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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
VITAMIN E Antioxidant which helps prevent cancer and heart disease.
VITAMIN E Antioxidant which helps prevent cancer and heart disease. Prevents cell damage. Reduces blood pressure and promotes healthy skin and hair.HERBAL SOURCES: Alfalfa, bladder wrack, dandelion, dong quai, flaxseed, nettle, oat straw, raspberry leaf, rose hips.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
American ginseng synonyms
American ginseng synonyms: American ginseng, amerikan ginseng, amerikanischer Ginseng, amerikkalainen ginseng, Anchi ginseng, Aralia quinquefolia Decne. & Planch (botanical synonym), Araliaceae (family), Canadian ginseng, CVT - E 002, five fingers, five leafed ginseng, garantoquen, ginseng, ginseng d'Amerique, ginsenosides poly-furanosyl-pyranosyl-saccharides, man-root, man's health, North American ginseng, Occidental ginseng, Ontario ginseng, Panax quincefolium, Panax quinquefolium, Panax quinquefolius , redberry, red berry, sang, shang (TCM), tartar root, TCM, tienchi ginseng, western ginseng, wild American ginseng, Wisconsin ginseng, xi yang shen.
herbal weight loss products herbal life weight loss pills vitamins
herbal weight loss products herbal life weight loss pills vitamins
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Tobacco is the most preventable cause of death
Brad Pope, vice president of human resources at Memorial Hospital, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press the decision is an extension of the hospital's commitment to health and is not based on potential health care cost savings.
"I understand the concerns people have, but we are here for the health of our community," Pope said. "Like it or not, what's proven is that tobacco is the most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. I think the Chattanooga and surrounding communities should expect this from Memorial."
Any form of nicotine will make an applicant ineligible to be hired — even nicotine gum or a patch.
The new hiring rule will not affect current employees of Memorial.
Dr. Carlos Baleeiro, with Battlefield Pulmonology in Fort Oglethorp, Ga., said the refusal by hospitals to hire tobacco users isn't yet widespread, especially in tobacco producing states.
"It's very brave of them," he said. "I'm quite impressed by Memorial."
Memorial is a nonprofit hospital that is operated by the Sisters of Charity order, based in Nazareth, Ky. It opened in 1952. The hospital Web site states Memorial is also part of Catholic Health Initiatives, which serves hospitals in 22 states.
The Memorial system has two acute care hospitals and a number of clinics.
Information posted on the Web site states testing for nicotine will be added to an already-required screening for illegal drugs and will disqualify applicants who test positive.
The posting states applicants who have been offered jobs and who test positive for tobacco won't be hired and may be disqualified for reapplying for six months.
Not everyone sees the move as entirely beneficial.
Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said he believes a policy barring the hiring of tobacco users is discriminatory.
Siegel said he avidly supports education on the dangers of using tobacco, but questions whether the hiring practice is fair.
"The same rationale that would support not hiring smokers would also support not hiring people who are obese or people who have young children or people who don't eat nutritious food or people who don't exercise," he said. "What it's basically saying is the private behavior of people in their own homes is somehow relevant to their qualifications to work in a workplace."
"I understand the concerns people have, but we are here for the health of our community," Pope said. "Like it or not, what's proven is that tobacco is the most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. I think the Chattanooga and surrounding communities should expect this from Memorial."
Any form of nicotine will make an applicant ineligible to be hired — even nicotine gum or a patch.
The new hiring rule will not affect current employees of Memorial.
Dr. Carlos Baleeiro, with Battlefield Pulmonology in Fort Oglethorp, Ga., said the refusal by hospitals to hire tobacco users isn't yet widespread, especially in tobacco producing states.
"It's very brave of them," he said. "I'm quite impressed by Memorial."
Memorial is a nonprofit hospital that is operated by the Sisters of Charity order, based in Nazareth, Ky. It opened in 1952. The hospital Web site states Memorial is also part of Catholic Health Initiatives, which serves hospitals in 22 states.
The Memorial system has two acute care hospitals and a number of clinics.
Information posted on the Web site states testing for nicotine will be added to an already-required screening for illegal drugs and will disqualify applicants who test positive.
The posting states applicants who have been offered jobs and who test positive for tobacco won't be hired and may be disqualified for reapplying for six months.
Not everyone sees the move as entirely beneficial.
Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said he believes a policy barring the hiring of tobacco users is discriminatory.
