Month: January 2006

Too Much Acetaminophen Can Kill

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The researchers have warned people to take care in taking the drugs, which have acetaminophen in it.

The researchers said that painkillers are the widely used medicines and people take a lot of extra doses of it. According to the recent statistics, it has been found out that there are a lot of deaths reported from the use of painkillers, which contained acetaminophen in them.
Acetaminophen can cause acute liver failure and then can ultimately lead to death. The researchers say that there are a lot of accidental poisoning cases reported of acetaminophen overdose.

The drug, Tylenol, has acetaminophen in it, and is named as the safest painkiller when used according to the doctor’s recommendation. This medicine is being used by more than a million people a year and the liver damage occurs in only a fraction of people who use this drug.

The researchers say that most of the cases of lethal overdose occurs when the patients do not follow the instructions of their physicians. Acetaminophen is present in over the counter remedies such as Theraflu and Excedrin, as well as the prescription narcotics that are Vicodin and Percocet.

It is also being stated with great stress that the people should not use the painkillers as they like, which have acetaminophen in it, but must take it according to the doctor’s prescription so as to prevent any accidental over dosage.

The recommended dosage of acetaminophen that adults can take in a day should be no more than 4,000 milligrams a day.

It must be known that if the recommended dose is doubled, it can just kill.

There are more than 56,000 emergency room visits a year due to acetaminophen overdose and out of that about that 100 people die annually from unintentionally taking too much.

There were stats collected on patients who suffered from acute liver failure and there were about 662 patients that were tracked over six years by the researchers at the different transplant centers and they found that about 28 percent of the patients suffering from acute liver failure were because of acetaminophen toxicity.

There were about 74 patients who died and 23 received a transplant, while the rest of them were admitted into the intensive care unit and received necessary treatment.

The basic essence of this article is to make you aware of the fact that you should take a lot of care while taking painkillers that have acetaminophen in it.


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Nicotine Patch Links To Birth Defects

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According to the latest research, the use of nicotine patches and gums can cause birth defects if used in the early stages of pregnancy.

It was further eluded that the women who use nicotine replacement therapy in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy pose a 60 percent higher incidence of birth defect than nonsmokers.

The research was conducted on 77,000 pregnant women and the data was collected from them in regards to smoking habits and about 21,000 women said that they were smokers and about 56,000 women were nonsmokers. Including in the nonsmokers were about 250 women who were in the process of quitting smoking and were using nicotine patches.

In a previous research it has been shown that there is an increased risk of birth defects of cleft palates, heart problems and digestive disorders in women who were smokers.

It was found that there were birth defects in both the groups, smokers and nonsmokers, which makes about 5% of the babies having the defects. It is a fact that women who are smokers are at high risk of miscarriages, as well as birth defects.

It was also established that the women who were using the alternative therapies to quit smoking such as patches and gums have a 60 per cent greater risk of birth defects than non-smokers and there is also a double chance of malformations such as hip problems.

As mentioned above, there were about 250 women who were in the process of quitting smoking and were using alternative therapies, in that group there were about 19 children were born with birth defects.

The researchers also mentioned that their studies are based on a very small population and there is still a whole lot that needs to be done to elucidate the facts.

It is also being stated that the women who are planning for pregnancy must give up smoking as it can cause low birth weights and premature births along with birth defects.

Tobacco smoke has a lot of toxins that are lethal for the child in the womb and can lead to a great deal of problems during pregnancy for both the mother and child.

It is being debated that women who are smoking, when switch onto different alternatives such as patches and gums as a tool for smoking cessation, are not exposing themselves to the many harmful substances that are in the cigarette smoke and are only using nicotine, but nicotine is considered fetotoxic, as well as with patches it can reach high peak values.

It was further discussed that the role of nicotine substitutes causing the musculoskeletal and congenital malformations must be carefully studied in smokers who are considering pregnancy.

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Cholesterol Lowering Drugs Offer No Help To Fight Cancer

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It had been thought that the cancer drugs have been providing greater benefit to fight cancer. The researchers have performed about 26 studies, which was involving more than 73,000 people who were taking the statins such as Zocor (simvastatin) and Pravachol (pravastatin).

These statins were given to the patients who were suffering from cancers of different organs such as breast, colon, gastrointestinal tract, prostate, respiratory tract, skin etc. and there was no benefit reported in these patients who were on different cholesterol lowering medications.
It was thought before that the cholesterol lowering medications reduce the risk of cancer by reducing inflammation and even blocking the genes that work in causing cancer.

There was a research on animals and in some studies on humans that the cholesterol lowering medications can prevent certain cancers, but the drawback of that study was that the participants were not given statins or placebos randomly.

