Archive for October, 2006
Having crushed medicinal pills could have serious, even fatal, consequences, on your health.
Experts estimate that over 80% of people find it convenient to crush tablets into powder before swallowing them. Most of those preferring powdered medicine are children and elderly patients. According to the doctors, crushing pills can alter their effect besides affecting the way the drug is released and absorbed in our digestive tract.
A lot of medicines available in the form of tablets have a special coating which prevents the chemical inside from coming in contact with the epithelial lining of your stomach. The medicine is meant to pass through your stomach and reach your intestine for absorption. When crushed the medicine comes into the contact with the stomach wall which may lead to a gastric injury and even bleeding.
A number of medicines, the experts warn, are effective when they are released slowly into your digestive tract. For example, anti-diabetic drug Metformin is meant to be released over 24 hours. Crushing of such medicines would lead to their action lasting only for a limited period only.
According to a drug expert, a tablet may have some binding agents and other accessory chemicals, which often are not spread uniformly across a tablet. Thus consuming even half a tablet with the intention of having half the dosage of the medicine may change their effect when consumed individually at two different times. Hence it may be thoroughly wrong to imagine that breaking a tablet into two would reduce its potency by half.
As has been observed most patients who crush tablets before their intake mix them in juice or milk. This may result into undesirable interaction of drug with the liquid. According to the experts, drugs that are not scored or lined from the centre must never be crushed under any circumstance.
Over 60% of elderly patients have trouble swallowing pills so they prefer crushing them or have them crushed by their nurses. An estimated 75 million prescriptions a year are associated with adverse drug reactions.
Among common medicines that must never be crushed are the antibiotic Amplicillin, blood pressure drug Lisinoprill and pain killer Ibuprofen. Also crushing some bitter medicinal tablets like Cirpoquine and Ciprofloxacin, could result in nausea and vomiting.
Hence, next time you think you cannot swallow a pill, have it with a dollop of dessert, if you like. That will be perfectly fine.
October 31st, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
The effect of mobile phone on our health has been a debatable issue ever since it became a popular means of voice based communication.
Now a study has found some disturbing findings, especially for men. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine study indicates that men who spend more than four hours a day talking on their mobiles have 25% lower sperm count than those who never used the gadget in their life.
Equally disturbing is the finding that those with lower sperm counts also had the poorest quality of fundamental units of reproduction and transference of characters from one generation to another.
The current study has been reported to be the biggest and best designed investigation. It is a follow up on an earlier study which linked the use of mobile phones with poor quality sperm.
The current investigation was done across continents with involvement of researchers from Cleaveland and New Orleans in the US and Mumbai in India, and involved 361 men undergoing checks at a fertility clinic.
The men were divided into four groups. Those who never used a mobile, 40, those who used the phone for less than two hours a day, 107, those using the gadget for two hours, 100 and those who used their mobiles for more than four hours a day, 114.
Appreciable differences of sperm potency counts, viability, morphology and motility were observed in the different groups of men. The more a group of men used mobile phones, greater was the degradation in sperm quality.
DR Ashok Aggarwal, director of Reproductive Research Centre at the Cleveland Clinic, who led the research says, “it is too early to advise men trying to start a family about whether they should limit their use of mobile”.
No technology or convenience comes without its negative repercussions. Once a convenience, mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives and its growing popularity is virtually unstoppable.
Yoga comes to the rescue of those men who suffer or fear loss of fertility because of deteriorating environmental or such conditions. Among the breathing exercises, called pranayama under the traditional regime of well being and healing, kapalbharti is useful in fighting reproductive disorders. The double-nostril exercise involves rhythmic exhalations, one every second, accompanied by inward contractions of stomach muscles and involuntary inhalations.
October 27th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
Sterol-fortified orange juice has been found to be effective in checking heart disease. Sterols are plant cholesterols that are known to lower low-density lipoprotein or bad cholesterol in humans. Bad human cholesterol is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular disease.
