AP acid attack victim Swapnika dies in hospital

She fought a desperate battle to live in a hospital in Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh. But her injuries were too serious.

Finally at 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning, she died.

Swapnika, a final year engineering student, was a victim of an acid attack less than two weeks ago in Warrangal.

Her condition had been very critical for the last few days and she was on ventilator.

Swapnika, along with her friend Pranitha, had been seriously injured when three boys threw acid on them. Her friend Pranitha is still in a hospital, recovering.

Swapnika had been critical for the last few days but there a very tragic end to this young life.

A lot of anger had been seen in Hyderabad after the case and the boys who were accused of throwing acid on the two girls had allegedly been killed in an encounter

Over 10,000 kids born with Thalassemia every year

Fascinated by anything that runs on wheels or anything that rings, at first sight Bhavesh might seem like any other kid. But it's his sister he's been missing the most for the last few days. His six-year-old sister Sonali donated her bone marrow so her little brother could recover from a blood disorder called Thalassemia.

Consultant Oncologist at Jaslok Hospital, Dr Suresh H Advani says, "We did what we call HLA typing. It matched 100 per cent. "The Bajaj family's fight against the disorder began three months after Bhavesh was born.

He was diagnosed as being Thalassemia major, which meant his body was unable to produce enough red blood cells and would require blood transfusion every three weeks or so for his entire life. A bone marrow transplant (BMT) is the only cure for children like Bhavesh, which was done after his own bone marrow was completely destroyed through chemotherapy. Dr Advani says, "We collected the bone marrow from his sister and intravenously gave it to him. In a month, the red blood cells began to multiply."

In the absence of BMT the child runs the risk of growth failure, even cardiac failure and contracting infections like hepatitis due to the continuous transfusions. Over 10,000 children are born with Thalassemia in India every year. With only 10 centers across the country performing BMT and the bleak chances of finding a match, the transplant becomes very difficult.

In Bhavesh's case, his real test will be in April next year when doctors will check conclusively whether he has been cured and if he will indeed not require any blood transfusions henceforth. Till then he lives on candies and lots of hope.

Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan discharged from hospital

Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan, undergoing treatment at Lilavati Hospital here for abdominal pain, was discharged today. Hospital spokesman Mohan Rajan said the actor went home this morning. His condition had improved since yesterday.

Saif was admitted to the hospital on December 25 after he complained of acute stomach pain. He had been kept under observation since then. Sources close to the 38-year-old actor said he is 100 per cent fit now. It was an intestinal infection probably due to eating too much spicy food, they said.

The actor had flown in from Philadelphia, US where he was shooting for a film, to celebrate Christmas with girlfriend Kareena Kapoor's family. Kareena and her sister Karisma were with Saif through out his three-day stay in the hospital.

Calif. teen's family sues Cigna over transplant

The family of a 17-year-old leukemia patient has sued health insurance giant Cigna Corp. for her death in 2007 after the company initially refused to pay for a liver transplant.

The lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court by the family's attorney, Mark Geragos, alleges breach of contract, unfair business practices and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit accuses Cigna of delaying and rejecting valid claims, which resulted in the wrongful death of Nataline Sarkisyan.

The Philadelphia-based insurer eventually approved the transplant after Sarkisyan's family held a rally outside Cigna's suburban Los Angeles office. Nataline, however, died hours after the approval was secured.

Chris Curran, a spokesman for Cigna, said the company empathizes with the family but feels the lawsuit is without merit. Curran said Cigna volunteered to pay for the procedure out of its own pocket and not the employer's.

"This decision was made despite the fact that Cigna had no obligation to do so and despite concluding, based on the information available, that the treatment would be unproven and ineffective and therefore experimental and not covered by the employer's benefit plan," Curran said, reading from a statement.

But Charles Idelson, a spokesman for the California Nurses Association, said insurance companies are "in business to provide profits for shareholders, not to provide care."

"Nataline Sarkisyan's case serves as a tragic poster child for everything that's wrong with our insurance based health care system," he said. "Why did it take public humiliation for Cigna Corporation to approve a transplant?"

Nataline was diagnosed with leukemia at 14 and received a bone marrow transplant from her brother the day before Thanksgiving 2007. A complication, however, caused the teen's liver to fail.

The family had asked Cigna to pay for a liver transplant but the insurer refused, calling the procedure experimental.

In a subsequent letter to Cigna, four doctors from Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA Medical Center appealed to the insurer to reconsider. They said patients in similar situations who undergo transplants have a six-month survival rate of about 65 percent.

The insurer eventually reversed the decision while about 150 nurses and community members rallied outside its office in Glendale.

By this time, however, the teen had fallen into a vegetative state and was taken off life support. She died within the hour.

Nano drugs can kill cancer cells

N ano particles that are 5,000 times as small as a human hair, carrying an experimental anti-cancer agent, kill human melanoma and drug-resistant breast cancer cells growing in lab cultures.

The discovery could lead to the development of a new generation of anti-cancer drugs that are safer and more effective than conventional chemotherapy agents, researchers suggested. Mark Kester, James Adair and colleagues at Penn State's Hershey Medical Centre and University Park campus point out that certain nanoparticles have shown promise as drug delivery vehicles.

However, many of these particles will not dissolve in body fluids and are toxic to cells, making them unsuitable for drug delivery in humans. Although promising as an anti-cancer agent, ceramide also is insoluble in the blood stream making delivery to cancer cells difficult.

The scientists report a potential solution with development of calcium phosphate nanocomposite particles (CPNPs). The particles are soluble and with ceramide encapsulated with the calcium phosphate, effectively make ceramide soluble, said a Penn State release.

With ceramide encapsulated inside, the CPNPs killed 95 percent of human melanoma cells and were "highly effective" against human breast cancer cells that are normally resistant to anticancer drugs, the researchers say.

The study was published in the December issue of Nano Letters.

Michael Jackson 'close to death'

Pop legend Michael Jackson is suffering from a rare lung condition and is "close to death", a British newspaper has claimed.

Jackson needs to undergo an emergency transplant operation but he is too weak to be rushed into surgery and may even be fighting for his life, the 'Sunday Express' quoted Ian Halperin, who is penning a biography on the singer, as saying.

According to Halperin, 50-year-old Jackson has been diagnosed with Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic condition that can be fatal in severe cases, and the singer is now so ill he can barely speak and has lost as much as 95 per cent of the vision in his left eye.

"He has had Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency for years but it's gotten worse. He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it.

"He also has emphysema and chronic gastrointestinal bleeding which his doctors have had a lot of trouble stopping. It is the bleeding that's the most problematic part. It could kill him," Halperin said.

Author Halperin has also claimed that Jackson's lung conditions - which affects only one in 5,000 Americans - has been difficult to treat due to its associated health problems.

"For years, Michael has been working with his own doctors to try to make sure it doesn't progress. He has been on much medication which has helped keep him stable," he was quoted by the British newspaper as saying.

Though Jackson's official spokeswoman wouldn't comment on Halperin's claims but his elder brother Jermaine seemed to have confirmed that the singer has serious health issues. "He is not doing so well right now. This isn't a good time," he told America's 'Fox TV News'.

Rumours on pulse polio deaths spark violence

A wave of mischievous rumours about babies dying after being administered pulse polio drops caused panic in Tamil Nadu including Chennai
leading to violence in some parts of the city and districts on Sunday. In Chennai miscreants who had mingled with local residents went on a rampage at the Tambaram Taluk Government Hospital at Chrompet in the evening.

It all started with a private television, owing allegiance to an opposition party, running a scroll claiming that a child in Erode district had died after taking the polio drops.

As news spread, nearly 300 residents including panic-stricken parents in and around Tambaram descended outside the hospital and demanded an explanation from the hospital authorities about the efficacy of the polio drops administered to their children. Since no senior official was around, the agitated crowd went on a rampage breaking window panes and tables and chairs at the casualty ward of the hospital. They also damaged a computer and blood pressure
checking machine at the ward.

The police arrived on the spot after learning about the violence and dispersed the crowd. To ensure that the miscreants did not reassemble, a large posse of policemen was posted in front of the hospital.

Elsewhere, hundreds of parents, many carrying babies, returned to the ESI Hospital in K K Nagar and at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital in North Chennai demanding that doctors examine their child and certify that they were fine.

Police and hospital authorities had a tough time convincing the people that news about the babies dying after being administered polio drops were only a rumour. At all these hospitals, the parents stayed till late night unconvinced by the explanations offered by doctors.

Following widespread protests in many districts, the government health department clarified that a four-month-old baby, Shankar of Periyakodiveri village near Sathyamangalam in Erode had died of hydrocephalus, a congenital disorder of excess fluid in the brains and not because of any lapse on the part of the administration while giving polio drops. All other babies administered polio drops at the same centre were healthy, officials said.

According to reports pouring in from across the state, miscreants pelted several government hospitals with stones. In Coimbatore, miscreants, holding banners of a Dalit party, went on the rampage, damaging passing vehicles, while a group hurled stones at the government hospital in Tirupur.

Panic telephone calls and short messages heightened parental anxieties. By the time the rumours were scotched through public address systems and the electronic media, the general hospitals, functioning with skeleton staff on Sundays, came under a virtual siege.

At Tirupur, in just two hours about 10,000 people had thronged the government hospital, but there were just two medical doctors on duty. As the enraged parents protested and stones landed on the window panes of the hospital, about 20 doctors rushed in to attend to the children.

At the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital, an outpatient centre was set up right at the entrance, with the dean and about 20 medical officers, personally attending over 5000 children within three hours.

Later in the evening, the state government condemned the television channel backed by AIADMK for spreading rumours.

Medicaid applicants grow as recession widens

That day in July was one that Tammy Morse won't soon forget. Five months earlier, her husband lost his job as a recruiter for the financial services industry. Once the family savings were gone, the mother of two from Stratford, Conn., saw no way to get health insurance coverage for her family other than to apply for Medicaid.

"It was humbling," she said of her visit to the state's Department of Social Services office. "For lack of a better way to put it, that was for other people. It wasn't for me."

Around the country, similar stories are playing out for thousands of families.

Since the recession began a year ago, many states have seen increases in the Medicaid rolls just as tax revenues are falling below projections. Governors have lobbied President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to help them weather the downturn by increasing the federal government's share of Medicaid spending for at least two years.

The governors said the extra $40 billion would ease the service cuts or tax increases that legislatures need to balance state budgets.

The unemployment rate has jumped from about 4.7 percent last December, when the recession began, to 6.7 percent today. Economists estimated in a Kaiser Family Foundation report that each 1 percent gain in the unemployment rate adds 1 million people to the Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Program.

In Connecticut, a state faring better than many, enrollment in the Medicaid program has climbed from about 312,000 last December to about 329,500 in November — a 6 percent increase. Many who lost their jobs were eligible to continue group health insurance. But that is not an option in most cases because they no longer have an employer picking up a large share of their premiums.

Medicaid insures nearly one in six low-income people in the U.S. The program typically covers the very poor and about half of enrollees are children. Spending came to $333 billion in the budget year ending Sept. 30, 2007. Washington picks up about 57 percent of that; the states cover the remainder.

Regular use of contact lenses harmful

Blue, sea-green or brown, now your eyes can have whichever shade you want thanks to the cosmetic contact lenses that are fast becoming an important fashion accessory. Ophthalmologists, however, caution against excessive use of contact lenses as fashion. According to city's Chary Eye Specilaist contact lenses are quite safe. "Contact lenses don't harm eyes."

For some people, however lenses can cause allergy if used frequently, says Dr S P Kumar, an Eye specialist. He says that lenses are imported and are tested before distribution. Lenses should be worn after the age of 18. Contact lenses are considered as alternative to spectacles. "But there is nothing like spectacles," he adds.

On frequent use, Kumar advises that contact lenses should not be used on a regular basis as permanent alternative to glasses. "If you are wearing lenses constantly then it is not good for eyes because lenses are like shield on eyes which restricts oxygen to enter in eyes which, however, is not good," he says. Another eye specialist Dr Sanjay Dhawan agrees. He cautions against over use as it can also lead to infection.

8 Limbed Baby to have an Operation

Lakshmi Tatma was born joined to a 'parasitic twin' and will go under the knife at the hands of 30 surgeons to remove two of her useless arms and legs. The headless 'twin' is joined to Lakshmi at the pelvis and has its own spinal column and kidney. Without the operation the little girl would never be able to walk or crawl and would be unlikely to live past her early teens, doctors said. The extraordinary eight-limbed baby was born in a poverty-stricken region of Bihar, India - on the day devoted to the celebration of the four-armed Hindu deity Vishnu. Her mother Poonam Tatma said she believed her daughter was "a miracle, a reincarnation" of Vishnu.

source:http:8limbedw1.blogspot.com

Regular walk in a park can help improve memory

A simple walk in the park a day can help improve your memory and attentiveness, according to a new study.

The new study led by Marc G Berman, John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan from the University of Michigan have found that spending time in nature may be more beneficial for mental processes than being in urban environments.

For the study, the researchers conducted two experiments to test how interactions with nature and urban environments would affect attention and memory processes.

First, a group of volunteers completed a task designed to challenge memory and attention. The volunteers then took a walk in either a park or in downtown Ann Arbor. After the walk, volunteers returned to the lab and were retested on the task.

Mystery behind forgetfulness revealed

In the second experiment, after volunteers completed the task, instead of going out for a walk, they simply viewed either nature photographs or photographs of urban environments and then repeated the task.

The results showed that performance on the memory and attention task greatly improved following the walk in the park, but did not improve for volunteers who walked downtown

Moreover, the group who viewed the nature photographs performed much better on the retest than the group who looked at city scenes.

The authors suggest that urban environments provide a relatively complex and often confusing pattern of stimulation, which requires effort to sort out and interpret.

Eat apples, bananas and oranges to boost memory

Natural environments, by contrast, offer a more coherent (and often more aesthetic) pattern of stimulation that, far from requiring effort, are often experienced as restful.

