Browse >
Home / Archive by category 'Conditions & Diseases'
Everyone Really Needs Life Insurance.. Especally Since The FLU is going around.. For a Free Quote Check Out Life Policy 101.
Article Summary:
Swine Flu is spreading all over the usa. Tamiflu helps prevent but is very expensive and limited. Acai Berry has tamiflu in it and has been proven to stop the swine flu. A Free and Limited trial is going on right now. Everyone should go here and get their supply.
Swine flu
Swine influenza (also swine flu) refers to influenza caused by any strain of the influenza virus that is endemic in pigs (swine).
Signs and symptoms:
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in humans the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general. Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. A few more patients than usual have also reported diarrhea and vomiting.
Prevention And Treatment:
Tamiflu or any product that contains tamiflu in it such as acai x3.
Tamiflu is used to treat some types of influenza (flu) in patients who have had symptoms of the flu for 2 days or less. Tamiflu works by stopping the growth and spread of the flu virus in your body. Oseltamivir helps shorten the time you have flu symptoms such as nasal congestion, sore throat, cough, muscle aches, tiredness, headache, fever, and chills.
Where to get tamiflu free trials?
Believe it or not Acai Berry has Tamiflu in it….. By taking Acai Berry you can prevent Swine.. Their is a free trial right now going on so if you want to prevent swine flu make sure you go get your free trial here.
- MONDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) — The overall cost of drugs for type 2 diabetes almost doubled between 2001 and 2007, yet whether these newer drugs improve care and outcomes isn’t known, a new study finds.
In that time period, total spending went from $6.7 billion to $12.5 billion, say researchers from the University of Chicago and Stanford University.
In 2002, diabetes accounted for more than 10 percent of U.S. health-care expenditures, and that number is expected to increase as the number of people with type 2 diabetes grows, the researchers noted.
“We found dramatic changes in the treatment patterns for diabetes during the past decade,” said study author Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. “This includes a remarkable change in drugs, as well as significant increases in costs.”
Whether these changes in diabetic care positively impact outcomes isn’t known, Alexander said. “The jury is still out as to whether these changes are worth it,” he said. “The million dollar question is: Are these changes going to lead to overall significant improvement in the outcomes that matter to patients and their doctors?”
The report was published in the Oct. 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The dramatic increase in cost is due to the high cost of commonly prescribed newer drugs. For example, sitagliptin (Januvia) costs $160 per prescription and exenatide (Byetta) costs $210 per prescription. That’s eight to 11 times higher than older, generic drugs such as metformin, Alexander said.
These drugs are marketed as being more convenient and offering better control of blood sugar than the older medications. In addition, doctors are using these new drugs as an alternative to insulin, Alexander said. In fact, insulin use dropped from 38 percent in 1994 to 28 percent in 2007.
Another factor fueling higher costs of diabetes care is that an increasing number of people are being diagnosed. In 2004, 4 percent of the U.S. population were diabetics; that number is expected to increase to 7 percent by 2050, the researchers said.
In addition, diabetic patients are receiving more aggressive treatment. Diabetic patients are often prescribed more than one medication. In 1994, 82 percent of diabetics received one drug; by 2007, only 47 percent of patients were receiving just one drug, the researchers found.
Alexander admitted that many of the new drugs target different pathways of disease. “There are some real innovations here,” he said. “But we don’t know enough about the comparative effectiveness of these medicines compared with older medicines to make a final verdict.”
One of the concerns is that drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before they have been tested on thousands of people, Alexander said. “All too often, physicians and patients may tend to adopt newer therapies without sufficient evidence of their superiority or benefits over older, less expensive, more time-tested alternatives,” he said.
Recently, the diabetes drug Avandia has been linked to an increased risk for heart attack resulting in the FDA’s adding a “black box” warning to the label.
Dr. Stuart Weiss, an endocrinologist at New York University Medical Center, thinks newer medications are more effective than the older ones, but they don’t replace the need for a healthful diet and exercise.
“Spending money is bad, and diet and exercise is the best thing we can do for our diabetic patients, but they are not very comfortable accepting diet and exercise as the treatment for diabetes,” Weiss said.
Using the older, generic medications is “good enough if your expectations are very low,” Weiss said. Diabetes is a progressive disease, and drugs such as metformin fail over time, he said. “The cheap drugs are not so good,” he said.
