health tips

5-year-old boy will receive medical marijuana to treat seizures

An Arizona family plans to give medical marijuana to their 5-year-old son to treat his seizures caused by a genetic brain defect.

Zander Welton had his first seizure when he was 9 months old and now has them weekly.

His parents, who live in Mesa, say the cortical dysplasia, coupled with autism, keeps Zander from any real form of communication. He squeals and grunts, and on occasion, will bring them a cup to indicate that he’s thirsty, but otherwise doesn’t use hand gestures or form words.

After hearing about some disabled kids thriving thanks to medical marijuana, Jacob and Jennifer Welton have started the process of making Zander a legal cardholder.

The Weltons hope to start giving their son the marijuana oil drops by next week, using a syringe to pinpoint the exact dosage that works.

“If this finally works for Zander and I finally get to meet who he is, that would be amazing.

Because I don’t know who he is. He’s just a little boy that’s trapped in this craziness,” Jennifer Welton told Phoenix TV station KNXV.

The Weltons have two other sons and Zander is the second oldest. He’s undergone two brain surgeries, a third surgery for shock therapy and has been administered a series of trial and error prescription drugs.

His latest prescription made minor improvements with his seizures, but Jennifer Welton said the medication made her son more combative.

Zander’s mobility also is limited and he often reverts back to crawling after a bad seizure.

For medical marijuana treatments, the Weltons need two doctors to sign off on it. The caregiver also needs to be approved for a medical marijuana caregiver’s card and that person has to live with the recipient.

The couple connected with a naturopathic doctor and started the process to administer legal pot, learning Tuesday that their applications have been approved.

Medical marijuana isn’t covered by insurance.  The state currently picks up the $5,000 a month tab for Zander’s prescriptions.

The CBD oil will cost about $300 a week out-of-pocket. The Weltons have been reaching out to friends and family for donations.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/29/5-year-old-boy-will-receive-medical-marijuana-to-treat-seizures/#ixzz2dX9Ck82y

 

Migraines cause long-lasting changes to brain structure

Symptoms can include a pounding headache, nausea, vomiting and light sensitivity.

Migraine may have more impacts on your mind than you may have thought at first. Scientists have discovered that migraine could have long-lasting effects on the brain’s structure.

Traditionally, migraine has been considered a benign disorder without long-term consequences for the brain,” said Messoud Ashina, one of the researchers, in a news release. “Our review and meta-analysis study suggests that the disorder may permanently alter brain structure in multiple ways.”

Migraine affects about 10 to 15 percent of the general population and the impacts associated with migraine can cause a substantial personal, occupational and social burden. Symptoms can include a pounding headache, nausea, vomiting and light sensitivity. Because there are no official “cures” for migraine, this makes living with the condition difficult. That’s why it’s important to understand exactly what might cause migraine and what its effects might be on the brain.

In order to examine the impact of migraine, the researchers reviewed six population-based studies and 13 clinic-based studies. They examined whether people who experienced migraine or migraine with aura had an increased risk of brain lesions, silent abnormalities or brain volume changes on MRI brain scans in comparison to those without the conditions.

In the end, the researchers found that migraine with aura increased the risk of white matter brain lesions by 68 percent. Migraine with no aura, in contrast, increased the risk by 34 percent. The scientists also discovered that the risk for infarct-like abnormalities increased by 44 percent for those with migraine with aura compared to those without aura. In addition, brain volume changes were more common in people with migraine and migraine with aura than those with no migraines.

“We hope that through more study, we can clarify the association of brain structure changes to attack frequency and length of the disease,” said Ashina. “We also want to find out how these lesions may influence brain function.”

Currently the researchers plan to conduct further studies to investigate these lesions and migraine further.

The findings are published in the journal Neurology.

 

 

Study finds poverty reduces brain power

Poverty require so much mental energy so the poor have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life

Poverty and the all-consuming fretting that comes with it require so much mental energy that the poor have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life, according to the findings of an international study published on Thursday.

