Anemia – An Emergency Like Situation In India That Needs Immediate Attention

If we go by latest statistics around anemia, then the news is surely bad because it says that almost 40% of the population in India Is Anemic. Anemia, as we all know is caused due lack of hemoglobin, a substance carries oxygen to the RBCs. Iron rich dark green leafy vegetables are the source of the essential nutrients required to fight anemia.

Even worse, the global nutrition report of 2017 shows India in the last spot which is worrisome for sure. Also another report of 2016, shows over 45% of female population in India is anemic and over 20% women are overweight.

Though, the government has been able to curb population of people living below extreme poverty lines from a humungous 306 million to 48 million. But, as far as curbing malnutrition is concerned, the government hasn’t been as much successful, despite efforts.

Even today Anemia is known to affect every second child in the country. There is not much decline in the condition over the past two decades. Even among the age group of 15 – 49 year olds, there isn’t any significant decline. This is an emergency situation as it seems and needs immediate attention.

The factors that are the real obstacles in the fight against anemia besides poverty are poor sanitation, gender bias, iron deficient diet and the government has been working on resolving these problems consistently.

One of the projects of the government which gave great results was that of Iron Supplementation program which increased the consumption of folic acid tablets by 30%. Thus simple strategies like Food Fortification, could be the possible answer to this problem which is taking a toll on the health of Indians for a long time now. Rice which seems to be the staple of over half of the population in India can supplied through a network of shops that offer it at an affordable price.

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OCPD — Causes, Symptoms, Treatment

People who have an OCPD personality disorder, tend to be perfect to the extreme, orderly and neat. They want their standards to be maintained by others and hence they try to do that in a very severe manner.

• The characteristics that govern an OCPD personality include
• They are obsession with being perfect, apparently leading to become even more inefficient
• They are people who are often in aloofness
• They are anxious and depressed simultaneously
• They find it difficult to express their feelings

OCPD personality disorder people don’t have an idea if there’s anything wrong with their behavior. They think and feel that whatever and however they think is right and others are wrong. OCPD is often mistaken with OCD but the fact is that these two conditions are different and not the same.

OCPD Risk Factors

Usually more than women, it’s the men that are at the risk of having OCPD. It is one of the most common personality disorders as per a journal of personality assessment. Also, those who are having existing mental health condition have a probability of getting OCPD as well. Particularly people suffering from OCD of severe nature are at risk of getting diagnosed with OCPD.

OCPD Causes

The causes of this condition are yet not known but factors like genetics and childhood experiences can be considered as some of the causes.

OCPD Symptoms

• Always want to be on time and expect the same from others
• Paying extreme attention to every detail
• Engrossed in their work to an extent that they don’t ignore family and societal relationships
• Their mannerisms are rigid and stiff
• They keep on stocking items that are of no use
• They are stingy with money

OCPD Treatment

One of the treatments for OCPD is Cognitive Behavioral therapy (CBT). You meet up with a counsellor and undergo a few sessions where you talk about your anxiety, depression or stress. The counsellor emphasizes on giving enough time to family as well as recreation rather than just work.

Relaxation Trianing

This process consists of breathing exercises to destress and decrease the sense of urgency and include yoga, pilates and tai chi.

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Fatty Liver Disease – An Insight

For those who haven’t heard of fatty liver, it means that liver has extra fat in it. The scientific name for the same is hepatic steatosis and is a resulting of addiction to alcohol. Due to high consumption of alcohol fat builds up inside the liver making it hard to work properly. It does not mean that if you do drink, you don’t get fatty liver. For those who don’t consume alcohol and still have fatty liver condition, it is a result of mainly a metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, high amount of belly fat and is known as Nonalcoholic Fatty liver Disease (NAFLD).

Simple Fatty Liver – This means there is only extra fat and no inflammation on the liver cells. Most people suffer from Simple fatty liver and it does not get worse.

Non Alcoholic Steathohepatitis (NASH) – This is known to be serious as compared to simple fatty liver. It occurs when the liver gets inflamed. Your liver cells get damaged due to NASH and can lead to further life threatening conditions like cirrhosis, liver cancer and fibrosis.

Alcohol related fatty liver disease – Also known as ALD, it might or might not exhibit any symptoms. If there are symptoms, they include discomfort or pain in the upper right side of belly. Though if drinking is not stopped, it can lead to complication like alcoholic cirrhosis and hepatitis.

Alcoholic Cirrhosis – The condition causes scar tissue buildup in liver. Symptoms that surface include fluid buildup in the belly, body bleeding, enlarged spleen, liver failure, dis-orientation and behavior changes as well.

Alcoholic Hepatitis – This kind of lever swelling can cause belly pain, jaundice, nausea and vomiting. Alcoholic fatty lever worsens to lead to alcoholic hepatitis and further more into Cirrhosis.

Symptoms – NAFLD as well as ALD as mentioned before may or may not give any symptoms other that fatigue or pain in the upper right side of the belly.