Siegel said he avidly supports education on the dangers of using tobacco, but questions whether the hiring practice is fair.
"The same rationale that would support not hiring smokers would also support not hiring people who are obese or people who have young children or people who don't eat nutritious food or people who don't exercise," he said. "What it's basically saying is the private behavior of people in their own homes is somehow relevant to their qualifications to work in a workplace."
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Finding the root cause of sexual dysfunction
One of the most difficult things about chronic pain is the profound impact that it can have on your sex life. But if you think you are the only chronic pain sufferer with intimacy issues, think again. "It's a silent epidemic," says Clifford Gevirtz, MD, medical director of Somnia Pain Management in New Rochelle, N.Y. "People are embarrassed to talk about it, but they are suffering."
But experts say that many are suffering needlessly: "There is a lot of help available," he says. "They just have to have the courage to ask."
The last thing a chronic pain sufferer needs is more discomfort. But when sex increases pain and patients avoid sex, a vicious cycle can start. "If avoidance continues, a major fear becomes associated with a sexual activity," says Todd Sitzman, MD, a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. "That lack of intimacy can have detrimental effects on relationships."
How emotions play a role
The alchemy of pain, sex, and relationships is complex. "Typically what I see is a combination of factors," says Geralyn Datz, PhD, a pain psychologist and behavioral medicine specialist in Hattiesburg, Miss. "The person has chronic pain, and intercourse may be physically uncomfortable." But she says often a person can feel emotionally unwilling or just feel bad about themselves.
Self-esteem can also plummet, says Datz: "You can imagine how someone who used to be the head of the household and is now relegated to the couch isn't feeling interested in intercourse or intimacy—their self esteem is dramatically affected."
Anticipation or fear of pain is another common problem: For Smyres, orgasms can sometimes trigger migraines, which "doesn't give me a whole lot of incentive," she says.
Finding the root cause of sexual dysfunction
Chronic pain affects sexuality on several levels. At the most basic level, pain itself can inhibit sexual activity. Kerrie Smyres, a 31-year-old writer in Seattle who blogs about her daily headaches, says that the pain in her head often hurts too much for sex. Despite the cliché, it's true that headaches can be a major obstacle to intimacy. In a small 2007 survey by the National Headache Foundation, 69% of respondents said they had avoided sex because of a headache.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Study.Detect breast cancer
U.S. researchers are working on an experimental DNA test that could pave the way for a simple blood test to detect breast cancer.
A team at Chronix Biomedical, a privately-owned U.S. company that works on cancer diagnosis techniques, reports they've had good success with a DNA breast cancer test.
They report, in a research paper published this week, that their test was able to detect 70 per cent of breast cancer cases, and clear 100 per cent of women who did not have breast cancer.
But, because of the huge expenses involved in conducting each test, it could still be a long time before the test is widely available.
Still, the company says this latest research gives them hope they are on the right track.
The test works by detecting the specific DNA biomarkers that are emitted from dead and dying breast cells.
While millions of the body's cells die each day, the Chronix team believes it has found the unique "DNA fingerprint" that dying breast cells emit. They were able to do that after they sequenced the entire genomes of 26 breast cancer patients and 67 healthy women.
To test their DNA fingerprint discovery, they sequenced the blood of 38 women with ductal carcinoma and compared the information with 87 healthy patients and those with other medical conditions.
Their results are published in the journal Molecular Cancer Research.
The company says the results are encouraging.
"This study supports the potential of an entirely new approach to identifying cancer at its earliest stages when therapies may be most effective," said Dr. William M. Mitchell, a professor of pathology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a co-author of the study.
"The promising diagnostic sensitivity and specificity achieved in this study further confirm the value of circulating DNA for disease detection and suggest that laboratory tests using this approach may have the potential both to screen large populations for cancer before symptoms appear and to monitor patients for the recurrence of cancer once treated."
The company says the test could have other uses. Not only could it help screen healthy women for breast cancer, but it could help tailor treatments for those who are diagnosed.
The DNA test could, for example, help identify the genetic differences that would make a patient more likely to respond to certain medications. The blood test could also help determine whether a treatment is working.
But there is still at least one major hurdle to cross before such a test becomes available: cost.
Using the DNA sequencers currently available to researchers costs thousands of dollars per test.
Though companies are working to get those costs down, they will have to come down significantly before a blood test would be practical, Chronix Biomedical's CEO, Howard Urnovitz, told Reuters.
