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Some 58 percent of Americans never wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, 70 percent never wear hearing protection when using a gas lawn mower or leaf blower, and 27 percent never use sunscreen when they’re in the sun for a long time, according to a nationally representative poll of 1,000 Americans conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.

The poll reveals what behaviors Americans do which they probably shouldn’t including: drive at least 10 mph over the speed limit on highways (25 percent often, 44 percent occasionally), talk on a cell phone (no hands-free device) while driving, (17 percent often, 36 occasionally) and leave items on the stairs at home (15 percent often, 22 percent occasionally).

The poll also reveals what behaviors Americans don’t do that they probably should including: read warnings that come with a prescription (9 percent never do), and unplug the toaster/toaster oven when not in use: (50 percent never do).

The results are revealing because those behaviors can cause real harm, according to safety experts at Consumer Reports and elsewhere. Ninety-two percent of bicyclists killed in 2007 reportedly weren’t wearing a helmet, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which notes that helmet use has been estimated to reduce risk of head injury by 85 percent.

The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 1 million new cases of basal and squamous cell cancers were expected to be diagnosed in 2008. And according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, prolonged exposure to noise at or above 85 decibels (emitted by many mowers) can cause gradual hearing loss.

Male and female poll respondents didn’t act much differently except when it came to wearing sunscreen (women did more often) and reading the info sheet for medicine (ditto). Behavior of younger respondents varied most when they were on the road. Respondents 18 to 34 years old were more likely than their elders to say they often use a cell phone when driving, roll through a stop sign, or drive at least 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

The full report on how often Americans take risks is available in the February 2009 issue of Consumer Reports, on sale January 6 and online at www.ConsumerReports.org.

Source: Consumer Reports

If you’re an asthma sufferer, make sure the medical history at your doctor’s office includes your employment and recreation plans. A new screening tool developed by Tel Aviv University researchers may save you a trip to the emergency room later on.

It has long been suspected that physical exertion itself, as part of work or play, can trigger an asthma attack, but little medical evidence has been found for this conclusion ? until now. A study by Dr. Shlomo Moshe from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine gives doctors a new way of advising those who may be at risk.

Dr. Moshe’s research, reported in Occupational Medicine, will also help young asthmatic adults find safer and more suitable employment. It could also save lives.

Doctors should be aware of the risk level for asthma in young adult patients, Dr. Moshe says. “Using our recent research, we have developed a tool that gives both percentages and risks. If you had asthma in childhood, you can certainly develop it again. Family physicians need to know that certain jobs can be risky to their patients. If a patient wants to be a pro-football player, a baker, a carpenter, or a technician in an animal laboratory, his doctor needs to advise him accordingly.”

Dr. Moshe’s most recent research, which follows upon an earlier study, finds an indisputable connection between asthma and exercise. “When young adults start their first job, they should be aware of the pulmonary risks,” says Dr. Moshe, whose research covered nearly 800 young recruits to the Israel Defense Forces. “Exercise and sports like football do cause asthmatic attacks. Logically, that should be considered if someone wants to do a job which includes physical exertion, like being a guard, taking part in competitive sports, or working in a factory on heavy machinery.”

Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Adults with diabetes experience a slowdown in several types of mental processing, which appears early in the disease and persists into old age, according to new research. Given the sharp rise in new cases of diabetes, this finding means that more adults may soon be living with mild but lasting deficits in their thought processes.

Researchers at Canada’s University of Alberta analyzed a cross-section of adults with and without adult-onset Type 2 diabetes, all followed in the Victoria Longitudinal Study. At three-year intervals, this study tracks three independent samples of initially healthy older adults to assess biomedical, health, cognitive and neurocognitive aspects of aging. The Neuropsychology study involved 41 adults with diabetes and 424 adults in good health, between ages 53 and 90.

The research confirmed previous reports that diabetes impairs cognition and added two important findings. First, it teased out the specific domains hurt by diabetes. Second, it revealed that the performance gap was not worse in the older group. Thus, the reductions in executive function and processing speed seem to begin earlier in the disease.

Healthy adults performed significantly better than adults with diabetes on two of the five domains tested: executive functioning, with significant differences across four different tests, and speed, with significant differences or trends across five different tests. There were no significant differences on tests of episodic and semantic memory, verbal fluency, reaction time and perceptual speed.

When researchers divided participants into young-old and old-old, with age 70 as the cutoff, they found the same pattern of cognitive differences between young-old and old-old in the diabetes and control groups. Thus, the researchers concluded, the diabetes-linked cognitive deficits appear early and remain stable.

Source: American Psychological Association

A new study has found that among women who have never used menopausal hormone therapy, obese women are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer compared with women of normal weight. The research indicates that obesity may contribute to the development of ovarian cancer through a hormonal mechanism.

Ovarian cancer is the most fatal of gynecologic malignancies, and has a 5-year survival rate of only 37 percent. While studies have linked excess body weight to higher risks of certain cancers, little is known about the relationship between body mass index and ovarian cancer risk.

Researchers studied 94,525 U.S. women aged 50 to 71 years over a period of seven years. The researchers documented 303 ovarian cancer cases during this time and noted that among women who had never taken hormones after menopause, obesity was associated with an almost 80 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer. In contrast, no link between body weight and ovarian cancer was evident for women who had ever used menopausal hormone therapy.

According to researchers, these findings support the hypothesis that obesity may enhance ovarian cancer risk in part through its hormonal effects. Excess body mass in postmenopausal women leads to an increased production of estrogen, which in turn may stimulate the growth of ovarian cells and play a role in the development of ovarian cancer.

Among women with no family history of ovarian cancer, obesity and increased ovarian cancer risk were also linked in this study. However, women that did have a positive family history of ovarian cancer showed no association between body mass and ovarian cancer risk.

The study will be published in the February 15, 2009 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.