Though NASH as well as cirrhosis do exhibit symptoms like red palms, breast enlargement in men, swollen belly, enlarged blood vessels below skin.

Diagnosis – The diagnosis is based on physical exam, health history and based on tests like blood tests as well as imaging tests. If required a liver biopsy may also be advised.

Treatment – There is no treatment as such in terms of medications for NAFLD, but in case of NASH complications like liver failure or cirrhosis, you may have to go for a liver transplant.

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The Weightloss Plan That Has Taken Maharashtra by Storm

The Diet plan of Dr. Dixit, a professor at the preventive departments of social medicine at the Government medical college and hospital believes that accepting that you are overweight and that you need a diet correction which includes shunning away tempting food and controlling diet in order to keep your diabetes at bay.

Diabetes is very common in India today and more like an epidemic, hence people do need to take their diet seriously. Dr. Dixit has devised a diet plan for 18 years and above age group. His diet plan is quite unique in a way. He harps upon a meal that is high in proteins and low in carbohydrates.

As per Dr Dixit, the food that is high on carbohydrate is responsible for secretion of insulin in big quantities. The meal that is rich in protein will cause less secretion of insulin. Hence, eating anything in between two meals is not advisable. Better drink water, green tea, coconut water or buttermilk instead as they do not trigger the secretion of insulin.

This theory of carboinsulin connection has been discussed by late Dr Shrikant Jichkar, who presented this idea of eating only two meals a day for diabetes prevention. He also organized a study of 446 participants out of which 428 did complete the study with the 6 monthly follow up. There was an average loss of 6.8 kg during the six months. The logic was that there was a rise in diabetes if the insulin levels increased.

He also added that the diet plan he has designed does not lead to loss of stamina. Instead poor diet can lead to health hazards like diabetes, hypertension and even cancer. As per Dr Dixit, eating two meals a day and restricting yourself from eating anything in between the two meals not only leads to weight loss but also controlling diabetes as well. Keto diet is another easy way of controlling your insulin.

Inspite of the fact that there is no definite proof of the same, this diet plan has worked for many people across Maharashtra and many people have tried this plan out.

 

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All About Essential Tremors

Many of us have either experienced or seen this happen mostly in elderly people. A nerve disorder, essential tremor causes uncontrollable shaking in various parts of the body. The areas that are commonly known to be affected by the same are arms, larynx, head, hands, chin and tongue. Mostly the affected areas is the upper part and not the lower part of the body. ET or essential tremor is not a life threatening disorder mostly and a person can easily have quality life living with it. Though some might face some difficulty doing routine activities like eating, writing or dressing, but overall one can live with it without much of a discomfort.

Causes
Tremors are known to be electrical activity of the brain of abnormal nature. Genetics could be a possible cause of ET in over half of the people because a child born to a parent with ET increases the chance of inheriting the same condition by 50%. ET is often seen in the elderly but its definitely cannot referred as a part of aging process.

Symptoms
The symptoms are visible tremors, where the particular affected area shakes uncontrollable, even voice could shake and head could nod as well. With increase in stress the shaking also increasing and decreases with rest. There could be balance problems as well but in rare cases.

Essential tremors are related to other disorders like headaches, migranes, Pariknson’s disease and even known to be a t high risk of getting dementia.

Treatment and Prevention
Treatment is required only in case of essential tremors of severe nature only. The treatment might include surgery or medications as per the severity levels.

Medicines – To reduce severity of essential tremors, medicines like Mysoline, Topamax, and tranquilizers like Ativan, Xanax and more are used. Sometimes Botox injections are used.

Surgery – The surgical alternative is called Deep brain stimulation or DBS and is used only in case of severe tremors even after use of medications.

Well, it is not all preventive because the root cause is not known but with the help of medications it can be kept under control significantly.

The Neurosurgery Department of Vydehi Institute of Medical Science & Research Centre has completed 500 major neurosurgical operations successfully in as many operating days. The Department boasts of state-of-the-art neurosurgical equipments, is now capable of treating all kinds of neurosurgical ailments at an affordable cost

Cancer Can Now Eliminate Tumors In Mice

A recent study by Stanford researchers have states that on activating T cells in Tumor, you can eliminate even distant metastases in mice. The researchers carried out the research in mice by injecting minimal quantity of two immune stimulating agents into solid tumors present inside mice. The researchers added that the idea could work well even on distant metastases and a variety of cancers as well.

The researchers further added that this therapy could turnout to be inexpensive comparatively and almost without any adverse side effects. The best part of this new finding is that the use of two agents together helps eliminate all the tumors in the body without a targeted approach to immune specific targets or wholesale activation of the immune system.

