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locustheologicus · 7 months ago

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"Democracy, let's face it, is not in good health!"

Pope Francis spoke at the concluding session of the 50th Italian Catholic Social Week. He recognize how important it is for the Church to participate with this event as it celebrates the democratic process in Italy.

It speaks of a Church sensitive to the transformations of society and striving to contribute to the common good. Strengthened by this experience, you wanted to deepen a very topical theme: "At the heart of democracy. Participating between history and future".

Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, who initiated this gathering back in 1907, defined democracy as:

that civil order in which all social, juridical and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate proportionally to the common good, flowing back into the last result to the prevailing advantage of the lower classes.

Pope Francis suggests that, based on that definition. Democracy is not in good health today. The diagnosis is based on a "heart attack" where participation is severely limited by corruption and illegality. This creates a marginalization that disempowers a community from the political process. The lack of participation is a grave concern for Pope Francis as he sees the democratic process eroding.

I am worried about the small number of people who went to vote. What does that mean? It is not only the vote of the people, but it requires that the conditions be created for everyone to express themselves and participate. And participation cannot be improvised: it is learned as children, as young people, and must also be "trained" to a critical sense with respect to ideological and populist temptations.

To respond to this diagnosis Pope Francis offers the vision of Catholic Social teaching. Fraternity, solidarity, and subsidiarity are seen as value based medicine that can heal the heart. Rather than getting caught up in a defeatist political attitude Pope Francis would have us reflect on where we see the God in the work of the local community and have that inspire us politically.

And for this we need to exercise creativity. If we look around us, we see many signs of the Holy Spirit's action in the lives of families and communities. Even in the fields of economics, ideology, politics, society. Let's think of those who have made room within an economic activity for people with disabilities; to workers who have waived their right to prevent the dismissal of others; renewable energy communities that promote integral ecology, also taking care of families in energy poverty; to administrators who promote the birth rate, work, school, educational services, accessible housing, mobility for all, the integration of migrants. All these things do not enter into politics without participation. The heart of politics is to participate. And these are the things that participation does, taking care of everything; not just charity, taking care of this…, no: altogether!

At the heart (pun intended) of his message is that we must help create a healthy democratic system by getting the people (not populism) to participate with the democratic process. To employ a faithful citizenship that curbs the power from ideologues and populist that attempt to control the status quo. If we look at the media jargon and arch-conservative pundits here in the United States we see that a certain populist strain is successfully (and unfortunately) pushing the narrative that the entire political system is broken and people should not bother participating. They may even say that they will not be voting, but I assure you, those people will be voting. Their hope is that the large moderate community, who are made to feel disenfranchised, will opt to not participate in the process. Pope Francis is asking us not to fall for this populist trap. Instead, we find Pope Francis bringing us back to the idea of political charity. He proposes a new political engagement that infuses politics with values that it desperately needs. His vision includes having social ministries play its role in creating an environment of political charity.

This is political love. It is a form of charity that allows politics to live up to its responsibilities and to get out of polarizations, these polarizations that impoverish and do not help to understand and face challenges. The whole Christian community is called to this political charity, in the distinction of ministries and charisms.

I want to end here with a concluding thought from Pope Francis, "A democracy with a healed heart," Pope Francis tells us, "continues to cultivate dreams for the future... Don't be afraid."

As a Catholic American this message warns me against the strain of ideological populism that would have me marginalize myself and others while giving up on the democratic vision to support the common good. Pope Francis offers me two suggestions with this message. First, to believe and participate in the democratic process. To know and accept that it may be messy but I will nevertheless continue to believe in the optimism of humankind and accept that compromise is not a dirty word (nor must we completely compromise myself to the value of a populist ideology). Second, To accept the challenges of our time and push for a progressive future for our society. To dream that another world is possible. To continue believing in the combined ideals and vision for this nation (rather than a limited vision of freedom that is based on a narrow interpretation of a few amendments). To believe that we can respond to the challenges of the environmental crisis, immigration reform, sustainable economic policies, and promoting the public welfare. I recently shared my own progressive vision and poltical dream in another post.

As we near our own election, let us Catholics take this vision to heart and commit ourselves to faithful citizenship. The post I am linking here offers insights that I have researched on promoting participation and faithful citizenship. Below is the full video of the speech Pope Francis gave at Treiste.

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#Youtube #pope francis #politics #faithful citizenship

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ahalal-uralma · 1 year ago

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^^ Person above me you have Migraines with auras as I have those very similar symptoms and that condition. You are describing auras. Auras can come in visual/auditory/sensory distortions that warn you of the impending attack. Sometimes they can last into it.

And I’m going to add many of those symptoms vary depending on the type of migraine sufferer one is. There is more than one type of migraine. Some are common (ie. migraines without aura) while others like migraine with aura are rare.

These are a list of them:

- Migraine without aura

- Migraine with aura

- Chronic migraine

- Abdominal migraine

- Acephalgicmigraine

- Migraine with brainstem aura

- Hemiplegic migraine

- Retinal migraine

- Status migrainosus

- Menstrual migraine

- Ophthalmoplegic migraine

- Medication-induced migraine

- Vestibular migraine

- Cyclic vomiting syndrome

With rare types you can be more susceptible to suffer severe symptoms like:

- Loss of appetite

- Dehydration due to uncontrolled vomiting

- Higher risks for sleep walking, insomnia, night terrors, and other sleeping disorder issues

- Loss of consciousness

- Short term memory loss

- Prolonged pain that can last for days straight. General rule is if it goes over 72 hours then you should go to the hospital, however there are other symptoms that can warrant an earlier trip within a 24 hour period.

- Paralysis (partial parts of the body or whole body paralysis). This can vary per person. Some may find their eyes paralyzed from movement, while other sufferers might have half or their entire body paralyzed like a statue.

- Stroke - either symptoms that mimic stroke or that literally lead to it depending on triggers

- Heart palpitations/ Heart attack risk

- Vertigo

- Seizures (these can be a result of the migraine with auras, especially; these may get diagnosed as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, or can be triggered/coupled with another disorder like epilepsy—more rare, but not impossible)

I’ve been battling slow erosion to my esophagus due to some of my attacks leading to horrible vomiting that won’t stop without injection of Zofran. Thing about erosion to the esophagus is it can be fatal if it fully erodes. It takes about 6 or 7 years to heal this, but I have not been able to since I have migraines all of the time. Medics try to warn me to stop, but I’ve reached a point my esophagus literally rattles and beats against my chest when I vomit. They can hear it and it’s become default protocol when I get that bad to throw me onto fluids and Zofran.

I can’t stress it enough if you’re experiencing anything that disrupts your quality of life it is to your benefit as a migraine sufferer to get full diagnosis and treatment from a Neurologist. I suffer vomiting only once or twice a month now since I’ve begun treatment, which is a huge improvement to 3-4 times a week.

Many of my large list of seizures I was enduring every day (multiple times a day) occur once or twice a week now and are reduced most of the time to “pacing around” episodes (with a few exceptions once in a while).

Before I got the right medication, I was having regular full paralysis, waking nightmare seizures (hallucination type) and had to fear getting ones where I would collapse into unconsciousness so bad my lungs and heart would freeze working for minutes (so far this has happened twice at most to my functioning memory).

Also, have to stress it pain might not be the worst symptom for some people, but that alone can be extremely torture to others. When my pain is kicked in throughout my head and neck at it’s worst it can cause nerves to hurt down to my feet. I have severe muscle tension in my legs all of the time.

Additionally, not to be dramatic but this is how it feels to get this pain��I feel like I’m being broken and amputated but I’m still intact and my nerves are my worst enemy.

While I have a migraine on Christmas Eve let’s talk about other aspects of migraines besides the pain that comes in waves because for me and many others the pain isn’t the worst symptom of migraines.

Migraines may include:

Feeling tired

Your brain feeling like mush

Getting a stuffy/runny nose (why many people think they get sinus headaches when really they are getting migraines)

Before a migraine, hallucinating smells

Nausea

Vomiting

Feeling tired and full of brain fog the next day

Muscle pain in your neck and back

Dull uncomfortable pressure rather than pain

Distorted vision/general sensitivity to light

Sensitivity to sound

Irritability

Scalp tenderness

Lightheadedness/dizziness

And more!

#text #migraines #health

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leonavalleyrecoverycenterca · 2 years ago

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Dual Diagnosis Treatment in the Heart of Los Angeles

Substance addiction is a complex condition that affects individuals in various ways. People with addiction frequently require professional treatment to cope with the physical and emotional toll that prolonged addiction can have on the body. Fortunately, anyone seeking comprehensive care for both mental health disorders and substance addiction finds solace and support at Leona Valley Recovery Center. In this blog, we will embark on a heartfelt exploration of the significance of dual diagnosis treatment in Los Angeles and how it can pave the way to lasting recovery, allowing individuals to reclaim their lives and embrace a sense of wholeness.

Complexities of Dual Diagnosis Treatment

When facing the challenges of mental health disorders and addiction, it is crucial to understand the intricate dance between these interconnected conditions. Dual diagnosis treatment acknowledges that mental health issues can contribute to substance abuse, and vice versa. The co-occurrence of these challenges requires a comprehensive and integrated approach to treatment. At Leona Valley Recovery Center, we recognize the complexities and nuances of dual diagnosis, and we are committed to providing the support and care needed to address both aspects simultaneously.

Many people living with mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are more likely to use drugs to try (unsuccessfully) self-medicate or less likely to seek professional help for their condition. To make things worse, substance misuse may aggravate preexisting mental health concerns or even cause the emergence of brand-new diseases. Because of the complexity of the connection between the two, it is imperative to treat both simultaneously for optimal results in rehabilitation.

The Impact of Mental Health Disorders and Substance Addiction in Los Angeles

In the diverse tapestry of Los Angeles, the impact of mental health disorders and substance addiction resonates deeply. These struggles transcend age, gender, and background, affecting individuals and their communities. Because of the city’s hectic pace, residents may experience increased stress, increased pressure, and with that, an increased likelihood of engaging in self-destructive habits. It is crucial to shed light on the prevalence and impact of these challenges to encourage individuals to seek the help they deserve through dual-diagnosis treatment.

For many, substance addiction will continue to grow and will have severe consequences on individuals’ lives, work, relationships, and overall well-being. They can affect personal and professional growth, strain familial bonds, and erode self-esteem and confidence. Furthermore, untreated dual-diagnosis conditions can lead to a deteriorating quality of life, financial difficulties, and even legal issues. By understanding the gravity of these challenges, individuals can recognize the importance of seeking comprehensive treatment, such as a dual diagnosis treatment in a Los Angeles program that addresses both mental health and addiction issues.

Dual Diagnosis Treatment in Los Angeles

Within the bustling landscape of Los Angeles, dual diagnosis treatment stands as a beacon of hope for those yearning to find balance and reclaim their lives. At Leona Valley Recovery Center, we embrace a holistic approach to healing, providing individuals with the integrated care they need to mend their minds and nurture their spirits. Our kind and committed staff work relentlessly to provide a secure and nurturing setting in which people may begin the process of healing themselves and discovering who they truly are.

Our dual diagnosis treatment programs at Leona Valley Recovery Center are tailored to meet the unique needs of each individual. We understand that every person’s journey is different, so we believe in a unique personalized approach for the underlying causes of addiction and mental health disorders that are unique for each person. Our comprehensive treatment plans encompass evidence-based therapies, counseling, and support systems that foster healing, personal growth, and self-empowerment.

Embracing a Holistic Path to Wellness

At Leona Valley Recovery Center, we recognize that healing goes beyond addressing the symptoms of addiction and mental health disorders. We embrace a holistic path to wellness, encompassing the whole person—mind, body, and spirit. Our integrated approach combines traditional therapeutic modalities with alternative and experiential therapies, allowing individuals to engage in a multifaceted journey of self-exploration and transformation.

