Health News

Being overweight may affect men’s semen quality

Overweight and obese men in a new study showed diminished quantity and quality of semen, suggesting that a weight problem might also affect fertility, researchers say.

“The heavier the men, the higher the chances of a low sperm count,” urologist Dr. Keith Jarvi told Reuters Health. “I don’t think that this message is well known or appreciated by men in general,” said Jarvi, who was not involved in the new study.

Dr. Michael Eisenberg, of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, and his colleagues recruited 468 couples in Texas and Michigan who were planning to conceive a child and tested several aspects of the men’s semen.

They also weighed the men and measured their waists and found that greater waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) – a measure of weight relative to height – were both linked to lower ejaculate volume.

“All aspects of semen quality are important,” Eisenberg said. “Ejaculate has several chemicals that provide a safer environment for sperm. As such, if the volume is low it may be a problem.”

Sperm count, another important metric, was lower among men with bigger waists.

“The sperm count is just that: the number of sperm in each cc of semen,” said Jarvi, director of the Murray Koffler Urologic Wellness Centre and Head of Urology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada.

Higher semen volume, within the optimal range between 2 and 5 milliliters, will overall have more sperm, Jarvi said. A volume under 1.5 mLs may cause infertility, he said, but too much is not good either.

In the study, a typical man in the normal BMI range had an ejaculate volume of 3.3 mL, compared to 2.8 mL for men in the highest BMI category, severely obese.

Men with the largest waists, over 40 inches, had about 22 percent lower total sperm count compared to men with waist measurements under 37 inches.

There appeared to be no link to semen concentration, motility, vitality or physical appearance, according to the results published in the journal Human Reproduction.

About half of the men had already fathered children when the study took place and none of the couples were seeking help with infertility when they were recruited.

The researchers also did not follow up to see whether the men succeeded in having children later.

Most men exercised less than once per week, so the authors couldn’t really examine what effects more exercise might have on sperm.

“The big question is what does reduction in body weight do to the sperm counts in men starting with a low sperm count?” Jarvi said. “This is the question that my overweight patients ask.”

Source: Reuters

Pregnant woman kept on life support against husband’s wishes

A man reportedly is fighting a Texas law to get his pregnant wife removed from life support, which he says were her wishes before she was declared brain dead.

Texas man Erick Munoz found his wife Marlise unconscious on their living room floor at 2:00 a.m. on Nov. 26, WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth reports. Munoz, a paramedic, began CPR and called 911, and his wife — also a paramedic — was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. She apparently experienced a pulmonary embolism, a potentially fatal blood clot.

“You just never think it’s going to be you,” he told the station.

Marlise was 14 weeks pregnant at the time, so doctors told the family they would provide all life-saving measures to her in order to comply with a rule under the Texas Health and Safety Code.

That rule states, “a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.”

But, Erick says he and his wife had discussed and mutually agreed upon “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders, though one was never signed. She has not shown brain activity since, and doctors are unsure how long the fetus was without oxygen and nutrients, so it’s unknown whether the fetus is even viable.

“I don’t agree with this law… I don’t,” he said, adding, he doesn’t expect many people to side with him on this.

A hospital spokesperson told CBS News that the facility follows state law.

“Our responsibility at JPS Health Network is to be a good corporate citizen while also providing quality care for our patients,” J.R. Labbe said in an email. “In all cases, JPS will follow the law as it applies to healthcare in the state of Texas. And this specific state law says life-sustaining treatment cannot be withheld or withdrawn from a pregnant patient.”

One bioethicist not involved in the case considers the Texas law both unethical and unconstitutional, arguing it violates individual liberties.

Source: bossip

Duke University scientists find women need more sleep than men

If the woman in your life woke up grumpy this morning, don’t be too hard on her. It is, apparently, only natural.

Scientists at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina discovered that women need more sleep than men. And chances are, she’s not getting enough.

In fact the best thing a loving husband or partner can do is perhaps persuade her to get a few extra hours snuggling under the duvet. Or face the consequences.

More relationship stories

Scientists say women suffer more than men, both mentally and physically, if they are forced to skimp on their sleep.

As well as a higher risk of heart disease, depression and psychological problems, sleep-deprived women have extra clotting factors in their blood, which can lead to a stroke.

They also have higher inflammation markers, which indicate developing health problems.
As inflammation markers are also linked to pain, sleep expert Dr Michael Breus explained that women can literally be in more pain when they wake up.

That’s enough to make any girl feel rather grumpy.

By contrast, the state of a man’s health does not appear to be closely linked to how much they sleep.

In the study, men showed no increased risk of developing the ailments that affect women when they are sleep deprived.

“We found that women had more depression, women had more anger, and women had more hostility early in the morning,” said Dr Breus.

