Low- and moderate-income people must often forgo treatments, report findsREAD MORE...HealthDay: "Many aging baby boomers not yet eligible for Medicare are suffering from debilitating chronic conditions, yet often lack the resources to pay for essential health care, a new report finds.

'This is basically a working group actively saving for retirement,' said Sara Collins, a senior program officer with the Commonwealth Fund, and lead author of the study. 'We wanted to see whether they had health coverage, where they got coverage, and what their out-of-pocket costs were like and what that meant for access to care.'

'These findings are clearly consistent with findings elsewhere,' added Carol Pryor, senior policy analyst with The Access Project in Boston. 'They point to a common problem.'

According to the study, growth in U.S. health care costs is far outpacing increases in workers' wages. Employees are also being required to assume a greater share of premium contributions, deductibles and co-payments. And that's if they have any coverage at all.

The report joins a veritable deluge of data assessing the state of health insurance in the United States."

READ MORE: "A combination of brain scanning with a new imaging agent and cerebrospinal fluid ( CSF ) analysis has left neuroscientists encouraged that they may finally be moving toward techniques for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease before its clinical symptoms become apparent.

' When clinical symptoms start, the disease process has already been at work in the patient for many years and possibly even decades,' explains Anne Fagan Niven, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. ' Up to 30 percent of neurons in vulnerable areas are already dead, and you can't get them back. So finding markers that can help us identify patients prior to symptoms is really our big push now.' "

United Press International - READ MORE: "Northwestern University scientists say they have developed a novel orally administered compound to help Alzheimer's disease patients.

The compound reportedly halts brain cell inflammation and neuron loss associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers note the compound is also rapidly absorbed by the brain and is non-toxic -- important considerations for a central nervous system drug that might need to be taken for extended periods.

The compound, called MW01-5-188WH, selectively inhibits production of pro-inflammatory proteins called cytokines by glia. Those are cells of the central nervous system that normally help the body mount a response, but are overactivated in certain neurodegenerative diseases -- such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, stroke and traumatic brain injury."

READ MORE - New York Times: "Think of it as the fight for the Bionic Baby Boomer.

From head to toe, aging boomers are being kept alive and kicking - or at least walking - by an expanding array of devices that combine the newest medical knowledge with the latest breakthroughs in digital electronics and material sciences. Already, the medical device field has become one of the most innovative and profitable segments of the economy. And as wave after wave of baby boomers enter their prime health care spending years, the medical device market is expected to grow by double digits for years to come. That trend more than any other may explain the current bidding war for the medical device maker Guidant....."

"LOW-LEVEL HEAT WRAP THERAPY SAFELY REDUCES LOW BACK PAIN AND IMPROVES MOBILITY IN THE WORKPLACE"

"The use of continuous low-level heat wrap therapy (CLHT) significantly reduces acute low back pain and related disability and improves occupational performance of employees in physically demanding jobs suffering from acute low back pain, according to a Johns Hopkins study published in the December 2005 issue of The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

"With recent concerns around the safety of oral pain medications, both patients and physicians are considering alternative treatment options for acute low back pain," said Edward J. Bernacki, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study's principal investigator. "The dramatic relief we see in workers using CLHT shows that this therapy has clear benefits for low back pain and that it plays an important role in pain management. Physicians and other health care providers in an occupational environment can tell patients that CLHT is a safe and effective alternative for treating acute low back plain."

In the study, 43 patients (age 20 to 62) who visited an occupational injury clinic for low back pain were randomized into one of two intervention arms: 18 patients received education regarding back therapy and pain management alone, while 25 received education regarding back therapy and pain management combined with three consecutive days of CLHT for eight hours continuously (ThermaCare® HeatWraps). The heat wrap is a wrap worn over the lower back, under the clothing. It uses an exothermic chemical reaction to deliver a low level of topical heat for at least eight continuous hours. All groups were assessed for measures of pain intensity and pain relief levels four times a day during the three treatment days, followed by measures for pain intensity and pain relief levels obtained in three follow-up visits on days four, seven and 14 from the beginning of the treatment. In addition, other measures were obtained and assessed by the Roland-Morris Low Back Disability Questionnaire and the Lifeware Musculoskeletal Abbreviated Assessment Form.

