Health News

Revealed – how chocolate can help you lose weight

Chocolate has almost always been on the ‘Heck no!’ list when it comes to diets, but a new regimen promises eating the sweet treat helps with weight loss. Neuroscientist Dr. Will Clower penned the book ‘Eat Chocolate Lose Weight’ and says consuming chocolate can actually help you eat less each day. Studies on thousands of people have reportedly proved his theory right.

‘What we see in all these people is that the amount that they’re hungry for at the plate will drop by a half to a third,’ the doctor told CBS News Pittsburgh. ‘And the amount that they’re hungry for, the amount of between meal snacks that they have, will drop by about a half.’

However, this doesn’t mean diet followers can chow down on bricks of the stuff each day and expert results. Clower outlines specific guidelines in his book, including going with dark chocolate whenever possible. Already celebrated for its health properties, Clower stresses ‘the darker, the better.’ Dark chocolate protects against sunburn and cancer, provides energy, stabilizes blood sugar and improves mood in addition to aiding weight loss.

‘So all of the good stuff in chocolate comes from one place and one place only – and that is the cocoa,’ Clower said. Cocoa that’s 70 percent or higher is best.

Clower also recommends eating chocolate 20 minutes before lunch and dinner, as well as five minutes after these meals.

‘With the little piece of wonderful, rich dark chocolate at the end of your meal, it stabilizes the sugar onset into your bloodstream so that you have more of that blood sugar more often throughout the afternoon, so you’re just not hungry,’ he explains.

Additional guidelines include not consuming portions larger than the end joint of your thumb, savoring instead of chewing chocolate, and eating the sweet daily.

‘If they brain-scan people and have them eat chocolate while they’re doing it, their pleasure centers are like a Christmas tree — everybody’s happy in there,’ Clower said.

Other health benefits of chocolate

Curious to know how chocolate can be healthy for you in other ways too? Well, here are some more of its health benefits.

1. Makes you feel good

Just like coffee, eating chocolate too can provide a ‘feel-good’ effect in the brain. This is because chocolate contains a stimulant called theobromine which is similar to caffeine, except that it doesn’t affect the central nervous system.

2. Acts as an aphrodisiac

Ever wondered why so many chocolate ads revolve around love and romance? The reason is that chocolate acts as an aphrodisiac which boosts your sexual desire or libido. The two nutrients responsible for giving chocolate this property are tryptophan and phenylethylamine
Source: The health site

Surgeons reconstruct baby’s skull with 3D printing technology

When baby Gabriel was born in August, his dad, Manuel Dela Cruz, said everything initially seemed fine with his new son. It wasn’t until a week after his birth that Gabriel’s parents thought their son’s forehead looked abnormal.

“We noticed something was wrong with him,” Dela Cruz, of East Quogue, N.Y., told . “His eye wasn’t the same, and his right forehead was more protruded than the other one.”

Worried for their son’s health, the new parents took Gabriel to a pediatrician, who diagnosed the newborn with unilateral coronal synostosis – also known as anterior plagiocephaly. For babies with this condition, a growth plate fuses prematurely on one
side of the skull, causing the forehead to become more and more distorted and form asymmetrically.

Although the side effects of plagiocephaly are mostly cosmetic, the deformity can grow significantly worse if left untreated – leading many parents to opt for reconstructive surgery. Knowing what needed to be done, Dela Cruz said it was frightening to have
their son undergo an operation at such a young age.

“You obviously fear the worse, especially because it was in the head,” Dela Cruz said. “Knowing he was going to be opened up…it was very scary on the part of the parent.”

In order to treat Gabriel, physicians at Stony Brook University decided to try a completely new kind of operation – one that would cut down on the time the infant spent in the operating room.

Through a collaboration with Medical Modeling Inc. in Golden, Colo., Dr. Michael Egnor and Dr. Elliot Duboys were able to virtually plan the entire surgery beforehand.  Additionally, the company created 3D printed before-and-after models of Gabriel’s skull for the surgeons, so they could accurately predict how the operation’s results would look.

“The first thing we do, after we make a diagnosis, is a CT scan of the baby’s head… and we sent the CT image to [Medical Modeling],” Egnor, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, told FoxNews.com. “Using a computer program, they simulated the baby’s skull with the symmetry and dimensions it should have. Then the
company manufactured these templates and sent them to us, so we had the exact measurements.”

