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| HEALTH & FITNESS |
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Chronic fatigue: the role of exercises
Heart ailments: elderly prefer angioplasty
HOMOEOPATHY AND YOU
HEALTH NOTES
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Chronic fatigue: the role of exercises
Fibromyalgia or the chronic fatigue syndrome is a condition characterised by widespread shifting muscular pains, exhaustion and multiple tender points in the body. Even slight pressure on these tender points leads to pain and distress. This disease afflicts millions of people, especially females. It is believed that the symptoms may be due to some chemical changes in the brain, history of past injury, certain viral/ bacterial infection, sleep disturbances, etc. Certain symptoms mimic those of the thyroid hormone disease, rheumatoid arthritis, neuropathy, etc. Most common symptoms are pain and stiffness, especially at the back of the head, upper back and neck, upper chest, hips and knees. Recurrent migraine attack or tension headaches are experienced by most of the patients. There is a history of marked fatigue, lack of energy and weakness as experienced after a viral fever attack. There might be complaints of mood variations and depression. Such patients may suffer from numbness and tingling sensations. Treatment is a combination of medication and physical therapy. It is important that patients be encouraged to have a positive attitude, which helps in early recovery. Analgesics, muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety drugs help in reducing pain and improve sleep. Exercises play a major role in the treatment of fibromyalgia. Exercises strengthen muscles, provide sound sleep and improve the overall sense of well-being. Due to inactivity (because of pain and fatigue) exercises should be initiated slowly and increased gradually so that the body gets acclimatised. A vigorous exercise programme and over-exertion can make the symptoms worse. Start it with three or five minutes of low-impact aerobic exercises like walking, cycling, swimming, etc, and increase it by one minute per session every third or fourth day until one exercises for a period of 20 to 30 minutes. Ideally, increase up to 40 minutes at least three times a week. But one should not push to meet unrealistic goals. These exercises can be done in bed, after a hot shower in acute cases and later on after a walk. Low back stretch
Lying on the back with knees bent and arms at the sides. Press the lower back against the bed. Repeat it five times and then pull both the knees to the chest. Hold for five seconds and release slowly. Repeat 10 times. Shoulder rolls
Raise shoulders up for five times, then squeeze them first in front and then in the back five times. While standing, breathe in deeply, and slowly raise the arms upwards as high as possible. Then bring your arms straight out to the sides. Repeat this five times. Neck rolls
Dropping the neck towards the chest, rotating to the right, back and left and repeating in the other direction. Feeling dizziness is a signal to stop. Leg lifts
Lying in the side on position, raise and lower each leg 10 times. Yoga, deep-breathing exercises and meditation help in reducing stress. When suffering from fibromyalgia having a positive attitude and following a regular exercise regimen can prevent much pain and agony and go a long way in quick recovery. This also prevents one suffering from anxiety, depression and scores of other problems. The writer is a former doctor/physiotherapist, Indian Cricket Team.
