Caregiving Archive

Many people are bothered by double chins and try to conceal them behind turtleneck shirts and scarves. However, recent advancements have expanded the options for jowl removal beyond surgery to in-office treatments.

Cryolipolysis (Cool Mini)

This procedure, also known as "cool sculpting," treats a double chin. The clinician places a handpiece under the chin and chills fat cells there almost to the point of freezing, damaging their membranes so they are absorbed and metabolized by the body. The treatment itself takes about an hour, and results are seen over the subsequent two months. The procedure is usually effective and can be performed more than once. It can also be used to reduce love handles on the waist. The cost is approximately $1,000 per treatment.

The health risks of loneliness and isolation have been known for some time, but more recently research has shown the specific effects in the brain. Finding ways to make connections with other people is the best "medicine" to alleviate the mental and physical effects of loneliness.

Decades of research show that yoga can reduce the emotional and physical fatigue brought on by cancer treatment. In 2017, scientists reported for the first time that this is also true specifically for men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. Men who took a yoga class twice a week during prostate cancer radiation treatment reported less fatigue, fewer sexual side effects, and better urinary functioning than men who did not.

The research team enrolled 50 men ages 53 to 85 who were diagnosed with early or advanced nonmetastatic prostate cancer. Of them, 22 were assigned to yoga classes and the rest did not participate in yoga. All the men received scheduled radiation treatments; 29 of them were also on hormonal therapy, and 19 had been treated previ-ously with surgery. The yoga and control groups were evenly balanced with respect to various cancer treatments as well as treatments for side effects.

If you're like most people, your posture could use some improvement. But how do you do that? The classic advice is to stand straight, with your head up, shoulders back, and belly in. While these are reasonable adjustments, tai chi takes a different approach that may be more effective. It aims to align the body in ways that afford safe, unstrained, and graceful postures—not the military-like, one-size-fits all, rigid stances many think of as good posture.

Instead, in tai chi, good posture centers around the principle of verticality. That means the head is centered over the torso, the torso rests over the hips, and the hips are centered over the legs and feet, your base of support. Here's how to do it.

24-hour health monitoring is high tech. But is it helpful?

 Image: © chombosan/Getty Images

The day has arrived when doctors can remotely monitor your health every moment, if you (and they) choose. Increasing numbers of wireless digital sensors — some implanted in or on the body, some ingested, and some worn like clothing — are making the leap from patents to patients. In 2017, the FDA cleared dozens of devices for continuous health monitoring. "The hope is that people heading toward serious problems — such as high blood sugar or heart rhythm abnormalities — can be headed off at the pass," explains Dr. Anthony Komaroff, editor in chief of the Harvard Health Letter.

Not necessarily new

We've had portable gadgets that monitor health for decades. One early example is the kind of heart pacemaker that detects irregular heartbeats and shocks them back to a normal rhythm. Today we also have devices that sense and respond to many other health problems, such as Parkinson's disease tremors or pauses in breathing during sleep.