Individual therapy, group therapy, family sessions, and alternative treatments including art therapy, mindfulness practices, and leisure activities are all available within our peaceful and supportive setting. By providing a wide variety of options, we encourage people to rediscover their inner resources, form constructive coping strategies, and find new meaning in their lives.

Aftercare and Ongoing Support

The completion of the dual diagnosis treatment program is just the beginning of a lifelong commitment to recovery. At Leona Valley Recovery Center, we understand that the path to sobriety requires ongoing support and guidance. Our aftercare services provide individuals with the tools and resources needed to crush the complexities of day-to-day beyond rehab and maintain their newfound balance and sobriety.

Aftercare at Leona Valley Recovery Center may include continued therapy, relapse prevention planning, support groups, and connections to community resources. We believe in the power of ongoing support and provide individuals with a strong foundation to help them navigate the challenges that may arise after treatment. We aim to create and maintain long-term success and empower individuals to thrive in their recovery journey.

Embrace Wholeness with Dual Diagnosis Treatment in Los Angeles

Hope and recovery are possible if you or someone you care about is struggling with mental health issues or addiction. Dual diagnosis treatment in Los Angeles, provided by the compassionate team at Leona Valley Recovery Center, can be the catalyst for profound change. By addressing the intricate interplay between mental health and addiction, we empower individuals to embark on a transformative journey toward holistic wellness. Reach out to us today, take that first courageous step, and unlock the door to a brighter future filled with wholeness, healing, and lasting recovery.

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ellocat-poemyourpainaway · 2 years ago

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To preface-my ex husband was a drug addict who went to Rehab repeated times and died of a drug overdose.

Still, people Deny that reality, they act like i was a bitch and he was a hero:

Something I’ve struggled with for a long time, That I feel like-I’m not allowed to talk about-is the affects addiction has on a) distorting and eroding a person b) the ripple effect of abuse/manipulation/gaslighting/and assault on boundaries and self esteem that addicts have on their loved ones/children/family. I know it’s not socially warm and fuzzy, that you all just want to hear the big hearted mature accolades of acceptance and compassion, bhuddist namaste energy for the actual addicts, with zero willingness to see or hear the other side of it. It’s a complete erasure and refutation of our lived experiences. No one wants to acknowledge or hear how so and so may have been a wonderful great guy to you, but that drugs have a well documented dr Jekkyl and Mr Hyde effect on addicts, that there is an entire list of personality disorders affiliated with addiction, the dual diagnosis/comorbidity. Most drug addicts have a co-diagnosis of some kind involving their emotional makeup and Psychological condition. No one Wants to Acknowledge that drug addicts not only can, but most likely, come across as warm genuine charismatic likable people, that it’s their cope. How do you think they navigate, rebound and keep pushing through without the ability to seem “other” than they are, to Manipulate the people that enable and protect them, to mask, even (and especially) to Themselves (via cognitive dissonance)? It is their specific skill set. Distortion is how they reconcile the repeated and grievous ways they injure their loved ones, it allows them to marry their, otherwise probably decent, moral Compasseswith the terrible Things they do. All Monsters aren’t ugly. In fact, I’d posit that most monsters are actually quite beautiful, that it’s The prettiest people that do the ugliest things. Personally it is triggering, over and over, to have my trauma not Only discredited, but refuted and treated like something i should be ashamed of, or hide better. You have no Idea the walk I’ve walked. Listen to my children talk and you’d realize your hero didn’t wear a cape. He brutalized his family. We loved him, that made it worse. He was a complex man, no one loved him more-and no one was more damaged by him than those of us he considered family, those of us closest to him. I’m tired of pretending that isn’t the truth. Have more empathy. Your ignorance is triggering. What you Don’t know can hurt others. I say this on behalf of the silent victims swallowing their rage as their Abusers are glamorized and Romanticized. Addicts are sick, and I have compassion For that, but There are other victims in their Story too. Trust me. Their sickness makes anyone who loves them sick too. If you have compassion for the addict you should have compassion for their family, because they typically devote whole lifetimes to being Stockholm/gaslit/lied to and abused. But don’t believe me, ask anyone who’s been the parent,child or spouse of an addict, ask them their untold story. You won’t like it, It will make you so uncomfortable, and if you’re honest, you’ll prob be ashamed of yourself for adding to their pain. I’m proud of myself that 99.9% of the time I put my past behind me like a ponytail, and I am a joyful well-balanced human who steps out of the victim role and refuses to ever wear that mantle. But sometimes, some of you bring it back to me like a boomerang. I need a little more tact and awareness. Honestly, I’ve cried oceans of tears for ernie, and I’m sure most people wouldn’t want to make a human care bear sob In her car. Do better please. Try to understand it’s a complex disease with ripple effects that damage many more people than just the addict and that you can’t know unless you’ve been there.

#drug addict #addicts #codependency #pain #trauma

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insurancetipsworld-blog · 5 years ago

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Five Reasons Why Seniors Need Life Insurance

We hear it time and time again – life insurance protects your family after you pass on. So, why do seniors need life insurance? Once you retire and your mortgage is paid off, won’t your savings be enough to take care of final expenses? The truth is, seniors need life insurance even if they are no longer earning an income. Today we will look at five reasons why Canadian life insurance for seniors is necessary.

Seniors are living longer

Thanks to innovations in health care, life expectancy for Canadians continues to rise. What is not keeping pace with this rise in expectancy is quality of life. The longer we live, the more health-related issues occur. While a senior may have taken every precaution to live without debt and to pay off a mortgage, a heart attack, stroke, serious fall, diabetes, or any other health issue could mean co-pays on expensive medication, having to hire a private nurse, or even a move to a nursing facility. Savings could quickly be eroded, leaving your survivors with nothing for final expenses when you pass on

2. Capital gains are in play

One of the joys of retirement is spending time at that cottage on the lake or that property in a warm climate. When you pass, Canada Revenue Agency deems you to have disposed of your assets. If that cottage or other property does not pass to a surviving spouse or is not in a tax-saving framework, your estate could be hit hard with capital gains tax – in addition to any tax owing on your final tax return (which is completed after you pass away). Canadian life insurance for seniors can help pay for these final expenses.

3.Funerals are expensive

The average cost of a funeral in Canada is $8,500, but it can easily be much higher. Every aspect has a fee associated with it: the flowers, the obituary notice, the body transfer, the casket, the burial plot, etc. In addition to these fees, one must also consider the cost of hosting out-of-town guests for the funeral, and even smaller things like ordering in meals if you are bereaved and not in a frame of mind to cook. Canadian life insurance for seniors can take care of funeral and final costs.

4.Added value

Not every life insurance policy is about death insurance. Critical illness insurance is an example of a living policy because it pays the life insured, not the beneficiaries. To make a claim, the life insured must be suffering from an ailment listed in the policy. This could be a heart attack, stroke, or even some forms of cancer. The diagnosis does not have to be terminal, it just needs to meet the conditions in the policy. Treatment for serious illnesses, especially cancer, is very expensive. While Canadians enjoy a robust health care system, it does not pay for driving back and forth to cancer centres, carers, and respite. Depending on where you live, medications may be an out-of-pocket expense too. Critical illness insurance is a gamechanger, providing money upfront to be used however you wish, be it a bucket-list trip, to pay off debts, or to pay for medication.

5.Leave a legacy

Sometimes there is money in place to take care of final expenses, no debt, no mortgage, and no expensive illness. However, there may not be money left to provide assistance for your grandchildren’s education or a donation to a cause that means the world to you. Many seniors are comforted knowing their final act is something that will benefit others for years to come. For this reason, some Canadian life insurance for seniors’ policies function as legacy funds that are revealed to the fortunate recipients after the senior passes away.

What is the best life insurance for seniors?

The best life insurance for seniors is one that fulfills a specific need, and that need is different for everyone. It could be final expenses, legacy building, or to offset the expenses of an unexpected illness. To get the best life insurance for seniors, work with a broker that has the ability to compare the market on your behalf and get you a quote that matches your needs and budget. Life insurance rates for seniors vary; brokers can sort through them all and find you the one you need.

#insurance for seniors

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theamericangirlscout · 6 years ago

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Women’s Health Badge

Purpose: To know how women can lead healthy lives

Requirement 1: Investigate the tests that help women stay healthy

Screenings are medical tests that can spot problems before they turn into something serious. For instance, you might have your blood pressure checked to test for general health, a mammogram to test for breast cancer, or a Pap smear to test of STDs and cervical cancer. Become familiar with the tests that are available for women to help us manage our good health throughout our lives.

Choices:

Find five steps to good health and prevention. Who should get a flu shot? Why does a high cholesterol level put someone at risk for diabetes? How is skin cancer preventable? You might focus on one part of your body, such as your heart, skin, or bones, and recommend the proper nutrition, exercise, and screening to take care of it.

Speak with a health professional. Invite one to speak to your group, or go to a clinic or office to discuss tests and procedures that are important for women’s health. Prepare some questions in advance.

Create a woman’s health poster or brochure. In it, include a chart showing all the procedures and tests you will need from puberty through menopause. What is involved with each procedure? At what age should girls start having each of them? How often? What are the benefits of each test?

Requirement 2: Find out how fads and beauty practices impact health

Fads generally fit into one of three categories. In the first category are things we do to our internal systems, including diets and eating fads. In the second category are things we do cosmetically, such as cosmetic surgery, tattoos, manicures, piercings, hair dye, wearing contacts, tanning, etc. The third category is habits: smoking, using drugs, drinking alcohol, wearing high heels, carrying heavy purses and backpacks, using portable listening devices, or not wearing protective sports equipment. Pick issue in any of the three categories, then do one of the choices below.

Choices:

Interview a medical expert about a health or beauty fad. This might be a foot specialist who can share the problems brought on my wearing high heels or a skin doctor who can talk about infections from tattoos, piercings, or manicures and pedicures. Find out how prevalent the problems are what you can do to protect yourself.

Follow a fad through time. Trace stories, evidence, and statistics about one fad over a period of at least 20 years. Try to speak to someone with personal experience. Was the person offered any warning about possible complications or infections? What impact does the experience have on their life today? Take time to understand the long-term effects of the activity.

Explore fads and beauty in other places. Other cultures have different views on beauty and health issues, such as weight, tattoos, piercings, and more. Gather images of women from other places- from international magazines, online, or in books- and make a beauty collage to compare the different outward expressions of beauty. How have those images of beauty impacted the culture where you live? What do you find beautiful? What makes the women in your life beautiful? You could include images from your own life as well.

Requirement 3: Focus on techniques to help you stay emotionally healthy

How you feel mentally impacts how you feel physically. Emotional conditions, such as stress and anxiety, can lead to alcohol or drug abuse, dangerous eating habits, and erratic sleep cycles, all of which can lead to physical problems. Paying attention to your emotional health is as important as overseeing your physical health, and this will be true throughout your lifetime.

Choices:

Get to know your moods. For two weeks, record your mood levels threes times a day. At the end of each day, read them over, and then make notes: What do you think triggered each strong emotion? Did you get enough sleep? Did you exercise? Where are you in your menstrual cycle? See if you find any specific pattern to your moods. Then find three recommendations from a reliable health source on healthy ways to lift your mood.

Explore healthy relationships. All our relationships affect our health- those with friends, family, romantic partner, mentors, peers at large. Knowing the research can provide some helpful ideas and tips for our own lives. Find three studies that offer some insight into relationships. For instance, some studies have found that close friendships can lengthen our life spans, that abusive relationships erode our health, and that a good marriage makes us happier. Other ideas you might look into include:

What are the differences between how men and women communicate?

Is there such a thing as a healthy breakup?

How can we choose our friends and relationships to increase our happiness?

How does a family life fit into mental health?

Explore a psychological topic. Interview a medical expert or read three or more articles about a topic you’re interested in: perhaps depression, teen suicide, eating disorders, anxiety, or schizophrenia. Find out the causes, how widespread the issue is, and what treatments exist. Do more women than men suffer from it? If so, why might this be- and how does the issue have a greater impact on younger or older women? Are there any prevention measures available?

