-Dr. Kathy Johnson, PhD, CMC

According to the latest edition of Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences, older adults increase their chances of falling by not taking their medications as directed.  This information comes from a recent study of Boston-area residents over age 70, which found those who sometimes neglected their medication experienced a 50 percent increased rate of falls compared with those who did not.

“Falls can now be added to the growing list of poor health outcomes associated with non-adherence to medication,” said lead author Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH,  a research scientist with the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston.

“Because non-adherence is common and easy to screen for, health care providers should discuss this subject with their patients.”

Berry and her co-authors are the first investigators to study the association between falls and medication adherence. The team used data gathered from subjects in the Maintenance of Balance, Independent Living, Intellect, and Zest in the Elderly of Boston (MOBILIZE Boston) Study, a community-based cohort of seniors recruited for the purpose of studying novel risk factors for falls.

They examined responses from a total of 246 senior men and 408 senior women with an average age of 78. Between 2005 and 2008, 376 individuals in this group reported a total of 1,052 falls.

A participant was characterized as having low medication adherence if he or she answered yes to any of the following questions:

• Do you ever forget to take your medications?
• Are you careless at times about taking your medications?
• When you feel better do you sometimes stop taking your medications? Sometimes if you feel worse when taking your medication, do you stop taking it?
• High adherence was defined as a “no” answer to every question. In total, 48 percent  of the respondents were classified as having low medication adherence.

Those in the low-adherence group experienced falls at an annual rate of 1.5 times that of the high adherence group. This association persisted after adjusting for other variables, including age, sex, cognitive function, and total number of medications.

-Dr.Kathy Johnson, PhD, CMC

When David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., discovered he had a brain tumor, he was forced to reevaluate conventional cancer-beating methods and dig deep for something new and promising.  Schreiber decided to take a deeper look into what factors cause cancer and how it can be prevented.
From his research he realized that all of us have cancer cells within our bodies and it is our own protective systems that keep two thirds of the population cancer-free. For the other one-third of the population that will most likely get cancer, however, Schreiber writes that we must protect our immune systems in order to make it harder for those cancer cells to take over the body. Some of these prevention techniques include lifestyle changes such as more exercise and stress-reducing activities such as breathing exercises.
Schreiber identified several behaviors that could help fight cancer that one might not have guessed would help  battle this disease.

-Avoid refined sugar
-Add spicy foods to your diet
-Exercise regularly
-Practice yoga and mindful meditation
-Avoid household toxins like Teflon

Although Schreiber has been living with cancer for 16 years he feels much happier and healthier after his lifestyle change.