The study appears in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Doctors Repair Lungs for Transplant

In a groundbreaking world first, Toronto doctors have used a new technique to repair and rejuvenate injured donor lungs and successfully transplanted them into a patient.

The technique, which involves placing the lungs in a bubble-like ventilation unit outside the donor’s body, opens up the possibility that many more people in need of transplants will be able to get the life-saving surgery.

Currently, only about 15% of donor lungs are healthy enough to be transplanted, said Shaf Keshavjee, director of the lung transplant program at Toronto General Hospital, who led the research team that developed the “ex vivo” procedure, BBC News website reported.

“In this technique, we’re able to set up the situation where the lung can start to recover already from the injuries that had been inflicted on it in the donor and start to recover and work better,” Keshavjee said on Friday at a news conference to announce the breakthrough.

“More importantly, we can actually monitor that and prove that the lung is better before we transplant it,” he said, adding that the technique would allow surgeons worldwide to “easily double or triple the number of (donor) lungs used today.”

The Toronto XVIVO Perfusion System, a see-through chamber with a retractable lid for housing the lungs, has been dubbed the “little SkyDome” because of its resemblance to Toronto’s Rogers Centre. Attached to the unit is a ventilator that pumps in oxygen—as if the organs were breathing inside someone’s chest—and a bloodless solution providing proteins and nutrients.

Traditionally, lungs are removed from a brain-dead donor and then kept cool, allowing them to remain usable for transplant for six to eight hours. But while on ice, the static lungs are slowly dying and deteriorating, Keshavjee said. With the new technique, the fragile organs are kept at room temperature and stay viable for at last 12 hours.

“What we’re doing now is using strategies of regenerative medicine
to say, well, can we actually not shut the organ down, but keep it alive, keep it so it’s working, so its regenerative properties which are natural in the organ to recover from the injury can actually be working while the organ’s outside the body?”

The new system Toronto System was used on donor lungs for Andy Dykstra, 56, who received his transplant on December 5, 2008. He had been waiting for a transplant since July 30, 2008, and was told of the clinical trial testing the new system on December 4 this year.

Recalling his difficulty breathing when walking to the front door in his home, Andy said that he waited only two seconds before deciding to be the first patient to receive the reconditioned lungs, which would not have been suitable for transplant without undergoing perfusion by the Toronto System. “When I was given this chance, the hair on my arms stood up, I was so excited. I knew it was right. I just had to go for it,” he said, with his wife Chris standing by his side and nodding for emphasis.

Andy is part of an ongoing clinical trial which uses the novel Toronto strategy to identify donor lungs which do not meet current transplant criteria, repair them, and then transplant them into patients.

To date, four patients in total have received lungs treated using this technique, and all have done well.

But Andy was the first patient who received lungs which did not meet standard transplant criteria and which could not have been used if they had not been repaired first by the Toronto System. (The three others received donor lungs which met transplant criteria and which were further improved by the Toronto System.) All TGH patients waiting for a lung transplant are eligible to be part of this clinical trial, and the lung transplant team will assess all those who are interested.

“We are extremely pleased that Andy is doing so well,” said Keshavjee, adding that Andy was able to breathe without any mechanical assistance just four days after the transplant and was discharged from hospital 12 days after the procedure.

He explained that currently only about 15%-20% of donor lungs are acceptable for transplantation since lungs are susceptible to injuries during the brain-death process or from intensive care unit-related lung complications.

These numbers can easily be doubled with this technique to treat and improve donor lungs.

source:timesofindia

How to get your Nutrition Back on track

About how to get your nutrition back on track

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How Turmeric can help prevent Cancer ?

There have been plenty of scientific investigations on Turmeric in addition to the time-tested evidence through folk medicine, about the therapeutic powers of Turmeric. Curcuma, or Turmeric ameliorates inflammation, ulcers, aggregation of platelets, lipid oxidation and microbial growth. Curcuminoids extracted from Turmeric have been known to show anti-tumorigenic and anticarcinogenic effects.

Curcumin is also anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant in nature.

a) Curcumin as chemopreventive : Curcumin can help inhibit the growth or development of chemically-induced tumors in oral cavity, stomach, skin, duodenum and colons. Tests for this has been done in rodents. It prevents activation of carcinogenic chemicals by suppressing hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A1 enzyme responsible for activation of carcinogenic chemicals and up-regulating the detoxification enzymes, such as glutathione S-transferases, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase and epoxide hydrolase etc. Cox-2 as a Potential Target for Anti-inflammatory and Tumor Antipromoting Effects of Curcumin
The roles of prostaglandins and other eicosanoids derived from arachidonic acid in the development and progression of human cancer have been known for over two decades. Increased prostaglandin synthesis may influence proliferation, survival capability, angiogenesis, and the metastatic potential of tumor cells, as well as carcinogen metabolism. Arachidonic acid metabolites derived from the cyclooxygenase-2 (COX) and lipoxygenase (LOX) pathways are hence important mediators of growth-related signal transduction, implying that intervention through these pathways should be useful for arresting tumor promotion and progression. Curcumin is a powerful antiinflammatory agent and inhibitor of COX-2 and is thought to inhibit carcinogenesis by preventing the formation of arachidonic acid metabolite such as prostaglandin. The molecular mechanisms underlying inhibition of COX-2 by curcumin remain poorly understood. Curcumin may down-regulate COX-2 expression by blocking the NF-kB signaling pathway. Inactivation of NF-kB by curcumin is achieved through blockade of phosphorylation of the inhibitory subunit I-kB prompted by the NF-kB-inducing kinase (NIK)/I-kB kinase (IKK) complex. Curcumin abolishes cigarette smoke–induced DNA binding and transcriptional activities of NF-kB, which correlates with suppression of NF-kB–dependent expression of COX-2, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9, and cyclin D1. Intragastric infusion of ethanol led to fatty liver, necrosis, and inflammation, which were accompanied by activation of NF-kB and the induction of COX-2, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), and nitrotyrosine formation. Treatment with curcumin prevents both the pathological and biochemical changes induced by ethanol possibly via suppression of induction of NF-kB-dependent genes. Suppression of activation of AP-1 and expression of its components (c-Jun and c-Fos) has been considered to be responsible for tumor-antipromoting activity of curcumin. In addition, curcumin is a potent inhibitor of protein kinase C (PKC) and epidermal growth factor (EGF)-receptor tyrosine kinase.

The transcription factor Nrf2, which normally exists in an inactive state as a consequence of binding to a cytoskeleton-associated protein Keap1, can be activated by stimuli that affect cellular redox status. Alteration of the Nrf2-Keap1 interaction enables Nrf2 to translocate to the nucleus, bind to the antioxidant-responsive element (ARE) and initiate the transcription of genes coding for Phase II detoxification/antioxidant enzymes and cytoprotective proteins. Curcumin has been reported to stimulate the expression of Nrf2 in which is associated with a significant increase in the expression and catalytic activity of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), a redox-sensitive inducible protein that provides protection against oxidative and nitrosative stress. The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) appears to be involved in curcumin-mediated HO-1 induction.

source:power-of-turmeric.com

Turmeric may work for Alzheimer’s

India’s very own haldi is now giving scientists hope of an Alzheimer’s cure. Researchers at the University of Southampton are investigating whether curcumin found in turmeric — that gives curries the yellow colour — could benefit people with Alzheimer’s.

Researchers believe curcumin could greatly minimise the effects of Alzheimer’s and will examine whether curcumin-containing drugs could counteract some of the brain changes that are characteristic of the disease.

Amrit Mudher, lead researcher from the University of Southampton, said, “Indian communities that regularly eat curcumin have a surprisingly low incidence of Alzheimer’s, but we do not know why. Part of our research will investigate how curcumin may help protect the brain and prevent the disease.”

In healthy people, proteins in the brain’s nerve cells help them to communicate with each other. In Alzheimer’s sufferers, these tau proteins become abnormal and disrupt the cell’s ability to communicate with each other and the nerve cells eventually die.

The team at Southampton will use fruit flies, genetically modified to have nerve cells that contain malfunctioning tau proteins similar to those found in people with Alzheimer’s.

Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the British Alzheimer’s Society, said, “Unless we act now, one million people will develop dementia in the next 10 years. A cheap, accessible and safe treatment could transform the quality of life of thousands of people with the disease.” Curcumin is marketed widely in the western world as a dietary supplement for the treatment and prevention of both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis. Scientists have also recently found that curcumin helps stop the spread of breast cancer into the lungs. Turmeric is also prescribed for liver and urinary diseases.

According to Indian Council of Medical Research scientists, a cure for Alzheimer’s will greatly benefit India. Alzheimer’s, which is a progressive brain disorder that gradually destroys a person’s memory and ability to reason and make judgments, presently affects 5% of the population above 60 in India.

Globally, Alzheimer’s affects one in 10 people over the age of 65. This study could be of prime importance for India where by 2050, the average Indian might live from the current 64.7 years to 75.6 years. According to the recent ‘World Population Prospects’ of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, by 2050, the number of Indians above 80 will increase more than six times from the current number of 78 lakh to nearly 5.14 crore. At present, 20% of this category in India suffer from Alzheimer’s.

About 17,000 poultry culled in West Bengal

About 17,000 poultry have been culled in West Bengal's bird flu-hit Malda district, an official said
Friday.

"Veterinary workers have culled 16,963 chickens and ducks till Thursday night. The culling operations will continue till Friday night and mopping up operations will start Saturday," District Magistrate Sridhar Ghosh said.

"The cullers are trying to cull more towards the evening when the poultry are back in the enclosures or farms," he said.

The state Animal Resources Development
Minister Anisur Rehman had said approximately 25,000 poultry will be culled at Narhatta and Satgheria villages under English Bazar police station in Malda, about 350 km from here.

Thirty teams comprising 150 veterinary workers started full-fledged culling operations Thursday in affected areas. Villagers are being paid compensation of Rs.20-50 for each fowl and duck depending on its age.

Rehman had confirmed that blood samples of dead poultry sent to the High Security Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Bhopal had tested positive for avian flu.

In January, over 200,000 poultry birds were culled in several districts. An outbreak of the bird flu had been detected at Malda in March and more than 50,000 birds were culled. This is the second time the disease has hit the district.

Bliss therapy... Massage your way to bed

THE MAGIC OF MASSAGE

In today's frantic world, most couples claim either to be too tired for sex or not having enough time. But, there's one way of turning your boring bedroom ritual into an exotic pleasure.

All you need is a sensual and soothing massage as a precursor for great sex.

"The significance of touch dates back to our very roots when we are in the womb, our mother's holding us, followed by childhood games with parents and friends all use touch therapy. Later in life, we tend to duplicate this in our cherished relations. A sexual massage is an unusual way of maintaining closeness and can result in not only relaxation, but a keener sense of intimacy to both partners," explains.

Whether you are married, are into a long-term relationship or exploring a passionate evening with your newly found love, treating your beloved with a sensual massage helps in building trust and enjoying quality time together. What's more? When done in a composed ambiance with affection flowing through your fingertips, a sensual massage helps heal even the most kaput relationships. We explore the magical world of massages...

Benefits of a sensual massage!
"People may find it hard to believe, but a simple back and head massage done with lukewarm coconut oil, has brought about a deeper connection than any solitaire, car, fancy dinner or vacation can ever achieve," shares Undeniably, lovers who touch and touch share a much closer bond than those who don't. The simple act of hand holding, regular cuddling outside the sexual ambit builds an eternal bond between two people. "Couples who habitually engage in non-sexual, physical contact miss their partners more when they are apart. Massage is the ultimate way of conveying your feelings to your partner. Mastering the methods and techniques of this intimate act improves your relationship. It doesn't always have to lead to a sexual encounter, it can be a way to communicate your feelings for one another with the sense of touch we all need in our lives," explains Dr. Rishabh Batra, a clinical psychologist.

Sensual massage is pleasing on many levels. It ignites the flames of desire and allows you to express your love and devotion. I have read about the impacts of massages on the Internet, and ever since I have started practicing it, my intimate relationship is blossoming and flourishing like never before."

Making way for great sex
Sensual massages are often a great way to express your feelings, without words, to your partner telling them just how much they mean to you. A sensual and sexual massage creates the perfect mood for a night of passion.

"A sexual massage actually tells your mind and body to relax. However, since it is a sexual massage, sexual tension is omnipresent, making for a night of great sex!"

Healthy breakfast may mean healthier diet overall

Breakfast may indeed be the most important meal of the day -- as long as that meal is not a doughnut -- a study suggests.

Using data from a national health survey of U.S. adults, researchers found that people who ate lower-calorie foods for breakfast tended to have a higher-quality diet overall.

Furthermore, men who ate a healthy breakfast generally weighed less. Among women, breakfast eaters -- regardless of the food involved -- tended to weigh less than those who skipped the morning meal.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, give some support to past studies finding that breakfast eaters are less likely to be overweight -- and that eating a high-quality breakfast, rather than grabbing a pastry, is the key.

Research has shown, for example, that people who eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast have a lower average weight than either those who skip breakfast or those who sit down to a plate of steak and eggs.

What's "unique" about the current study is that it suggests that breakfast foods low in "energy density" -- low in calories for a given amount of food -- "appear to predict better food choices for the rest of the day and may help with better management of body weight," Dr. James Rippe, one of the researchers on the work, said in a written statement.

Fruits, vegetables and high-fiber whole grains, for example, are low in energy density, while confections like Danish pastries and doughnuts have a high energy density.

The current findings underscore the importance of choosing low-energy- density options for breakfast, according to Rippe, a cardiologist with the Rippe Lifestyle Institute in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

The Rippe organization manages the Breakfast Research Institute, an industry-sponsored group that funds health and nutrition research. The BRI financed the current study.

The findings are based on responses from more than 12,000 U.S. adults who took part in three federal health surveys between 1999 and 2004.

Overall, people who reported eating a low-energy-density breakfast in the past day were more likely than their counterparts to choose lower-calorie foods for the rest of the day as well. As a group, they also had a higher-quality diet -- eating a wider variety of foods and more vitamins and minerals.

