Teens Who Sleep More Get into Less Trouble, Study Suggests

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Parents might hate it when their teens can't get out of bed -- particularly on a school day -- but a new study suggests they should be grateful for those extra Zs, because the more an adolescent sleeps, the less chance he or she has of getting into trouble.

The data released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that teens who get fewer than eight hours of sleep are more inclined than their sleepier peers to drink alcohol, take drugs, get into fights and engage in sexual activity.

Furthermore, youngsters who are sleep-deprived are also more likely to use tobacco, sit around the house rather than exercise, and contemplate suicide.

About seven in 10 teens sleep fewer than eight hours a night, so the risk group is far bigger than high schoolers who get more shuteye.

The CDC also found that for some reason, teens who sleep more also tend to watch more TV.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Study: Fathers' Hearts Healthier Than Those of Childless Men

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(PALO ALTO, Calif.) -- Men who have children may be at an advantage over their childless counterparts when it comes to heart health, according to a new study.

After examining married men over a 10-year period, researchers at Stanford University found that those who didn't become fathers were 17 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than guys who had kids.

All the men in the study were over 50, healthy and had no overt problems that might have interfered with reproduction.

Dr. Michael Eisenberg says the findings point to infertility as the possible reason for this phenomenon since low testosterone levels are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Still, Eisenberg isn't about to entirely dismiss the cause-and-effect possibility that having children might improve heart health.  He speculates that after becoming a father, men might decide to take better care of themselves.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Doctors Provoke Dairy Industry Backlash, Say Cheese Is Unhealthy

Digital Vision/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- A provocative billboard from a nonprofit physicians’ group planned for display near Lambeau Field in Wisconsin has stirred controversy even before it goes up.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C., has announced the ad, which includes the Grim Reaper wearing a “Cheesehead” hat and which carries an ominous message, “Warning: Cheese Can Sack Your Health. Fat. Cholesterol. Sodium.”

“Cheese has somehow managed [to be marketed] as some kind of health food, which is exactly the opposite of what it is,” says Susan Levin, a registered dietitian who is the director of nutrition education for PCRM. “It is an incredibly unhelpful food product with loads of fat, cholesterol and sodium.  It is a pretty toxic food for people to be consuming.”

The message itself is certainly enough to stoke a backlash in Wisconsin, where the economy leans heavily on the dairy industry. But the location of the billboard itself seems designed to provoke a reaction. The Cheesehead, of course, is worn proudly by thousands of fans of the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, who play their home games at legendary Lambeau Field. The new billboard will be placed strategically along U.S. Highway 41 near the stadium, so that all those tailgaters would have something to think about in the parking lots on Sundays as they gobble up deep-fried cheese curds and Cheesehead Beer Cheese Soup.

"That visual is going to resonate more near a Packers’ game for obvious reasons,” Levin says. “We wanted to draw attention to the fact that cheese is unhealthy, and we think that [this] is a good place to get that attention.”

The billboard was scheduled to go up Monday, but bad weather has apparently delayed its going up until Tuesday. But that hasn’t stopped Wisconsin’s $26-billion dairy industry from starting to fight back.

“They are taking a page out of PETA’s book on this. They are trying to shock people,” says Patrick Geoghegan of Wisconsin’s Milk Marketing Board. Geoghegan characterizes PCRM as a fringe group with a “vegan agenda” that is more about animal rights than human health.

“People have been eating cheese for thousands of years,” says Geoghegan. “Many cheeses are an excellent source of calcium and a source of high-quality protein and phosphorus. It tastes great. We should enjoy it.”

PCRM is also facing potential legal action from Foamation, a family-owned Wisconsin business that owns the trademark to the Cheesehead brand. “We asked them to remove our product from the billboard,” says Edward Sarskas, an attorney for the company. “If they fail to comply we will have to consider all options, including going to a judge to order that it be taken down.”

But PCRM, which paid $3,500 for a month of space on the billboard, says this is about free speech rights. “There’s no way that anyone could perceive this as an attack on a hat,” Dan Kinburn, the organization’s general counsel told ABC News. “No one is criticizing the hat. No one is criticizing Packer fans. The only one being criticized is the dairy industry. The message is that dairy and cheese are bad food.” Kinburn says that as soon as the weather clears, the billboard will go up as planned.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Brazil: Daughter Finds ‘Dead’ Mother Alive in Morgue

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(RIO DE JANEIRO) -- Rosangela Celestrino of Brazil was devastated when she got the call to come identify her mother’s body at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro. But when she arrived and the body was pulled out of the refrigerated drawer, Celestrino was shocked to find that her mother was still alive.