“The newer drugs have a very nice effect on the progression of disease in diabetes, and they don’t lose efficacy after a few years,” Weiss added. “I don’t know whether they are going to fail over time. There is no medication that can’t be overwhelmed by a bad diet.”
Saving money by not using the newer drugs is not the answer to the growing diabetes epidemic. Even the most expensive drugs are cheaper than untreated diabetes, Weiss said. “If people think that giving cheap drugs will be the solution to the growing problem — I think they are making a huge mistake.”
Representatives of the drug industry were unavailable for comment on Monday.
LONDON (Reuters) - Doctors baffled by an unexplained rash on people’s ears or cheeks should be on alert for a skin allergy caused by too much mobile phone use, the British Association of Dermatologists said on Thursday.
Citing published studies, the group said a red or itchy rash, known as “mobile phone dermatitis,” affects people who develop an allergic reaction to the nickel surface on mobile phones after spending long periods of time on the devices.
“It is worth doctors bearing this condition in mind if they see a patient with a rash on the cheek or ear that cannot otherwise be explained,” it said.
The British group said many doctors were unaware mobile phones could cause the condition.
Safety concerns over mobile phones has grown as more people rely on them for everyday communication, although the evidence to date has given the technology a clean bill of health when it comes to serious conditions like brain cancer.
“In mobile phone dermatitis, the rash would typically occur on the cheek or ear, depending on where the metal part of the phone comes into contact with the skin,” the group said in a statement.
“In theory it could even occur on the fingers if you spend a lot of time texting on metal menu buttons.”
Nickel is a metal found in products, ranging from mobile phones to jewelry to belt buckles and is one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis, according to the Mayo Clinic in the United States.
Earlier this year Lionel Bercovitch of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and colleagues tested 22 popular handsets from eight different manufacturers and found nickel in 10 of the devices.
Cardiovascular disease is a broad term used to describe a range of diseases that affect your heart or blood vessels. The various diseases that fall under the umbrella of cardiovascular disease include coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure, high blood pressure and stroke.
The term “cardiovascular disease” is often used interchangeably with heart disease because both terms refer to diseases of the heart or arteries. By whatever name you call it — cardiovascular disease or heart disease - it’s clear that diseases of the heart and blood vessels are serious problems. Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 worldwide killer of men and women, including in the United States. For example, cardiovascular disease is responsible for 40 percent of all the deaths in the United States, more than all forms of cancer combined.
Brushing up on some basic terminology about cardiovascular disease can help you stay more informed, which pays off whether you’re watching the news or meeting with your doctor.
Causes of cardiovascular disease
While cardiovascular disease can refer to many different types of heart or blood vessel problems, it’s used most often to describe damage caused to your heart or blood vessels by atherosclerosis. This is a disease that affects your arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients from your heart to the rest of your body. Healthy arteries are flexible, strong and elastic.
Over time, however, too much pressure in your arteries can make the walls thick and stiff — sometimes restricting blood flow to your organs and tissues. This process is called arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and atherosclerosis is the most common form of this disorder. So if atherosclerosis is the most common cause of cardiovascular disease, you may wonder what ultimately causes atherosclerosis. The culprits are the same risk factors you’ve heard mentioned in connection with heart disease and cardiovascular disease: An unhealthy diet (lots of saturated fats), lack of exercise, being overweight and smoking. All of these are major risk factors for developing atherosclerosis and, in turn, cardiovascular disease.
Some forms of cardiovascular disease aren’t caused by atherosclerosis. Those forms include diseases such as congenital heart disease, heart valve diseases, heart infections or disease of the heart muscle called cardiomyopathy.
Types of cardiovascular disease
Your cardiovascular system consists of your heart and all blood vessels throughout your body. Diseases ranging from aneurysms to valve disease are types of cardiovascular disease. You may be born with some types of cardiovascular disease (congenital) or acquire others later on, usually from a lifetime of unhealthy habits, such as smoking, which can damage your arteries and cause atherosclerosis.
