Denician Angeleia

Archive for September, 2011

Primary stroke centers or stroke units aid stroke patient recovery by providing immediate ample attention needed by patients not only during the stroke but, more importantly, the days after it.

When a person is having a stroke, the immediate response is to bring him or her to the nearest hospital–any hospital. There’s nothing wrong with that, as this is just practical. However, not all hospitals are equipped in handling stroke cases as quickly as possible as they should when you’re suffering stroke.

This is the reason why a certification program is being issued to medical facilities to help people become more aware on where to go to in case of a stroke. Called Certified Primary Stroke Centers, the Joint Commission awards the Primary Stroke Center Certification to stroke units after these have been evaluated on the basis of compliance with consensus-based national standards, effective use of primary stroke center recommendations and clinical practice guidelines to manage and optimize care, and performance measurement and improvement activities.

A list of certified stroke units in the U.S. are available on the Joint Commission website for easy identification of which hospital to go to for this purpose. It is actually suggested that one should make oneself a personal list of the nearest stroke unit to where one works and to where one lives in the event of emergency to ensure that you get where you’re supposed to go to at the fastest possible time.

Time, after all, is a very important factor in saving the life of a person having a stroke. The longer one gets attention, the more grave its possible deficits on the person aside from the higher risk of death. Patients who go to stroke units have really higher chances of recovery as they are given tPA, the intravenous clot-dissolving drug proven to decrease cognitive and physical disabilities due to stroke–provided this is given within 3 hours of stroke onset.

According to Kristine Rueca, a physical therapist based in one of the leading hospitals in the Philippines, knowing where to go during a stroke is not just a preventive measure but a necessary step to ensure that you’ll have less deficits after a stroke.

What normally happens, she said, is that when a patient gets confined in a hospital that is not equipped with primary stroke care, the only thing that’s taken cared of with the patient are the vital signs. The tendency is that patients under this scenario end up having difficulty recovering from stroke, if they recover at all, as disability has already set in.

Patients who get confined in a primary stroke care facility get rehabilitation from physical therapists as soon as their condition stabilizes. This ensures that they quickly recover as much normal functioning as they can and get higher chances of avoiding long-term disability.

Indeed, primary stroke care centers or stroke units aid recovery for stroke patients. The faster a person gets to one during a stroke, the lesser chances of disabilities.

There’s a whole bunch of people who claim we’re the result of intelligent design. That means every aspect of the bodies we now occupy while on this Earth was in the original plan. So, for millennia, we’ve had to put up with pain when the designer could have left out the pain receptors placed all over our bodies or installed a painkiller chemical dispensation system. We got adrenaline to increase the body’s performance. It would have been just as easy to give us something to calm down the pain. Would something as simple as an off-switch be too much to ask for?

So what’s pain for? Well, it’s a basic survival tool. Unlike a few insects that have eyes with all-round vision, we can easily be taken by surprise. As primates, we had a habit of walking through thick grasses and stepping on sharp objects or sleeping snakes. We were also prone to losing concentration at key moments and falling out of our trees. In our modern lives, we have surrounded ourselves with dangerous machinery. The price of not paying attention is injury. We’ve always been accidents waiting to happen. In this, it’s pain that gives us the first warning signals if we’re in trouble. More importantly, it tells us where the problem is and what kind of injury we’re likely to have picked up.

Now you might say this is good so far as it goes, but why can’t we switch it off when we’ve seen a doctor and got the treatment? The answer is simple. You and the doctor need to monitor the pain. If it starts to get worse, the treatment needs to change. It’s the same if the pain starts to spread. If you have switched off the pain, there’s no way you would know something different is needed. More to the point, if you switch off pain because you hurt your leg and then pick up a pan that’s too hot, do you have to wait to smell the cooking flesh? All the rest of your body needs the pain reflexes to be working, otherwise you might accidentally injure yourself and make everything worse.

So let’s be clear. There are no drugs in development that will switch off pain. Actually, no one is trying very hard to develop such a drug. Pain is too useful to want to switch it off altogether. In chronic cases where the pain in an inflamed joint is making life a misery, there’s a legitimate case to be made for a selective pill to turn off the pain receptors at a specific location. But no one has any idea how that would be done. All doctors can do is treat the joint itself and hope the pain will reduce naturally.

This is all building up to a message you don’t want to hear. We’re an overmedicated nation. More people die through the abuse of prescription drugs than of heart attacks. This habit is literally killing us. We should accept more pain in our lives and do without pills. If you find this unbearable, Tramadol is the strongest drug you should take. Equally important, don’t use Tramadol over long periods of time. This builds up tolerance, forcing a move to the opiates where the risk of dependence is more real.

It is hard for a person with good eyesight to imagine living in a world that is cloudy and murky. Worse than any rainy day in fall, this murk and haze is a constant. It hinders every facet of life from driving to reading a recipe. No longer are the colors vibrant and the images clear. People living with cataracts understand this example. The world has slowly lost focus as the white, milky substance overtakes their vision.

All cataracts are made up of proteins in the eye that begin to adhere together. A cataract begins very small. Imagine wearing a pair of glasses and there being a tiny smudge in the corner. When the smudge starts out, it is just a tiny pinpoint. Over time, the smudge begins to grow and take up more area on the surface of the lens. Everything viewed through that lens distorts. That is how a cataract is. There are three types of cataracts: nuclear, sub capsular and a cortical. They differ on what causes them as well as how they manifest themselves. A nuclear cataract is most often associated with natural aging. It forms on the nucleus of the eye, hence nuclear cataract. A cataract that form at the back of the eye and is most often associated with having diabetes or high farsightedness is the sub capsular. Diabetics also have to worry about forming the third form of cataract, the cortical. The cortical cataract extends out from the center of the eye in a similar resemblance to bicycle spokes.

