Thursday, 24 October 2013
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Peptic Ulcer Disease; The Facts& Myths
Peptic Ulcer Disease Facts and Myths - Peptic ulcer Disease(PUD) is shrouded by myths however there are many facts which many people need to know to live healthy.
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Keep Your Kidneys Healthy
Catch Kidney Disease Early
Your kidneys aren’t very big—each is about the size of your fist—but they do important work. They keep
you healthy by maintaining just the right balance of water and other substances inside your body.
Unfortunately, if your kidneys start to malfunction, you might not realize it for a long while. Kidney disease usually doesn’t make you feel sick until the problem becomes serious and irreversible. March is National Kidney Month, a perfect time to learn more about how to keep your kidneys healthy and how to catch problems early.
Your kidneys are 2 reddish, bean-shaped organs located on either side of your spine in the middle of your back. Their main job is to filter your blood. Each kidney contains about a million tiny filters that can process around 40 gallons of fluid every day—about enough to fill a house’s hot water heater. When blood passes through the kidney, the filters sift and hold onto the substances your body might need, such as certain nutrients and much of the water. Harmful wastes and extra water and nutrients are routed to the nearby bladder and flushed away as urine.
Your kidneys also produce several hormones. These hormones help to control your blood pressure, make red blood cells and activate vitamin D, which keeps your bones strong.
We all lose a little of our kidney function as we get older. People can even survive with just one kidney if they donate the other to a friend or family member.
But when kidney function drops because of an underlying kidney disease, it’s something to be concerned about. Toxins and extra water can build up in your blood. Falling hormone production can cause other problems. About 1 in 10 adults nationwide, or about 20 million people, have at least some signs of kidney damage.
There are different types of kidney disease. Most strike both kidneys at the same time, harming the tiny filters—called nephrons—and reducing their filtering ability. When damage to nephrons happens quickly, often because of injury or poisoning, it’s known as acute kidney injury. It’s more common, though, for nephrons to worsen slowly and silently for years or even decades. This is known as chronic kidney disease.
“Most people have few or no symptoms until chronic kidney disease is very advanced,” says Dr. Andrew Narva, a kidney specialist at NIH. “You can lose up to three-fourths of your kidney function and essentially have no symptoms.”
Chronic kidney disease can strike people of any race, but African Americans are especially at risk. African Americans also tend to have high rates of diabetes and high blood pressure, the 2 leading causes of kidney disease. Other risk factors for kidney disease include heart disease and a family history of kidney failure—a severe form of kidney disease.
If you have these risk factors, it’s important to be screened for kidney disease,” says Narva. “That usually involves simple laboratory tests: a urine test to look for kidney damage, and a blood test to measure how well the kidneys are working.”
The urine test checks for a protein called albumin, which isn’t routinely detected when your kidneys are healthy. The blood test checks your GFR—glomerular filtration rate. GFR is an estimate of your kidney’s filtering ability. A GFR below 60 is a sign of chronic kidney disease. A GFR below 15 is described as kidney failure.
“I tell my patients they should know their numbers,” says NIH kidney expert Dr. Jeffrey B. Kopp. “We usually cannot cure chronic kidney disease, but if we catch it early, we can slow down its progression.”
Without treatment, kidney disease often gets worse. If your GFR drops below 15, you may feel tired and weak, with nausea, vomiting and itching. By that point, you may need a kidney transplant or dialysis. It’s a good idea to talk with your doctor about the possibility of these therapies long before they’re needed. It takes time to understand your options, and it’s easier to figure things out when you’re feeling healthy.
“In general, the preferred therapy for kidney failure is to have a kidney transplant, but not everyone can have a transplant,” says Kopp. Some obstacles include long waiting lists for healthy kidneys and finding a well-matched donor.
Dialysis is a treatment that filters wastes and water from the blood, allowing patients with kidney failure to feel better and continue with everyday activities. NIH kidney specialist Dr. Paul Kimmel leads an NIH program to improve the lives of patients on dialysis. “Although dialysis is a life-saving therapy, it can be challenging for patients and families,” Kimmel says. “We’re encouraging researchers to explore innovative ways to improve the quality of life and long-term outcome for these patients.”
You can take many steps to avoid or delay reaching the point of kidney failure. The best thing you can do is control your blood pressure. A healthy lifestyle, including physical activity and a heart-healthy diet, can help to normalize blood pressure and also slow kidney disease.
“Most Americans eat more sodium and protein than the body needs. It’s your kidneys’ job to filter and get rid of the leftovers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says registered dietitian Theresa Kuracina, who advises NIH on kidney health and nutrition. Healthy kidneys can generally handle the workload. “But if you have kidney damage, too much sodium and protein can have a negative effect,” Kuracina says. “We generally recommend eating less sodium and more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. To reduce fats, choose lean meats and low-fat or fat-free dairy products.”