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Heart ailments: elderly prefer angioplasty
In the context of cardiovascular health, the word “elderly” has a different meaning. In a physician’s dictionary, it stands for the people aged 65 and above. Heart, the strongest muscle in the body, beats more than 100,000 times a day, pumping roughly 2,000 gallons of blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels every 24 hours. By the time a person reaches 65, his heart has done an astounding amount of work. With age, it becomes less elastic, making it unable to relax completely between beats. The walls get thickened, it may enlarge in size. Also, it’s not able to “gear up” for exercises. These physiological changes do lessen its efficiency and make it more prone to diseases. For the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the elderly, physicians have always preferred lifestyle changes and drug therapies over surgery and invasive procedures. There has always been hesitation to use an aggressive treatment with the elderly heart patients, as the risks associated with these procedures are somewhat higher. Also, the recovery period may be long and it may lead to bleeding that could cause serious damage. New techniques, researches and studies have been able to mitigate these fears to a great extent. According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, use of artery-opening procedures such as angioplasty and
stinting in emergency situations could halve the number of deaths or second heart attacks in older people. Also, a 50 per cent reduction in death or recurrent myocardial infarction was found in the elderly patients when treated with angioplasty. For every 1,000 patients, 100 events were prevented. Some cases of bleeding were reported in the research but ultimately the problems were outweighed by the benefits of the aggressive artery-opening strategy. The findings have important implications for the older people who make up a large part of Indian population. The reduction in the fertility level, reinforced by a steady increase in life expectancy has produced certain fundamental changes in the age structure. The older population in India — which was 56.7 million in 1991, 72 million in 2001 - is expected to grow to 137 million by 2021. Today India is home to one out of every 10 senior citizens of the world. Both the absolute and relative size of the population of the elderly in India will gain strength in future. Also, over the last three decades, there has been a three-fold rise in the cases of coronary artery disease in India. An estimated 12 out of 100 people living in cities, and seven out of 100 in rural India suffer from heart disease. By 2010, 60 per cent of the world’s coronary heart patients will be in India. The elderly population makes a big chunk of this percentage as cardiovascular disease is the most frequent single cause of death among people over 65 years. This certainly motivates the physicians to consider the application of interventional procedures for older heart patients. The advances in
stinting and angioplasty techniques further add credibility to the efforts of toying with this idea. The drug-eluting
stints have shown inspiring results in various studies conducted abroad. According to American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2004, elderly patients treated with Cypher’s Sirolimus-eluting coronary
stints should expect the same benefit in repeat coronary procedures as seen with younger patients. This suggests that the introduction of drug-eluting
stints have the potential to enhance the durability of interventional procedures in the elderly, which till now was considered a risky option because of the fear of complications attached with it. With lots of trials being executed on the national and international levels, there is hope that cardiac ailments in elderly patients will be treated with more confidence with interventional procedures. The writer is Head of the Department, Cardiology, Escorts Heart Institute, Amritsar
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HOMOEOPATHY
AND YOU It is now an accepted fact that homoeopathy works miraculously for skin disorders, and skin allergies are very effectively treatable with homoeopathic medicines. Even if the skin disorder is chronic and has been in the body for many years, the biggest advantage that homoeopathic treatment has is that it can completely eliminate the allergy from the body, so that the symptoms do not keep coming back again. The big question, however, is: “Why it is so that homoeopathy is successful in treating skin allergies?” The answer lies in the medical fact that in skin allergies the problem does not lie in the skin but in the body’s immune system which becomes overactive. The efficacy of homoeopathy is due to the fact that it takes a holistic view of our body and does not treat the skin as a single organ. It believes that such skin allergies are a part of our disturbed internal state and allergies on the skin are a representation of the disturbed state. The medication is aimed at removing the internal cause or the internal pollution which has resulted in the skin becoming hypersensitive. Homoeopathic philosophy strongly believes that the treatment of skin disorders by applying ointments, creams, etc, is suppressive in nature and that the disease needs to be treated from within the body, or else it will reoccur or change its shape and appear in some other form. Skin allergies can vary greatly in the type and intensity of symptoms. They can range from a simple rash to a condition where the skin all over the body is intensely inflamed, with severe itching all over and the oozing of watery fluid. Skin allergies broadly incorporate two types of problems: atopic dermatitis. and contact dermatitis Atopic dermatitis is a chronic skin disorder categorised by rashes that itch and are of a scaly nature. People with this kind of skin allergy often have a family history of allergic conditions like asthma, nasal allergy, or eczema. It is more common in infants, and 50 per cent of all cases are all-right okay by the age of three years. In adults it is a chronic problem that keeps coming back. The symptoms include intense itching, blisters, rashes more on face, behind the knees, folds of the skin, etc. The most common allergens are eggs, peanuts, milk, fish, soy products, and wheat, dust mites, mold and pollen. Contact dermatitis is a kind of skin allergy where the reaction develops when the skin comes in contact with the allergens (allergy causing substances) or the irritants.