“I went to kiss my mom, and she was breathing. I began to scream, ‘My mom is alive!’ and everyone looked at me like I was crazy,” she told the Brazilian newspaper O Globo.

Rosa Celestrino de Assis, 60, spent two hours inside a plastic bag in the refrigerated drawer of a hospital morgue. She had been admitted to the Hospital Estadual Adao Pereira Nunes for a pulmonary infection.

At 7:20 p.m. last Friday, a nurse at the hospital called the on-call doctor when she noticed that Assis was not showing any signs of life. The doctor ran some tests and pronounced her dead. Celestrino de Assis was taken to the morgue. When the daughter found her mother alive at 10 p.m., the hospital sent her back to the intensive care unit.

“She made some sort of movement and was immediately taken to the ICU, intubated again and put on a respirator,” hospital director Manoel Moreira Filho told O Globo.

The nurse who first suspected Celestrino de Assis was dead has been fired, and the doctor who pronounced her dead resigned. The family has made a police complaint. If negligence is proved, the family could sue for personal injury and if the patient were to die, they could sue for manslaughter.

Celestrino de Assis’ shocked daughter is still struggling to understand what happened.

“You go to the hospital to pick up someone you know -- who put you on the earth -- and not only is she in the cold drawer of a hospital, but when I opened it, I saw that she was alive,” Celestrino said.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Maria Menounos: ‘My Choice’ to Freeze My Eggs

ABC/Lou Rocco(NEW YORK) -- Maria Menounos is a red carpet regular, known for her A-list interviews. But the Extra co-host became the center of attention herself after she went public with her decision to have her eggs frozen as a way to assure her fertility in the future.

“To me, parenting is the most difficult job in the entire world, and when I do it, I want to be committed, and I want to be 100-percent ready to take it on and be the best mom I can be,” Menounos, 33, said Monday on Good Morning America. “Right now, I don’t find myself in that position.”

Menounos announced her fertility decision last Thursday in an appearance on the CW network’s Lifechangers With Dr. Drew series, to which she also contributes.

“I’m 33, and I decided that I know I have a couple of years of work I want to get to, and then do it,” Menounos told the show’s host, Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Although Menounos is one of a growing number of women who have decided to postpone pregnancy by harvesting their eggs, her decision drew headlines on two fronts: her decison to put work before family, and to go so public with it.

“For me, this is important...because now we can show women there is an option if you need it and if you want it and if you think it’s right for you,” Menounos told GMA.

Menounos said she was motivated to both undergo the harvesting procedure and document it publicly because she, like many women, was not aware of how quickly a woman’s chances for pregnancy decline once they hit 40.

Explaining the video diary-style documentary series that will air on the Lifechangers show in the upcoming weeks, she said, “We’ll show you every step of the way. I’ve been shooting footage of my injections and exactly how I’m feeling because, for me, it’s important to show that.”

Around 1,000 to 2,000 babies around the world have been born using frozen eggs, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, which sets industry guidelines.

Menounos’  doctor, Los Angeles fertility specialist Dr. Melanie Landay, shared with GMA the statistics.

“People do get pregnant when they’re 40, but the chances of pregnancy per month at age 40 are about five percent compared to someone who’s 30 when they’re about 20 to 25 percent per month,” Landay said.  “So there is a chance, but it’s dramatically decreased.”

At 33, Menounos is still young enough to benefit from egg harvesting, said Landay, which requires taking a series of hormone injections.

“The best candidate is someone who’s under the age of 35,”   Landay said. “The one thing we can’t do with medicine is we can’t avert the aging process.”

Menounos also took the extra step, Landay told GMA, of having both her eggs and embryos fertilized to increase her likelihood of becoming pregnant.

“Just because you freeze your eggs doesn’t mean there’s a 100-percent chance you’re going to have a baby, but it absolutely doesn’t affect your chance of getting pregnant naturally,” which Menounos has not ruled out.