Requirement 4: Take a closer look at a women’s health issue.

Choose a health issue that resonates with you, and explore its impact on girls and women. Perhaps it’s something that has affected someone in your own family or another woman close to you. Perhaps its something you discovered in one of the previous requirements and want to look at through a different lens. In this requirement, check into causes, consequences, and possible preventative measures and treatments.

Choices:

Take a global look at the issue. In what country/ region is the health issue most commonly found? Is it avoidable? How? What health support do women in that area have access to? What can be done to help?

Take a local look at the issue. Find out the statistics for the issue in your area. Talk to a local health care professional to explore the impact on your community. Are there any protective measures or awareness campaigns in place?

Take a close-up look at the issue. Interview a medical expert or someone with firsthand experience. It might be a cancer survivor, a woman who has been treated for severe PMS, or a cardiologist who treats women. If appropriate, ask about diagnosis and treatments: What were the symptoms? What tests were taken? How was the patient treated? Can this issue be prevented?

Requirement 5: Get the word out on a woman’s health topic

Choices:

Design a public service announcement or presentation. Use your audio/ visual skills to create a video, presentation, or Web slide show about your topic. Post it online or email it to friends, or present it to one of your classes or at a place of worship, a library, or a community center. You might tie your topic to an awareness event, such as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Prematurity Awareness Month, or World AIDS Day

Hold a women’s health forum. Invite a panel of professionals in health and wellness to present facts and answer questions about the topic you chose. Use what you’ve learned to assemble the appropriate panel and help make the information the relevant it can be for your audience- whether it’s your Girl Scout group, other female friends and peers, or a group of women in your community.

Design a prevention program. Focus on one women’s health issue and come up with a program that includes exercise, diet, and other prevention tips. Share it as a brochure, website, exhibit/ poster display, or slide presentation

#women's health #girl scouts #gsusa #feminsim #badge #badges #badgebook #senior #senior badge #women's health badge

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rdagade · 3 years ago

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Electroceuticals Market

Global Electroceuticals Market was valued $xx Bn in 2019 and is expected to reach $28.5 Bn by 2026, at a CAGR of xx% during the forecast period.

Global Electroceuticals Market Introduction

Electroceuticals are medical devices that use electrical impulses to affect changes in body functions. Electroceuticals are a non-drug alternative that is expected to become the gold standard for treating a variety of diseases in the future. Electroceuticals, unlike other muscle or tissue stimulators, work on the basis of neurostimulation, which is the use of electrical impulses to modulate the nervous system. Electroceuticals have been used to treat a variety of diseases and disorders, and they are effective in both invasive and non-invasive methods for treating neurological conditions. In the future, these are expected to be a genuine replacement for drug-based medications.

Global Electroceuticals Market Dynamics

The rising geriatric population, which requires bioelectric medicine, is expected to drive growth over the forecast period. Medical disorders such as cardiac arrhythmias, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and depression are common among the elderly. These conditions are treated with advanced electroceuticals such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cochlear implants, cardiac pacemakers, and spinal cord stimulators. Another major factor driving the electroceuticals market is increased investment in the development of advanced bioelectric medicine.

In recent years, the global pharmaceutical market has experienced strong growth. The development of the Electroceuticals market is expected to be influenced by the overall growth of the pharma market. Disease patterns are shifting all over the world. Developed healthcare economies like the United States and Europe are grappling with issues like rising drug prices, universal health care, and an increase in the number of heart and cancer patients. Patients are struggling to keep up with rising medical costs. The electroceuticals market has a chance to fill this void because the medicine has few side effects and can cure in a short period of time.

The pharmaceutical segment, which is another critical component that can act as a catalyst in the growth of the Bioelectronic medicines market, is eroding as a result of multiple research and key collaborations. Electroceuticals are being increasingly adopted by pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, research institutes, and laboratories. Because electroceutical devices are small, there is a lot of scope for companies with product pipelines to enter the medical device industry. The use of electroceuticals is causing a shift in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as technological advancements in the medical device industry.

Global Electroceuticals Market Segment Analysis

Due to the high use of these products for arrhythmia, the implantable cardioverter defibrillators segment had the highest revenue grossing segment in 2019. In addition, rising geriatric population, increased incidence of sudden cardiac arrests and advanced product development are expected to drive market growth.

Because of the rising prevalence of Parkinson's disease and lifestyle-related disorders such as obesity and depression, the deep brain stimulator market is expected to grow significantly over the forecast period. According to the European Parkinson's Disease Association (EPDA), there are approximately 6.3 million Parkinson's patients worldwide, with 1.2 million of them living in Europe. Due to product advancement and new product launches by companies, the sacral nerve stimulators segment accounted for a significant revenue share. Nevro Corp. received FDA approval for the new Senza II SNS System in August 2018. The company expects this launch to aid in the expansion of its product portfolio in the neuromodulation and pain treatment segments.

The electroceuticals market is segmented into implantable and noninvasive electroceuticals devices based on their type. Due to the widespread use of these products to treat arrhythmia, chronic pain, ischemia, depression, tremor, and sensorineural hearing loss, implantable electroceuticals devices were the highest revenue-generating segment in 2019. Manufacturers are focusing on releasing advanced products to meet customers' unmet needs. For example, in August 2018, Biotronik released the MoMe cardiac monitor, which is designed to improve the early detection and diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias.

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Global Electroceuticals Market Regional Insights

Because of the presence of medical device manufacturers such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific Corporation, and BIOTRONIK, North America dominated the electroceuticals industry with the largest revenue share of xx% in 2019. Furthermore, the region's advanced healthcare and availability of advanced products have fueled growth. Following North America, Europe accounted for over 28.0 % market in 2018. Growing demand for innovative medical devices for treatment, as well as the presence of large electroceutical manufacturers, primarily in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and France, as well as a well-developed healthcare infrastructure, are expected to be major market drivers.

Due to the rising geriatric population in Asian countries such as China and India, the Asia Pacific region is expected to have the highest CAGR during the forecast period. In addition, the prevalence of chronic diseases such as cardiac arrhythmias, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy is on the rise in this region, driving electroceuticals adoption.

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Global Electroceuticals Market Report Scope: Inquire before buying

Global Electroceuticals Market, by Region

• North America

• Europe

• South America

• MEA

• Asia Pacific

Global Electroceuticals Market Key Players

• Medtronic plc

• St. Jude Medical, Inc.

• Boston Scientific Corporation

• Cochlear Limited

• Sonova Holding AG

• LivaNova PLC

• Biotronik

• Nevro Corporation

• Second Sight Medical Products, Inc.

• and ElectroCore LLC

• BioElectronics Corporation

• MED-EL

• Cefaly Technology

• Stimwave LLC

• Vomaris Innovations, Inc

• EnteroMedics Inc

• NeuroSigma, Inc.

• Oticon Medical

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#Electroceuticals Market

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your-dietician · 4 years ago

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Kidney disease in African American people: Risk factors and causes

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/kidney-disease-in-african-american-people-risk-factors-and-causes/

Kidney disease in African American people: Risk factors and causes

African American people are more likely to develop kidney disease than white people. This is due to structural racism and some genetic factors, among other things.

Although African American people make up just 13% of the United States population, they make up about 35% of people with kidney failure in the U.S. Kidney disease in African American people is a major public health issue.

That said, there are a number of strategies that can help prevent kidney disease and prolong survival in people who have it.

Keep reading to learn more about kidney disease in African American people, including reasons for the increased risk, symptoms, treatment options, and outlook.

A number of factors contribute to the higher risk of kidney disease among African American people. They include the following.

Racism in medicine

Racism in medicine may increase the risk of African American people developing kidney disease. It may also increase the risk of people not receiving a correct diagnosis and treatment.

Numerous studies have documented a pattern of racism in medicine. For example, according to one 2021 paper, genetic variation is actually greatest between members of the same racial group, not between different racial groups. This indicates that race really is a social construct, not a biological reality.

However, doctors continue to treat race as a biological factor, attributing differences in the prevalence of certain medical conditions to race and genetics.

A 2016 study of doctors in training found that about half of them endorsed at least one racist myth about Black patients, such as the myth that they have thicker skin or feel less pain. These false ideas could directly affect their treatment of patients, such as by causing them not to correctly diagnose or treat pain.

Doctors score tests of kidney function in Black people differently, based on early but flawed research, suggesting that there might be some differences in kidney function. The estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) test can measure how well the kidneys function. However, doctors apply a multiple to Black people’s scores that elevates their number, potentially making it appear as though their kidneys function better than they do.

In 2020, the American Society of Nephrology and the National Kidney Foundation created a task force to reevaluate the calculations that doctors use to measure kidney disease in African American people.

Learn more about racism in healthcare here.

Lower access to healthcare

African American people may struggle to access quality healthcare due to a variety of factors, including:

residential segregation that may mean that they do not live near quality doctors

low incomes that may make it more difficult to afford healthcare

a low willingness to seek medical care when needed due to factors such as fear of racism

Learn more about socioeconomic factors affecting access to healthcare here.

Structural racism

Structural racism is racism that is built into daily life. It often goes unnoticed, as it does not always require people to behave in explicitly racist ways.

Black American people are more likely to live in poor areas, in areas with low access to quality food, and in neighborhoods where they face exposure to toxic chemicals and environmental pollutants. Over time, this can erode their health.

Residential segregation persists thanks to historic and ongoing racial inequities. This includes the process of redlining, which excluded African American people from many neighborhoods. A 2013 study involving people receiving dialysis found that African American people who lived in highly segregated and low income neighborhoods had lower survival rates.

Chronic exposure to racism may steadily erode a person’s health. This can increase their risk of developing and dying from chronic conditions such as kidney disease. The theory of racism-related weathering argues that racism is a chronic stressor that steadily damages a person’s health throughout their life.

Learn more about the effects of racism on health and mental health here.

More risk factors

African American people, as a group, tend to have more risk factors for kidney disease than most other groups.

The risk factors include:

diabetes

obesity

a family history of diabetes or kidney disease

high blood pressure

It is important to note that racism in medicine and structural medicine may both contribute to the higher prevalence of these risk factors among African American people.

Learn more about diabetes in African American people here.

Learn more about high blood pressure in African American people here.

Genetic differences

According to a recent 2021 study, a variant in a gene called APOL1 is more common in people with recent African ancestry. Having this gene may increase the risk of developing chronic kidney disease.

Other research has found that kidney function may decline faster in Black American people. For example, a 2011 analysis involving people with atherosclerosis — a kidney disease risk factor — found higher rates of kidney decline among Black study participants.

Some researchers believe that this supports the notion of genetic differences in kidney function. However, other factors — such as low access to quality care, ongoing exposure to racist stress, or poor quality living environments — have a greater impact on these differences in kidney function.

Certain factors increase the risk of developing kidney disease.

They include:

having diabetes

having high blood pressure

being over the age of 60 years

being African American, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian American

having certain genetic kidney diseases or a history of kidney cancer

African American people are especially vulnerable to kidney disease from high blood pressure and diabetes. They are twice as likely as white people to develop diabetes, and they have a higher risk of certain diabetes risk factors.

Socioeconomic factors and chronic stress, including the stress of racism, may increase the risk of having conditions that cause kidney disease — especially diabetes and high blood pressure.

It is possible to have kidney disease and no symptoms, especially in the early stages. The symptoms can be subtle at first, and a person might blame them on fatigue or other medical conditions. For this reason, undergoing regular medical checkups can help a doctor diagnose the problem.

Some symptoms to watch for include:

new or worsening fatigue or concentration problems

difficulty sleeping

puffiness in the face, especially around the eyes

swelling in the feet

unexplained muscle pain or cramps

reduced appetite or unintentional weight loss

itchy skin

more frequent urination, particularly at night

urine that looks bubbly or foamy

Learn more about kidney disease here.

