Noseless toddler can still cough and sneeze but can’t smell

Noseless toddler can still cough and sneeze but can’t smell

A toddler in Britain has a rare medical condition because of which she was born without a nose. Though the baby-girl does not have any sense of smell, she can still cough, sneeze and catch a cold. Tessa Evans loves running around, playing outside and blowing kisses. But unlike any other children, she suffers from an extremely rare condition which means she has no nose. The 17-month-old has complete congenital arhinia, which is so rare there are only around 40 cases reported in medical literature,

Despite her difficulties, she always has a smile on her face, says her mother Gráinne. ‘At first I just couldn’t understand it, I didn’t even know it was possible. How did my little girl not have a nose? Was she going to live? Would anyone be able to help her? But ever since we got her home she’s grown every day, smiled more and the more she shines the more her differences fade into the background.’ Just weeks after giving birth, while researching the condition on the internet, the mother came across a journal online which stated that babies born like Tessa had poor mental and physical development.

She claims it implied that parents should be given the option to terminate their pregnancy. Buut Evans, a full time carer from Maghera, County Derry, Northern Ireland says her daughter proves that statement wrong. Tessa’s condition was detected during the 20-week scan which showed an abnormally flat facial profile. Her mother and father – Nathan, 32, a nightclub manager – were told to prepare to make difficult decisions. But the follow up 3D scan and tests revealed Tessa was perfectly healthy and everything was normal. There are just 47 recorded cases in the English records of people with partial or full facial anomalies.

Source; The health site

Why sitting is the new smoking

Why sitting is the new smoking

If we estimate the exact time we spend sitting, it comes to around to about 10-12 hours per day. This includes driving, sitting at your workplace, relaxing at home and other such activities. Thought to be as bad for your health as smoking, the number of hours you spend sitting directly affects your health{1}. So much so, that in her book Don’t Lose Out, Work Out, Rujuta Diwekar mentions that sitting predisposes you to a variety of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, high levels of cholesterol and an overall sluggish system.

Sit at your own risk!

Sitting for long hours can lead to certain disorders like chronic fatigue syndrome accompanied by anemia, insomnia, digestive problems, lethargy, etc. Apart from that, it may also give rise to inactivity stress syndrome –a condition where a person suffers from stress without doing any work. Also read how sitting can lead to excessive accumulation of fat around your hips.

At the work place, a sedentary lifestyle is accompanied with bad dietary habits like eating junk food, irregular eating habits or eating on the run and drinking unhealthy beverages like tea, coffee or soft drinks. This completely upsets your normal metabolic function which may lead to conditions like acidity, constipation, ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.

Can lead to spinal problems

The way you sit or your posture can be one of the causes for spinal problems or common pains along the neck, shoulders and lower back. Bad posture or sitting the wrong way can lead to muscle strain and eventually severe back problems. Apart from that, you could also suffer from muscle and bone loss as well. This problem is no more unique to the elderly, experts have found that even in teenagers; continuous sitting can be a reason for muscle pain and bone loss. Read more about yoga asanas to strengthen your spine.

Another major ill effect of sitting is obesity. Sitting is known to lead to accumulation of belly fat, thereby increasing the amount of bad cholesterol in your body. This in turn leads to diabetes and heart problems.

Tips to keep the ill-effects of sitting at bay:

While watching TV, take a short walk during the commercial breaks. Alternatively you can choose to finish some work between your regular TV shows. While at work, take short walks either around your office or outside. This will not only help you relax and refresh your mind but will keep you fit as well.

Make your food habits healthier. Avoid eating junk food and try some healthy snack options instead.
Practice relaxing and stretching exercises like yoga, which can be done while sitting at home or even in the office. Read more about yoga poses you can practice at your workplace.

Source: The health site

Parkinson’s boosts creativity: Study

Parkinson's boosts creativity

If you are in a creative profession, Parkinson’s may be a blessing in disguise as researchers have found that patients of the nerve cells disease in the area of brain are more creative than their healthy peers.

Those Parkinson’s patients taking higher doses of medication are more artistic than their less-medicated counterparts, the study added.

“It began with my observation that Parkinson’s patients have a special interest in art and have creative hobbies incompatible with their physical limitations,” said Rivka Inzelberg, professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

For the study, the researchers conducted tests on 27 Parkinson’s patients treated with anti-Parkinson’s drugs and 27 age and education-matched healthy controls.

The tests included the Verbal Fluency exam, in which a person is asked to mention as many different words beginning with a certain letter and in a certain category (fruit, for example) as possible.

The participants were then asked to undergo a more challenging Remote Association Test, in which they had to name a fourth word (following three given words) within a fixed context.

