Medical Mania

[Mer]

yeah i might go on tues [img]smile.gif[/img]

well i have cleratin but i found it was starting to smell and taste bad so i stopped taking it >.< plus i dont need it! lmao

my head/lymph node thingy is startin to annoy me cos it hurts still when i put any pressure on it so i'ma go get it checked n what not [img]smile.gif[/img] i like your layout for breast cancer [img]smile.gif[/img] very nice i also liked the leaf pattern you had before [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Rogue Angel]

Self-breast exam tool... every woman over the age of 20 should be doing a self-breast exam... if you don't know how, this is a good guide.

http://www.webmd.com/content/tools/1..._self_exam.htm

[Rogue Angel]

Battle of the Sexes
Why women are twice as likely as men to suffer depression.

Puberty changes a lot more than the way kids look and act. It sets in motion a tendency to depression among females.

No matter how the numbers are counted, women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with unipolar major depression: 21.3% of women and 12.7% of men experience at least one bout of major depression over the course of their lifetime.

However, once depression occurs, the clinical course is identical. Men and women experience similar duration of depressive episodes -- and equal likelihood that depression will recur.

It's the same around the world, and it's specific to unipolar depression. Men and women suffer in equal number from bipolar, or manic, disorder.

The gender difference in susceptibility to depression emerges at age 13. Before then, young boys are, if anything, a bit more likely to be depressed than young girls.

And there's some evidence the gender difference winds down four decades later. In other words, major depression is most commonly a disorder of women in the childbearing years. Just why this is so is a matter of hot debate.

It's hormones, insists Adrian Angold, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. He indicts not only estrogen but testosterone, both of which rise in women during puberty. Testosterone is easily converted to estrogen, which then acts on the brain.

But it's not the hormones alone, otherwise all females would get depressed. His evidence suggests that estrogen switches on some inherited vulnerability to depression, perhaps a deficiency in serotonin.

Estrogen is known to modulate neurotransmitters, certainly serotonin. "In the later stages of puberty, when estrogen and testosterone rise to a certain level, this switches on some genetic effect on depression that was not apparent before," says Angold. "This increases the propensity to become depressed under any circumstances."

Depression is just waiting in the wings. But whether someone gets depressed then depends on happenstance. In his studies, girls who experience stressful life events are three times more likely to get depressed than those who do not. One stressor has a big impact on precipitating depression in pubertal girls -- having a mother either with a history of mental illness or currently experiencing depression.

And that takes Angold right back to genetic vulnerability. "What we think of as environmental also runs in families." From studies of boy-girl twin pairs, psychiatrist Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University, contends that whatever genes contribute to depression, they are to some degree different in men and women. Nor is there a single set of genes that is expressed as depression in women and alcoholism in men. "Otherwise you'd expect depression in a sister to be strongly correlated with alcoholism in her brother; we didn't find that," says Kendler.

Yes, the hormonal fluctuations girls experience in their monthly menstrual cycles create a mood response by turning genes on and off. But that doesn't account for all depression, Kendler finds.

Environmental factors are also important. He highlights one event that contributes strongly to gender differences in depression -- childhood sexual abuse involving attempted intercourse. "It's a pretty potent risk factor."

Not only do girls experience abuse more than boys but the abuse is more toxic to them. Other studies show that early sexual abuse in girls can create long-term hyperactivity of the stress hormone system so that they overrespond to stress in adulthood.

One strong stress of a threatening kind can not only bring on a depressive episode but it can permanently change the brain -- "kindle" it. It then takes less and less stress to set off bouts of depression.

Then, too, Kendler adds, "socialization factors are likely to play a role. There must be something in rearing patterns in which girls are reinforced for expressing emotions and boys are teased for that."

The emotional coping styles of males and females are radically different, offers psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan. "Men avoid negative emotions. Women don't." Unfortunately, women can get stuck in such emotions, caught in a cycle of passivity and despair.

Her work shows that women are more likely to ruminate about the stressors they encounter. They focus on symptoms of distress and the possible causes and consequences of the symptoms in a repetitive and passive manner.

Some rumination is natural. But people who ruminate a lot amplify negative events.

They generate more negative memories from the past, are more pessimistic about the present and more fatalistic about the future. That makes them increasingly hopeless, distorts their thinking, and renders them less likely to take positive action.

But wait -- it gets worse. Their hopelessness makes them unpleasant to be around -- and thus unlikely to get needed social support from relationships they are in.

The negative response in turn makes it harder for the body to handle subsequent stressors of any kind. And early adolescence provides challenges aplenty for girls, says Nolen-Hoeksema -- from a surge in sexual abuse to new attunement to the needs of others to new awareness of limitations imposed on them by societal gender roles.

It is possible to short-circuit depression by curbing the tendency to ruminate. Studies show that cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation are effective in helping people overcome rumination.

