Health & Medicine

Sleeping position

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:51:31 +0000

If you’re waking up sore and achy every morning and your mattress is new, you may need to re-evaluate how you’re sleeping, says Scott D. Boden, M.D., director of the Emory Spine Center in Atlanta. Lying flat on your back forces your spine into an unnatural position, which can strain your muscles, joints, and nerves. “Your spine isn’t meant to be straight,” he says. “It has three natural curves: one in your lower back, one in the middle of your back, and one near your neck.” His advice:

Lie on your side in the fetal position with your knees bent and a pillow tucked between your legs. This will take the most stress off your back.

Sleeping on your back may be putting stress on your spine.
If you must sleep on your back, prop a big, fluffy pillow under your knees to reduce the pressure on the sciatic nerve in your lower back.

Use a small pillow or a rolled-up towel under your neck as long as it doesn’t push your chin too far forward.

Don’t sleep on your stomach. Sleeping facedown can exaggerate the arch at the base of your spine and cause strain. Our advice? Sew or tape a tennis ball to the front of your nightgown or nightshirt. We guarantee your stomach-sleeping days will be over.

REASONS for being VEGETERIAN

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 10:37:05 +0000

Vegetarianism is the fastest growing trend in the developed world. Here are 21 reasons why you should think about turning green too.

Avoiding meat is one of the best and simplest ways to cut down your fat consumption. Modern farm animals are deliberately fattened up to increase profits. Eating fatty meat increases your chances of having a heart attack or developing cancer.

Every minute of every working day, thousands of animals are killed in slaughter-houses. Pain and misery are common. In the US alone, 500,000 animals are killed for meat every hour.

There are millions of cases of food poisoning recorded every year. The vast majority are caused by eating meat.

Meat contains absolutely nothing – no proteins, vitamins or minerals – that the human body cannot obtain perfectly happily from a vegetarian diet.

African countries – where millions are starving to death – export grain to the developed world so that animals can be fattened for our dining tables.
‘Meat’ can include the tail, head, feet, rectum and spinal cord of an animal.
A sausage can contain ground up intestines. How can anyone be sure that the intestines are empty when they are ground up? Do you really want to eat the content of a pig’s intestines?
If we eat the plants we grow instead of feeding them to animals, the world’s food shortage will disappear virtually overnight. Remember that 100 acres of land will produce enough beef for 20 people but enough wheat to feed 240 people.
Every day, tens of millions of one-day-old male chicks are killed because they will not be able to lay eggs. There are no rules about how this mass slaughter takes place. Some are crushed or suffocated to death. Many are used for fertiliser or fed to other animals.

Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane.

It’s must easier to become (and stay) slim if you are a vegetarian. (By ’slim’, I do not mean ‘abnormally slender’ or ‘underweight’ but rather, an absense of excess weight!)

Half the rainforests in the world have been destroyed to clear ground to graze cattle to make beefburgers. The burning of the forests contributes 20% of all green-house gases. Roughtly 1,000 species a year become extinct because of the destruction of the rainforests. Approximately 60 million people a year die of starvation. All those lives could be saved because those people could eat grain used to fatten cattle and other farm animals – if Americans ate 10% less meat.

The world’s fresh water shortage is being made worse by animal farming. And meat producers are the biggest polluters of water. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat. If the US meat industry wasn’t supported by the taxpayer paying a large proportion of its water costs, then hamburger meat would cost $35 a pound.

If you eat meat, you are consuming hormones that were fed to the animals. No one knows what effect those hormones will have on your health. In some parts of the world, as many as one on four hamburgers contain growth hormones that were originally given to cattle.

The following diseases are commoner among meat eaters: anaemia, appendicitis, arthritis, breast cancer, cancer of the colon, cancer of the prostrate, constipation, diabetes, gallstones, gout, high blood pressure, indigestion, obesity, piles, strokes and varicose veins. Lifelong vegetarians visit hospital 22% less often than meat eaters and for shorter stays. Vegetarians have a 20% lower blood cholestrol level than meat eaters and this reduces heart attack and cancer risks considerably.

Some farmers use tranquillisers to keep animals calm. Other routinely use antibiotics to starve off infection. When you eat meat you are eating those drugs. In America, 55% of all antibiotics are fed to animals and the percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin went up from 14% in 1960 to 91% in 1988.
In a lifetime, the average meat eater will consumer 36 pigs, 36 sheep and 750 chickens and turkeys. Do you want that much carnage on your conscience?

Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. How would you like to spend your last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animal and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Anyone who eats meat condones and supports the way animals are treated.

Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six week old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children. Eating dead animals is barbaric.

Vegetarians are fitter than meat eaters. many of the world’s most successful athletes are vegetarian.

GallStone Treatment

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:36:05 +0000

DEFINITIONS
Bile is a pile of stone crystals in the gallbladder or in the bile duct. Stones found in the gallbladder is called cholelitiasis, while stones in the bile ducts called koledokolitiasis.