So, now that you know a little bit about cardiovascular disease and its causes, here are some specific terms used to describe the various forms of cardiovascular disease:
Coronary artery disease
This is a common form of cardiovascular disease. Coronary artery diseases are diseases of the arteries that supply the heart muscle with blood. Sometimes known as CAD, coronary artery disease is the leading cause of heart attacks. It generally means that blood flow through the coronary arteries has become obstructed, reducing blood flow to the heart muscle. The most common cause of such obstructions is a condition called atherosclerosis, a largely preventable type of vascular disease. Coronary artery disease and the resulting reduced blood flow to the heart muscle can lead to other heart problems, such as chest pain (angina) and heart attack (myocardial infarction).
Heart attack
A heart attack is an injury to the heart muscle caused by a loss of blood supply. The medical term for heart attack is “myocardial infarction,” often abbreviated MI. A heart attack usually occurs when a blood clot blocks the flow of blood through a coronary artery — a blood vessel that feeds blood to a part of the heart muscle. Interrupted blood flow to your heart can damage or destroy a part of the heart muscle.
Cardiomyopathy
Cardiomyopathy means diseases of the heart muscle. Some types of cardiomyopathy are genetic, while others occur for reasons that are less well understood. Types of cardiomyopathy include ischemic, which is caused by loss of heart muscle from reduced coronary blood flow; dilated, which means the heart chambers are enlarged; hypertrophic, which means the heart muscle is thickened; and idiopathic, which means the cause is unknown. One of the most common types of cardiomyopathy is idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy — an enlarged heart without a known cause.
Congenital heart disease
Congenital heart disease refers to a form of heart disease that develops before birth (congenital). Congenital heart disease is a broad term and includes a wide range of diseases and conditions. These diseases can affect the formation of the heart muscle or its chambers or valves. They include such conditions as narrowing of a section of the aorta (coarctation) or holes in the heart (atrial or ventricular septal defect). Some congenital heart defects may be apparent at birth, while others may not be detected until later in life.
Aneurysm
An aneurysm is a bulge or weakness in a blood vessel (artery or vein) wall. Aneurysms usually get bigger over time. Because of that, they have the potential to rupture and cause life-threatening bleeding. Aneurysms can occur in arteries in any location in your body. The most common sites include the abdominal aorta and the arteries at the base of the brain.
Valvular heart diseases
These are diseases of the heart valves. Four valves within your heart keep blood flowing in the right direction. Valves may be damaged by a variety of conditions leading to narrowing (stenosis), leaking (regurgitation or insufficiency) or improper closing (prolapse). You may be born with valvular disease, or the valves may be damaged by such conditions as rheumatic fever, infections (infectious endocarditis), connective tissue disorders, and certain medications or radiation treatments for cancer.
Pericardial diseases
These are diseases of the sac that encases the heart (pericardium). Pericardial disorders include inflammation (pericarditis), fluid accumulation (pericardial effusion) and stiffness (constrictive pericarditis). These can occur alone or together. The causes of pericardial disease vary, as do the problems they may lead to. For instance, pericarditis can occur after a heart attack and, as a result, lead to pericardial effusion or chest pain.
Heart failure
Heart failure, often called congestive heart failure, is a condition in which the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the needs of your body’s organs and tissues. It doesn’t mean your heart has failed and can’t pump blood at all. With this less effective pumping, vital organs don’t get enough blood, causing such signs and symptoms as shortness of breath, fluid retention and fatigue. “Congestive” heart failure is technically reserved for situations in which heart failure has led to fluid buildup in the body. Not all heart failure is congestive, but the terms are often used interchangeably. Heart failure may develop suddenly or over many years. It may occur as a result of other cardiovascular conditions that have damaged or weakened the heart, such as coronary artery disease or cardiomyopathy.
High blood pressure
High blood pressure (hypertension) is the excessive force of blood pumping through your blood vessels. It’s perhaps the most common form of cardiovascular disease in the Western world, affecting about one in four Americans. Although potentially life-threatening, it’s one of the most preventable and treatable types of cardiovascular disease. High blood pressure also causes many other types of cardiovascular disease, such as stroke and heart failure.
Stroke
A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is interrupted (ischemic stroke) or when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures (hemorrhagic stroke). Both can cause the death of brain cells in the affected areas. Stroke is also considered a neurological disorder because of the many complications it causes. Other forms of cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure, increase your risk of stroke.