Urnovitz says the company is now also working on tests for other cancers, including multiple myeloma, and other life-threatening conditions.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Children are uniquely vulnerable to pollutant exposures
From the time of implantation, through gestation, birth, and early childhood, humans are exposed to chemicals and chemical combinations, which place their health in jeopardy. Numerous toxic agents have been detected in umbilical cord blood samples, a finding potentially significant because tissues, organs, and genetic material of the unborn and young are particularly susceptible to biologic insult. The National Research Council reported in 1993 that children are uniquely vulnerable to pollutant exposures because growing and developing organ systems may suffer permanent impairment.
A growing body of literature suggests there is an association between maternal inhalation of common ambient air pollutants and adverse birth outcomes, including an increased risk for preterm delivery, intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), low birth weight, small head circumference, and increased rate of malformations. Potentially more worrisome are recent studies, which report a relationship between exposure to airborne particulate matter and heritable mutations in laboratory animals. The contaminants noted in these studies are ubiquitous to many urban environments.
Outdoor air pollution is not the only potential source of non-employment-related airborne contamination. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that people in developed countries spend 90% of their time indoors, where the air pollutant concentration is 3 to 5 times higher than outdoors. Although research examining the effect of indoor air pollutants on pregnancy outcomes is sparse, data gleaned from environmental tobacco smoke studies suggest reason for concern. Nonsmoking pregnant women exposed to environmental tobacco smoke have an increased risk of delivering a low birth weight infant.
After birth, children continue to be vulnerable, particularly for exposure to air pollutants. The EPA found that children under the age of 1 have inhalation rates 3.4 times higher per kilogram of body weight than their adult counterparts; for children aged 3 to 5 years, the ratio is 2.8 times higher.Children very likely internalize greater doses of contamination from pollutants suspended in the air column as a function of their inhalation rates and body weight, and endure greater risk of excessive tissue damage because of their underdeveloped immune systems.
Children suffer disproportionately from exposure to environmental hazards in general and indoor air pollutants in particular. Globally, 40% of disease burden attributable to environmental factors impacts children under the age of 5, although this cohort accounts for only 10% of the world's population. An egregious environmental risk factor is exposure to indoor cooksmoke (i.e., the combustion contaminants generated from fuels during the cooking of foods and other indoor activities requiring fire).
An estimated 90% of rural households in developing countries and up to one half of homes worldwide use biomass fuels as their primary source of energy (biomass homes). These fuels are plant based in origin; examples include animal dung, crop residues, wood, and charcoal. Unfortunately, the products of incomplete combustion emanating from these burning fuels include a catalog of pollutants known to present risk to human health. A partial list includes airborne particulate matter, polynuclear aromatics, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur.
The indoor combustion of biomass fuels has been linked to acute lower respiratory infections, the single most important cause of mortality in children under the age of 5, accounting for some 2 million deaths annually. Acute lower respiratory infection is also the cause of mortality for many children reported to have measles, pertussis, and HIV/AIDS.
Poverty is a strong predictor of indoor air contamination in developing countries. Modest income earners rely on accessible, low-quality/low-cost fuels, and frequently reside in homes that tend to exacerbate poor air quality. Cooking fires are customarily contained in 3-stone stoves, open pits, or inefficient cooking appliances, all of which have a propensity to produce copious quantities of air pollutants. The dwellings often do not possess chimneys to capture and expel smoke and combustion by-products, and in many cases, are not designed to maximize dilution ventilation from doors and windows, exacerbating an already risk-prone environment. Although few empirical studies have been conducted to assess risk to mothers, women of reproductive age, and children, the few data that exist suggest substantial exposures to indoor air pollutants occur.
One representative contaminant, airborne particulate, can be relatively easily measured in the indoor environment. Small airborne particles possess an aerodynamic diameter of 10 microns or less, and are hazardous because they can be inhaled deeply into the lung and serve as a vehicle for toxins that may be adsorbed onto their surface. Particle concentrations in the range of 300 to 3000 mcg per cubic meter of air are present during cooking in biomass homes, with peak concentrations upward to 30,0000 mcg/m3. As a point of reference, the EPA has traditionally maintained 2 standards to protect human health against exposure to small airborne particulates. The first standard is a 24-hour average exposure of 150 mcg/m3, which is not to be exceeded more than once per year. The second standard is 50 mcg/m3, which represents an average annual exposure that should not be exceeded, on average, over the course of a calendar year.