Among men, those who ate a breakfast low in energy density tended to weigh less, even with factors like exercise and income considered. For women, any type of breakfast was related to a lower likelihood of obesity -- though the calorie density of other meals did seem to be important.

More research is needed to confirm those particular findings, Rippe's team notes. For now, they suggest that men should be encouraged to eat a breakfast low in energy density, whereas women should eat breakfast but also focus on choosing low-energy-density foods throughout the day.

source: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Educational Video For Prostate Cancer

This is a educational video for the prostate cancer patient and their family. Depending on the individual patient, a radical prostatectomy, might a procedure that your urologist could recommend as treatment.

Combo Treatment for Prostate Cancer Cuts Deaths

Treating advanced prostate cancer with radiation and hormone-blocking drugs cut the death rate in half in a study of Scandinavian men, researchers report. In the United States, the combination has been standard care since the 1990s. But in Europe, many doctors have avoided the combo treatment and used hormone drugs alone, thinking the pair would be too harsh for most patients.

"What this study shows is that men with prostate cancer do benefit from more aggressive therapy," said Dr. Howard Sandler, of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The Scandinavian rearchers tracked 875 men with advanced prostate cancer in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

About half were given hormone-blocking drugs while the other half got the same treatment plus radiation. The drugs block production of testosterone, which feeds cancer cells.

After nearly eight years, 79 men in the hormone only group had died of prostate cancer, compared to 37 in the group that had hormone therapy plus radiation.

"It's not enough just to put patients on hormones," said Anders Widmark of Umea University in Sweden, one of the paper's authors. "To get a dramatic increase in survival, you have to add radiation. This should be the new standard."

The study was published online Tuesday by the British medical journal, Lancet. It was paid for by various Scandinavian cancer groups, Umea University and the makers of the drugs used in the study, Schering-Plough Corp. (Lupron), and Abbott Laboratories Inc. (Eulexin).

Adding radiation to patients' treatment did come at a cost. After five years, men receiving hormones and radiation reported higher rates of side effects including fatigue, insomnia, and sexual problems.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, and usually strikes after age 50.

While the combination treatment is recommended in U.S. guidelines, Sandler said not all patients get it. He said men who are being treated with hormones alone should talk to their doctor so see if radiation should be added.

"Combining hormones and radiotherapy should now be available to patients universally," said Chris Parker of the Institute of Cancer Research in Surrey, England.

Face transplanted in surgery - Cleveland Clinic..Video

(CNN) -- It was a surgery no one wanted to work on -- a Finnish man had accidentally chopped off his hand in the forest. Reattaching his hand required hours of meticulously connecting the arteries, tendons and bones together. Dr. Maria Siemionow, a reconstructive surgeon, jumped at the chance to take part.

"The hand that was white in one room became pink in another room connecting to the patient," Siemionow told CNN two years ago, describing how blood flow revived the once-severed hand. It was, she said, "a powerful event, which kind of led me to think that technically we can do so much and you can make patients that are disabled one day, being able to come back to society the next day."

On Wednesday, Siemionow, the head of plastic surgery research at the Cleveland Clinic, is expected to announce the completion of another complex surgery -- a near-total face transplant.

The face transplant surgery done two weeks ago by a team of eight surgeons at the Cleveland, Ohio hospital, is the first of its kind conducted in the United States.

In the surgery, 80 percent of the female trauma patient's face was transplanted, a Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman said. The forehead and chin were left intact. Details about the patient and procedure have not been released yet.

Since 2004, Siemionow had medical and ethical clearance for a full facial transplant. It has taken four years to find the right patient.

"We want to make sure they understand that this is a lifelong commitment getting the medications and being compliant," she told CNN in a previous interview.

Woman gets near-total face transplant in Cleveland

Her injuries were ghastly: no nose, no palate, no way to eat or breathe normally, a face so hideous that children who saw her screamed and ran away. From the moment they met earlier this year, Dr. Maria Siemionow knew the severely disfigured woman would be the one — the first person in the U.S. to receive a face transplant.

"Our patient was called names and was humiliated. You need a face to face the world," said Siemionow, the Cleveland Clinic reconstructive surgeon who led the operation about two weeks ago.

During the 22-hour procedure, 80 percent of the patient's face was replaced with bone, muscles, nerves, skin, blood vessels and some teeth taken from a woman who had died hours earlier.

It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive as this one.

"I must tell you how happy she was when with both her hands she could go over her face and feel that she has a nose, feel that she has a jaw," Siemionow said. "She wants just to go out and be invisible in the crowd."

The patient's name and age were not released, nor were details on how she was injured, and she did not appear at a hospital news conference Wednesday. Surgeons said she was doing well and showing no signs of rejecting her new face. She was still sedated and unable to speak much, communicating mostly through writing, Siemionow said.

Doctors believe she will eventually be able to eat on her own, breathe normally instead of through a hole in her windpipe, and exhibit a full range of facial expressions, including smiling and frowning.

She is expected to spend weeks in the hospital, after which she will have to undergo periodic checkups for the rest of her life to watch for signs of rejection.

The transplant was fraught with ethical questions.

Unlike operations involving vital organs like hearts and livers, transplants of faces are done to improve quality of life — not extend it. Recipients run the risk of deadly complications and must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent organ rejection, raising their odds of cancer and infections.

But the hospital's bioethics chief, Dr. Eric Kodish, said the circumstances and procedures followed for the donation and transplant were "beyond reproach."

"This is not cosmetic surgery in any conventional sense," Kodish said.

Over the past four years, Siemionow had considered dozens of desperate burn victims and other potential candidates for the operation, and practiced on animals and cadavers to perfect the technique. The woman selected was so badly injured that only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.

"She heard people calling her names, children just scared of her, running away from her. When she was on the street, people were turning their heads," Siemionow said.

Previous operations on the woman over several years at the Cleveland Clinic had made little improvement in her looks, doctors said.

"This patient exhausted all conventional means of reconstruction, and is the right patient," Siemionow said.

The donor's family gave specific permission for the face to be used. The removal of a dead person's face would rule out an open-casket funeral.

The recipient was not shown a picture of the donor, and in animal experiments, "the recipient never looks like the donor," especially when the injuries are severe, Siemionow said. That is because the underlying bone structure is different from person to person.

The hospital posted a statement from the woman's sibling on its Web site.

"We never thought for a moment that our sister would ever have a chance at a normal life again, after the trauma she endured," it says. "But thanks to the wonderful person that donated her organs to help another living human being, she has another chance to live a normal life. Our family cannot thank you enough."

After about three months waiting for a donor similar to the recipient in age, gender, tissue type and skin tone, Siemionow again asked her patient if she wanted to go through with it. "She said 'I'm ready. I've been waiting for this,'" the surgeon said.

Disfigured patients are stuck at home, "hiding from society" and afraid to go out, the surgeon said.

Many more like her exist, and a military grant to the clinic will let them explore the possibility of operating on soldiers left severely disfigured, Siemionow said.

The clinic is absorbing the roughly $200,000 cost of this first transplant because it is an experiment and part of research. They hope to offer more, but are taking this one case at a time for now, Siemionow said.

The world's first partial face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog. Isabelle Dinoire received a new nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor. Apart from some rejection episodes, she has done well.

Two others have received partial face transplants since then — a Chinese farmer attacked by a bear and a European man disfigured by a genetic condition.

Leading plastic surgeons praised the operation. It's an example of a medical advance "that gives patients their lives back," Dr. John Canady, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, said in a statement.

What Causes Obesity?

When you take in more calories than you burn off, you gain weight. How you eat, how active you are, and other things affect how your body uses calories and whether you gain weight.

If your family members are obese, you may have inherited a tendency to gain weight. And your family also helps form your eating and lifestyle habits, which can lead to obesity.

Also, our busy lives make it harder to plan and cook healthy meals. For many of us, it's easier to reach for prepared foods, go out to eat, or go to the drive-through. But these foods are often high in fat and calories. Portions are often too large. Work schedules, long commutes, and other commitments also cut into the time we have for physical activity.

There is no quick fix to being overweight. To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you take in.

Govt to set up six more bird flu testing labs

As part of measures to check bird flu, the Centre will set up six more laboratories in different parts of the country to detect the avian influenza virus, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Tuesday.

While bird flu outbreak was often being reported from various parts of the country, there is only one laboratory located at Bhopal for detecting the virus in samples.

By March 2009, two testing facilities will be set up in Kolkata and Jalandhar, Pawar said in the Rajya Sabha, replying to a debate on a bill that seeks to prevent communicable diseases in animals and birds.

The Prevention and Control of Infectious and Contagious Diseases in Animals Bill, 2005 passed by the House, is aimed at providing a uniform legislation throughout the country to monitor and control infectious animal diseases.

The minister did not reveal the location details for the other four laboratories that the Centre would set up.

Pawar also said an expert group will study the viability of setting up a body on the lines of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for the animal husbandry sector. He was responding to a demand from MPs to set up such a body.

Framing legislation for control of major livestock diseases is also an international obligation for India to enable the country to take benefits under the International Animal Health Code, a crucial enabler for livestock trade.

Contagious diseases like foot and mouth disease, black quarter and anthrax, among others, continue to be a serious threat to Indian livestock with a production value estimated at Rs 2.11 lakh crore.

Honey Best dressing salad can get!

Honey is not only a healthy alternative to chemical additives, but also protects the quality of salad dressings for up to nine months while Honey is the best bet when it comes to salad dressings sweetening them naturally, says a new study.

Dwelling into the health benefits of the antioxidant-rich honey, Nicki Engeseth, a University of Illinois associate professor of food chemistry said: "To capitalize on the positive health effects of honey, we experimented with using honey in salad dressings. We found that the antioxidants in honey protected the quality of the salad dressings for up to nine months while sweetening them naturally," the expert added.

Engeseth's study substituted honey for EDTA, an additive used to keep the oils in salad dressings from oxidizing, and high-fructose corn syrup, used by many commercial salad-dressing producers to sweeten their salad dressing recipes. "We chose clover and blueberry honeys for the study after an analysis of the sweetening potential, antioxidant activity, and phenolic profiles of 19 honeys with varying characteristics," said the scientist.

The dressings were also compared to a control dressing that contained ingredients found in current commercial salad dressings, she said.

Engeseth explained a problem the scientists encountered in using honey in a salad dressing system. "Salad dressings are emulsions—they contain oil and water; and to keep these ingredients together in one phase, manufacturers rely on emulsifiers and thickening agents to avoid thinning of the dressing and separation of the oil and water phase," she said.

When the researchers found that enzymes in the honey broke the emulsion by attacking the starch that was used to thicken the dressing, they came up with a new formulation that used xanthan gum as a thickening agent, which they then used in all the dressings, she said.

The researchers then stored the dressings under various conditions, including 37 degrees Celsius (accelerated storage) for six weeks and 23 degrees Celsius and 4 degrees Celsius for one year, followed by an evaluation of their oxidative stability. "After nine months of storage, both types of honey were as effective as EDTA in protecting against oxidation or spoilage. Blueberry honey performed slightly better than clover," she said.

Engeseth said that many consumers prefer products with natural ingredients and that salad dressings made with honey should appeal to these consumers.

How to Take Control of Your Health

The amount of time you revel in wonderful moments of joy, contentment, inspiration, laughter, love and learning will be directly proportional to your health, happiness, success, satisfaction, productivity and fulfillment! Maintain a healthy outlook through the power of a positive thought!

Steps

1. Cleanse the Soul. For the same reason you wouldn't go a week without a shower, you shouldn't keep a week's worth of mind clutter stored up in your grey matter. Do easy meditations daily in the shower to clear your mind, open yourself up to new opportunities and prepare for a simply fantastic day!

2. Brush Up. Do a daily affirmation twice a day in the morning and at night when you are brushing your teeth. Say it aloud through toothpaste suds or silently in your mind, "I am masterfully creating my ultimate life. Success and health (or sub in what you desire) comes naturally to me."

3. Be Active. Don't just stand around and let life happen to you. Every time you walk to the car, think about tiny actions you could take to move you closer to achieving what you truly desire. Keep a notebook to jot them down before you start up the engine. Watch each baby step start to exponentially propel your life forward.

4. Dress Up. Just as you might think ahead or lay out your wardrobe for an important meeting or date, prepare your mind for important events. Focus on how you want to feel and set your intentions and be very specific on what you'd like to accomplish.

5. Buckle Up For Safety. It's the law. Expect that you will experience life mishaps, tragedy, injury and unfairness. You can safeguard against emotional distress by getting in touch with your true self. Choose how you want to feel, how you would like to handle difficult situations and think before you let fear, worry or panic creep in. It's your choice.

6. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

7. Preventative Prescription. A vitamin a day keeps the self doubt away. Honor yourself and recognize all that you are. When something has gone well, applaud yourself and enjoy it! Don't dwell on what you could have done to improve it or what you would do differently next time. We all make mistakes. Learn and grow from them but remember to enjoy and relish in even your smallest achievements too!

8. Bless Your Meals. Just as you might say grace or spend an extra moment going around the Thanksgiving table to express what you are thankful for, find the good in your life and be thankful for it. Adopt an attitude of gratitude at dinner time.

9. Sleep Tight. Take your last waking moments before you drift off to sleep to focus on something that inspires you. Read inspiring literature, listen to soothing music or breathe in a delightful aroma. You will feel happier and wake up more content when you close your day with inspiring thoughts and feelings.

Tips

* Use the daily rituals that you normally spend taking care of your body to also care for your mind. How important is your physical shell if you don't have a sharp, positive, encouraging and affirming mind to perfectly blend with it? Fill your mind with hopeful, positive and uplifting thoughts and you will bring about more success, abundance, health and happiness.

source:wikihow.com

Implantable device to kill Cancer

The days of rampaging cancer cells might be numbered, thanks to an implantable device developed by a researcher.