The development of the first of a kind monoclonal antibody, known as rituximab has been approved for cancer treatment in human beings. This approach makes use of small quantity of two agents in order to stimulate the immune cells within the tumor itself. The one time application of the same has displayed amazing results by eliminating all tumors in the studied animal. The method apparently reactivates the cancer specific T cells after the agents are injected in microgram amount into the tumor. Some tumor specific T cells also leave the place where they are injected, find other similar tumors in the body and eliminate them. The results have been awe-inspiring because out of the 90 mice 87 have been cured completely.

Now, the clinical trial involving humans is to begin. Initially 15 patients with low grade cancers are going to be experimented upon and if the results are as desired then the clinicians are aiming to inject the two mentioned agents in solid tumors before the surgical removal of them in order to prevent relapse of the same. As per the researchers, there is no limit on the type of cancer that could be treated using this technique as long as it can be infiltrated by the immune system.

The expected results of the test might as well pave the path to inexpensive cancer treatment therapy with astounding results.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

ADHD or Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as is it is known is a common disorder in human kind. Well, researchers have some news to share around the same now. As per the researchers, people with this condition are known to have impairments in brain. Further these impairments are unique in nature and hence it is very difficult to have a common explanation for the cause of this condition.

The findings are based on the research carried out over 117 adolescents having ADHD. They were assessed for impulsive behavior which is known to be one of the most typical behavior in the condition. The study revealed that the participants had shown three different types of characteristics thus leading to creation of three sub categories –
Group 1 – Showed impulsive motor responses during fast moving visual tasks
Group 2 – Showed immediate reward preference
Group 3 – Showed normal behavior for both the tasks compared to 134 non ADHD adolescents

Though the researchers also made it clear that only cognitive testing could help distinguish ADHD patients of different subgroups. They also used the functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to find out the relation between the impulsive behavior based test profiles and brain dysfunction. But, the results were negative as in the FMRI was not able to record and abnormality other than the core ADHD profile of the brain dysfunction in any of the subgroups because every subgroup showed dysfunction in different regions of the brain depending upon their specific brain impairment.

The results point towards the fact that every brain has different neural systems to manage the executive functions as well as reward processing that are known to contribute individually to the growth of ADHD symptoms.

Well, the study is at a preliminary level and hence as per the researchers it would definitely require detailed study in order to prove that ADHD is a collection of different disorders but this initial study does pave a path to it. The study would also help with effective treatments of people with these conditions because some ADHD medications might not just work well with one subgroup while it might work well with another work group. Hence, targeted treatment would be the approach to be taken because these findings do highlight that more than one factor is definitely responsible for psychiatric disorders like ADHD.

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Five Human Senses – Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste, and Touch

We all are taught in early school days only about the five human senses. The brain is apparently the decision maker and these sensory organs only help send the information to the brain and help the brain. But, what some of us might not know is there are people with more than five senses in addition to the existing ones. Before we talk about them let us talk about the basic five.

Sight – View is not as simple as ti seems. It is a complex procedure involving the transparent outer layer or the eye called cornea, the pupil and the iris. When the light reflects from the object you view to the eye the cornea bend the light as it passes through the pupil hole. The iris is like the camera shutter for eyes which opens to let the light in or retracts to let it out.

Smell – As per researchers humans are able to smell over 1 trillion scents. The nerve endings in olfactory cleft are responsible for transmitting smell to the brain. The oltefactory is located beside the smelling part of the brain on the roof of the nasal cavity. While human are equipped with 400 different smelling recepters, if there are issues in recognizing smells then it could be result of a rare disorder of effect of aging.

Hearing – Hearing is also a complex sensory organ that uses a complex labyrinth called human ear through which it funnels the sound from its external part into the external auditory canal. The sound apparently travels through eardrum or tympanic membrane, a thin connective tissue sheet that vibrates when sound waves strike. It then reaches the auditory ossicles in the middle year. These three little bones are known as malleus (hammer), stapes (stirrup) and incus(anvil) vibrate. The vibrates are send to the corti by the stapes bone by pushing the oval window structure in and out.

Taste – Taste is further divided into three different perceptions called sweet salty bitter and sour. Though scientists and researchers believe that the fifth one is savory or umami, they also say that there are many more that are yet to be discovered. As per the National Library of Medicine, spicy cannot be considered a taste but it is apparently a sign of pain. As humans we have 2000 to 4000 taste buds on the tongue, throat back, nasal cavity, esophagus and epiglottis. But, again smell does help the brain perceive the taste and hence, people with stuffy nose have difficulty recognizing taste properly.

Touch – As per researchers touch is said to be the first sense that humans develop. Specialized neurons in the skin communicate the distinct sensation to the brain. A touch sense includes sensations like touch, vibration, temperature, pain, pressure and more. It is said to be very important to human beings wellness beyond its use for interaction and does influence decision making to a good extent as well.

Now, about the additional senses. We do have some more subtle one that we never perceive. These include neuron sensors that control head tilt and balance besides kinesthetic receptors that are responsible for muscle and tendons stretching detection. Our body also has receptors that detect particular arteries of the bloodstream as well.

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