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HEALTH NOTES Washington: While numerous studies in humans have shown that a high-vegetable diet is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as with reductions in blood pressure and increases in “good” cholesterol, a new research on animals suggests that increased vegetable consumption may reduce hardening of arteries, thus preventing heart attacks and strokes. A study in mice found that a mixture of five common vegetables reduced hardening of the arteries by 38 percent compared to animals eating a non-vegetable diet. “While everyone knows that eating more vegetables is supposed to be good for you, no one had shown before that it can actually inhibit the development of atherosclerosis,” said Michael Adams, D.V.M., lead researcher. “This suggests how a diet high in vegetables may help prevent heart attacks and strokes.” The study used specially bred mice that rapidly develop atherosclerosis, the formation on blood vessel walls of fatty plaques that eventually protrude into the vessel’s opening and can reduce blood flow. The mice have elevated low-density lipoprotein ( LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, which is also a risk factor for atherosclerosis in humans. — ANI Antidepressants linked to suicide risk in elderly
NEW YORK: The risk of suicide among older patients appears to be increased during the first month of therapy with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, but this increased risk is fairly low, researchers in Canada report. Dr David N. Juurlink, of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, and colleagues examined coroner’s data, along with data on prescriptions, physician billing claims and hospitalization, for more than 1.2 million subjects who were at least 66 years of age between 1992 and 2000. A total of 1138 individuals who suicide were identified and these individuals were closely matched to 4,552 subjects who served as comparison group, according to the team’s report in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Compared with other antidepressants, SSRIs were associated with a nearly fivefold increased risk of completed suicide during the first month of therapy. In the first 30 days of treatment, 62 patients on an SSRI committed suicide compared with 17 suicides among patients who were prescribed another type of antidepressant drug. This risk was still seen after factoring in the effects of a recent depression diagnosis or previous psychiatric care. Suicide of a violent nature was also more common among patients on SSRI therapy compared with patients receiving other antidepressants. However, no increased risk of suicide was observed during the second and subsequent months of SSRI antidepressant treatment.
— Reuters Obesity tied to hepatitis C treatment failure
NEW YORK: Obese patients who are treated for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are more likely to have a better outcome if the underlying abnormalities caused by excessive fat tissue are corrected first, according to a review published in the medical journal Hepatology. The lead author, Dr Michael R Charlton of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues point out that obesity is considered to be a metabolic condition, not simply a matter of being very overweight. Obesity in patients with HCV infection is associated inflammation and insulin resistance, a ‘’prediabetic’’ abnormality of blood sugar. These patients may also have steatosis, ‘’fatty liver disease;’’ progression of fibrosis, scarring of the liver; and poor response to interferon and ribavirin, the standard treatment for HCV infection. Patients with hepatitis C and obesity-related fatty liver disease are also at greater risk for more advanced liver disease. Weight loss to reduce fat tissue is an important first step in improving the response to treatment, the investigators advise.
— Reuters Excess pounds may raise ovarian cancer risk
NEW YORK: Being overweight in young adulthood or later in life may raise a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer, particularly if she’s never had children, researchers have found. In a study of 2,110 women with and without ovarian cancer, researchers found that those who were relatively heavy, either in recent years or at the age of 18, were more likely than thinner women to develop the disease. But the relationship between weight and ovarian cancer was strongest among women who’d never given birth. For them, cancer risk climbed in tandem with recent body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height. Among childless women, those who were obese in recent years had 2.5 times the risk of ovarian cancer compared with the thinnest women. The same pattern emerged when the researchers looked at the women’s weight gain since age 18. Dr Julia Greer and her colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center report the findings in the journal Cancer. A number of studies have looked at the relationship between body weight and ovarian cancer risk, with conflicting results. A connection is considered biologically plausible because excess body fat can raise levels of estrogen, as well as male sex hormones called androgens, which may in turn feed ovarian tumour development. |