If a doctor suspects that a person has kidney disease, they may begin with a urine test to check for certain kidney disease markers. Albumin is a protein that, when present in the urine, may mean that the kidneys are damaged.

A blood test called an eGFR can measure how well the kidneys are filtering the blood. A score of about 60 indicates healthy kidneys, while a score below 60 may mean that a person has kidney disease. When the eGFR falls below 15, a person may have kidney failure. Kidney failure may require dialysis or a kidney transplant.

To diagnose the specific cause of kidney disease, a doctor may recommend other tests, such as an imaging scan of the kidneys.

Treatment for kidney disease depends on how severe the condition is. People experiencing kidney failure have kidneys that are not functioning well enough to sustain their body and filter their blood. They may need dialysis, which helps filter the blood. A kidney transplant is a longer-term solution and an alternative to dialysis.

In most cases, it is not possible to reverse damage to the kidneys. Instead, treatment focuses on maintaining a healthy lifestyle so that kidney disease does not get worse.

Some options include:

getting more frequent exercise

treating and controlling other medical conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure

quitting smoking, if applicable

reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption, if applicable

reducing protein intake

eating a kidney-friendly diet that is lower in sodium, potassium, and phosphorus

In some cases, a person may be able to take medication to slow the progression of kidney disease. Medication can also help with managing other conditions, such as high blood pressure.

Learn more about the best diet for healthy kidneys here.

Many of the same strategies that prevent other conditions can also lower the risk of kidney disease.

People can try the following prevention tips:

Eat a wide variety of healthy foods, such as whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins. Eat under 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day.

Manage any underlying medical conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

Maintain a moderate body weight.

Do not smoke.

Do not drink alcohol to excess.

Monitor one’s cholesterol levels.

Get at least 7–8 hours of sleep at night.

Develop a plan for managing stress, as stress — including the stress of racism — can slowly damage the body.

Exercise for at least 30 minutes most days of the week.

Early stage kidney disease is a treatable medical condition. With a healthy lifestyle and quality medical care, a person can live a long and healthy life.

That said, kidney disease increases the risk of death from other conditions, including heart disease, as well as the risk of hospitalization.

African American people generally have a worse outlook with chronic kidney disease, especially in the later stages. A kidney transplant may help a person survive much longer, but a person who needs a kidney transplant may also die while waiting for one.

A 2020 study involving 422 people undergoing dialysis found that after a year, 82.3% were still alive. The average overall survival rate was about 6.79 years. Survival rates varied depending on a person’s blood work and overall health, and factors such as serum iron, protein, and calcium helped predict survival.

This suggests that a doctor may be able to more accurately estimate long-term survival based on a person’s test results.

Chronic kidney disease is a potentially fatal medical condition.

Most types of kidney disease are preventable, and, in the early stages, making lifestyle and other changes may prevent kidney disease from getting worse.

Because African American people may face diagnostic delays and other barriers to treatment, it is important for them to seek prompt medical care with a doctor who listens to them and respects their requests for testing and treatment.

Kidney disease can increase the risk of death from other conditions, but on its own, it is very treatable with the right medical care.

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crstapor · 4 years ago

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Why I am so Cynical

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” - Zarathustra

Part 4

We all have a conception of how best to define cynicism. You can look into dictionaries or the web, find plenty of examples. And surely, having used the word often enough, you must feel I have a firm grip on how best to explain this particular ideology. I certainly used to. As a younger man it was a badge of honor, sure - look how smart I am! Look how cooler I am than all these slack-jawed yokels who know nothing of the terrors that surround! It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so true. Sure, I was a complete bastard for a number of years, and mostly owing to my juvenile cynicism. One genuine aspect of this worldview - and one that has been true since Diogenes and his tub - is that you have to be pretty dastardly smart to employ it. Tall beer to a self-assured youthling, and like a few pints, intoxicating. No evening lasts eternal in these petite fragile lives of ours so of course that morning did come; hangover and all. When it happened that I finally arose from that frenetic bender, I did so with two horrifying certainties writhing in my gut; the first, that I would never again enjoy such an evening (ah, fleeting youth!) the second, that even though I still felt the same way about humanity and all its ills, I no longer felt that gave me a free-pass on not trying to change all of that. With great cynicism comes great responsibility … why? I wondered, was this the case? It seemed clear that only a dyed in the wool cynic would see things for what they truly were - without the myopia of an idealist, the single-mindedness of a technician or scientist, the childish fantasies of the religious set, the self-aggrandizement of a political sort, or the crude egoism of a businessperson - without any sort of filter or preconceived notions egging them on (except of course for that one perpetual proposition cynics have long employed: start at the bottom, because with humans you can only go up).

So I got up. Out of the muck of that youthful sensualist-cynical-solipsism and into the act of putting my personal perspective to work addressing these concerns, these problems I saw consuming my land and all I knew of home. I did so not with the hope of profit (right, philosophy making a profit in this world? Ha!), or fame (please leave me alone; I really don’t like 99% of humanity ((right, sure, as if this would ever be a problem))), or even in the hope that any of my efforts would bear fruit (as you must know, the first step in any honest analysis of the human condition is just watching humans do what they do without prejudging them … an act that will quickly make you either throw up or start searching for a ticket to Alpha Centauri …) no, I did so because I found that I must. That there was nothing left for me other than to try (I gave up on the idea of suicide long ago). That sure, I could spend my remaining days whiling away the hours sitting around thinking about how petty everyone else was and how great it was that I knew that, but that contained in such an enterprise was a terrible hermeneutic, a sinister circle that left me the pettiest of them all. Well, I told myself, I have spent enough of my life being petty - so what next?

First was the analysis; actually looking at the problem as honestly as possible: trying my damnedest to see it from all sides. On average I have, admittedly in a stylized fashion (as opposed an academic one), reported the findings of these investigations in Part 3 of this essay. Ok. So we have a diagnosis on what’s wrong with the way people think, and how this thinking is affecting themselves, their communities, and the environment (which - as if I even need to say it - we DO NOT OWN). The diagnosis in hand, I proceeded to theorizing possible remedies, theories for renewal that I will now outline in brief detail. Before I do so I would like to make one last point very clear - the problem is not exterior, the problems are not insurmountable, nor are they predetermined, immutable, and impossible to address - quite the contrary! - the problem, as it always is, is in the way humanity thinks … and a thought is not a comet or a solar flare … a thought is a simple thing, and, provided one has the will can be thought differently quite simply … at the end of the day all we have to do, as a people, as a species, is start thinking other than we have been so far, and if we do, if we can find the courage to do so, we can turn all of this around. It really is that simple. It truly always has been.

In Part 3 I outlined three specific phenomena, and the problems specific to them: the surface, the self, and the symbol. To these three problems I have devised three solutions, which I will address in that order.

Recovering Pangea

We live in a culture of divisions. Walls and moats, dead-ends and labyrinths, tribes and gangs. Our daily activities are inundated with opportunities to see the other, not as a continuance of ourselves, but as alien interloper constantly on the move, the attack, conspiring against us. As if we didn’t obliterate the natives generations ago. As an evolutionary tack, strategy, the tribal thinking that sustained the species made sense for countless millennia; it no longer does. Now it is a detriment, a harm, a violence to our sustainability as a species and certainly to the future any of your children might know. As societies have evolved, become more interconnected, the need for greater empathy and understanding has risen as well; in a proportional degree to how the need for divisive us/them thinking has declined. And yet we don’t see the culture acknowledging this transition as readily as it might; certainly as readily as it should. So many define themselves based off tiny specifics that they lose sight of the greater whole … It’s great to be a Texan, or a Californian - or even just an American - but even there we have yet to muster the full truth. It has been said that no man is an island, and while true, it is also true that no nation is a planet. There is only one planet. One planet and we are all of us - regardless of tribe or nationality - a part of it. Earthlings, you might say. And it is the Earth that sustains us, not being black or gay, a Tennesseean or Republican, a fetishist or prude, etc. etc. ad nauseum/infinitum. For the species to do justice to this reality - a justice bearing legitimate existential pressure - we must recover Pangea. Some sense of the whole Earth as vital to us all. Think globally, act locally - yeah, sure - but think! It is a simple thing, to put a primacy on what is good for all opposed the few. And yet, without some grand metaphor, a marketing campaign (you might say if overly cynical), how will this change in thought be achieved? For there are great dangers lying before us on a global scale; threats to the very existence of our current cultures and ways of life: problems that can not be faced or confronted by petty tribes staking claims and building fences - no! - that can only be tackled if we work together. One people, one species. One, whole, Earth. Without Pangea, thinking so, what hope do we have .?. it might seem a simple thought, an easy answer, but the most effective ones usually are; the matter at hand is how best to achieve this thought-shift: this repositioning of our natural inclinations … I don’t know … I do know that without committing to a species prerogative as opposed a tribal one, the species itself doesn’t have an easy road ahead of it … that only the road through Pangea leads to a future sustainable, one where the dreams of the next may yet find purchase in the lands ever underfoot … all that great Earth each and everyone of us has ever known of home …

Lifespeed Harmonization

Socrates said ‘know thyself’ and if we truly did, we moderns, I wonder what we would find .?. None are born equal so the enterprise shouldn’t be thought the final panacea for what ills prevail, even so, the act itself seems withered and put-off; devalued by us of its station at the height of self-awareness - as if it was still some undiscovered land where lives the best us. It seems we feel knowing our objects and symbols has become more important than knowing your own heart, mind, or soul. A market of ‘relationships’ has poisoned our very conception of the heart, and truly too many shriveled old men and their fairy-tales still corral the souls of sleepers far and wide; and the mind! Hasn’t it nearly been forgotten or reduced to a simple calculating device? If not a putrid appendix. The true wonder of the human condition has seen a callous compartmentalization through the vagaries of our modernity; and via these divisions the meaning of the human condition has eroded as well - what it in fact means to be human. No longer, under this brave modernity, are human beings total wholes, no, now you are a taxpayer, a consumer, a victim of identity politics, a statistic, a criminal or an ‘elite’ because you happen to possess more symbols than your neighbor, etc. etc. … if the problem is polyfurcation, then the answer is a return to the whole (seeing somewhat of a pattern here?). We must learn to know ourselves, and if we do, we might learn to know each other … we must learn to be more conscious of the decisions in our lives as they affect every other decision, we must learn to see the balance in things, and yes, understand that balance is the perpetual existential state of the healthy human being against the chaos that surrounds … we must harmonize our lifespeeds to the music of the flux … so many of us, for too long, have treated life like a Lego model - an arbitrary whole easily torn to pieces, the pieces then randomly reassembled or lost under the couch … and yet our lives, our sense of self - and thus all the pieces that compose them - are not arbitrary as such, not insofar as they are us, insofar as they are to have meaning for us. The whole is only as strong as the weakest part and until we part with the notion of life as a series of hapless interconnected events we won’t be able to make ourselves stronger, or our societies and world.

The Exchange Revolution

The idea here is simple. We humans must revolutionize our thinking concerning how we exchange material goods and temporal services. Our current system of allowing hollow symbols to possess value, to stand in for the measure of exchange, is deeply flawed, as it permits a few individuals with nothing else on their mind to manipulate the symbols with devastating affect. Money did not fall from the sky, does not reach us on starlight, nor did we find it hidden in the ground. It is an idea. Like all ideas, with enough effort, it can be reconceived, rewrought, redefined. This is the purpose of the Exchange Revolution. To free humanity from the tyranny of hollow symbology once and for all: to remerge the referent with the sign in the markets of human exchange.

