General Health

How important Fiber is for Health?

What is fiber? Know about it.

Fiber is the indigestible part of the plants, generally in the form of cellulose, pectins, and other polysaccharides which can not be digested by humans. Fibers form the bulk of the stool and help in regularizing bowel habit and reduce incidence of constipation. This is the main reason problem of constipation is lesser in developing countries, where people consume lots of fiber in the diet as they eat natural food without refining. Fibers are also very good for controlling your body weight as they fill the stomach without increasing the calorie consumption and you do not feel hungry. If you consume fiber supplements (Active Fiber Complex) along with other products for weight reduction (of course if you are obese), it can give added advantage in weight loss and help you reduce weight faster and also help in maintaining lost body weight.

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How hemorrhoids are treated?

Hemorrhoids (commonly known as piles when they become pathological) are responsible for common health problems, affecting the anal canal. Hemorrhoids are actually vascular structures which are responsible for control of stool. If these vascular structures become pathological (inflamed and swollen) they create health problem which range from mild to severe pain and bleeding from anal canal (hemorrhoids). Hemorrhoids acts as cushion composed of arterio-venous (arteries and veins) channels and with presence of connective tissues, they help to control movement of stool through anal canal.

The treatment of hemroids may be very difficult and at times may not yield satisfactory results. The commonly used procedures for treatment of hemorrhoids include hemorrhoidectomy (which may be direct surgical excision of hemorrhoids, laser hemorrhoidectomy or may be stapled hemorrhoidectomy), rubber band ligation, sclerotherapy, Doppler guided transanal hemorrhoidal dearterialization (to cut the arterial blood supply and thereby destroy the hemorrhoids), destroying the hemorrhoids with help of electrocautery, infrared radiation, laser or cryosurgery.

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Diagnosis of Swine Flu

Swine flu should be diagnosed as per the guidelines given by health authorities. Diagnosis of swine flu can be done systematically at first by suspecting a case to be swine flu clinically, next by examining blood and by confirming swine flu with specific tests for swine flu.

How to suspect swine flu by symptoms? Swine flu should be suspected clinically in a patient with acute fever of 38 degree Centigrade or more and respiratory symptoms (cough, sneezing etc.) and gives the history of contact with confirmed case/cases of swine flu (H1N1) in last 7 days or there is history of travel to a place/community with one or more confirmed cases of swine flu or the patient is residing in a place where there is at least one or more confirmed cases of swine flu.

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Should you use Online Medical Consultation?

At present we are living in information age, after leaving behind agrarian age and industrial age. And information is power these days, and this is true in field of medicine also. That is the reason online medical consultation or consulting a doctor of your choice online is becoming a common practice. There are several advantages and disadvantages of consulting your doctor online and they are very obvious. The online medical consultation is called telemedicine in common language.

The advantages of telemedicine include easier accessibility and 24 hours service 365 days a year, easy affordability and sometimes it may be free (especially when it is provided by Govt. or NGOs in remote areas) etc. Online medical consultation can be of great help, in some remote areas where specialist doctors are not available locally. For any special medical help, telemedicine can be used for the patients of remote areas. One of the disadvantages of telemedicine is that, doctor is not able to examine the patient physically, which can be a problem. But this problem can be solved to a great extent by keeping a trained doctor (not a specialist doctor) at the place from where patient is using telemedicine, so that when required the doctor with the patient can guide the specialist doctor.

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Get Cancer Info Instantly

Do you enjoy accessing all the information at the click of your mouse button? The world of internet has really made it easier for us to access any information we want. Today, billions of people access the internet for various personal and professional reasons. The launch of more and more websites on daily basis has made it more convenient for the people to search for almost anything they think of. However, you have to be a bit careful when you are searching for health related topics because not all the information on the internet is genuine.

If you are searching for cancer information you have to be extra cautious and it is wise to access information from websites that have been approved by medical institutions and hospitals and agencies. Finding the cancer information on the internet is not a tough task to do because there are thousands of websites on the internet where you can find cancer related information. CancerAnswers123.com is one of the upcoming websites on the internet that has all the information you need. The website does not target any specific cancer like other websites and therefore you can find information related to different cancer types on the same website.