Peripheral arterial disease and claudication
You may be more familiar with the term “claudication” — which usually refers to pain in your legs during exercise — than you are the term “peripheral arterial disease.” Strictly speaking, claudication is a symptom of peripheral arterial disease. However, claudication is often referred to as a disease itself. Peripheral arterial disease is a disorder in which the arteries supplying blood to your limbs — usually your legs — become narrowed or blocked. When this happens, your legs receive less blood than they need to keep up with demand. Claudication may then develop. When the obstruction is mild, you may have such symptoms as pain in your legs only during strenuous exercise. As the disease progresses and arteries become more obstructed, you may have pain or cramping in your legs even at rest.
Arrhythmias
Heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias) occur when the electrical impulses in your heart that coordinate your heartbeats don’t function properly, causing your heart to beat too fast, too slow or irregularly. Other forms of cardiovascular disease can cause arrhythmias.
Staying informed about cardiovascular disease
You may be surprised how many different diseases fall under the umbrella of cardiovascular disease. The thing to remember is most forms of cardiovascular disease are often related to preventable risk factors. For example, an unhealthy diet, smoking and lack of exercise can all lead to atherosclerosis, which in turn can cause one or more types of cardiovascular disease. Learning how cardiovascular disease is described and what the various terms mean can help you become more informed as you take charge of your health.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Combination treatment for type 2 diabetes using two classes of drugs — metformin and sulfonylureas — may increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular disease and mortality, according to a report in the current issue of Diabetes Care.
Researchers came to this conclusion after an analysis of pooled data from nine large observational studies.
“The paper highlights a real dilemma we have today in diabetes treatment,” senior investigator Dr. Vivian A. Fonseca told Reuters Health. “We have drugs that lower glucose but we seem to run into problems over time with improving outcomes — particularly cardiovascular outcomes.”
“A big question,” he added, “is whether it is due to the disease or the drugs increasing cardiovascular risk.”
To help answer that question, Fonseca of Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, and colleagues performed a review of data from more than 101,000 study participants, about one quarter of whom received combination therapy with metformin and sulfonylurea. The other patients were treated with one of these agents or diet therapy.
In the combination group, the risk of mortality from any cause was increased by 19 percent and by 29 percent for cardiovascular mortality. There were no statistically significant differences, however, when compared with the mortality rates in the other groups.
However, the combined end-point of death or hospitalization due to cardiovascular disease was increased by 43 percent in the group on combination therapy, which was significantly greater than in the other groups.
“So it appears,” continued Fonseca, “that there is some increased risk with this combination that is the most widely used diabetes treatment of two drugs that are cheap and generic.”
Our findings, he concluded, “clearly demonstrate that further studies are needed not only to assess the association of combination therapy of metformin and sulfonylurea with all-cause and/or cardiovascular mortality, but also to understand the potential underlying mechanism of its effects.”
SOURCE: Diabetes Care, August 2008.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who are both obese and have diabetes are highly likely to develop heart disease during their lifetime, a new study shows.
Researchers found that of more than 3,400 adults in a long-running U.S. heart study, women who were obese and diabetic had a nearly 80 percent chance of developing heart disease at some point. For their male counterparts, that figure was nearly 90 percent.
Lifetime risk was based on the likelihood that a 50-year-old would develop heart disease in the next 30 years.
Obesity and diabetes commonly go hand-in-hand. The new findings, published in the journal Diabetes Care, show that diabetes on its own significantly raises the lifetime risk of heart disease, and that obesity worsens the situation.
Dr. Caroline S. Fox of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and her colleagues the lifetime heart disease risk of normal-weight women who did not have diabetes was 34 percent. The risk for normal-weight women with diabetes was 55 percent.
Among obese women, those who did not have diabetes had a 47 percent chance of developing heart disease, while the risk for those with diabetes was 79 percent.
The pattern was similar for men, with a lifetime heart disease risk of 49 percent among normal-weight, non-diabetic men, and a 77 percent risk for normal-weight men with diabetes. Obese men without diabetes had a 67 percent lifetime heart disease risk, while the risk for obese diabetic men was 87 percent.
The number of Americans with diabetes is expected to rise to 48.3 million by 2050, the researchers note, and heart disease due to diabetes appears to already be on the rise.
“This trend may continue to worsen if current trajectories do not change,” they warn.
SOURCE: Diabetes Care, August 2008.
FRIDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) — A new drug therapy may help cut down on the lung function loss experienced by patients with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a new study says.
