Natural Remedies

My struggle against borderline high blood pressure I have borderline high blood pressure, so this post is about what can be done to reduce high blood pressure. Even if one does not have high blood pressure, it would be wise to keep lifestyle that can keep high blood pressure at bay.

Apparently, the best course of action, and the hardest, is to exercise. Regular exercise can reduce stress, lower blood pressure and decrease resting heart rate. Exercise can lower blood pressure.Another is a healthy diet. Keep salt intake low while increasing intake of calcium, magnesium and potassium. Potassium-rich foods are avocados, bananas, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, grapefruit, nectarines, oranges, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, green peas, potatoes, and squash.

Foods rich in magnesium include nuts, rice, bananas, potatoes, wheat germ, kidney and lima beans, soy, and molasses.I eat a bowl of oats every morning. Oats not only help keep the weight down, but also lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Daily Oats Improve High Blood Pressure.

Men with Testicular Cancer Often Become Fathers

Men with Testicular Cancer Often Become Fathers Men with Testicular Cancer Often Become FathersReuters HealthTuesday, November 1, 2005NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - After treatment for testicular cancer, about 71 percent of men achieve fatherhood, new research indicates. However, the type of treatment has a strong impact on the paternity rate. The findings, which appear in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, are based on a study of 554 long-term survivors of testicular cancer who attempted to become fathers following treatment.

Dr. Marianne Brydoy, from Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway, and colleagues divided the subjects into groups based on the treatment they were given after surgery: surveillance, removal of lymph nodes, radiation, low-dose chemotherapy, and high-dose chemo. As noted, the overall 15-year post-treatment paternity rate was 71 percent. The highest paternity rate, 92 percent, was in the surveillance group, while the lowest rate, 48 percent, was in the high-dose chemotherapy group. The average time from diagnosis to the birth of the first child was 6.6 years, but once again the specific time depended largely on the treatment received.

21 Million Americans Have Diabetes, CDC Finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 21 million Americans have diabetes, most of them the type-2 variety associated with being overweight, too little exercise and poor diet, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.

This represents about 7 percent of the population - and more than 6 million of these people do not know they have the condition, the CDC said. "Another 41 million people are estimated to have pre-diabetes, a condition that increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes - the most common form of the disease - as well as heart disease and stroke," the CDC said in a statement. "Diabetes is a leading cause of adult blindness, lower-limb amputation, kidney disease and nerve damage. Two-thirds of people with diabetes die from a heart attack or stroke," said Dr. Frank Vinicor, director of CDC's diabetes program. Several genes are known to contribute to diabetes, but it has become more common as the population has become fatter. The risk of diabetes increases with age.

About 21 percent of Americans aged 60 years or older have diabetes, the CDC said. "Recent studies have shown that people with pre-diabetes can successfully prevent or delay the onset of diabetes by losing 5 percent to 7 percent of their body weight," Vinicor said in a statement. "This can be accomplished through 30 minutes or more of physical activity most days of the week and by following a low calorie, low fat eating plan, including a diet rich in whole grains and fruits and vegetables," he added.

Reuters Health. Thursday, October 27, 2005
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A shopping cart of cancer fighters

Broccoli sprouts, cabbage, ginkgo biloba and garlic appear to have a role in preventing a variety of cancers, researchers report.

The research, which focused on chemical interactions between compounds found in foods and the body's cells and DNA, suggests that the addition of these foods to the diet can confer health benefits, the researchers say.

The findings were to be presented Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research's meeting in Baltimore.

In the first study, Akinori Yanaka and colleagues from the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that in 20 people, a diet rich in broccoli sprouts significantly reduced Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection.

H. pylori, a bacterium, is a cause of gastritis -- inflammation of the stomach lining -- and is a major factor in peptic ulcer and stomach cancer, the researchers say. "

Even though we were unable to eradicate H. pylori, to be able to suppress it and relieve the accompanying gastritis by means as simple as eating more broccoli sprouts is good news for the many people who are infected," Yanaka said in a prepared statement.

Sulforaphane, a chemical found in broccoli sprouts, appears to be the active cancer-fighting agent. Sulforaphane apparently helps cells defend against oxidants: the highly reactive and toxic molecules that damage DNA and kill cells and potentially lead to cancer, the researchers noted.