Cornell University researcher Michael King has designed a lethal “lint brush” for the blood — a tiny device that traps and kills cancer cells in the bloodstream before they spread through the body.

The strategy, which takes advantage of the body’s immune system, could lead to new treatments for a variety of cancers, said King, who is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell.

King showed that two naturally occurring proteins can work together to attract and kill as many as 30% of tumour cells flowing past the device at a single time, with the potential to kill more in the closed-loop system of the body.

King’s approach uses a tiny tubelike device coated with the proteins that could hypothetically be implanted in a peripheral blood vessel to filter out and destroy free-flowing cancer cells in the bloodstream.

To capture the tumour cells in the blood, King used selectin molecules — proteins that move to the surface of blood vessels in response to infection or injury, said a Cornell release written by Lauren Gold. Selectin molecules normally recruit white blood cells (leukocytes) which “roll” along their surfaces and create an inflammatory response — but they also attract cancer cells, which can mimic the adhesion and rolling process.

In the body, the inlet and outlet would connect to an artery and vein, respectively.

During experimentation, once the cancer cells adhered to the selectin on the microtube's surface, King exposed them to a protein called TRAIL (for Tumour Necrosis Factor Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand), which binds to two so-called “death receptors” on the cancer cells’ surface, setting in motion a process that causes the cell to self-destruct.

source:timesofindia

How to Have Enough Energy to Make it Through the Day

Today's lifestyle is super hectic for everyone! You have the kids, the spouse, work, bills... The list just never really stops. Here are a few smart lifestyle changes that can help you charge your batteries back up and make it through the day!

* determination to change your current habits

Step1
The first thing your body needs in order to recharge is sleep. Small steps you can take to make sure you get enough sleep include setting a relaxing routine for bedtime. Make sure you go to bed and get up at the same time every day (even on weekends). Make sure you finish eating two to three hours before bedtime for a more restful sleep. Keeping your body on a set routine decreases the amount of energy you waste when your body is required to adjust to "schedule" changes.

Step2
Eat for energy, not just to eat. Be sure to eat breakfast every day to start yourself off with an energy source. Drink plenty of water to transport the nutrients throughout your body. Eat lean protein with each meal to help keep blood sugar levels stable and prolong the feeling of being satisfied with your meal. Eat slowly to give your body time to feel full. Overeating will increase your fatigue.

Step3
Get moving! Exercise, even just ten minutes, eases pent up stress, relieves muscle tension, sends oxygenated blood to the brain and boosts the efficiency of your heart and lungs. It's best to try for thirty or more minutes, but even just ten minutes is better than none at all.

Step4
Incorporate these simple lifestyle changes into your life and, within days, you'll start feeling much more energized and feel much healthier!

Now, a Bandage for Bypass Surgery

Scientists have designed what they claim is a bandage which could be used for wrapping around a transplanted blood vessel for the first few hours or days after surgery.

Heart bypass surgery involves transplanting arteries or veins from elsewhere in the body to route blood around the partially blocked areas of the coronary vessels which actually supply heart muscle.

However, a significant number of bypasses fail as the walls of the transplanted arteries get thickened, restricting blood flow, which surgeons
believe happens due to the stress of being transplanted and suddenly having to handle altogether a different blood pressure and flow rate.

Now, a team at biopharmaceutical giant Geron has developed the biodegradable polymer bandage which they claim could take the strain for the first few days after surgery, according to a report in the 'New Scientist'.

And, the good news is that tests on pigs have revealed that the bandage works and can very well prevent the dangerous stress response after a bypass.

"The US scientists tested the bandage on animals. But we need to see whether it works on humans. And, if successful, it could be a boon for bypass surgery patients not only in the US but also in India and across the globe," India-based doctor SK Dasgupta said.

The pharma company has filed a patent application for the polymer bandage.

Vigilance reports fake drugs on sale

The state vigilance directorate has confirmed circulation of huge amount of fake medicines in markets vis-à-vis a trade mostly dealing with “generic spurious drugs”.

The state vigilance, in its report submitted in Orissa High Court yesterday, further added a thriving racket in the supply of substandard drugs and transfusion fluids for government hospitals. “The corrupt officials of the state health department, responsible for purchase and storage of drugs in crores, are suspected to be hand in glove with manufacturers,” the report said.

“In most cases, spurious drugs circulation is carried out with the knowledge and connivance of officials of the drug controller, Orissa, and local drug inspectors who are on the payroll of unscrupulous dealers,” it added.

The spurious drugs issue had reached the high court after a PIL was filed in the wake of busting of a major fake drug manufacturing and supply racket in the state in July last year. Several PILs seeking judicial intervention against alleged circulation of spurious drugs in the state were filed subsequently.

The report also indicted the Utkal Chemists and Drugs Association, the apex body of retailers and wholesalers in the state, which had apparently turned into a power hub in controlling the trade and the industry through clandestine drug deals involving huge amount of money, the 17-page report observed.

Seed uproar

The alleged supply of substandard groundnut seeds to farmers sparked an uproar in the Assembly today with the Opposition demanding a high-level probe into the lapses. Even ruling party members alleged about the short supply of seeds and fertiliser and requested the agriculture minister to rise to the occasion.

However, agriculture minister Surendra Nath Nayak said only certified seeds had been supplied to farmers.

Study: Bone drug helps chemo fight breast cancer

New research adds fresh hope that a drug that strengthens bones might also fight breast cancer. Women who were given the drug, Zometa, as part of their initial treatment had greater tumor shrinkage and were less likely to need radical surgery, according to a preliminary study reported Thursday at a cancer conference in Texas.

In June, doctors were stunned when a big study found that Zometa — given to prevent bone loss caused by certain cancer treatments — also greatly cut the risk that cancer would recur in women who developed the disease before menopause.

Cancer specialists are eagerly awaiting the final results of a second, ongoing study testing Zometa in 3,360 women who had breast cancer after menopause — a much more common situation.

Its leaders gave a mini-report Thursday on 205 participants who had chemotherapy to try to shrink their tumors before surgery.

Those given infusions of Zometa along with chemo had a third more tumor shrinkage and as a result, were less likely to need their whole breast removed versus just the lump, said study leader Dr. Robert Coleman of the University of Sheffield in England.

Eleven percent of Zometa takers had a complete response to treatment — no evidence of cancer in their breasts or lymph nodes — versus 6 percent of women given chemo alone.

Partial studies like this are not enough to change practice, but these results are surprising and deserve further testing, said Dr. Eric Winer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston. Such significant benefits from the bone drug before surgery "is not something I would have expected," he said.

Winer had no role in the work or financial ties to any breast cancer drugmakers. He also is a spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the largest group of doctors who treat cancer.

The study was sponsored by Zometa's maker, Swiss-based Novartis AG, and the study leader consults for the company. With doctor fees, a Zometa infusion can run more than $1,200. In the study it was given every three weeks for four to six months.

Known side effects of Zometa and other bone-building bisphosphonate drugs like Fosamax include bone, joint or muscle pain and in rare cases, jawbone decay. They are mainly used to treat osteoporosis.

Also at the conference, several reports strengthened evidence that newer hormone-blockers called aromatase inhibitors, or AIs, do a better job of preventing cancer recurrences and may give a slight survival advantage over the long-used drug tamoxifen.

These drugs work against estrogen, which helps most breast tumors grow, and are given for about five years after surgery for early stage breast cancer to prevent its return.

Tamoxifen has been used for decades and is sold in generic form for about $70 a month. The newer drugs cost around $300 and come in three brands: AstraZeneca PLC's Arimidex (anastrozole), Pfizer Inc.'s Aromasin (exemestane) and Novartis' Femara (letrozole). They only work in women after menopause.

Doctors already know that women who take these newer drugs either as initial treatment or after a few years of tamoxifen have better chances of staying cancer-free. But which of these approaches is best is not known.

Results of a study led by Novartis consultant Dr. Henning Mouridsen of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark mostly were a draw. There were trends toward improved survival for women starting on Femara, but the differences were so small they could have occurred by chance alone.

Specialists took issue with a separate analysis of that study, which hinted at a bigger benefit from starting on Femara. And pooled results of prior studies involving 20,000 women suggest that any such advantage is very small.

"At this point in time, there is a slight increase in survival in patients treated with AIs but it is not statistically significant," said that study's leader, Dr. James Ingle of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"The only really fair interpretation is that all of these are the same," and that women should include one at some point in their treatment as guidelines now recommend, Winer said.

About 90,000 women in the United States and many more worldwide each year face this decision, and key issues are cost and side effects.

Both drugs can cause hot flashes. Tamoxifen raises the risk of endometrial cancer and blood clots. The aromatase inhibitors can cause more bone loss, vaginal dryness, problems having sex, joint pain and muscle aches.

"Many of us think that overall, they're drugs that are a little harder to take," Winer said of the newer drugs.

"When you put it all together it's almost a balancing act," depending on each woman's health history and risks, said Dr. C. Kent Osborne, a breast cancer specialist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

The San Antonio Breast Cancer symposium is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Global Cancer Deaths to Double by 2030

Report Predicts Poor Nations Will See Biggest Increases in Cancer

Cancer deaths are projected to more than double worldwide over the next two decades, largely from a dramatic increase in cancer incidence in low- and middle-income countries driven by tobacco use and increasingly Westernized lifestyles.

A new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) explores the global burden of cancer, which is poised to become the leading cause of death worldwide by 2010.

The report predicts that:

* By 2030, 27 million new cancer cases and 17 million cancer deaths will occur each year worldwide. That compares to 12 million new cancers and slightly less than 8 million cancer deaths in 2007.
* Based on current trends, the rate at which new cancers are diagnosed is expected to grow by 1% annually, as are deaths from the disease.
* China, Russia, and India are projected to have the biggest increases in cancers and cancer deaths.
* Smoking and other lifestyle factors like obesity will overtake chronic infection as the leading cause of cancer in poor and middle-income countries.

The projections stand in striking contrast to encouraging cancer trends in the United States.

A report released earlier this month showed a decline in both cancer incidence and cancer deaths for the first time in a decade.

This highlights the point that the burden of cancer is shifting to less industrialized regions, IARC Director Peter Boyle, MD, tells WebMD.

"Forty years ago, cancer was primarily a disease of high-resource, industrialized countries," Boyle says. "That isn't true anymore. When we think of low-resource countries, we think of communicable diseases as the big killers. But each year more people across the globe die of cancer than die of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined."
Cancer Burden Will Double

Around the world, the burden of cancer doubled between 1975 and 2000, and it is predicted to double again by 2020 and triple by 2030.

Boyle notes that in 1970, just 15% of cancers occurred in poor and medium-resource countries.

Today, more than half of cancer cases and two-thirds of cancer deaths occur in these underserved countries, and the disparity is expected to rise.

The dramatic increase in smoking in low- and medium-income countries, which began in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, is the biggest single cause of the projected increase, which is expected to peak in 2030.

It takes about 40 years for big increases in smoking rates to be reflected in smoking-related diseases like lung cancer and emphysema, Boyle says.

"The big tobacco companies started to move pretty strongly into these low- and medium-resource countries in the early 1990s at about the same time that we were working very aggressively to reduce tobacco use in Western countries," he says.

According to the report:

* About 1.3 billion people smoke worldwide.
* About 12% of cancers in low-income countries can be attributed to tobacco use, but this figure is expected to rise substantially.
* Lung cancer kills more people than any other cancer worldwide.

Breast cancers are also on the rise in low-income countries, where incidence rates have been increasing by up to 5% a year.

And cervical cancer, which is largely preventable and treatable in the industrialized world, is a leading cause of cancer deaths among women living in poor regions, including many areas of Africa.

Vitamins 'do not cut Cancer risk'

Taking vitamin C or E does not reduce the risk of prostate cancers - or other forms of the disease, two large US studies suggest.

Both trials were set up following some evidence that taking supplements might have a positive effect.

But one study of 35,533 men, and a second of 15,000 doctors, found no evidence that cancer rates were any lower in those taking supplements.

Both studies feature in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Supplements don't substitute for a healthy diet and some studies have shown that they may actually increase the risk of cancer
Dr Jodie Moffat
Cancer Research UK

A number of trials had suggested that taking vitamins could cut the risk of certain cancers by boosting levels of beneficial antioxidants which work to minimise damage in the tissues, but the results were mixed.

The latest studies set out to come up with more definitive results, by involving large numbers of volunteers.

In the first study, researchers from University of Texas and the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine gave healthy men either the trace mineral selenium, vitamin E, both or a dummy pill.

The team intended to monitor all the participants for at least seven years but the trial was stopped early because the results were so disappointing.

The researchers found there were no statistically significant differences in the numbers of men who developed prostate cancer in the four groups.

In all cases the proportion of men diagnosed with prostate cancer over a five-year period was 4% to 5%.

In the second study, researchers at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital tested the impact of regular vitamin E and C supplements on cancer rates among 14, 641 male doctors.

Over eight years, taking vitamin E had no impact at all on rates of either prostate cancer, or cancer in general. Vitamin C had no significant effect.

No substitute

Dr Jodie Moffat, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "There are a lot of studies looking at whether vitamin and mineral supplements can reduce the risk of cancer but many of them, like this one, don't support a link.


PROSTATE CANCER
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the UK
Every year in the UK 35,000 men are diagnosed
One man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK
African Caribbean men are three times more likely to develop prostate cancer than white men

"This new research means it is even less likely than we previously thought that supplements can protect against prostate cancer.

"Supplements don't substitute for a healthy diet and some studies have shown that they may actually increase the risk of cancer."

She added that eating a diet high in fruit and vegetables was still the best way to get the required vitamins and minerals.

John Neate, of The Prostate Cancer Charity, described the findings as "disappointing".

"Diet does seem important in the development of prostate cancer and we recommend reducing the amount of saturated fat eaten, keeping weight under control, and increasing the intake of fruit and vegetables," he said.

Dr Pamela Mason, scientific advisor to the Health Supplements Information Service, said all three nutrients were essential for human health.

