Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

The older you are, the more likely it is that you could have tinnitus. It has a variety of causes, including:
long exposure to loud noise (more…)

I consider myself a capitalist and pro-business. Generally, I believe that business people are productive builders who help society. We have all, of course, encountered the exceptions. But there is one group of businesses for whom I can give no benefit of the doubt, and that’s the tobacco industry. For years, they have known that their products cause sickness and death. For years, they ignored the evidence, fought a legal and public relations battle and continued to produce their death sticks and other tobacco products. More, they sought to hook people faster and more effectively by upping the nicotine content of their products. (more…)

A virus causes genital warts, a sexually transmitted disease, or STD. Some strains of this virus may increase the risk of getting cervical or penile cancer. Treatment for this serious condition can include medication or laser surgery. (more…)

Whether you’re talking comfortable shoes or contact lenses, proper fit is key. The same is true for canes, crutches or wheelchairs. For people who spend a majority of their daily lives using them, fit can be crucial, says Dr. Thao Tran, The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR), Houston, and The University of Texas-Houston Medical School. (more…)

How you maintain your skin can also help keep control of oil.

“I have oily skin clients that I suggest use mineral oil on their skin, then keep it powdered. I always suggest powdering, unless you want to look like an oil slick,” she said. (more…)

Carmen Desrochers has had oily skin all of her life.

“I have always felt greasy, like a french fry,” said the 61-year-old grandmother of eight in Kittery, Maine. “My skin was extremely oily all the time. Of course, this led to terrible, terrible acne which caused me problems with feelings of being accepted and my own self-worth.”

Desrochers, like many others with oily skin, suffers from a condition that skin-care professionals say is one of the toughest to treat. “Everyone has sebaceous glands in their skin. If the skin is oily, it means the sebaceous glands are more active,” said Dr. Peter Pugliese.

Pugliese is a physician and president of Peter T. Pugliese and Associates, a Reading, Pa. facility that does research into skin and skin-care products. “You are more apt to get acne if have oily skin,” Pugliese said.

And if you have oily skin, you have your ancestors to thank. For Desrochers, it was most likely passed down by her French-Canadian ancestors, and she in turn passed it to her four children.

“It’s terrible to see your children have to go through the same thing,” she said.

“You are genetically predisposed to oily skin and acne,” said Christine Heathman, an aesthetician with more than 30 years of experience. Heathman is chief executive officer of Glymed Plus, a Utah company that dispenses medically based products used in the medical and aesthetic industries.

“Controlling oily skin can be very frustrating,” Heathman said. “There is nothing more frustrating than putting on makeup and then having oil everywhere in an hour.”

Heathman should know. Her suffering with oily skin and resulting acne led her to do her own research into skin care, in search of a cure. Now, she not only helps develop “cosme-ceutical” (cosmetic pharmaceutical) products, she also treats patients with skin problems. While there may not be much you can do about your sebaceous glands, there are things you can do to decrease the oil they secrete and its effects on your skin.

“Diet is an important one, because skin is also a great garbage disposal area of the body. Much of what you eat is reflected in some manner in the skin,” Pugliese said. Pugliese suggests limiting saturated fats in one’s diet.

“Sugars can step up oil production, so I often encourage the elimination of them, as well as limiting environmental factors such as sun exposure,” said Heathman. Heathman added that ultraviolet radiation creates free radicals and breaks down collagen in the skin.

An imbalance of hormones can negatively affect the skin, but the hormone production can be controlled.”Androgens are male hormones that can create this imbalance,” Pugliese said. “Women going through menopause can experience adult acne because their hormones are out of whack.”

“Stress can also create hormone imbalance,” Heathman added. “It activates the adrenal glands, which produce more hormones that get dumped into the bloodstream and can cause acne flare-ups.”

If your young one is less than 2 years old, or if you are pregnant, you will be interested to learn about a new vaccine to prevent pneumococcal

disease. So what is pneumococcal disease and why should you be concerned?
The common bacterium “pneumococcus,” or Streptococcus pneumoniae, is responsible for thousands of very serious childhood infections every year, especially in children from about 3 months to 3 years of age. These infections include bacterial meningitis, a severe and potentially fatal infection of the spinal fluid and the tissues surrounding the brain. In fact, pneumococcal meningitis is the most common form of bacterial meningitis. (more…)

Exercise and healthy diets may reduce the risk of cancer by up to one-third of all cancer cases. According to a recent report by the Food and Nutrition Science Alliance (FANSA), Cancer kills more than half of a million people annually. (more…)

There’s no way around it: If you want to get serious about keeping on top of household chores, you’re going to have to get your kids involved.

Here are a few tips on getting your own family work corps up and running:

First, list all of the jobs that need to be done around the house. Then figure out which jobs can be handled by family members of various ages. Children as young as 3, for example, can help with tasks such as matching up clean socks, putting away clean laundry and picking up their own toys. (more…)

Scientists are continually working on new approaches to breast cancer, a disease that poses innumerable intellectual challenges for those in the laboratory as well as for doctors tending patients at their bedsides. This is not to say that current treatment modalities do not work — they do. More women are surviving breast cancer today than at any other point in history. (more…)