…

And sure, the younger me would say, well isn’t that all very convenient - just think again! That’s the answer, like people will ever listen or get around to it. As if just saying it is enough. Hey tyrants, you need to change your viewpoint, become one with the herd again and forget all self-interest … and yet, were it not for my years lost in the wilds of cynicism, I would never have looked at the problems facing American modernity with any genuine care. If I hadn’t spent so many lifetimes just laughing at it all I never would have perceived the hidden terror behind the joke. The fact is, that because of my cynical attitude I was able to see that something was wrong; the fact is I’m cynical because I care. Maybe the inherent duality of all opposites has gotten too far under my skin … perhaps seeing the object and the globe at once is unhealthy, or a few steps out of time … Perhaps so … but I can’t help thinking that it is simply thinking that is the problem, and it truly is the easiest thing in the world to do, if you want to … I mean, as if I even needed to provide an example just look at money: the largest, most successful thought experiment in history - hey Humans! Believe that these symbols hold all the value in your life then create an entire society around them! And that’s exactly what everyone did … hook, line, and sunk … we all believe in money, which is why it has so much power … wouldn’t it be grand if we could, one day, all start believing in something else …

#Essay #Philosophy #c. r. stapor #cynicism #nietszche #Modernity #philosophers on tumblr #writers on tumblr

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sreekarkumar56 · 4 years ago

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6 health signs that men shouldn’t ignore

According to research, men tend to visit their doctors less frequently, compared to women, and also skip going to an annual health checkup.

Never mind the annual checkup, men do not go to a doctor until they find the pain too overbearing to handle.

This thoughtless habit can prove to be dangerous. Early diagnosis and treatment sometimes may also cure life-threatening diseases.

It is highly imperative that both men and also women must check with a doctor as soon as they get an abnormal sign from their body.

As men are half as likely as women to visit a doctor, this article will focus on them to help identify any signs of bodily harm so that they can book an appointment with the doctor before it is too late. Here are 6 health signs that men shouldn’t ignore.

1. Irregular skin patch or mole

Most men develop irregular skin patches or moles that are not present since birth. These sudden occurrences of skin patches and odd moles must not be brushed aside lightly as it could be a sign of skin cancer or melanoma, a type of tumor.

While most moles are harmless or benign, a few could turn out to be cancerous. So, it is better to check with a dermatologist as soon as you detect an unusual change in skin color or if a mole pops up.

2. Frequent acid refluxes

Most people suffer from acid reflux or heartburn from time to time, especially after hogging on greasy or spicy foods. While this is a normal reaction to it, it is a cause for concern if you get acid refluxes after every meal. It could be a sign of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

This happens due to the backward kick of stomach acids towards your esophagus. This irritates or erodes your esophagus tissues and eventually causes ulcers. It also has the probability to cause cancer in the esophagus. Few people also mistake an actual heart problem for heartburn. Whatever might be the case, it is best you consult a specialist.

3. Excessive snoring

People snore when the muscles in their mouth, tongue, and throat relax. When the air passes through these, it vibrates and causes harsh and irritating snoring sounds. People mostly snore when their body is extremely tired.

However, when they tend to snore more than usual, it might be a case of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is more common in men than in women. It results in a pause in breathing while asleep. This in turn affects the sleep patterns and its quality. If left untreated it can leave you with a constant feeling of fatigue and may even develop into cardiovascular diseases. It is also linked to diabetes and obesity. You may want to check with an ENT specialist if you are suffering from the above issue.

4. Excessive thirst and frequent urination

If you are urinating frequently or are always thirsty, it might be a sign of diabetes. You tend to urinate frequently as your kidneys work overtime to expel the excess sugar present in your blood.

It could also be a sign of prostate issues. Prostate problems may also have other symptoms such as less flow in urination, discomfort in the pelvic region, or blood in urine or semen.

These symptoms can lead to serious conditions if left untreated or delayed, so, consult a doctor if you find any of the above symptoms.

5. Pain in chest

Chest pains are commonly associated with heart diseases. While this is true, frequent chest pains could also be signs of underlying health conditions like lung and gastrointestinal diseases.

However, in men, most chest pains are a sign of cardiac arrest. You might get warning signals days or even weeks before the actual attack. Signs include intermittent pain in the chest, shortness of breath, palpitations, abdominal or back pain, and nausea.

If you experience any of the above symptoms for no reason, do not take them lightly and immediately check with a doctor.

6. Erectile dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction is one of the most common health issues in men. While this affects sexual performance, it may also be a sign of serious underlying health conditions like cardiovascular diseases.

It could also be the result of excess stress or even depression. To know the exact reason, we recommend checking with a doctor to find the root cause and have it treated. The sooner you detect, the easier you can find the solution and diagnose it.

While the above signs are some of the common ones found in men, there are many such signs you can detect and have it checked with a doctor before it is too late.

Men are known to have dismal health statistics compared to women. Not surprisingly, they die earlier than women. This can be prevented if only they could read the signs early on and have them treated before the health condition compounds.

No matter what the sign or symptom is, however big or small, if you are in doubt, always check with a doctor. Not sure which doctor to consult, fret not. Simply contact us on +91 88-00-644-744, and we will provide you a free pre-consultation and direct you to the right doctor based on your health issues or symptoms.

https://www.redheal.com/blog/mens-health/6-health-signs-that-men-shouldnt-ignore/

#Acid Reflux Best Cardiologist In Hyderabad Best Dermatologist In Hyderabad Best Doctor Near Me Best Ent Specialist In Hyderabad Best Gastero

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dentistrymasters · 5 years ago

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Understand Teeth, Their Conditions and Treatment- 13 - What Is Dental Bonding

Each of your teeth has tissues-four to be exact. All the dental tissues are hard or calcified except for the fourth tissue. The pulp is in the center of the tooth and it's the nerve center where all the blood vessels and the connective tissues are located. This is the only tooth layer that should be soft. To further understand the further discussion, here is a brief overview of the anatomy of a tooth for you to skip back to you if you are unsure of what one of the tooth elements is when referenced. enamel anatomical crown gums pulp chamber neck dentin root canal cementum periodontal ligament Enamel Enamel is the hard tissue that covers the dentin. There are no living cells within enamel so it's unable to repair itself. Only a dentist can repair enamel if it's assessed as repairable. Anatomical Crown The anatomical crown is the part of your tooth that is above the gums. A healthy anatomical crown is covered in enamel. Gums The gums are sometimes referred to as the gingiva. This is a soft tissue that protects the roots of your teeth and the teeth that have not yet broken through. Some people are in their 30s and still have their wisdom teeth impacted inside the gums. Pulp Chamber The pulp chamber is the space in the middle of the tooth where the nerve endings, blood vessels, and connective tissues are located. Neck No, not where your head sits. The neck is the area where the crown meets the joint on the tooth. Dentin Dentin is the crime scene when oral sensitivity occurs. Root Canal The root canal is part of the pulp cavity inside a tooth's root. It's a chamber that's inside the root and contains pulp. Cementum The cementum is the hard tissue that covers the root and attaches the tooth to the periodontal ligament. Periodontal Ligament The periodontal ligament is a connective tissue that connects the tooth into the socket. When kids lose "baby teeth" and you hear a parent say "It was hanging by a thread," that thread is the periodontal ligament.

Most Common Dental Problems That Need A Dentist

There are several common dental problems that are indicators you should see a dentist. bad breath tooth decay gum (periodontal) disease oral cancer mouth sores tooth erosion tooth sensitivity Bad Breath The medical term for bad breath is halitosis. Most of the people you come in contact with who have bad breath actually have an underlying dental condition such as: bacteria on the tongue cavities dry mouth gum disease oral cancer If you have any of these problems simply using mouth was will not make the halitosis go away, it will only act as a short term mask for the odor. If you are experiencing chronic bad breath, do not feel any shame. Contact your dentistry office and get an appointment. Tooth Decay Tooth decay is normally referred to as "having a cavity." Plaque is the nasty sticky gunk that forms around an unbrushed tooth. When a tooth has a layer of plaque on it already and it is combined with sugar and/or starch the result is an acid that eats at the enamel. Tooth enamel erodes naturally with age. Sometimes cavities form from medications that lead to dry mouth which in turn leads to decay and cavities. You can avoid decaying your teeth by brushing them twice daily, always floss before bed, eating healthy food saying no to sugary snacks and drinks. Gum (Periodontal) Disease Periodontal disease is an infection that has settled in the gums that surround your teeth. One of the main causes of tooth loss in adults is gum disease. It has not been proven but some research is linking the periodontal disease with heart disease as well. No one is immune to gum disease but it's most common in folks over the age of 30. Smoking puts you at risk for disease in the gumline as well. Diabetics also are in danger. The symptoms are: bad breath red gums swollen gums bleeding gums sensitive teeth painful chewing There are two stages to gum disease: gingivitis and periodontitis. You should contact your dentistry office for diagnosis if you think you may have either stage.

Cosmetic Dentist

The things we have covered so far have been the most necessary treatments for dental issues that can cause you problems medically. Some people resort to see a cosmetic dentist though when they just don't like their smile at all. You may be considering veneers.

What Are Veneers And Why Would I Get Them?

The best way to define veneers is if you look at them as masks for the unsightly parts of your smile. Maybe your teeth have been stained by medication, maybe you have a gap between your two front teeth. A veneer is just a little porcelain wafer that your smile professional will bond to the front of your tooth permanently. The porcelain will not fix any problems that you have with erosion or decay. As a matter of fact, those and the other issues covered above need to be handled prior to getting cosmetic treatment. If you're going the route of dental bonding, you may not even need anesthesia. You go in, get the resin matched to your tooth color, your natural tooth will be roughed up and then the dental professional will mold the tooth right in your mouth and harden it up with ultraviolet lighting. Call your dental office today, whether it's for a problem or for cosmetic reasons. You deserve to smile. (818) 782-9500 or visit us at www.ezdental.com Read the full article

#bonding #CosmeticVeneers #cosmetic-dentist #Veneers

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runthejoint-blog · 6 years ago

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Investigation and diagnosis  

The road to Paris 

When I awoke at about 2am on the morning of May 4th, it wasn’t in excitement and anticipation that I was just a few hours later going to embark on the feat of endurance that is cycling from London to Paris within 24 hours as part of Challenge Sophie’s annual event. No, I awoke in agony with crippling pain in my right hand. I couldn’t form a fist without shooting pain and instantly felt a wave of anxiety flood over me. Not only did I wonder what was wrong with me, but I felt an immense sense of panic. How the hell was I going to cycle 200 miles with limited use of one hand? I was not just worried about the pain, more how would I handle the bike, grip the handlebars, and most importantly brake! I jumped out of bed and ran down to the kitchen to consume pain killers and anti-inflammatories and find a Rapid Ice to stick my hand into.  

A few hours later Tom and I were on the train bound for the start line at Blackheath. The train was packed; standing room only, with our bikes precariously packed into the overcrowded carriage and my face crumbling in pain every time I was forced to grab the hand rail to hold on. I decided the best strategy was to keep moving my hand to avoid it seizing up further and gradually over the course of the day the pain abated.  Once the ride got underway the concern about the pain began to lift (in part because it did), mainly as we were confronted with unbelievable weather for the first May bank holiday weekend - torrential rain, followed by vicious hail and our fair share of strong winds - it was going to be challenging I appreciated, particularly as this was a last minute decision for me to join the ride, and had done no training, but this turned into a harrowing four hours on the first day. What on paper should have been a straightforward, and by our standards easy ride, was proving far from it.   

Arriving at Newhaven heralded an enormous sense of relief, the chance to consume copious amounts of carbs (a favourite hobby of mine, and probably the one I excel at the most) and most importantly change into clean and dry kit and begin the next challenge of drying out shoes and staying warm, not to mention trying to sleep on the five hour ferry crossing.