But she added: "Vitamins and trace elements are not intended to be used like drugs. They are intended for health maintenance and for making up dietary gaps in the population."

Research published earlier this year suggested Vitamin C supplements may substantially reduce the benefit from a wide range of anti-cancer drugs.

source:BBC

Nuts help cut risk of heart disease

Here's a health tip in a nutshell: Eating a handful of nuts a day for a year — along with a Mediterranean diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fish — may help undo a collection of risk factors for heart disease.

Spanish researchers found that adding nuts worked better than boosting the olive oil in a typical Mediterranean diet. Both regimens cut the heart risks known as metabolic syndrome in more people than a low-fat diet did.

"What's most surprising is they found substantial metabolic benefits in the absence of calorie reduction or weight loss," said JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital. In the study, the people who improved most were told to eat about three whole walnuts, seven or eight whole hazelnuts and seven or eight whole almonds. They didn't lose weight, on average, but more of them succeeded in reducing belly fat and improving their cholesterol and blood pressure.

Manson, who wasn't involved in the study, cautioned that adding nuts to a western diet — one packed with too many calories and junk food — could lead to weight gain and more health risks.

"But using nuts to replace a snack of chips or crackers is a very favorable change to make in your diet," Manson cautioned.

The American Heart Association says that over 50 million Americans have metabolic syndrome, a combination of health risks, such as high blood pressure and abdominal obesity.

Nuts help people feel full while also increasing the body's ability to burn fat, said lead author Jordi Salas-Salvado of the University of Rovira i Virgili in Reus, Spain.

"Nuts could have an effect on metabolic syndrome by multiple mechanisms," Salas-Salvado said. Nuts are rich in anti-inflammatory substances, such as fiber, and antioxidants, such as vitamin E. They are high in unsaturated fat, a healthier fat known to lower blood triglycerides and increase good cholesterol.

Health groups: Unknown thousands dying in Zimbabwe

Thousands of Zimbabweans are dying, uncounted and out of sight in a silent emergency as hospitals shut, clinics run out of drugs and most cannot afford private medical care, health groups say.

Even as deaths from a cholera epidemic climbed into the hundreds, international and local organizations say many more are dying needlessly in a disaster critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's government.

The toll will never be known, according to Itai Rusike, executive director of the Community Working Group on Health — a civil society network grouping 35 national organizations.

"Zimbabwe used to have one of the best surveillance systems in the region," Rusike said in a telephone interview. "But phones are not working, nurses are not there, so their information system has collapsed. ... It is very difficult to tell how many people have died."

"These are symptoms of a failed state," he said in a telephone interview. "Nothing is working."

The British charity Oxfam agreed with estimates of thousands of unreported deaths due to the collapse of the health system and says the situation will get worse with the onset of the rainy season, which lasts until February.

"When you look at people who are already weakened by hunger, many already weakened by HIV and AIDS, and with rainy season comes malaria, and we know anthrax is spreading, it's really just a recipe for disaster," spokeswoman Caroline Hooper-Box said in neighboring South Africa.

She said many people Oxfam interviewed in Zimbabwe say they have cut back to one meal in three days. Some are trying to survive on insects and berries.

Once a major food exporter, Zimbabwe has been crippled by shortages of necessities including food and medicine as Mugabe, the leader since independence in 1980, clings to power.

As businesses collapse, unemployment has risen to 80 percent with the majority of the population depending on handouts from a growing diaspora; more than a third of a population has fled, many to South Africa and former colonizer Britain, but some as far as New Zealand.

In a new health report published last week, the civic group Women of Zimbabwe Arise recounted the case of an 8-year-old boy who fell in a school yard and twisted his knee.

"A week later, he was dead," the report said. "The death certificate cited cause of death as 'swollen knee' ... But the real cause of death is clear criminal negligence of the worst kind on the part of the ZANU-PF government."

The report was dedicated to two of the group's own leaders who it said died needlessly. One was Thembelani Lunga, a 32-year-old in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo who was HIV-positive and had problems accessing life-preserving antiretroviral medication.

Lunga died after being jailed for four days in Bulawayo Central Police Station, where she was denied access to AIDS medication, the organization said.

To the cholera deaths, the report said, it was necessary to add people with diabetes who run out of insulin, appendicitis cases, asthma attacks, bleeding ulcers and septicemia — "all treatable conditions from which thousands of deaths are now occurring."

Save the Children, a British charity, said hundreds, if not thousands of pregnant women and their children "stand a very high risk of death."

Zimbabwe director Rachel Pounds said the United Nations reported that 700 women were recently turned away from hospitals in Harare that are no longer able to provide maternity services.

Last week, Health Minister David Parirenyatwa appealed for help from international organizations.

"Our central hospitals are literally not functioning. Our staff is demotivated and we need your support to ensure that they start coming to work and our health system is revived," he was quoted as saying in The Herald.

Both Rusike, of the community health group, and Women of Zimbabwe Arise said the cholera epidemic could be linked directly to the government's failures. The disease is caused by contaminated water and food, in Zimbabwe's case the collapse of water and sewage services.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. would continue to press the international community to take action on Zimbabwe but also stressed the importance of pressure from the country's African neighbors.

"We made extensive efforts in the (U.N.) Security Council to get the international system to act. And we're going to continue those efforts," McCormack told a press briefing on Monday.

"But, quite frankly, some of the states of the region need to step up. They need to use their leverage."

Rusike warned in June 2007 that Zimbabwe was in danger of suffering epidemics of cholera and malaria when he called for Parirenyatwa to intervene as water supplies became more erratic.

Mugabe's government took control of water supplies from city and town councils when the councils were taken over by opposition politicians in elections three years ago.

Rusike said the government officials fired water engineers and other staff and replaced them with "friends and relatives with no qualifications in water management."

Last week, water authorities cut all supplies in Harare, the sprawling capital of about 2 million people and the epicenter of the cholera epidemic, saying they had no purifying chemicals and feared piping contaminated water would help spread the disease.

Women Feel Most Sexy At The Age Of 34.

Women feel they are sexiest at 34

Being sexy is often perceived to be a key essence of femininity. And, now a new study has found that women feel most sexy at the age of 34.

Researchers have based their findings on a survey of over 1,000 women who were questioned about their sex lives - the majority of respondents said that it was at the age of 34 when they had felt more sexy.

The survey also revealed that middle-aged women have half as much sex as they did when they were younger - in fact the researchers found that that on average women aged 45 to 60 have sex 4.5 times a month, compared to 10.4 times a month in their 20s and 30s. However, 56% of the respondents said they enjoyed it now more than they did when they were younger, British newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported.

Sex and relationship advisor Dr Catherine Hood said: “Many of us make the assumption that older people have less sex than the young, and this research appears to confirm this.

However, it does show that women are still enjoying great sex lives as they get older.

“Women’s sexual needs, libido and lifestyle change over time, but there is absolutely no reason why older women can’t enjoy an extremely fulfiling sex life in their middle age and well into their senior years.

“The fact that over half of those quizzed said they had better sex now than in their 20s and 30s suggests that these women are more confident and self-assured than they were in their younger days and aren’t afraid of getting what they want.”

The research commissioned by moisturiser brand Astral questioned 1,031 women about their sex lives.

Healthy Foods

Tomatoes are loaded with vitamin A and C, and lycopene, which is the substance that makes tomatoes red. Lycopene is being researched to lower lung cancer risks. Smokers and non-smokers both seem to respond beneficially.

Apples produce fluids for your body. They particularly moisten dryness of the lungs, protects the lungs from cigarette smoke, stimulate the appetite and remedies indigestion.

Purple grape juice offers most of the same benefits for the heart as red wine but the moderate level of alcohol in red wine does offer one more apparent benefit: It increases HDL, the good cholesterol.

Nuts and seeds are fatty foods, which are typically the best sources of vitamin E, an immune enhancing antioxidant and nerve protector. They contain the largest quantity of fat of all unprocessed foods but much of it is in the form of essential fatty acids. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, carbohydrates, and others are just a part of their remarkable properties. Looked at in total, nuts and seeds are the "spark of life, a living and perfect food". They are best consumed in small amounts. Most tonify the body and add weight and strength. Here's the catch. Nuts and seeds lose their nutrients and become rancid once hulled or shelled. Deterioration begins immediately. Only buy them in their shells. They will last up to one year.

Yoga moves for that perfect Body!

Thousands of years ago, a man sat with his eyes closed, deep in meditation, yet aware of the connection between all beings. When he opened his eyes, he noticed a beautiful, strong tree. But instead of breaking the meditative state and experiencing the tree as "over there," he had a shift in perception.

He saw, for the first time, that there was no separation between himself and the tree. They were made of the same molecules, they breathed the same air, and they could not live without one another -- they actually were the same being in different physical forms.

Sara Ivanhoe, Yoga Instructor/writer, www.saraivanhoe.com. "Like the lotus flower that grows out of the mud, I feel totally grounded here, balanced...so that I can bloom completely,"
In other words, he and the tree were one. This was a moment of identification, connection, and unity. It was yoga. Overwhelmed by this feeling of "tree-ness," he could no longer keep it confined in his mind. This feeling of union had to take a physical form.

The man spontaneously stood up, balanced on one leg, and shot his arms into the air in a passionate expression of the bhav (feeling) of the tree. He had channeled his tree-ness, and was so overtaken with compassionate feeling that he couldn’t help but spring into the pose to experience being the tree: "I know how it feels to be you, it feels like this..." This was the beginning of hatha yoga.

Beyond words, yoga is the experience of union that we once thought was outside ourselves. The yogis pictured here went on a personal journey within to channel their own nature of asana. And because the focus of this issue is on our environment, we especially wanted to explore yoga’s connection to nature.

Sara Ivanhoe, Yoga Instructor/writer. "I am the tree! The tree is me!" says she. This redwood tree, planted in 1908, will turn 100 years old next year. Special thanks to Gary Deutschman for the use of his home.

eEka Pada Rajakapotasana (Pigeon pos) Keshni Kashyap, writer

"Pigeon opens my hips and makes me feel creative!" says she.

Simhasana (Lion pose) Ross, yoga instructor.

"It's all good. Yoga feels good and it's fun!" says he

Vatayanasana (Horse pose) Schein, yoga instructor

"I love Horse because it’s a deep hip-and-shoulder opener. As a balancing pose, it also challenges me to focus on my drishti. It’s fun to incorporate hips, shoulders, drishti, and balance into one posture."

Garudasana (Eagle pose)

Kahshanna Evans, Actress, upcoming indie film The Wrong Hands, her first lead.

"I love Eagle Pose! I love that an eagle connects the ‘heavens’ to the earth. There is something empowering in journeying between the God and the Goddess, connecting and understanding, receiving inspiration from both...uh, oh, now I sound like a real hippie! I feel strong, rooted, and still very feminine when I rock my Eagle Pose."

Parsva bakasana (Side crow) Vinnie Marino, yoga instructor

"It's a little bit like taking flight..."

Ardha chandrasana (Half moon pose) Tom Morley, yoga instructor

"I like Half Moon Pose because I feel like I'm flying for a moment. I actually feel the transition from effort to effortlessness.

Krouhancsana (Heron pose)

Sofia Vassilieva, actress on NBC hit series Medium

"The heron is an intense stretch that restores my inner balance, releases tension in the body and mind, and opens the heart."

nasana (Upward facing dog) Maxine Bahns, actress/certified yoga work instructor

"I love the way I feel in Upward Facing Dog. My chest and shoulders are open, allowing me to take a deep breath. And, at the same time, my spine is elongated and flexed, which helps with the lower back pain I sometimes get from cycling and running. It’s a gentle backbend that fires up the whole body."

source

Don’t be a passive smoker

What is passive smoking? In general passive smoking deals with the subject of smoke in the environment that is exhaled from the lungs of the smoker. Well, this is not all. It also implies the smoke that emanates from the smoker’s cigarette or any product and gets inhaled by others. When does this happen? Whenever your next neighbor (hubby, buddy or fiancé) smokes, you can be an easy prey of passive smoking. Remember that as a woman you are getting exposed to a secondhand smoke that poses risks and are more sinister than the firsthand smoke. Are you concerned of the fact that these frequent exposures to secondhand smoke can result in your disability, disease and death as well? If you are ignorant, learn it from now.

Which diseases can happen hence? It can be anything like lung cancer, heart disease, lung infection, ear infection, asthma, allergies, and many more. A large number of researches are going on in the international arena on this subject that are bringing to the fore startling results. The recently completed researches have claimed that the controlling influence of the constant exposure to second hand smoke or passive smoking make women infertile. According to the studies, 68 percent more women are probable to face fertility problems and can also suffer miscarriage. In one such study 4,800 non-smoking women were included. A detailed analysis describes how the bystanders of passive smoking suffer from pregnancy related problems and do have miscarriages.

In this regard, Luke J Peppone, PhD, research assistant professor at Rochester’s James P Wilmot Cancer Center said, “These statistics are breathtaking and certainly points to yet another danger of second hand smoke exposure.” “We all know that cigarettes and second hand smoke are dangerous. Breathing the smoke has lasting effects, especially for women when they’re ready for children,” added Peppone.

But there is a serious question. We are living in a world where a consciousness against the habit of smoking does exist. But that has failed to bring down the number of smokers to a large extent. On the contrary the addiction towards smoking is rising among the young generation. How can the women save themselves in this respect? She will have to be determined and have got to express iron determination wherever necessary. You have to make your buddy stop from smoking. This is the only way.

source:littleabout.com

'Mobiles can damage memory'

Swedish researchers have found memory impairment in rats exposed to cellphone radiation for two hours every week for more than a year.

The rats subjected to a memory test were released into a box with four objects. These objects were changed on two occasions and their position was also altered both the times. The actual test trial was the third occasion. This time the rats encountered two of the objects from the first occasion and two of the objects from the second.

The rats, used as control, spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which they considered more interesting since they had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced a lesser pronounced difference in interest.

