Archive for ◊ March, 2011 ◊

Sleep is The Key to Success
Author:
• Thursday, March 24th, 2011

It is one of our most basic functions, as important as the in and out of our breath. Our need for sleep is primal, yet the pace of life means it’s often pushed to the periphery, sacrificed at the altar of work, friends, study and fun.

But now science is beginning to show that getting the right amount of sleep might be the key to making the rest of our lives run more smoothly.

Increasingly, research is indicating that the quality and quantity of our sleep affects every part of our lives, from success in work and school to our likelihood of developing problems such as obesity or mental illness.

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Neurology last year, American researchers highlighted the growing body of research confirming that students who have insomnia, inadequate sleep, daytime sleepiness, irregular sleep patterns or poor sleep quality do not perform as well in school as others.

Many sleep researchers now advocate the introduction of staggered start times for older high-school students – one of the most under-slept groups in society after shift workers.

But the most cutting edge of sleep research is beginning to show it seems also to be linked to mental illness.

Nicholas Glozier is at the forefront of such research in his work as a professor of psychiatry and sleep research at the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney.

He says lack of sleep is one of the most common problems for which people seek help from GPs, with about one-third of women and one-quarter of men saying they have trouble falling or staying asleep.

The average Australian sleeps for about 8¼ hours a day – much less than that and you may not be getting enough. The average sleep period for a teenager is about seven hours. People who get six hours or less a night are at risk of illnesses such as bipolar disorder, anxiety and panic disorder.

Professor Glozier published research late last year that followed 20,000 people aged 17 to 24 for a year. It found those who slept less than five hours a night were three times more likely than normal sleepers to become psychologically distressed.

A big question for researchers is whether sleep deprivation is a cause or effect of mental illness.

“One of the real issues with sleep research at the moment is it is a bit like where psychiatry was 15 years ago,” he says. “We really don’t know whether [improving sleep] is going to impact on other health outcomes.”

In the next 15 years – provided research is well funded by governments and universities – Glozier says we will be on our way to finding some of the answers.

One researcher who has conducted an Australian-first trial into sleep and teenagers is Amanda Gamble, a psychologist and research fellow with the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research.

For many of the teenagers Dr Gamble sees, sleep has become a stressful part of life. It causes fights with parents and absences from school. One patient’s parents were so desperate, they would spray their child with water in the mornings to force them up.

“For most of these teenagers, falling asleep and staying asleep has made them feel incredibly out of control and it’s quite a frightening thing,” she says. “If you can’t control a basic bodily process that happens every single day, there’s no escaping it.”

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Her research, unpublished, has shown that through a four-session program using cognitive behavioural therapy, not only were patients getting to sleep earlier and sleeping longer, they also became less depressed and anxious. She is recruiting teenagers for a larger version of the study.

For some, sleep is as simple as rolling into bed and snoring within minutes. But those who lie awake for hours can attest to the way sleep deprivation can creep into every crevice of life. But now science is catching up and beginning to reveal the intricate connections between how we sleep and how we live.

INSOMNIA CAUSES:

Medical

* Obstructive sleep apnoea

* Narcolepsy

* Drug or alcohol addiction

* Restless legs syndrome

* Depression and anxiety disorders

* Neurological conditions — dementia, Parkinson’s

* Hormone changes — menstruation, menopause

Behavioural or social

* Increased working hours

* Shift work

* Major life event — divorce, bereavement, job loss

* Jet lag

* Poor “sleep hygiene” — irregular sleeping times, caffeine before bed, inadequate exercise

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When to use pain relief medication
Author:
• Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Over the last century, there has been a quiet medical revolution. Go back to the early 1900s and the doctor was the main source of treatment. They needed to earn enough to live on, so you were always required to pay your way. But, there may be some truth in Sue Lowden’s story about chickens. As you may remember, she was one of the Republican Senate candidates standing in Nevada. She hit the headlines for reminding people that, in the rural areas, people would offer the doctor a chicken or to paint his house. Whether barter was generally accepted does not matter. Everyone relied on their local doctor and the growing hospitals for whatever medical care was available.

Look around now. Hospitals have grown into major institutions and, with all the problems over paying for treatment, the pharmaceutical industry has stepped into the limelight. Now all doctors need do is decide which pill to give you. If you don’t have the money to pay a doctor, there’s always the internet where you can buy all the major drugs without ever having to see a doctor. The focus is now on the pill. Watch TV or open most newspapers and magazines and you will see ads telling you which drugs to rely on for every illness. Indeed, some suggest the pharmaceutical industry make up illnesses and then invent cures for them.

So, what’s the problem? Well, there’s no doubt some drugs are very effective but the problems come through the way they are used. Let’s take pain relief as an example. There are some remarkable drugs across the range of treatment, from minor injuries to the most severe problems causing agonizing pain. For whatever you need, you pay the asking price and the pain is reduced or goes away completely. This sounds like a good deal but it overlooks one problem. Painkillers have a good name. It describes accurately what they do. But it also shows their limitation. They may kill the pain but they do nothing to treat or cure the cause of the pain. Let’s say someone shoots you, leaving the bullet inside your body. You could take painkillers but the long-term solution is having a surgeon open you up and remove the bullet before you get an infection and risk death.