(The HealthDay Web site) 2005 HealthDay News

Heart Attack Deaths Higher Among Blacks

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The death rate following a heart attack is significantly increased at hospitals that disproportionately serve black patients, according to a new report. Previous reports have shown that blacks are more likely than whites to be treated by physicians with less training or at hospitals where it takes longer for treatment for a heart attack to be started. However, the impact of these differences on outcomes was unclear.

To investigate, Dr. Jonathan Skinner, from Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, and co-investigators analyzed data on more than 1 million Medicare patients who were hospitalized for a heart attack between 1997 and 2001. The study included 4289 hospitals that were rated from 1 to 10 based on the extent to which they treated to black patients, the team explains in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. Category 1 hospitals treated no black heart-attack patients during the study period, whereas at category 10 hospitals about one third of all heart-attack patients were black.

The percentage of patients who died within 90 days after suffering a heart attack was significantly higher in category 10 hospitals compared with category 1 hospitals: 23.7 percent vs. 20.1 percent. The researchers found that the difference in mortality between category 1 and category 10 hospitals could not be explained by income, hospital ownership status, the volume of heart attacks treated at the hospital, census region, or urban status. In a related editorial, Dr. Nancy R. Kressin, from Boston University School of Public Health comments, "The evidence to date suggests a discouraging picture of racial disparities in cardiovascular care, and Skinner and coworkers' study documents disparate outcomes associated with segregated care. It is still not clear what proportion of the life expectancy gap in cardiovascular disease is explained by disparate care."
SOURCE: Circulation, online October 25, 2005.
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Distance to Care Facility Affects Mastectomy Rates

(Reuters Health) - The further a woman with breast cancer lives from a radiation therapy facility, the less likely she is to have breast-conserving therapy, a new study shows. Since 1990, Dr. Anneke T. Schroen of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and her team note, breast conservation therapy has been considered the gold standard for women with early-stage breast cancer.

This type of therapy involves removing the tumor surgically along with any cancer-containing lymph nodes, followed by radiation treatment. In mastectomy, a more debilitating and disfiguring surgery that is not always necessary, the entire breast as well as some surrounding tissue is removed. While breast conservation therapy is being used more frequently in the US as a whole, Schroen and her colleagues write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, rates are lower in portions of the southern US. But the reason for this regional variation is unclear.

The team conducted the current study to investigate whether access to care, as measured by distance from the nearest radiation therapy facility, might affect breast cancer therapy. Virginia offers an excellent opportunity for evaluating access to treatment and quality of care, the researchers note, given that it encompasses both urban and rural areas and poor and wealthy populations.

Their analysis included 20,094 patients diagnosed with breast cancer in Virginia between 1996 and 2000. While mastectomy rates were 43 percent for women who lived within 10 miles of a radiation therapy facility, they were 47 percent among women living 10 to 25 miles from a facility, 53 percent at 25 to 50 miles, and 58 percent at greater than 50 miles.

The same relationship was seen for the women who had small, early stage tumors, with mastectomy rates being 31 percent, 36 percent, 41 percent and 49 percent, respectively. During the course of the study, the researchers found, overall mastectomy rates dropped from 48 percent to 43 percent across the state.

In a rural area where a new radiation therapy facility was opened, rates dropped from 61 percent to 45 percent in the same time period. While it may not be cost-effective to site new radiation therapy facilities in rural areas, Dr. Schroen and her team note, another possibility for improving access for rural women would be to provide housing assistance near existing facilities. The findings suggest, they conclude, that improving access to radiation therapy could help to increase rates of breast-conserving treatment.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, October 1, 2005.
Copyright 2005 Reuters.

Blood Pressure Drugs May Prevent Headaches

Reuters HealthNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Findings from a large analysis of clinical trial data indicate that the use of blood pressure-lowering drugs can prevent a substantial proportion of headaches.

The fact that agents of different classes produce this effect suggests that the mechanism is the ability to lower blood pressure, lead author Dr. Malcolm Law, from London Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, and colleagues note.

Yet, findings from observational studies have not supported a link between high blood pressure and headaches. The study, reported in the journal Circulation, involved data from 94 trials that looked at the four main blood pressure-lowering drug classes -- thiazides, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, and angiotensin II receptor antagonist.

