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Sunday, 27 May 2012

Princess Health and.Princessiccia

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H+P Sucess Story

H+P athlete Dale just started into running in late 2011.  He wanted to pursue a new hobby and a higher level of fitness in the process.  After following through with a few beginner running groups, Dale ran his first 10km in January 2012 in a time of 54 minutes.

Not bad for just starting out in the sport of running!  But Dale was not satisfied.

After following through with the H+P Monday Night Interval Sessions and Coach Sean's Personal Training Plan, Dale set out to race the Yonge Street 10K on April 22nd, 2012.

With a goal time of running sub-50 minutes, Dale completely exceeded expectations running an amazing 43:43, taking over 10 minutes off his personal best over the course of 4 short months.  

Dale also placed just inside the top 10 percent of a field just under 6000 runners, and placed 25th in the very competitive 50-54 AG category.

Congratulations Dale, way to make the entire team proud!

Dale finishing the 2012 YS10km in a PB time of 43:43

Friday, 25 May 2012

Princess Health and U of L profs get $6.3 million to continue spinal cord research.Princessiccia

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Susan Harkema, a University of Louisville professor, talks
about epidural spinal stimulation. Courier-Journal photo.
Two University of Louisville professors have received a $6.3 million grant to continue their work helping paralyzed patients restore movement by using electrical stimulation.

The grant was awarded to Susan Harkema and Dr. Jonathan Hodes from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Last year, they received much acclaim when they published a study in the journal The Lancet "showing that the use of continual, direct, electrical stimulation of a patient's lower spinal cord using technology designed for pain relief can allow a person using a wheelchair to stand and bear weight," reports Laura Ungar for The Courier-Journal.

With these new grant funds, Harkema said they will "be able to built a stimulator that will allow the individual to take advantage of these advances in their homes and communities."

One of the initial case studies involved Rob Summers, a former baseball player from Oregon who was paralyzed below the chest after a car accident. After the therapy, he was able to get to a standing position and stand as long as four minutes. "He was also able to take steps with help and move his toes, ankles, knees and hips." Harkema said he continues to improve.

Nationwide, more than 5 million Americans live with some type of paralysis, and more than 1.3 million have spinal-cord injuries. (Read more)

Princess Health and Federal panel says PSA screening for prostate cancer does more harm than good, but no better test is available.Princessiccia

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Prostate cancer cells. Getty Images photo by Abbey Michael.
An influential federal panel says testing healthy men's prostate-specific antigen levels to detect prostate cancer does more harm than good.

The PSA test can lead to unnecessary biopsies for men who turn out to be cancer-free. Those biopsies can also lead to men being treated for cancers that are so slow-growing (a characteristic of most prostate cancers) that they didn't need to be detected.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,300 men die annually from complications associated with treatments that are initiated because of PSA screening, reports Alice Park for Time magazine. Moreover, treating harmless prostate tumors increases the chances of making men impotent or incontinent.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published the recommendation in the Annals of Internal Medicine. In 2009, the panel also recommended that women delay routine mammograms until the age of 50. That was controversial, and "The task force's recommendation goes against two decades of widespread use of the PSA test, a $35 blood test," Park reports.

"The recommendation is not just counter to what the lay public has been taught about cancer prevention but what physicians have been taught as well," said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-vice chair of the USPSTF and a professor of family and community medicine at University of Missouri. "We've been told for decades to be afraid of cancer and that the only hope is early detection and treatment. So it's hard for physicians and patients alike to accept that not all cancers need to be detected or need to be treated and that there are harms associated with screening, not just benefits."

Through PSA testing, physicians "were finding the cancer earlier, so the time from diagnosis to death was longer, but the patient wasn't actually living longer," explained Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

But there isn't a better test to replace the PSA, and Ian Thompson, chairman of urology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, said to reject it completely is unwise. He said U.S. death rates from prostate cancer dropped between 30 and 50 percent since the screening became commonplace in the early 1990s, though those numbers could also have been influenced by more effective treatments. Thompson said he didn't want to go back to the "bad old days" when doctors only found prostate cancer when it was already unable to be cured, reports Liz Szabo for USA Today.  (Read more)

Princess Health and Louisville comes in third to last in fitness and health ranking of 50 largest cities.Princessiccia

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Rowing under California's Bay Bridge (Photo by City Kayak)
In a fitness ranking of the country's 50 largest cities, Louisville ranked an abysmal 48th, sitting just above Detroit and Oklahoma City.

