some cases asthma symptoms. For many individuals this can interfere with work or school performance, sleep and social activities. Tablets and sprays may temporarily relieve symptoms, but for severe cases one option is a vaccine to "switch off" the allergy, called immunotherapy.

The vaccines currently used involve high doses of allergen given by injection underneath the skin (subcutaneously) or sometimes as a daily tablet or drops under the tongue. In most cases this involves large numbers of injections in an NHS allergy clinic or daily tablets or drops taken continuously, which can be inconvenient for patients and expensive for the NHS.

Published today in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, this new study shows that a series of low dose allergen injections (less than a thousandth of the usual dose) into a higher layer of the skin (intradermally), rather than subcutaneously, led to a 90 per cent reduction in skin reactivity to grass pollen.

Researchers administered the vaccine intradermally to volunteer hayfever sufferers from Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. One group of subjects received six injections of grass pollen extract at two-week intervals over 10 weeks. The participants' allergic responses in the skin were then measured. The initial injection provoked an allergic reaction on the arm visible as a lump around 10 cm in diameter lasting 1-2 days. Over time a dramatic 90 per cent reduction was seen in the size of the lump suggesting that the allergic reaction was gradually being switched off with each injection. The size of the lump did not decrease in another group of subjects who received only two injections separated by 10 weeks.

During the study none of the participants reported unwanted side effects and the injections did not trigger hayfever symptoms.

The researchers believe that the method of injecting the vaccine intradermally is a major factor in its success, as the skin is a highly active immunological area - more so than underneath the skin where allergy vaccines are traditionally administered.

Professor Stephen Durham, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, said: "There is great interest in giving immunotherapy by novel alternative routes to improve uptake by the immune system. The results of this study provide an excellent foundation for going on to test the intradermal vaccine route in clinical trials."

Dr Stephen Till, Senior Lecturer at King's College London said: "The results of our study are hugely exciting. We now want to find out if this process can also switch off grass allergy in the nose and improve hayfever symptoms, so we are today launching the PollenLITE clinical trial to further test our new approach."

Maureen Jenkins, the director of clinical services at the charity Allergy UK, said this was a "very exciting development" which "offers hope for sufferers".

She added: "The proposed vaccine, if successful, is much quicker and more straightforward than current immunotherapy treatment for hay fever, which takes years. It also has the potential to offer cost savings.

"If this series of injections proves effective in combating hay fever, it will be a wonderful step forward in tackling this common, but often underestimated allergy."

A separate vaccine would have to be developed to help people with allergies to tree pollen.

9/11 cancer victims to have treatment funded

(CBS News) Monday's announcement that the government would add about 50 types of cancer to the list of 9/11-related illnesses that's health care costs would be covered has provided relief for what many are calling an overdue decision. But, the announcement also raised concerns over the amount of available funds for suffers and families.

Government to cover cancer health care costs for 9/11 responders and victims
Government will fund care for 50 types of cancers linked to 9/11 under Zadroga Act
60 Minutes: The Dust At Ground Zero

On the eve of the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the National Institute for Occupational Safety (NIOSH) announced it would cover the cancer care for responders and other victims exposed to the toxic dust at ground zero who developed cancers including lung, breast colon, and leukemia and lymphoma. The program had previously only covered lung diseases, asthma and chronic cough along with mental health illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

"The publication of this final rule marks an important step in the effort to provide needed treatment and care to 9/11 responders and survivors through the WTC Health Program," NIOSH director Dr. John Howard said in a statement to the Associated Press.

In June, officials at NIOSH had said in a filing that it favored a major expansion of the program, known as the Zadroga Act, to include people with the different cancer types that span 14 broad categories of the disease. The decision followed a March recommendation by an advisory committee made up of doctors, union officials and community health advocates, who recommended that cancer be added to the program. While a definitive link between the toxic exposure causing these cancers hasn't been definitely shown, the NIOSH committee said the dust contained about 70 known and possible carcinogens.

Firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who had been saying for years that the hundreds of hours he worked at ground zero had something to do with his advanced kidney cancer, told the CBS Evening News that he welcomed the announcement.

"It's like a vindication saying 'hey listen, you know, we're recognized that we were down there that we did get sick from down there,'" Pfeiffer explained. "It's a little bit of a relief."

The compensation has been held up by a dispute over whether there was evidence of a direct link between the World Trade Center tragedy and cancer.

'Stem cell hope' for deaf people

Stem cell therapy may one day enable deaf people to hear again.

