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Archive for the ‘Disease Prevention’ Category

Do you know why most MD would not tell you anything you ask about disease prevention?

In their years of training to be a physician, sad to say that they are not trained in this area but to cure diseases.

Not The Doctors Fault

It is not the doctor’s fault.

Your health-care situation is just like a highway. The medical and pharmaceutical industry is just like a rescue team in a dangerous high-speed highway, waiting for accident to happen.

While not being their responsibility to maintain good highway condition and putting up effective road signs, they can’t help you to prevent your health-care accident from happening.

It Is Your Responsibility

So it is your responsibility to take disease prevention steps and maintain good health care condition of your body like maintaining good road condition of a highway, which will ensure your journey on the health-care highway is not jeopardized by poor road conditions.

Anyway, it is your body that you can control to maintain good health condition. Many people still do not believe that good health condition and preventive measure is their responsibility and it is attainable without doctors’ intervention.

I am going to do my part here to give your the resources and knowledge that I know to you. It is up to you to learn, apply and take full responsibility to prevent disease and maintain healthy body.

You can get lots of the information from the expert in the field, which is available to you free on the Internet or by paying a small fee.

Some of the advice or reference you find require you to take some form of vitamin supplements, some require you to take disciplined actions or exercise.

When you decided to take vitamin to maintain optimal health, please remember that you need to take them consistently and regularly in order for you to reap the benefit of these supplements to prevent diseases.

Do Your Research

You ought to do your research carefully and thoroughly before taking your plunge to prevent disease naturally. From my own experience, I did my own research before using high quality and natural products to keep my general well being of my health. My own proactive research started a few years ago when I was advised to take Statin to lower my bad cholesterol level. However, contrary to the advice, I decided to take a non-drug treatment approach and I succeeded in bringing down my bad cholesterol level.

There other numerous experience from my family members who also used a non-drug approach to cure diseases like liver tumor and ovarian cyst.

There are more resource and information about disease prevention and medicine alternatives approach to preventing, treatment and cure of diseases on the Internet.

All of us know that for a healthy proper body, it is very important that the heart functions properly. We need to take care of the heart as one of the main causes for heart blockage and in severe cases; a heart attack is nothing but the substance cholesterol. We need to ensure that we take in a proper diet with the correct levels of cholesterol. This involves ensuring that there is a balance between Low Density Lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL and High Density Lipoprotein cholesterol or HDL. This helps in reducing the chances of a coronary artery disease occurring in the individual.

LDL Cholesterol is also known as bad cholesterol because it transports cholesterol to the arteries. The risk here is that there is every chance that it will get stored there by the arterial protoglycans. This will lead to the formation of plaques causing the condition called atherosclerosis and finally to coronary artery disease. HDL or High Density Lipoprotein cholesterol is also called good cholesterol because it has found that it can remove cholesterol from the arteries and take it back to the liver to be excreted or to be re-utilized.

Therefore, having more of HDL than LDL can mean that you are protected from having a heart attack and any other coronary disease. This also means that we should learn to control our diet in such a way that the intake comprises more of HDL cholesterol and not LDL cholesterol.

One should learn to have soy protein, almonds, plant sterol-enriched margarines and oats, psyllium, okra, and eggplant as they help in reducing the levels of LDL Cholesterol.

Heart disease is not a just single condition or disorder. It has many forms and conditions. Hence, the term ‘heart disease’ refers to any disorder pertaining to the heart and the supporting blood circulatory system.

The Causes of Heart Disease

Some heart diseases are unpreventable. Typical examples are congenital and hereditary heart disease, which are due to defects existing at birth and due to genes respectively. There are other heart diseases, which are acquired due to lifestyle.

For the acquired types, it is possible to prevent them by living healthily, including doing physical exercise regularly, eating a balanced diet, not smoking and drink excessively.

There is a connection between heart diseases and diabetes. In fact, diabetic are up to 4 times more likely to suffer from a heart attack.

