�With more than 30
million Americans expected to hit the roads this Labor Day weekend, there's
much more for drivers to worry about than high gas prices and congested
highways, warns The Vision Council and the National Sleep Foundation (NSF).
The organizations are joining forces to educate the nation about two
under-recognized driving hazards, poor vision and drowsy driving, that are
just as deadly as poor road weather condition and drunk driving, specially at
night.
According to a recent survey, Shedding Light on Driving in the Dark,
respondents complained of asthenopia (38 per centum), dry or tired eyes (34
per centum), fatigue (25 percent) and an unfitness to focus (18 pct) while
driving at night. In addition, both the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) and the National Safety Council adduce the human death
rate at nighttime (6:00 P.M. - 6:00 A.M.) to be three multiplication higher than the
day rate.
More than 11 million Americans have undisciplined vision problems, which
lav significantly diminish their ability to ride safely. And, since 85
percent of the information needed for safe driving is visual, regular optic
exams are an authoritative part of driver safety.
"We trust on our eyes every time we step into a gondola, especially our
peripheral visual modality, depth perception and focalization skills," aforesaid Ed Greene,
CEO of the Vision Council. "This link between vision and driving makes it
essential for motorists to read steps to maintain healthy vision, but as
they take other safety precautions on the road."
In addition, the 2008 Sleep in America Poll establish that 64 percent of
drivers world Health Organization work at least 30 hours per week account they own driven a
vehicle spell feeling drowsy in the past year, and more than tierce, 36
per centum, have actually fallen benumbed at the wheel. Sleep-related crashes
are most common in young people, specially men, shift workers, commercial
drivers, and people with untreated sopor disorders. NHTSA conservatively
estimates that century,000 police-reported crashes ar the steer result of
driver tiredness each year. This results in an estimated 1,550 deaths, 71,000
injuries, and $12.5 billion in monetary losings each year.
"Most people are cognisant of the dangers of drinking and driving, but are
unaware that driving drowsy bathroom be just as fatal," said Darrel Drobnich,
chief program officer at NSF. "In fact, traffic safety and slumber experts
believe that yawning driving is much more common than even federal
statistics indicate."
Recent research finds that even a single night of quietus deprivation canful
negatively regard a driver's ability to coordinate eye movement with
steering a car. And, like intoxicant, sleepiness affects your vision, slows
reaction time, decreases awareness and increases your risk of crashing.
To improve driver safety during this holiday weekend, the National
Sleep Foundation and The Vision Council offer the following tips for
enhancing vision and preventing drowsy driving:
-- Get regular comprehensive eye exams from an eye doctor. Many serious
and progressive eye diseases do not have noticeable symptoms. An eye dr.
can too ensure that your prescription is stream.
-- Always wear your prescription eyewear and make sure that your
eyeglasses are clean. Cleaning lenses regularly helps to move out dirt and
fingerprints that can interfere with vision, especially at night.
-- Wear anti-reflective (AR) lenses to eliminate lens blaze. AR lenses
act to improve imagination by increasing the amount of light that reaches the
eye and by reducing harmful glare due to reflections off the back surfaces
of lenses.
-- Get adequate sleep. Most adults need seventy-nine hours to maintain proper
alertness during the day. Make sleep a antecedency before getting behind the
wheel.
-- Schedule proper breaks and arrange for a travel companion. Stop or
switch drivers approximately every hundred miles or two hours during foresighted
trips.
-- Watch for the warning signs of fatigue. Impaired reaction time and
legal opinion; decreased performance, vigilance and motivation; trouble
focusing, keeping your eyes open or your head up; revery and peregrine
thoughts; yawning or rubbing your eyes repeatedly; drifting from your lane;
tailgating and absent signs or exits; and feeling restless, irritable or
aggressive. If you observe yourself rolling down the window, turning up the
radio or experiencing one of these signs of fatigue, pull over at safe
topographic point immediately for a short nap or find a place to stay for the night.
For more information about vision and safe drive, or to find an eye
doctor in your area, call in http://www.thevisioncouncil.org. To instruct more about
drowsy drive and Drowsy Driving Prevention Week, held in November, visit
http://www.drowsydriving.org.
