Inhaling Salt Water Improves Cystic Fibrosis


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There was a recent research conducted that showed that people who are suffering from cystic fibrosis had improvement in their condition when they inhaled the salt water solution at least twice a day and there was reduction in half of the patients who used to get hospitalized with complications of cystic fibrosis and it improved their ability to clear the mucus from the lungs.

There was also included in the study that there was marked improvement in the lung function.
According to the statistics, there are about 30,000 children and young adults in the United States that are being affected by cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a fatal disease and in this disorder which causes a thick and sticky mucus to build up in the lungs. The inner surfaces of the lung in the patients with cystic fibrosis become dry, which makes the mucus both harder and stickier. During the normal process, the individual can cough up the mucus but in patients with cystic fibrosis the mucus does not come up that easily.

There was an incidental finding that the surfers who ride the waves and are suffering from cystic fibrosis had very fewer lung exacerbations.

This then led the researchers to think that this might have something to do with the salt water that the surfers who have cystic fibrosis have improved pulmonary functions.

The researchers added that the salt water adds a layer of lubricant to the inner lung surfaces and it rehydrates it and that helps make it a whole lot easier to clear the mucus.

The researchers conducted the study on 24 patients for 48 weeks and they found that the hypertonic saline were the ones who had the most benefit and on the other hand the patients who underwent treatment with amiloride, which is a diuretic drug to boost the hydration effect of salt water had no improvement at all.

It was found that people who had been getting the salt water through a nebulizer had marked improvement in lung function and they had about 56 percent fewer lung exacerbations.
The researchers also added that there is a whole lot need to perform more studies so that it could be learnt as to how the people would be able to tolerate the treatment.

It was also mentioned that the cystic fibrosis patients who are admitted for exacerbations at least one time a year can be reduced to half and this would be a whole big achievement.

The treatment with the salt water requires the patients to inhale it for about 15 minutes at a time. The researchers say that they need to find better ways of administering the drug for a less time possible.

This treatment can bring wonders for the patients who are suffering from the disastrous symptoms of cystic fibrosis and they will have a great chance to improve their quality of life.


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Role Of Aspirin In Preventing Heart Disease

Aspirin plays a very different role in men and women from preventing them from heart diseases and strokes. In women, aspirin protects them from ischemic strokes, but they do not provide protection against myocardial infarction or death. On the other hand, aspirin provides men protection against myocardial infarction, but does not prevent them from strokes or cardiovascular mortality.

These results are derived from a meta-analysis study that was conducted in New York.

This is the first time ever that there is data available regarding women and there was no data that was available before for women and the doctors used to hesitate to prescribe aspirin for women. There was only data available on men regarding the use of aspirin. Therefore now it is much better as seen through the study that women can also use aspirin as men.

This study was conducted on 51,000 women and 44,000 men, and there were the differences in the cardioprotective effects between the two genders.

The common adverse effect that was found in both the sexes was that there was noted an incidence of major bleeding episodes.

The use of aspirin in the women was associated with a 12% reduction in cardiovascular events and about 17% reduction in stroke. There were no significant effects of aspirin that were reported on MI or cardiovascular mortality among women.

It has also been stated in the research that when an aspirin therapy is given for an average duration of 6.4 years, this resulted in an complete benefit with about cardiac events in 1000 women and about four events per 1000 men.

It has also been stated that the physicians must outweigh the risks and benefits of aspirin before they prescribe the aspirin therapy to any of the sexes.

The researchers also mentioned that as is reported in the study that there were very few cases of strokes in women and myocardial infarctions in men, it must be noted that the dose of aspirin, the duration for which it was used and the follow up was not uniform.


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Obesity Going High

Obesity is a world wide problem and it is on a constant rise. There is a research that was conducted in Canada and it showed that the Canadians who are obese are getting more obese.

The scientists still do not know as to why there is a constant rise in the population who are obese and getting more obese.

The researchers say that they do not yet know as to what is the exact cause of the steep high rise in the number of the obese people getting more obese, as well as the relation of the medical and the social factors that are contributing to this problem.

The researchers also added that it is really difficult to lose weight or even maintain weight when the person is at extremes level of obesity.

There was a study that was published in a journal, which mentioned that the people whose weight consists of 35 to 40 percent or more of fat have quadrupled since 1985.

There was a study that was released in 2004 in Canada where they found that about 7.8 percent of population was morbidly obese.

In those same statistics it was showed that there were about 36.1 percent of adults were overweight and there are another 23.1 percent who are obese and this makes the total to about 59.2 percent.

When the data was collected according to the ages, the children and adolescents between ages 2 and 17, there were about 26 percent who were overweight and about 8 percent who were obese and that makes the total to about 34 percent.

The research mentions that the Canadians are putting on weight much faster than they are taking it off. It also said that that the people who were overweight in 1994 had become obese by 2002. The rate with which the people gained back in the range of normal weight was about 10 percent.

The people who are morbidly obese are the ones who suffer a lot of health problems at a younger age, which include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, osteoarthritis, cancer and fertility issues.

It is also mentioned that when the person is obese, lifestyle changes do not help such as diet and exercise and the person needs drugs and bariatric surgery to control their weight.

There are a lot of other issues that the obese people face, which include not able to fit in the ambulances, wheelchairs etc.

Body mass index is an approximation of body fat, which is based on height and weight. It has been established that a person who has a body mass index of 25 or more is considered as an overweight individual, and a person who has a body mass index of 30 or more is called as obese.

Learn many home remedies for obesity.


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Dogs Can Do Wonders

It has been long known that dogs have amazing sniffing powers and are used to sniff out explosives, narcotics, and they are also known for their powers of sniffing out fake money.

A new research has been conducted where it is shown that dogs can detect lung and breast cancer through breath samples.

