10 BODY POSTURE YOU NEVER KNEW THAT IS HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH

Beware of these bad postures and save yourself from Chronic body pain!

Man plays guitar while undergoing brain surgery

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For over an hour, as doctors performed a brain surgery on Mr. Li on Monday, the 57-year-old musician lay strumming his guitar.

Li, who hails from Changchun in Jilin Province, had been suffering from focal dystonia— a rare muscle disease that has been known to hit musicians – for some 20 years.

Over time, the ailment resulted in his fingers stiffening, making it difficult for him to carry out daily tasks and, of course, play the guitar.

After years of attempting to treat the illness with medication, he finally turned to doctors in Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province.

“The major symptom of the disease is that you will not be able to repeat (or complete) the activities that you are very familiar with, because your muscles become very stiff,” Cai Xiaodong, one of the doctors who treated Li told the Guangdong-based Southern Daily.

However, in examining Li, the doctors further found that apart from suffering from focal dystonia, pathological changes over the years had also affected Li’s brain circuitry, further complicating the case.

Following the examinations, they concluded that Li needed to undergo a Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery.

DBS is a neurosurgical procedure involving the implantation of a medical device called a neurostimulator (sometimes referred to as a brain pacemaker), which sends electrical impulses, through implanted electrodes, to specific parts of the brain for the treatment of movement and affective disorders.

Although DBS isn’t new, if the doctors were to go ahead, then it would be the first time that the procedure would be performed in China, according the Southern Daily.

Given that, in order to test the effectiveness of the surgery, the doctors had Li lie down in the operation theater, holding his guitar.

As the minutes ticked by, they asked him to strum. After years of having been denied the pleasure of feeling the strings move to the beat that he wanted them to, Li finally struck a chord.

“How do you feel after playing the first sound after years?” the doctors asked. “It feels like I’ve recovered over 80%,” Li responded with joy.

“The surgery has an immediate effect,” explained doctor Cai after the procedure, adding that all Li needed now to enjoy full muscle function was rehabilitation and training.

Naturally reduce your cancer risk with watermelon

Watermelon;

Watermelon is a “wonder fruit” and the perfect example of food that can help you stay hydrated. The juice is full of good electrolytes, not only great on a hot day, but also helps to quench the inflammation that contributes to conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, asthma, atherosclerosis, and even cancer.

Watermelon contains mostly water but the refreshing fruit is loaded with goodness. Each juicy bite is loaded with powerful nutrients. Like other fruits and vegetables, watermelons may be helpful in reducing the risk of cancer through their antioxidant properties.

Most of the most important antioxidants in nature, such as vitamin C (which boosts the immune system), vitamin A (which maintains eye health), and vitamin B6 (which augments brain function), are found in watermelon.

Two important anticancer agents, carotenoid and lycopene are are present in high quantities in watermelons. As a matter of fact, watermelon has the highest concentration of lycopene of any known fresh fruit or vegetable.

Lycopene is a phytonutrient, which is a naturally occurring compound in fruits and vegetables that reacts with the human body to trigger healthy reactions. It is also the red pigment that gives watermelons, tomatoes, red grapefruits and guavas their colour. Scientists have taken notice of watermelon’s high lycopene levels.

Lycopene has been widely studied in humans and found to be protective against prostate, lung, colorectal, endometrial, and breast cancers. Lycopene has also been shown to help prevent heart disease. It has also been linked with heart health, bone health and prostate cancer prevention. It’s also a powerful antioxidant thought to have anti-inflammatory properties.

Watermelon’s high levels of lycopene are very effective at protecting cells from damage and may help lower risk of heart disease. The lycopene in watermelon makes it an anti-inflammatory fruit. Lycopene is an inhibitor for various inflammatory processes and also works as an antioxidant to neutralize free radicals.

To really maximize your lycopene intake, let your watermelon fully ripen. The redder your watermelon gets, the higher the concentration of lycopene becomes. Beta-carotene and phenolic antioxidant content also increase as the watermelon ripens. Nevertheless, all parts of the watermelon are good. There are a lot of nutrients throughout, including the white flesh nearest the rind.

Watermelons are rich in electrolytes (sodium and potassium), nourishing the body by not only replacing the electrolytes lost through sweat, but also by hydrating cells and maintaining the water balance. And because of the higher water content and lower calorie content than many other fruits, watermelon delivers more nutrients per calorie – an outstanding health benefit.

Try this great tip today. Cut a medium or large watermelon into small pieces and remove the seeds. Take about two cups of the diced watermelon and put into the blender. Add strawberries and some yogurt or milk and a little honey. If you want it a bit thicker, add a couple of bananas or avocado for added taste. Blend and enjoy!

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How high blood pressure cripples the body

IN Nigeria and environs, High Blood Pressure, a.k.a. Hypertension, is increasingly becoming a problem. It puts people at risk of heart disease, kidney disease and stroke. Already a massive hidden killer, High Blood Pressure is set to sharply rise as Nigerians adopt western diets and sedentary lifestyles.

High blood pressure is twice as high in Nigeria compared with most neighbouring countries and less than 1 in 5 Nigerians are aware that they are hypertensive.

It is estimated that one in-three men and one-in-four women are hypertensive, and this is set to rise to 39 million cases by 2030. It is particularly worrisome that high blood pressure is treated effectively in less than 10 per cent of cases.

As one of the most prevalent Non Communicable diseases worldwide, hypertension is responsible for an estimated 45 percent of deaths due to heart disease and 51 percent of deaths due to stroke globally.