In a new test by UK scientists found that deaf gerbils recover their hearing after human stem cells were injected into their ears.

Hearing partially improved when nerves in the ear, which pass sounds into the brain, were rebuilt in gerbils - a UK study in the journal Nature reports.

Getting the same improvement in people would be a shift from being unable to hear traffic to hearing a conversation.

However, treating humans is still a distant prospect.

The aim of researchers at the University of Sheffield was to replace those baton-dropping nerve cells, called spiral ganglion neurons, with new ones. They used stem cells from a human embryo, which are capable of becoming any other type of cell in the human body from nerve to skin, muscle to kidney.

A chemical soup was added to the stem cells that converted them into cells similar to the spiral ganglion neurons. These were then delicately injected into the inner ears of 18 deaf gerbils.

Over 10 weeks the gerbils' hearing improved. On average 45% of their hearing range was restored by the end of the study.

When these neurons get damaged or die they can't be replaced. This results in a form of deafness called auditory neuropathy, which affects about a tenth of deaf people, according to Rivolta.

Cochlear implants can correct the main form of deafness, which occurs when the cochlea loses hair cells that register sound by bending. But neurons can't be substituted except through an expensive, risky and invasive procedure to implant an electrode directly into the brain.

Now, Rivolta and his colleagues hope to develop much simpler treatments based on the so-called otic neural progenitor stem cells developed in the lab from human embryonic stem cells, the cells in embryos that can turn into all types of bodily tissues.

They injected about 50,000 of the otic neural progenitor cells into single ears of 18 gerbils. The animals' spiral ganglion neurons had been deliberately destroyed with a drug called ouabain, leaving them completely deaf. The stem cells were injected into the cochlea through a tiny, drilled hole.

Post mortems showed that the stem cells turned into specialised spiral ganglion neurons in the ear.

Within 10 weeks, about two-thirds of the animals had recovered some hearing. On average, the animals recovered about 46 per cent of their hearing, as measured by their ability to respond to sounds of varying volume.

"In people, this would mean going from only being able to hear a loud truck on the street to being able to hold a conversation," said Rivolta.

But it will be years before it can be tested in people as Rivolta has said that more work in animals is needed to refine the procedure.

Prof Dave Moore, the director of the Medical Research Council's Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham, told the BBC: "It is a big moment, it really is a major development."

However, he cautioned that there will still be difficulties repeating the feat in people.

"The biggest issue is actually getting into the part of the inner ear where they'll do some good. It's extremely tiny and very difficult to get to and that will be a really formidable undertaking," he said.

Dr Ralph Holme, head of biomedical research for the charity Action on Hearing Loss, said: "The research is tremendously encouraging and gives us real hope that it will be possible to fix the actual cause of some types of hearing loss in the future.

"For the millions of people for whom hearing loss is eroding their quality of life, this can't come soon enough."

Eating Less Red Meat Could Benefit Health And Environment

reducing down the amount of red meat we eat not only affects our health, but also the health of the environment, study from the United Kingdom suggests.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that cutting back on red meat consumption could decrease the number of cases of chronic disease by 3 to 12 percent, and make the carbon footprint nearly 28 million tons smaller per year by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The BMJ Open study included data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey of British Adults in 2000-2001. Researchers looked at the amount of meat the people in the study consumed, as well as how many green gas emissions were emitted that are linked to 45 different kinds of food.

After adjusting for proportions, the researchers found that people who regularly ate red or processed meat in the study also just generally consumed more food than people who didn't regularly eat red or processed meat. So, they calculated that if people who ate the most red and processed meat in the study change their eating habits so they ate like the people who consumed the least red and processed meat in the study, that would decrease health risks (such as risk of diabetes, colorectal cancer and heart disease) anywhere from 3 to 12 percent.

Specifically, the Telegraph reported that if men with an average meat consumption of 91 grams per day cut it down to 53 grams per day, it would translate to a 12 percent decrease in colorectal cancer and Type 2 diabetes risks.

Plus, the decreased greenhouse gas emissions linked with food and beverages would decrease each year by about 0.45 tons per person, the researchers calculated.

Even though the data is from 2000 and 2001, the researchers noted that red meat consumption hasn't changed significantly over the last 10 years.

"This indicates that our estimates remain relevant and may even be conservative and highlights the need for action to prevent further increases in intake in the UK population," the researchers wrote in the study.

