Month: August 2009

Categories
Healthy Tips

Eat Fat With Tomatoes to Absorb All the Nutrients

Tomatoes are a good source of the antioxidants lycopene and beta-carotene. But if you eat a tomato without adding a little fat, your body is unlikely to absorb all these nutrients.
tomato with corn
Scientists recruited graduate students to eat bowls of salad greens with tomatoes and various types of salad dressings. The researchers put IV lines into the participants’ veins and drew blood samples before and after they’d eaten the salads in order to get precise measurements of the absorption of nutrients.

When researchers went back and analyzed the blood samples, they realized that people who had eaten fat-free or low-fat dressings didn’t absorb the beneficial carotenoids from the salad. Only when they had eaten the oil-based dressing did they get the nutrients.

Sources: NPR July 27, 2009

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
Positive thinking

Consulting Heart and Mind

Making Choices from a Place of Balance
Each of the myriad decisions we make every day has the potential to have a deep impact on our lives. Some choices touch us to our very cores, awakening poignant feelings within us. Others seem at first to be simple but prove to be confusingly complex. We make the best decisions when we approach the decision-making process from a balanced emotional and intellectual foundation. When we have achieved equilibrium in our hearts and in our minds, we can clearly see both sides of an issue or alternative. Likewise, we can accept compromise as a natural fact of life. Instead of relying solely on our feelings or our rationality, we utilize both in equal measure, empowering ourselves to come to a life-affirming and balanced conclusion.

Balance within and balance without go hand in hand. When you are called upon to choose between two or more options, whether they are attractive or distasteful, you should understand all you can about the choice ahead of you before moving forward. If you do not come to the decision from a place of balance, you risk making choices that are irrational and overly emotional or are wholly logical and don’t take your feelings into account. In bringing your thoughts and emotions together during the decision-making process, you ensure that you are taking everything possible into account before moving forward. Nothing is left up to chance, and you have ample opportunity to determine which options are in accordance with your values.

Though some major decisions may oblige you to act and react quickly, most will allow you an abundance of time in which to mull over your choices. If you doubt your ability to approach your options in a balanced fashion, take an extended time-out before responding to the decision. This will give you the interlude you need to make certain that your thoughts and feelings are in equilibrium. As you practice achieving balance, you will ultimately reach a state of mind in which you can easily make decisions that honor every aspect of the self.

Source: Daily Om

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Categories
News on Health & Science

The Truth About Pandemics

[amazon_link asins=’B00A2HD40E,125011800X,1940026091,1548850314,B019HBW9OC,1974433897,1548247901,B00TQ5SEAI,1546868631′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’afcf3fb8-91e6-11e7-800d-5f7a6589c0cf’]

We are reeling under a surfeit of breaking news and scientific expert opinions about the swine flu pandemic. However, we need to remain focused and evaluate the statistics. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that there are approximately 1.2 million cases worldwide and around 1,000 deaths. In India, the fatalities are still in the double digits.

In contrast, tuberculosis (TB) causes 4,00,000 deaths in India annually. In fact, it is the leading cause of death in the economically productive 15 to 45 age group. However, TB can be easily diagnosed and cured with proper medication.

Around 450 out of 1,00,000 healthy young women die during childbirth. This is in contrast to China where the figure has fallen to 50. The WHO report states that the problem is magnified because the poor get inadequate care, while the rich demand and pay for caesarians and other non essential interventions.

Nineteen-year-old Saina Nehwal made headlines when she developed chicken pox a couple of weeks before the August 10 world badminton finals. She is part of the 95 per cent of the world population that develops chicken pox at some time in the course of their lives. It is an extremely contagious infection which is not taken seriously, as it usually results in innocuous disease. It can, however, turn dangerous and cause complications like brain fever, blindness, pneumonia and sterility in 10 per cent of those affected. If it occurs in childhood, it usually passes off with about a month’s absence from school. But if it occurs at a crucial stage in life like during your college finals or a public exam, it can cause much misery. The fact is such harassment is totally avoidable. The disease is preventable with a single dose of Varicella vaccine, which has to be administered after the age of one.

Pneumococcal disease causes pneumonia, brain fever, ear infection, sinusitis and bronchitis. The infection is common and results in 1.6 million deaths every year. Of this, one million are children. The death toll can be eliminated with timely immunisation in childhood. Infective jaundice because of hepatitis A and B can also be prevented with immunisation. Hepatitis A is considered harmless and exposure inevitable in India. Although the number of fatalities is negligible, it causes morbidity, with a feeling of “weakness”, lack of energy and ill health that persists for months. Hepatitis B is more dangerous. It can result in liver damage, chronic disease, cancer and even death. Again, both infections are preventable with immunisation.

Rubella or German measles is another disease that is preventable through vaccination. If acquired during pregnancy, the affliction can result in a stillbirth or a mentally retarded child with multiple defects requiring a lifetime of care. There are more vaccine preventable diseases such as measles, brain fever (caused by H. Influenzae or the meningococcal bacteria), typhoid, rotor virus diarrhoea, polio and even cervical cancer (caused by the Human Papillovirus infection).

Why then are we so focused on the swine flu epidemic? Flu has been around for centuries. Confirmed pandemics have been occurring with devastating regularity after 1918. The viruses responsible have a reservoir in birds and animals from where they mutate and transmigrate into humans. Since pigs share many genes with humans, the transition is this particular pandemic is very efficient. The rapid spread of the virus is helped by the lack of sunshine during the monsoon and in winter. It cannot survive long when exposed to our tropical sun, so in India the pandemic may be time bound.

It is difficult to differentiate the symptoms of regular flu from that of swine flu. Both start with fever, body ache, headache, sore throat, nasal stuffiness and cough. There may be diarrhoea or vomiting. The symptoms are more severe with swine flu. Most healthy people recover spontaneously from either. Those at risk are children under five, old people above 65, pregnant women and those with underlying medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease.