Prevention of Heart Disease

As mentioned, living healthily is the best prevention. Other preventive measures are maintaining a healthy weight, keeping your cholesterol levels within healthy ranges, controlling your blood sugar if you have diabetes, controlling your blood pressure, and make sure that you eat a balance diet that is rich in both fruits and vegetables as well as whole grain and nuts.

By doing these, you will not only be able to prevent heart disease but also prevent many other ailments as well. Staying healthy enable your body to withstand damages caused by disease. Hence, even if stricken by illnesses, you are likely to recover faster.

Testing for Heart Disease

Doctors will check for heart diseases when there are related family history and or high risk factors. The risk factors are hypertension or high blood pressure, breathlessness, heavy smoking or drinking, obesity, high cholesterol level, sedentary lifestyle and diabetes.

Treatment for Heart Disease

On first diagnosis of heart disease, a patient will very likely be advised to adopt a healthier lifestyle. For example, doing frequent exercise, eating a balance diet, quit alcohol and smoking. This is the first step in treatment. The next step will be medications and or surgery. There are many varieties of treatments for different problems of the heart.

If the prescribed medication does not seem to be effective or if the patient’s condition deteriorates, the next recourse will be surgery. There are also wide ranges of surgeries that can be performed and many of them are minimally invasive. Hence recovery time is quicker.

About Living with Heart Disease

The first thing to consider when it comes to living with heart disease is the actual condition of the disease. Are you just being cautious because of high risk factors? Or, do you have a serious heart condition? If you have only a mild form of heart disease, you probably have medication to control the problem.

Another aspect of living with heart disease is physical exercises. If your heart disease is serious, you should not exert yourself too much. A good form of exercise would be to take daily walks.

One of the more difficult aspects of living with heart disease is forgoing the fatty and unhealthy food such as fast food. Some discipline is really important here. If you want to prolong your life, it is a fair trade. However, nowadays, healthy foods are just as delicious.

The best approach to heart disease prevention is not a single course of action. In addition to exercise and diet, losing weight, keeping blood sugar level low are also important.

Good heart disease prevention also means having low cholesterol level. This may be achieved by making changes to diet and by taking prescription medications if so recommended by the doctor.

Consuming dietary supplements such as antioxidants, vitamin B and folic acid is helpful to heart disease prevention. Mangosteen is a very good source of all three. It is rich in antioxidants, which help to destroy free radicals. It is rich in vitamin B and folic acid that helps keep homocysteine low, which will otherwise will lead to arteriosclerotic disease.

Thus, with the help of a few changes to diet, lifestyle and also keeping blood pressure, LDL cholesterol low one can get the most out of heart disease prevention measures and ensure a longer life.

For more information on living with heart disease, consult your doctor or check out reputable websites.

Blood sugar regulation is important for many American adults as around 8 percent of the population has some type of diabetes. This figure may be growing each year as the epidemic of obesity increases. Many more Americans are facing a condition of pre-diabetes, making blood glucose control essential to prevent disorders such as kidney disease, blindness and amputation. In addition, fluctuating blood sugar levels are known to increase the risk of the development of atherosclerosis which contributes to heart attack and stroke. In fact, a person with high uncontrolled blood sugar levels may be up to 4 times more likely to develop heart attack or stroke than those who do not have diabetes. Keeping control of the blood glucose levels may be possible with the use of natural supplements such as Glucose Regulation Complex.

Chromium

Chromium has been shown to play a key role in glucose intolerance. When Chromium is added to the diet, improvement may be seen in blood sugar levels, insulin utilization, HbA1C levels and cholesterol. Reducing the blood glucose levels may decrease the risk for the development of cardiovascular disease.

Vanadium

Vanadium is a trace element which may actually mimic insulin to reduce blood glucose levels. Vanadium may reduce the need for additional insulin and may help to lower cholesterol levels. Lowering both the blood sugar and cholesterol levels may be important in reducing the development of atherosclerosis, particularly in diabetics or others having trouble maintaining healthy blood sugar levels.

