Month: June 2014

Natural Remedy for Elevated Blood Sugar

horseradish root

Blood Sugar
When the findings are disappointing, and your doctor will ask whether you want to start insulin therapy or try a diet to reduce blood sugar. Many succeeded to heal and to maintain normal blood sugar levels, using this natural remedy.

Ingredients

  •  A horseradish root, medium size (about 20 cm long, 2 cm wide)
  •  One clove garlic
  •  2 beers

Preparation
Wash the horseradish root nice several times. Leave to stand for 15-20 minutes in water in which you have added a cup of malic acid. Don’t peel it, chop finely or grind it. Along with finely chopped garlic place them into a larger jar and pour the beer. Close the jar and store it for 10 days in a dark place. Then strain and use as follows:

  • The first two days, one teaspoon three times a day.
  • Further use one tablespoon three times a day.
  • Treatment is for one month.

In addition, you should drink 150 ml oatmeal water, 4 times a day, properly arranged.
(50 g oatmeal boil over on low heat for 15 minutes, then let it stand for 1 hour. Grains are squeezed, then strained through gauze).

Source: healthy tavern

An innovative technology to improve Hand Hygiene in Hospitals

91AL

Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) are the leading cause of death after cancer and heart disease. Over 103,000 people in the US die every year due to HAIs. The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that over 5 million people lose their lives every year due to some form of HAI.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 70 per cent of these lives could be saved if the Health Care Workers (HCWs) across the globe followed the prescribed hand hygiene guidelines. In spite of the established advantages of proper hand hygiene in healthcare settings, the compliance to prescribed guidelines is dismally low. Hand Hygiene Compliance (HHC) is barely 30 per cent in the US and around 35 per cent in Europe. The situation is much worse in the developing countries.

Hand hygiene is considered the primary measure to reduce the transmission of nosocomial pathogens. Non-compliance with hand hygiene, however, remains a major problem in hospitals. Within the hospital environment, preventing the spread of antibiotic resistant germs through good hand hygiene is critical.

To serve this purpose and make hand hygiene an easy and reliable process, a multidisciplinary team of an engineer, a product designer and a clinician has come up with a novel technology that could reduce possible chances of spread of infection via hand and could help reduce HAIs from the healthcare settings.

The new technology named ‘Hansure’ by Observe Design is a joint innovation of Aanan Khurma, an electronics engineer; Saurabh Bag, a product designer; and Agyeya Dwivedi, an occupational therapist.

Hansure is a wearable compact technology, composed of a hand disinfectant ensuring all time access to disinfection. The device carries a smart sensing technology that intimates HCWs at precise instants when they are required to sanitize their hands.

The device aims to empower healthcare workers to adhere to the WHO prescribed hand hygiene guidelines. These guidelines are difficult to follow in the existing scenario where multiple factors like lack of time, high inconvenience, forgetfulness and some negligence at play prevent HCWs from being 100 per cent compliant to hand hygiene guidelines.

Aanan Khurma, a part of the team and a consultant with the Stanford India Biodesign programme, told India Medical Times, “Our team has worked for several months at the ground level with HCWs in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to identify the fundamental causes of poor hand hygiene in healthcare settings. Our team found out that although WHO guidelines are flawless in preventing spread of infections, they are impossible to adhere to in the existing infrastructure.”

“Our novel solution, Hansure, will ensure that no infections are ever spread through the hands of healthcare workers. We are working to empower healthcare workers rather than penalizing them. Apart from making hand hygiene convenient, our device also protects HCWs from posture related ailments, which affect 50 per cent of entire HCWs at some point or the other. Hansure tackles all these issues simultaneously ensuring that no opportunity for hand hygiene is ever missed by any healthcare worker. All this is done in accordance with the WHO guidelines,” he added.

Most healthcare providers are taught to wash their hands before and after patient contact, however, measuring this accurately on a large scale is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The technology could save time of healthcare workers by as much as 65 per cent, which in turn increases productivity. It makes hand hygiene a convenient process for them and protects them from contracting infections besides preventing posture related problems. Moreover, it does not rely on monitoring, forcing, judging or penalizing.

