Community Magazine July 2014

104 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE HOSPITALS IMPROVING PATIENT SAFETY The government says hospitals are becoming safer for patients due to a quality improvement partnership between industry and federal agencies. A report in May 2014 from Health and Human Services found that adverse events such as medication mistakes, falls and infections decreased by 9 percent from 2010 to 2012, the latest year that such statistics were available. This reduction prevented nearly 15,000 deaths and saved $4 billion in costs, the report estimated. Another key quality indicator forMedicare patients also showed continued improvement, as readmission rates declined in 2013 for the second year in a row. Under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, hospitals can face financial penalties if too many Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted within 30 days of an initial hospitalization. PHYSICAL FITNESS LINKED TOMEMORY FUNCTION Here’s yet another reason to drop that doughnut and hit the treadmill: aerobic fitness will boost your long-term memory, according to a new study. “The findings show that lower-fit individuals lose more memory across time,” said study co-author Kimberly Fenn. The study is one of the first to investigate the link between fitness and memory in young, generally healthy adults. Previous research on fitness and memory has focused largely on children, whose brains are still developing, and the elderly, whose memories are declining. Participants in the study related word pairs such as “camp” and “trail,” and the next day they were tested on the word pairs to evaluate long-term memory retention. Long-term memory refers to retaining information initially obtained more than about 30 seconds earlier. A surprising number of college students in the study were significantly out of shape and were far less capable of retaining information than those who were extremely fit, Fenn said. The findings speak to the increasingly sedentary lifestyles of people in the United States and other Western cultures. ASPIRIN A DAY?WHO SHOULD, WHO SHOULDN’T Some people taking daily aspirin should cut back to two or three doses a week. That’s the advice of one of the nation’s top cardiologists in the wake of a new warning from the Food and Drug Administration last month that too many Americans are taking aspirin every day, exposing themselves to the risk of bleeding in the stomach and brain. The FDA said that aspirin shouldn’t be used to prevent heart attacks or stroke in people with no history of heart disease. Chauncey Crandall, M.D., chief of the cardiac transplant program at the world- renowned Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic, believes that the warning goes too far. “Based on my 30 years of practice I can tell you that a large number of heart attacks happen in people without underlying coronary heart disease,” Dr. Crandall said. “Up to 50 percent of people who have their first heart attack don’t have diagnosed heart disease. Aspirin can prevent these first heart attacks – so people should not stop taking it.” He recommends that those over age 50 with no heart disease history take a low-dose or baby aspirin two to three days a week. “That way, they will get the benefits of aspirin without the risks,” Dr. Crandall said. For patients who’ve had a heart attack or show other signs of heart disease, he advises taking a low-dose aspirin every day. “Aspirin is a lifesaving drug with a long safety record,” said Dr. Crandall. Beside heart attack prevention, he explains, aspirin “has a lot of other benefits, as well.” For example, research has shown that it helps prevent colon cancer and osteoarthritis. The FDA noted that aspirin, which is a blood thinner, increases the risk for potentially serious complications, including bleeding and gastrointestinal problems. WALKING BOOSTS CREATIVITY If you find yourself in a creative slump, scientists have a suggestion: take a walk. People generate more creative ideas when they walk than when they sit, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. “Everyone always says going on a walk gives you new ideas, but nobody had ever proved it before,” said Marily Oppezzo, Professor of Psychology at Santa Clara University and the lead author of the study. To measure creativity, Oppezzo recruited 176 people and gave them various verbal tests. Researchers found that 81 percent of the participants improved their creative output when walking. Walkers were more talkative than sitters, but, Oppezzo said, the increased output of creative ideas while ambulatory was not simply the result of having more ideas in general. “We took everything they said and divided the total creative ideas by the total ideas mentioned,” she said. “Walkers had more thoughts, but they also had a higher density of creative thoughts than sitters.” In subsequent experiments, the researchers found that this creative boost can linger. People who took the creativity test while walking came up with more creative ideas later while sitting in their chairs than other seated volunteers who hadn’t gone for a walk. To make sure this was not just a function of the volunteers’ growing accustomed to the test, the researchers asked some participants to take the test twice and to remain seated both times. Under those conditions, test performance did not improve with experience. In another set of experiments, the researchers found that walking inside was just as good for creativity as walking outside, though being outdoors made participants more talkative. “Our study shows everybody’s creativity improved when they were walking compared to themselves when they were sitting,” Oppezzo said. To • • Health