The statins have been known to have a lot of side effects such as liver damage and muscle pain, therefore the researchers have said that it is not useful to prescribe statins anymore to prevent cancer, as they say that it is not worth to spend both money and time to find a practical link between cancer and statins.

There are a whole lot other roles of statins such as reducing cholesterol in patients who are suffering from high blood pressure, it is also given to patients who are suffering from increased weight and cholesterol lowering medications are used as a mean to lower their cholesterol and hence prevent them from having heart and vessel related diseases. Increased weight can also lead to a lot of other problems in the body and results in endocrine disorders as well. Therefore there are a lot of other benefits that can be extracted from the cholesterol lowering medications.

The researchers also stressed that “Prevention is better than cure�, therefore, it is always good to eat healthy and prevent yourself from using medicines, as they have side effects along with benefits.


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Birth Control Pills Suppress Sex Drive

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According to a new research, the birth control pills may suppress the sex drives of women who are on birth control pills for a long duration of time. This fact has been stated in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

It has been an established fact that birth control pills have been known to alter libido in women. The researchers have found the way that these birth control pills affect the sex drive, they say that these pills can change the level of the proteins in the blood that are responsible for the libido for a longer period of time even after the women have stopped using the birth control pills.

The researchers have collected data and they have found very astonishing results. There are a total of about one hundred million women who are using birth control pills, which they are using either for birth control pills, hormonal imbalances or menstrual irregularities. It has also been found out that there are about 80 percent of American women who were born after 1945 have taken the birth control pill.

The researchers have also pointed out that the data of suppressed sex drive has been taken from the clinic where women with sexual dysfunction were treated and this data was collected on about 124 women who were surveyed. So the researchers mentioned that the women should not get panic after reading this data.

There are a lot of reasons of sexual dysfunction. It can be due to stress, medicines taken during treatments, sleep deprivation, alcohol, illicit drug usage etc. So there are a lot of reasons for loss of libido and one should not only consider that they are having loss of libido because they have used the birth control pills. Sexual dysfunction is also related to the psychological condition of a person. For example, if a person is depressed, there would be loss of libido.

Let us discuss as how the birth control pills prevent pregnancy. The birth control pills prevent pregnancy by changing the reproductive hormones of the women, they also bear effect on the sex-hormone binding globulin, which is a protein that suppress testosterone. It is of note that women, whose testosterone levels are suppressed, suffer a loss in libido. It has also been found that the women who are on birth control pill have very high levels of serum hormone binding globulin that binds up with the testosterone and in turn suppresses it than the women who are not on any birth control pills.

This study is still under process and there are a whole lot of things that need to be sorted out and debated so that things could be said with greater authenticity. So the researchers have been mentioning it loud that there is no need to panic.

There are also a lot of women who have not used birth control pills but they suffer from sexual dysfunction, therefore one must not consider the above stated under process research as the last word.

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How You Can Protect Yourself From Cancer Through Diet

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At this day and age cancer is the leading cause of death among other leading causes and affects the people throughout the globe without making any difference of age, sex, class, religion etc. There are millions of people who are dying every year because of cancer and very few are being saved whose cancer is being detected at an early stage. Almost every organ system of the body can have cancer because in cancer the actual cells mutate and they take the shape and form of the different cells than normal and this ultimately leads to the development of cancer.

The prognosis of individuals suffering from cancer is good who are detected at an early stage than the individuals whose cancer is not detected until it reaches the advanced stages and this then leads to deterioration of health at a very fast pace and this just drags the person through misery and pain until one dies. There are a few things that we can do and prevent ourselves from doing to protect ourselves against the cancer and this is what we are going to write down in the following paragraphs.

What You Should Avoid?

There are certain things that must be avoided in order to protect oneself from the clutches of cancer, which includes:

1. Avoid the animal fats and fats found in different meat and the dairy products.
2. If you are eating a large amount of margarine, then you must know that it is really unhealthy for you.
3. Use of refined flour products is pretty unhealthy.
4. Take out the alcohol from your life.
5. Do not use foods that are high in sugar and salt content.
6. Smoking is one of the leading cause of cancer and it is responsible for about thirty percent of all the cancers that occur in our body.

What You Should Do

1. You must adopt a diet that is high in vitamin B, folic acid, which is high in green beans and spinach.
2. You must eat foods that contain omega-3 fatty acids, which is contained in fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel, as well as olive oil. These fatty acids lower cholesterol, as well as prevents the damage that is being done by the omega-6 fatty acids.
3. You must prevent your weight from creeping up.
4. Make a habit of regular exercise in your life.
5. You must not take pill in an uncontrolled fashion.
6. You must eat fruits and vegetables, as they have cancer fighting properties, especially the green leafy vegetables, onions, garlic etc.
7. There is a compound known as Geisten that is present in soy beans that enhances the repair of DNA and thus protect the cells from becoming cancerous.