In order to contain healthcare costs, preventative actions in patient safety are clear ways to decrease expenses. In the past, no one had quantified the value of preventative actions, such as hand hygiene, in decreasing healthcare costs. For administrators, the technology could decrease average hospital stay per patient and reduce expenditure on patient care. Low cases of negligence would further help in reduced legal hassles and brand building. Reduced financial burden on healthcare system would ultimately help in saving taxpayers’ money. In a proper hand hygiene set up in hospitals, patients also feel relieved from the fear of contracting secondary infection when they visit a healthcare facility.

The traditional approach to increase compliance towards hand hygiene among HCWs has been to manually monitor them and penalize them for their non-compliance. Currently, methods to determine hand hygiene adherence include direct observation, product utilization, and reporting of hand hygiene activities, but these are subjective and unreliable.

Not only this technique is inherently flawed, it consumes numerous amounts of man-hours and does not significantly improve the compliance towards hand hygiene. Moreover, such monitoring creates a tense work environment in the healthcare setting where a management person monitors trained healthcare workers and then criticizes them for their behaviour.

Lately, there have been some new technologies in the area of hand hygiene like Mobile/Tablet based apps ZigBEE and RFID (radio-frequency identification) based monitoring solutions that aim to promote hand hygiene among healthcare workers.

Khurma said, “All these upcoming technologies are just trying to mimic the manual monitoring process. The only difference being that these new technologies are automating the process of monitoring, logging data and penalizing the healthcare workers. These systems require huge infrastructure changes, backend server installation, and manpower for backend data management and with so many components maintenance is frequently required. Our solution works to simplify the entire hand hygiene process rather than complicating it.”

The innovators are the product of Stanford India Biodesign Programme, under which the fellows are trained to identify unmet medical needs and design new and cost effective devices to serve India’s specific healthcare needs.

Source: India medical times

10 Nervous Habits That Hurt Your Health

GTY_nervous_habits_lpl_140214_16x9_608

Nix these tics
Nervous habits are often more annoying to the people around you than to yourself, but some types of fidgeting and fussing can do real harm. Here, experts reveal the reasons why nail-biting, hair-twirling, and other seemingly harmless habits can be hazardous to your health.

You bite your nails
It’s one thing if you nervously bite your nails only during scary movies, but when it becomes a regular habit, it can damage both your nails and the skin around them, says Michael Shapiro, MD, a New York City-based dermatologist. Germs from the mouth get transferred to the skin, and vice versa. “Bacteria under the nails may also be transferred to mouth, causing infections of the gums and throat,” Dr. Shapiro says. Painting your nails may discourage you from chewing. No dice? Try tape to break the habit.

You twirl and pull your hair
Twisting and twirling a piece of hair around your finger can lead to damage to the root over time, says Ariel Ostad, MD, a dermatologist based in New York City. “This can result in temporary or permanent areas of hair loss as well as infection,” Dr. Ostad says. Obsessive hair pulling may be a sign of a psychiatric impulse control condition called trichotillomania, which requires psychotherapy and medication.

You crack your neck
Twisting your head forcibly to one side releases gases built up in the the joints between vertebrae and creates a popping sound. Although this may feel good, repeatedly cracking your neck can make the surrounding ligaments hypermobile and more susceptible to injury, says Michael Gleiber, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and affiliate assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine in Boca Raton. In addition, this excessive motion on the facet joints themselves can cause wear within the joints and may result in arthritis over time. In rare cases neck cracking may trigger a stroke, says Dr. Gleiber.

You touch your face
Repeatedly touching your face or picking at acne can damage the top very thin microscopic layers of the skin, says Jessica Krant, MD, board certified dermatologist and founder of Art of Dermatology and assistant clinical professor of dermatology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City. “If you bleed, you may have just created a permanent scar,” she says. “Do not pick at pimples or itchy areas. Treat them gently with topical creams and plenty of moisturizer.

You grind your teeth
Clenching and grinding your teeth (bruxism) when you’re under stress can wreak havoc with your oral health. Grinding can cause teeth to crack or break, which may require repair with crowns or root canals. It can also result in damage to the jaw joint in the form of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ), says Justin Philipp, who has a dental practice in Chandler, Ariz. “People clench or grind their teeth as a response to stress. However, most cases are a result of pathology such as misaligned or missing teeth and a ‘bad bite.'” Treatments include orthodontics to improve the bite and even Botox injections in the muscles, which can reduce the amount of force and, therefore, the potential damage.