A total of 17,641 subjects received an active agent and 6,603 were given a placebo. Treatment with a blood pressure-lowering drug reduced the top and the bottom reading of blood pressure by an average of 9.4 and 5.5 mm Hg, respectively, the authors report. Overall, 12.4 percent of subjects given placebo reported headaches compared with 8.0 percent of those treated with an active agent, representing a risk reduction of 33 percent.

The authors estimate that about 1 in 30 subjects given a blood pressure-lowering drug benefitted by having a headache prevented. All four drug classes appeared to provide a significant reduction in headache prevalence. "Blood pressure-lowering drugs are prescribed to reduce blood pressure and a person's risk of having a stroke or heart attack," Law said in a statement. "This result indicates that, as an added benefit, the drugs also prevent headaches." Law conceded, however, that given the lack of association in observational studies, the present findings do not resolve the long-standing mystery of whether high blood pressure actually causes headaches.

SOURCE: Circulation, October 11, 2005.

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Blood Test Gives Early Warning to Brain Injury

By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new test that detects fragments of broken brain cells that leak into the bloodstream may help doctors quickly detect and treat people with severe head injuries or brain diseases.

"The important thing about this work is that we can easily monitor the release of an axonal protein into serum for the first time," Dr. Gerry Shaw from the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville told Reuters Health.

"It is useful to know this as you can decide whether an accident victim has a serious brain or spinal cord injury quickly without performing MRI, X-rays etc., and you should also be able tell if diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, or Alzheimer's are in their early, presymptomatic, stages."

Using their blood test, Shaw and colleagues observed that a brain protein called NF-H is readily detected in "surprisingly large amounts" in the blood of rats following experimentally induced spinal cord injury and, in smaller but still significant amounts, in rats given experimental traumatic brain injury. Since this protein is only found in axons -- nerve fibers that help brain cells communicate -- this indicates that axonal injury must have occurred, Shaw noted.

The discovery, reported in the current online issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, could lead to tests for the clinic or battlefield to diagnose ailments with just a few drops of blood, bypassing more cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive tests such as brain scans.

For example, shaken-soldier syndrome is a traumatic brain injury that can occur when a soldier survives a roadside blast, Dr. Douglas Anderson from the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida who participated in the research explains. "In patients who are unconscious but with no penetrating head wounds, it would be extremely helpful for emergency medical technicians to test for a marker to see how severe the injuries are. Then perhaps something can be done early on," he said in a statement.

SOURCE: Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications October 2005. More information’s here:

Radiation adjustment can stop hair loss

United Press International

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

DENVER, Oct 19, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Adjusting the application of radiation technology could prevent hair loss in patients treated for brain tumors, researchers reported Wednesday.

Hair loss is one of the more socially and emotionally devastating quality-of-life issues involved in cancer treatment.

"This is a quality of life issue," Dr. Todd Scarbrough, a radiation oncologist at Melbourne Internal Medicine Associates in Florida, told United Press International. "Whole-brain radiation is generally used for palliation when cancer metastasizes. With standard treatment, patients almost always lose all their hair. With our technique most of them keep it."

The standard treatment for brain metastases involves a two-field opposed lateral beams of radiation energy, Scarbrough explained at the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiology and Oncology.

"In addition to irradiating the cancer in hopes of killing it or stopping its spread, the standard two-field treatment also irradiates the scalp, and results in most case in 100 percent alopecia -- hair loss."

Scarbrough said hair loss, even to patients with grim diagnoses of metastatic cancer, remains one of the toughest consequences of cancer treatment.

"Hair loss is not just important to women," he said. "Men too are deeply affected by losing their hair."

He said loss of hair can impact social events, and can be embarrassing, because it marks the individual as a cancer patient, even to those who do not know them.

Instead of using the two-beam treatment, Scarbrough offers his patients a multi-field, computer-controlled conformal beam arrangement that can focus more radiotherapy on the areas where the lesions are located and limit radiation exposure to the scalp.

He began using intensity-modulated radiation therapy this year and has tried it on 14 patients. Of those patients, six suffered no hair loss during their treatment.

"The others had what I call subjective mild hair loss," said Scarbrough, who holds faculty positions at the University of Miami School of Public Health in Florida and at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. "There is no standardized scale for defining hair loss."

"Use of intensity modulated radiation therapy is much more expensive than standard whole brain radiation," noted Dr. Theodore Lawrence, professor and chair of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

"It may be difficult to sell to patients the idea that they might be able to protect their hair with a procedure that is both more expensive than the standard and unproven," Lawrence told UPI.

