Posts Tagged ‘Preventing’

Preventing Breast Cancer

January 31st, 2010 admin

Breast cancer is the commonest cancer of women in the world. It can happen to anybody, young or old, married or single. One in 5 women is at the risk of developing breast cancer in her lifetime in USA. In India the incidence is slightly lower but it is increasing.

A lot of research is being done to find the cause and cure of breast cancer. Cause of breast cancer is still unknown. Certain cancer genes have been identified that run in families or can occur newly by mutation in women without any family gene. Tests are available to detect such a gene so that extra precautions can be taken to detect cancer early in women with such genes. Since the advances in plastic surgery have made it possible to create attractive new breasts, women who are genetically at high risk can go for removal of breasts and reconstruction.

Prevention gives the best chance of cure. You can beat the cancer by being cautious and detecting it early. Remember cancer starts as a painless lump in the breast and you have the best chance of detecting it yourself. By Breast self examination ( BSE). This is how you can do It:

* Stand in front of a mirror with top exposed.
* Place hands on hips.
* Look for signs of dimpling, swelling, soreness, or redness in all parts of your breasts in the mirror.
* Repeat with arms raised above your head.
* While still standing, palpate your breasts with your fingers, feeling for lumps. Try to use a larger area of your fingers rather than prodding. Feel both for the area just beneath the skin and for the tissue deeper within.
* Go over the entire breast while examining. One method is to divide the breast into quadrants and palpate each quadrant carefully. Also examine the “axillary tail” of each breast that extends toward the armpit.
* Repeat palpation while lying down.
* Check the nipples and the area just beneath them. Gently squeeze each nipple to check for any discharge.

Breasts tend to feel different in different parts of menstrual cycle. Therefore BSE should be done 7-10 days after the first day of periods, every month. Once you get the feel of your breasts it will be easy for you to detect any change and you will be able to differentiate normal breast feel from that of a lump.

If you have detected a lump or nodule do not panic, because 8 out of ten times these are harmless. You should go to an expert surgeon for examination. She/he may advise further testing if needed like mammography( breast X ray) and sonography of breast -both of which are painless .Fine needle biopsy may also be needed to get the diagnosis.

If the lump is benign (harmless) it can be left alone or can be removed through small incision. If it is malignant (cancer) and detected early (less than 2 cm size lump) then it is possible to have breast preserving surgery wherein only the lump with surrounding rim of normal breast is removed leaving behind rest of the breast and radiation to the breast. For bigger cancers treatment usually involves total removal of breast and chemotherapy, with or without radiotherapy. Plastic surgical breast reconstruction is commonly done after total removal of breast. If the cancer is detected in early stage, very long survival 20 years or more is known after complete treatment.

After the age of 40 yearly mammography can be done to detect any minute cancer. It is like an X ray and is painless. Early detection not only allows for breast preservation but also increases the chances of cure.

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Preventing Diabetes

January 29th, 2010 admin

Even if you do not suffer from diabetes (which can be a very difficult condition to manage) it is very important for your well being to take the right measures in order to remain healthy and to prevent it. There are some easy steps you can take in order to achieve this, such as adopting and maintaining a healthy life style. Not only will this reduce the risk of developing the condition of diabetes, which can come in many forms, but it can also prevent other serious conditions such as a heart disease. Adopting a healthy lifestyle can mean many things, but the good news is that there is really no need to exaggerate anything to achieve this. It just basically means eating healthy (maintaining a healthy diet), keeping your weight to a normal level for your height (you can find lots of information on this on the web, such as charts), undertaking exercise and sport (even if you are not very fit as a person, a simple everyday walk can mean a lot for your health!), quitting bad habits (such as smoking or excessive drinking ) and reducing your exposure to stress (this means trying to fix and addressing any aspect of your life that causes stress for you, within the limits of possibility of course!).

It is also OK for your new and healthy lifestyle to continually change, improve and adapt (depending on your knowledge, requirements, resources and time) as you learn how to properly make changes for the better. However don’t start something and then quit (or not stick with the plan). New technology advances and new health discoveries will help surely help you with this (if you choose to go down this path). It is crucial that you learn anything you can about different aspects of positive lifestyles and adapt to it! Like we said in the beginning, do not exaggerate anything and only do things that you feel comfortable with.

Eating healthy foods is an easy step to start with. This means that you should minimize fast-food, junk-food, and not too many sugary sweets please; they can have a nasty effect on your health and blood sugars (glucose) if they are consumed over a long periods of time. Medical research has shown that by adopting a healthy diet you greatly reduce the risks of developing various conditions, especially the chronic diseases such as diabetes. Choose a healthy diet that includes a large amount of fruit and vegetables, which contain the important fibre you need to lower the rate (or slow down) sugar (glucose) absorption from the gastrointestinal tract, so your blood glucose levels don’t rise too quickly! It is also very important to consume vegetables as they are (raw) and try not to overcook them as they lose all their wonderful healthy nutrients. A good healthy diet is also one that contains low fat, low salt low cholesterol and low saturated fat (less than 6 g per 100g). The cholesterol is a major factor for heart disease not helped by too many fast-food type of meals. Always be well informed of the nutritional content when consuming new types (and old types!) of food; again there is a lot of useful information on this topic out there.

It is equally important to maintain a normal healthy weight for your body. It is proven and you surely know this by now, that excess body fat often times leads to heart (cardiovascular) conditions and other health problems, such as Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

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The Secret of Easily Preventing Diverticulitis & Achieving Colon Health

January 27th, 2010 admin

Diverticulitis seems to be the new “Disease of the Year”, in the media. Everywhere you turn you’re hearing more doctors and medical studies say “More people in the world have either diverticulitis or diverticulosis than ever before!” But how many of them are telling you effective and easy ways to stop it? Certainly not many.