You suck on hard candies
Sucking on hard candies bathes your teeth in sugar, which can lead to cavities, says Philipp. Bacteria feed off the sugar, which creates a perfect environment for tooth decay. Chomping down on hard candy can also risk damaging teeth or dental restorations, says Jack Ringer, president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. “Sucking on candies in moderation is fine provided the candies are sugarless and low in acidity,” Dr. Ringer says

You lick or bite your lip
Nervously licking your lips exposes them to your mouth’s digestive enzymes, says Whitney Bowe, MD, a New York board-certified dermatologist. “These enzymes chew away at the skin and can lead to dermatitis and cheilitis (inflammation), which make lips appear dry and cracked,” she says. Biting your lips when under stress can cause the development of fibromas, firm flesh colored growths, that may require surgical removal, says Coyle S. Connolly, MD, dermatologist and president of Connolly Dermatology in New Jersey.

You gnaw on the inside of your cheek
Like biting your nails, cheek-chewing can also become a nervous habit. “Often the inside of the cheek gets swollen and it then becomes easier to continue biting the same spot,” says Ringer. “Even after it heals the habit continues.” Over time this can result in chronic inflammation, possible bleeding, and scarring of the area.

You chew gum
All that snapping and popping does more than annoy your coworkers. It may also put you at risk for TMJ from overuse of jaw muscles, says Philipp. Sugarless gum presents a different set of problems, mainly digestive ailments. Sorbitol, an artificial sweetener, produces an unpleasant laxative effect when eaten in excess (18 to 20 sticks a day). Swallowing excess air while chewing also increases risk of a gassy stomach, according to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC). “It is usually easier to try to replace the habit with another one than it is to quit, so try something a healthier switch such as drinking water,” says Philipp.

You nibble the ends of pencils and pens
Germs can lurk on the ends of pens so this habit can expose you to nasty pathogens including cold viruses, says Ted Myatt, director of research compliance at the University of Rhode Island. “An infected person likely has the virus on his or her fingers and spreads it through pens as well as computer keyboards and telephones.” And aside from the embarrassment of ink on your mouth from an exploding pen, chewing on writing instruments can damage teeth and dental work as well as injure the soft tissue and gums inside the mouth, says Ringer.

Source: the health

 

FDA taking another look at mercury in seafood

seafood

The Food and Drug Administration is updating its advice for pregnant women on the appropriate levels of mercury in seafood. Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says the agency won’t require mercury labels on seafood packages.

In a wide-ranging interview Friday with The Associated Press, Hamburg said the agency will update guidance on mercury in different varieties of seafood and what that means, a long-awaited move aimed at helping women better understand what to eat when they’re pregnant.
“It’s an advisory, not an effort to mandate labeling,” Hamburg said. “Different seafood products do contain different levels of mercury, and so different seafood products can be rated in terms of levels of mercury.”

Eating fish is part of a heart-healthy diet, and many types are good sources of omega-3 fatty acids that are important for brain development.
But fish also can absorb small amounts of mercury, a neurotoxin, from streams and oceans — and a small number of varieties harbor higher levels.

For most people, accumulating mercury from eating seafood isn’t a health risk. But for a decade, the FDA has warned that pregnant women, those who may become pregnant, and young children avoid certain types of high-mercury fish because of concern that too much could harm a developing brain.

Consumer groups have sued the agency, saying the warnings weren’t clear enough about what to avoid, and seeking labeling to help so that shoppers wouldn’t have to remember which products are OK during pregnancy or for youngsters.

“We can’t ask consumers to memorize two different lists of fish,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the groups that sued.

DeWaal said the new advisory will be an improvement if it gives consumers better information, especially if that information could be kept at fish counters in grocery stores and retail outlets.
The seafood industry says the government shouldn’t look at mercury by itself, but at the benefits of seafood. Jennifer McGuire of the National Fisheries Institute says the original FDA guidelines warning against some types of fish for pregnant women just served to decrease overall seafood intake.

“That would be very concerning if there was a ‘good fish, bad fish’ list,” she said.