The groups also took the Tel Aviv University Creativity Test, which tested their interpretation of abstract images and assessed the imagination inherent in answers to questions like “What can you do with sandals?”

The final exam was a version of the Test for a Novel Metaphor, adapted specifically for the study.

Throughout the testing, Parkinson’s patients offered more original answers and more thoughtful interpretations than their healthier counterparts.

In order to rule out the possibility that the creative process evident in the hobbies of patients was linked to obsessive compulsions like gambling and hoarding, to which many Parkinson’s patients fall prey, participants were also asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire.

An analysis indicated no correlation between compulsive behaviour and elevated creativity.

The study appeared in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Source: Business Standard

 

New oral medication may help cure blindness: Study

New oral medication may help cure blindness

Scientists have revealed that a new oral medication is showing significant progress in restoring vision to patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA).

According to scientists of Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), this is the first time that an oral drug has improved the visual function of blind patients with LCA, which causes visual impairment ranging from reduced vision to complete blindness, has remained untreatable.

Robert Koenekoop, director of McGill Ocular Genetics Laboratory at The Montreal Children’s Hospital of the MUHC, said that this treatment is giving hope to many patients who suffer from this devastating retinal degeneration.
The study involved 14 participants from around the world with LCA ranging in age from 6 to 38 years old. Their blindness was caused by either mutations in the genes RPE65 or LRAT, leading to a serious defect in the retinoid cycle.

The retinoid cycle is one of the most important cycles in the human retina because it produces a molecule called 11-cis retinal which has the special capacity to capture light and initiate vision. Patients with RPE65 or LRAT mutations cannot produce this crucial molecule thus the retinal cells cannot create vision, and slowly die.

The study found that 10out of the 14 patients expanded their visual fields; others improved their visual acuity. The research team performed special brain scans of the visual cortex, which showed marked improvements in brain activities in patients who also improved in field size and acuity.

The study was published in the scientific journal The Lancet

source: yahoo news

 

Diabetic Diet: 6 Foods That May Help Control Blood Sugar

Diabetic Diet 6 Foods That May Help Control Blood Sugar

Coffee and cinnamon have made headlines recently as foods that might be able to cut the risk of diabetes or help to improve blood sugar levels. But don’t get the idea that such foods are magic bullets for your diabetic diet, experts warn.

“None of this is a magic potion for diabetes,” says American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Cathy Nonas, RD. It’s still important for people with diabetes to eat a balanced diabetic diet and exercise to help manage the disease, she says.

Nevertheless, some foods, such as white bread, are converted almost right away to blood sugar, causing a quick spike. Other foods, such as brown rice, are digested more slowly, causing a lower and gentler change in blood sugar.

If you are trying to follow a healthy diabetic diet, here are six that may help to keep your blood sugar in check.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal can help control blood sugar — but don’t get the sweetened kind.

“Even though it’s a carbohydrate, it’s a very good carbohydrate,” American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Marisa Moore, RD, LD, tells WebMD. Because it’s high in soluble fiber, “it’s slower to digest and it won’t raise your blood sugar as much or as quickly. It’s going to work better at controlling blood sugar over time.”

Not only does this high-quality carbohydrate offer a steadier source of energy than white bread, it can also help with weight loss. The soluble fiber in oats “helps to keep us feeling fuller longer,” Moore says.

That’s important for people with type 2 diabetes, who tend to be overweight. “If you reduce the weight, you usually significantly improve the glucose control,” Nonas says.

Barley isn’t as popular as oats. But there’s some evidence that barley, which is also high in soluble fiber, may also help with blood glucose control. Kay Behall, PhD, a research nutritionist at the USDA Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, has studied barley, and she suggests that people try eating boiled pearl barley in place of rice.

Besides oats and barley, Moore adds, “most whole grains are going to be a great choice for a person with diabetes.”

Broccoli, Spinach, and Green Beans

Add plenty of nonstarchy vegetables, such as broccoli, spinach, and green beans, to your diabetic diet, diabetes experts say. These foods are high in fiber and low in carbohydrates, which make them ideal for people with diabetes.

In contrast, starchy vegetables include peas, potatoes, corn, winter squash, and lima beans. There’s no need to cut them from the diet, Moore says. “They do give us additional nutrients. We want to maintain balance.” But because starchy vegetables have more carbohydrates and raise blood sugar more, it’s important to stick to proper portion sizes, she says.

There’s new evidence, too, that vegetables are healthy for people with diabetes.

Source: Web md

 

Got a rash? iPad, other devices might be the cause

iPad, other devices might be the cause

Unexplained rash? Check your iPad. It turns out the popular tablet computer may contain nickel, one of the most common allergy-inducing metals.