Having a child naturally is still something the TV host, who has been in a steady relationship with director Keven Undergaro for 13 years, plans to try first, she said.

“It’s a bit of an insurance policy,” Menounos said of her decision to harvest her eggs.  “It doesn’t mean that in two years or three years I’m not going to try naturally, but at least I have this in case there’s a problem.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Coffee Acts as Pick-Me-Up in Older Female Smokers

Ryan McVay/Thinkstock(BOSTON) -- From dementia to stroke, suicide to lethal forms of cancer, coffee has been touted as reducing risk of all such medical conditions. Now, coffee drinkers, here's another reason to refill that cup of joe: a new prospective study found that risk of depression decreases as java consumption increases.

The catch? The findings apply only to post-menopausal women who smoke.

The research, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, studied more than 50,000 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study, a long-term Harvard study of some of the biggest issues affecting women's health. None of the women, who had an average age of 63, suffered from depression at the start of the study in 1996. By June 2006, researchers followed up and found that, for women who smoked, the more coffee they drank, the less they were at risk of depression.

Compared with women who drank 100 milligrams of coffee or less per day, women who drank four or more cups per day had 20-percent less risk of depression.

The association was not seen in non-smoking women, and researchers could not analyze women who drank very high amounts of coffee -- more than six cups per day -- due to an insignificant number of people who consumed such quantities.

"Regular coffee drinkers have a lower risk of developing depression than non-drinkers," said Alberto Ascherio, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the study. But he warned, "These are preliminary results that need to be confirmed."

In the study, the caffeinated coffee was associated with a decline in depression risk among older female smokers, but decaf coffee saw no such association. Oddly, when looking at other caffeinated resources (tea, soda, chocolate), researchers did not see an associated decrease of depression either. Study authors wrote that this could be because an insignificant portion of people made up the group after excluding those who drank one or more cups of coffee per day.

This type of depression is also not the typical kind that may develop in the younger years, researchers noted. Post-menopausal women are at higher risk of depression due to hormone and chemical changes in the brain. Because of this, the association of decreased depression risk cannot be directly linked to younger women.

More than half of American adults drink some form of coffee each day, according to the National Coffee Association, and caffeine is the most frequently consumed stimulant in the world.

While several antidepressants contain stimulants, Harold Koenig, professor of social psychology at Tulane University School of Medicine, said he is "concerned" if people read about the study and decide to use coffee as self-medication. Antidepressants likely have different chemical compositions than coffee, and would likely have a different effect on the brain.

"No doubt, caffeine can temporarily increase mood and energy, but the problem is that the effect does not last, and the dose has to be continually increased to maintain the same effect," said Koenig. "Many people experience a caffeine withdrawal when they cut down on their caffeine intake, and this can cause dysphoria and fatigue.

"Think about how you feel after you drink a high-caffeinated drink and think about how you feel after about two to three hours," Koenig continued. "Common sense says that the caffeine effect doesn't last, and that people have to pay for whatever improved mood they experience in terms of withdrawal."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

California Hospital Patient Dies During Strike

Thomas Northcut/Thinkstock(OAKLAND, Calif.) -- California authorities are investigating the death of a patient at an Oakland hospital that police and hospital and union officials said resulted from a medication error made during a labor dispute between nurses and the health system that runs the hospital.

Police and officials at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center told the local media the woman died after she received an incorrect dose of medication administered by a replacement nurse. At the time, regular staff nurses employed by Sutter Health System were locked out following a one-day strike by 23,000 nurses across the state.

The California Nurses Association, the state nurses' union, blamed the woman's death on the lockout. After Thursday's strike, the association said, nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center tried to return to work Friday, but hospital officials turned them away.

The union called the lockout "dangerous" and questioned whether the nurses hired as replacements were clinically qualified to care for the patients.

"Nurses are in the hospital caring for our patients who don't have the proper training, who aren't familiar with our equipment, and there's been a tragic death," said one nurse who participated in a Sunday vigil outside the hospital. A video showing highlights of the vigil is posted on the union's web page.

The hospital, however, said the fill-in nurses were all highly competent and experienced.

"Every single one of the nurses is an experienced nurse that has been working in the areas to which they are assigned," Dr. Steve O'Brien, the hospital's vice president of medical affairs, told local media. "We did not skimp on any of the nurses."