The government’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines incorporated FDA’s warnings to say that pregnant or breastfeeding women should consume 8 to 12 ounces of a variety of seafood per week. But it said they should not eat tilefish, shark, swordfish and king mackerel because of the mercury content and it advised limiting white albacore tuna to six ounces a week.
On other food-related issues, Hamburg said deciding which businesses will have to post calorie labels has been “one of the more complex undertakings of my tenure as FDA commissioner.”

The food industry is closely watching FDA to see which establishments are included in final menu labeling rules, which are expected this year. Congress required the labels in 2010 health overhaul, and supermarkets and convenience stores have lobbied aggressively since then to be excluded. But the restaurant industry says that all establishments serving prepared foods should have to post the labels.

She said the increasing amount of caffeine in a whole range of foods “has gotten our attention and concern” and that the agency needs to better understand the role of the stimulant in non-traditional products, especially on children. She said the science is not absolutely clear about its effects.

The agency is investigating the safety of energy drinks and energy shots, prompted by consumer reports of illness and death. FDA is also looking at caffeine in food as manufacturers have added caffeine to candy, nuts and other snack foods in recent years.
On genetically modified foods, Hamburg reiterated her support for voluntary labels, and said a “considerable amount of scientific study” does not suggest the kinds of public health concerns that some consumers have worried about. Advocates for GM labeling have been pushing state laws that require the labels.

As such, she says she does not believe FDA should have to do a mandatory safety review of all engineered foods. FDA now reviews the safety of GM animals, but has a voluntary review for companies that want to sell modified crops for consumption.

Source: news press now

 

13-pound tumor removed from man’s face

stefan-zoleik

Doctors have removed a tumour weighing almost a stone from the face of a Slovakian man. In 2004, Stefan Zoleik developed a thankfully rare condition called Madelung disease, which caused fat tumours to grown on his face.
One of them grew from ear to ear under his chin causing people to stop and stare at him in the street.

‘Everybody was turning and looking at me,’ Mr Zoleik told Reuters the news agency. ‘It was very unpleasant. It also bothered me all the time when I moved my head.’

Finally, Igor Homola, a surgeon, spent five hours cutting away the growth and Mr Zoleik is more than happy with the resuts saying: ‘This is amazing, much better than it was before, which was horrible. ‘I don’t even feel any pain now.’

Mr Zoleik spent 10 years living with the swelling, caused by a rare disease called Madelung that sees fat fibres grow wildly across his face

Mr Zoleik is very happy with the results of the surgery which removed a tumour weighing nearly a stone from his face

source: daily mail

Man charged with stealing $350,000 worth of human skin from hospital

skin theft

A southeastern Pennsylvania man has been charged with stealing more than $350,000 worth of human skin over a period of several years.

Fifty-four-year-old Gary Dudek of Wallingford was arrested Monday and charged with theft, receiving stolen property and tampering with records.

Authorities say he worked until September as a sales representative for a Massachusetts-based regenerative medicine firm and could order skin grafts for Mercy Philadelphia Hospital.

The Philadelphia Daily News reports that authorities allege that Dudek ordered more than 200 grafts without authorization from November 2011 to July that the hospital never received.

Philadelphia police said they do not know the motive or what happened to the grafts.

Defense attorney Eugene Tinari told WCAU-TV that the case should be handled as a civil matter, and the criminal charges are “draconian.”

Source: fox news

Study reveals stress degrades sperm quality

stress degrades

Psychological stress is harmful to sperm and semen quality, affecting its concentration, appearance, and ability to fertilize an egg, according to a study led by researchers Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Rutgers School of Public Health. Results are published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, infertility affects men and women equally, and semen quality is a key indicator of male fertility.

“Men who feel stressed are more likely to have lower concentrations of sperm in their ejaculate, and the sperm they have are more likely to be misshapen or have impaired motility,” says senior author Pam Factor-Litvak, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health. “These deficits could be associated with fertility problems.”

The researchers studied 193 men, ages 38 to 49, enrolled in the Study of the Environment and Reproduction at the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Oakland, California, between 2005 and 2008. The men completed tests to measure work and life stress on subjective scale (how they felt overall) and objective scale (life events behind the stress). They also provided semen samples. Technicians at the University of California, Davis, used standard methods employed in fertility testing to assess the samples for semen concentration, and sperm appearance and motility.