These were some of the results of the American College of Sports Medicine's 2012 Fitness Index. Cities were assessed on preventive health behaviors; levels of chronic disease; health care access; and community resources and policies that support physical activity such as bike lanes and parks.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was ranked first for the second year in a row, scoring 77.2 out of a possible 100 points. Louisville got just 32.1 points, but it did climb up one ranking slot over 2011's assessment.

The index is gaining notoriety and "might well become the scorecard for cities looking to attract health-conscious companies and people to settle in for a spell," reports Melissa Healy for the Los Angeles Times. "It draws on parks and recreation data from the Trust for Public Land, on nutrition and health behavior collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and on federally tallied school report cards to learn about school policies that promote fitness." (Read more)

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Princess Health and.Princessiccia

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NEW LEARN TO RUN GROUP!

New learn to run group starts in TWO WEEKS!

8 week program designed to help you reach your summer fitness goals-June 14th-August 2nd!

Every Thursday at 6:30pm!

Designed and led by experienced runners, this program will introduce you to the sport of running at your own pace & injury free!

Registration Deadline: Monday, June 11th 2012

E-Mail: gillianwillard@gmail.com


Princess Health and Nursing home chain says it will lease its Kentucky facilities because legislature didn't pass bill to filter lawsuits.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Nursing home chain says it will lease its Kentucky facilities because legislature didn't pass bill to filter lawsuits.Princessiccia

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A major nursing-home chain says it will lease all of its Kentucky properties to a Texas company because a bill to insulate nursing homes from lawsuits did not pass the General Assembly this year,

Extendicare Health Services owns Pembroke Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Shady Lawn Nursing Home in Cadiz and 19 other facilities in Kentucky, reports Nick Tabor of the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville. The company has been riddled with problems. A 2009 study ranked three of its Kentucky facilities among the country's worst nursing homes.

"The combination of a worsening litigation environment and the lack of any likelihood of tort reform in the state of Kentucky has made this the prudent decision for our company and its unitholders," said Tim Lukenda, president and CEO of Extendicare.

In this year's legislative session, nursing homes lobbied for a law that would have created medical review panels to evaluate potential lawsuits against nursing homes, personal-care homes and some facilities for the intellectually and developmentally disabled. The goal of the panel was to help eliminate frivolous lawsuits against the long-term care industry.

The Pembroke facility has been sued 20 times in Christian Circuit Court since 2002, and seven of the suits are still pending, Tabor reports. The others were dismissed, most with confidential settlements. (Read more)

Princess Health and Care in rural hospitals is just as good as that in urban hospitals, study concludes.Princessiccia

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While rural Americans have less access to primary care and have worse health outcomes, the care at rural hospitals is equal to, if not better, than that at urban hospitals, a National Rural Health Association report says.

The study also found rural health care is not more expensive than urban care. "However, urban residents rarely out-migrate to rural settings for either routine or advanced treatments or care yet many rural patients are referred to or voluntarily travel to urban providers based on the myth of better care," a summary of the study says.

The study was compiled by iVantage Health Analysis, a private health-care research company. It collected data on Medicare costs and health outcomes for doctors and hospitals for 12 months and divided the results into rural and urban groups based on zip codes, to give a picture of the state-by-state importance of rural hospitals.

In Kentucky, nearly half of its Medicare beneficiaries lived in rural counties in 2010. Nationwide, just 21 percent of them do, though there were western states with much higher percentages. In Wyoming, for example, 69 percent of Medicare beneficiaries live in rural places. Spending per Medicare beneficiary in Kentucky was nearly $8,000 in both urban ($7,851) and rural ($7,879) settings in 2010. That spending is high compared to the rest of the country, however; only nine other states had higher spending.
The study could have wider wider ramifications given changes in the federal health-care reform law and the move toward accountable care organizations, in which doctors and other providers are encouraged to team up to give coordinated care for a population of people and be paid financial incentives to do so.

"Value in health care is created by doing a few things well and not by trying to do everything," the summary reads. "The rural findings may just suggest that by national selection, rural has figured out what it does well and has optimized those services for the patient's benefit." (Read more)
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