The mental strain could be costing poor people up to 13 IQ (intelligence quotient) points and means they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that amplify and perpetuate their financial woes, researchers found.

“Our results suggest that when you are poor, money is not the only thing in short supply. Cognitive capacity is also stretched thin,” said Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, part of an international team that conducted the study.

In a series of experiments, researchers from Harvard, Princeton and other universities in North America and from Britain’s University of Warwick found that pressing financial worries had an immediate impact on poor people’s ability to perform well in cognitive and logic tests.

Far from signaling that poor people are stupid, the results suggest those living on a tight budget have their effective brain power, or what the researchers called “mental bandwidth”, dramatically limited by the stress of making ends meet.

On average, someone weighed down by money woes showed a drop in cognitive function in one part of the study that was comparable to a 13 point dip in IQ, and similar to the performance deficit expected from someone who has missed a whole night’s sleep.

“Previous views of poverty have blamed (it) on personal failings, on an environment that is not conducive to success,” said Jiaying Zhao, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

“We are arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function,” she said.

Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton who worked on the research team, said it was not stress in general, but financial worries in particular, that led to a reduced ability to make sound decisions.

“The poor are often highly effective at focusing on and dealing with pressing problems,” he said. “But they don’t have leftover bandwidth to devote to other tasks.

“So, if you live in poverty, you’re more error prone and errors cost you more dearly — it’s hard to find a way out.”

The researchers studied two very different groups – shoppers at a mall in New Jersey in the United States, and sugar cane farmers in rural India.

In the mall study, they gathered dozens of low and middle-income shoppers and subjected them to a battery of tests to measure IQ and impulse control.

Half of the participants were first asked to think about what they would do if their car broke down and the repair cost $1,500 – designed to kick off worries about money. It was among these people that performance dipped significantly.

In India, the researchers found that farmers had diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest compared to afterwards, when their coffers have been replenished.

“One month after the harvest, they’re pretty rich, but the month before – when the money has run out – they’re pretty poor,” Mullainathan said in a report of the research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

“What we see is that IQ goes up, (when they are rich)… errors go way down, and response times go way down.”

He said the effect in India was about two-thirds the size of the effect in the mall study – equal to around nine or 10 IQ points difference from one month to the next.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/08/30/study-finds-poverty-reduces-brain-power/#ixzz2dWnPFZ9N

 

4 first-aid remedies in your kitchen

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Some of the best first-aid tools can be found in your kitchen

Some of the best first-aid tools can be found in your kitchen. While you should always have some Band-Aids and first-aid ointment in your bathroom cabinet, there are some things in your house you may not have thought about that could help out in a health crisis.

Here are a few that will help out in a pinch.

1. Onions
Onions can be used as a topical treatment for burns. Apply a cut onion to the burn as soon as it happens, and it will help to alleviate the pain. It can also be used on bee stings.

2. Green tea
Green tea has a laundry list of health benefits – from longevity and immunity-boosting properties to heart-healing power. But, did you know green tea can also be used to soothe puffy eyes? The caffeine helps reduce swelling and shrinks blood vessels.

3. Honey
Honey can sweeten a dish – and treat a hangover.

It’s true – honey helps your body metabolize alcohol quicker, and it’s packed with potassium, which your body loses after a night of drinking.

4. Salt
Salt is an excellent anti-inflammatory. Use it to combat a sore throat – gargling with salt water will ease the pain.

 

HPV vaccine for boys has ‘good start’ in first year

When the HPV vaccine was first recommended for boys, health officials worried it would be an unusually hard sell. But a new report suggests that might not be the case.

About 1 in 5 boys got at least one of the recommended three doses last year, relatively good for a new vaccine aimed at adolescents.

The shots are largely intended not to protect boys from disease, but to stop them from spreading a sexually transmitted virus to girls that could cause cervical cancer.

The vaccine hasn’t been very popular among girls. The government report issued Thursday is the first real sense of how many boys are getting the shots.

