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Prediabetes attached to Stroke Risk 0

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Prediabetes refers to blood sugar levels that are higher than normal but not high enough to be defined as having diabetes. This condition places a person at greater risk for full-blown diabetes. Many people with prediabetes also have other risk factors for stroke. These include beingoverweight or obese, having high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels.

Researchers from the University of California at San Diego analyzed 15 studies of nearly 761,000 people to get a handle on whether or not prediabetes increases stroke risk.

And it does -- sometimes. Stroke risk varies based on the definition of prediabetes. Not all studies in the new analysis defined prediabetes in the same way.

Prediabetes is typically defined as a fasting (not eating for 12 hours) glucose level between 100 to 125 mg/dl. Seventy to 100 mg/dl is normal.

Studies with people whose blood sugar levels were in the 110 to 125 mg/dl range showed a 21% greater likelihood of stroke. This risk held even after the research team took into account other factors that are known to increase risk for stroke.

This range was how the American Diabetes Association defined prediabetes in 1997. They changed the definition to 100mg/dl to 125mg/dl in 2003.

Studies that used the less-restrictive range did show a higher risk for stroke.

Future stroke risk begins to rise at or above a fasting glucose level of 110 mg/dL, the study authors suggest. Their findings appear in the British Medical Journal.

If you fall into this category, "the best thing you can do is alter your lifestyle," says researcher Bruce Ovbiagele, MD. He is a neuroscientist at University of California at San Diego. "Maintain a normal weight and try to exercise at least three times a week."

There is no medicine that treats prediabetes, but "lifestyle modifications can prevent more than 50% of people from going from prediabetes to frank diabetes, which is a major risk factor for stroke," he says.

The best part is that these lifestyle changes are side-effect free.

"There is a growing epidemic of prediabetes, and more people should check whether or not they have it, regardless of the difference in definitions," Ovbiagele tells WebMD.

Lifestyle Changes Can Prevent Full-Blown Diabetes

Minisha Sood, MD, agrees. She says prediabetes can be an important warning sign for future health problems, including stroke. Sood is an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

The question becomes: What can you do about it? "If someone has impaired fasting glucose, I suggest lifestyle modifications endorsing 5% to 10% weight loss if they are overweight or obese, 150 minutes of exercise per week, and counseling about how to accomplish this."

"Many people don't take complications of their disease to heart, and they don't put a lot of weight on lifestyle changes," she says. "The onus is on the patient, but physicians can't be lackadaisical about prediabetes either. ... Know your numbers so you can get a head start on reducing your cardiovascular risk factors."

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The study was very small, and the procedure is not ready for widespread use. "We now have a unique approach with some positive findings, but it's still early. We need to better understand the biology behind the treatment and follow patients for long-term side effects," Robert E. Ratner, MD, chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association, tells WebMD.

This is the latest of several stem cell studies to show promising results for the treatment of type 1 diabetes, Ratner notes.

In the new study, 15 of 28 teens with type 1 diabetes who got an experimental treatment using their own stem cells went into remission and did not need insulin injections for an average of about 1.5 years.

The "cocktail treatment" combines stem cell therapy with drugs that suppress the body's immune system. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells within the pancreas.

The experimental treatment is called autologous nonmyeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). It aims to kill the destructive immune system cells and replace them with immature stem cells not programmed to destroy insulin-producing cells.

First, patients are given drugs to stimulate production of blood stem cells. The blood stem cells are then removed from the body and frozen. Then, patients are hospitalized and given drugs to kill the destructive immune system cells. The harvested blood stem cells are then put back into the patient.

Eight teens who took part in the study have remained insulin-free for two years, on average. One patient has gone without insulin injections for 3.5 years.

"All our patients considered the [treatment] to be worthwhile and beneficial, though some patients experienced side effects," study head Weiqiong Gu, MD, of Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai, tells WebMD.

As a result of the immune-system suppressing drugs, most of the patients in Gu's study experienced side effects including low white blood cell counts, fever, nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and suppression of bone marrow.

Most of those side effects disappeared within two to four weeks, and unlike in previous studies of the experimental therapy, none of the patients developed infections, pneumonia, low sperm counts, or organ damage. "One woman becamepregnant by natural means a year after transplantation and delivered a healthy girl," Gu says.

Still, patients have to be followed for years to ensure they do not develop known long-term complications of immune-suppressing drugs, including tumors andinfertility, Gu says.

The findings were presented here at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and appear in the July issue of the journal Diabetes Care.

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If you have COPD, the most important step you can take to manage your condition is to quit smoking.

Your second most important step is to live in a smoke-free environment.

Whether you directly inhale smoke or get it from secondhand smoke,

cigarette smoke accelerates the damage already going on in the lungs. Avoiding smoke slows the damage and actually slows the progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

In addition, when you quit smoking, you lower the risk for you and those around you of other serious health problems like heart disease.