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Drug Rehabilitation

We all know drug addiction is a great social evil and it is difficult to find a greater social evil than drug addiction. No community, no society is free from the evil drug addiction and none is immune to it either. Tackling drug addiction and successfully is a tough job and need involvement of all of us, or in other words a multidisciplinary approach is must for successful fight against drug addiction. In the fight against drug addiction, we need trained doctors. But trained doctors alone can not fight drug addiction and we need community leaders, social workers, sociologists, and psychologists, non Government and Government involvement. In the fight against drug addiction, drug rehab centers play an important and vital role. After all, the drug addict has to be treated and rehabilitated and for that purpose we need drug rehabilitation centers. Drug rehab centers play the central role in drug de-addiction or fight against drug addiction. All other disciplines involve in fight against drug addiction act in coordination with drug rehab center.

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Should You Get Flu Vaccine?

The vaccines (both inactivated and live attenuated type) of influenza (including swine flu) generally have to be given every year to get full protection. The vaccines are not recommended to all the individuals and only selected individuals should be vaccinated yearly. If you fall in the group mentioned below, you should get flu vaccine shot.

The annual vaccine of influenza is recommended among the following individuals:

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Why Pandemics of Influenza occurs frequently?

The history of mankind is full of pandemics or epidemics. The common diseases which can cause pandemic or epidemics are influenza, pneumonic plague, smallpox (now eradicated and one of the most significant achievement of modern medicine) etc. All the diseases which cause pandemic are spread through respiratory route, which is very fast and efficient route of transmission. Other routes are not very efficient in transmission of disease and generally do not cause pandemics.

The question now is why influenza caused so many pandemics and it is still causing pandemics in these days of modern and advanced medicine? The answer to this question can not be given in few words. There are several reasons of repeated pandemics of influenza in the history of mankind. The first reason is already discussed and it is the highly efficient route of transmission of influenza i.e. respiratory route. The second reason of repeated pandemics of influenza is that it is a viral disease and there are no effective anti viral drug available at present (like effective antibacterial antibiotics). The influenza that is caused by bacteria (caused by bacteria Haemophilus influenzae) generally does not cause pandemics, at least in these days of effective antibacterial antibiotics, because the spread can be controlled with effective antibiotics and practice of certain general measures.

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What are the Symptoms of Influenza?

Influenza, generally known as flu generally has prominent respiratory symptoms. Usually the symptoms influenza starts abruptly and they include headache, feverishness, chills, myalgia (general muscle pain), malaise, and accompanying respiratory tract involvement, particularly cough and sore throat. The abrupt onset of symptoms is seen in almost all the cases of flu and in some cases the onset of flu symptoms may be so abrupt that many patients can recall the precise time they became ill.

The clinical presentation of flu can vary widely ranging from mild, respiratory illness without any fever similar to that of common cold to severe disease which may be with relatively few respiratory signs and symptoms. Sometimes the onset of symptoms may be gradual, like common cold with predominant respiratory symptom. Fever is a prominent symptom in influenza with temperature of 100.4°–105.8°F (38°–41°C) and in many cases fever is the reason why patient seek medical attention. The fever in influenza rises very fast (in less than 24 hours) and gradually comes down to normal in 2-3 days, but may lasts for a week in some cases. Generally illness starts as feverish feeling with headache (it may be generalized or frontal headache, which may be very difficult to manage) and chillness. Fever may also be accompanied by myalgia (body ache) commonly in legs and arthralgia (pain in the joints).

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Ways to Swine Flu prevention

Swine flu or other influenza can be prevented with either vaccines or by administration of antiviral drugs to recommended individuals. The vaccination as well as chemoprophylaxis with antiviral drugs is not recommended for all the individuals; only selected individuals should be vaccinated or receive antiviral prophylaxis.

There are two types of influenza (including swine flu) vaccines available; one is inactivated (killed) and the other is live attenuated vaccine. The commonly used vaccine is the inactivated vaccine. The vaccines are generally derived from the virus that circulated during the previous influenza season. So if the vaccine virus and current circulating virus are of similar type (antigenically) the vaccine may be up to 80% effective. The inactivated vaccines are highly purified and side effects low, but up to 5% of recipients of the vaccine may develop low-grade fever and other mild systemic symptoms for up to 24 hours and approximately one third may develop tenderness at the site of injection of vaccine. There are reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome with the 1976 swine influenza vaccine, but after 1976 there are no such reports (only approximately 1 case of per million vaccinations). This clearly outweighs the risk of influenza and its complications. The live attenuated influenza vaccine is administered by intranasal spray and it is highly efficacious (92% protective), especially in young children and it can protect from influenza virus that had drifted antigenically away from the strain of the vaccine virus.

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