“It’s a good start,” said Shannon Stokley, a vaccination expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Introduced in 2006, the vaccine protects against human papillomavirus, which is spread during sex. Most infections go away on their own, without people developing symptoms. But the virus can cause cervical cancer in females, genital warts in both sexes, and some other, less common conditions like throat and anal cancer.

The vaccine was first recommended for girls ages 11 and 12 because it works best if given before a teen starts to have sex. In 2011, it was also recommended for boys that age to help prevent the virus’s spread.

The CDC report covers vaccination rates for last year, the first full year since the shots were advised for boys. It’s based on telephone calls to families for about 19,000 boys and girls ages 13 to 17.

About 21 percent of the boys had gotten at least one of the three doses. Less than 7 percent were fully vaccinated.

The rates look relatively good compared to the initial rates for some other vaccines aimed at adolescents. For example, the initial rate for a meningococcal vaccine was just 12 percent.

Rates tend to start low when a vaccine is first recommended and build after. So the HPV numbers for boys are reason to be optimistic, said the CDC’s Dr. Melinda Wharton, although she added a word of caution.

“Given how the coverage level has stalled for girls, though, a solid start isn’t enough,” she said.

For girls, the initial rate for at least one HPV shot was 25 percent. Last year, it was about 54 percent and hadn’t changed much from the previous two years. Only a third was fully immunized with all three doses last year.

“We’d really like to do much better with boys and girls,” Wharton said.

Source: fox news

Eat kiwifruit to ward off tiredness and depression

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Vitamin C in kiwi fruit activate enzymes in the body and different neurochemicals in the brain

Researchers found people who ate two kiwifruit daily had significantly less fatigue and depression than those who consumed half a kiwifruit daily.

The finding came out of a University of Otago, Christchurch study which involved 54 young male university students who generally eat little fresh fruit and vegetables.

They also felt they had more energy.

These changes appeared to be related to the optimizing of vitamin C intake with the two- kiwifruit dose. Kiwifruit are an exceptional source of vitamin C.

Vitamin C helped activate enzymes in the body that enhanced the levels of metabolic energy and different neurochemicals in the brain, Professor Margreet Vissers, of the university`s Centre for Free Radical Research said.

The findings were published in the Journal of Nutritional Science.

Eating broccoli can help prevent osteoarthritis

eating broccoli will improve and protect the people from osteo arthritis

Scientists have revealed that eating broccoli could help you avoid suffering the most common form of arthritis- osteoarthritis.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia have discovered that a compound sulforaphane, found mainly in the vegetable, slows down the destruction of cartilage in joints linked with osteoarthritis, the Mirror reported.

The study found that the vegetable might have health benefits for people with osteo arthritis and even protect them from developing the disease.

 

Early diagnostic tool for Alzheimer’s comes closer to reality

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Researchers have made a new breakthrough which may not only help diagnose Alzheimer`s, but also assess its severity

Researchers have made a new breakthrough which may not only help diagnose Alzheimer`s, but also assess its severity.

Patients with Alzheimer`s disease currently undergo neuropsychological testing to detect signs of the disease. The test results are difficult to interpret and are insufficient for making a definitive diagnosis.

But as scientists have already discovered, activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex is affected even in the early stages of the disease. Professor Tiago H. Falk of INRS`s Centre Energie Materiaux Telecommunications, specializing in biological signal acquisition, examined this phenomenon and compared the electroencephalograms (EEGs) of healthy individuals (27), individuals with mild Alzheimer`s (27), and individuals with moderate cases of the disease (22).

He found statistically significant differences across the three groups.

In collaboration with neurologists and Francisco J. Fraga, an INRS visiting professor specializing in biological signals, Professor Falk used an algorithm that dissects brain waves of varying frequencies.

Falk said that what makes this algorithm innovative is that it characterizes the changes in temporal dynamics of the patients` brain waves.

