Friday 3 February 2017

CANCER STARTS EASY BUT ENDS SO BAD !

Skin cancer occurs when errors (mutations) occur in the DNA of skin cells. The mutations cause the cells to grow out of control and form a mass of cancer cells.




Cells involved in skin cancer

Skin cancer begins in your skin's top layer — the epidermis. The epidermis is a thin layer that provides a protective cover of skin cells that your body continually sheds. The epidermis contains three main types of cells:
  • Squamous cells lie just below the outer surface and function as the skin's inner lining.
  • Basal cells, which produce new skin cells, sit beneath the squamous cells.
  • Melanocytes — which produce melanin, the pigment that gives skin its normal color — are located in the lower part of your epidermis. Melanocytes produce more melanin when you're in the sun to help protect the deeper layers of your skin.
Where your skin cancer begins determines its type and your treatment options.

Ultraviolet light and other potential causes

Much of the damage to DNA in skin cells results from ultraviolet (UV) radiation found in sunlight and in the lights used in tanning beds. But sun exposure doesn't explain skin cancers that develop on skin not ordinarily exposed to sunlight. This indicates that other factors may contribute to your risk of skin cancer, such as being exposed to toxic substances or having a condition that weakens your immune system.

Age

The older you are, the more likely you are to develop non melanoma skin cancer. But skin cancers can develop in younger people too.

Previous skin cancer

A diagnosis of melanoma means that you have a 3 times higher than average risk of getting a non melanoma skin cancer.
Being diagnosed with a non melanoma skin cancer means that you:
  • have about a 10 times higher risk of a second non melanoma skin cancer
  • might also be at an increased risk of developing a second primary cancer (other than skin cancer), it's not clear why


Family history of skin cancer

Most non melanoma skin cancers don't run in families. But research has found some families seem to have a higher number than normal. You have an increased risk of developing a squamous cell skin cancer (SCC) if one of your parents has had an SCC. People who have a family history of melanoma have an increased risk of basal cell skin cancer (BCC).
Of course, skin type runs in families. So people from fair skinned families will be more at risk. But there might be some other inherited genes that increase the risk of non melanoma skin cancer in some families.

Sun exposure

Most skin cancers are caused by exposure to the sun. This may be long term exposure, or short periods of intense sun exposure and burning. The ultraviolet light in sunlight damages the DNA in the skin cells. This damage can happen years before a cancer develops.

Wednesday 7 December 2016

CHRONIC PAIN ! what is it ?

 

Chronic pain can begin with an injury or a problem such as a bulging disk in the spine. It can be associated with complex syndromes such as fibromyalgia. Or you may experience it as headaches, back pain, joint pain, nerve pain, or a myriad of other localized symptoms.

What Is Chronic Pain?

About 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, defined as pain that lasts longer than six months. Chronic pain can be mild or excruciating, episodic or continuous, merely inconvenient or totally incapacitating.
With chronic pain, signals of pain remain active in the nervous system for months or even years. This can take both a physical and emotional toll on a person.
The most common sources of pain stem from headaches, joint pain, pain from injury, and backaches. Other kinds of chronic pain include tendinitis, sinus pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and pain affecting specific parts of the body, such as the shoulders, pelvis, and neck. Generalized muscle or nerve pain can also develop into a chronic condition.
Chronic pain may originate with an initial trauma/injury or infection, or there may be an ongoing cause of pain. Some people suffer chronic pain in the absence of any past injury or evidence of body damage.
The emotional toll of chronic pain also can make pain worse. Anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and fatigue interact in complex ways with chronic pain and may decrease the body's production of natural painkillers; moreover, such negative feelings may increase the level of substances that amplify sensations of pain, causing a vicious cycle of pain for the person. Even the body's most basic defenses may be compromised: There is considerable evidence that unrelenting pain can suppress the immune system.
Because of the mind-body links associated with chronic pain, effective treatment requires addressing psychological as well as physical aspects of the condition.

COFFE IS IT GOOD OR BAD ?




The health effects of coffee are quite controversial.
Depending on who you ask, it is either a super healthy beverage or incredibly harmful.
But despite what you may have heard, there are actually plenty of good things to be said about coffee.
For example, it is high in antioxidants and linked to a reduced risk of many diseases.
However… it also contains caffeine, a stimulant that can cause problems in some people and disrupt sleep.
This article takes a detailed look at coffee and its health effects, examining both the pros and cons.

Coffee Contains Some Essential Nutrients and is Extremely High in Antioxidants

Coffee is more than just dark brown water… many of the nutrients in the coffee beans do make it into the drink.
Caffeine is the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world (4).
he caffeine content of a single cup can range from 30-300 mg, but the average cup is somewhere around 90-100 mg.
Caffeine is a known stimulant. In the brain, it blocks the function of an inhibitory neurotransmitter (brain hormone) called Adenosine.
By blocking adenosine, caffeine actually increases activity in the brain and the release of other neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and dopamine. This reduces tiredness and makes us feel more alert (5, 6).
There are numerous studies showing that caffeine can lead to a short-term boost in brain function… including improved mood, reaction time, vigilance and general cognitive function (7, 8).
Caffeine can also boost metabolism (calories burned) by 3-11% and even increase exercise performance by 11-12%, on average (9, 10, 11, 12).
However… some of these effects are likely to be short-term. If you drink coffee every day, then you will build a tolerance to it and the effects will be less powerful (13).
There are also some downsides to caffeine, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Best way to lose weigh fast !