[Pickles]

Self Help CPR (When your alone)

What are you to do if you have a heart attack while you are alone.
If you've already received this, it means people care about you
The Johnson City Medical Center staff actually discovered this
and did an in-depth study on it in our ICU The two individuals that
discovered this then did an article on it . had it published and have
even had it incorporated into ACLS and CPR classes.
It is very true and has and does work. It is called cough CPR. A cardiologist says it's the truth ... For your info If everyone who gets
this sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we'll save at least one life.
Read This...It could save your life! Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of course), after an usually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into
your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the
hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately you don't know if you'll be
able to make it that far.
What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course, didn't tell you what to do if it happened to yourself.

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack,
this article seemed to be in order. Without help, the person
whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint,
has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.
However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged,
as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about very two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating
normally again.
Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital. Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their lives!
From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter "AND THE BEAT GOES ON ."

[Rogue Angel]

Fall Back, or Fall Asleep?

The low light and short days of fall and winter can exacerbate sleep and mood disorders. But a few simple actions may help.

Give a moment of silence, please, for the passing of daylight-saving time. (Try not to fall asleep while you're at it.)

First, the good news: People have an easier time adjusting to this weekend's time change, which gives us an extra hour of sleep, than they do to switching back to daylight-saving time in the spring, which takes that hour away again. But when the low light of winter makes you oversleep or feel fuzzy when you must be alert, you have to wonder if we aren?t meant to be in hibernation for the winter.

Internal Clock Watchers

Like nearly all forms of life, humans are tuned to run on approximately 24-hour cycles called circadian rhythms. Changes in behavior and physiology are governed by this timekeeping system within our brains that, among other functions, regulates when we sleep and when we are awake. Our internal clocks also help us respond to the natural world, including the varying lengths of day and night and the changing seasons.

Scientists have long known that most circadian rhythms are "free running," that is, the changes happen whether or not we receive messages from our environment. But external cues such as sunlight can partially reset the clock, or to a small degree, we can influence when we feel sleepy and when we are awake. And for people who have trouble adjusting their sleep/wake patterns to the darker days of winter, a small change may be all that's needed to feel bright-eyed.

What a Little Daylight Can Do

Because light helps stimulate our internal clocks, a day without sunshine?or at least very bright light of some kind?is like a day without a double espresso.

In the morning, sunlight enters our eyes and transmits signals to the brain that stop production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. When the sun sets, the process reverses: Darkness brings the release of melatonin, which helps make us sleepy. Similarly, bright light helps stimulate production of serotonin, a hormone with effects that include elevating mood.

Shawn Youngstedt, an assistant professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina who studies the effects of light and exercise on sleep patterns, explains, "Low levels of light are associated with worse mood, not necessarily clinical depression, but mild or moderate depression."

Depression that arrives with autumn and retreats in spring has a name: seasonal affective disorder. SAD is more prevalent in northern latitudes where daylight dwindles markedly in winter than it is in regions that are closer to the equator, where the length of the day doesn't vary as much. Treatment centers on using bright light to help alleviate symptoms that include increases in sleep time, daytime drowsiness, bigger appetites, carbohydrate cravings, weight gain, anxiety, irritability and sadness.

Let There Be Light, and Also Exercise

If exposure to light affects the internal clock, Youngstedt's work suggests that exercise does, too. When comparing exercise and light exposure sessions of the same duration, he says, exercise alone is about three-quarters as effective as light in helping people reset their clocks so that they can awaken on time. Getting both may be especially helpful.

"Exercise in the morning can help advance the body clock," he says, "and exercise and light together might help people regulate their sleep."

Nurse practitioner Marie-Annette Brown and her colleagues at the University of Washington School of Nursing didn't set out to study the internal clock when they developed the program they call LEVITY. But they did want to see if they could help women who year-round have a collection of symptoms similar to SAD, including sleep disorders and daytime drowsiness.

Brown and her colleagues discovered during an eight-week trial of the program that three relatively simple actions could help mildly depressed women feel better. Their prescription: Take a walk outside, get more bright light during the day and less at night, and take a combination of six vitamins and minerals. (For more details on the plan, see ?3Tips for Shaking the Winter Blahs? later in this article.) Brown and co-author Jo Robinson outline the regimen in their book, When Your Body Gets the Blues, and on their Web site.

Good Night and Good Luck

In the early 1990s, scientists studying seasonal affective disorder surveyed 1,571 people living in four latitudes about their sleep habits. Almost half of the respondents?drawn from the general population, not SAD patients?reported that they slept two or more hours a night longer in winter than they did in summer.

Is it so wrong to indulge yourself in a bit more sleep during winter?

Not necessarily, says Brown. "Many of us have chronic sleep deprivation," she points out. "If wintertime encourages people to get more sleep, it may be the only time they really get a normal amount."

Sleep, after all, is not a time when your body and brain shut down. It's crucial to the smooth operation of your memory, your ability to learn and the functioning of your metabolic and hormonal systems. There's evidence that not getting enough sleep can inhibit the immune system?something nobody wants during the winter cold and flu season.

"Do you know what you're doing to your immune system when you don't get enough sleep?" asks Brown. "Just like people get all this praise for exercising, we should get praise for sleeping enough."

3 Tips for Shaking the Winter Blahs

No. 1: Go Outside

When it comes to the dark days of fall and winter, says nurse practitioner Brown, getting enough light is especially important.