Previous research has shown a possible link between processed meat consumption and cancer risk, with an extra 50 grams a day of processed meat being linked with a 19 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer, according to a British Journal of Cancer study.

And even more recently, a group of water scientists has predicted that the whole world is going to be vegetarian anyhow by 2050, in order to accommodate growing population growth.

"There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," according to the report by Malik Falkenmark and other scientists at the Stockholm International Water Institute noted, as reported by The Guardian.

4-in-1 HIV combination pill approved

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a new anti-HIV pill that combines four medicines to fight the virus that causes AIDS.

The agency approved Gilead Sciences' Stribild as a once-a-day treatment to control HIV in adults who have not still been treated for infection.

The pill contains two previously approved antiviral drugs, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, currently sold as the combination pill Truvada. Those drugs are combined with two new drugs: elvitegravir and cobicistat. Elvitegravir interferes with one of the enzymes that HIV needs to multiply. Cobicistat helps prolong the effect of elvitegravir.

Company studies showed that 88 to 90 percent of patients taking Stribild had an undetectable level of HIV in their blood after 48 weeks, compared with 87 percent for patients taking Atripla, another HIV drug that contains Truvada and one other drug.

An estimated 1.2 million Americans have HIV, which develops into AIDS unless treated with antiviral drugs. AIDS causes the body's immune system to break down, leading to infections which are eventually fatal.

Patients can live healthy, normal lives when treated with antiviral cocktails.

Like most other HIV drugs, Stribild will carry a boxed warning about potentially dangerous side effects, including severe liver problems and the buildup of lactic acid. More common side effects include nausea and diarrhea.

Earlier this year, Gilead received FDA approval to market Truvada as the first preventive medicine for healthy people who are at high risk of acquiring HIV. Truvada was first approved in 2004 for patients already infected with the virus.

UK healthy life expectancy rises to nearly 64 for men

Men in the UK expect to live in good health until almost 64 – two years more than they did half a decade ago, official figures show.

The Office for National Statistics found that in the UK healthy life expectancy – a measure of how long people thought they would live free from the debilitating effects of chronic disease or disability – had risen for men from 61.4 years in the years 2005-7 to 63.5 years in 2008-10. For women the rise was more dramatic – three and a half years more.

The figures came on the day that the ONS also revealed that older workers were retiring early – in effect dropping out of the workforce.

There appeared to be significant national differences with men reporting expectations of a healthy life until 64.4 years in England and 63.0 years in Wales, up from 61.6 years and 59.2 years respectively.

However in Scotland and Northern Ireland men's healthy life expectancy declined from 61.2 years to 59.8 years and from 60.7 years to 59.2 years. The ONS said that some of this could be explained by the "UK labour market, where the percentage of older workers is greater in England and Wales than in Scotland and Northern Ireland".

Experts emphasised that there were "real lifestyle differences between the nations".

Alan Maryon-Davis, professor of public health at King's College London, said there were "markedly more smoking, bad diets and drinking in Scotland and Northern Ireland … that will affect how much healthcare people need. But also we have to note that in terms of workforce it will affect who can work longer. We want people to live lives where they can be economically useful, have better relationships and contribute to society."

The ONS says that by the time men reach 65 in the UK they have 10 years of healthy life left on average but 18 years of total life expectancy. For women the comparable figures are almost 12 years of healthy life but 20 years of life expectancy.

In a paper accompanying the statistical release the ONS said the life expectancy gap between men and women was narrowing due to changes in lifestyle and employment – with less of the male workforce employed in heavy industry.

"Life expectancy for males has increased at a slightly higher rate than for females in recent years, causing an overall narrowing of the gender gap. In part this may be due to changes in lifestyle, such as more rapid declines in rates of alcohol consumption and smoking among males compared with females. There may also be reductions in the health risks associated with occupations traditionally undertaken by males such as the coal and steel industries."

Earlier this year the Church Urban Fund showed a significant north-south divide – with life expectancy for people living in England's most deprived areas up to 20 years lower than for those in affluent districts.

Groups representing older people said that increasing life expectancy was "great news" but posed challenges. Ros Altmann, director general of Saga, said: "The latest figures showing that more of us are staying healthy into later life these days are really something to celebrate. Medical advances have brought such success in helping people live longer. That does also mean re-evaluating our lives too.

"Working longer, keeping active – and saving more if you can – are vital ingredients of managing the ageing population. We need to help older people look after themselves where possible and help younger people appreciate the value of elders."