He asserted that the findings show that healthy individuals have different patterns than those with mild Alzheimer`s disease and asserted that they also found a difference between patients with mild levels of the disease and those with moderate Alzheimer`s.

The study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.

 

IVF more successful in women under 35 years of age

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women below the age of 35 can be blessed with a baby if they opt for In Vitro Fertilization.

A new study has revealed that one in two women below the age of 35 can be blessed with a baby if they opt for In Vitro Fertilization.

However, the research by the University of NSW also suggested that the chances of success drop dramatically after five tries, News.com.au reported.

The study, which is the first in the world to track national success rates for IVF, is based on 2011 statistics from 35 centers in Australia and New Zealand.

According to the study`s lead author UNSW Professor Elizabeth Sullivan, although fertility treatment can be useful, it is always best to conceive spontaneously if possible.
It was found that the overall chance for all age groups of delivering a baby is 21 per cent after one cycle of treatment, increasing to 40 per cent by the fifth cycle, but when women aged 35 and older are removed from the statistics, the success rate jumps to more than 50 per cent after five attempts.

Prof Sullivan says although older women have a very low success rate using their own eggs, they usually manage as well as younger women using donor eggs.

The study is to be presented at a Fertility Society of Australia scientific meeting.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/ivf-more-successful-in-women-under-35-years-of-age_23647.html

Eating whole fruit lowers risk of diabetes than its juices

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Eating whole fresh fruit, especially blueberries, grapes, apples and pears, will lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but drinking more fruit juice has the opposite effect

Eating more whole fresh fruit, especially blueberries, grapes, apples and pears, is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but drinking more fruit juice has the opposite effect, says a study.

British, US and Singaporean researchers pored over data from three big health investigations that took place in the United States, spanning a quarter of a century in all.

More than 187,000 nurses and other professional caregivers were enrolled.

Their health was monitored over the following years, and they regularly answered questionnaires on their eating habits, weight, smoking, physical activity and other pointers to lifestyle.

Around 6.5 percent of the volunteers developed diabetes during the studies.

People who ate at least two servings each week of certain whole fruits, especially blueberries, grapes and apples, reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes by as much as 23 percent compared to those who ate less than one serving per month.

“Our findings provide novel evidence suggesting certain fruits may be especially beneficial for lower diabetes risk,” said Qi Sun, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

On the other hand, those who consumed one or more servings of fruit juice each day saw their risk of the disease increase by as much as 21 percent.

Swapping three servings of juice per week for whole fruits resulted in a seven-percent reduction in risk, although there was no such difference with strawberries and cantaloupe melon.

“Greater consumption of specific whole fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, was significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas greater fruit juice consumption was associated with a higher risk,” the authors say in the paper.

The paper, published on Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), says further work is needed to to explore this “significant” difference.

It speculates that, even if the nutritional values of whole fruit and fruit juice are similar, the difference lies with the fact that one food is a semi-solid and the other a liquid.

“Fluids pass through the stomach to the intestine more rapidly than solids even if nutritional content is similar,” says the paper.

“For example, fruit juices lead to more rapid and larger changes in serum [blood] levels of glucose and insulin than whole fruits.”

The study also points to evidence that some kinds of fruit have a beneficial effect for health.

Berries and grapes, for instance, have compounds called anthocyanins which have been found to lower the risk of heart attacks.

But, say the authors, how or even whether this also applies to diabetes risks is for now unclear.

The investigation looked at data from the Nurses` Health Study, which ran from 1984-2008; the Nurses` Health Study II (1991-2009); and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2008).

Ten kinds of fruit were used in the questionnaire: grapes or raisins; peach, plums or apricots; prunes; bananas; cantaloupe melon; apples or pears; oranges; grapefruit; strawberries; and blueberries.

The fruit juices identified in the questionnaire were apple, orange, grapefruit and “other.”

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/healthy-eating/whole-fruit-deters-diabetes-juice-boosts-risk-study_23641.html