"After [daylight-saving time] our body doesn't get the normal messages to turn up and down the melatonin and serotonin," she says, referring to two hormones that affect sleep and mood. "So all these changes we have that depend on the light cycle, we don't have anymore."

To help lighten things up, Brown recommends a simple action: Go outside, even if it's cloudy. What you need is lots of lux, a common measurement of light.

"What people don't understand is it's being outside that you want," says Brown. "If you're sitting inside next to a sunny window, you could be getting maybe 400 lux. In any normal room?summer or winter?you're getting maybe 50 lux."

Go outside, she says, and even on a cloudy day you'll get around 7,000 lux. If it's sunny, the reading will be more like 80,000 lux.

"Don't ask yourself, 'Do I want to go outside?' " she advises. "Ask yourself, 'What clothes do I have to wear to go outside?' "

No. 2: Get Exercise

As long as you're outside, you might as well take a walk. Brown's program for combating "the body blues" combines both light and exercise by prescribing a 20-minute walk outside five times a week.

Youngstedt agrees that getting outside may be a good idea, but he points out that there's no solid comparison of inside and outside exercise. Most studies so far have been conducted inside, mainly on treadmills and stationary bikes, where researchers can control conditions more easily.

How much and how hard you should exercise are still a matter of debate. But Youngstedt thinks an hour of "fairly intense" exercise is enough to give you a jolt. "I think for a lot of people that means a brisk walk," he says. "I don't want to give people the idea that they have to be an endurance athlete."

What time of day? Both Brown and Youngstedt say morning may be especially beneficial since you'll be getting your light exposure early. But the best time to exercise is whenever you'll actually do it.

No. 3: Take Vitamins

When and how much you eat may affect your sleep-and-wake cycle. Scientists have found evidence for that?but so far only in animal studies.

Brown, on the other hand, gave participants in a trial of her program a daily dose of six vitamins and minerals meant to help their bodies produce the chemicals that reduce stress, regulate mood and suppress appetite:

* 50 milligrams vitamin B1 (thiamin)
* 50 milligrams vitamin B2 (riboflavin)
* 50 milligrams vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)
* 400 micrograms folic acid
* 400 IU vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol)
* 200 micrograms selenium

"You put light, exercise and the vitamins together, and people do better," says Brown. "There really is hope."

[Rogue Angel]

Milk Blunts Heart Benefits of Tea
It wipes out the valuable effects of antioxidants, study finds
By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Jan. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Plenty of studies have suggested that tea is a boon for cardiovascular health, but new research has found that adding milk to your favorite brew negates those benefits.

The culprits in milk is a group of proteins called caseins that interact with tea, decreasing the concentration of catechin -- the flavonoids in tea that are responsible for its protective effects against heart disease, according to the study authors.

"There are a lot of studies that show that tea is protective against cardiac diseases," said lead researcher Dr. Verena Stangl, professor of cardiology at the Charite Hospital, Universitatsmedizin-Berlin, in Germany. "If you look at the studies, you see that in Asia there are less cardiac diseases, but in England that's not the case. So the question is, is the addition of milk a reason for this difference between Asia and England, where tea is often taken with milk?" she said.

In the study, 16 healthy postmenopausal women drank either half a liter of freshly brewed black tea, black tea with 10 percent skimmed milk, or boiled water on three different occasions under similar conditions. The researchers then measured the function of the cells lining the brachial artery in the forearm, using high resolution ultrasound before and two hours after tea consumption.

Stangl's team found that black tea significantly improved the ability of the arteries to relax and expand. "But when we added milk, we found the biological effect of tea was completely abolished," she said.

Additional experiments on rat aortas and rat endothelial cells -- which line blood vessels -- found that tea relaxed the vessels. But adding milk blunted the effect.

"If you want to drink tea for its health effects, don't drink it with milk," Stangl said.

The study findings are published in the Jan. 9 online edition of the European Heart Journal.

Stangl noted that not only does milk block tea's benefits for blood vessels, it also destroys the antioxidant effects of tea and perhaps its cancer-protective effects as well.

She said her team is also comparing the effects of green and black tea on the function of blood vessels. "It's a question whether green tea, with its higher catechin content, is better than black tea in regard to endothelial function," she said.

One expert agreed that you should hold the milk when drinking tea.

"This is actually something we tell patients to do -- not to have milk in tea," said Dr. Robert Vogel, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical School.

Tea is one of the greatest sources of antioxidants, Vogel said. "In countries where they drink a lot of tea, heart disease is decreased, except for the British Isles. It is typical in Great Britain to add milk."

Vogel's advice is simple. "Add lemon not milk. You should not add milk or cream to tea -- it's a very good drink, but not with milk," he said.

WOW. no more milk in my hot tea... [img]frown.gif[/img] not that i drink it that often that way anyhow... *L*... it's usually green tea, and iced... sweet, with lemon...

<font color="#9DB68C" size="1">[ January 09, 2007 06:59 PM: Message edited by: Rogue Angel ]</font>