If you have kidney disease, your health care provider may recommend additional changes to your diet. And if lifestyle changes aren’t enough to slow down kidney damage, your doctor may prescribe medications to reduce blood pressure, control blood glucose and lower your cholesterol.
Don’t wait to take the first step to keep your kidneys healthy. Talk to your health care provider about your kidneys, and ask if you should be tested for kidney disease.
Source:NIH News in Health
Young Adult Obesity May Affect Later Heart Disease
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Heart disease is the leading cause of death nationwide, and obesity boosts the risk for heart disease. Past studies have linked both body mass index (BMI)—a ratio of weight to height—and waist circumference to heart disease risk. However, few studies have looked at whether the length of time a person is obese affects heart disease as well.
To learn more, a team led by NIH’s Dr. Jared Reis studied more than 3,200 young adults, ages 18 to 30, who weren’t obese at the start of the study. The subjects were followed over a 25-year period to see if and when they became obese and for how long. Heart scans looked for calcium deposits in their coronary arteries, an early warning sign of heart disease. These calcifications can arise long before symptoms are noticed—a condition called silent heart disease.
About 40% of the adults became obese during the study. Over 38% of those who were obese for more than 2 decades developed coronary artery calcification. In contrast, only about 25% of those who never became obese developed calcification. The scientists calculated that each year a young adult is obese raises that person’s risk of developing silent heart disease by 2-4%.
People in the U.S. are becoming obese at younger ages, and more than one-third of adults are obese.
“I think our findings really suggest that if we don’t measure obesity duration in addition to BMI and waist circumference, we may be underestimating the health risks of obesity,” Reis says.
Source:NIH News in Health
Monday, 21 October 2013
Smoking out Good Health
"One thousand Americans stop smoking everyday-by dying"
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Smoking that mean to say taking or habit of taking cigarette, cigar and other form of tobacco products is a major and recurrent issue in our present World. It started centuries ago when aborigines of American sub-continent and Australia chewed tobacco. It become worldwide phenomenon after Sir Raleigh introduced it into English Royal court. Subsequently, habit of taking cigarette, cigar and pipe spread with English imperialist conquest around the world.
By 2000,there are about 1.1 billion smokers worldwide and 943 millions are in Developing Countries. Many reasons people give for smoking or given why people smoke range from coping with life pressure, peer pressure, in order to forget their problems ,justifying the belief that everybody is taking it, boredom, curiosity and ignorance among others.But put in another way the addiction from tobacco taking particularly smoking of cigarette is in this pattern. You take one stick and you want to take another,(craving) and when you take another, you want to yet take another. And in this way you are experiencing what is scientifically refer to as TOLERANCE,PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE.
So for one reason or the other you light a stick of cigarette and in that combustion you generate 4000 chemical substances, which goes into the system. Chiefly, among them are nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar. The effect boomerang not in a day or two in most cases, it manifest latter in life as cancer of many part of the body most especially lung and upper part of the airway. Other effects are heart diseases, chronic bronchitis(related to the lung) and deleterious effect on pregnancy which range from low birth-weight of the child, spontaneous abortion, premature delivery and showing of physical and mental development in children of mother that smokes. Memory problems are not left out, so also production of abnormal spermatozoa in adult males that smokes.
And these generate a startling statistic-10,000 people die from smoking everyday. Maybe something would kill us, as some people would say.But the poser is that why allow what could be prevented kill us.Which unfortunately is an activity so commonly encouraged by availability of tobacco products and money to push it around the world by rich multinational tobacco companies.
Maybe let stop and examine what smokers say, particularly nudged on by emerging scientific findings which show that it reduces incidence of Parkinson’s disease and Inflammatory Bowel Disease and minimally in Alzeihmer’s Disease.
Could the benefit ever outweigh the risk,particularly the risk to the smoker and the people around him from second hand smoke.Second hand smoke is significantly injurious to innocent bystanders.A quitter of smoking reduce his risk of smoking-related shortening of life expectancy related disease and lost of man hour from such disease among other things.
A quitting Government is also very important. It is not enough for health authorities world-wide to enforce placing of warning on tobacco pack or advert.More punitive measures have to be taken which goes beyond the aforementioned one and slamming greater tax on tobacco products. Oxford medical companion a medical text summed it well-a cigarette is the only legally available consumer product which kills people when it is entirely used as intended.
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| Its Never Too Late to Stop Smoking. (National Film Theatre, Beverley Road, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England)Source: Charles Rispin [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
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