If this sounds like someone you know, it can probably be blamed on sleep deprivation and the fact that women are particularly susceptible to the effects. What does Dr Breus advise?

If you don’t manage to get enough sleep at night, try taking strategic naps.
However, he warned that those naps should be either 25 minutes or 90 minutes long. Any other length will make the snoozer feel worse when they wake, he said.

This is not the first time experts have suggested that women need more sleep than men.
One of Britain’s leading authorities on sleep found that women actually need 20 minutes more shut-eye. This is because of the female multi-tasking brain.

“One of the major functions of sleep is to allow the brain to recover and repair itself,” said Professor Jim Horne, director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, England.

“During deep sleep, the cortex – the part of the brain responsible for thought, memory, language and so on – disengages from the senses and goes into recovery mode.

“The more of your brain you use during the day, the more of it that needs to recover and, consequently, the more sleep you need.
“Women tend to multi-task – they do lots at once and are flexible – and so they use more of their actual brain than men do. Because of that, their sleep need is greater.

“A man who has a complex job that involves a lot of decision-making and lateral thinking may also need more sleep than the average male – though probably still not as much as a woman.”
source: news.com

India launches its indigenous cervical cancer screening device

India launched its first indigenously developed device for screening and early detection of cervical cancer, which kills over 74,000 women in the country every year.

Launching the low-cost “AV-Magnivisualiser” device developed by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad said it will help in early detection of cervical cancer among adolescent girls and women, thus helping in save many lives.

Designed and developed at Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology ( ICPO), Noida, working under ICMR, the device will cost about Rs 10,000 and is much lower as compared to the cervical cytology method used at present in medical colleges, the equipment of which costs over Rs eight lakh.

“I am extremely happy and I congratulate the scientists involved in the cutting-edge level. I hope the cost-effective device will be available in the market in the next eight months to help ensure ..

The Minister said with this device it will be easy to screen and detect cervical cancer in its early stages, thus making treatment more effective.

“We will also ensure proper training of nurses and manpower for using the device in the coming months,” he said, adding that screening for cervical cancer is available only in regional cancer institutes and medical colleges at present.

He said the equipment presently being used is expensive, as a result of which not many medical coll ..

Source: Economic Times

Three reasons why you should eat kiwi fruit

Other than its exotic taste, kiwi fruit contains numerous phytonutrients and well known vitamins and minerals that promote health.

Here are a few reasons why you should eat kiwi:

1. Aids digestion: A great source of fibre, kiwi prevents constipation and other intestinal problems. It also offers soluble fiber, providing bulk that promotes the feeling of fullness – a natural diet aid.

2. Reduces cardiovascular risk: Eating kiwi every day may help lower risk of blood clots and reduce the amount of fats (triglycerides) in the blood, thus promoting cardiovascular health. It is an excellent source of vitamin C, and polyphenols, and a good source of potassium, all of which may function individually or in concert to protect the blood vessels and heart. High level of potassium helps keep electrolytes in balance by counteracting the effects of sodium, thus helping manage blood pressure.

3. Good for asthma and diabetes sufferers: The high content of vitamin C confers significant protective effect against respiratory symptoms associated with asthma such as wheezing. Kiwifruit, as a very good source of dietary fiber is good for keeping the blood sugar levels of diabetic patients under control.

Source: Zee news

850 foreign doctors allowed to practice in India this year

Under the modified provisions of the Indian Medical Council Act 1956, which removed the restriction for granting temporary permission to foreign doctors only for the purpose of teaching, research and charitable work, 850 foreign doctors were granted temporary permission this year to practice in the country.

Foreign doctors are granted temporary permission by the Medical Council of India (MCI) on the basis of their applications received through the inviting institutions.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad informed the Lok Sabha on December 13 that 1289 foreign doctors sought permission between January 1 and December 10 this year, out of which 850 have been granted permission.

Maximum number of temporary permission was granted to foreign doctors to practice in Maharashtra (172) and Delhi (125). Tamil Nadu, an emerging medical hub, also received a huge number of permissions with approval to 114 foreign doctors.

The provisions of the Indian Medical Council Act 1956 allow temporary permission to foreign doctors for the purpose of teaching, research or charitable work for a specified period limited to the institution to which they are attached. Recently, the government, through the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Second Ordinance 2013, removed the restriction for granting temporary permission to foreign doctors only for the purpose of teaching, research and charitable work.

Source: India Medical Times

Pre-Natal Care Goes Mobile in Uganda

Kampala — In Uganda, three students have invented a smartphone application that can measure the heartbeat of a fetus. The device could improve prenatal care in rural clinics, and may even help prevent deaths during childbirth.

Joshua Okello’s first love was medicine. He studied to be a doctor before quitting to pursue his second love: technology. However, his interest in medicine never left him. Last year, Okello and two other students at Kampala’s Makerere University invented a smartphone application that they think could change the face of maternal health care in Africa.