There are a lot of studies that have confirmed the link between the food that we eat and the protection from cancer. The researchers have also found the genes known as the brca1 and brca2 genes whose function is to prevent the passing on of information from the damaged cells. If any individual that has a faulty structure of the brca genes, are the ones who are prone to have the cancer of the breast, ovary and prostate.

You must eat healthy foods and avoid eating unhealthy foods and habits so as to prevent yourself from having cancer. I know you will make the right choices for you and will put yourself on the right track. You must also read the literature from the Internet on the different foods groups that are really good for prevention of cancer by selecting the keywords from this article. I wish you Best of Luck and a good healthy life.


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Young Cautious About Their Youth

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It has always been considered that people who start to reach their late 30s and early 40s tend to work more on regaining their youth by using anti-aging products, but now in this era things are changing very fast. The young ones who are the age of 20s are working on retaining their youth from that age. They are using anti-aging products as well as wrinkle treatments.

The young people in their 20s are saying that its better to start early to care for staying young rather than begin working at the later ages.

This is a new trend that has been starting to take roots as more and more younger people are just beginning to move towards this drift.

The younger generation says that they have been experiencing problems with their skin while they have been spending hours in tanning booths or tanning under the sun where they say that their skin have started to experience changes and for that reason if they do not take care of it now, this might be something that would get out of their hands to control in their 30s or 40s.

Women are the ones who have the most incline towards using the anti-aging products, whereas on the other hand, the men are not that inclined on towards the anti-aging process as compared to women.

On a large scale, men do not believe in spending money as to how they look, but the trend is generally growing in them too to use the anti-aging products to have better looks and have a much younger look.

This trend has also gotten strong overtime because of the treatments to achieve beauty through surgery and Botox injections, which have their own side effects, so in order to prevent that, the women are beginning much more inclined to maintain a younger look in their early ages.

So we can clearly see that younger people have a much more inclination to maintain their beauty from their early ages, which is a very positive development.

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Limit The Level Of Lead In Candy

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There was a recent recommendation by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where they have proposed that there should be a stricter limit on the amount of lead, which is a highly toxic metal, allowed in the children’s candies, which include spicy lollipops that are being sold in the a lot of Hispanic neighborhoods.

The Food and Drug Administration has recommended that the candies that are being eaten by children must not contain more than one tenth of a part per million of lead in them, which would be an about eighty percent reduction from the previous decade recommended level.
The Food and Drug Administration representative said that it would further reduce the minimal risk posed from lead exposure in candy.

The Food and Drug Administration has also made it clear that they want these guidelines to be followed as to what they have set for the candies regardless of their country of origin.

Most of the candies do meet the stricter requirement of the lead levels in the candies, but Food and Drug Administration has further lowered down the levels of lead being used in the candies. This decision was made after the candies from Mexico were being tested for the lead level and the ingredients that can boost the level of lead in the candies.

The ingredients that can increase the level of lead in the candies are chili powder, tamarind pulp and the salts, as well as the salty powdered snack mixes that are used in making these candies.
The representative said that apart from the ingredients mentioned above that cause the increased level of lead in the candies is believed to come from the improper washing and washing of the ingredients in lead contaminated containers, as well as the ink used on the candy wrappers, which are printed with an ink containing the metal.

Lead poisoning can lead to a disastrous situation, which includes behavioral problems, learning disabilities, as well as seizures or death.

This is a very serious matter on which the Food and Drug Administration have taken very strong steps to avoid having any children getting into any serious health problems.

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Grapefruits Can Help Fight Gum Disease

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The recent study says that people who eat grapefruit for about a fortnight may have minimal bleeding from gums, as it is found that grapefruit promotes wound healing.

The researchers conducted a study in which they selected about 58 people who were suffering from chronic gum disease. They asked those people to eat grapefruit and then after a period of time they found out that eating grapefruits had a very positive effect in both smokers and nonsmokers.

The mechanism with which grapefruits work is that they increase the level of vitamin C in blood and thus they promote the process of wound healing and reduce the damage that occurs by unstable free radical molecules.

It is found in the study that the vitamin C level in smokers is about 29 percent lower than in nonsmokers.

Researchers have also mentioned that eating two grapefruits a day can raise the vitamin C plasma levels in all those people who consume grapefruits.

The smokers were seen to have a level that was doubled after taking the grapefruit, but as they had a lower baseline of vitamin C level at the start of taking the grapefruit, the level of vitamin C was still lower than that recorded in the non-smokers.