About The Vision Council:
Dedicated to enhancing life through better vision, The Vision Council
represents the manufacturers and suppliers of the optical manufacture. We
provide a forum to exponent for better vision and to promote quality vision
care products and services in the global community.
About the National Sleep Foundation:
The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) is an independent nonprofit
organisation dedicated to improving populace health and safety by achieving
greater understanding of sleep and sleep disorders. NSF furthers its
military mission through sleep-related education, research and advocacy initiatives.
To learn more than about yawning driving and sleep disorders visit:
hypertext transfer protocol://www.drowsydriving.org or http://www.sleepfoundation.org.
National Sleep Foundation
http://www.sleepfoundation.org
More info
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Low Vitamin D Levels Pose Large Threat To Health
�Researchers at Johns Hopkins are reportage what is believed to be the most conclusive evidence to date that inadequate levels of vitamin D, obtained from milk, fortified cereals and exposure to sun, lead to substantially increased risk of death.
In a study coiffure to come out in the Archives of Internal Medicine online Aug. 11, the Johns Hopkins team analyzed a diverse sample of 13,000 initially salubrious men and women participating in an ongoing national health review and compared the peril of death between those with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D to those with higher amounts. An unhealthy lack, experts say, is considered blood levels of 17.8 nanograms per cubic centimetre or lower.
Of the 1,800 study participants known to make died by Dec. 31, 2000, most 700 died from some form of heart disease, with four hundred of these being deficient in vitamin D. This translates overall to an estimated 26 percent increased risk of any death, though the number of deaths from heart disease alone was not large enough to meet scientific criteria to resolve that it was due to low vitamin D levels.
Yet, researchers say it does highlight a trend, with other studies linking shortages of vitamin D to increased rates of bosom cancer and depression in the aged. And earlier published findings by the team, from the same national study, have naturalized a possible tie-in, display an 80 percent increased risk of peripheral artery disease from vitamin D deficits.
Researchers government note that other studies in the net year or so in animals and humans have identified a connection between low levels of vitamin D and heart disease. But these studies, they say, were weakened by small sample numbers, lack of diversity in the population studied and other factors that limited scientists' ability to generalize the findings to the public at large.
"Our results make it often more clear that all men and women concerned about their overall health should more than closely monitor their rake levels of vitamin D, and work sure they have sufficiency," says subject field co-lead investigator Erin Michos, M.D., M.H.S.
"We think we have extra evidence to consider adding vitamin D deficiency as a distinct and severalise risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease, putting it alongside much better known and understood risk factors, such as age, gender, family history, smoke, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, lack of usage, obesity and diabetes," says Michos.
Vitamin D is well known to play an essential character in cell growth, in boosting the body's immune system and in strengthening bones.
"Now that we know vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor, we can better assess how aggressively to treat people at risk of heart disease or those world Health Organization are already ill and undergoing discussion," says Michos, who adds that test screening for nutrient levels is comparatively simple. It can, she says, be made section of bit blood work and through while monitoring other known risk factors, including blood pressure, glucose and lipoid levels.
Heart disease remains the nation's stellar cause of death, kill more than a gazillion Americans each year. Nearly 10 pct of those with the condition have not one identifiable, traditional risk element, which the experts say is why a considerable extent of the disease goes unexplained.
Michos, an helper professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, recommends that people boost their vitamin D levels by eating diets rich in such fish as sardines and mackerel, consuming fortified dairy products, taking cod-liver oil and vitamin supplements, and in warmer brave out briefly exposing skin to the sun's vitamin-D producing ultraviolet light.
Aware of the cancer risks linked to too much time worn out in the sun, she says as little as 10 to 15 proceedings of day-by-day exposure to the sun can produce sufficient amounts of vitamin D to sustain health. The hormone-like nutrient controls blood levels of calcium and phosphorus, essential chemicals in the body.
If vitamin supplements are used, Michos says thither is no evidence that more than 2,000 international units per clarence Shepard Day Jr. do any good. Study results establish that heart disease death rates planate out in participants with the highest vitamin D levels (higher up 50 nanograms per ml of blood), signaling a possible loss of the vitamin's protective effects at too-high doses.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine suggests that an decent daily uptake of vitamin D is between two hundred and four hundred international units (or blood levels nearing 30 nanograms per cubic centimeter). Previous results from the same nationwide survey showed that 41 percent of men and 53 per centum of women are technically deficient in the food, with vitamin D levels below 28 nanograms per milliliter.
