Hygiene is still the best defense against viruses and experts are again raising the alarm for simple yet effective precautionary measures that minimizes the chances of infection, especially for us social creatures who enjoy company of others that can carry such nasty surprises. Hand washing especially in public places where physical contact is assured is indeed a good way to protect yourself. Face masks are effective only if they are worn at all times and if everybody uses them. In the home, proper sanitation of all surfaces that are touched frequently is also a key to preventing the disease form spreading. Once a proper vaccine has been developed, they will allow us to deal better with the disease to train our immune system with a weakened form of the virus that lets it know how to deal with it best and shrug it off as a known invader. Continue reading “Hygiene – Best Flu Defense”
The flu caught everybody by surprise and suddenly, rentals of outbreak movies are soaring and people are demanding governments develop vaccines for the new flu scourge that has in a matter of months circled the globe and continues to kill people. Viruses are the most feared health risks due to their ability to mutate and change from time to time. Flu is a common illness that everybody get sick of and is normally a seasonal disease that occurs during the entry of the cold months when our bodies are adjusting to colder weather as winter approaches. Just what is it about viruses that makes them so dangerous? They are simple and quite effective at their infectious abilities, being mere genetic material encapsulated within a protective jacket of protein, ready to wreak havoc on people who have no immunity to their genetic mutating abilities. Continue reading “SWINE FLU”
The rash of flu outbreaks that has been the topic of warnings by scientists ad other health workers for some time has become more of a truth with the developments that are now sweeping the world in terms of pandemic proportions. The scourge the bird-flu is exacting on the population of this earth continues to ravage people’s lives then in comes the new Swine flu epidemic that has seemingly met forecasts/predictions in the speed at which it started to spread all over the world in the span of a few months. It started with a boy who got sick from a small Mexican town, seemingly form a rare form of flu that was unknowingly obtained from pigs that in poor countries shared close proximity in terms of living spaces to their owners. He gets sick, taken to the local clinic and then infects everybody there spreading the disease to the capital of Mexico then to the whole world. Continue reading “The Common Flu – Not so Common at All!”
The ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun can be very dangerous when a person is exposed to it for a very long time. Applying a sunscreen (sunblock or suntan lotion) will protect the skin by absorbing or reflecing the harmful UV radiation.
The SPF (Sun Protection Factor) of a sunscreen is an important consideration in choosing which product to buy. A sunscreen lotion with a higher SPF has more protection against UV radiation (UV-B) which causes sunburn.
Apply sunscreen to the skin to ensure maximum protection from UV rays even if you are not going out. Other products beside sunscreen lotion contain SPF, like lipstick, foundation, powder, and concealer.
Prevention is better than cure, so they say, so minimize your chances of getting skin cancer by using products with sunscreen.
Accutane, a common acne treatment has been found to double the risk of depression in people who use the product according to studies. Isotretinoin, the active ingredient of the acne treatment has been found to amplify depression that has prompted doctors to include proper psychological assesment as part of pre-prescription routines. Psychological exams would be able to tell if depression is present allowing the prescription of alternative treatments. Much is the concern that the cosmetics industry is now under scrutiny due to many substances that are commonly found in them that have long been banned from other developed countries due to harmful side effects. It is estimated that the average woman in their daily routine for beauty, can apply as much as 200 different compounds on their faces and body some of which have been determined to cause some health problems as they are absorbed into the blood stream passing thought the skin. Anything that has active ingredients, even natural products should be treated as drugs due to their ability to pass through skin and cause health problems in the future.
The symptoms are serious and can me interpreted as a heart attack but researchers have found that there are individuals that do exhibit the adverse reaction to bad news such as a loved one passing away. It first caught the attention of Japanese doctors in 1991 and was initially called takutsubo cardiomyopathy, modern terminology has it named several versions such as; stress cardiomyopathy, stress-induced cardiomyopathy or apical ballooning syndrome and they have since gained little knowledge on how psychological trauma can trigger such an adverse effect in humans. Researchers are identifying adrenaline as the main culprit but more research is needed to prove it as such. They have found that too much of the hormone can damage the hearts of certain individuals as they get to hear of bad news resulting in symptoms similar to heart attacks.
Telling the real heart attach from the syndrome can be difficult for they do exhibit the same symptoms but there are rarely any side effects form those who suffer Broken heart syndrome, sufferers tend to recover fast and get back with their normal lives but caution is advised so as not to under mind the possibility of a true failing heart. In a true heart attack, there is arterial blockage but in the syndrome, the blood vessels and arteries are fine but trauma may result in sluggish blood flow. Experts form the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research are continuing research in to the possible reason for the syndrome as they try to better understand why psychological trauma can produce such profound effects on the physical body.
According to experts, elderly people who are getting treatment/medication to overcome dementia associated with their relative age can result in death or hospitalization short after. The side effects of older and newer drugs were analyzed when researchers tried to find an explanation for the rash of deaths that were plaguing elderly communities in health care facilities/nursing homes finding that those who did receive the antipsychotic drugs are three times more likely to get hospitalized or even die due to long term side-effects of the drugs in question.
“Newer antipsychotic drugs (olanzapine, quetiapine fumarate and risperidone) have been on the market for more than a decade and are commonly used to treat the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia,” the authors write as background information in the article.
The study recruited people in nursing homes as test subjects and their results did confirm that the adverse effects of individuals who received antipsychotics did have a higher risk of getting into health problems as a result of the drugs. Most elderly people who are confined to nursing homes are getting treated with antipsychotics to manage their often fragile health but compared to those who live outside of them they are more likely to die or get into serious health problems. The researchers are advising that these drugs be prescribed with caution till they get to the bottom of the problems as many follow-up testing and research is in order to establish better data.
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The sun gives us a lot of benefits. For one, its invisible infrared waves provide us warmth. Also, the heat helps our gardens grow and most importantly, we get our main source of Vitamin D from its ultraviolet rays.
But although the mighty sun furnishes us with so much goodness, too much of it can be harmful to our environment and to our health. A word of caution to sun lovers: sunshine in moderation is good, but sunbathing to an excess is bad.
Skin cancer is caused by excessive exposure to the sun’s heat. This type of cancer is more common among light-skinned persons because the skin pigment (melanin) in darker-skinned persons filters out some of the harmful ultraviolet light from the sun.