  The morning of May 5th began in earnest with us joking that the predicted bad weather was nowhere to be seen. Gathering before dawn to start pedalling again, there was an atmosphere of sleep-deprived, good-natured hysteria. Little did we know that within seven miles the first freezing cold rain would begin, quickly followed up with a chaser of yet more ice-cold and truly vicious hail. Thank goodness we were part of a peloton of 120 riders who had made a pact to cycle the first 30 or so miles to breakfast as a group. Yes, it meant the pace was slower than maybe we would have liked given the conditions, but I genuinely don’t know if either of us would have kept going if we’d done this as an independent duo - we’re tough, but this reduced even the hardiest of riders to teeth-chattering wrecks (personally I blame the previous year’s participants, including Tom, for bitching about how they endured the start of the 2018 heat wave). At the breakfast stop (after what seemed like an eternity of riding) Tom and I stuffed as much food and coffee into ourselves as possible and tried to get warm (an impossible task, it turned out). I genuinely wondered if we should continue, I was particularly worried about Tom with his lack of corporeal padding, but on we went and eventually we made it to the Eiffel Tower with time to spare - 37 minutes to be precise. It had been hard, the weather and fatigue had been a challenge, but all pain had evaporated, or at least been replaced with the general ache of long days in the saddle and the effects of having been unbearably cold.

The road to diagnosis 

I forgot about this weird hand pain and continued on my merry way, enjoying an immersive new job and putting my ever-growing tiredness down to spending nine hours a day at a desk staring at a computer screen, and my lifestyle transforming overnight from relatively active to largely sedentary. And then it happened again. About two weeks after the first attack, I was once again seized in the middle of the night by the same pain - overtaking my hand and wrist. It remained for the next 48 hours or so before my left hand began to hurt, although along the edges of my palm and wrist rather than the fingers and knuckles of my right hand. It struck me, it must be carpal tunnel. I knew it was something that tends to get progressively worse before you often need to resort to a surgical fix. A request for diagnosis from a couple of doctor friends over a drink in the pub one night, confirmed my Google self-diagnosis.  Sitting 36 hours later in a consultation room with a locum GP he told me it definitely wasn’t carpal tunnel and instead it sounded more like arthritis. He proceeded to unsuccessfully try and print off a request for blood tests and a prescription for anti-inflammatories to keep me going until the results came back. His inability to work the printer and the fact he didn’t agree with my Google-formed opinion (or that of my friends) instantly made me decide that I couldn’t trust this opinion (another doctor friend has since told me he is one of the best doctors around!). I am 29 years old, eight weeks away from my 30th birthday. I cannot have arthritis. So I duly trotted off to St Richard’s for a blood test the following Tuesday, and cracked on with the day to day.

  Within 48 hours I received a phone call from the surgery; my usual GP would like to see me to discuss my test results. It didn’t need to be an urgent appointment, I was told, and so I assumed that the results had returned nothing and further investigation was needed. Nearly two weeks later I endured a 40 minute wait to see the Dr and safely ensconced in her office, she broke the news I had least expected to hear, and wanted to hear even less. At the age of 29 and now six weeks before my 30th birthday, the blood results showed I had arthritis. The tears came quickly, yet silently and trickled down my cheeks as it dawned on me what this could mean. My lovely, warm-hearted, good-humoured GP who has counselled me through so much over the past six months and has seen me transformed from an anxiety-ridden shell unable to speak back to a smily, bouncy, positive person told me not to get ahead of myself. Yes, it was highly unlikely I would be able to run the ultra-marathon I had only a couple of weeks before set my sights on. Yes, it was now a case that I would be medicated for life and have to practice damage-limitation to avoid any further degeneration of my joints. But, I could cycle, I could swim, do yoga, pilates and consider diet adaptions to keep the inflammation under control. The two of us quickly established that it was best for her to refer me to the rheumatology department at our local NHS hospital, but also to see a consultant who practised at the local private hospital so that I would know where I stand sooner rather than later.  

You see, yes I can cycle. Cycling is in fact seen as one of the best activities for those living with arthritis. But is the cycling I choose to do going to be encouraged. Is powering up a 15% hill as hard as I can ok? Is putting everything into a sprint to beat my big brother to the coffee shop ok? How about a 2 week long endurance ride akin to the LEJOG challenge I completed last summer going to ruin me, or make me thrive? How about a week climbing in the Alps, Dolomites or Pyrenees? Or a 24 hour endurance challenge such as the one I completed when this whole sorry saga began?

For those who know me even a little, they know that physical challenges are how I survive life. How I feel truly alive. Challenging myself physically, not knowing if I’ll complete it until the last millisecond, that is how I not only get my kicks, but keep my anxiety and greatest fears at bay and build confidence and belief in myself; something that only a few months ago had been eroded to non-existence. We often see such challenges and achievements as something to be celebrated; a sign of mental toughness as well as physical toughness. The other day someone who has endured hundreds if not thousands of miles pedalling next to (or more accurately in front of me) sent me a message saying: “you tend to push yourself very hard physically. I’ve observed many people in this regard, and your intensity is among the very best (worst?) I’ve seen.” Suddenly, someone whose opinion I had valued so much and who had always made me think that this commitment was a good thing, made me re-evaluate myself. Had I pushed too hard? Had I broken myself? Was I to blame for this?

Today, almost six weeks to the day since my symptoms began and five weeks before my 30th birthday, I met by consultant, Sanj. After he quizzed me on my symptoms, he came up with the analogy of me recounting my experience so far as akin to a Beatles song coming on the radio (familiar and instantly recognisable to him): there was no doubt in his mind that I had inflammatory (or rheumatoid) arthritis. Again those silent tears sprung a leak. I guess I had this hope that he would disagree with the GP, say it was a one-off virus and nothing to worry about. No such luck, the exhaustion I feel is genuine, the pain in my elbow is not all in my head, it’s in fact totally swollen, the excruciating pain I have in my shoulder today is really there, and yes, it is why I feel physically sick - I’m a classic case; not worrying unnecessarily, I will feel like crap right now and it’s right I feel anxious and fearful for the future. He had a clever knack of giving me as much information as he felt was necessary but knew not to overload me or what could wait until we met again. I won’t know for another couple of weeks what the long term treatment will be, or what my most recent test results will suggest in terms of prognosis, but I do know that it will be a case of adaptation, ‘disease limitation’ and living life by evaluating truly how I feel each day. It might mean that sometimes the best laid plans will fall to pieces at the last minute, or I may even complete an unplanned challenge on the spur of the moment because I feel good. And that is going to be my biggest mental barrier to overcome. It’s ok to not put yourself under pressure every weekend to get out and put yourself through gruelling challenge, after gruelling challenge - I just need to remember that during my lowest moments.

How often do we say, “Oh I want to do that one day”? Make that day today, you never know what is round the corner. I thought I had years to enter Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders, cycle the Highland 500, run a marathon, run that ultra-marathon, cycle from the Channel to the Med - suddenly I am a lot less sure.  

Keep this in mind: One day I will not be able to do this, today is not that day, but tomorrow could be. Don’t waste a day. 

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paleorecipecookbook · 8 years ago

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RHR: The Myth of Adrenal Fatigue

Tweet: Can your adrenals really become fatigued? In this episode, we discuss:

How our stress-response system works

The concepts of resilience and metabolic reserve

The origins of “adrenal fatigue”

The problems with the adrenal fatigue model

Why an accurate understanding matters

The causes of HPA axis dysfunction

How to treat HPA-D

[smart_track_player url="http://ift.tt/2tWRYPL" title="RHR: The Myth of Adrenal Fatigue" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

youtube

Show notes:

The Role of Stress and the HPA Axis in Chronic Disease Management by Dr. Thomas Guilliams

Chris Kresser: Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. Today, we have a question from Mary. Let's give it a listen. Mary: Hi, Chris. I'm Mary from Oregon, and I heard that you recently did a presentation at a symposium in California with more information about evidence-based research addressing adrenal fatigue. And I think you're going to focus of course on using diet to remedy those things. So I'm especially interested in that, and I know you've done some recent podcasts about over-exercising and adrenal fatigue. But I would appreciate it if you would do an updated podcast on adrenal burnout, or HPA axis dysfunction, or whatever you want to call it. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Chris: Thanks for that question, Mary. It's really an interesting topic. Adrenal fatigue has become a popular diagnosis amongst both patients and practitioners, at least within the functional and integrated medicine worlds. It's really used to describe a wide range of symptoms from fatigue, insomnia, and brain fog to things like joint pain, allergies, and weight gain. If you search for adrenal fatigue online, you'll see usually a bullet point list of pretty much every symptom that you could possibly ever experience, so very nonspecific and associated with a lot of problems. Proponents of the adrenal fatigue concept will suggest that it affects hundreds of millions of people around the world and may be at the root of most modern disease. But the question is, does adrenal fatigue really exist? Is it an accurate representation of stress-related pathology? What happens to us when we experience chronic stress, and is it in alignment with current scientific evidence? These are questions I've been exploring for a very long time.

Can your adrenals really become fatigued?

When I started studying functional medicine and getting involved in this world, I heard the term “adrenal fatigue” thrown around a lot, and it's one of those things that I think a lot of us as health care practitioners just accept, at least those of us in the functional and integrated medicine world. It's certainly true that we see a lot of patients with stress-related issues and that chronic stress is associated with numerous health problems, so I didn't doubt that because I had seen that both in my own experience and also with many patients. There is tons of research correlating stress with many different symptoms and diseases, but I did wonder if this idea that the mechanism that explains all of that is because our adrenals become drained and unable to produce cortisol anymore, which is kind of the fundamental idea behind the adrenal fatigue hypothesis. I did a really deep dive into this issue in preparation for my clinician training program, and what I learned might surprise you. It definitely surprised a lot of the practitioners that I trained who have been like I was: just kind of accepting the adrenal fatigue idea without a lot of critical thinking and just assuming that it was true because it does make sense on the surface in many ways. I've been doing presentations for practitioners to dispel this what I call the “adrenal fatigue myth” and replace it with a more accurate conception of what's really happening. I realized, Mary, when you asked me that question, that I haven't actually shared this information with the general public and people that aren't healthcare practitioners. So I wanted to take the opportunity to do that here, and thanks for giving me that excuse, Mary.

How our stress-response system works

In order to really understand this, we have to get a little bit geeky and take a closer look at some of the basic physiology and concepts here, otherwise it won't really be possible for me to explain why the adrenal fatigue idea isn't consistent with our current understanding of the body and how it responds to stress. Our stress-response system consists of two primary components. There's the sympathoadrenal medullary system (SAS) that primarily governs our immediate or short-term response to stress, and then there’s the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis), which governs our intermediate- to long-term stress response. These are both really complex systems, so I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but the key concept to understand here is that mechanisms that protect us in the short term from acute stress can actually become harmful or damaging over the long term. For example, let's say you’re a hunter–gatherer and you're out walking on the savanna and you're confronted by a lion. Well, in that case, it's a really good thing that your heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar all go up, your muscles tense and your digestive and reproductive systems shut down because those immediate changes that happen help you to survive that threat. But what happens if that system that helps us survive the short-term threats is continually activated, as it often is in the modern world? We're stuck in traffic. We’re working two jobs, eating an inflammatory diet or using electronic media late at night. All of these things activate that same stress-response system, but those changes that all happen like, when you're confronted by a lion, for example, that are adaptive in the short term can become maladaptive, or harmful, over the long term. The constant activation of that stress-response system erodes resilience and it depletes metabolic reserve. These are really, really important concepts to understand when it comes to understanding the effects of stress on our physiology.