Recent reports in medical journals detail nickel allergies from a variety of personal electronic devices, including laptops and cellphones. But it was an Apple iPad that caused an itchy body rash in an 11-year-old boy recently treated at a San Diego hospital, according to a report in Monday’s Pediatrics.

Nickel rashes aren’t life-threatening but they can be very uncomfortable, and they may require treatment with steroids and antibiotics if the skin eruptions become infected, said Dr. Sharon Jacob, a dermatologist at Rady Children’s Hospital, where the boy was treated. Jacob, who co-wrote the report, said the young patient had to miss school because of the rash.

The boy had a common skin condition that causes scaly patches, but he developed a different rash all over his body that didn’t respond to usual treatment. Skin testing showed he had a nickel allergy, and doctors traced it to an iPad his family had bought in 2010.

Doctors tested the device and detected a chemical compound found in nickel in the iPad’s outside coating.
“He used the iPad daily,” she said.

He got better after putting it in a protective case, she said Whether all iPad models and other Apple devices contain nickel is uncertain; Apple spokesman Chris Gaither said the company had no comment.
Nickel rashes also have been traced to other common products including some jewelry, eyeglass frames and zippers.

Jacob said evidence suggests nickel allergies are become more common, or increasingly recognized. She cited national data showing that about 25 percent of children who get skin tests for allergies have nickel allergies, versus about 17 percent a decade ago.

She said doctors need to consider electronic devices as potential sources when patients seek treatment for skin rashes.

Source: NWCN

Accidental Overdose: Metric System Can Help Children’s Medicine

Accidental Overdose Metric System Can Help Children's Medicine

Parents aren’t doing a great job measuring out medications for their little ones — and the problem may be that we’re still using the so-called English system rather than switching to the metric system, a new study shows.

Busy multitasking parents make all kinds of medication errors, such as reading tablespoons for teaspoons, which results in three times the dose, or substituting a kitchen spoon for an actual teaspoon. That may at least partially explain the more than 10,000 annual calls to poison centers, researchers suggested in the study which published in Pediatrics.

The researchers found that when parents were given a prescription in teaspoons or tablespoons nearly 40 percent measured wrong, while more than 40 percent read the dosage off the prescription wrong. When prescriptions were written in metric units parents were half as likely to make mistakes. The findings suggest that medicines should switch to a milliliter-only standard, the researchers say.

Source: NBC news

Tamarind: The best fruit you’re not eating

Tamarind The best fruit you're not eating

Sweet and tangy, tamarind is one of the widely used spice-condiments found in every South-Asian kitchen!

Tamarind is a very large tree with long, heavy drooping branches, and dense foliage. Completely grown-up tree might reach up to 80 feet in height. During each season, the tree bears curved fruit pods in abundance covering all over its branches. Each pod has hard outer shell encasing deep brown soft pulp enveloping around 2-10 hard dark-brown seeds. Its pulp and seeds held together by extensive fiber network.

Botanically, the tree is among the large tropical trees belonging to the family of Fabaceae, in the genus: Tamarindus. Scientific name: Tamarindus indica.

Tamarinds are evergreen tropical trees native to Africa. They grow throughout tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, South Asia, South America and Caribbean islands for their fruits.

Health benefits of Tamarind

Tamarind fruit contains certain health benefiting essential volatile chemical compounds, minerals, vitamins and dietary fiber.

Its sticky pulp is a rich source of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) or dietary-fiber such as gums, hemicelluloses, mucilage, pectin and tannins. 100 g of fruit pulp provides 5.1 or over 13% of dietary fiber. NSP or dietary fiber in the food increases its bulk and augments bowel movements thereby help prevent constipation. The fiber also binds to toxins in the food thereby help protect the colon mucus membrane from cancer-causing chemicals.

In addition, dietary fibers in the pulp bind to bile salts (produced from cholesterol) and decrease their re-absorption in the colon; thereby help in expulsion of “bad” or LDL cholesterol levels from the body.

While lemon composes of citric acid, tamarind is rich in tartaric acid. Tartaric acid gives sour taste to food besides its inherent activity as a powerful antioxidant. (Anti-oxidant E-number is E334). It, thus, helps human body protect from harmful free radicals.

Tamarind fruit contains many volatile phytochemicals such as limonene, geraniol, safrole, cinnamic acid, methyl salicylate, pyrazine and alkyl­thiazoles. Together these compounds account for the medicinal properties of tamarind.

This prized spice is a good source of minerals like copper, potassium, calcium, iron, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps control heart rate and blood pressure. Iron is essential for red blood cell production and as a co-factor for cytochrome oxidases enzymes.

In addition, it is also rich in many vital vitamins, including thiamin (36% of daily required levels), vitamin-A, folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, and vitamin-C. Much of these vitamins plays antioxidant as well as co-factor functions for enzyme metabolism inside the body.