A simple artificial lens marks the difference in being able to see clearly and shrouded in haze. The ophthalmologist removes the old, damaged lens and replaces it. The surgery itself is simple and is an outpatient treatment. Within a few weeks, the patient recovers and their eyesight is vastly improved. It is that easy.

Cataracts do not have to mark the end of independence and vision. They do not have to be just a mark of growing old. With today’s procedures, a person can live a full active life without the worry of losing his or her eyesight. Independence happens for the growing aging population. Seniors no longer have to live in a slowly darkening world devoid of bright colors and lights.

There’s a variety of ways you may cause an inflammatory process inside your body. The common causes for inflammation to occur are external infections and damage to the tissue, which are often seen together under a variety of conditions. Many inflammatory conditions such as arthritis also have a genetic factor involved, since they are known to pass down through generations. Yet, you can also increase the likelihood of experiencing inflammation by eating specific types of foods and not caring about your body the right way. And there’s also the environment, which may be a source of many inflammatory agents that can be passed through air, soil and water.

If taking a look at the specific regimen to employ there are many products that usually lead to inflammatory processes in the body. Such products include sugar, salt, saturated fats and specific oil types that can be found in a variety of processed foods. So if you want to reduce the risk of inflammation you should first eliminate all types of fast foods, soft drinks and sweets from your diet.

There are also specific foods and products that can actually reduce inflammation in a natural fashion. Of course, it’s not very likely that these foods will be as effective as medications like Prednisone but they certainly provide a healthy and natural alternatives to anti-inflammatory drugs when the condition is not so severe. Yet, moderation is the key to any benefit, as you shouldn’t overeat even those types of food that are known to decrease inflammation since it may actually make things worse.

Some of the most effective natural anti-inflammatory agents include Omega 3 acids, Bromelain, Curcumin, Gingerols and Capsacain. These substances can usually be found in such products as chili peppers, ginger, spices and turmeric.

Here’s a short list of foods that will help reduce the inflammation when you need a natural alternative to drugs like Prednisone:

1. A rich source of Quercetin, which is a natural anti-inflammatory agent, are fruits like cherries and apples.

2. If you aren’t fond of vegetables such as cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower then you should definitely change your tastes because these foods contain a lot of anti-inflammatory agents that will certainly help you.

3. Onions and garlic aren’t very aesthetic if you want to keep a good breath but they will sure help you out with inflammation. Not only these products have a high concentration of Quercetin, but they are also well known for their analgesic and antibacterial properties that are used in a variety of traditional herbal remedies all over the globe.

4. Pineapples are not only tasty and a great choice for those looking for a product to burn fat with. High content of Bromelain makes pineapples a great product for addressing inflammatory processes in the body.

5. Omega 3 fatty acids are usually found in fish oil, namely derived from fish such as herring, salmon, sardines and mackerel. This type of substances is known for its general beneficial character and is used in numerous dietary supplements for improving different health aspects and preventing inflammation as well.

There are a lot of painkiller medications available on the market these days. Starting with herbal painkillers that don’t require a prescription to very potent analgesics that you can only get through a prescription or even only while in hospital – the segment of pharmaceutical industry dealing with pain relief drugs is very saturated. So it often comes to the point where the main question is what to choose for the best effect rather than what to get in order to stop the pain. And it turns out that there’s a limited range of drugs that can be used for various types of pain effectively. After all, we don’t want to mess with various medications for various types of pain, right?

Currently, the most widespread type of effective painkillers available on the market is synthetic opioids. Previously there were natural and processed opioids used for pain relief. However these substances produced from poppy flower seeds and resembling the infamous drug opium were plagued by numerous side effects affecting the central nervous system: dizziness, drowsiness, inability to concentrate, hallucinations, etc. The current generation of synthetic opioids represents a much improved version of the first drugs from this class with lower risk of developing unpleasant side effect yet still retaining the increased effectiveness when used for pain management.

The main benefit of synthetic opioids like Tramadol is that they are universal in their application. Whether it’s a simple headache, a serious sprain or an underlying internal condition this type of drugs will effectively relieve the pain and allow you to get proper medical care without being disturbed by the discomfort of pain. This is because opioids have a very interesting and effective mechanism of action: by blocking specific receptors in the brain and decreasing the intensity of nerve signals they make the brain believe that there’s no more pain in the body. Pain is primarily a brain function so when the brain doesn’t receive any signals of this kind the person stops experiencing pain in general. So it really doesn’t matter what’s causing pain in the first place because all signals sent to the brain will be blocked. That is why drugs like Tramadol are so popular among doctors and people in search of effective pain relief solutions.

Another very important aspect of this kind of drugs is that they are much safer than their predecessors. The new generation of analgesics allows you to take the drug when needed and perform your typical tasks even if they require high degrees of concentration. You can easily drive a car or perform complex and hazardous tasks after taking Tramadol since it doesn’t have significant depressing effects on the central nervous system. Of course, doctors recommend doing these things right after your first use of the drug before you actually know how Tramadol will affect your reactions and concentration. But as soon as you find it’s safe for you then there’s no problem doing anything you need to do without being troubled by pain. And that’s certainly very comforting to those who don’t have the time to spare on pain.