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Mouth Indicates Body’s Overall Health

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The mouth or oral cavity area is an excellent indicator of the whole body’s health, says a University of Maryland Dental School professor.
……....CLICK & SEE.
Professor Li Mao insists surface tissues inside the cheek could be checked to detect tobacco-induced damage in the lungs.

This could prove to be an important advancement in designing future lung cancer prevention trials.

“We hypothesized that tobacco-induced molecular alterations in the oral epithelium are similar to those in the lungs,” said Mao.

The expert added: “This might have broader implications for using the mouth as a diagnostic indicator for general health.”

“I feel that dentists should play a major role in prevention of cancer and Dr. Mao is the leading oral cancer researcher in the country. He crosses the bridge between medicine and dentistry,” said University of Maryland Dental School Dean Christian S. Stohler, DMD, DrMedDent, a leader in the movement to retool dental education.

“Being a physician helps expand dental health care and he wants to change how patients are being treated because his background is in head and neck cancer,” Stohler added.

Source: The study is published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

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Reduced Salt Intake Lowers Blood Pressure

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Using less amount of salt in diet can lead to slight reduction in blood pressure in the medium term, a new study has claimed. However,  whether in the long term this can also reduce the risk of late complications in people with sustained high blood pressure, otherwise known as essential hypertension, and whether in the long term their anti-hypertensive medication can be reduced remains unresolved, the study by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) concluded.

The study has been published in the form of a rapid report on 20 July 2009. This rapid report is part of a package commissioned by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), in which the benefit of various non-drug treatment strategies for high blood pressure are to be assessed. Stress management and more physical activity are also included, as well as giving up smoking and cutting down alcohol consumption.

This rapid report was prepared on the basis of secondary literature. In principle, this can be done if current, high quality systematic reviews are already available on a given topic. This was the case with reducing salt intake in hypertension, as IQWiG’s preliminary search revealed.

To reach the conclusion, IQWiG searched for systematic reviews that compared the following patients with hypertension: an intervention group, which was to follow a low-salt diet over a long period, versus a control group, which either did not have this target or whose salt reduction was not so great as in the intervention group.

The minimum duration of the studies had to be 4 weeks. In order not to overlook any current and potentially relevant studies, IQWiG also conducted an update search of recently published primary studies.

IQWiG was able to include in its assessment 7 reviews, in which the results of between 520 and 3391 participants from a total of 62 randomized controlled trials were analysed together.

IQWiG found that no conclusions on late complications could be drawn from the available data. The reason for this is that none of the studies had the primary goal of investigating the effects of a low-salt diet on cardiovascular disease or all-cause mortality.

However, the investigations consistently show that a reduction in salt intake can assist in lowering blood pressure: over a period of up to one year, there was a mean drop of 3.6 to 8 mmHg in systolic values and a mean drop of approximately 2 to 3 mmHg in diastolic values. This applied primarily to patients who did not take any additional anti-hypertensive drugs. The sustainability of this effect, however, remains unclear.

You may click to see:->Salt and its other adverse effects on the heart

Source: The Times Of India

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Tai Chi ‘Can Cure Arthritis’

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An international team has found carried out the study and found that Tai Chi helps in mitigating the pain associated with problems like arthritis and lessen disability — in fact, it reduces pain with trends towards improving overall health.

Tai Chi is an exercise that is regularly practiced in China to improve overall health and well-being. It is usually performed in a group but is practiced individually at leisure, which differs from traditional exercise therapy
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“The fact that Tai Chi is inexpensive, convenient, and enjoyable and conveys other psychological and social benefits supports the use this type of intervention for pain conditions such as arthritis,” lead researcher Amanda Hall.

Hall of George Institute in Australia and colleagues have based their findings on an analysis of systematic review and meta-analysis, the results of which are published in the latest edition of the ‘Arthritis Care & Research’ journal.

In fact, they analysed seven eligible randomised controlled trials that used Tai Chi as the main intervention for patients with musculoskeletal pain and found that Tai Chi improves pain and disability in patients suffering arthritis.

“It is of importance to note that the results reported in this systematic review are indicative of the effect of Tai Chi versus minimal intervention (usual health care or health education) or wait list control,” Hall said.

However, the researchers said that establishing the specific effects of Tai Chi would require a placebo-controlled trial, which has not yet been undertaken.

Source: The Times Of India

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Mostly Third of Childbirths are Cesareans

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The cesarean birth — delivery via uterine incision — was once reserved for cases in which the life of the baby or mother was in danger. But now it is a routine practice. It is in fact the most common operation in the United States; performed in 31 percent of births, up from a mere 4.5 percent in 1965.

With that surge has come an explosion in medical bills and an increase in complications. Now, the use of cesareans is being reconsidered. It is a major reason childbirth often is held up in healthcare reform debates as an example of how the intensive and expensive U.S. brand of medicine has failed to deliver better results, and may actually be doing more harm than good.

Childbirth is the number one cause of hospital admissions, and is a huge part of the nation’s $2.4-trillion annual healthcare expenditure. Spending on the average uncomplicated cesarean runs from $4,500 to $13,000, much more than a comparable vaginal birth. And the cesarean rate in the U.S. is higher than in most other developed nations despite a standing government goal of reducing such deliveries.

The cesarean also exposes a woman to the risk of infection, blood clots and other serious problems. Cesareans have been shown to increase premature births and the need for intensive care for newborns. Even without such complications, cesareans result in longer hospital stays.

Sources: Los Angeles Times May 17, 2009

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Quick Surgery Not Helpful After Mild Heart Attack

Does rushing a patient to hospital after a mild heart attack improve his or her chances of survival? It doesn’t help much, says a new  Canadian study led by Indian-origin professor Shamir Mehta at McMaster University in Hamilton near Toronto.
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The study found that rushing patients with a mild heart attack into bypass surgery or angioplasty did not improve their chances of survival, than waiting a few days. Led by Mehta, the researchers found similar rates of death or recurrence of heart attack in patients who underwent surgery quickly after a mild stroke and those who had to wait for a day and longer.

However, patients at high risk of having another stroke or heart attack needed quick surgery, the researchers said. Calling their findings “good news for patients and physicians”, Mehta said: “While we have known for a long time that patients with a full blown heart attack benefit from receiving angioplasty as early as possible, we did not know the optimal timing of angioplasty in patients with threatened or smaller heart attacks.”

“These second group of patients represent a large burden to the health care system and outnumber patients with full blown heart attacks by about 2:1. They often respond well to initial therapy with aspirin and other anti-clotting medications.”

As part of their multi-country study, the researchers picked up 3,031 patients – from 17 countries – who underwent angiography within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital or within 50 hours of admission.

Six months after the surgery, 9.6% of patients who received early treatment suffered another heart attack or died as compared to 11.3% who received delayed surgical intervention.

The study said: “Early intervention did not differ greatly from delayed intervention in preventing the primary outcome, but it did reduce the rate of the composite secondary outcome of death, myocardial infarction, or refractory aeschemia and was superior to delayed intervention in high-risk patients.”

Mehta said: “Patients coming to hospital with small or threatened heart attacks can be treated with aspirin and other anti-clotting medications and be transferred to a catheterisation laboratory a few days later, without undue harm.

“For patients with smaller or threatened heart attacks, only those who are at high risk need to have angioplasty early. The majority can be safely treated a few days later.”

Sources:The Times Of India

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