Michal Melamed, M.D., M.H.S., study co-lead investigator wHO started the research as a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins, says no one knows yet why or how vitamin D's hormone-like properties may protect the heart, but she adds that there are plenty of leads in the better known golf links the vitamin has to problems with muscle giantism and high blood insistency, in addition to its control of inflammation, which scientists are showing plays a stronger role in all kinds of heart disease. But more research is required to decide the nutrient's precise biologic action.
Researchers state their side by side steps ar to test various high doses of vitamin D to discover out if the nutritional supplementation results in fewer deaths and lower incidence of pump disease, including heart plan of attack or moments of prolonged and severe chest pain.
The team too plans to investigate what biological triggers, such as obesity or hypertension, mightiness offset or worsen the action of vitamin D on ticker muscle, or whether vitamin D sets off some other reaction in the heart.
Melamed says that because vitamin D levels are known to fluctuate in direct proportion with day-to-day physical activity, the growing epidemic of obesity and indoor sedentary lifestyles lend more urgency to act on the vitamin D factor.
Funding for this cogitation was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the P.J. Schafer Cardiovascular Research Fund and the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Program. Michos has received previous consulting fees from vitamin D therapeutics manufacturer Abbott Pharmaceuticals. The terms of these arrangements are being managed by the Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.
Besides Michos and Melamed, other Hopkins researchers involved in this survey, conducted entirely at Hopkins, were Wendy Post, M.D.; and Brad Astor, Ph.D. Melamed is now an assistant prof at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.
Johns Hopkins Medicine
901 S Bond St., Ste. 550
Baltimore, MD 21231
United States
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org
More information
In a study coiffure to come out in the Archives of Internal Medicine online Aug. 11, the Johns Hopkins team analyzed a diverse sample of 13,000 initially salubrious men and women participating in an ongoing national health review and compared the peril of death between those with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D to those with higher amounts. An unhealthy lack, experts say, is considered blood levels of 17.8 nanograms per cubic centimetre or lower.
Of the 1,800 study participants known to make died by Dec. 31, 2000, most 700 died from some form of heart disease, with four hundred of these being deficient in vitamin D. This translates overall to an estimated 26 percent increased risk of any death, though the number of deaths from heart disease alone was not large enough to meet scientific criteria to resolve that it was due to low vitamin D levels.
Yet, researchers say it does highlight a trend, with other studies linking shortages of vitamin D to increased rates of bosom cancer and depression in the aged. And earlier published findings by the team, from the same national study, have naturalized a possible tie-in, display an 80 percent increased risk of peripheral artery disease from vitamin D deficits.
Researchers government note that other studies in the net year or so in animals and humans have identified a connection between low levels of vitamin D and heart disease. But these studies, they say, were weakened by small sample numbers, lack of diversity in the population studied and other factors that limited scientists' ability to generalize the findings to the public at large.
"Our results make it often more clear that all men and women concerned about their overall health should more than closely monitor their rake levels of vitamin D, and work sure they have sufficiency," says subject field co-lead investigator Erin Michos, M.D., M.H.S.
"We think we have extra evidence to consider adding vitamin D deficiency as a distinct and severalise risk factor for death from cardiovascular disease, putting it alongside much better known and understood risk factors, such as age, gender, family history, smoke, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, lack of usage, obesity and diabetes," says Michos.
Vitamin D is well known to play an essential character in cell growth, in boosting the body's immune system and in strengthening bones.
"Now that we know vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor, we can better assess how aggressively to treat people at risk of heart disease or those world Health Organization are already ill and undergoing discussion," says Michos, who adds that test screening for nutrient levels is comparatively simple. It can, she says, be made section of bit blood work and through while monitoring other known risk factors, including blood pressure, glucose and lipoid levels.
Heart disease remains the nation's stellar cause of death, kill more than a gazillion Americans each year. Nearly 10 pct of those with the condition have not one identifiable, traditional risk element, which the experts say is why a considerable extent of the disease goes unexplained.