The reason why the smokers have decreased levels of vitamin C is because it alters the way the body metabolizes vitamin C and it is also possible that smokers also have a less healthy diet.

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Bird Flu Vaccine Extracted From Christmas Tree

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According to the latest news report, a pharmaceutical company named, Biolyse Pharma Crop is planning to extract bird flu vaccine from Christmas trees. This company extracts chemicals from plants to develop medicines. They have a plan to extract the chemicals needed to develop the bird flu vaccine from over half a million Christmas trees that will be discarded in Ontario.

The Christmas trees contain an acid in their pine, which is known as shikimic acid, spruce and fir needles. The same acid, which is shikimic acid, is used in Tamiflu, which is being developed by Roche Holding.

It is also being said by the researchers that the demand for drugs such as Tamiflu has risen in the past three months due to the steep rise of patients having bird flu in several of the countries in Asia, which has killed about 71 people since 2003. According to the history, the Spanish flu had swallowed about 50 million people in 1918 and 1919.

The Biolyse Company has also informed that the price of the acid has risen to about $600 per kilogram in a year.

The demand for the shikimic acid has risen very sharply over the past few months since there has been reported cases of bird flu and it has become very pressing to meet the demands that are rising way high to meet the demands of the continents, as there is a fear that the bird flu can be a pandemic and would be a real disaster as we have seen that in the case of the Spanish flu that swallowed up millions of people.

We need to combat against the disaster before it becomes a pandemic.

The Biolyse company’s correspondent said that they are going to get the trees from the company, which recycles the forest products. The Biolyse correspondent says that the needles of the Christmas tree has a fairly high concentration of the shikimic acid in it. They also say that it is a difficult process of finding a simple way to extract the acid.

The production of shikimic acid is limited from the star nise tree that takes about eight years to reach the maturity level.

The high rise of bird flu has caused the researchers to extract large quantities of shikimic acid to meet the demands of the world to fight against the pandemic that can be there cause there is a news alert that it is spreading widely due to the migrating birds and the whole world is looking forward to find the way to combat this disease.

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Beware Frequent Complications With Breast Implants

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Breast cancer is the most common cancer occurring in women. The patients who are suffering from breast cancer go through chemotherapies, breast irradiation and surgical removal of breasts, which is also called as mastectomy, as well as breast conserving therapies and breast reconstruction surgeries.

After removal of a single breast or both breasts, the women prefer to go for breast implantation for cosmetic reasons. But, there was a concern regarding breast implantation surgery, which was mentioned in the archives of surgery regarding breast implantation. It was mentioned that statistics collected regarding breast implantation were that 31% of the women who had undergone reconstructive breast implantation after mastectomy were the ones who suffered at least one short-term complication in the chest or breast area, whereas there were about 21% of the women who required additional surgery.

The most common complications occurring from breast implantation are skin perforation; blood clotting, infection and seroma. The data also suggested that about 49% of the complications happened within three months of surgery and about 67% occurred within six months.
We will discuss very briefly as to what constitutes a reconstructive surgery is done, reconstructive surgery utilizes a breast implant or a method where a new breast is formed from the skin and other tissues from the woman’s body who is going under the reconstructive surgery and that tissue is known as autologous tissue, because it has the least chance of rejection from the body. There are times when other techniques are used.

Women mostly choose breast implantation because this procedure requires less surgery and is less complicated to perform. The benefits that the implants have is that it preserves the skin, as well as some sensitivity.

The researchers inspected the data from 574 women who had post-mastectomy breast reconstruction between June 1, 1999, and July 24, 2003.

The surgeons provided the information as to when the operation was performed and also provided the details of the operations and answered questionnaires when the women came in for follow-up visits.

The researchers then came up with the statistics that there were about 31% of the women who had at least one complication and about 16% had two complications and 8% were the ones who had three or more complications following their first implantation.

There were about 21% of the women who required additional surgery, while there were about 3% who underwent additional non-surgical treatment. The reason for which they had to undergo the additional surgery was displacement of an implant, correction of asymmetry of the breasts or capsular contracture where the capsule-like scar tissue was formed around the implant, which was hardened and tightened.

There were about 302 women who had re-implantations in order to exchange or replace the existing implants, about 36% developed at least one complication and 21% had to have additional surgery.

The researchers pointed out that when the risks and benefits are being evaluated for breast reconstruction, the surgeons and patients must acknowledge the fact that the women going through reconstructive breast surgeries might be needing other operations as well because of the complications resulting from the reconstructive surgeries and that this must be an essential part of the informed consent that the patient’s must sign before undergoing the surgeries for implantation.

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