Vaccines are available, but they have to be “upgraded” and “restructured” each time there is a new epidemic, as the genetic nature of the virus changes. The WHO anticipates that a vaccine to protect us against this pandemic will be available by October or November. But will there be enough vaccine to cover the entire world (or even Indian) population at risk?

The diagnosis is confirmed by tests done on nasal and throat swabs or nasal aspirates. Blood tests can be done but they take five days and involve taking two different samples. Treatment too is available in government hospitals. The drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) is administered once diagnosis is confirmed.

The likelihood of infection is reduced by:

• Washing hands with soap several times a day, especially after handling money

• Cleaning surfaces like doorknobs with disinfectant

• Using a face mask

• Covering the face while coughing or sneezing

• Not spitting.

Source: The Terlegraph (Kolkata, India)

 
Categories
News on Health & Science

Study Supports Wider Use of Statins

An analysis of studies supports a growing belief that guidelines for prescribing cholesterol-lowering statin drugs should be expanded to include healthy people without established heart disease, cardiologists say.

The meta-analysis of 10 trials involving more than 70,000 participants found that statin therapy reduced overall mortality by 12 percent, major coronary events by 30 percent and strokes by 19 percent.

It supports the findings of the JUPITER trial, reported last year, which noted 54 percent fewer heart attacks and 48 percent fewer strokes among people taking a statin who had normal cholesterol levels but high levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, said Dr. Antonio M. Gotto, Jr., dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, a member of the international team reporting on the meta-analysis in the BMJ online.

The analysis shows that “the more risk factors you have, the more aggressive you should be, and the lower the cholesterol level you should consider using statins for,” Gotto said.

Primarily as a result of the JUPITER trial, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has announced that it will review the guidelines for prescribing statins, Gotto said. Those guidelines now focus on reducing elevated levels of LDL cholesterol, the “bad” kind that clogs arteries.

The increased benefit of statins is believed to be due to their anti-inflammatory activity, Gotto said.

The meta-analysis was undertaken before the JUPITER results were reported, Gotto said, because “there was a push against statin use in primary prevention in women and the elderly.” Primary prevention is aimed at people who have cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, but have not been diagnosed with heart disease.

“We thought it was an important health problem that was not being addressed,” Gotto said.

Previous trials were too small to provide definitive evidence that statin therapy would help women and older people who had risk factors for heart disease, he said. In the studies that were amassed for the meta-analysis, 34 percent of participants were women and 23 percent had diabetes.

Age should be a major consideration when considering statin therapy, but gender should also be taken into account, said Dr. Jacob W. Deckers of the department of cardiology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, a member of the international team. The study indicates that statin therapy should be started 10 years earlier in men than in women with the same risk factors, he said.

“Statins should be prescribed in older men with a single risk factor and in older women with several risk factors,” he said.

Only minimal side effects of statin therapy were found in the meta-analysis, Deckers said. No increased risk of cancer was seen, and the incidence of myalgia, the muscle pain that can accompany statin use, was one case in 10,000 persons, he said.

Many people who now take aspirin to reduce cardiovascular risk would be better off with statin therapy, Deckers said. Aspirin’s anti-clotting effects reduce the risk of artery blockage but increase the risk of excess bleeding, he noted.

“It would be better to switch to a statin because of a better benefit-risk ratio,” Deckers added. “With aspirin, the benefit is relatively low and the risk is relatively high.”

More Information you may click on -> U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Source:Health.com. July-1, 2009

 
Categories
Featured

How to Combat the Latest Supergerms

[amazon_link asins=’B00GB85JR4,B00JGCBGZQ,B0032BH76O’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’4e8aeb66-0e11-11e8-a2de-4b838fc92011′]

[amazon_link asins=’B002JY1DCO,B00CJF92NA,B00FE1RPC6,B0017JOF86,B00112UDQM,B00005302X,B00FE1ROUO,B00J75KF4U,B015QOGXR8′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’finmeacur-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’c0b721bb-0e11-11e8-bf5a-4da45219217f’]

As more and more bugs, including some truly nasty bacteria, become impervious to the effects of drugs it’s necessary to come up with effective alternatives.
Fortunately, while some germs may be outpacing our ability to kill them, we’re not completely defenseless. In fact, there are plenty of things we can do to slow their spread.

Here are some of Health.com’s better suggestions:

•Fight the flu with vitamin D. 1,500 to 2,000 I.U. of vitamin D not only bolsters the immune system but also may help prevent infection. (PLEASE NOTE: this is NOT my recommendation, but abstracted from the article on Health.com. I believe most adults need 5,000-8,000 units of vitamin D per day)

•Wash your hands. The flu virus can live for up to 72 hours on surfaces. That makes hand-washing the most effective daily defense. Wash briskly with soap and water for 30 seconds.

•Cover up. Bandage all cuts, even paper cuts and blisters.

•Stay clean at the hospital. If you’re visiting a hospital, wash yourself and your clothes right after. Don’t use bar soap in any hospital bathroom or set your purse on the floor. And researchers recently found that one in three stethoscopes used by emergency-medical-service providers was contaminated with MRSA — ask your doctor to swab his scope with alcohol.

•De-germ the gym. Use a disinfectant wipe to swab the handlebars of equipment, and drape a clean towel over shared yoga mats and sauna and locker room benches.

•Don’t share. You’re at increased risk of MRSA if you share razors, soap, towels, or other personal items.

•Be proactive. If you have to take an antibiotic, take a probiotic at the same time to build up the healthy bacteria in your gut.

Source: Health.com July 15, 2009

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
css.php