Banaba Leaf Extract

The Banaba plant has been used in parts of Asia to treat diabetes. It is high in a phytochemical known as colosolic acid or corosolic acid which is thought to help stabilize blood sugar and may promote weight loss. Banaba Leaf extract may also help to promote healthy kidney function and improve kidney health which is extremely important in those who have problems maintaining stable blood sugar levels.

Alpha Lipoic Acid

Alpha Lipoic Acid is a natural anti-oxidant that can help turn glucose into energy. It works as a free radical scavenger throughout all of the tissues of the body because it is both fat and water soluble. It may help to lower blood sugar levels and its ability to prevent and reverse oxidation may help with conditions such as diabetic neuropathy and skin eruptions that are common in some persons with uncontrolled blood sugar.

Glucose Regulation Complex contains all of these important natural ingredients and is manufactured using whole food processes. The ingredients are guaranteed to be of the highest purity and most natural products available. Shaklee is a well established company that is always proud to promise that you will be happy with the purchase and offers a 100% money back guarantee if you are not. Glucose Regulation Complex is the finest product available for the support of healthy blood sugar.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease

Up until fairly recently, the known risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were few and clear. These were A. Advancing age, B. Genetic association (AD runs in families) and C. Genetic markers, specifically a gene that makes one form of a protein called apolipoprotein E (APOE 4).

The relative uncontrollability of these factors meant that there was little emphasis on Alzheimer’s prevention.

But then, in recent years there has been an increasing flow of information from long-term studies of populations that have brought in new understandings. We now understand AD better and several more risk factors have been identified. These risk factors appear to be controllable.

Factors of cardio-vascular health and the lifestyles that people adopt and follow have been shown to affect not only heart disease but also AD. Some of the same advice applies to both. People who follow lifestyles that are not heart-healthy are more prone to heart attacks and they are also more likely to have AD.

It’s true that we cannot yet do anything about your genetic profile and its built-in proclivities. However, we can do a great deal to affect the interactions between genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. These factors are what trigger certain reactions, which may never happen if they are controlled.

AD is an affliction that becomes apparent in older people. But we now know that there is a decades-long development stage in which bad things are happening to the brain and the disease is developing. Eventually it will become bad enough to show up in measurable impairment of your ability to think.

Understanding that, it becomes clear that taking a life-long approach to Alzheimer’s prevention is much more appropriate than the old late-life view. AD dementia risk is the result of exposure to both protective and harmful factors over a lifetime. Most of these factors can be influenced and controlled.

The risk factors for dementia/AD, important in Alzheimers prevention, identified so far are:

Hypertension – High blood pressure in mid-life is a risk factor for AD in later life.

Hypercholesterolemia – High serum total cholesterol levels at midlife increase the risk of AD in later-life.

Obesity – is increasing across the world, with severe consequences on cardiovascular health. Its association with the risk of AD has not been extensively studied, but there appear to be links to AD.

Vascular diseases – Whether it is the vascular disease itself or the risk factors present for it to develop is unknown, but it is linked to AD. Vascular disease prevention would be Alzheimer’s prevention.

Dietary factors – what you eat is an important lifestyle factor that affects vascular health. A diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol may increase the risk of AD whereas polyunsaturated fatty acids and fish may be protective.

Physical exercise and active lifestyle – Some shorter term longitudinal studies have indicated an inverse association between some form of regular physical activity (dancing, walking) and dementia/AD risk.

Smoking and alcohol drinking – Smoking (which is a strong risk factor for vascular diseases) may result in slightly increased risk for AD. Heavy drinking may increase dementia risk, but light-to-moderate alcohol use, especially with red wine, may have a protective effect related to AD.

Apolipoprotein E and other genetic factors – ApoE 4 is as yet the only genetic risk factor of established general significance for AD. It is a susceptibility gene for AD, being neither necessary nor sufficient for AD development. This is a problem for Alzheimer’s prevention, but is not at all insurmountable.