Sterols are added to margarines, salad dressings and other fats. A University of California study has found that twice-daily servings of a low-calorie orange juice fortified with sterols also reduce levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, and a known risk factor for heart disease.
According to Sridevi Devaraj, lead author of the study, their investigation is the first of its kind to show that the fortified orange juice beverage can reduce C-reactive protein levels besides lowering bad cholesterol. Devaraj and Ishwarlal Jialal, professor of medicine and pathology had, in 2004, shown the cholesterol-reducing effects of a non-fat beverage fortified with sterols.
Cardiovascular or heart disease remains one of the leading causes of death in the Western world despite significant advances made towards its prevention and treatment.
Nearly half of all heart disease patients do not have elevated levels of blood cholesterol. Hence the considerable role of inflammation, which leads to cardiovascular disease, has come under extensive investigation since recently.
The researchers believe that although the best way to fight heart disease is through lifestyle changes including diet and exercise, people are too lethargic to leave their existing habits for better ones.
The time-tested healthy regime of yoga, which includes breathing and physical exercises, is now increasingly accepted not only as preventive but also for even mitigating the cardiovascular conditions, worldwide. But again, you have to make time and change in your lifestyle to get the best out of the ancient science.
Fortified orange juice could prove to be of significant benefit in the meantime.
October 23rd, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
There’s been a lot of publicity in the UK over the last few days about research which has found that sleep deprivation in teenages can cause hormonal changes that can result in obesity.
The TV and newspapers have been full of information about how teenagers are spending too much time playing computer games in the evening, or later, and therefore reducing their sleep time, triggering hormonal changes that induce them to overeat and hence increase their chances of becoming obese.
I can’t question the validity of this research, of course, however I do wonder if it is missing the point.
The pathway from lack of sleep to hormonal changes to increased appetites to obesity is a bit of a long and tortuous one. Surely any hormonal changes must be small and therefore the final effect on increasing obesity must be small too.
Much more threatening to the health of our children, is the general lack of physical exercise that the young are suffering from. Spending evenings playing computer games instead of kicking a football around a field must surely account for incidences of over weight and obese children.
Exercise makes you physically tired, so you sleep better and then, according to this research, your hormones will be more in balance and you will control your eating (though I must confess that exercise makes me hungry and I have to be careful not to overeat as a result!).
So lets do everything that we can to encourage our children to be as active as possible. I am convinced that they will be sharper intellectually, healthier and happier as a result. What could be better than that?
October 20th, 2006
Written By: chris
Chris in his blog a couple of days back has talked about the research on how your body image can influence your decision about checking your weight and getting back to shape.
The latest research from Brigham Young University in Utah may help you pinpoint what is wrong with your diet even if you cannot assess yourself or would not like to disclose to your dietician.
According to the research, your hair strands provide an insight to an eating disorder if you have one. The researchers identified differences in the contents of nitrogen and carbon in the hair strands taken from female volunteers who had an eating-disorder and those who did not have one.
They could identify the source of the disorder 80% of the time.
Hair can show the patterns of diet of an individual, according to Kent Hatch, a professor in BYU’s department of integrative biology and the principle author of the research published in a journal, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.
Your hair grows continuously every day. Their chemistry changes on a day-to-day basis, which has been found to be linked with your daily intake of nutrition or lack of it. Just five strands of your hair can indicate if you have anorexia or bulimia, the two most common eating disorders.
The research, which needs to be perfected for wider usage, can help a clinician diagnose an eating disorder at a much earlier stage.
Doctors and therapists in their diagnosis of an eating disorder normally have to depend upon what their patients say about what and how much they eat. “Their self-evaluation is very impaired; they are poor historians too”, says Jennifer Tolman, clinical director of a treatment facility in Utah.
According to Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of well being and healing, it is very important for you to know when you must eat, when you must not and when you must stop while eating. For instance, it takes 45 minutes to an hour after a meal for you to know whether you have eaten just enough, or have overeaten. Your correct biorhythms about such body processes are set very early in life. The parents who force their kids to eat when they are not hungry help set wrong biorhythms for them to grow into sick individuals. Yoga has been found to help correct such imbalances.