Measured subjectively or objectively, life stress degraded semen quality, even after accounting for men’s concerns about their fertility, their history of reproductive health problems, or their other health issues. Workplace stress was not a factor, however the researchers say it may still affect reproductive health since men with job strain had diminished levels of testosterone. Being without a job did not improve matters. Unemployed men had sperm of lower quality than employed men, regardless of how stressed they were.

It is not fully understood how stress affects semen quality. It may trigger the release of steroid hormones called glucocorticoids, which in turn could blunt levels of testosterone and sperm production. Another possibility is oxidative stress, which has been shown to affect semen quality and fertility.

“Stress has long been identified as having an influence on health. Our research suggests that men’s reproductive health may also be affected by their social environment,” says Teresa Janevic, PhD, the study’s first author and an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health.
While several previous studies have examined the link between stress and semen quality, the current paper is the first to look at subjective and objective measures of stress and find associations with semen concentration, and sperm appearance and motility.

Source: science daily

Now, a ‘smart cap’ to map brain functions

640_electroencephalograph

The functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), most commonly used in brain mapping method, may not be ideal for children and patients with implanted electrical devices such as pacemakers, cochlear implants and deep brain stimulators. The magnetic fields used in the method may disrupt either the function or safety of these devices.

Researchers have now developed a “smart cap”, a new brain scanning system that shines tiny lights onto the head and works just as well as magnetic brain scanner.

The instrument uses a technology called diffuse optical tomography (DOT) and works by detecting light transmitted through the head and capturing the dynamic changes in the colours of the brain tissue.

The new DOT instrument covers two-thirds of the head and for the first time can image brain processes taking place in multiple regions and brain networks.

“When the neuronal activity of a region in the brain increases, highly oxygenated blood flows to the parts of the brain doing more work and we can detect that,” Joseph Culver from Washington University was quoted as saying.

The researchers validated the performance of DOT by comparing its results to fMRI scans, Daily Mail reported.

The study appeared in the journal Nature Photonics.

Source: chennai online

New genetic cause of male reproductive birth defects revealed

birth-defects

Researchers have defined a previously unrecognized genetic cause for two types of birth defects found in newborn boys.

Lead author Dr. Dolores Lamb, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Baylor, professor and vice chair for research of urology and molecular and cellular biology at Baylor, asid cryptorchidism and hypospadias are among the most common birth defects but the causes are usually unknown.

Cryptorchidism is characterized by the failure of descent of one or both testes into the scrotum during fetal development. In the adult man, the testes produce sperm and the male hormone, testosterone. Hypospadias is the abnormal placement of the opening of the urethra on the penis.

Both birth defects are usually surgically repaired during infancy.

Lamb and colleagues used a method of genome wide screening (essentially a molecular karyotype) called array comparative genomic hybridization to study children with these defects. The method looks specifically at changes in chromosomal regions that have undergone duplication or deletions too small to see under a microscope, termed copy number variations.

These genomic changes can alter gene dosage (gene gains or losses) resulting in a change in cell function.

In its analysis, the team showed that the cause of these birth defects in a subset of children with these defects of testis and penile development resulted from a change in the number of copies of a gene, VAMP7.

The role of VAMP7 gene duplication in causing these male birth defects was important because of the type of protein family it belongs to – it is a SNARE (Soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor activating protein receptor) protein (a large protein superfamily consisting of more than 60 members in yeast and mammalian cell), Lamb said.

The report has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Source: yahoo news

5 reasons why grapes are good for you

grapes bunch

Most of us love eating grapes. This juicy fruit is a rich source of vitamins A, C, B6 and folate. Grapes are a powerhouse of flavonoids and antioxidants, which help in reducing the damage caused by free radicals and slow down the process of ageing.

The best part about this ‘Queen of fruits’ is that they can be consumed in many ways – like grape juice, in wines etc.

Here are a few health benefits of the wonder fruit:

  • Grape juice is the best home remedy to treat migraine pains.
  • Research suggests that grape seed can be combined with chemotherapy to improve treatment for bowel cancer.
  • Adding grapes to your diet can help you lessen that excruciating knee pain.
  • Studies suggest that eating grapes helps lower blood pressure and improve heart function.
  • Grapes help in aiding digestion process thereby preventing dyspepsia.

Source: Zee news