Henrietta Nittby and her supervisor Leif Salford, of the neurosurgery division of Lund University, Sweden, believe that the findings may be related to the team's earlier findings, that microwave radiation from cellphones can affect the so-called blood-brain barrier. This is a barrier that protects the brain by preventing substances circulating in the blood from penetrating into the brain tissue and damaging nerve cells.

Obama says he won't be smoking in White House

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama failed to give a straight answer when asked on a U.S. talkshow on Sunday whether he had managed to quit smoking.

In a country where cigarettes are responsible for one in five deaths and smoking costs tens of billions of dollars in health care, Obama has been under pressure to set an example by giving up his reported two-decade-old habit.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" program, interviewer Tom Brokaw told Obama he had ducked answering the question during an interview last month with ABC's Barbara Walters.

Noting that the White House was a no-smoking zone, Brokaw asked Obama, "Have you stopped smoking?"

"I have," Obama replied, smiling broadly. "What I said was that there are times where I have fallen off the wagon."

"Wait a minute," Brokaw interjected, "that means you haven't stopped."

"Fair enough," Obama said. "What I would say is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier. You will not see any violations of these rules in the White House."

Obama was often observed on the presidential campaign trail chewing Nicorette gum, which helps ease the craving for nicotine. He has tried several times to quit.

The 47-year-old president-elect, who takes office on January 20, works out daily at the gym and sometimes plays basketball. His doctor said in May he was in excellent health, often jogged 3 miles a day and was fit to serve as U.S. president.

Website www.cigaraficionado.com says Gerald Ford, who served from 1974-77, was the last U.S. president to use tobacco on a regular basis. The White House no-smoking rule was imposed by former First Lady Hillary Clinton, now Obama's nominee for secretary of state.

Over 2600 donate blood to help Mumbai victims

Over 2600 people donated blood to help victims of Mumbai terror attacks, State Blood Transfusion Council (SBTC) said.

After the attacks, many voluntary organisations organised blood donation camps where 2,606 people donated blood voluntarily, Acting Assistant Director, SBTC, Dr Girish Chaudhary, said.

As of now, around 4000 bottles of blood are available in banks, Chaudhary said, adding that sufficient stock of blood is available in all banks. If the injured need blood, their relatives should contact various blood banks in Mumbai and they will be given free blood, he said.

The blood will also be available at some major hospitals including St George, JJ, GT, KEM and Sion, he added.

Meanwhile, an official release said around 120 of those injured in the terror attacks have been discharged from hospitals. Nearly 248 injured were admitted for treatment at the various hospitals in the city, it said.

Post-mortem of all 173 dead in the attacks has been done and 158 bodies have been handed over to relatives, while 15 are yet to be claimed, the release said. Of the dead, 138 were male and 35 female. The dead included 26 foreigners, the release added.

Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever Signs and symptoms

This is manifested by a sudden onset of severe headache, muscle and joint pains (myalgias and arthralgias—severe pain gives it the name break-bone fever or bonecrusher disease), fever, and rash. The dengue rash is characteristically bright red petechiae and usually appears first on the lower limbs and the chest; in some patients, it spreads to cover most of the body. There may also be gastritis with some combination of associated abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.

Some cases develop much milder symptoms which can be misdiagnosed as influenza or other viral infection when no rash is present. Thus travelers from tropical areas may pass on dengue in their home countries inadvertently, having not been properly diagnosed at the height of their illness. Patients with dengue can pass on the infection only through mosquitoes or blood products and only while they are still febrile.

The classic dengue fever lasts about six to seven days, with a smaller peak of fever at the trailing end of the disease. Clinically, the platelet count will drop until the patient's temperature is normal.

Cases of DHF also show higher fever, variable haemorrhagic phenomena, thrombocytopenia, and haemoconcentration. A small proportion of cases lead to dengue shock syndrome (DSS) which has a high mortality rate.

Diagnosis

The diagnosis of dengue is usually made clinically. The classic picture is high fever with no localising source of infection, a petechial rash with thrombocytopenia and relative leukopenia - low platelet and white blood cell count.

The WHO definition of dengue haemorrhagic fever has been in use since 1975; all four criteria must be fulfilled:

1. Fever, bladder problem, constant headaches, severe dizziness and loss of appetite.

2. Hemorrhagic tendency (positive tourniquet test, spontaneous bruising, bleeding from mucosa, gingiva, injection sites, etc.; vomiting blood, or bloody diarrhea)

source:wikipidea

Sunny von Bulow dead after 28 years in coma

Martha "Sunny" von Bulow, an heiress who spent the last 28 years of her life in oblivion after what prosecutors alleged in a pair of sensational trials were two murder attempts by her husband, died Saturday at age 76.

She died at a nursing home in New York, her children said in a statement issued by family spokeswoman Maureen Connelly.

Sunny von Bulow was a personification of romantic notions about high society — a stunning heiress who brought her American millions to marriages with men who gave her honored old European names.

But she ended her days in a coma, showing no sign of awareness as she was visited by her children and tended around the clock by nurses.

In the 1980s, she was the offstage presence that haunted her husband's two sensational trials in Newport and Providence, R.I.

At the first trial, in 1982, Claus von Bulow was convicted of trying twice to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, R.I. That verdict was thrown out on appeal, and he was acquitted at a second trial in 1985.

The murder case split Newport society, produced lurid headlines and was later made into the 1990 film, "Reversal of Fortune," starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons.

Claus von Bulow is now living in London, "mostly taking care of his grandchildren," said Alan Dershowitz, the defense lawyer who handled the appeal and won his acquittal at the second trial. He wrote the book "Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bulow Case," on which the movie was based.

Dershowitz said there was "overwhelming" evidence that her coma was self-induced — caused by a "large ingestion of drugs, and Claus had nothing to do with it," Dershowitz said.

"There are no winners in a case like this," he added.

Claus von Bulow's main accusers were his wife's children by a previous marriage to Austrian Prince Alfred von Auersperg — Princess Annie-Laurie "Ala" von Auersperg Isham and Prince Alexander von Auersperg. They renewed the charges against their stepfather in a civil lawsuit a month after his acquittal.

Two years later, Claus von Bulow agreed to give up any claims to his wife's estimated $25 million-to-$40 million fortune and to the $120,000-a-year income of a trust she set up for him. He also agreed to divorce her, leave the country and never profit from their story.

Sales of Sunny von Bulow's property brought $4.2 million from her oceanfront estate in Newport, $6.25 million from her 12-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and $11.5 million from the art and antiques from the homes.

Prosecutors contended that Claus von Bulow wanted to get rid of his wife to inherit a large chunk of her wealth and be free to marry a mistress. The defense countered by painting Sunny von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, as an alcoholic and pill popper who drank herself into a coma.

Claus Von Bulow was accused of injecting his wife with insulin first in December 1979, causing a coma from which she revived. Prosecutors said he tried again a year later, on Dec. 21, 1980, and the 49-year-old heiress fell into what her children on Saturday called "a persistent vegetative state."

Her world was reduced to a private, guarded room in the Harkness Pavilion and later the McKeen Pavilion of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She died at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, her family said.

Her doctor testified that the cost of maintaining her was $375,000 the first year, 1981.

No figures were available for the years that followed, but by the early 1990s, room charges were up to about $1,500 a day — $547,000 a year — plus $200,000 to $300,000 for round-the-clock private nursing.

She was born Martha Sharp Crawford aboard a railcar in Manassas, Va., on Sept. 1, 1932, daughter of utilities tycoon George Crawford, who died when she was 4.

Sunny, nicknamed for her disposition, was raised by her mother in New York City.

While touring Europe with her mother, she met Prince Alfred von Auersperg, who was younger, penniless and working as a tennis pro at an Austrian resort catering to rich Americans. They were married in 1957 and divorced eight years later after she returned alone to New York with their young son and daughter.

On June 6, 1966, she married von Bulow, who then quit his job as an aide to oilman J. Paul Getty. He could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday.

In addition to her two children from her first marriage, Sunny von Bulow is survived by Cosima Pavoncelli, a daughter from her marriage to von Bulow. Pavoncelli sided with her father during the trials.

How can my allergy to cold weather be treated?

Q. I am a 37 years old woman having allergy to cold. Its symptoms are itching with red rashes whenever I expose to cold water or weather for some work. The doctor suggested that it is not a disease and I should only avoid contact with cold weather and water. But being a housewife, I am not able to restrain myself from doing daily chores or walking in cold weather. In my earlier consultation it was referred as globulinaemias. Please elaborate on this and is there any medicine to avoid this?
A. You probably have developed cold urticaria.

Cold urticaria occurs in two forms. The rare form is hereditary and manifests as hives all over the body 9 to 18 hours after cold exposure. The common form of cold urticaria presents with the rapid onset of hives on the face, neck, or hands after exposure to cold.

Cold urticaria is common and lasts for an average of 5 to 6 years. The population most affected is young adults age 18 to 25 years. Many people with cold urticaria also have dermographism and cholinergic urticaria.

Severe reactions can be seen with exposure to cold water. Swimming in cold water is the most common cause of a severe reaction. This can cause a massive release of histamine resulting in low blood pressure, fainting, shock, and even death.

Cold urticaria is diagnosed by holding an ice cube against the skin of the forearm for 1 to 5 minutes. A distinct hive should develop if a patient has cold urticaria. This is different than the normal redness that would be seen in people without cold urticaria.

Patients with cold urticaria should learn to protect themselves from a rapid drop in body temperature. Regular antihistamines are not generally effective. The antihistamine cyproheptadine has been found to be a useful treatment. The tricyclic antidepressant doxepin has also been found to be an effective blocker of histamine release. Finally, a medication called ketotifen, which keeps mast cells from releasing histamine, has also been used with success.

source:ndtv.com

Want to lose weight? Keep a food diary

Want to get rid of those extra pounds? Well, then all you need to do is simply write down your daily food intake, for it can double your weight Food diary food intake can double weight loss
Writing down your dailyloss, according to a new study.

The study, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed 1,700 overweight people over six months and revealed that those who wrote down everything they ate lost an average of 13lb.

“Recording what you eat can really help you lose weight, because a lot of the time, you’re not conscious of your behaviour,” Times Online quoted Azmina Govindji, a consultant nutritionist and author of The Hot Body Plan , as saying.

“Some eating habits are situational — for example, having tea
and a chocolate biscuit while watching your favourite television programme. We do it on autopilot. If you know that you actually have to record every item you eat, it gives a split-second pause for thought. You think, ‘Do I really want to write this down.’”

“Through the use of a food journal, we often become aware of patterns that are self-destructive. We become more authentically honest with ourselves and we start asking the question ‘What’s eating me?’ instead of ‘What can I eat?’” Azmina said.

Even people who believe that they are resolutely healthy can get a shock when they see everything written down in black and white. “Once someone spots a pattern, then they can do something to change it,” Azmina said.

The most common patterns she uncovers are in those who eat naughty foods because they are bored, hormonal or depressed.

Heart Attack Patients get 'big chill' Treatment

A patient is cooled in the thermosuit Monday, Nov. 11, 2008 at Ochsner Hospital in Jefferson, La., a suburb of New Orleans. A pump rapidly inflates it as doctors Velcro on a plastic topsheet. Tubes spray naked patients with frigid water as other tubes drain it away, taking heat from the patient's skin with it

It took five mighty shocks to get Cynthia Crawford's heart to start beating again after she collapsed at Ochsner Clinic a few weeks ago. A dramatic rescue, to be sure, yet it was routine care she could have had at any hospital. What came next, though, was not. As she lay unconscious, barely clinging to life, doctors placed her in an inflatable cocoon-like pool that sprayed her naked body with hundreds of icy cold jets of water, plunging her into hypothermia.

"Like jumping in the North Sea," said the cardiologist leading her care, Dr. Paul McMullan.

Days later, Crawford was recovering without the brain damage she might have suffered.

For years, doctors have tried cooling people to limit damage from head and spinal cord injuries, strokes and even prematurity and birth trauma in newborns. It's also used for cardiac arrest, when someone's heart has stopped. In January, New York will join several other cities requiring ambulances to take many cardiac arrest patients to hospitals that offer cooling.

Now doctors will be testing a new and dramatically speedier way of doing this for a much more common problem — heart attacks, which strike a million Americans each year.

"It's extremely appealing" because the cooling system is non-invasive and can be used in an ordinary hospital room, said Dr. George Sopko of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is paying for this first-of-a-kind study.

Animal research suggests it will help, "but we need the hard evidence" from human tests to know, he said.

Heart attacks occur when an artery gets blocked, depriving the heart muscle of oxygen and blood, and causing part of it to die. But the damage doesn't happen all at once — cells die off slowly, sending chemical messages that make neighboring cells do the same. Cooling the body to around 90 degrees from its usual 98.6 slows this down.

"Tissue that would have died, were it not cooled, can stay alive," McMullan explained.

Cooling has been around — you may have heard of it last year when it was used experimentally on Buffalo Bills football player Kevin Everett's spinal cord injury. Doctors pumped frigid saline into his veins to reduce inflammation and give things a chance to heal.

Half a dozen companies sell tools to do this — tubes that go into veins or the belly cavity, fancy ice bags and gel packs, blankets with cold saline inside, fans blowing cold air over patients, even a skullcap to cool the head.

Surgeons use cooling now during open-heart surgery, and promising results from a few studies several years ago led the American Heart Association to recommend it for cardiac arrest patients, whose hearts have stopped.


"The problem with all these trials is the cooling was too slow," taking as long as six hours with some devices, said the leader of one key study, Dr. Michael Holzer of Medical University of Vienna in Austria.

That's too pokey for treating heart attacks, where doctors must move at warp speed to open the clogged vessel and keep the initial injury as small as possible — the "time is muscle" message we often hear.

The only big study of cooling for heart attacks — 392 patients given cold saline through a big vein — failed to show benefit, said its leader, Dr. William O'Neill, executive dean of clinical affairs at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine.

However, the cooling was only a few degrees and took an average of 75 minutes.