October 19th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
The war against carbonated beverages in general and colas in particular seems to gather momentum both in the East and the West. There have been reports from the US, UK and India where some schools and universities have banned the sale of the fizzy drink on their campuses.
Patanajali Yog Peeth (PYP), the yoga and health crusader institution in India has virtually launched a countrywide diatribe against coke in particular and carbonated drinks in general.
The torchbearer of the yoga movement in India and the chief functionary of PYP, Swami Ramdev, quotes the institution’s findings that carbonated beverages cause a number of health disorders including arthritis, digestive and respiratory disorders and even serious pregnancy related conditions.
PYP and Swami Ramdev have often been accused of lashing unsubstantiated criticism against the soft drinks multinationals.
Almost no yoga camp organized by PYP and addressed by Swami Ramdev concludes without critical mention of the effects of carbonated beverages. Swami particularly discourages the children and asks them to resolve against the intake of cola drinks. He calls the drink ‘toilet cleaner’ for it has been found to be quite effective at it. Hence his slogan for the children and all – “the right place for your cola is not your refrigerator, it is your toilet.”
In this backdrop a recent US research report on the effect of carbonated drinks is opportune. Accordingly, the fizzy drink makes bones brittle in case of women. The brittle bone disease, called osteoporosis, in the case of women has been linked by the study to phosphoric acid found in cola drinks.
Three million Britons suffer from osteoporosis in which bones lose their density. An early menopause, lack of dietary calcium and low levels of physical exercise are among several factors which may lead to the condition.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study had 2500 men and women in the age group of 60 as volunteers. While each woman was drinking a minimum of four cola drinks in a week, men were consuming five. No real effect was observed in case of men when the volunteers were examined for their bone densities in the hip and spine region.
Well, that should not give carte blanche to men. For, a higher level of physical activity, which is men probably do, could well be the reason for their being not found affected by cola drinks.
PYP and Swami Ramdev have yet more evidence coming from the western world to support trheir stance against these drinks.
October 17th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
Interesting research has been published which shows how your body image can affect your willingness to control your weight within healthy limits.
You can read more about the experiment here, but in essence the research found that subjects who were asked to think about their body image were more encouraged to slim and lead a healthy lifestyle than those who had no cause to consider how they looked.
I guess that these findings should not surprise many people, however it does tie in with thoughts that I have had previously about how people perceive themselves when they look in the mirror.
I know that if I look at myself in the mirror and think that I’ve put on a few pounds, I immediately think “uh oh I need to shed those excess pounds as soon as possible”. I’ll take care to do so until the image that stares back at me in the mirror looks “right”.
I guess that I have a strong body image.
I wonder, though, about those who are grossly overweight or obese. They haven’t just acquired that extra weight overnight, but have gradually gained pound after pound. Do they adjust their standards when they look at themselves ie “I look ok with those extra few pounds, I needn’t do anything about it”.
Then later “I look OK with that extra stone - I’m fine”.
I don’t know what goes through their minds, but as our series of articles on eating disorders show, the way in which people perceive themselves and the pressures that are placed upon them by society, can be very damaging.
It depends on the individual if they end up suffering from an eating disorder - either leading them towards anorexia or towards obesity - or steel themselves to lose weight until their actual image matches their perceived image, in a healthy way.
October 16th, 2006
Written By: chris
Chris has talked about Echinacea or purple coneflower in his blog as a
preventive against common cold. Diya, my daughter of seven, used to
get colds accompanied by high fever a bit too often until recently.
As a result she was put on antibiotics time and again, which gave her
serious problems whilst she was teething.
I used to be worried about her catching colds frequently so I put her
on Echinacea, which a herbalist had suggested. Whilst on the
supplement for more than a month Diya caught a cold and had a fever
shooting up to 105 degree Fahrenheit. I was asked to double the
dosage of the herbal supplement, which I did. But Diya was unable to
fight her cold and my worries did not seem to abate.