 


Ali Vincent made history as the first female to win weight loss competition show The Biggest Loser in 2008 after losing 112 lbs.—but in April, Vincent, 41, revealed that she had regained almost all of the weight she had lost.
“I swore I would never be there again, be here again,” she posted on Facebook at the time. “I couldn’t imagine a day again that I would weigh over 200 lbs. I feel ashamed. I feel embarrassed. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like failure.”
Vincent recently revealed that she was the victim of a sexual assault while getting a massage, and believes much of her weight gain came from dealing with the emotional fallout.
“I’ve realized, over the last year, as I’ve gained this weight, it was so much of my life slowed down, that a lot of stuff came up that I just hadn’t dealt with,” she said.
Vincent announced that she was joining Weight Watchers to get her weight back on track, but says she is still struggling with the emotional aspects of her weight gain now.
“The Biggest Loser gave me the opportunity to believe in myself and I don’t know that I ever really did,” Vincent says on Monday’s episode of T.D. Jakes. “Everybody wanted me to and I wanted to for them, and I had results to prove it. But do I really deserve to have everything that I dream of? Do I deserve to have this happiness?”
Vincent admits that it’s her past struggles that have been holding her back from being her best self.
“I know that there’s stuff that I have to deal with, and I know that it goes back way far, but then I also know that I’m 41 years old — when am I going to own my own stuff?” she says. “When can I just let go?”
To see more of Vincent’s emotional interview with T.D. Jakes, check your local listings to tune into the full episode on Monday. Also available on OWN at 6 p.m. EST/PST.

Tuesday 6 December 2016

Have you talked to your family about organ donation ?

 

IF YOU or one of your children needed a heart transplant, your gratitude to the family that donated one would be boundless. In their hour of greatest despair that family would have consented to an organ donation, a selfless, life-saving choice.
But if the positions were reversed, could you make the same decision? Sadly, the number of donor hearts does not match demand. That means many adults and children die waiting. Every death is the loss of a father or a son, a mother or a daughter.
Part of the problem is that not enough families give their consent. In the UK only 60 per cent agree compared with 80 per cent in many other European countries. That means 4 out of 10 families who are approached in the UK refuse to donate.
Perhaps that’s not surprising. Many people are uncomfortable about confronting their mortality and that of their immediate family. Surveys for the National Health Service show that more than 30 per cent of people have never discussed organ donation, and few are aware how those closest to them feel about it.
The NHS wants to change this. Its organ donation team is encouraging families to talk about organ donation, to think about how they would feel about donation if they needed a transplant and to encourage them to sign the organ donation register at organdonation.nhs.uk.
And of course, the problem is not confined to hearts. People waiting for lungs, livers, kidneys, corneas and so on, vastly outnumber the supply of organs for transplant. At the end of March 2016, there were almost 6500 patients waiting for some kind of transplant.
Even a small increase in the percentage of people agreeing to donate would make a huge difference to the waiting time. Increasing the UK consent rate from 60 per cent to 80 per cent would lead to about 1000 more transplants each year. That’s a great many lives. One of them could be yours.

ALKOHOL , does this have bad consequences ?

 




WE RAISE a glass to celebrate, sip wine to unwind, knock back a few beers while catching up with friends. Alcohol plays a central role in socialising in many cultures, especially at this time of year. In December, consumption is 41 per cent higher in the UK than during the other months.
Yet the warm glow of a holiday tipple may be tempered by a growing awareness of alcohol’s harms. Drinking can increase your risk of cancer, stroke and liver disease. It exacerbates the harms of smoking, can undermine your immune system, impair your judgement and make you more likely to have risky sex, injure yourself or hurt someone else. Each year, alcohol-related crime costs the UK a whopping £11 billion, and the country’s National Health Service spends £3.5 billion treating alcohol-related medical issues. That’s not to mention the £7.3 billion hangover in lost workdays.
So far, so clear. Booze is bad. But what about the steady trickle of findings that suggest, in moderate amounts, it may have some benefits? There is the seductive story of red wine staving off dementia, and the finding that regular drinking decreases your risk of heart disease and premature death. Do these stories stand up? In other words, can we really raise a glass to our health?

Why young adults choose to stay sober ?

 



WHILE baby boomers may be parsing the evidence to see if an evening glass of wine could be good for them, young adults are quietly turning away from alcohol. Sure, a hardcore still binge heavily, but more and more are choosing to be teetotal, and those who do drink are, on average, doing less of it.
That has public health experts toasting their good luck. If this lifestyle takes hold, there could be many health benefits, from fewer accidents and less alcohol-fuelled violence, to reduced incidences of cancer and liver and heart disease in decades to come. So what is spurring young people to shun alcohol, and will it continue?
The move away from booze was first seen in those born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, the generation known as millennials. The post-millennials (or generation Z) are continuing and even deepening the trend.

Obesity Around the World Continues to Rise

 , , ,
A new medical report has found out that the number of obese people around the world has increased by 600% over the past 40 years. The report says that about 12% of the world's population suffers from obesity. Within the next decade 20% of the world's population will be overweight.
The report is based on the body mass index (BMI) , the relationship between height and weight. A normal, healthy person has a BMI of between 20 and 25.  People with a BMI of over 30 are considered to be obese.
It is no surprise that most of the world's obese people live in the wealthy countries of the world. Six countries - the US, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand account for a fifth of the world's obese people. China and the United States have the highest number of obese in the world. In contrast, the poorest countries have the lowest number of overweight people. In southern Asia and southeastern Asia, for example, 25% of the population are underweight.
Having too many overweight people puts an enormous financial burden on our health system, through rising costs for medication, doctors and hospitals.

Medical experts point out that obesity cannot be treated  with medication and exercise alone. It is also important to change your diet and consume less fatty food and sugary drinks. We also need to  eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and reduce the intake of processed food.