Knowing exactly how the skull should look after the procedure, 6-month-old Gabriel was brought in for surgery and placed him under anesthesia. In order to get to the deformed bone, the surgeons made an incision across the top of Gabriel’s forehead,
exposing the entire front of the skull and eye sockets. Through the use of a special saw, the surgeons removed four pieces of deformed bone and made special cuts in the skull to help reshape and restructure the baby’s head. In an

attempt to make the remodeling more precise, Egnor and Duboys utilized the 3D printed templates provided by Medical Modeling, which helped to highlight where the surgeons needed to make their incisions.

“They sent us cutting templates, which were pieces of 3D modeling that we were able to place on the child’s skull during surgery,” Duboys, associate professor of surgery at Stony Brook Medicine, told. “And then we just traced where the cuts should be on the
skull, almost like a stencil… And then we know where to cut.”

Both Egnor and Duboys said the 3D modeling technology helped to cut down on the length of the procedure, which meant Gabriel spent far less time under anesthesia than during traditional surgery. They hope more surgeons will utilize this 3D imaging and modeling to perform reconstructive surgeries in the future.

“I think it’s going to become, over time, acknowledged as the best way to do procedures of this nature,” Egnor said. “I was hopeful that this would work nicely, and it made a believer out of me.”

As for Gabriel, Dela Cruz said his son will still need to wear a helmet to reshape his forehead. But overall, he responded extremely well to the surgery and his forehead is not as protruded as it once was.

“There are no side effects, and he’s a normal baby,” Dela Cruz said. “…Gabriel responded very good to the procedure, and three or four days after, he was joking and playing. It was great seeing him that way.”

Source: Fox news

Man Has Skin Reaction to Tattoo — 20 Years Later

There have been many cases of people having allergic reactions just after getting a tattoo. But for one man in England, the reaction was delayed, coming 20 years after he got his tattoo, according to a new report of his case.

The 54-year-old man had recently completed chemotherapy for the blood cancer lymphoma, and had just undergone a bone-marrow transplant using his own cells. Six days later, when his immune system was still suppressed because of the procedure, he developed a fever.

Looking for the cause of the fever, doctors found newly formed skin lesions on the red-ink parts of his old tattoo, resembling the allergic reaction that some people experience when they get a new tattoo.

“While acute red-ink tattoo reactions are well documented, a case of a tattoo reaction with a delay of more than two decades has not been previously described,” said Dr. George Chapman, who treated the man.

Although most people who get such reactions to tattoo ink are allergic to one of the ingredients in the ink, this was likely not the case for this patient, said Chapman, of Churchill Hospital in England.

“Given this was a bone-marrow transplant of the patient’s own bone marrow, his immune system should be near identical (in terms of what his immune system reacts to, and what it has seen before) both before and after the transplant,” Chapman told Live Science in an email.

“I believe that immune-system suppression was the trigger for the reaction, Chapman said.

Most likely, the tattooing done decades ago had introduced bacteria into the man’s body, and those bacteria were held at bay by a healthy immune system, Chapman explained. But once the immune system was compromised by chemotherapy, those bacteria found an opportunity to cause problems.

In fact, three days later, when the patient’s immune system returned to normal, the lesions healed, leaving only peeling skin behind [Image of the tattoo reaction]

The patient declined a biopsy, so it remains unknown which bacteria may have caused the reaction.

However, it is also possible that the reaction was not due to an infection, Chapman said. Rather, an ingredient in the ink might have interacted with one of the chemotherapy drugs to form a new compound. This new molecule could have then appeared new to the immune system, and caused a reaction, Chapman said.

The report was published Jan. 10 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Source: Live science

The Odd Ways Pregnancy Can Cause Vision Problems

Pregnancy can cause vision problems in sometimes unexpected ways, as two new medical reports show.

In one report, a 25-year-old first-time mother experienced blurred vision and flashes of light in both eyes when she was 36 weeks into her pregnancy.

An eye exam showed she had damage to the back of her eye, including swelling of the optic nerve. Another test showed the woman also had extremely high blood pressure, and a urine sample revealed she had abnormally high levels of protein in her urine.