It’s time for a change, and it’s time for YOU to take control of your digestive health. However, in order for you to be fully in charge, you need to understand the facts. When you’re armed with what’s really going on, it makes it so much easier to reveal the easy change you can do to prevent this painful problem.

First, these intestinal changes don’t develop over night. Due to dietary habits, the problem takes a while to form, and then be noticed by the affected person.  Diverticulum are small pockets in the intestine wall which develop when the intestine has to work too hard to move food through it. The great strain causes these hazardous pockets to form. They can become infected, sore, or even break open and harm your health.

But why do they form? And why “now more than ever”?
It’s not your fault! Just look around at the foods readily available to everyone. They’re full of refined flour and there isn’t a lot of ‘whole grain’ that tastes delicious as an option for you. The combination of not enough liquid throughout the day, along with not enough soluble and insoluble fiber adds up to intestinal trouble.

Fiber is important for your health on many different levels.  Once you understand the benefits of fiber, you can use it to combat many common problems! There are 5 main points to keep in mind.

First:
Fiber that is incompletely or slowly digested promotes normal bowl function and treats constipation. This type of fiber also helps prevent diverticulosis and diverticulitis. It provides relief from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) which is also on the rise.

Second:
 Fiber-rich foods are processed more slowly by the body. This is a great benefit if you’re trying to lose weight! When foods process more slowly, you feel ‘satisfied’ or ‘full’ much faster than normal. This makes it easy to eat less at mealtime.

Third:
By packing in fiber, the food you eat is less calorically dense. The fiber fills you up, and performs its important roles, but ISNT absorbed by the body to turn into extra calories and fat.

Fourth:
 Reduce your risk of colon cancer. When the food you eat has enough fiber in it, it does not spend very long in the intestines. Bile acid doesn’t get re-absorbed. Unwelcome bacteria don’t get a chance to ferment food in the intestines. Toxins don’t build up or have the opportunity to be absorbed into the body because everything “Keeps on moving”. Thirteen case-control studies were recently published on the use of fiber in the diet. They concluded with substantiated evidence that the risk of colorectal cancer in the USA could be decreased by 31% JUST by adding 13 grams more fiber each day. Easy to do? Just keep reading.

Fifth:
Cholesterol and blood glucose. Everyone knows about cholesterol levels, good and bad. There have been so many studies on it as a risk-factor for heart attacks and heart disease. There’s plenty you can do naturally to help lower cholesterol, but did you know getting enough fiber will help too? Soluble fiber has been proven to lower blood cholesterol levels.

But what about glucose? Glucose and insulin levels are important for preventing type-2 diabetes. Starchy foods, sugary drinks, and other modern-day diet options that convert quickly into sugars in the body spike insulin levels. These are hard on your body to digest…so you can give your system a break with fiber. Viscous fiber (that which appears like a gelatin) slows down the conversion of carbohydrates into sugars and helps normalize blood glucose levels.  

But if fiber is so beneficial, why isn’t anyone getting enough?

There’s plenty of fiber in apple peels, celery stalks, whole-grains like oat and flax…but these foods don’t always fit into what people think is delicious or convenient. “An apple a day…” is rarely practiced by anyone! What about fiber pills or powders? These can be expensive, gritty, or “Just another pill” among a handful that people already didn’t really want to choke down every day. Plus, with supplement pills or powders, the body misses out on important oils, micronutrients and anti-oxidants available in plant fiber sources.

What can YOU do about it?

The power to save yourself from this range of digestive maladies is now in your hands. Now that you have a basic understanding of what fiber can do for you, and how it works, it’s time to take easy action and get your health under your control.

What you need, are seeds!
Chia Seeds, to be exact. These seeds are loaded with soluble & insoluble fiber. In fact, it is their special type of fiber that allows the seeds to form a bead of gel on their exterior when exposed to liquid. The fibers trap more than THREE times the weight of the seed in water, and hold it close to the outside. What does this mean for you?
Easier digestion! The liquid clings to the seed, and is removed slowly throughout the digestive process. This keeps the colon hydrated, so it’s easy to move food.
Insoluble fiber is found in the seed’s outer coating. It’s this type of fiber that isn’t digested by the body and is sometimes called ‘roughage’. It acts like a ‘sweeper’ moving things along in the intestinal tract and preventing constipation.

Fiber isn’t the only thing…remember the above points? Chia Seeds have you covered on all five points. You can even literally see the viscous (appears like a gelatin or gummy) fibers on the outside when you make Chia gel. These help lower blood cholesterol and normalize blood glucose and insulin levels.

It’s time to feel full longer, reduce your cholesterol, and clean up any colon problems! Chia Seeds are incredibly easy to use. They have no flavor of their own, so you can add them to anything you already like to eat. If they are allowed to hydrate in a liquid food (like yogurt, juice or cola) they will take on the flavor of that food. In cooking, because of their ability to distribute flavors, they can actually make the food more flavorful!

A tablespoon of Chia a day is generally what most people require. Chia seeds are incredibly safe and simple to use, so you don’t need to worry about having too much. The seeds also contain essential micro-nutrients, omega 3 healthy oils and b-vitamins. No fiber substitute can do all of that, while tasting as great and being as versatile as Chia. When you add Chia to your meals, you’re guaranteeing that you and your family are getting the fiber your body requires.

NOW is the time to take control of your digestive health, and the easiest answer is Chia.

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