CAUSE
Gallstones were more common in women and risk factors are:
- Elderly
- Obesity (Obesity)
- High-fat diet
- Heredity.

The major components of gallstones is cholesterol, a small portion of other forms of calcium salt. Bile contains large amounts of cholesterol that usually remains as a liquid. If the bile becomes saturated because of cholesterol, so cholesterol can become insoluble and precipitate out to form bile.

Most gallstones form inside the gallbladder and the majority of stones in the bile ducts from the gallbladder. Gallstones can form inside the bile duct if the bile experiencing backflow due to narrowing of the canal or after the removal of gall bladder.

Gallstones in the bile ducts can cause severe infection of the bile ducts (cholangitis), infection of the pancreas (pancreatitis) or liver infection. If the bile duct is blocked, then the bacteria will grow quickly and cause infection in the channel. Bacteria can spread through the bloodstream and cause infections in other body parts.

SYMPTOMS
The majority of gallstones in a long time does not cause symptoms, especially when settling in the gall-bladder stones. Sometimes large stones will gradually erode the gallbladder wall and into the small intestine or large intestine, causing intestinal obstruction (gallstone ileus).

What more often happens is out of gallstones and gallbladder into the bile duct. Of the bile duct, gallstones can enter the small intestine or remain in the bile ducts without causing disturbances or symptoms of bile flow.

If gallstones block the sudden bile duct, then the patient will feel pain. Pain tends to disappear, arise and are known as colic pain. Pain arises slowly and reached a peak, then decreased gradually. Pain is sharp and the missing-occur, could last up to several hours. Location of pain varies, but most felt in the upper right abdomen and can spread to the right shoulder.

Sufferers often feel nauseated and vomiting. If infection occurs in conjunction with a blocked duct, it will have a fever, chills and jaundice (jaundice). Usually the blockage is temporary and rare infections. Pain due to blockage of the channel can not be distinguished from pain caused by blockage of the gallbladder.

Persist in the cystic duct obstruction caused gallbladder inflammation (acute cholecystitis). Gallstones blocking the pancreatic duct causing inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis), pain, jaundice and may also be infected. Sometimes the pain is gone-recurrence arising after gall bladder removed, pain may be caused by gallstones in the main bile duct.

DIAGNOSIS
To find the best examination of gallstones is by ultrasound and kolesistografi. In kolesistografi, x-rays will show the path of the contrast agent that has been swallowed radioopak, absorbed in the intestine, thrown into the bile and stored in the gallbladder. If the gallbladder is not functioning, the contrast agent will not be visible in the gallbladder. If the gall bladder function, then the outer boundary of the gall bladder will be visible on x-rays.

Diagnosis of bile duct stones in upheld on the basis of abdominal pain, jaundice, chills and fever. Results of blood tests usually show a pattern of abnormal liver function, which may indicate blockage of bile ducts. Several other tests can provide additional information to make a definite diagnosis is:
- Ultrasound
- CT scan
- Various techniques using x-ray contrast substances radioopak to describe the bile duct.

TREATMENT
If not found symptoms, hence require no treatment. Missing pain-arising can be avoided or reduced by avoiding or reducing fatty foods.

Gall Bladder Stone
If emped bladder stones cause repeated pain attacks have been carried out despite dietary changes, then it is advisable to undergo gallbladder removal (cholecystectomy). Appointment of the gall bladder does not cause nutrient deficiency and after surgery, food restriction is not necessary. Approximately 1-5 of every 1000 people who underwent kolesistektom died.

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy was introduced in 1990 and is currently about 90% done in laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Gallbladder removed through a tube that is inserted through a small incision in the abdominal wall.

This type of surgery has the following advantages:
- Reducing post-surgical discomfort
- Shortening the period of hospitalization.

Other techniques to remove gall bladder stones are:
- Dissolution with methyl-butyl-ether
- Split with sound waves (lithotripsy)
- Dissolution with chronic bile acid treatment (acid and acid kenodiol ursodeoksikolik).

Gall Stone Line
Bile duct stones can cause serious problems, because it must be removed either surgically or through the abdomen, a procedure called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).

In ERCP, an endoscope is inserted through the mouth, esophagus, stomach and into the small intestine. Radioopak contrast substance into the bile duct through a tube in the sphincter Oddi. In sfingterotomi, rather wide open sphincter muscles so that gallstones are blocking the channel will move to the small intestine.

ERCP and sfingterotomi has been successfully performed on 90% of cases. Less than four of every 1,000 patients who died and 3-7% had complications, so that this procedure is safer than abdominal surgery.

Complications that may soon occur are:
- Bleeding
- Inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis)
- Perforation or biliary tract infection.

In 2-6% of patients, shrinking the channel back and gall stones appear again. Gallbladder stones can not be removed via ERCP procedures. ERCP is usually effective only in patients with bile duct stones are older, the bladder bile has been lifted.

PREVENTION
Because the largest composition of gallstones are cholesterol, high cholesterol should avoid foods that are generally derived from animal fats.