Doctors determined that her eye problems were caused by severe preeclampsia, a complication of pregnancy involving high blood pressure and high levels of protein in the urine, according to the case reported by the researchers, from Mohammed V University in Morocco

The only cure for preeclampsia is to deliver the baby, and the woman underwent a prompt Caesarean section. She had a baby boy, who, despite his low birth weight, appeared to be healthy. Three months later, the woman’s vision was back to normal, the researchers said.
Source: Yahoo news

Drops Are Best Treatment for Ear Tube-Related Dripping

For children with ear tubes, topical antibiotic drops treat the leaky discharge caused by an ear infection much more effectively than oral antibiotics or observation, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

Each year, roughly 670,000 children in the United States have tiny plastic tubes placed in the eardrum in one of the most common surgeries of childhood. If the ear gets infected afterward, clear or bloody discharge can drip out, and a foul smell may be noticeable. This condition of drippy ears, which may or may not be painful, is known as tympanostomy tube otorrhea. In a 2013 study, 67 percent of children who had ear tubes put in experienced one or more episodes of otorrhea in the year after the procedure.

Smaller trials with different designs have found that ear drops are more effective than systemic antibiotics for this common problem. But the new study is the first to include a no-treatment, wait-and-see group, and provides the best evidence to date for the superiority of ear drops for children with tubes.

“This is a big study, very high quality and very rigorous. It’s more of a definitive study,” said Dr. Richard M. Rosenfeld, chairman of otolaryngology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, who was not involved in the research. Putting drops into the ear canal, he said, is akin to “dropping a Scud missile on the bacteria.”

There are two benefits, he said. “It resolves the otorrhea more effectively and faster than oral medicine,” he said. “More importantly, you avoid the problem of resistant germs, which is a major, major problem.”

In the new study, 230 children ages 1 to 10 with acute tube discharge were randomly assigned to three groups: some got ear drops, some got oral antibiotics, and some were simply observed.

At two weeks, 5 percent of the children treated with drops still had discharge from an infection, compared with 44 percent of those treated with oral antibiotics and 55 percent of those who were only observed.

The study suggests that drippy ears in children with tubes might take two weeks or longer to resolve without treatment — a long time if the child has trouble sleeping or cannot participate in activities.

“No previous study assessed the actual need to treat these children,” said Dr. Thijs M.A. van Dongen, the lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands.

In a six-month follow-up, the study found that children who were not treated for the first two weeks had a median total of 18 days of discharge, compared with five days for those who got ear drops, and 13.5 days for those given oral antibiotics.

“It’s better to start treatment quickly after onset of symptoms,” Dr. van Dongen said. “They improve more quickly, and they have less recurrence in following months.”

But Dr. Rosenfeld said it was not clear that all children with tube otorrhea should promptly start ear drops. Watching and waiting is an option, he said, if the drainage is not profuse and causes no discomfort, and the child still sleeps and acts normally. Drops can be expensive, and if used excessively they can cause hard-to-treat yeast overgrowth.

Last July, practice guidelines issued by the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery strongly recommended that clinicians prescribe only topical antibiotic ear drops for children with uncomplicated cases of tube discharge.

But some pediatricians and family physicians still routinely prescribe systemic antibiotics for these cases. Among otolaryngologists, the new guidelines are “fairly well accepted,” said Dr. Joseph E. Kerschner, a professor of otolaryngology and the dean of the medical school at Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. “Still, there’s evidence that not all physicians have gotten the message.”

A 2013 survey found that 54 percent of emergency-medicine physicians used oral antibiotics to treat an ear infection in a child with ear tubes, compared with just 9 percent of ear, nose and throat doctors, almost all of whom used topical antibiotics.

Most children do not see ear, nose and throat specialists first, said Dr. Seth R. Schwartz, an otolaryngologist and the director of the Listen for Life Center at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, so “it’s important that all physicians who treat children with this condition are aware.”

The bottom line is that “oral antibiotics don’t work well” in these cases, he said, and they may cause stomach upset or diarrhea.

In an uncomplicated case of tube discharge, Dr. Kerschner advised parents to say to pediatricians, “’Hey, my kid has a draining ear, how about using topical antibiotics instead of oral antibiotics?’ The child will get better faster and more reliably.”

In children without ear tubes who get an ear infection, drops are not effective as they cannot get behind the ear drum. For those children, oral antibiotics are a common treatment. Lately, Dr. Schwartz said, “there’s a higher recognition that you can treat with observation initially with close follow-up.”

Source: New York Times

 

Heart surgeons in Toronto perform bypass on Twitter

Twitter followers saw photos, learned about bypasses in real time, but ethical questions remain

Surgeons at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre brought Twitter followers into their operating room today while performing a coronary artery bypass graft on a 57-year-old man to raise awareness about heart issues.

The hospital’s social media team tweeted facts, photos and videos of the coronary artery bypass graft, also known as CABG, on Thursday. They are also provided information about preventing heart disease by quitting smoking, exercising and eating better.