The concepts of resilience and metabolic reserve

Resilience is defined as the immediate capacity of our body to respond to changes in physiological need—or to stress, to put it more simply. Metabolic reserve is basically the long-term capacity of our body to withstand stress. What happens is if we're under a lot of stress, initially that resilience will drop. But if we have sufficient metabolic reserve, if you can think of it like a battery that’s charged, if our battery has a lot of charge, we should be able to withstand those changes fairly well or at least bounce back from those changes. Another analogy that could be helpful is like a bank account. If you have a good balance between making withdrawals and making deposits and you've got a lot of deposits in a big bank account, you can withstand a period where you're making more withdrawals because you've got that reserve there to back you up. But if you're constantly making withdrawals over a long period of time and you're not replenishing with deposits, then over time that account is going to be overdrawn. That's really a similar thing that happens with stress. There are a lot of things that we can do that build our resilience and metabolic reserve. Eat a healthy diet, get plenty of sleep, get adequate amounts of exercise (not too little, not too much), manage our stress, spend time in nature. All of the things that we talk about, those are metaphorical deposits into our metabolic reserve account and our resilience account. But if we're constantly drawing that down with an inflammatory diet, not getting enough sleep, not getting enough exercise or getting too much exercise, the converse of everything that I just said, then that's going to deplete our resilience and our metabolic reserve. What we know when we look at the research is that there are a huge number of conditions that are associated with the loss of resilience and the depletion of metabolic reserve, and it is true that I think this is a key driver of the epidemic of modern disease. I'm just going to tell you a few of them. This is only a partial list, but:

depression

obsessive–compulsive disorder

alcoholism

diabetes

obesity

PTSD

hyperthyroidism

hypothyroidism

chronic fatigue syndrome

fibromyalgia

premenstrual tension syndrome

rheumatoid arthritis

asthma

eczema

These have all been associated with an activation of the HPA axis and that stress response and then the progressive loss of resilience and depletion of metabolic reserve.

The origins of “adrenal fatigue”

Now let's get back to this adrenal fatigue idea. It really comes from something called the general adaptation syndrome, which is a theory advanced by a pioneering doctor and researcher, Hans Selye. He was trying to describe the effects of stress on physiology, particularly in the animals that he was studying. This general adaptation syndrome that he suggested predicts what happens to the body when it's exposed to stress. He basically argued that first you see rising cortisol, DHEA and pregnenolone hormones, stress hormones that are produced by the adrenal glands. When you're first exposed to stress, you see all those things go up, and then over time they begin to decline as the stress is chronic or lasting. You have high cortisol at first, and then cortisol drops. It might even fall into the normal range in stage 2, and then in stage 3, cortisol and DHEA are falling below the normal range, until finally you reach adrenal exhaustion or failure, where cortisol, DHEA, and pregnenolone are all very low. That's the typical idea. This isn't what Hans Selye argued, but people who saw Selye’s model and kind of took it and ran with it advanced the idea that what happened in that situation was that the adrenal glands, which normally produce cortisol, lost the ability to continue producing cortisol. The adrenal glands become fatigued, hence the name “adrenal fatigue,” and they were just over time, because of the exposure to chronic stress, they become less and less able to produce cortisol. That's the basic idea behind adrenal fatigue, and certainly we hear many people now saying, “Oh, my adrenals are shot.” “I've got adrenal fatigue. I can't make cortisol.” People are taking supplements to increase cortisol levels because of this, including some medications like hydrocortisone to actually increase cortisol levels in the body.

The problems with the adrenal fatigue model

But there are really three primary problems with the adrenal fatigue hypothesis, and I'm just covering these very briefly because it gets pretty technical pretty quickly. I think for most people listening to this podcast, you're mostly concerned with how this affects you and what you can do about it, maybe not so much about the terminology and why that's important, but bear with me because I think it is meaningful and it does make a difference in terms of how we approach this, so I want to just quickly go over these three reasons that I think the adrenal fatigue concept is not accurate. Number one, many, if not most, people with adrenal fatigue don't really have low cortisol levels. Mary, I’ll talk about each of these in a little more detail. Number two, even when cortisol is low, it's rarely because the adrenals are fatigued and unable to produce it. Number three, adrenal fatigue as a concept isn't really supported by our current scientific understanding of the stress response.

Most people don’t really have low cortisol

Let's go back to number one, which is that most people don't actually have low cortisol. People with so-called adrenal fatigue don't actually have low cortisol. Adrenal fatigue is often diagnosed by using a saliva cortisol test, and the cortisol that's measured in saliva is in the unbound or free form. It means it's not bound to a protein carrier. If you've heard of “free testosterone” or “free T3” or “free T4,” we're talking about the same thing. It's the free unbound form of the hormone. That is the most potent form of cortisol, but it only represents about 3 to 5 percent of the total cortisol in the body at any given time, and the rest of the cortisol is cleared by several different metabolic pathways before it's excreted in the urine. Again, this can get complex, but the key thing to understand here is that when we measure saliva cortisol, it's not necessarily representative of the total cortisol levels in the body. When studies have looked at total cortisol levels in addition to free cortisol levels, they found that when people have low free cortisol, they don't necessarily have low total cortisol. In fact, it's more common when people have low free cortisol for them to have either normal total cortisol or even high total cortisol. One of the reasons for this is that this constellation with low free cortisol and high total cortisol is common in obesity. Now we know that one-third of Americans are obese, two-thirds are overweight, so that's not an uncommon thing to see. Again, the first thing is we need to be clear about what we're actually measuring, and when we are clear about that, we see that free cortisol is not as common as is typically assumed. Another issue is that some of the functional labs that are testing saliva cortisol in saliva have ranges that I believe are actually too narrow. I've often argued that the lab ranges are too broad, but in some cases, I think they've been revised in a way that isn't totally supported by the evidence. That can lead to false diagnosis of low cortisol. Another problem is how saliva is collected. When the saliva test is done in the morning, it’s really important in terms of determining the cortisol levels. Before we even wake up, cortisol levels are beginning to rise, and then right when we wake up and open our eyes and light hits our eyeballs, that leads to a dramatic rise in cortisol within the first 15 to 30 minutes after we wake up, and that's called the cortisol awakening response. That accounts for over 50 percent of the total cortisol production during the day. It's a major event in terms of cortisol production. What happened was that a lot of the labs that were doing this testing didn't instruct people to take the first sample within that first half-hour period. If someone wakes up and then they wait for an hour or even two hours to do that first sample, they missed that entire cortisol awakening response—that surge of cortisol that happens early, first thing in the morning. The level that they get back will miss that surge of cortisol and it will lead to a falsely low morning level of cortisol, and they'll be falsely diagnosed with low cortisol. As you can see, there are a lot of problems with how we've been doing this. When you do the testing correctly, far fewer people actually do have low total cortisol and even low free cortisol than the testing initially led us to believe.

2. Even when cortisol is low, it's rarely because the adrenals are fatigued

The second thing is that I mentioned was that even when cortisol is low, it's rarely because the adrenals are fatigued and unable to produce it. Now this gets very technical very quickly too. But the first thing, I think, to say is that there certainly is a condition that does lead to the adrenal glands being unable to produce cortisol, and that's called Addison's disease. Addison’s is pretty rare. There are fewer than 200,000 cases a year. Even though stress is probably a factor, it's an autoimmune disease, so it's not a stress condition that's wholly caused by stress. It's also important to note that the low levels of cortisol that are observed in Addison’s are way, way lower than what are observed in so-called adrenal fatigue. If you don't have Addison's, but you do have low cortisol, it’s not because the adrenals are not able to produce it. There are actually several other mechanisms that determine cortisol levels in the body and can lead to low cortisol levels, and they have nothing to do with the adrenals’ ability to actually produce cortisol. I'm not going to go into detail on all these, but I'm just going to mention a few of them. One is downregulation of the HPA axis. When we're exposed to stress over a long period of time, the body has some mechanisms that it uses to try to protect us from the effects of that high cortisol that would result from that stress. It essentially decreases the sensitivity of some receptors that are involved in this pathway, and that again is a protective mechanism. The body's trying to prevent any harm coming from this exposure to high cortisol from stress, but unfortunately, that ends up leading to a decreased ability to produce cortisol in the face of future stress. That has to do with the brain. It doesn't have to do with the adrenals not being unable to or not being able to produce it. The second thing that can happen is cortisol resistance. If you're familiar with the concept of insulin resistance, this is very similar. Chronically high cortisol levels can lead to cortisol resistance, and that's caused by a decrease in cortisol receptor sensitivity. The receptors become insensitive to cortisol, and it can also be caused by a decrease in the number of receptors for cortisol. Again, that's a protective response. The body's trying to protect against the effects of high cortisol, but it ends up leading to low cortisol over time. The third reason would be decreased bioavailability of cortisol at the tissue level. That can be caused by increased levels of the binding protein that carries cortisol throughout the body, and that can be also caused by an increase in the conversion of cortisol, which is the active form of the hormone into cortisone, which is a less active form of the hormone. Those are just three of many other mechanisms that lead to low cortisol that have nothing to do with the adrenals being unable to produce it.

The adrenal fatigue concept isn't really supported by our current scientific understanding of the stress response

The third reason is that adrenal fatigue is just really not supported by scientific understanding and the stress response. If you go on to PubMed, which is the clearinghouse of scientific studies database where you can search for various topics, and you type in “adrenal fatigue” in quotation marks, which means it will just search for that phrase, you'll find about 10 results, and they're not really impressive results either. But if you then search for “hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis,” you'll find about 18,000 results. The difference there is, as I said in the beginning of this podcast, there is tons of research connecting stress and disease showing that the effects of stress-related physiology are profound and can cause numerous symptoms and numerous health problems. But again, it's because of brain or central nervous system or tissue-specific regulatory mechanisms that govern the availability of cortisol, not because the adrenals can't produce enough of it.

Why an accurate understanding matters

Okay, so let's talk about why this matters a little bit. The first reason is that if we want to really, truly understand how to address the signs and symptoms that were previously known as “adrenal fatigue,” if you will, then we need to understand what it actually is and then what causes it, which I'll get to in a second. In functional medicine, of course, we're always trying to address the underlying cause of disease. If we don't know what the cause is, we can't be as effective in our treatment. Second is it brings us into alignment with the current scientific evidence, and that means we can leverage the vast amount of research that's been done on stress and the HPA axis and disease outcomes to figure out better treatments and better ways of approaching things. Third, it leads to better treatment outcomes for the two reasons that I just mentioned and can prevent harm. For example, let's say we falsely diagnose a patient with adrenal fatigue because we're not using saliva hormone testing properly, and we don't collect the sample well, and it comes back with low cortisol, and we prescribe hydrocortisone or some some herbal treatment that raises the cortisol levels. Well, if they actually have high cortisol levels instead of low, then that might not be a good idea and may make them worse and potentially cause harm. There are real reasons why this is important, and it's not just a question of terminology and splitting hairs.

The causes of HPA axis dysfunction

Let's talk a little bit about the causes of HPA axis dysfunction. That's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about a dysregulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and possibly the SAS, sympathoadrenal medullary system. It's not as sexy as adrenal fatigue. It's not as easy to say. We could call it “HPA axis maladaptation.” That actually is probably even more accurate because most of the changes that occur, as I mentioned, are the body's attempt to adapt to a chronically high cortisol, but in doing so, it overshoots the target and we end up with low cortisol. We can call it “HPA axis dysregulation,” which I have argued for. HPA-D is a way we could say it in shorthand, but we can also name a specific abnormality. If the patient actually has high cortisol rather than low, we could call it “hypercortisolism,” or just “high cortisol.” Or if the patient has normal cortisol but they're producing not enough in the morning and too much at night, we could call it “disrupted diurnal cortisol rhythm.” Again, these terms are not as user friendly, not easy to say, but they're important in terms of improving our understanding of what's going on. Okay, so what causes HPA axis dysfunction? Well there are four primary causes, and if anyone is interested in reading more about this and diving into this in much more detail, especially if you're a health care provider, Dr. Tom Guilliams wrote a fantastic book. He's with the Point Institute, and the book is called The Role of Stress and the HPA Axis in Chronic Disease Management. It's oriented towards clinicians and practitioners, but if you're interested, that’s what I would suggest. Okay, so let's talk about the four triggers of HPA axis dysfunction as Tom describes in his book.