Quitting cigarettes can make the difference between living longer and well - and not living at all. That’s especially true now that COPD is a part of your life. The good news is smoking is a risk factor you can control. Here’s how.

1. Set a Date to Quit Smoking

If you want to quit smoking, it helps to set a quit date, says Lindy Wolfenden, MD. Wolfenden is an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She is also director of the outpatient pulmonary function laboratory at Emory Clinic. Setting a date to quit formalizes the attempt to quit. And while it may still take several attempts, the likelihood of permanently quitting goes up with each attempt you make.

When you choose a date to quit smoking, make it one when it is less likely you’ll have added stress. Stress is a major roadblock to any behavioral change. That’s especially true when you try to quit smoking.

Mark the quit date on your calendar. Experts recommend that as it approaches you stay mentally and emotionally focused on this date as a time for new beginnings and better health.

2. Expect to Feel Miserable

When you first quit smoking, it will be rough. You might feel miserable, irritable, even depressed. But according to the American Lung Association, nicotine clears out of the system quickly. It is usually in the undetectable range within 24 hours after someone quits.

For a few weeks, you might feel hungrier than normal. You may want to eat snacks all day long -- anything to occupy your hands and mouth. Once you get past the first few days, though, you will begin to feel more in control.

Keep sugarless gum or hard candy in your pocket during this time as a short-term “fix” when you crave a cigarette.

3. Remove Smoking Triggers

A smoking trigger is anything your brain has connected with smoking. Everyone’s smoking triggers are different. Your smoking trigger may be the smell of cigarette smoke, your morning coffee, or spotting an ashtray.

Wolfenden suggests removing tobacco from the house, porch, and car. “People should talk with their families about getting cigarettes, ashtrays, and lighters out of the house. Remove anything that reminds them of smoking.”

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A recent survey on American woman has revealed that more than half of them feel stressed out most of the time. What’s more, this stress is making them bitchy. Since stressful situations lower the feel good hormones such as endorphin and increase the harmful hormones such as cortisol in the body, they can lead to outbursts. The condition of women is aggravated by their conditioning. They are expected and conditioned to keep their anger to themselves and not express it overtly. They would tend to get into a bad mood to express their bad mood.

If such is your case, here are some pointers to manage your stress better from now onwards:

Get tougher assignments done earlier in the day – You should schedule your day in a way that the tougher tasks are completed first thing in the morning. Leaving them for later or procrastinating is likely to make you yell at people a lot more out of anxiety.
Don’t forget your coffee breaks – A study has found that having coffee alone does not have a good effect on your stress levels. On the other hand, if you sipped in caffeinated drinks in a group, the stress levels were reduced.
Learn to say ‘no’ – Women are inclined to accept each and every invitation that they receive. You do not need to feel obliged just because you have been called. In fact going somewhere while feeling annoyed or bitter all the time is likely to have the reverse effect in socialising.
Short high-intensity exercises – To really let out the stress from your body, get your body moving. Running for 5 to 10 minutes might be a better option than doing cardio or Yoga. Slower paced workouts do not have as good an effect on reducing your stress levels as the fast paced ones.
Pamper yourself – Enjoying a sauna, taking a hot relaxing shower or any other indulgence usually works well to beat your stress. Just make sure that it does not divert your focus from something important.
Get hold of your finances – Plan your summer holiday travel and check out how you are going to make it. Paying attention to your financial condition would make you feel more secured about the future and help to relieve stress.
Learn to speak slowly – Be alert about when you can snap out at anyone, the cahier or clerk of any establishment, or any other person. However tiresome the person may be, if you restrain yourself to talk slowly, it would place you in a better position to get what you want.
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Ovulating Girls have More Sexual Fantasies

Several studies on finding differences in women’s sexual desire or interest across the menstrual cycle have found out that women have more sexual fantasies when they are ovulating. A study that was published in 2007 found that when ovulating women were interviewed, they preferred masculine and macho guys. A more recent study has found that a woman experiences an increase in sexual fantasiesduring the most fertile periods of her menstrual cycle.

Study author Samantha Dawson said that sexual fantasies and sexual daydreams do not depend on the availability of sex partners implying that fantasies are more representative of sexual interest than how much of sex a woman has. To conduct the study, the researches paid 27 single heterosexual women to keep an online diary of their sexual daydreams or fantasies every day for about a month. By counting reverse from the previous menstrual cycle, the researchers kept a ten-day window within which every woman will be likely to ovulate. During these ten days, each woman undertook a self urine test to find if they were ovulating. The women were not told that they were being tested for ovulation by keeping the ovulation tests in neutral packaging.

The women reported that they experienced 0.77 sexual fantasies per day on an average. This was seen to be much higher than what was found in earlier studies that said that men fantasised once per day and women fantasised once per week.

It was found that the frequency of fantasies increased in women, who were around three days surrounding ovulation. The women also reported that the fantasies were more arousing than the ones they had during the non-fertile days.