"We believe the reason the trial didn't work is they didn't cool them fast enough," McMullan said.

His proof: People in the study whose temperatures were below 95 degrees at the time they had their artery-opening procedures wound up with only half the heart damage of the others, who were not cooled so much or so quickly.

Which is why doctors at Ochsner (pronounced OSH-ner) have high hopes for the ThermoSuit, made by Life Recovery Systems in Waldwick, N.J.,and designed by a former Air force flight surgeon, cardiologist Robert Freedman of Alexandria, La.

A pump rapidly inflates the pool-like suit until it puffs up tightly around the patient as doctors Velcro on a plastic topsheet. Tubes spray naked patients with frigid water as other tubes drain it away.

The clinic has not yet had the type of heart attack patients called for in the new study. But McMullan has used the suit on 12 cardiac arrest patients, like Crawford, and cooled them to around 90 degrees in as little as nine minutes, typically in about half an hour.

"That's fabulous and that is very quick. That's the kind of speed we're going to need" for this to be practical and useful, said Dr. Lance Becker, a University of Pennsylvania doctor and Heart Association spokesman who led cooling experiments in animals.

On the morning of Nov. 11, when Crawford went into cardiac arrest, she had just arrived for an appointment to see if her badly weakened heart qualified her to be on a transplant list. A doctor-in-training found her slumped near the elevators, and emergency workers shocked her with a defibrillator to restart her heart.

Soon, McMullan and 10 other doctors and nurses were furiously working on the 56-year-old patient as more staff huddled outside a small window in the hall, craning for a peek at the cooling suit spectacle going on inside.

"Isn't that something? Will you look at that," one of them muttered.

Crawford's temperature dropped to 90 degrees in about 40 minutes. Days later, her family marveled at how well she had come through.

"We called her an icicle," said her daughter, Sarah Crawford, a Tulane University student majoring in public health. "Her brain function is perfect. We were very grateful that that happened, and that she was at Ochsner," which is a 90-minute drive from her home in Brusly, La., near Baton Rouge.

Cardiac arrest patients usually are unconscious; heart attack patients will be given sedatives and a drug to limit shivering. The sedatives would be given anyway in preparation for the artery-opening procedure, McMullan said.

There are potential risks: Cooling could trigger a heart rhythm problem, cause loss of fluids, a blood pressure drop, an imbalance of essential body salts, even respiratory problems.

A ThermoSuit system costs a hospital around $30,000, and each single-use suit is $1,600. Federal officials have given previous grants totaling $1.3 million to develop the suit, and are spending $700,000 for the 20-patient heart attack study at Ochsner.

Ice is added to the bucket part of the ThermoSuit Monday, Nov. 11, 2008 at Ochsner Hospital in Jefferson, La. a suburb of New Orleans.

Results so far on cardiac arrest patients have impressed Ochsner's chief of cardiology, Dr. Christopher White.

"These are dead people, and they walk out of the hospital. One of them was a mother with six children," he said.

Another was Steve Benton, 52, treated with the suit in April.

"They came out and told my dad that I was dead," but he wound up being revived and survived without any brain damage. He is now back at work as a landscaping contractor.

About What Causes Asthma

Question: Do Asthma Genetic Factors Cause Asthma?

Answer: Experts do know that some people are born with a tendency to develop asthma. This is due to certain asthma genetic factors. This tendency appears to be closely related to a history of allergies. Asthma also tends to run in families. So, if your brother, sister, or a parent has asthma, it’s highly likely that you will develop it too.

Question: Are There Asthma Environmental Factors?

Answer: Your environment also seems to have some impact on whether you will develop asthma. This is because repeated exposure to certain substances that act as asthma triggers over time can raise the sensitivity of your airways and result in asthma symptoms.

In people who don't have asthma, exposure to such triggers produces no real response in terms of breathing. But in people at risk for asthma, the trigger causes your body's immune system to respond to the substance as though it were a threat to your health. As a result, your immune system cells set off a series of reactions in an attempt to "fight off" this threat.

The reactions cause your airways to narrow and tighten. Extra mucus is also produced, which makes it even harder to breathe. The result is an asthma attack.

Question: Do Allergies Cause Asthma?

Answer: Experts are not sure what causes asthma, but they do know that people who have allergies are at much higher risk of developing asthma. The substances that trigger allergies are the same things that can trigger an asthma attack in certain people.

source:about.com

Home Treatments for Cholera

Use of Lemon: The juice of Lemon can kill cholera bacilli within a very short period of time. It can be taken in the form of a sweetened or salted beverage for this purpose.

Use of Guava Root Bark: Thirty grams of the root bark should be used in half a litre of water to make the decoction. The water should be boiled down to reduce it by one-third. This decoction can be taken twice daily.

Use of Onion: Onions are another valuable remedy for cholera. About thirty grams of onion and seven black peppers should be pounded finely in a pestle and given to the patient in two or three doses during the day.

Use of Bitter Gourd: The fresh juice of bitter gourd is an effective medicine in the early stages of cholera. Two teaspoons of this juice, mixed with an equal quantity of white onion juice and a teaspoon of lime juice, should be given twice daily in the treatment of this condition.

Use of Cucumber: A glass of fresh juice of cucumber leaves with an equal quantity of tender coconut water, given in doses of 30-60 ml, forms a valuable remedy for excessive thirst during cholera.

Use of Clove: Cloves are useful in cholera. About four grams of cloves should be boiled in three litres of water until half of the water has evaporated. The decoction thus prepared should be given to the patient several times during the day.

Zimbabwe declares cholera outbreak a national emergency

Zimbabwe is appealing for international aid after declaring a cholera epidemic -- which has so far claimed 565 lives -- a national emergency, the state-run Herald newspaper said onThursday.

"The government yesterday (Wednesday) declared the cholera outbreak ... and the malfunctioning of central hospitals as national emergencies and appealed to the donor community for assistance to alleviate the situation," it said.

"The emergency appeal will help us reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with the current socio-economic environment," health minister David Parirenyatwa told a meeting of aid groups, the newspaper reported.

"Our central hospitals are literally not functioning. Our staff is demotivated and we need your support to ensure that they start coming to work and our health system is revived." He put the death toll so far at 563, after the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday that the outbreak had claimed 565 lives, with 12,546 recorded cases.

Cholera is the latest challenge to hit poverty-wracked Zimbabwe, which is already struggling with political instability and the world's most severe case of hyperinflation. Cholera is caused by food or water tainted with vibrio cholera bacteria, the World Health Organization says. With a short incubation period, it brings on diarrhoea that can fast lead to severe dehydration and death.

Parirenyatwa said that referral hospitals were in urgent need of drugs
, food and equipment. Also needed are laboratory reagents, surgical sundries, renal and laundry equipment, X-ray films and boilers. In addition, he said the health ministry needs 1.5 million dollars a month as incentives for health workers who have gone on strike in government hospitals in a pay dispute.

"So far, seven million has been made available with effect from January 1, 2009 and there is still a gap of 11 million dollars which we are requesting now," Parirenyatwa said. The deputy minister of water and infrastructural development, Walter Mzembi, who also attended the meeting, said his ministry has water treatment chemicals enough to last the next 12 weeks.

"I am appealing for at least 40 million rand (3.1 million euros, 3.93 million dollars) to purchase chemicals for the next two months and the money is needed between now and Monday," he said, according to Herald.

Water was mostly restored in Harare on Wednesday after a crippling 48 hour water cut, Mzembi told AFP earlier. Taps in Harare ran dry on Saturday after the state-run water company ran short of aluminium sulphate, used to purify water, forcing people to dig shallow wells and sparking a trade in water-selling.

Charities have warned that cholera has spread to neighbouring South Africa, where health authorities in the north say the Limpopo River, a major waterway and border with Zimbabwe, tested positive for cholera this week.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced emergency measures Tuesday to increase health services, provide nutritional supplements and widen access to safe water in Zimbabwe. Its effort will include buying essential medicines for 70 percent of the Zimbabwe's population of 11 million, immunisation for 1.5 million children and emergency support and protection for 250,000 orphans and vulnerable children.

Women prefer males with deep voices

Women 'prefer men with deeper voices'

Women prefer males with deep voices because it signals strength, dominance and good genes, a new research suggests.

The research among African hunter-gatherers found that men with deeper voices attract women more than those with squeaky ones when they are at their most fertile. Deeper-voiced men are deemed better hunters who offer more protection, the study claimed.

According to the study, women who were nursing a child prefer higher-pitched male voices than fertile women who had not recently given birth, reports New Scientist. Coren Apicella, an anthropologist at Harvard University and leader of the study, said the Hadza - hunter-gatherers native to northern Tanzania - have limited exposure to the mass media.

Cut off from the daily bombardment of advertisements, pop songs and newscasts that''s typical in much of the world, they were an ideal population in which to study innate sexual preferences, Coren said. To reach the conclusion, the boffin spent six months studying vocal preferences among Hadza men and women.

She tested the vocal preferences of 88 Hadza men and women. They heard a member of the opposite sex saying the Swahili word "hujambo" - loosely translated as hello - in a computer-altered high and low register. Women were asked whether the voice belonged to someone likely to make a good hunter and husband, while men rated the voices in terms of skill as a forager and suitability as a wife. Apicella found that the Hadza men judged deeper-voiced women to be better foragers, but they fancied the highest-pitched women.

Nursing women favoured higher-pitched tones, while fertile women showed a slight preference for the deeper voices, she found. When Hadza women start breast-feeding, their foraging falls off. "They rely on men a lot more to bring in food and resources. Maybe a higher-pitched voice is signalling pro-social behaviour,” the expert said.

Exercise may speed weight loss after gastric bypass

People who've undergone surgery to manage their obesity may lose more weight if they start exercising, a new study suggests.

More and more severely obese adults are turning to gastric bypass surgery in an effort to lose weight. The procedure, which restricts the amount of food a person can eat, can spur substantial weight loss and help control obesity-related conditions like diabetes.

However, while regular exercise is a well-known way to keep body weight in check, it has not been clear whether people who start exercising after gastric bypass fare any better than those who remain sedentary. The new study suggests that they do.

Researchers found that of 199 patients who underwent gastric bypass, those who became more active after surgery lost more weight over one year than those who remained relatively inactive.

In fact, the former group did as well as patients who were regularly active both before and after their gastric bypass surgery, the researchers report in the journal Obesity.

All of the study patients had undergone Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, in which a surgeon staples off the upper portion of the stomach to create a small pouch that restricts the amount of food a person can eat at one time. The surgeon also creates a bypass around the rest of the stomach and a portion of the small intestine, which limits the body's absorption of food.

The weight-loss effects of the procedure itself are so "powerful," it is notable that a lifestyle change may still make an important difference, noted lead researcher Dr. Dale S. Bond, of the Brown Alpert Medical School and Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.

The findings also shed light on how much exercise may be necessary, he told Reuters Health.

The study defined "active" as getting at least 200 minutes of exercise per week. Patients who, based on survey responses, started getting that much exercise after surgery lost an average of 15 pounds more than their counterparts who remained less active.

For the most part, patients walked for exercise, Bond said, noting that walking is considered the "safest and most practical" way to get active after gastric bypass.

He suggested that patients talk to their doctors about starting an exercise regimen after weight-loss surgery. Getting active, Bond noted, may not only aid in cutting pounds, but may also help manage the medical conditions so often seen in severely obese adults -- including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

British conjoined twin dies after surgery

Faith was breathing for Hope. So when the newborn conjoined Williams twins were separated, it turned out that Hope couldn't live without her sister.

Week-old Hope Williams died Tuesday night at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital after being separated from her sister, her doctor, Agostino Pierro, said Wednesday.

"Hope's lungs were too small to support ... breathing and the circulation," said Pierro, who headed the surgical team that separated the twins. "The lungs of Faith were somehow supporting Hope."

Faith was in stable condition Wednesday in the hospital's intensive care unit. Her chances of survival are about 50 percent, Pierro said, and she will have to undergo further surgery to close the incision in her stomach.

The twins were born Nov. 26 by Caesarean section, joined from their chests to the lower part of their stomachs. They had separate hearts, but shared a liver and intestines.

Doctors had hoped to give the girls more time to become stronger before trying to separate them, but Pierro said the infants began to deteriorate Monday.

"This was an emergency operation, because there was a blockage in their joint intestine, which could only be resolved through surgery," he said.

A team of more than 20 doctors, nurses and other health care professionals worked to separate Faith and Hope in an operation that began Tuesday morning and finished 11 hours later.

"The operation done on Hope and Faith was one of the most complex and challenging we have ever faced," Pierro said.

Hope's parents, 18-year-old Laura Williams and her husband, Aled, from Shropshire in west England, were with their daughter when she died.

"They are clearly devastated by the loss of their daughter," Pierro said.

Twins joined at the abdomen are easier to separate than those joined elsewhere, such as the head. Last month, doctors in Cleveland, Ohio decided it would have been too risky to separate 4-year-old Italian twins born connected at the head. The girls, Anastasia and Tatiana Dogaru, will remain together, doctors said.

Dr. Charles Stolar, pediatric surgeon in chief at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said if all goes well, Faith's recovery should take weeks rather than months.

"They've had to divide the liver, they've had to repair bile ducts, they've had to repair intestines," said Stolar, who has performed similar operations. "So all that has to heal ... I would be optimistic."

Surgeon carries out amputation by text

A British surgeon volunteering in the Democratic Republic of Congo saved the life of a teenage boy by amputating his shoulder using instructions texted by a colleague in London.

David Nott, 52, a general and vascular surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, was working with the charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in the town of Rutshuru when he came across the badly injured 16-year-old in October.

The teenager's left arm had been so badly damaged - either in an accident or as a result of the fighting between Congolese and rebel troops - that it had already had to be amputated. But the flesh and bone that remained had become badly infected and gangrenous.

"He was dying" said Nott. "He had about two or three days to live."