Medicinal uses of Tamarind

  • Its pulp has been used in many traditional medicines as a laxative, digestive, and as a remedy for biliousness and bile disorders.
  • This spice condiment is also used as emulsifying agent in syrups, decoctions, etc., in different pharmaceutical products.

source: nutrition and you

Tooth decay is the biggest cause of primary school children

tooth decay

Rotting teeth is the most common cause of primary school aged children being admitted to hospital, new figures show

Almost 26,000 primary school children were treated for tooth decay in the past year, making it the most common reason youngsters are admitted to hospital, research shows.

Nearly 500 children aged five to nine were hospitalized due to rotten teeth each week in 2013-14. In some cases dentists are forced to remove all 20 baby teeth from their young patients.

The figures sparked further calls for a crackdown on sugary drinks and fruit juice. The number of hospital admissions for five to nine-year-olds with dental problems increased by more than 3000 in the just three years, from 22,574 in 2010-11 to 25,812 in 2013-14, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

Graham Barnby, honorary vice-president of the British Dental Health Foundation, said: “It all relates to the consumption of sugary, fizzy drinks.” Kathryn Harley, a consultant in paediatric dentistry, said: “We have children who require all 20 of their baby teeth to be extracted. It beggars belief that their diets could produce such a drastic effect.”

She added: “They are going into hospital because they are either presenting with acute problems with pain or because the stage of dental disease, the number of teeth with decay, is such that they need a general anaesthetic.”
Ms Harley said most children need four to eight teeth removed but that having ten to 14 extracted is not uncommon.

She claimed fruit juice should be banned in schools to prevent the problem worsening and pointed the finger at parents who were “inadvertently responsible”.

NHS England also urged parents to take action to protect their childrens’ dental health. “We have some of the lowest rates of tooth decay in the world but these statistics are of course worrying,” the health body said in a statement.

“Parents of young children should discourage them from drinking fizzy drinks as this can lead to tooth decay.” The rising number of young tooth decay patients has also raised questions about whether dentists should carry out more childhood fillings.

Professor Jimmy Steele, head of the dentistry school at Newcastle University, said some dentists are unwilling to carry out filling due to uncertainty about their effectiveness.

They prefer to monitor decay in the baby teeth, he claimed. “Dentists are much less likely nowadays than they used to be to try to fill teeth using conventional measures,” he said.

Tonsillitis is the second most common reason for children of 5 to 9 being admitted to hospital, with 11,522 cases in 2012-13.

Source: The telegraph

Older age women must exercise to reduce death risk: Study

Older age women must exercise to reduce death risk

The benefits of regular physical activity extends far beyond weight management as research shows that prescribing exercise as treatment to older women helps reduce the risk of death in them.

Loss of muscle mass in the body is inevitable with age, and one of the major causes of muscle loss is sedentary lifestyle. According to the American Association of Retired Persons, after the age of 50 seniors lose muscle mass at the rate of about half a pound per year, especially if they don’t exercise. Older people achieve significant health benefits from physical activity.

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, found that along with the conventional treatments for physical and mental health, moderate to high intensity tailored exercise program is needed to lower the risk of death in older women above the age of 50 years.

The study led by Professor Anderson and QUT’s Charlotte Seib, reviewed the five years of research that looked at the impact of exercise on the mental and physical health in women above the age of 50 years.

“Studies clearly show moderate to vigorous intensity activity can have mental and physical health benefits, particularly when part of broader positive health changes,” Professor Anderson said. “When once we thought that 30 minutes of mild exercise a day was enough to improve health, research is now telling us that older women should be doing at least 30-45 minutes five times a week of moderate to high intensity exercise and by that we mean exercise that leaves you huffing and puffing.”

The exercise program must be tailored to ensure that it is a high intensity activity needed to obtain the positive sustained effects of exercise.
The study clearly revealed that the high intensity exercise over a sedentary lifestyle significantly lowers the risk of death.

Older adults who adhere to regular physical activity also experience less disability, enhanced physical function irrespective of the body mass. The women who are most active are more likely to survive than those who are least physically active.

“We have an ageing population and as a result promoting healthy ageing has become an important strategy for reducing morbidity and mortality,” said Professor Anderson. “The research also linked exercise to improvements in mental well-being.” As high intensity exercise not just boosts physical health, but also brain health.

Researchers noticed that older women were capable of undertaking a range of activities that is beyond simple walking. The study highlights that mid-to-later in life women are seen jogging, running, hiking, swimming and riding.

Hence, the healthcare professionals should develop exercise programs that are home-based and easy to follow as part of everyday activities.

Source: science world report