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Tick explosion is the price of mild weather
adidas outdoor shoesWinter’s warm temperatures have yielded an unusually robust bounty of springtime ticks that have attached themselves to pets and people in Massachusetts. But the same warm, dry weather that fueled an explosion of ticks may ultimately stifle survival of young ticks known as nymphs that are most prone to spread disease.“Deer ticks are exquisitely sensitive to drying out,’’ said Richard Pollack, a tick researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “This can shorten their survival, which could be good for people, but not so good for deer ticks.’’There is some disagreement among specialists about the reasons for the bumper crop of ticks. Maybe, some scientists contend, it is because of a surge in rodents last year. Ticks feed on rodents, and because there was a proliferation of white-footed mice last year, that gave ticks more sustenance and, thus, allowed for more ticks.This much, most specialists agree on: Adult ticks generally go dormant in the winter, nestled under leaves and snow, and then wake up in spring, hungry and looking for a blood meal. But seemingly confused by the balmy winter temperatures, the ticks never seemed to take a break and latched on to prey in large numbers the past several months.Ticks can spread illness to people. They carry not only Lyme disease but germs for two other illnesses becoming more common in Massachusetts: babesia and anaplasmosis, which usually produce fever, chills, and muscle aches, and are generally easily treatable.
discount adidas tennis shoes saleAt Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, doctors are seeing a dramatic rise in tick-infested dogs. The center reported performing 1,445 tests for tick-borne illnesses in the first three months of this year compared with 511 in the same period last year.Craig Hollingsworth, an insect specialist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Extension Center, tests ticks sent in from doctors, hospitals, and residents across the state to determine if they are carrying Lyme or other diseases. Hollingsworth said his lab has received six times as many samples in late March and early April, compared with a similar period the past two years.“That’s because we had record numbers of adult deer ticks from last fall going into the winter,’’ Hollingsworth said.The adult deer ticks that are latching on to people and pets now are only responsible for transmitting about 15 percent of reported infections of Lyme disease. It is he younger nymphs that typically transmit illnesses in May, June, and July.It is not that adult deer ticks carry fewer germs; it is that they are larger than young nymph ticks - think a sesame seed compared to a poppy seed - so they are easier to spot and remove before they spit enough bacteria into the skin to cause infection. Women's life spans in the USA are improving at a slower pace than men's and are shorter in many U.S. counties than they were 20 years ago, according to a report released Thursday.The trend is cause for alarm even though women are still expected to outlive men by four years, says the report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research center at the University of Washington. The study is based on mortality data by age, sex and county from 1989 to 2009.
jordan retro shoesLife expectancy for U.S. men improved by 4.6 years on average, but only by 2.7 years for women. Life spans county to county across the USA range on average from 66.1 to 81.6 years for men and 73.5 to 86 years for women."A gain in life expectancy should be equal among men and women," says Ali Mokdad, director of the research team. "This is a wake-up call for all of us. It's tragic that in a country as wealthy as the United States, and with all the medical expertise we have, that so many girls will live shorter lives than their mothers."Life expectancy stopped improving or reversed for women since 1999 in 661 U.S. counties and in 166 counties for men. The declining rates appear in 84% of Oklahoma counties, 58% of Tennessee counties and 33% of Georgia counties.A larger percentage of women than men are not adequately treating high blood pressure and high cholesterol, the researchers said."Women aren't as encouraged by their doctors to get medication to ward off heart disease," says physician Gina Lundberg, national spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, who is not associated with the study. "And many doctors don't treat their symptoms as aggressively as they do in men. They'll say you have an upset stomach and send you home."Key reasons for the disparities are preventable causes of death, including tobacco, obesity and alcohol."Heart blockages progress faster in women who smoke," Lundberg says. "And studies show women who smoke who have heart attacks are more likely to die from the heart attack."
jordan pantoneOne of the biggest decreases for women was in Harmon County, Okla., where life expectancy dropped by nearly two years (from 79.1 to 77.4) from 1989 to 2009. Women in three counties in Tennessee saw decreases of more than a year: Smith (78.5-77.4), Rhea and Meigs (78.7-77.5).Across the country, there's nearly a 12-year gap in women's life spans. Women live the longest in Collier, Fla., (85.8) but had the shortest life spans in McDowell, W.Va. (74.1). In 1989, the gap was 8.7 years."So much of this can be corrected," Mokdad says. "We need to do a better job educating people about lifestyle and getting good health care. The U.S. spends more on health care than any other country, and other countries are doing a better job than us."For instance in Australia, life expectancy improved 12 years in both men and women from 1989 to 2009, Mokdad said. When it comes to life span, U.S. men rank 37th out of 196 countries, women rank 38th. Bruce Johnson, a consultant on cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and leader of the group, said the study subjects will be a U.S. team that plans to replicate the first 1963 ascent of the mountain by a U.S. team.That expedition put five U.S. climbers on the summit, two climbing the difficult and then-untested West Ridge route and the rest along the normal Southeast Ridge route which was used by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in their pioneering 1953 ascent.
cheap nike shoes onlineNearly 3,700 people have climbed Mount Everest, the world's highest peak at 8,850 meters (29,035 feet), since then."We are interested in lung physiology in high altitude, which is similar to the lung physiology in heart failure patients," Johnson told Reuters in Kathmandu, equipment scattered around him.Johnson said each of the nine climbers, who are already at the mountain acclimatizing, will be fitted with equipment including a special wrist watch and an arm band that will allow their body to be monitored at a base camp laboratory.The watch will measure the blood oxygen level and the specially designed arm band will show their energy expenditure and how many calories they burn.Climbers will also be wearing the "Mayo platform," an instrument devised by the clinic that fits in a tiny pocket on the climber's clothing and will measure their cardiovascular activity, Johnson said.Specially developed video games will also be used to test the cognitive performance of climbers, such as their ability to think at high altitude, where oxygen levels are low.The team will set up a lab in a dome-shaped tent at the base camp, which becomes a tent city during the climbing season.Medical research has been carried out on Mount Everest climbers in the past, and Johnson said what his team was doing would add "some incremental bits of knowledge" to the working of the human body in extreme conditions."The study is also very closely associated with the work we do back home with heart patients and patients with lung diseases," Johnson said.
wholesale jordan shoesHe said the study would also add to knowledge about altitude sickness, which is a leading cause of death in high mountains.More than 300 foreign climbers and another 400 Sherpa guides have gathered at the base camp located at about 5,300 meters (17,390 feet) to climb Mount Everest during the current climbing season which started in March. The Billings Gazette reports the Montana Democrat made the comments Saturday during a U.S. Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee field hearing on health care for rural veterans that he hosted."I think we need to do a better job of communicating between the VA and private providers," he said during the hearing that went over two hours. "I think we need to do a better job having the VA communicate to veterans the services that are out there."People who spoke at the hearing also cited a lack of coordinated electronic medical records, difficulty getting timely appointments, long drives, and a shortage of specialty physicians.Casey Elder, a 27-year-old Purple Heart recipient, told Tester she asked to have a cervical biopsy to check for cancer done in Billings by a female doctor. But the agency told her she'd have to travel to Helena to see a male doctor and wait three months."None of this was sufficient, given the threat of cancer," said Elder, now a full-time student at Montana State University Billings. "I was seen by a local female doctor less than 10 days later and paid for the procedure with $300 out of my own pocket, funds that are scarcely available to full-time students."Elder, injured when insurgents set off an improvised explosive device during the last month of her deployment in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, was among a number of people who also mentioned the problems of having to make long trips to Fort Harrison in Helena to see a doctor.
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