The hospital explained that it was contractually obligated to hire replacement nurses for a certain number of days, which was the reason for the lockout. Staff nurses can return to work Tuesday.

The union said it's fighting against Sutter Health System's demand for 200 contract concessions that the union said would undermine patient safety.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Standard Heart Attack Testing Doesn't Always Work for Women

iStockphoto(NEW YORK) -- When Bronx resident Carolyn Brown, 64, went to the hospital complaining of shortness of breath, a heart attack was the last thing on her mind.

"I thought I had a cold," she told ABC News. "I always look for the signs of heart attack, chest pain, pain in your shoulder...but I didn't have that," she says.

Even the doctors were unsure of whether Brown had suffered a heart attack. Blood tests suggested she may have had one, but an angiogram -- the imaging test that has been the gold standard for detecting heart attacks -- showed that her coronary arteries were clear. Her doctors sent her home without any of the medication -- such as statins to lower cholesterol and aspirin to thin the blood -- usually given to patients who have had a confirmed heart attack.

When Brown returned to the ER with much more severe symptoms in April 2010, the angiogram yet again revealed clear arteries, but this time doctors used a different kind of test -- an intravascular ultrasound, or IVUS -- that was more suited to detecting arterial plaque in women. Thanks to the IVUS, doctors found a dangerous block in Brown's neck, and she has since received the heart medication she needed all along.

Brown's case is not that unusual. Anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 women every year with arteries that show up clear on an angiogram suffer from a heart attack. Thirty-eight percent of the time, like Brown, they have the kind of plaque that doesn't show up on an angiogram, according to new research from the Cardiac and Vascular Institute at New York University Langone Medical Center. In these women, a rupture or ulcer in the plaque of their coronary arteries is behind their heart attack, but this rupture would not show up in standard angiogram.

"When a woman comes in with heart attack symptoms, but the angiogram is clear, doctors will sometimes turn around and tell them they didn't have a heart attack at all," says Dr. Harmony Reynolds, the lead author of the study and an associate director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center. "This is a big deal, because these patients are not getting the medication they need."

In the past, cardiologists have suspected that women with heart attack symptoms but clear angiogram results had the kind of plaque rupture identified in this study, but this research is the first to suggest that using additional ultrasound imaging testing could help determine that these women are in fact suffering from a heart attack, Reynolds says.

For years it seemed that heart disease was more of a health problem for men, but now doctors know that once women go through menopause, they are even more likely than men to have a heart attack. The way their heart disease and heart attack symptoms show up can be very different than in men, however, and this can make it difficult to detect these heart attacks using the standard tests.

What cardiologists and women should take from this research is that "even if the 'regular' test shows no blockages, you are not totally out of the woods," says Dr. Christopher Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Instead, doctors should treat these women's risk factors to lower their risk of a repeat cardiac event, he says.

"Women in Brown's situation should also make sure to ask their doctors if they should be put on medication to lower their cardiovascular risk," Reynolds says.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Buyer Beware: Uncertified Doc Botches Surgery

ABC News(NEW YORK) -- After going into surgery for a simple repair of her breast implants, Dinora Rodriguez, 40, awoke from the procedure to find that her plastic surgeon had left her with conjoined breasts. Without her knowledge or permission, the surgeon had also nip/tucked her eyelids, leaving Rodriguez with eyes that to this day cannot close all the way.

Rodriguez learned the hard way -- you always have to vet your plastic surgeon.

"A friend had recommended the doctor to me. My biggest mistake is that I didn't check any of her credentials. I found out later that she had done really bad surgeries on some other people too," Rodriguez told ABC News.

The doctor in question was licensed to practice as a plastic surgeon in California, where Rodriguez lives, but she was not board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

After a year of pain and disfigurement, Rodriguez sued her doctor for malpractice and says she found out that the corrective surgery on her breasts was not even necessary in the first place.

"She told me that she needed to replace the implants because they were leaking and I believed her. She gave me a good price on the surgery and I said yes," she said.

Now Rodriguez has become the poster child for a new safety campaign spearheaded by the new president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), Dr. Malcolm Roth. The campaign, announced Monday at the annual ASPS conference, warns against "white coat deception" – basically, just because a doctor has a white coat, and even an M.D., doesn't mean they are qualified to perform plastic surgery.

