According to a new WHO report “Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda,” more Filipino women/girls are smoking now than ever. The Filipino data for both sexes is also higher than the global average and is up 6.8% from the previous WHO report.
This is terrible news indeed. I hope we could arrest this trend. Smoking tobacco is the 2nd most common cause of death after hypertension and it would serve us well to intensify information campaigns to educate or warn young people about the danger of getting hooked on tobacco.
This post should be titled "how not to treat a sprained foot"... I was cleaning my room when I stubbed my toe on the foot of the bed frame--actually it's the area between the 2nd and 3rd toe of my left foot to be specific--it hurt but the pain was bearable and I just went about my business walking around like nothing happened until 5 hours later when my foot was swollen to 3x its usual size and I couldn't take another step because the pain was so bad.
They say people in the medical profession make terrible patients and I'm no exception... I've treated several cases of sprains (ankle, toe, foot, hand) and I feel I can recite the P.R.I.C.E protocol in my sleep. But with all these knowledge at my disposal, and because I know no bone was broken, I didn't apply first aid on my sprained foot until I absolutely had to and suffered more for it.
So as a service to my readers, I'm posting the P.R.I.C.E. protocol from the Mayo Clinic here so you'd know how to take care of a sprained ankle or whatever and hopefully follow it if something like this happens to you.
1. Protect the injured limb from further injury by not using the joint. You can do this using anything from splints to crutches.
2. Rest the injured limb. But don't avoid all activity. Even with an ankle sprain, you can usually still exercise other muscles to minimize deconditioning. For example, you can use an exercise bicycle with arm exercise handles, working both your arms and the uninjured leg while resting the injured ankle on another part of the bike. That way you still get three-limb exercise to keep up your cardiovascular conditioning.
3. Ice the area. Use a cold pack, a slush bath or a compression sleeve filled with cold water to help limit swelling after an injury. Try to ice the area as soon as possible after the injury and continue to ice it for 10 to 15 minutes four times a day for 48 hours. If you use ice, be careful not to use it too long, as this could cause tissue damage.
4. Compress the area with an elastic wrap or bandage. Compressive wraps or sleeves made from elastic or neoprene are best.
5. Elevate the injured limb above your heart whenever possible to help prevent or limit swelling.
*** This really works... when I woke up today, the swelling has lessened and the pain is almost gone (I took 1 Ibuprofen tablet before going to bed). I'm now able to wiggle my toes and though it's still sore, my injured foot's range of motion is good. I just put on socks because I couldn't find compressive bandages. I'm still hopping around the house on one foot but I feel loads better.
A new study conducted by the National Nutrition and Health Survey found that 1 in 4 Filipinos has hypertension and are at risk from lifestyle-related diseases like diabetes. Not really surprising considering the popularity of fast food chains in the country and the sedentary lifestyle of most people.
Recent results of the National Nutrition and Health Survey (NNHeS II) FNRI showed that more Filipinos have hypertension, high fasting blood sugar, and high cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and other lifestyle-related diseases.
They found out that one in every four Filipino adults (25.3 percent) has hypertension or a blood pressure (BP) reading equal to or higher than 140/90 millimeter mercury (mmHg), a significant increase in the prevalence of hypertension. In 2008, the prevalence of hypertension increased to 25.3 percent from 22.5 percent in 2003.
This is good to know. There's a recently released study that proves parents pass on less genetic mutations to their offspring than previously believed. I mean 75 genetic mutations from each parent?
Now researchers estimate that kids just receive about 60 mutations from both parents, so that's infinitely better, obviously. Although most genetic mutations are thought to have no ill effect on a child's overall health, thank God!
WASHINGTON – American scientists have for the first time unlocked the genetic code of an entire family, and made a startling discovery – that parents pass on fewer mutations than previously thought. Scientists had long believed that each parent passed on some 75 genetic mutations to their children.
But the result of research by a team at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and the University of Utah found this was nowhere near the case, according to their study published in Thursday's edition of Science Express.
This is good news for consumers, drugs are too expensive as it is. I hope the government won't stifle innovation though, by imposing price controls that would prevent drug companies from investing on new research. Everyone wants cheap medicines--but we have to remember, the pharmaceutical companies have to make a profit to be viable too.
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Health (DOH) announced Friday a new round of price reductions for at least 97 types of drugs sold in drug stores and hospital pharmacies. The “voluntary” price reductions, to take effect on March 31, were made by 11 local pharmaceutical companies, according to Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral.
The price cuts, according to Cabral, translate to about P2 billion worth of “consumer savings” on drugs for cancer, diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, asthma, infectious diseases and on dialysis solutions and medical devices. Drug companies volunteered to reduce prices to avoid government-ordered mandatory price cuts, Cabral said. She commended the companies for reducing their prices by an “average of 50 percent.”
This is good news. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in cooperation with the Department of Health (DOH) is stepping up its campaign against HIV/AIDS in the workplace. Predictably with the release of a new report that shows a rise in registered HIV/AIDS cases, the blame game has began... it's really counter-productive to point fingers at the government, the Catholic church etc.
The focus should be on educating people about the risks.I believe that one's health is one's responsibility not anyone else's... educating people about HIV/AIDS is very important but the individual should also do his part--all the information in the world is useless if you ignore it and keep on doing things that put your health at risk.
Read more...
Wonderful news for people in the developing world still affected by malaria. Rhoel Dinglasan an entomologist and biologist at Johns Hopkins University developed a vaccine that worked in a way that keeps mosquitoes from spreading malaria if they bite someone who has been inoculated with the vaccine--thereby preventing them from spreading the disease. Dinglasan has Filipino roots too so this makes it more awesome.
Malaria was eradicated in the U.S. by 1951, so Americans can be forgiven for not giving the disease much thought. But the mosquito-borne scourge is responsible for the deaths of nearly a million children under age 5 each year — mostly in Africa — killing one child every 30 seconds. Half the world's population remains at risk — including travelers to affected countries.
Traditional vaccines work by introducing a killed or weakened version of a disease into the body, where the immune system spots it and cranks out antibodies against it. Then, if a wild strain of the pathogen comes along later — one that has the power to sicken or kill — the body is ready for it. The new approach is different. Developed by Rhoel Dinglasan, an entomologist and biologist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, it would instead work within the mosquito gut.
Dinglasan has found an antigen, called AnAPN1, that causes humans to create antibodies that prevent transmission of malaria by mosquitoes. Get enough of these antibodies into mosquitoes, and you lock the disease up there and prevent it from infecting us. Sounds good, but how do you implement such a strategy? You can hardly vaccinate the mosquitoes themselves. Instead, you put the AnAPN1 into their food source: us. A mosquito that bites an inoculated person would pick up the antibodies and then be sidelined from the malaria-transmission game.
Talking about the obvious... but of course it's always good to have common sense backed up by research so there would not be any doubt. Here's more proof that Mama's right, "too much of anything is bad for you."
From WebMD:
Jan 11, 2010 -- Watch out, couch potatoes! A new study says that every hour of TV you watch daily may increase your risk of early death from cardiovascular disease.
Australian researchers, reporting in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, studied the lifestyle habits of 8,800 adults. They found that each hour spent watching television on a daily basis is associated with an 18% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
“What has happened is that a lot of the normal activities of daily living that involved standing up and moving the muscles in the body have been converted to sitting,” Dunstan says in a news release. “Technological, social, and economic changes mean that people don’t move their muscles as much as they used to -- consequently the levels of energy expenditure as people go about their lives continue to shrink. For many people, on a daily basis, they simply shift from one chair to another, from the chair in the car to the chair in the office to the chair in front of the television.”