Perceived stress

The first is perceived stress, and that is what we all think about when it comes to stress. It's financial stress, job stress, relationship stress, and there's a lot more to say about that, and maybe we'll do a separate thing on that. Perceived stress is an important term because it highlights the fact that people perceive stress in different ways. Something that's stressful for one person may not be stressful for another. There are actually positive forms of stress called “eustress” and negative forms of stress called “distress,” but we can group this together in this category called perceived stress. Then inflammation is number two, blood sugar dysregulation is number three, and circadian disruption is number four. Most people, I think, when they think of adrenal fatigue, think of stress as being the major cause, and it's true that it is a major cause. But part of the problem there is we tend to neglect these other three causes that can be just as significant when it comes to HPA axis disruption.

Anything that causes inflammation

Anything that causes inflammation—if you have SIBO and gut issues, even if you have no perceived stress in your life, that can still cause HPA axis problems—obesity, inflammatory diet, any other issues that we know can cause inflammation or will trigger HPA axis dysfunction.

High or low blood sugar

High blood sugar or low blood sugar will also trigger that, and it'll cause problems with insulin and leptin signaling, and that can affect the HPA axis in a negative way, so that's another issue.

Circadian disruption

Circadian disruption, that refers to not getting enough exposure to light at the right time during the day and then the morning in particular, and getting too much exposure to light at the wrong times, like at night. I'm sure you've heard me talk about this a lot. It's in my book. This is a growing problem in the modern world, and it contributes really significantly to HPA axis dysfunction. We’re running out of time, and we won't have time to go into a really detailed treatment of what to do about this, but I'll come back to that in a future podcast. For the purposes of this show, I just really wanted to give you an idea of why the adrenal fatigue hypothesis is ... it's not really correct and what we should replace it with, and then I'm just going to briefly mention what we can do about it.

How to treat HPA-D

Hopefully, that's obvious now because you know what the four triggers are. We need to of course address those four triggers as the primary way of reversing HPA axis disruption.

This means reducing perceived stress. This is reducing our exposure to stress when that's possible and then taking steps to manage stress when it's not. I've written a ton about stress management, so we can provide some links in the show notes to help you get started with that, to keep going with that, because it's so important. I can't say enough about it. If a patient comes to me and they have significant HPA axis disruption, what I tell them is there is no way to supplement or eat yourself out of this alone. Those things are really important, but you really, really have to address the stress piece, the behavioral and lifestyle management part of it, or else you won't get well.

Number two would be to address root causes of inflammation. Again, if you have gut dysbiosis, SIBO, parasites or fungal overgrowth, and that's contributing to an inflammatory picture, then you have to address that before the HPA axis will improve.

Number three would be to regulate blood sugar. If your blood sugar is too high, taking steps to lower it like a Paleo-type of diet, possibly lower, low carb, and even keto, if necessary, would be helpful if you've got more of a hypoglycemic picture. Those steps still might be helpful, or you might need to eat smaller, more frequent meals, so whatever needs to be done to regulate blood sugar.

Then what we would call circadian entrainment, which means bringing yourself more into alignment with the natural rhythm of light and dark, making sure to get some light exposure first thing in the morning if you can, but certainly during the day, and then reducing your exposure to artificial light at night. All of those things are really important for reducing that circadian disruption that can cause HPA axis problems.

Okay, I know that probably ended up being pretty sciencey and geeky. I hope that wasn't overwhelming or confusing, but I just really felt like it was important to give you the overview of why the adrenal fatigue hypothesis is not supported by current scientific understanding of stress and how stress affects our physiology. Hopefully this leads to a broader investigation into the causes of the symptoms known as adrenal fatigue, if you're exploring that yourself on your own as a patient, and I'm certainly passionate about training practitioners through my ADAPT program to better understand this condition and be able to more clearly diagnose, more accurately diagnose it and then more effectively treat it. That's it for today, everybody. Thanks for listening. Please keep sending your questions in to http://ift.tt/1DErq19, and I'll talk to you soon.

Source: http://chriskresser.com July 07, 2017 at 12:51AM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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ulrichfoester · 5 years ago

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What to Know When Seeking A Retreat Center

It’s a brand new year, providing a fresh slate and the opportunity to finally take steps to break free from a substance use problem or mental health issue that has prevented you from enjoying a fulfilling and productive life. While it is never easy to initiate the recovery process, once that reticence is overcome and treatment is sought a whole new rewarding life awaits.

When seeking a retreat center for addiction recovery or mental health treatment it helps to have a general understanding of what kinds of services are provided. Aligning your unique recovery needs with the most appropriate treatment pathways is an essential first step toward obtaining a successful outcome. By gaining some basic information about the different types of treatment settings, treatment philosophies, retreat formats, and services available you are equipped with the knowledge to take that important step.

Addiction Recovery Retreat Center

A substance use disorder may have completely blindsided you, seeming to come out of nowhere to steal your life right out from under you. Whether your drug or alcohol problem is a recent development or the result of a long history of substance abuse, the result is the same. Addiction is addiction, period. Becoming enslaved by a substance use disorder will upend a person’s life on every level.

Finding an addiction recovery or depression retreat center that adheres to clinically proven evidence-based treatment modalities will get you on the road to recovery. Addiction treatment involves multiple disciplines that work in tandem to help the individual make the needed changes that will help them overcome the disease.

Additionally, any underlying factors, such as a mood disorder or trauma, will be identified and treated alongside the substance use disorder. It is crucial to address the contributing mental health issues when treating addiction or dependency. In many cases, the substance use is merely a symptom of the core issue that drives the addiction behaviors. A retreat center for addiction recovery will assist you in achieving realignment between the mind, body, and spirit.

What Types of Substance Use Disorders are Treated?

An addiction treatment retreat may specialize in a particular type of substance use disorder, such as alcoholism or opiate addictions. Most, however, will be equipped to treat individuals struggling from a variety of substance use disorders, including:

Alcohol

Prescription opioids

Heroin

Cocaine

Methamphetamine

Benzodiazepines

Marijuana

Poly-drugs

Each type of substance use disorder will have its own treatment protocol and anticipated withdrawal symptoms during the detox process. For this reason, it is beneficial to locate a retreat center that routinely customizes treatment plans to address the specific features of a certain drug or alcohol addiction, as well as any coexisting mental health disorders.

Why is Psychotherapy Important for Addiction Recovery?

Detox and withdrawal provides the launch point for a new life liberated from addiction, but that is only the first step. Learning to live your daily life without the substance that you have relied on takes a whole set of coping skills, as well as a shift in thinking. Assisting individuals in making these important changes through evidence-based psychotherapy is at the heart of addiction treatment.

Psychotherapists utilize a number of modalities that are effective for individuals recovering from addiction. The most commonly used therapies include:

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on both the cognitive (thoughts) and behavioral (actions) of the individual by helping them modify thought-behavior patterns that are keeping them trapped in substance abuse. For example, someone may be convinced that they cannot function at work or at social functions without drugs or alcohol, therefore they continue to self-medicate in these situations. CBT teaches them to exchange that irrational belief to a positive statement.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT is centered on shifting negative self-messaging and self-criticism toward acceptance, while encouraging improvement in four specific areas, including mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. DBT can be especially useful for individuals with a dual diagnosis, such as alcoholism and depression or anxiety, as it helps them learn to regulate emotions and mood swings.

Motivational enhancement therapy (MET). MET is a short-term therapy that uses four steps to help the person identify feelings of ambivalence about giving up the substance. It is often used in conjunction with other types of therapies at the outset of a treatment program, helping to identify the reasons for hesitating to seek sobriety. MET helps persuade the individual to embrace recovery and to become self-motivated to embrace change.

Contingency management. CM is an incentive-based type of therapy that provides small rewards in exchange for continued sobriety. Clean alcohol or drug tests will result in the individual receiving a reward, strengthening their resolve to remain sober and avoid relapse. CM is a classic behavioral psychotherapy.

Using these clinically tested psychotherapies, the individual works to overcome the addiction from the inside out.

Mental Health Retreat Center

Living with a mental health disorder can undermine daily functioning and erode quality of life. Far too many people attempt to manage their daily struggle on their own, never seeking the professional help that could make a real difference in their life experience. For some, the fear of the enduring stigma attached to mental health issues keeps them from taking that first step toward wellness. For others, a misdirected fear of appearing weak or incapable of dealing with life’s setbacks prevents them from seeking help.

As heroic as the effort to push through and handle it might appear, neglecting to pursue mental health treatment allows the illness to worsen. As the condition deepens, the impact on daily life also deepens, introducing serious consequences such as putting one’s job in jeopardy, damaging personal relationships, or elevating suicide risk.

Taking the time to address the mental health concern at a wellness retreat center can put you on a path to healing within a supportive, safe space. There are varying levels of care available depending on the needs of the individual, with retreat programs offering a short one-week stay up to an extended duration of several months if needed.

What Mental Health Conditions Are Treated?

While there are mental health programs that treat a wide array of conditions, the majority of concerns addressed at a mental health or trauma recovery retreat center revolve around the following:

Depression

Depression affects more than 17 million Americans each year, and has a variety of types including:

Major depressive disorder

Seasonal affective disorder

Dysthymia

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder

Bipolar depression

Symptoms of major depressive disorder include the following:

Loss of interest in daily life

Feelings of sadness and despair

Fatigue

Change in sleep patterns

Change in eating patterns

Slowed movements

Difficulty making decisions

Feelings of shame or guilt

Thoughts of suicide

Anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental health conditions in the U.S. impacting 40 million people. The types of anxiety disorders include:

Generalized anxiety disorder

Social anxiety

Phobia

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Panic disorder

Symptoms for generalized anxiety disorder include:

Excessive worry

Tense muscles

Irritability

Isolating behaviors

Insomnia

Sweating

Palpitations

Nausea

Trembling

Trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects 3.5% of the U.S. adult population, or one in every 11 people. A traumatic event that is experienced or witnessed can have long-term effects on health and wellbeing when its impact on the individual does not resolve in a timely manner. Symptoms of PTSD last more than one month and include:

Flashbacks

Nightmares

Frightening thoughts

Avoiding places, things, or events that could trigger memories of the trauma

Avoiding emotions and thoughts related to the trauma

Being tense and on edge

Being easily startled

Angry outbursts

Insomnia

Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed

Distorted feelings of self-blame or guilt

What Are the Treatment Elements at a Wellness Retreat?

At a mental health retreat center the clinical team will provide a diagnosis and customize a treatment plan based on the findings. While therapeutic treatment elements may vary across the spectrum of mental health providers, most retreats will include the following:

Individual psychotherapy. Talk therapy sessions with a psychotherapist provide a safe, confidential space for patients to explore the underlying issues that may be contributing factors for the mental health disorder.

Group therapy. Patients gather in small groups to share their personal experiences or mental health challenges. A licensed therapist guides the topics of discussion.

Family therapy. Family therapy sessions benefit both the patient and the family members. These sessions help family members to become educated about their loved one’s mental health condition and how to be supportive of them as they are healing.

Medication management. Medications can be prescribed to help manage and mitigate the symptoms of the disorder, or existing medications can be adjusted. These drugs include antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-psychotic drugs, and mood stabilizers.

Experiential or holistic therapies. Complementary holistic activities can further enhance the clinical effects, including mindfulness meditation, yoga, art and music therapy, deep-breathing techniques, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and massage therapy.

Recreation and fitness. Exercise offers both psychological and physical benefits and is integrated into the treatment plan. These activities might include swimming, participation in group sports, cycling, exercise classes, hiking or walking.

Whether there is a need for a substance use disorder or a mental health condition, finding a retreat center that is aligned with your needs is the first step toward wellness.

The Treatment Specialist Offers Expert Guidance for Addiction and Mental Health Treatment

The Treatment Specialist provides free online resources for individuals in need of guidance for mental health or addiction recovery. Our specialists provide that essential information needed to be able to select the best retreat center for your particular recovery needs. In this New Year, make the commitment to seek out the professional help that can turn your life around. Call The Treatment Specialist today at (866) 641-7911.

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