Patients who received CLHT for low back pain over a three-day period in conjunction with pain management education experienced rapid and significant reduction in pain intensity and greater pain relief when compared to patients who only received pain education. Patients on CLHT showed a 52 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 43 percent improvement in pain relief within one day of treatment as compared to the reference group. Both pain intensity reduction and pain relief were maintained for the three days of treatment with CLHT at 60 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Additionally, the benefits of pain relief and pain intensity reduction were maintained at a significant level in the CLHT patients in a follow-up period on day 4 and day 14 after treatment was discontinued."

ABC News: Study: READ MORE: "Although he is 82 years old, Warren Raymond still exercises several times a week.

'It's helped me in any number of ways. It enhances my self-esteem, improves my physical conditioning,' Raymond said.

Raymond was one of 1,700 volunteers in a study that showed exercise also may be good for mental conditioning as well.

In a study published in the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, volunteers 65 years and older were given a battery of memory tests and questioned about their weekly exercise habits.

After six years, researchers detected a remarkable pattern. Seniors who were physically active at least three time a week were 38 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, which causes a slow, irreversible decline in brain function.

'It says the decline the brain experiences late in life is not inevitable. It can be affected by things like habitual exercise,' said lead study author Dr. Eric Larson of the Group Health Coopertive in Seattle."

CLICK TO READ MOREA new study is the first to associate a low-calorie diet with delayed signs of aging in humans, its authors say.

The hearts of people who follow a low-calorie, yet nutritionally balanced, diet resemble those of younger people when examined by sophisticated ultrasound function tests, the study found. They also tend to have more desirable levels of some markers of inflammation and excessive fibrous tissue, it concluded.

The study appears in the Jan. 17 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

".....results of a new study suggest that older age and more extensive cardiovascular risk factors -- and not sub-par treatment -- explain why poor people have higher mortality rates than affluent people after suffering a heart attack.

Patients with the lowest income were twice as likely as those with the highest to die before scheduled follow-up at 30 days, 1 year, and 2 years, the investigators report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"Differences in mortality between poorer and more affluent patients were virtually entirely explained by age and differences in cardiovascular risk profile upon hospital presentation," Dr. Alter said.

"While there were disparities between lower and higher income patients in the type of care that we provided," he added, "those factors were not important players in explaining the survival differences."MORE

- New York TimesIn a study being published in the January issue of The Annals of Neurology, researchers report that vibrating insoles allow diabetics with numb feet and stroke victims with uncertain balance to stand quietly without swaying and losing their balance.

The random vibrations, which were so subtle that people did not have any conscious awareness of them, effectively stimulated the neurons on the bottom of their feet. That provided their wobbly balance system with missing information about how their stance was changing moment to moment.

An earlier study using the vibrating insoles had a similar result, said James J. Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University who led the research. In that experiment, the vibrations helped elderly subjects stand as steadily as most 20-year-olds.

John Milton, a neuroscientist at the Claremont Colleges in California and an expert on human movement who is familiar with the research, said it had great potential.

"Anything that decreases the risk of falling even by a few percent will have a tremendous impact on society," Mr. Milton said.

In 2003, more than 1.8 million people 65 and older were treated in emergency departments for fall-related injuries, and more than 421,000 were hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such injuries cost more than $20 billion a year.

Human balance relies on pressure and touch signals from nerve cells in the soles of the feet, joints and ankles, Dr. Collins said. While a person stands or moves about in different positions, these signals fluctuate and travel up to the brain, where they combine with vision and sensors in the inner ear to achieve balance.

The body, which is essentially an inverted pendulum, is stabilized by a control loop based on this rapidly changing noise from its periphery.

Unfortunately, as people age the mechanical sensors in their feet, joints and muscles degrade, much as hearing and vision decline, Dr. Collins said. Signals from the feet and lower limbs do not reach the brain to promote balance. People then stiffen their muscles to try to improve stability, and that increases their postural sway.

To deliver more useful noise to the brain, Dr. Collins and his colleagues embedded three battery-powered vibrating elements into insoles made of an elastic silicone gel. When people stand on the insoles, their feet are stimulated by random vibrations that they cannot consciously feel but that nevertheless reach their brains.

In the latest experiments, subjects who had trouble balancing were asked to stand quietly on the insoles, hands at their sides and eyes closed. An overhead camera measured how much their bodies swayed by tracking a marker placed on their shoulders. Subjects with numbness from diabetes and others with damage to the brain from strokes were helped by the vibrating soles.

In 2000, Dr. Collins helped form the Afferent Corporation in Providence, R.I., to commercialize the vibrating insoles for use in ordinary shoes. Prototypes are being developed.