Few studies have quantified the combustion contaminant exposure to women while they cook using biomass fuels. To gain insight into this issue and to bolster the public health inventory of published works on this subject, the authors conducted a preliminary study in Gimbie, Ethiopia, to assess various factors associated with exposure to cooksmoke in that environment.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/507502_2
A growing body of literature suggests there is an association between maternal inhalation of common ambient air pollutants and adverse birth outcomes, including an increased risk for preterm delivery, intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), low birth weight, small head circumference, and increased rate of malformations. Potentially more worrisome are recent studies, which report a relationship between exposure to airborne particulate matter and heritable mutations in laboratory animals. The contaminants noted in these studies are ubiquitous to many urban environments.
Outdoor air pollution is not the only potential source of non-employment-related airborne contamination. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that people in developed countries spend 90% of their time indoors, where the air pollutant concentration is 3 to 5 times higher than outdoors. Although research examining the effect of indoor air pollutants on pregnancy outcomes is sparse, data gleaned from environmental tobacco smoke studies suggest reason for concern. Nonsmoking pregnant women exposed to environmental tobacco smoke have an increased risk of delivering a low birth weight infant.
After birth, children continue to be vulnerable, particularly for exposure to air pollutants. The EPA found that children under the age of 1 have inhalation rates 3.4 times higher per kilogram of body weight than their adult counterparts; for children aged 3 to 5 years, the ratio is 2.8 times higher.Children very likely internalize greater doses of contamination from pollutants suspended in the air column as a function of their inhalation rates and body weight, and endure greater risk of excessive tissue damage because of their underdeveloped immune systems.
Children suffer disproportionately from exposure to environmental hazards in general and indoor air pollutants in particular. Globally, 40% of disease burden attributable to environmental factors impacts children under the age of 5, although this cohort accounts for only 10% of the world's population. An egregious environmental risk factor is exposure to indoor cooksmoke (i.e., the combustion contaminants generated from fuels during the cooking of foods and other indoor activities requiring fire).
An estimated 90% of rural households in developing countries and up to one half of homes worldwide use biomass fuels as their primary source of energy (biomass homes). These fuels are plant based in origin; examples include animal dung, crop residues, wood, and charcoal. Unfortunately, the products of incomplete combustion emanating from these burning fuels include a catalog of pollutants known to present risk to human health. A partial list includes airborne particulate matter, polynuclear aromatics, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur.
The indoor combustion of biomass fuels has been linked to acute lower respiratory infections, the single most important cause of mortality in children under the age of 5, accounting for some 2 million deaths annually. Acute lower respiratory infection is also the cause of mortality for many children reported to have measles, pertussis, and HIV/AIDS.
Poverty is a strong predictor of indoor air contamination in developing countries. Modest income earners rely on accessible, low-quality/low-cost fuels, and frequently reside in homes that tend to exacerbate poor air quality. Cooking fires are customarily contained in 3-stone stoves, open pits, or inefficient cooking appliances, all of which have a propensity to produce copious quantities of air pollutants. The dwellings often do not possess chimneys to capture and expel smoke and combustion by-products, and in many cases, are not designed to maximize dilution ventilation from doors and windows, exacerbating an already risk-prone environment. Although few empirical studies have been conducted to assess risk to mothers, women of reproductive age, and children, the few data that exist suggest substantial exposures to indoor air pollutants occur.
One representative contaminant, airborne particulate, can be relatively easily measured in the indoor environment. Small airborne particles possess an aerodynamic diameter of 10 microns or less, and are hazardous because they can be inhaled deeply into the lung and serve as a vehicle for toxins that may be adsorbed onto their surface. Particle concentrations in the range of 300 to 3000 mcg per cubic meter of air are present during cooking in biomass homes, with peak concentrations upward to 30,0000 mcg/m3. As a point of reference, the EPA has traditionally maintained 2 standards to protect human health against exposure to small airborne particulates. The first standard is a 24-hour average exposure of 150 mcg/m3, which is not to be exceeded more than once per year. The second standard is 50 mcg/m3, which represents an average annual exposure that should not be exceeded, on average, over the course of a calendar year.
Few studies have quantified the combustion contaminant exposure to women while they cook using biomass fuels. To gain insight into this issue and to bolster the public health inventory of published works on this subject, the authors conducted a preliminary study in Gimbie, Ethiopia, to assess various factors associated with exposure to cooksmoke in that environment.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/507502_2
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