The doctor realised the boy's best chance of survival was a forequarter amputation which requires the surgeon to remove the collar bone and shoulder blade. The only problem was that it was an operation Nott had never performed. But he remembered that one of his colleagues at home had carried out the procedure.

"I texted him and he texted back step-by-step instructions," he said.

"Even then I had to think long and hard about whether it was right to leave a young boy with only one arm in the middle of this fighting.

"But in the end he would have died without it, so I took a deep breath and followed the instructions to the letter."

Such an operation, if performed in the UK, would require careful planning with every sort of modern medical product on hand if things went wrong.

But in Congo Nott had just one pint of blood and an elementary operating theatre.

Despite the basic conditions, the operation was a success and the teenager made a full recovery.

More than 5 million people have been killed in Congo since the early 1990s when the Rwandan genocide spread into what was then Zaire

Health Tip...Drink enough water

Health Tip: Drink enough water

Drink enough water to help flush toxins out of your system. It is a natural way to keep your metabolism humming and promote weight loss. The best skin moisturiser and hair conditioner is water. It may even offer protection from some forms of cancer.

Cardiac arrest cases more in winter

With mercury set to go down making "weak hearts" even more vulnerable to disorder, it is time for cardiac patients to spend more time
indoors and cut down exposures to cold.

Doctors
claim that they have noticed an increase of about 20 per cent incidence of cardiac arrests in winters as compared to warmer months as low temperatures increase the possibility of spasms in arteries.

"The main problem faced by cardiac patients in winters is greater chances of increased blood pressure levels. This in turn increases the needed quantity of BP controlling medicines," said Dr Vishal Rastogi, senior cardiologist at the Escorts Heart Institute in the national capital.

Low temperature is a major cause of spasms in arteries that carry blood to the heart, thus forcing the heart to pump more blood, increasing BP levels and raising the probability of heart attacks.

"The incidences are higher in India as we do not live in artificially regulated temperatures," said Rastogi. "It is therefore imperative for people with heart ailments to take as much precaution as possible to prevent exposure to cold," he said.

For all those who have a routine for early morning walks, should delay it to post sunrise.

"The appropriate time to venture out for morning walks in the winter months should be 8:30 am as the early morning chill has subsided, with the sun appearing on the skies," said Dr Umesh Gupta, senior cardiologist at Umkal Healthcare.

Temperature often plummets to less than 5 degree Celsius in the peak winter months of December and January.

The normal heart has a reserve potential of 400-500 per cent, said Gupta.

While the season affects everybody in the same way, increasing the amount of labour required by the heart, a person with a normal heart hardly feels the increased level of stress.
The same can be dangerous for a person with a history of cardiac ailments.

"People having a healthy heart will not even realise that the muscle in their chest has increased its labour by over four times or 400 per cent. However, this can be harmful for a cardiac patient," said Gupta.

With general cold-related ailments like common cold and cough also increasing the chances of cardiac attacks, some doctors also advise administering of anti-cold vaccines right at the outset of winter.

"The best way to keep the heart healthy in winters is to avoid all cold-related problems. Therefore, we also advise people prone to heart diseases to take anti-cold vaccinations that keep common cold, cough and other such problems at bay," Rastogi said.

Pause and think about AIDS, the silent killer

According to 2007 figures released by WHO, there are almost 33.2 million people living with HIV. In India, approximately 2.5 million people were living with HIV, in 2006. Almost 31 per cent of India’s youth are in the high risk bracket..

THESE DAYS we are concerned with the recent killings at Mumbai, perhaps rightly. But there is one more deadly disease, AIDS which kills lakhs of people every year, all around the world. The World AIDS Day (December 1) is the time when individuals and organisations from around the world come together to raise awareness about HIV/ AIDS.

According to 2007 figures released by WHO, there are almost 33.2 million people living with HIV. And In India, approximately 2.5 million people were living with HIV, in 2006. Almost 25 per cent of the country’s population is between the ages of 15 and 29 years and in this age group 31 per cent people are at the high risk of contracting HIV. To tackle with this deadly disease, young people must be encouraged and supported to take leadership roles within their communities.

This year, World AIDS campaign were organised in large scale in two cities of India: Pune and New Delhi. With the support of UNFPA and Aids Fonds, the World AIDS campaign, Wake up Pune campaign and the Naz Foundation (India) Trust (Naz India) are organising the events to increase awareness around HIV and AIDS among youths. The events took note of the effects that HIV has on the population (particularly young people), stigma and discrimination, youth rights and needs regarding HIV and AIDS.

It also highlighted the importance of young people being actively involved in the HIV and AIDS response.

Over 600 HIV positive people from 19 districts of West Bengal took part in a marathon run, on Sunday, ahead of World AIDS Day. The event was organised by Bengal Network of People living with HIV/AIDS (BNP plus). BNP plus has 4,654 members in its network.

The Karnataka state AIDS Prevention Society, launched in September, collaborated with Population Service India (PSI) for creating awareness about AIDS among the corporate, IT and other service sectors in the city. The government is doing well to spread awareness about AIDS/ HIV infection. But still more needs to done.

A section of society thinks that AIDS can be spread through touching. Many HIV positive children have to keep their status secret from the school they attend. Many of these children were rejected by their families and even by doctors and sometimes by the orphanages too.

source:merinews.com

Asthma inhalers to go 'green' on Dec. 31

Last warning: Asthma inhalers go "green" on Dec. 31, forcing patients still using the old-fashioned kind to make a pricey and even confusing switch. The medicine inside these rescue inhalers — the albuterol that quickly opens airways during an asthma attack — isn't changing. But the chemicals used to puff that drug into your lungs are.

No more chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that damage Earth's protective ozone layer. By year's end, all albuterol inhalers must be powered by the more eco-friendly chemical HFA, or hydrofluoroalkane.

The down side: The new inhalers cost more, $30 to $60 compared to as little as $5 or $10 for the disappearing generic CFC inhalers.

And patients face a learning curve. HFA inhalers must be used differently than the old-fashioned kind. The medicine feels and tastes different, sometimes alarming new users despite doctors' assurances that it works just as well.

"There's still significant confusion," says Dr. Harvey Leo of the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. "Patients will tell you, 'I don't feel the puff anymore.'"

Calls from parents unsure how to use the new inhalers, or even what they are, have increased in the past two months as more drugstores run out of CFC-powered inhalers and automatically switch people who'd been expecting a mere refill, he adds.

The change shouldn't be a surprise. The Food and Drug Administration has long warned it was coming, and lung specialists have spent the past year easing many of the nation's 20 million asthma patients — as well as millions of emphysema sufferers who also use albuterol to ease breathing — into it.

But industry figures show that in mid-November, 20 percent of all albuterol prescriptions still were being filled with CFC versions.

Some patients may purposefully be buying up cheaper CFC inhalers before the sales ban. But many patients don't see a lung specialist, or their prescription may not expire until next year so they haven't been seen recently enough to be told.

Reaching the last fraction "is, as you can imagine, a very difficult task," says Dr. Bidrul Chowdhury, FDA's pulmonary drugs chief. "How to get to somebody who is not tuned in?"

The CFC-free options: GlaxoSmithKline's Ventolin HFA, Schering Plough's Proventil HFA and Teva Specialty Pharmaceuticals' ProAir HFA all contain albuterol. Also, Sepracor's Xopenex HFA contains the similar medication levalbuterol.

Albuterol inhalers are for emergencies, for quick relief of wheezing. Patients also need daily medication to control their asthma and prevent flare-ups. Someone who's using the albuterol inhaler more than a few times a month isn't well-controlled, and his or her doctor needs to determine why, stresses Dr. Paul Greenberger of Northwestern University, president-elect of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Here's the rub: Recent research suggests only one in five children has their asthma under good control; no one knows how many adults do.

The last to go CFC-free will be the poor and uninsured whose asthma is less likely to be controlled, says Leo, who researches that issue at Michigan's Center for Managing Chronic Disease.

Albuterol manufacturers are providing free samples and posting coupons on their Web sites.

Still, specialists worry that some patients will try to save money with a decades-old nonprescription inhaler that contains a different drug, epinephrine, best known by the brand name Primatene Mist — inhalers that also contain ozone-harming CFCs. National asthma guidelines argue against such self-treatment as too risky and less effective than albuterol. The government will allow sale of those over-the-counter inhalers until December 2011 as manufacturers reformulate.

Leo has another concern: Only one of the new inhalers counts doses used. He's monitoring emergency-room statistics to see if cost-conscious patients trying to squeeze out last drops wind up using empty inhalers.

What do patients need to know as they switch?

_Expect a softer puff instead of the CFC version's cold blast of air in the back of the throat.

"They are getting their medicine," says Dr. David Rosenstreich of New York's Montefiore Medical Center. "They have to get used to it and be aware that it's working."

_The new inhalers clog more often because HFA makes the drug stickier. Clean the hole weekly, following the instructions unique to each brand.

_Never get the whole device wet.

The FDA says there's plenty of supply; it gave manufacturers several years to ramp up before the ban.

But don't wait until the last minute. When Eric Stoermer of Ann Arbor, Mich., made the switch in August, he waited a week for a new inhaler for his 11-year-old son Ethan. Their drugstore was temporarily out of stock.

"I ended up having to hunt around on an emergency basis," Stoermer says. "This is a bad thing to run out of."

source:news.yahoo.com

Stomach cancer Symptoms

Symptoms

Early stomach cancer often does not cause clear symptoms. As the cancer grows, the most common symptoms are:

* Discomfort in the stomach area


* Feeling full or bloated after a small meal


* Nausea and vomiting


* Weight loss

Most often, these symptoms are not due to cancer. Other health problems, such as an ulcer or infection, can cause the same symptoms. Anyone with these symptoms should tell the doctor so that problems can be found and treated as early as possible.

Diagnosis

If you have a symptom that suggests stomach cancer, your doctor must find out whether it is really due to cancer or to some other cause. Your doctor may refer you to a gastroenterologist, a doctor whose specialty is diagnosing and treating digestive problems.

The doctor asks about your personal and family health history. You may have blood or other lab tests. You also may have:

* Physical exam: The doctor checks your abdomen for fluid, swelling, or other changes. The doctor also feels for swollen lymph nodes. Your skin and eyes are checked to see if they seem yellow.


* Upper GI series: The doctor orders x-rays of your esophagus and stomach. The x-rays are taken after you drink a barium solution. The solution makes your stomach show up more clearly on the x-rays.


* Endoscopy: The doctor uses a thin, lighted tube (endoscope) to look into your stomach. The doctor first numbs your throat with an anesthetic spray. You also may receive medicine to help you relax. The tube is passed through your mouth and esophagus to the stomach.


* Biopsy: The doctor uses an endoscope to remove tissue from the stomach. A pathologist checks the tissue under a microscope for cancer cells. A biopsy is the only sure way to know if cancer cells are present.

source:medicinenet.com

Anti-ageing creams 'don't work'

A new study, conducted by researchers at University College London, has revealed that diets and creams claiming their antioxidant properties could slow ageing, have little or no effect.

While conducting a study with Nematode worms, the researchers found that even those given enhanced antioxidant powers to deal with tissue damaging "free radicals" did not live longer.

The researchers said that there was "no clear evidence" they could slow ageing.

Antioxidants are a staple of the beauty and health industries. This has been based on a 50-year-old theory.

In 1956, it was suggested that ageing was caused by a build-up of molecular damage caused by reactive forms of oxygen, called superoxides or free radicals, circulating in the body.

This is known as oxidative stress. Antioxidants supposedly worked to mop up these free radicals, minimising their damage.

However, the new could help explain why many studies aimed at proving the theory have been inconclusive.

The research team, led by Dr David Gems, genetically manipulated nematodes so that their bodies were able to "mop up" surplus free radicals.

However, these worms lived just as long as the others, suggesting that "oxidative stress" is less of a factor in the ageing of our cells and tissues as some have suggested.

"The fact is that we don't understand much about the fundamental mechanisms of ageing - the free radical theory has filled a knowledge vacuum for over 50 years now, but it doesn't stand up to the evidence," BBC quoted Gems, as saying.

"It is clear that if superoxide is involved, it plays only a small part in the story - oxidative damage is clearly not a universal, major driver of the ageing process," Gems added.

He said a healthy, balanced diet was important for reducing the risk of many "old age" diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis, but there was no clear evidence that eating antioxidants could slow or prevent ageing, and even less evidence to support the claims made by antioxidant pills and creams.

Guideline Urges HIV Tests for All Patients 13 and Older

(HealthDay News) -- Physicians should routinely screen all patients 13 years and older for HIV, says a new practice guideline released Monday by the American College of Physicians (ACP). HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

In the United States, HIV affects more than one million people, and about 20,000 new infections are caused each year by people who don't know they have HIV. Screening can help identify undiagnosed cases of HIV infection and prevent further transmission of the virus.

"The purpose of the guideline is to present the available evidence to physicians as a way to help guide their decisions around screening for HIV in their practice," guideline lead author Dr. Amir Qaseem, senior medical associate in ACP's Clinical Programs and Quality of Care Department, said in a group news release. "ACP recommends that physicians adopt a routine screening policy for HIV and encourage their patients to get tested, regardless of their risk factors."

The new guideline, released on World AIDS Day, says doctors should offer initial screening to all patients and should determine the need for repeat screening intervals on a case-by-case basis. Patients at higher risk for HIV infection should be retested more frequently than patients at average risk.

High-risk patients include: those who've shared injection needles; had a blood transfusion between 1978 and 1985; have had unprotected sex with multiple partners; have a sexually transmitted disease, or have had unprotected sex with anyone in any of these risk categories.

Patients should talk to their doctors about their individual risk, says the guideline, which was published on the Annals of Internal Medicine Web site.

"The intent of this guideline is to help prevent the unwitting spread of HIV infection," Dr. Vincenza Snow, director of clinical programs and quality of care at ACP, said in the news release. "I would tell my patients that it's important to know your HIV status, so that you do not risk infecting anyone else. Besides, an AIDS test is very simple and quick, and can be performed during a routine exam."