According to the second August issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a combination of salmeterol, a β-agonist, and fluticasone propiniate, an inhaled cortical steroid, proved a successful therapy in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted in 42 countries.
“Pharmacotherapy with salmeterol plus fluticasone propionate, or the components, reduces the rate of decline on [lung function] in patients with moderate to severe COPD, thus slowing disease progression,” study author Dr. Bartolome R. Celli, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, said in a news release issued by the journal’s publisher. “To date, smoking cessation is the only intervention that has conclusively been shown to alter the rate of decline in [lung function].”
Celli said this is the first demonstration of an effective drug therapy in COPD.
The rate of lung function decline was similar despite variables such as sex, age, ethnicity and body-mass index.
“Although treatment did not abolish the accelerated decline in lung function [that occurs with COPD], it did ameliorate it substantially,” Celli wrote.
FRIDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthDay News) — Statins might quickly help reverse erectile dysfunction among men who have metabolic syndrome, new animal research suggests.
A threat to cardiovascular health, metabolic syndrome is also known to raise the risk for erectile dysfunction (ED). The current finding indicates that statins may reduce levels of a specific protein that contributes to ED.
“Each condition of metabolic syndrome phenomenon — high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and obesity — independently raises the risk for erectile dysfunction just on their own,” explained study author Christopher J. Wingard, an associate professor of physiology with the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. “And so, when all are present in combination as part of this syndrome, you have a situation where you don’t even need to be as diabetic or hypertensive as you might otherwise have to be to experience erectile dysfunction. And that fact has been raising concern among clinicians.”
“So, we followed up on case reports and anecdotal evidence that statins being used to lower cholesterol over a six- to eight-week period among patients with metabolic syndrome seemed to also quickly improve erections — even before cholesterol levels go down,” Wingard added. “And in an animal model, we found this to be the case.”
Wingard and his colleagues presented their findings recently at the American Urological Association Research Conference, in Linthicum, Md.
The effort to evaluate the possibility of using statins to treat ED focused on 16- to 20-week-old lean and obese rats, all of whom were given one of three statins on a daily basis for between three to five days.
The researchers then assessed erectile function in the rats. At the same time, they also measured any changes in levels of certain key proteins that they believed could be involved in triggering the onset of ED.
The authors found that the statins were able to quickly relieve some of the vascular constriction associated with metabolic syndrome that can bring about ED.
They further noted that the way in which the statins appeared to have their effect was by inhibiting the expression — and lowering the levels — of a particular protein known as Rho-kinase. This protein had previously been cited as a possible culprit in vascular constriction of penile smooth muscle.
Wingard suggested that more research is sure to follow, to explore whether the findings would apply to patients following a long-term regimen of statin treatment.
However, Dr. Arnold Melman, chairman of the department of urology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, described the findings as “very preliminary.”
“Statins are used by everyone under the sun, and, as far as I know, there’s been no hard evidence that it can be used to treat erectile dysfunction,” he said. “On the other hand, it may be that it could prevent or modify some of the other risk factors for erectile dysfunction.”
“This is because we do know that an increase in Rho-kinase leads to heightened tone of the corpus smooth muscle, which is one of the causes of erectile dysfunction,” Melman noted. “So, while I wouldn’t go too far with this, and I would probably not see statins becoming a primary treatment for erectile dysfunction, if these findings turn out to be true, then there could perhaps be an additional good use for statins.”
Some Tips for Diabetics
Diabetes and Hypertension are the 2 most common chronic ailments affecting general population of developed or developing countries. Though they are life-time diseases, you can live a healthy life along with them if you take care properly.
Following are some of the useful tips for Diabetec Patients :
- Take your medicines regularly.
- Don’t forget to take your meals after taking medicine to avoid hypoglycemia.
- Avoid foods with direct carbohydrates like sugar, cake, white bread etc.
- Take food at same time daily and at frequent intervals
- Exercise regularly
- Get your blood sugar checked at regular intervals as per doctor’s advise.
- Maintain a diabetes diary mentioning your medicines, sugar levels, emergency contact numbers, your doctor etc.
- Wear a Diabetic Wristband or bracelet for rapid identification during emergency
- Check your feet daily and see that there is no injury. If there is any, take instant treatment.
- Keep Glucose tablets or candies ready in case of hypoglycemic episodes.
Take diabetes as a challenge, fight against it and don’t get depressed. 
