Patients who feel that their physicians treat them with respect and fairness, communicate well and engage with them outside of the office setting are more active in their own health care, finds a new study published in the journal Health Services Research. The study looked at how role relationships between patients and their physicians, which traditionally have followed a passive-patient and dominant-physic ...

People sleep significantly better and feel more alert during the day if they get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week, a new study concludes. A nationally representative sample of more than 2,600 men and women, ages 18 to 85, found that 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week, which is the national guideline, provided a 65 percent improvement in sleep quality. People also said they felt less ...

Critically ill patients who recover from a potentially deadly syndrome known as acute lung injury frequently emerge with new, apparently long-lasting depressive symptoms and new physical impairments that make them unable to perform many daily tasks, Johns Hopkins research suggests. Results of the new study, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, also suggest that the de ...

An intermittent, low-carbohydrate diet was superior to a standard, daily calorie-restricted diet for reducing weight and lowering blood levels of insulin, a cancer-promoting hormone, according to recent findings. Researchers at Genesis Prevention Center at University Hospital in South Manchester, England, found that restricting carbohydrates two days per week may be a better dietary approach than a standard ...

Obesity is associated with worse outcomes overall in early-stage breast cancer, researchers reported at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 6-10, 2011. Obesity was linked to shorter time to recurrence (TTR), disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). The exception was treatment with endocrine therapy (mainly tamoxifen), in which obesity was associated with a protect ...

Having diabetes or being obese after age 60 significantly increases the risk for developing breast cancer, a Swedish study has revealed. Data also showed that high blood lipids were less common in patients when diagnosed with breast cancer, while low blood lipids were associated with an increased risk. Researchers of the study also looked at overall cancer incidence and discovered that use of one diabetes d ...

Contrary to claims that United States' presidents age at twice the normal rate, a new study finds that most U.S. presidents live longer than expected for men of their same age and era. The research letter, by noted University of Illinois at Chicago demographer S. Jay Olshansky, is published in the Dec. 7 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. ...

A new analysis of national survey data finds that less than one-quarter of parents of overweight children recall ever being told by a doctor or other health care provider that their children were overweight. And although that percentage has increased over the last 10 years, more improvement is needed, said Eliana M. Perrin, MD, MPH, associate professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Scho ...

State and school district-level policies mandating minimum requirements for in-school physical education and recess time are associated with increased odds of schools in those states and districts meeting physical activity recommendations for students, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ...

Over a 10-year period, spending for Medicaid-enrolled patients with depression increased substantially but only minimal improvements in quality of care were observed, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The study was carried out by Catherine A. Fullerton, M.D., M.P.H., of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, Bosto ...