Bypass surgery is done to improve blood flow to the heart, typically after arteries have become blocked with plaque due to coronary artery disease. Surgeons remove a healthy blood vessel — often from the leg —and attach it to the blocked artery.

Sunnybrook likened it to a “road detour” around blocked arteries, with the aim of increasing blood flow to the heart.

The hospital has said the patient has given permission and referred to him by his first name, Lou.

At noon, the hospital said the grafts were complete, the heart had resumed beating successfully and Lou was off bypass. A video showed surgeons placing chest tubes to prevent blood from putting pressure on the heart during recovery. At 1 p.m., they closed his chest to complete the surgery successfully — a birthday gift for him.

Earlier, Lou was connected to a bypass, or “heart-lung,” machine to keep oxygenated blood pumping through his body during the procedure, hospital tweets said.

A surgical photo showed a radial artery harvested from his left arm, one of the patient’s two bypass grafts.

“Obviously we can’t bring the public into the operating room, so it’s nice to be able to broadcast what we do,” Dr. Gideon Cohen, Sunnybrook’s chief of cardiac surgery, said in a post-surgery interview with CBC News. “This is an engaging way of keeping the public informed.”

On Twitter, the surgical team was asked about what they feel like during the four hours at the operating table, where they listened to music on a radio.

“You don’t notice it at the time of the operation, but when you get home you feel pretty wiped,” Cohen said. “So it’s probably that kind of subconscious stress that gets to you at the end of the day.”

Source: cbc

AIIMS doctors devise new technique for complex spine surgery

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Doctors at AIIMS have devised a new technique for complex spine surgery involving the joint at the upper part of the neck that supports and articulates with the head.

“The procedure called ‘distraction, compression, extension and reduction (DCER)’ removes the compression over the spinal cord and also reduces the deformity through a single surgery performed only from the back of the neck,” said Prof P Sarat Chandra (Dept of Neurosurgery) who conceptualised the innovative surgery.

The surgery normally is arduous, requires two separate procedures performed at the same sitting or in two different sittings and is a full day job, explained Chandra.

It first involves drilling out the piece of bone compressing the spinal cord (operated through the mouth) followed by a second procedure performed from behind the nape of neck resulting in stabilising the head and neck using rod and screws.

Surgery in this area is quite complex, technically demanding and requires intensive training. However, this procedure reduces the time of surgery by 50 per cent and has also been shown to reduce the rate of complications and hospital stay significantly.

The complication involving this area (called technically as atlanto-axial dislocation and basilar invagination) results in the uppermost portion of the neck slipping from its articulation with the base of the Lead causing compression of the spinal cord.

If untreated, the patient develops weakness of all limbs, becomes incontinent, bed-ridden and finally succumbs to the disease, said Chandra.

“The technique currently does not require any special instrumentation and utilises the existing instruments to perform a 2-axis motion which reduces the deformity,” stated Prof BS Sharma (Dept of Neurosurgery) who also has been part of the study.

The concept of the technique is connection based on the law of levers, first described by Archimedes, Prof P Sarat Chandra said.

He further added that the technique will be of immense use for our patients as it does not require any additional cost, reduces the hospital stay and also the complication rate thus benefiting the patients and the hospital in the long run.

The initial results of this procedure has been published in various prestigious international and national journals and has been also presented in various conferences.

Source: Business standard

Flu hits young, middle aged people hard this year

The flu is hitting young and middle aged people in the United States particularly hard this season, as a tough flu strain re-emerged and too few people were vaccinated, health authorities said Thursday.

More than 60 percent of all severe flu cases this season in the United States were in people 18-64 years old — or about double the usual rate, they said.

Typically, people at risk for flu complications include pregnant women, the elderly, children and people with compromised immune systems.

The main flu circulating this season is H1N1, otherwise known as the “swine flu” that caused a pandemic four years ago.

“It is back this year, and it is hitting younger people hard,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Tom Frieden.

“One of the reasons,” he said, “is that the vaccination rate for young adults, 18-64, is too low.”

Only a third of all people in that age group were vaccinated as of November, compared to nearly two-thirds of children and elderly people, he said.

“That is one of the reasons we are seeing a much higher proportion of hospitalizations and death among 18-64 year olds than we generally see.”

People with underlying health conditions such as obesity, asthma, lung disease and diabetes are particularly vulnerable to dangerous bouts of the flu, leading to pneumonia and possibly death.

Although experts do not have a tally of US deaths yet this season, early indications suggest that there have been more deaths than normal in the 18-64 age group.