All of these risk factors but one are subject to change and control. The one that is not controllable, the ApoE 4, is one that can be worked around or neutralized. We are beginning to understand that AD is not inevitable, that prevention is possible. The dream of Alzheimer’s prevention, once all but dead, is now reborn!

As Alzheimer’s disease seems to begin very early in adulthood, the midlife period becomes especially important for Alzheimer’s prevention. As with many other chronic diseases, Alzheimer’s prevention can only be achieved by taking a life-long view, attacking at the point of outset, stopping it before it begins.

The clearest single message we get is that even though we don’t know exactly how it works or why, it seems that taking care of your heart’s health may also protect your brain as well.

For more information on Alzheimer’s prevention and what you can do to avoid AD, follow the links below.

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Obesity, A Disease By Itself

What is obesity?

Obesity is one of the major problems in the industrialized world. It is affecting all age groups and is responsible for many diseases and disorders like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis etc. Obesity is characterized by excess weight (fat) accumulated on the body.

How much is judged as excess weight?

A person whose body mass index (BMI) is more than 30 is considered obese. Your body mass index is defined as your body weight divided by the square of your height. Body mass index may be calculated using the formula given on the website mentioned at the end of this article.

What causes obesity?

Your weight is determined by the balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure. People gain weight if they consume more calories than they burn, the excess calories are stored by the body as fat. You can lose weight if you consumes less calories than you burn, Therefore the most common causes of obesity are overeating and physical inactivity.

It is not as simple as it looks

Weight gain or loss is not that simple! As we try to study why we become obese, the matter tends to become more and more complex. If it were that simple, we would not have spent billions of dollars on research for understanding and controlling obesity! There are many factors that contribute to a person’s weight gain (or loss). Genetics or heredity plays a very important role

Genetics.

If one or both parents are obese, the child is more likely to BE obese. Hormones involved in fat regulation are also affected by genetics. Deficiency of the hormone leptin, for example, is one of the causes of obesity. Placenta and the adipocytes (fat cells) produce the hormone leptin. When the body stores too much fat in the fat cells, they secrete leptin in the circulation, which gives a signal to the brain to eat less thereby controlling weight gain or obesity. If there is a defect in this leptin signalling pathway, that is if either enough leptin is not produced or leptin is ineffective in signalling the brain to eat less obesity develops. Leptin replacement therapy could potentially be one future possibility to treat obesity.

Overeating. Overeating is one of the major causes of weight gain. If the diet is high in fat or simple sugars, the effect of weight gain is multiplied. The reason for this is simply the high energy density (more calories packed in a small volume of a serving) of the high fat high sugar diet. Weight gain due to consumption of high fat high sugar diet has been validated by several epidemiological studies.

A diet high in simple sugars. Simple sugars increase blood glucose levels, which in turn stimulate the pancreas to secrete insulin, and insulin promotes deposition of fat in fat cells thereby causing weight gain. (actually fat gain!) Some scientists believe that simple sugars (eatables made by adding table sugar, glucose, fructose, desserts, soft drinks, beer, liquor etc.) are rapidly absorbed into the blood stream (see glycemic index) than complex carbohydrates like bread, brown rice, grains, vegetables, raw fruits, etc. More sugar in blood has to be rapidly cleared by our body system to avoid hyperglycemia. This is done by insulin. Therefore, more simple sugars in diet » rapid rise in blood glucose » more insulin secretion » more deposition of glucose as fat in fat cells » weight gain.

Frequency of eating. Eating more frequently can help you lose fat!

We saw above that the diet high in simple sugars raises the rate of glucose pouring into the blood circulation. A diet large in serving size also has the same effect: fast rise in blood sugar requires fast rise in insulin levels causing conversion of excess blood sugar into fat and ultimately deposit in the fat cells. Instead, if the serving size is smaller, and the eating frequency higher, the overall effect is some reduction in total calories consumed per day without feeling hungry. This is validated in several studies. People eating small portions more frequently have stable blood sugar levels (and in turn stable insulin levels) and also they have lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. For more about obesity and disease prevention visit Body Mass Index