Echinacea, a native of America and southern Canada, has long been held out to
prevent and treat common cold, flu and other infections of the upper
respiratory system. It is believed to boost immune system.
But scientific studies carried out on the efficacy of the herb have some
discouraging findings. National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine within the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services
funded two studies on Echinacea without establishing the benefits as
traditionally claimed.
Some long-term users of the herb have known to suffer from allergic
reactions including rashes and aggravation in existing respiratory
conditions like asthma. Clinical trials on the herb showed
gastrointestinal problems as among the most common side effects.
When it comes to using a particular herb it is important to know if it has
been in use under a recognised medicinal system. A herb simply for
its being natural does not qualify it to be safe. Herbs like kava and
comfrey have been known to cause liver failures. Spirulina, sometime
back was marketed to be a protein-rich ‘wonder’ lichen
that was claimed to end malnutrition all over the world. Several
gastrointestinal and other disorders were linked to the lichen in the
studies carried out later.
Caution
is the word before using herbal supplements. Nursing and pregnant
women should specially need to be careful.
Upper respiratory problems are among the first ones which respond to now
the-much- talked-about breathing exercises called Aalom Vilom
under yoga. Diya could get rid of her frequent bouts of cold thanks
to yoga. Even if she took liberties like finishing off the 250 ml
bucket of her favourite ice-cream on a winter night and caught a
cold, she seldom has had a fever. High fever in her case is a history
for sure.
October 13th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
I like walnuts and I was delighted to see that not only are they good to eat, but they can help prevent coronary heart diease.
The humble walnut looks like it should be a super star amongst healthy foods for not only does it contain a range of healthy Omega 3 oils, as found in oily fish, but it can also reduce cholesterol levels too.
According to the study in the Journal of Nutrition, eating about 1.5 ounces of walnuts each day brings many cardiovascular benefits, reducing many of the risk factors that can cause heart disease.
Of course nuts are infamous for their high calorific properties, which can help put on those extra pounds, however it appears this small amount of walnuts eaten daily should not have adverse affects on your weight, particularly if you are following a healthy balanced diet anyway.
October 11th, 2006
Written By: chris
Modern medical science has bad news for women. According to a German study, women’s skin ages faster than men’s. The study was carried out using a new laser-based technique to measure damage from sun exposure and aging.
The findings of the study have been published in Optics Letters, a journal of the Optical Society of America. The findings are based on a new technique in which pulses of laser light are used to look at the deeper layers of the skin and measure its aging.
The process of aging of the skin is associated with the degeneration of collagens and elastins leading to wrinkles and loss of suppleness. Collagens and elastins are groups of proteins found in the dermis layer of the skin. Dermis is present under the uppermost layer of the skin called epidermis. Strands of collagens and elastins form mesh architecture thus providing strength to the skin.
The process of degeneration of the proteins “appeared to be sex-dependant with women’s skin losing collagen at faster rates than men’s,” according to the researchers from Germany’s Freidrich Schiller University in Jena and the Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Technology in St. Ingbert.
The co-author of the Optic Letters paper, dermatologist Dr Jahannes Koehler informs that skin of a healthy 35-year old person in some areas of his body can appear like that of a 25-year old and in some other areas like someone who is 50.
In your youth your body keeps up with a consistent supply of collagens. The production of the proteins decreases with age making the skin becoming flaccid.
The German researchers have been credited with the non-invasive skin testing technique, which could pave the way to checking anti-aging cosmetic products and investigating skin diseases that affect the skin proteins.
In this context I would like to share that yoga is known to restore blood supply to the connective tissue of an aging skin. Thus on practising yoga your skin is able to regain its suppleness and strength. Blemishes and other surface marks on the skin are among the first ones to disappear, as found in number of individuals who have been practising for at least six months. Skin is one of the last organs of your body to show the good effects of yoga though.
The technique used by the German researchers could well be used to verify the effects of yoga on your skin.
Yoga may come to the rescue of women after all.
October 10th, 2006
Written By: lalitgambhir
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