SUNDAY, Jan. 22, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- The key to keeping those New Year’s resolutions from fading out by February: Make sure you've set achievable goals.Resolutions are often lifestyle changes and those are best managed when the goal is something attainable, according to an expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Resolutions and lifestyle changes are very similar. When we think about lifestyle changes, it’s normally positive, but when people have unrealistic expectations, they often fail," Dr. Asim Shah said in a college news release. He is executive vice chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor.Common resolutions include weight loss, exercise routines, diet changes, managing finances and quitting smoking. Understand the pros...

SATURDAY, Jan. 21, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Winter is no friend to the body’s delicate skin, but an expert offers three key tips: moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.“It’s pretty intuitive, but it bears repeating,” said dermatologist Dr. David Pearson, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, in Minneapolis. “The environment treats our skin differently in the winter, and that means we may have to change our behaviors to acclimate.”As temperatures and humidity levels drop, your skin loses moisture, Pearson explained in a university news release. This is especially true in a cold, dry state like Minnesota.To help hydrate winter skin, Pearson recommends a thick moisturizing cream that has to be scooped out of a jar or squeezed out of a tube, rather...

FRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- The pandemic brought the utility of testing wastewater to gauge viral spread to the fore. Now, experts at the independent National Academies of Sciences (NAS) have issued a report outlining a roadmap for the broader surveillance of Americans' wastewater.The report "reviews the usefulness of community-level wastewater surveillance during the pandemic and assesses its potential value for control and prevention of infectious diseases beyond COVID-19," the NAS said on its website.As the NAS explained, people naturally shed the DNA of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens in their stool, which of course makes its way into local wastewater systems. So, efforts to test and track wastewater "can be used to identify changing levels of a pathogen or...

FRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A cancer diagnosis can be devastating.Now, new research shows that patients diagnosed with cancer have a risk of suicide 26% higher than the general population.A variety of factors contribute to the elevated risk, including geography, race and ethnicity, economic status and clinical characteristics, American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers found.The study also showed a decline in elevated risk for cancer patients compared with the general population from 67% in 2000 to 16% in 2016."Our findings highlight the importance of timely symptom management and targeted interventions for suicide prevention in individuals with cancer," said senior author Xuesong Han, scientific director of health services research at ACS."These require joint efforts by...