The best treatment always sees the whole problem and gives appropriate treatment. If you have an injury, you may need surgery to repair the damage. Illnesses may require antibiotics or antivirals. Just taking a painkiller like Ultram is never the right answer on its own. This is a wonderful drug but, unless you want to become dependent on it for months or years to come, you should have all the treatment necessary to remove the cause of the pain. Keeping this real, if the doctor cures the underlying cause, the pain usually goes away. Ask yourself which is better. That you should keep taking Ultram, or that you should be free of pain and no longer have to take a painkiller? Perhaps your grandparents always had spare chickens and could always barter with their doctor. But the best value for their chickens was treatment for the whole body and no longer term payment for drugs.

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How can you stop hair loss?
Author:
• Monday, March 07th, 2011

Hair loss is definitely one of those problems that don’t affect your health in a bad way but sure cause a lot of regret. Like any health issue that has prominent visual signs, hair loss seriously affects a person’s image – something that’s really important in the modern society. Losing one’s hair is often seen as a sign of aging or bad health, and in a society where a person’s looks are often more important than their mind, it’s not hard to imagine the devastating effects of hair loss.

There are different behind hair loss problems. There are also different types of hair loss characterized by different factors causing them and ways they are manifested. Some of the most common reasons for hair loss to occur include hormonal changes, poor hair nutrition, hygiene, environment, other health conditions and medication side effects. Most of these factors can be effectively controlled in order to stop and even reverse hair loss. But before you take any measures, you should first identify the actual cause behind your hair loss problems. The best way to do it is to consult with your family doctor or even get a referral to a trichologist. Only after visiting the doctor you may start taking measures to treat hair loss, otherwise you risk aiming the wrong causes and even worsening your condition.

The most common measures that can help you stop hair loss include dietary changes, better hygiene, hormonal therapy, changes of medications and treatments in use. Sometimes you will be required to combine these measures in order to gain the best results.

Dietary changes for treating hair loss require the consumption of more vitamins and minerals. You should keep your levels of vitamin group D, vitamin C and minerals like zinc at a healthy level either by consuming foods rich with these substances or taking vitamin supplements. Deficiency of these substances is often the cause of poor hair condition and hair loss.

The environment isn’t as helpful for the condition of hair and skin as we would want it to be. So good hair hygiene is a must for keeping your hair in a good condition and protecting the hair follicles from the negative influence of numerous harmful agents present in the air and water.

Certain treatments and medications can cause hair loss. Such potent practices as radial or chemotherapy for treating cancer often cause serious hair loss. Some medications can also trigger this process if taken for a long period of time. Consult with your physician regarding the alternatives if you are certain that your hair loss is the result of the treatment course.

Hormonal changes often cause different health problems and hair loss is not an exception. In fact, it was confirmed that the abundance of specific hormones in the male body trigger male pattern hair loss. This can be stopped by consulting with an endocrinologist or asking your doctor to give you prescription for Propecia. Propecia works perfectly for men with hormonal problems and is known to reverse hair loss in the majority of cases.

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Men Five Times More Likely to Smoke than Women in Indonesia
Author:
• Thursday, March 03rd, 2011

LONDON, KOMPAS.com - Millions of women in developing countries risk disease and early death in the coming decades as their rising economic and political status leads them to smoke more, researchers said on Tuesday.

An analysis in 74 countries found that men are five times more likely to smoke than women in countries with lower rates of female empowerment, such as China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uganda.

In countries with relatively high female empowerment, such as Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and the United States, this gap is small and women smoke almost as much as men do. Douglas Bettcher, director of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) tobacco free initiative, said the findings showed the need for authorities to act quickly to curb smoking rates among women, particularly in poorer countries.

“The tobacco epidemic is still in its early stages in many countries but is expected to worsen,” he said in a statement with the study, which was published in the WHO journal Bulletin. “Strong tobacco control measures such as bans on tobacco advertising are needed to prevent the tobacco industry from targeting women.”

Tobacco kills up to half its users and is described by the WHO “one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced”. The annual death toll linked to tobacco is more than five million, experts say, and could rise beyond eight million by 2030 unless action is taken to control smoking.

According to the study, it is estimated that men smoke nearly five times as much as women worldwide, but the ratios of female-to-male smoking prevalence rates vary dramatically. In China, for example, 61 percent of men are reported to be current smokers, compared with 4.2 percent of women, while in many rich nations roughly equal numbers of men and women smoke.

Women’s empowerment is measured by the United Nations Development Programme using data such as representation in parliament, voting rights and comparisons of male and female income.

“Our study makes a strong case for implementing gender-specific tobacco control activities … such as more higher tobacco taxes, more prominent graphic health warnings, smoke-free laws, and advertising and promotion bans,” said Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who led Tuesday’s study.

Fellow researcher Sara Hitchman said authorities should look closely at “the ways in which the tobacco industry is capitalising on societal changes to target women, such as marketing cigarettes to women as a symbol of emancipation”.

The researchers also said a useful step could be to monitor how price and tax measures affect uptake of smoking among women in countries where tobacco is not yet widely used by them.

“Further research into patterns of uptake could help governments take more effective action and reduce adoption rates for smoking among women in the future,” said Hitchman.

 

http://english.kompas.com/read/2011/03/02/21512080/Men.Five.Times.More.Likely.to.Smoke.than.Women.in.Indonesia

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