Over the previous three flu seasons, people age 18-64 represented only about 35 percent of all flu hospitalizations.

Last year the predominant flu type was H3N2, which accounted for fewer hospitalizations among middle aged people.

Getting vaccinated lowered the risk of having to see a doctor by about 60 percent for people of all ages, the CDC added.

“Vaccination is the single most important thing you can do to protect yourself against the flu,” Frieden said.

The flu is expected to continue to make people sick for the next several weeks across the United States.

The CDC recommends that all people over the age of six months get a flu vaccine each year.

Source: Yahoo news

Meditation can reduce stress disorder in ten days

The researchers tested 11 participants after 10-days and 30-days TM practice. After just 10-days, PTSD symptoms dropped almost 30 per cent.

For people suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), here comes a good news: Transcendental Meditation ™ technique can significantly reduce the stress disorder in flat 10 days.

In experiments on Congolese war refugees living in Ugandan camps, researchers found these fascinating results.

“An earlier study found a similar result after 30 days where 90 per cent of TM participants dropped to a non-symptomatic level. But we were surprised to see such a significant reduction with this group after just 10 days,” said lead author Colonel Brian Rees from US Army Reserve Medical Corps.

The researchers tested 11 participants after 10-days and 30-days TM practice. After just 10-days, PTSD symptoms dropped almost 30 per cent.

“What makes this study interesting is when we tested them in the 90 days before they began the TM technique, their PTSD scores kept going up,” said co-author Fred Travis, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management situated in Iowa, US.

“The Transcendental Meditation technique is increasingly being seen as a viable treatment by the US military,” added Rees.

According to the researchers, during this particular meditation technique, one experiences a deep state of restful alertness.

Repeated experience of this state for 20 minutes twice a day cultures the nervous system to maintain settled mental and physical functioning the rest of the day.

This helps minimise disturbing thoughts, sleep difficulties and other adverse PTSD symptoms, said the study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

Source; khaleej times

Top 5 Reasons Why You Get a Headache

Having a headache is no fun. We have all been there. A small twinge can soon turn into a headache, that can be mildly irritating to excruciatingly painful. But what are some of the main causes of headaches? This article will explore some of the reasons why headaches occur.

#1 Lack of sleep

You can normally tell that if you have had insufficient sleep that a headache will start. I know that is how it usually is with me. I can almost guarantee that if I have not had a proper night’s rest, I will wake up and throughout the day, a headache will form. The solution is simple. Just try to get to bed a little earlier and get plenty of sleep so that a headache does not form in the first place.

#2 Dehydration

By the time you find out that you are dehydrated, you will already be quite dehydrated. One of the signs of this is the onset of a headache. So if you have dry gums, smarting eyes and you know you have not been drinking enough water, you are also likely to develop a headache. If you get a headache as the result of dehydration, it will be a more intense headache, and harder to just shake off. Drink water throughout the day. Even if you have already developed a headache, drink plenty of water with the painkillers and continue to do so. It will help the medication kick in quicker and the headache should soon subside.

#3 Eye strain

How long has it been since your last eye examination? If you wear glasses or contact lenses, your eyesight may have changed and you may require a new prescription. One of the first signs you will get is a headache, as your eyes strain to see what is before you.

#4 Stress or anxiety

Do you worry about a lot of things that are going on in your life? Do you find it hard to cope with anxiety? These are both reasons why many people have a headache. A tension headache will often occur after the muscles around the shoulders and neck become tense. It is not pleasant to have to deal with a headache on top of stress and anxiety as well. Try to relax the shoulders and neck and deal with the issues that are causing you so much stress and anxiety. Do not keep it all bottled up. It will only increase stress levels.

#5 Medical reasons

Concussions and side effects from prescription medications are another reason why a person may develop a headache. See your doctor if you feel that you cannot cope with the headaches and ask about changing to another medication that will not leave you with bad side effects. A concussion is not a condition that can be dealt with straightaway. It may take some time to overcome it. A persistent headache may indicate a more serious underlying cause. Again, consult your doctor and be specific about the kind of pain you feel and how long it has been going on. The doctor will then be more able to treat you properly.

It is not possible to avoid all headaches. But you can help to lessen the effects of a headahce by taking the appropriate action. Some headaches seem to just appear for no apparent reason and with no warning. Make sure that when you do feel a headache developing that you have a reliable form of painkiller on hand to deal with the pain quickly. Try to lie down and close your eyes for a few minutes until you feel the pain lessen. Headaches are a nuisance, but they need not take over your life.

Source: Yahoo voices