Michos, an helper professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart and Vascular Institute, recommends that people boost their vitamin D levels by eating diets rich in such fish as sardines and mackerel, consuming fortified dairy products, taking cod-liver oil and vitamin supplements, and in warmer brave out briefly exposing skin to the sun's vitamin-D producing ultraviolet light.
Aware of the cancer risks linked to too much time worn out in the sun, she says as little as 10 to 15 proceedings of day-by-day exposure to the sun can produce sufficient amounts of vitamin D to sustain health. The hormone-like nutrient controls blood levels of calcium and phosphorus, essential chemicals in the body.
If vitamin supplements are used, Michos says thither is no evidence that more than 2,000 international units per clarence Shepard Day Jr. do any good. Study results establish that heart disease death rates planate out in participants with the highest vitamin D levels (higher up 50 nanograms per ml of blood), signaling a possible loss of the vitamin's protective effects at too-high doses.
The U.S. Institute of Medicine suggests that an decent daily uptake of vitamin D is between two hundred and four hundred international units (or blood levels nearing 30 nanograms per cubic centimeter). Previous results from the same nationwide survey showed that 41 percent of men and 53 per centum of women are technically deficient in the food, with vitamin D levels below 28 nanograms per milliliter.
Michal Melamed, M.D., M.H.S., study co-lead investigator wHO started the research as a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins, says no one knows yet why or how vitamin D's hormone-like properties may protect the heart, but she adds that there are plenty of leads in the better known golf links the vitamin has to problems with muscle giantism and high blood insistency, in addition to its control of inflammation, which scientists are showing plays a stronger role in all kinds of heart disease. But more research is required to decide the nutrient's precise biologic action.
Researchers state their side by side steps ar to test various high doses of vitamin D to discover out if the nutritional supplementation results in fewer deaths and lower incidence of pump disease, including heart plan of attack or moments of prolonged and severe chest pain.
The team too plans to investigate what biological triggers, such as obesity or hypertension, mightiness offset or worsen the action of vitamin D on ticker muscle, or whether vitamin D sets off some other reaction in the heart.
Melamed says that because vitamin D levels are known to fluctuate in direct proportion with day-to-day physical activity, the growing epidemic of obesity and indoor sedentary lifestyles lend more urgency to act on the vitamin D factor.
Funding for this cogitation was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the P.J. Schafer Cardiovascular Research Fund and the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Program. Michos has received previous consulting fees from vitamin D therapeutics manufacturer Abbott Pharmaceuticals. The terms of these arrangements are being managed by the Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.
Besides Michos and Melamed, other Hopkins researchers involved in this survey, conducted entirely at Hopkins, were Wendy Post, M.D.; and Brad Astor, Ph.D. Melamed is now an assistant prof at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.
Johns Hopkins Medicine
901 S Bond St., Ste. 550
Baltimore, MD 21231
United States
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org
More information
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Dizzee Rascal not expecting another No.1
Dizzee Rascal has insisted that he does not expect his future singles to top the charts.
Following the succeeder of his recent 'Dance Wiv Me' track, which was number one in the UK for four-spot weeks, the R&B star has vowed to stick with his new pop sound.
However, as he prepares to return to the studio and record new material, Rascal has admitted that he won't experience his hopes up for another reign at the top.
"I'm non thinking of it as well much like 'I want another number one', because it don't really work like that, the charts are in truth unpredictable," Dizzee told BBC Radio 6 Music. "All you canful hope for is to have a hit that grabs the attention of everyone, like that song does."
Asked about his future plans, he confirmed: "We're doing a small tour of Australia. Then I just want to get back in the studio and make music again. I've put lashings of demos down."
More information
Following the succeeder of his recent 'Dance Wiv Me' track, which was number one in the UK for four-spot weeks, the R&B star has vowed to stick with his new pop sound.
However, as he prepares to return to the studio and record new material, Rascal has admitted that he won't experience his hopes up for another reign at the top.
"I'm non thinking of it as well much like 'I want another number one', because it don't really work like that, the charts are in truth unpredictable," Dizzee told BBC Radio 6 Music. "All you canful hope for is to have a hit that grabs the attention of everyone, like that song does."
Asked about his future plans, he confirmed: "We're doing a small tour of Australia. Then I just want to get back in the studio and make music again. I've put lashings of demos down."
More information
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