The app is called a WinSenga – “senga” is the local term for an aunt who helps out during pregnancy. It consists of a tiny microphone in a plastic horn, based on the Pinard horn used by midwives for centuries.

“It’s a long cone-shaped device with a hole through it and a flat top. The midwife places it on the belly and listens in. Every midwife in this country has seen it, and that is what they are trained with,” said Okello.

The sound the horn picks up is fed into a smartphone that records and analyzes the fetal heartbeat. From there, said Okello, the WinSenga suggests different courses of action.

“Say you have a baby and we detect that the heartbeat is less than 120 beats per minute. That is a problem. So immediately, we pop up something that says ‘Please, we suggest that you could do A, B, C, D,'” explained Okello.

The device is not yet fully functional, but last year Okello and his partners won a $50,000 grant from Microsoft – the “Win” in WinSenga is short for Windows. They are now developing their app from a Microsoft-funded technology incubator at the university, set up to encourage Uganda’s nascent tech sector.

Having a mobile device could make it easier for health care workers to reach women in remote villages, said Okello. The final result should also be cheaper than the machines currently in use.

“We are getting a solution that’s cheaper, which means that more clinics are going to get it. If we could get Huawei or I don’t know who to give us phones for free, we are looking at a solution that’s less than $100,” said Okello.

Juliet Birungi, an obstetrician who has tried the WinSenga, says she sees another use for it. In understaffed hospitals like the one she works in, she says, the WinSenga could be even more helpful if it is attached to a mother’s belly during labor and delivery, monitoring the state of the baby.

“You have so many mothers in labor, and we do not have enough staff. You find that while the mother is laboring here, the other one is delivering, the other one is bleeding. So when you come, you are able to look at the recording,” said Birungi.

An abnormal fetal heart rate can be a warning sign of labor complications, and could mean the difference between life and death, says Birungi. Uganda’s maternal mortality rate is so high, she adds, that a machine can only do so much.

“Just like all devices, they do not replace the need for a human being who is skilled. The need is still there, and it’s real and it has to be worked upon. But this device would make their work easier, and the outcome would be much better,” said Birungi.

The app could easily be adapted to other developing countries with similar problems, thinks Okello. With a little tweaking, he adds, it could even be used at home by pregnant women in developed countries.

For the moment, however, he and his team are busy preparing for a clinical trial in January, when WinSenga will finally be put to the test.

Source: All africa

How to use meditation for pain relief?

With its origins in ancient religious and spiritual traditions, meditation is a widely used mind-body practice used even today, to complement medical procedures and treatments.

Although, used mostly for relaxation and stress reduction, meditation-based therapy is increasingly offered in medical centers and clinics today to manage pain and reduce anxiety prior to surgeries. Surprised? Recent studies have shown that frequent practice of meditation can lead to significant control of pain. Read on to know how meditation alters your pain perception and quells pain even better than some of the most powerful drugs.

Meditation and common forms
The term meditation refers to a set of techniques wherein a person minimizes the activity of the mind without altering the level of alertness. Broadly, the technique has been categorized under five basic categories:

Mantra meditation
This comprises the Transcendental Meditation techniques, Clinically Standardized Meditation and Relaxation Response. In this process, by repeatedly using a sound or phrase, a person focuses to achieve a state of perfect consciousness.

Mindfulness meditation
This form of meditation involves focusing on what you experience while performing the technique like the very flow of your breath.

Yoga
Here, a person attempts to achieve a state of calmness by combining bodily postures with controlled breathing.

Tai-Chi – A form of Chinese martial arts, the technique is performed using self-paced series of movements in a slow-graceful manner along with deep breathing.

Qi gong – This involves a combination of meditation, breathing exercise, relaxation and physical movements.

Meditation and pain management: In the past, meditation has been explored extensively for its effects on stress reduction and other similar clinical functions. However, researchers have now identified another significant health benefit of the technique that suggests that it is actually possible to overcome debilitating pain with the help of meditation. What’s more, some of these studies have also suggested that the pain-relieving effects of meditation might be even more effective than morphine.

Back in April, 2011, a study by the researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center indicated that a person can attain at least 40 per ent decrease in pain intensity and 57 per cent in pain unpleasantness merely by practicing these techniques regularly. This decrease in pain was found to be much higher than with morphine or other pain-relieving drugs. With the help of magnetic resonance imaging, the brain activity of study participants after meditation demonstrated how the technique increased the activity of certain areas which are responsible for pain perception.

Despite such findings, scientists were unable to ascertain the actual mechanism of this phenomenon until now. According to a recent research published at the Brain Research Bulletin, investigators from Harvard, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified a possible answer. They suggested that the explanation probably lies in alpha waves manipulation in the brain.