He said the physics behind the concept is sound and there should be less of a dose of radiation to the scalp. Nevertheless, Lawrence said the treatment needs to be compared in a randomized trial to determine its true effectiveness.

Scarbrough said if insurers cover the expense of palliation treatment for a person with late stage cancer, the companies will often pick up the cost of using the more expensive treatment. Not surprising, he said, patients prefer the treatment that will preserve their hair.

Edward Susman covers medical research for UPI. E-mail: healthbiz@upi.com

URL: www.upi.com

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

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Ginseng Product May Lessen Misery of Cold Season

Reuters Health
By Amy Norton
Wednesday, November 2, 2005

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A cold remedy derived from the popular herb ginseng could help make the cold season a bit shorter and sweeter, new research suggests.

In a study that pitted the ginseng product against a placebo, Canadian researchers found that adults who took the botanical everyday for 4 months developed fewer and less-severe colds than did those on the placebo.

Though people in both groups were equally likely to suffer at least one cold during the cold and flu season, those who took ginseng were less likely to fall ill multiple times. What's more, their cold symptoms tended to be shorter-lasting and less severe, according to findings published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The dried root of the ginseng plant has a long history of use in Chinese medicine. In many countries, both the Asian and North American varieties of the herb have become popular as dietary supplements; these products purport to carry a number of health benefits, including increased energy and stronger immune function.

The product used in the current study, sold as Cold-fX, is composed of 10 percent North American ginseng and a large amount of complex carbohydrates called polysaccharides. According to study co-author Dr. Tapan Basu of the University of Alberta, the findings cannot be generalized to all ginseng formulations.

"Does this mean any ginseng will do? No," Basu said in an interview.

The polysaccharides, according to the researcher, are key to enhancing the body's immune defenses against cold viruses. A random ginseng product, he said, would have polysaccharides, but they would be "diluted."

The product's manufacturer, Edmonton, Canada-based CV Technologies Inc., funded the research. Basu has served as a consultant to the company.

The study included 323 adults who were randomly assigned to take either the ginseng capsules or placebo capsules filled with rice powder everyday for 4 months. During that time, participants kept daily logs of any cold symptoms -- including runny nose, congestion, sore throat and headache.

In general, adults in both groups had a similar likelihood of developing one cold during the study period. But less than half as many in the ginseng group had a repeat cold -- 10 percent, versus almost 23 percent in the placebo group.

And based on participants' reports, symptoms tended to be less severe and have less staying power in the ginseng group.

Since the study assessed participants' symptoms, and the common cold and Influenza share some symptoms, there is a chance that the ginseng product prevented some cases of the flu, Basu noted.

He said he "wouldn't hesitate to recommend" the herbal remedy to healthy adults who tend to suffer from multiple colds during the winter. But the product's safety and effectiveness for other groups -- including children, pregnant women and people with immune system dysfunction -- is unknown.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Ronald B. Turner of the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville points to the difficulty of studying remedies for the common cold.

Numerous cold therapies, he writes, "both alternative and conventional," have shown promise in preliminary research only to fizzle with further study. More research, Turner concludes, will be needed to confirm the current findings.

SOURCE: Canadian Medical Association Journal, October 25, 2005.

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Kidney disease may have heritable factor

United Press International

Tuesday, November 1, 2005


WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Nov 1, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Wake Forest University scientists say nearly one-fourth of all kidney dialysis patients have a close relative on dialysis, suggesting a heritable factor.

The researchers at the university's Baptist Medical Center, and others, suggest screening such patients' relatives for undetected kidney disease.

The research was conducted by scientists from Wake Forest and Emory universities and the End-Stage Renal Disease Network 6, one of 18 such networks in the United States.

The largest study of its type ever performed, the research involved 25,883 newly treated dialysis patients from North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Of those, 22.8 percent were found to have close family members also with end-stage kidney failure.

Dr. Barry Freedman, professor of internal medicine and head of the Baptist Medical Center's nephrology section, said, "Physicians caring for patients with chronic kidney disease should consider focusing screening efforts on high-risk family members in an attempt to slow the exponential growth rate of kidney failure."

The study was based on dialysis patients from North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia and appears in the current online edition of the American Journal of Nephrology.

URL: www.upi.com

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

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