In several studies, men had reported to have had more visual and explicit fantasies than females, who tend to give more attention to the emotions or feelings they have towards the man instead of his masculinity or the kind of sexual acts they indulge in in the fantasies. In the current study, researchers found that women looked at pictures of masculine and feminine men as well as women at least three points across their menstrual cycle, but found hardly any interest during the fertile periods.

The researchers found that women were more interested in men during their most fertile periods. As far as the characters in the fantasies are concerned, women had about 95 per cent male characters across their menstrual cycle.

The Study has been publishes in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.

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The thyroid gland that is located in the neck is responsible for the production of hormones. When the gland stops producing the required amount of hormones, the body’s functions slow down with depressionbeing one of the symptoms of a lack in adequate production of hormones.

The thyroid gland is located in the neck just above the collarbone and is called the endocrine gland. The endocrine gland produces hormones that regulate the metabolism n the body. Endocrine glands make the hormones and secrete them into all the parts of the body through the bloodstream.

One’s metabolism affects the speed at which the body functions. Metabolism takes control of all the internal organs. When your thyroid slows down and thereby produces insufficient amount of hormones to control the metabolism, you undergo what is called hypothyroidism.

The symptoms of hypothyroidism can come and go with time. Most thyroid disorders are hereditary. Therefore, if your mother or aunt has had any thyroid disorder, you are likely to have it too.

Symptoms of Depression

There may be several signs of depression in people diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Some of the warning signs of depression in patients with thyroid cancer include:

consistently feeling sad, hopeless, empty, worthless or helpless,

thinking about suicide and death,

not enjoying hobbies or activeness and

significant changes in weight.

Patients with thyroid cancer may experience feelings of fatigue, difficulty in concentrating, wanting to sleep and feeling sluggish. The treatments may also cause depression, especially if you were an active person prior to going through the treatments that demand a lot of rest.

Treatment of Depression

If you want to stop being unhappy or feel that being sad is out of your control, make sure that you the health care team that is responsible for treating thyroid cancer is also responsible for taking care of emotional health. Here are other treatments for depression that you can administer yourself.

Eat a healthy diet.
Enrol in a support group to gain assistance from other thyroid cancer survivors and patients.
Talk to friends and family about your condition. Seek emotional support from them.
Understand that depression is a commonly experienced mental condition after having been diagnosed with cancer, but it can be treated.

Tips

Remind yourself to not sink into depression or let it affect you so much that you find it hard to battle thyroid cancer.

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Being pregnant doesn’t have to mean abandoning all your fitness routines; it just means you need to be a little more vigilant about where and how you exercise. If you are already skilled and proficient at certain exercises and techniques, then there shouldn’t be any problems continuing these. It can be just as important to stay fit and strong during pregnancy, as you will need a show of strength during labour.

Stay indoors

Working out indoors minimises unpredictability; you’re never too sure what you’re going to get outdoors. Unmerciful weather can make footpaths slippery; loose debris may cause you to stumble or trip and loose autumnal leaves may make you slip. The chances of these happening are slim of course and you may scoff at this, but one trip, fall or stumble could cause a mis-carriage.

Erin O’Brien – a pre- and post-natal exercise specialist out of California agrees with taking your routines indoors and stresses that you can maximise the contours of your own home. O’Brien produced an exercise DVD called Pregnancy Fitness and it details numerous ways of keeping yourself in relative shape up to the delivery.

“Walking stairs is a great workout, because as you get heavier, you'll need stronger legs; put on some rock-and-roll,” she says, “and walk up and down your stairs for 20 minutes, up until you're 36 weeks pregnant.”

Keep cool

Keeping cool is another pointer the experts love to stress, which is why any kind of activity in the hot summer afternoons and evenings isn’t recommended; even getting in a hot tub or having a hot shower isn’t advised.

Scott G. Williams MD, FACOG - an expert in obstetrics and gynecology – says that “babies don't develop as well with excessive heat, which is why pregnant women are told to avoid hot tubs; you get so hot, you raise the temperature of the baby; try to avoid being outside exercising in the middle of a July or August day.”

While Erin O’Brien recommends that “if you look in the mirror and see that your face is really flush, I'd take it down a notch”.

Back in the saddle

Cycling is a great work-out for pregnant women and to minimise the risk involved a stationary exercise bike might be best. These bikes come in all shapes, sizes and requirements, so you can practically build a bike that suits your needs. Your needs in this situation are a back rest and a wide saddle, as you’ll want to be as comfortable as possible in that seat.

Whatever pregnancy exercise or fitness routine you are doing, be sure to take on board lots of liquid; staying hydrated is critical to you and your baby. Tap water – if it is safe – is best kind as it contains all the natural minerals needed in our daily diet. Try to stay away from sports drinks, as these are high on sugar content and you’re not trying to endure yourself, you’re just getting exercise.

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