NEWS
January 26, 2012 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog
Regular exercise can be beneficial to people with rheumatoid arthritis, but a study finds that two out of five people with the disease may not be active at all. The study, released Thursday in the journal Arthritis Care & Research , looked at how much physical activity was done over seven days by 176 adults age 23 to 86 who had rheumatoid arthritis. Instead of having the study participants report their activity, researchers had them wear accelerometers for a week, small devices that are fairly good measurements of physical activity and give a fuller picture of daily movement compared to pedometers.
BUSINESS
January 3, 2012 | By Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times
You've heard of the fat suit and the pregnancy suit; now meet AGNES — the old person suit. AGNES stands for Age Gain Now Empathy System and was designed by researchers at MIT's AgeLab to emulate what it feels like to be 75 years old with arthritis and diabetes. "The business of old age demands new tools," said Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab. "While focus groups and observations and surveys can help you understand what the older consumer needs and wants, young marketers never get that 'Ah ha!
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 3, 2011 | By Nita Lelyveld, Los Angeles Times
Thanks to the conveniences of the wired world, Peter Winkler was able to write a book and find an agent and a publisher without ever having to leave his North Hollywood home. Winkler raced to produce the first biography of Dennis Hopper to come out after the actor died in May 2010. It was only when the book was on the shelves that his agent learned how he had done it. "My God, I had no idea," said Robert Diforio of Weston, Conn., who sold "Dennis Hopper: The Wild Ride of a Hollywood Rebel" to a small East Coast publisher, Barricade Books.
NEWS
November 15, 2011 | By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog
Seeing the movements of a healthy hand mirroring one's own movements plays a welcome trick on the brains of arthritis sufferers, a new study shows: It reduces the perception of pain. The observation, reported this week at the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference , could offer a safe, inexpensive means of dampening chronic pain by enlisting the brain's power of suggestion. The small arthritis study, which tested just eight subjects, comes from the lab of UC San Diego neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran -- who first used mirror-based trickery to treat phantom-limb pain in patients who have had an amputation.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 5, 2011 | Steve Lopez
I can't think of a better way to begin this column than to let a fellow pundit get things going. So I'll turn things over to Allene Arthur, who's been writing columns for the Palm Springs Desert Sun for 32 years: "Fiftieth high school class reunions are a dime a dozen," Arthur wrote in a note to me recently. "Sixtieth reunions are rare enough to get our attention. But a 70th class reunion is an uncommon big deal. The Manual Arts High School class of Summer, 1941, will hold its 70th on October 3....
NEWS
September 27, 2011 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog
Exercise relieved symptoms of arthritis in obese mice, even though they lost no weight from their efforts, a study finds. Excessive weight has long been considered one of the culprits of osteoarthritis, since it puts additional strain on joints. While exercise has been shown in some studies to ease arthritis symptoms, others have found that for overweight and obese people, a fitness regimen can exacerbate the condition. This study, published online Tuesday in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism , found that although weight may heighten the risk of osteoarthritis, regular exercise could diminish joint problems by slowing its progression.