Furthermore, they explained that by practicing the techniques of mindfulness meditation for a period of eight-weeks or above, you will be able to control the activity of these brain waves.

Source; Times of India

Older men who ignore knee pain risk worse problems

Shrugging off chronic knee pain as an inevitable part of aging puts men in their 70s at risk for accelerated muscle loss, falls and generally reduced quality of life, a new study suggests.

“This study confirms the findings of many studies indicating that chronic knee pain will seriously impact quality of life in older people,” lead author Marlene Franzen said.

Franzen is an associate professor of physiotherapy at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Nearly half of men over 70 have chronic knee pain, according to her team’s report in the journal in Age and Ageing.

“Chronic knee pain is not a ‘benign’ disease,” she told Reuters Health. “It does lead to a greatly increased risk of falls and developing mobility disability, and therefore increased risk of early mortality.”

Mobility disability means being unable to walk up or down stairs to the first floor without help and being unable to walk about half a mile without help, according to Franzen.

She and her coauthors tracked 1,587 men over age 70 for two years. About 640 of the men said they suffered from chronic knee pain at the start of the study. Two years later, another 150 reported experiencing bouts of chronic knee pain as well.

The researchers found that men with knee pain were nearly two and a half times more likely to have mobility disability than those without pain.

“Mobility disability among older people with chronic knee pain is serious as it has been associated with early mortality,” Franzen said.

The men with knee pain were also more likely to experience falls, which can be serious for people over 70, and to have reduced strength and mass in the muscles, tendons and ligaments that extend the knee, according to diagnostic scans.

The link between decreased leg muscle strength and chronic knee pain had only previously been established for women, Franzen said.

While some loss of muscle mass – about 1 percent a year – is typical with aging, Franzen’s team also measured changes in the strength of leg muscles that control the knee.

Past research has found the strength of those muscles drops by about 3.4 percent a year, and that was the rate Franzen’s group saw among men without knee pain. But for men who developed knee pain during the two-year study, muscle strength dropped by 4.5 percent a year.

“I think the evidence from this study and previous research would suggest that knee pain in older adults is associated with increased mobility problems, and this may be at least partly related to muscle strength declines,” David Scott said.

Scott studies the gradual loss of muscle mass that usually begins after age 30 at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, but was not involved in the new study.

“This might indicate that methods to improve lower-limb muscle strength in older adults, such as supervised exercise training, may have potential benefits both in decreasing the disability associated with knee pain, and also in preventing development of pain itself,” he said.

In the new study, obesity, back pain and higher levels of physical activity were more common in the group of men with knee pain. Men in their 80s, however, were less likely to have knee pain, which the authors attributed to their probably being more sedentary.

Knee pain usually becomes troublesome many years earlier than age 70, when people often have more physically demanding lifestyles or occupations, often in their 50s, Franzen said. Knee pain with age is even more common among women, she said.

For the obese, losing weight can help alleviate some knee pain, she said.

Otherwise, patients should see their doctors for an effective and safe pain management strategy, and a physiotherapist for a recommended physical activity program, Franzen said.

Source: News dump

New tech may boost success rate of IVF

 

Scientists have developed a safe, accurate and low-cost method to select genetically normal embryos for the IVF procedure, increasing a couple’s chance of producing a healthy child.

Through whole-genome sequencing of individual egg cells, the new method detects chromosomal abnormalities and DNA sequence variations associated with genetic disorders.

“Theoretically, if this works perfectly, we will be able to double the success rate of test-tube baby technology from 30 per cent to 60 per cent or even more,” said study author Dr Jie Qiao, Chief Physician and head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing.

The in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure involves joining a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring embryos into the woman’s womb.

Various procedures are currently available to detect genetic defects in embryos prior to implantation, but these approaches are often invasive, requiring the removal of cells from the growing embryo, and do not simultaneously detect both chromosomal abnormalities and DNA sequence variations associated with genetic disorders.

Researchers have recently developed whole-genome sequencing methods to simultaneously detect both types of defects in single human sperm cells, but until now, an analogous approach had not been applied to egg cells, even though chromosomal abnormalities are much more common in egg cells than in sperm cells.

In the new study, Dr Sunney Xie of Peking and Harvard universities teamed up with Qiao and Dr Fuchou Tang of Peking University to develop a method for sequencing the entire genomes of polar bodies – cells that arise as a byproduct of egg cell division and often die later on.

Because polar bodies are dispensable for human embryonic development, they can be safely removed without harming the embryo.

“We are now starting a clinical trial based on this approach. If the clinical trial works, this technique could enormously increase the success rate of IVF, especially for older women or women who have had recurrent miscarriages,” Xie said.

The study was published in the journal Cell.

Source: Times of India