on July 5th, 2008
Smoking-related diseases will kill about one million Indians a year by 2010. It could account for 20 per cent of all male deaths and 5 per cent of all female deaths in the 30 to 69 age group, says a study based on a nationwide survey of 1.1 million homes. There are about 120 million smokers in India. Around 30 per cent of men and 5 per cent of women in the 30-69 age group smoke either bidis or cigarettes. Men who smoke bidis shorten their lives by six years, and women by eight years. Men who smoke cigarettes lose ten years. “Smokers in India start later in life and smoke fewer cigarettes, or bidis, than those in Europe or America, but the risks are as extreme as in the west,” said Prabhat Jha, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Toronto. He said graphic warnings would be more effective in educating people about the dangers of smoking, as 50 per cent of smoking-related deaths were expected to be among poor, illiterate Indians. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was led by a team of doctors from India, Britain and Canada.
on July 4th, 2008
* Ill-fitting shoes don’t cause bunions, that painful swelling on the first joint of the big toe. High heels and toe-squishing footwear might contribute to the condition, but these abdominal bony growths form because of a laxity in the joint at the base of the big toe.
* A stress fracture in the foot is often one of the first signs of osteoporosis.
* Plantar fasciitis is an inflammation of the connective tissue running from your heel to the base of your toes. It becomes more common with age. A doctor can suggest a regimen of pain medication and stretches.
* Cutting away corns, the painful area of thickened skin on the foot, or removing them with medicated pads at home can lead to infection.Most corns are caused by ill-fitting shoes, or by rolling your feet inward or outward while walking.
* Broken toe bones that don’t heal properly can lead to arthritis and deformities later in life.
on July 3rd, 2008
Breast cancer, like any other cancer, secretes certain proteins for its survival. This protein can be detected in saliva or blood. Scientists from the University of Texas have identified certain proteins unique in patients with breast cancer. A study of the saliva of 30 women — 10 with no cancer, 10 with benign breast disease, and 10 with breast cancer — showed a definite difference in the saliva of each group. Now we depend on mammograms (X-rays of the breast) for diagnosis of breast cancer. But the tumor has to grow about half a centimeter to be detected. In about 15 per cent cases, mammograms failed to detect cancer. Also, the method is not very expensive and not very common in the developing world. Non-invasive molecular tests looking at the protein expression in the tumor can detect the cancer early on.
on July 2nd, 2008
Feeding babies sugar solution two minutes before vaccination may lessen the pain of injection. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University studied 100 infants — half of them were given sugar solution and the others sterile water — and assessed their crying, body posture, facial expression, and behavior immediately after giving the shot. They found that giving 2ml of a 24 per cent oral sucrose solution to infants two minutes before immunization was effective in decreasing pain and shortening the time of their returning to a near-normal state.
on July 1st, 2008
Mammograms, which help detect breast cancer, may also help identify women who are at risk for strokes. Benign arterial calcifications found in blood vessels of the breasts were more commonly found on the mammograms of women who had suffered a stroke. Researchers at the University of Missouri looked at 793 mammograms of women aged 40 to 90 and found that 86 of them, about 10 per cent, had the calcifications. And 115 of the 204 women in the group who had had stroke had the calcifications. Previous studies showed a link between benign calcifications and the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
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