In 48 states it is currently legal in the United States for doctors who are not certified by the board of plastic surgeons to practice cosmetic and plastic surgery.

"This means that we have other physicians creeping in who have taken a course and think they can do plastic surgery," said Roth. "It's not the same as going through six years in training specifically in plastic surgery, plus the continual training and code of ethics that are required for those who are board certified," he said.

"People spend months or years making a decision on which care they're going to purchase – it's no different when having a procedure performed. Plastic surgery is elective, there's plenty of time to do your homework and that's really all we're asking: do your homework," Roth said.

Rodriguez ended up settling her malpractice suit out of court. She says the compensation she received barely covered her reconstructive surgery she needed. Because the surgeon had cut across the two separate "pockets" that normally hold breast tissue, the implants were able to touch in the middle, said Dr. Steven Teitelbaum, a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles who did Rodriguez's reconstructive surgery.

Unfortunately, because the first surgeon had removed too much skin from Rodriguez's eyelids during the procedure she says she had never asked to have done, there is nothing that can be done to reconstruct her lids -- she will never again be able to fully close her lids and must take medication for the rest of her life to moisten her eyes. Because the first surgeon cut through nerves and muscle, she also has shooting pains in her ribs surrounding her breasts.

The number of non-board certified plastic surgeons practicing is on the rise, Teitelbaum said, because the public is demanding more plastic surgery and with insurance reimbursements so low, many non-plastic surgeons are offering cosmetic procedures in an attempt to maintain their income.

And with the rising number of unqualified plastic surgeons practicing, he says the number of patients suffering from less-than-ideal surgeries is also increasing.

So what can a patient do to check out their doctors before going under the knife?

First and foremost, make sure the doctor is board certified in plastic surgery specifically, which you can do by searching the doctor's name on the ASPS website, Roth said.

In order to be board certified, doctors who do their residency in plastic surgery must pass a rigorous set of written and oral examinations. While they can legally practice plastic surgery even if they don't pass these tests, they will not get board certification.

Another important question to ask of your surgeon is whether they have hospital privileges if needed to perform their procedures, Roth says.

"If the nearby hospital won't let them practice under their roof, then something might be up," he says. "Probably, the physicians at the hospitals don't believe that this physician has adequate training."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Prostate Cancer Counseling Helps Couples' Sex Lives, Says Study

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(HOUSTON) -- Despite improved therapies for men diagnosed with prostate cancer, most men face erection dysfunction because of nerve damage or blood flow problems.  Many also lose their desire for sex and have difficulties reaching an orgasm.

Now, a new study published online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, suggests that counseling can enhance the effectiveness of erectile dysfunction medications to help improve couples' sex lives.

Both Internet-based counseling and face-to-face therapy sessions improved the sex lives of prostate cancer survivors and their spouses, according to the study led by Leslie Schover, a psychologist and professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

"When men get these problems, they see their sexual function as how hard is my erection, and women get ignored and turned off," she said.  "And so men get distressed emotionally and feel like they are a failure."

In the study, Internet-based and face-to-face counseling focused on both partners' enjoyment when they "encountered more intimacy and less performance," said Schover.

The University of Texas study involved 115 couples. In each case, the man's prostate cancer treatment had taken place no more than two years prior to the study.  Half of the couples sought no help for three months.  The other half had three face-to-face counseling sessions or worked with an online counselor who gave feedback on the Internet.

A third group of 71 couples who lived too far to participate in face-to-face counseling was part of the Internet group.

Couples were also educated about treatment options for impotence: drugs like Viagra that increase blood flow, shots in the penis, vacuum pumps and surgical penile implants.

Each partner looked over the information on these medical interventions and rated them. The computer generated their top three choices.

Couples compared notes then agreed on a treatment option as a first step.  They were also monitored by counselors to see how well it worked and to "troubleshoot," according to Schover.

After three months, the couples who had received no counseling benefits were assigned one of the two treatment options.

Both partners in the relationship filled out questionnaires assessing their sexual function and satisfaction before counseling, after treatment, and at six months and one year later.

At the end of one year, 54 percent found effective treatments for their sexual dysfunction.  On average, the group "looked like the score of men in a community who don't have erection problems," said Schover.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio