Health News Blog provides coverage of current health news.

posted by admin on May 8

What can I do to prevent endometriosis? Although endometriosis is rarely life-threatening, it affects life on two very critical levels—well-being and fertility. Women are often surprised by the differences they can make in ending the misery of endometriosis.

• Believe you cm make a difference. You will learn what you can do to alter your condition within these pages, but you must believe, in your heart, that you can do it. Then you have to take the first step. Beginnings can seem formidable and the goat may seem far away. Keep up your energy and motivation to reach the goal of offsetting the symptoms of endometriosis, reducing the pain, and, possibly, curing the disease and preventing its recurrence. This is challenging, but it can be done by taking one step at a time.

• Change your diet. Endometriosis responds so well to dietary changes, it must be part of standard treatment, along with medication, as indicated, for each woman. The endometriosis recovery diet follows shortly. It is based on evidence that certain foods, vitamins, and minerals affect both pain from menstrual cramping and hormone levels. The diet concentrates on putting your body in balance nutritionally and reducing pain the natural way Put very simply, it requires you to cut down on sugar, salt, and fat and increase your intake of complex carbohydrates, certain vitamins, and fiber.

Studies show that obesity promotes higher estrogen levels, which increase die chances of endometriotic cysts. Women on vegetarian diets have higher levels of estrogen and cholesterol in their stool than meat-eaters. Essentially, all the fiber they are eating helps eliminate excess estrogen and cholesterol from their bodies. This is one reason why you need fiber.

• Reduce stress. Stress-related accidents and illnesses account for about three-fourths of the time lost on the job. Why does this happen? Stress attacks start a domino effect in the body. Stress is far more than a pyschological irritant. During hard stress, the lymph glands shrink; the cortisone level is raised as the adrenal glands release more of this hormone and impair immune system functioning; blood pressure rises; the heart works harder; and the body, in sum, is left open to infection or stress-related disease.

There is much dispute about stress’s affecting or creating endometriosis. Some see the disease as a combination of known and unknown factors, all of them within the body itself—whether it is genetic predisposition or links to hormone production. These people, many of them sufferers of endometriosis, do not believe that stress has any real bearing on the condition, arguing that this places too much responsibility and “guilt” on the patient. Others, like myself, believe that this disease is connected in some way to the effects of counterproductive stress, such as fatigue, overwork, disruptive environments, discord among family members or friends, worry about money, career, love, and security for the future.

Dr. Christiane North nip an obstetrician and gynecologist and co-founder of a group practice. Women to Women, in Yarmouth, Maine, concurs. “I almost never sec a patient with endometriosis who does not have a number of adverse factors in her life, which may have affected the onset or progress of the disease.” she told me. As a woman doctor treating women, she says, “I feel strongly that stress is most definitely a component.”

Dr. Northrup thinks it is helpful for women to “rethink their goals” and do some “inner searching.” What does she mean? “Modern women want their lives to be an organic whole,” she said. “Ideally, this means home life is consistent with work life, rather like an intermeshed flowing whole. I think it’s common for working women to be hard on themselves and add the self-induced pressures of wanting that harmony and balance, myself included.

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posted by admin on May 8

Both hair and nails are derived from the epidermis, and both consist of the same dead tissue—the protein, keratin. Because of their derivation from the epidermis it is not surprising that diseases affecting the skin may affect the hair and nails as well. In addition, there are a number of disorders which are peculiar to the hair (including the scalp) and nails.

Hair loss may be temporary, when it is usually called alopecia; or it may be permanent, when usually called baldness. The most common form of temporary diffuse alopecia is that associated with the following conditions or circumstances:

acute mental stress

severe illness or injury

following pregnancy

stopping the oral contraceptive pill iron deficiency various hormonal deficiencies certain drugs rapid weight loss In these cases the hairs in the resting phase are the ones which are usually lost. As such the hair loss is temporary, and will right itself once the precipitating cause has been corrected.

Alopecia areata, where the loss is localized to one or more well-defined areas, is the most common type of hair loss seen in medical practice. There is sometimes a family history of it, and there appears to be a genetic association with some other conditions (known as auto-immune diseases) such as vitiligo (pigment loss), pernicious anaemia, and either over or under active thyroid disorders. There is often psychological stress or some emotional deprivation some weeks prior to onset. Although alopecia areata occurs at all ages the majority of cases are in children and young adults. It is estimated that there are about 100000 sufferers in Australia.

With this disorder patches of hair may be lost from any part of the body, although hair loss is typically limited to the scalp and beard areas. Symptomless bald areas up to a few centimetres in diameter develop, which may coalesce and produce the loss of all scalp hair (alopecia totalis) or even of the whole body [alopecia universalis). In the stage of active hair loss, very short, broken hairs shaped like exclamation marks may be found. These are not seen in the conditions which may, otherwise, be taken for alopecia areata (such conditions as ringworm and secondary syphilis). The prognosis for alopecia areata is good in the majority of cases, with most patients growing new, often initially white, hair within six to nine months. The longer the alopecia lasts and the larger the areas affected, the worse are the chances of satisfactory regrowth.

Small areas of hair loss which show evidence of regrowth are best left untreated. When improvement is slow or where areas are large, topical corticosteroids may be useful. Occasionally, they may be injected into the areas to promote regrowth, but this effect may be transient. Recently, various irritants and sensitizers—such as DNCB—have been used in an attempt to stimulate hair growth. It is important for patients or parents to fully understand what is known about the condition and its varied course. Considerable reassurance is frequently necessary, and recently a number of self-help groups have been set up to enable those involved to help one another and to seek further help both from the Government and the medical profession.

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posted by admin on May 8

The modem focus of eating plans for sustainable fat loss is a decrease in total dietary fat and an increase in the proportion of complex carbohydrates, followed in importance by a decrease in total energy intake. When assessing diet plans, these basic criteria need to be kept in mind. It is also important for health professionals providing advice to those seeking fat loss to know just how this is best achieved and to have an understanding of how popular diet plans manipulate the facts. The following is a review of some general diet plans.

Low-energy diets. These diets aim to provide 800-1200 kcal/day which is substantially lower than the resting metabolic rate of even very lean adults. The associated risks of the diet will decrease as the energy intake increases, but one of the main problems is dealing with hunger on these diets. The use of appropriately advised physical activity programs to support these diets is highly recommended.

When these reduced-calorie diets are based on regularly available foods rather than fortified products, there is a small risk of micronutrient inadequacy. Supplementation may be recommended, which would seem to defeat the purpose of creating a lifelong achievable plan that is nutritionally adequate. The needs of pre-menopausal women for iron and all women for calcium may not be met by these diets.

Many of the commercial weight loss organisations base their programs on this type of diet and include interventions in the form of a client attending a centre, a group meeting in community settings or home-delivered meals. The ready availability of frozen, pre-packaged meals for dieters in the supermarket is an area of concern, as these have little relevance to an overall rat loss strategy and are not concerned with nutritional adequacy.

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posted by admin on May 8

There are many reasons why hysterectomies are carried out, the most common being fibroids and unexplained heavy menstrual bleeding. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare studies indicate that fibroids account for about 6500 (22%) and heavy menstrual bleeding for about 5300 (18%) of the estimated 30 000 hysterectomies performed in Australia each year. In the US, fibroids are said to be responsible for as many as 30% of hysterectomies and a further 20% are due to excessive bleeding of uncertain cause. Other major reasons given for the hysterectomies performed in Australia are prolapse (7-21% depending on the type of hospital and State in which it is located), endometriosis and adenomyosis (6-23%), cancer (1-12%) and pelvic inflammatory disease (2-8%). Multiple reasons are given for the remaining hysterectomies.

While information is available about the number of women who have hysterectomies and the underlying reasons, much greater uncertainty surrounds the women who consider the option of hysterectomy but decide against it. It is probable that these women number many, many thousands.

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posted by admin on May 8

A television documentary recently reported an unusual case of insomnia in England. Loughborough University advertised for people who thought they did not need to sleep to come forward to join in a sleep research study. So people who were short sleepers volunteered to be tested under laboratory conditions. At night they were allowed to lie in bed to rest and their brain waves were monitored continuously. There was a man who claimed that after an accident causing head injury a few years earlier he did not sleep at all. He also claimed that he was functioning normally and did not feel worried when he was lying awake. Brain wave recordings showed that he slept only four minutes during the three day study.

The study findings suggest that perhaps the brain is programmed to sleep periodically. The man who did not have the need to sleep after the head injury may have had his brain reprogrammed in such a way that sleep was no longer required. Maybe in hundreds or thousands of years from now we will be able to reprogram the brain so that we will have the choice of not having to sleep at all. There is a Chinese saying, ‘Life is not as long as it seems, as half of it is spent sleeping’.

It is possible that there are other biological functions, yet to be discovered, which only happen in sleep. We have only just started to study sleep as a science, and sleep laboratories have been around only in the last 50 years. We are certain that we are only scratching the surface of the science of sleep and that there is much more to discover, for there are still many unanswered questions and why we need to sleep is one of them.

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