It has always been a wonder when there are devices or gadgets that were invented who have the ability to detect cancer in its earliest stages. It has always been a prime need to detect cancer in its early stages so that lives could be saved and the people who are suffering from cancer can be provided with good quality of life and now with dogs have the ability to sniff out cancer through breath samples in its earliest stages can provide an amazing help to the people who might have to go through the tough and prolonged treatment process with poor prognosis.

The researchers think that dogs would be the most important tool in recognizing tumor at a very early stage and the canines can pick up on the chemical differences that linger in the breath samples of an individual who is suffering from cancer.

The dogs that were trained to identify cancers at early stages were Labrador and the two Portuguese water dogs that were trained in three weeks by either laying or sitting after they have sniffed on the breath samples that were taken from the lung or breast cancer patients, while they were trained to ignore the healthy individuals.

These are ordinary household pets who have the power to sniff out cancers in individuals.

The research was conducted on a total of 169 breath samples that were collected in special tubes, out of which 55 patients were with lung cancer and 31 patients had breast cancer and about 83 people were healthy.

The cancer patients were the ones who were already being diagnosed through the conventional ways, either by CT scans or mammograms and were about to start the chemotherapy program. These samples to which the dogs identified the cancer patients were new and they were not exposed to them earlier during training.

It was shown that through the research that dogs were about 88 to 97 percent correct in identifying both early and late stage breast and lung cancers.

This study is yet to appear in March this year.

The best thing that will happen is that there will be a chance for more people to live a healthy life after the deadly cancers have been diagnosed at an early stage, as it is impossible to save a life when the cancers progress to advanced stages.

This ability of dogs with which they can detect cancer was discovered in 1989 and they were known to detect melanoma and bladder cancers.

The researchers are planning to start and develop the canine training centers where they can train dogs and can train them to detect different cancers.

The time the dogs took to detect cancer was very less, and the accuracy level that they gave was way high after such a short time of training.

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Cholesterol Lowering Drugs Offer No Help To Fight Cancer

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

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

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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Grapefruits Can Help Fight Gum Disease

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.

Related: Home remedies for toothache


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Risk Of Diarrhea Increased By Stomach Acid Drugs

According to a recent research the most prescribed anti-heartburn drug such as proton-pump inhibitor blocks the stomach acid production, but on the other hand it increases the risk of an increasingly common infectious diarrhea.

The researchers say that there are some drugs, which are known to triple the risk of diarrhea, which was blamed earlier on the Clostridium difficile, a bacteria, and the names of the drugs are Nexium and Losec.

The other drug, which is prescribed for heartburn activity are called as H2 antagonists, the brand name of which is Zantac, which is found to double the risk of the bacterial diarrhea.
The other thing that causes the most common type of infectious diarrhea is Clostridium difficile, which occurs mostly in the patients aged 75 and older.

According to the statistics, the infectious diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, which is the source of infection and inflammation of the intestine mostly happens during the hospital stays. But the latest reports suggest that the cases of diarrhea have risen to about 22 per 100,000 people in 2004 from 1 in 100,000 a decade earlier.

The research also suggested that the bacteria, Clostridium difficile, which is the pathogen for causing the infectious diarrhea is on a rise constantly, which is pretty concerning and that may be due to the fact that the bacteria is going constantly through a variation in the strains and this is quite alarming and concerning. The researchers are conducting studies to find out more about the strains and look for how the variation is taking place so that necessary steps can be taken to prevent this from turning into a disaster.

These acid blocking drugs have been gaining popularity over time for treatments of gastric reflux disease.

There is still a whole lot work that needs to be done in conjunction with the pharmaceutical companies to determine as to how we can prevent these drugs from causing the diarrheal symptoms in patients suffering from heartburn.

Here are some home remedies for diarrhea.


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Chronic Reflux Treated Well With Drugs As Well As With Surgery

According to the new research, it is estimated that about 60 million of Americans who are suffering from gastroesophageal reflux disease can be effectively cured with drugs, which is as effective as being managed with surgery.

Gastroesophageal reflux disease occurs when the food contents along with the acid regurgitates back into the esophagus from the stomach thus causing heartburn and causing damage to the esophagus.

With gastroesophageal reflux disease, the main question that arises among most of the people suffering from this is problem is that whether they should take the pills to treat the gastroesophageal reflux disease or should they go for surgery.

The report on gastroesophageal reflux disease registers the various treatments available and the evidence for their safety and effectiveness. The main purpose of this report is to provide the people and the healthcare providers with the recent information as to the availability of the latest treatments for the condition.

The findings that were listed in the report regarding chronic gastroesophageal reflux disease were that over-the-counter H2 receptor antagonist medications are not as effective as proton pump inhibitors, although PPIs have more side effects. The brand names included in H2 receptor antagonists are Axid, Pepcid, Tagamet and Zantac. The brand names of the PPI drugs are as follows; Aciphex, Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec OTC and Protonix.

When the PPIs are compared with surgery, PPIs appear to be similarly effective in relieving symptoms and improving quality of life.

The doctors say that in general, patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease do respond to both surgical and medical treatment, however, the basis of therapy, which is not addressed, is that we can alter our diet and eating and sleeping habits to prevent the gastroesophageal disease from occurring in the first place.

Another researcher added that without bringing about change in lifestyle, a large number of patients experience only limited improvement in signs and symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease despite aggressive medical and / or surgical intervention.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but the guidelines that are already spanned out must be followed so that this problem can be prevented from occurring in the first place. The gastroesophageal reflux disease in the chronic forms can also cause the esophagus to have strictures and this might lead to deterioration of health of the person suffering from it. So we need to follow the guidelines to have an improved quality of life.

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