High blood pressure forces the heart to work harder, which can make it grow weaker. The effects can be felt throughout the body

Blood pressure varies from person to person and can fluctuate throughout the day. a reading of 140/90 may require treatment. The top number (systolic) signifies the pressure in the arteries. A normal systolic blood pressure is 120 or below.As the heart beats, it pushes blood through the arteries on its way to the rest of the body. Blood pressure is the amount of force created within the arteries and veins. Systolic blood pressure is measured as the blood pumps out of the heart. Diastolic blood pressure is measured between heartbeats.

The diastolic blood pressure number or the bottom number indicates the pressure in the arteries when the heart rests between beats. A normal diastolic blood pressure number is less than 80. A diastolic blood pressure between 80 and 89 indicates pre-hypertension.

High blood pressure doesn’t always produce obvious symptoms. However, it causes progressive damage to arteries and veins, which can interfere with blood flow throughout the body. This may lead to stroke, heart disease, and heart failure. Other parts of the body, including the kidneys, limbs, and eyes, also may suffer damage.

Circulatory system
The circulatory system transports oxygenated blood throughout the body. Healthy arteries stretch slightly as blood is pumped through them. High blood pressure may cause the arteries to stretch too much, leaving them vulnerable to damage. Over time, small tears form scar tissue within the arteries.

Narrowed arteries, called atherosclerosis, can trap plaque and cholesterol, causing coronary artery disease. If the left ventricle of the heart thickens, its ability to pump blood can be severely limited. Trapped blood can result in blood clots that narrow or block arteries, causing a stroke or heart attack. Blood clots can also block the flow of blood to other vital organs. Weak or bulging arteries and blood vessels are more likely to rupture.

Chest pain (angina) and irregular heart rhythms (arrhythmias) may accompany high blood pressure. Chronic high blood pressure forces the heart to work harder and grow weaker, increasing the likelihood of heart failure.

Any part of the body that doesn’t receive enough oxygenated blood is at risk. Pain or numbness may be a sign of impaired blood flow to your limbs, resulting in peripheral artery disease. This increases the chance of infection or tissue death, called gangrene.
Central Nervous System

Your brain cannot function without a steady supply of oxygenated blood. Narrowed arteries or a blood clot can briefly block the flow of blood to the brain. This is called a transient ischemic attack (TIA), or mini stroke. People who have a TIA are at increased risk of a full-blown stroke, an event in which the blood supply to part of the brain is cut off, causing brain cells to die. Stroke can cause severe, sometimes irreversible damage, depending on the part of the brain involved. The biggest risk for stroke is high blood pressure.

Other potential effects of high blood pressure are mild cognitive impairment and vascular dementia, a brain disease caused by an interrupted blood supply to the brain. Symptoms include problems with memory, reasoning, and speaking.

Retinopathy occurs when damage occurs in the small blood vessels that bring blood to the eyes. It can cause bleeding or a build up of fluid under the retina, which is called choroidopathy. Damage to the optic nerve (optic neuropathy) can actually kill nerve cells in the eyes. These conditions can result in impaired vision or even permanent vision loss.

Excretory system
The kidneys filter waste products, keeping what you need, and discarding what your body can’t use. The kidneys can’t function without a good supply of oxygenated blood. Narrowed blood vessels restrict the blood supply, causing the kidneys to grow less and less efficient in removing toxins.

Over time, scarring can occur and the kidneys may stop functioning completely, signalling the need for dialysis or a kidney transplant. One of the highest risk factors for kidney failure is high blood pressure. If an aneurysm in an artery that leads to the kidney bursts (renal artery aneurysm), the internal bleeding can be life threatening.

Sexual dysfunction
High blood pressure can cause sexual dysfunction in men and women. In men, good blood flow to the penis is necessary to achieve and maintain an erection. If chronic high blood pressure affects arteries and blood vessels leading to the penis, it can result in Erectile Dysfunction, ED, painful ejaculation, and impotence.

In women, high blood pressure can affect the blood flow to the external sexual organs. That can cause vaginal dryness, painful intercourse, decreased sexual desire, and trouble achieving orgasm. Sexual dysfunction can cause anxiety in both men in women and potentially lead to relationship problems.

Most of the prescription medications used to treat high blood pressure can also cause sexual problems. These include the skeletal system requires calcium to maintain strong, healthy bones. Part of the kidneys’ job is to filter urine. When the kidneys don’t function properly, you may excrete too much calcium in your urine. If not enough calcium remains in circulation for your bones, bone density decreases, increasing your risk for osteoporosis. Bones become weak, brittle, and more prone to fractures and breaks. Fractures in the hips, spine, and wrists are the most common.

Early detection, treatment, key to surviving breast cancer

With about 13,000 women dying of breast cancer annually in Nigeria, medical experts, cancer survivors and other stakeholders in cancer care have said that early detection and prompt treatment is key to surviving breast cancer.

File Photo: Breast examination

Speaking during a 10 kilometre walk to mark this year’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the 20th anniversary of the Care. Organisation. Public. Enlightenment, COPE, in Lagos, they lamented late presentation of breast cancer patients at the hospital.

Addressing hundreds of participants during the walk which kicked off around 7:00am Saturday from the Archbishop Vining Memorial Church, GRA , Ikeja to Maryland and back, Chief Executive Officer, COPE, Mrs Ebunola Anozie identified late presentation, lack of special fund and comprehensive cancer centre as major factors contributing to low survival rates in the country.

Late presentation: Anozie said the choice of a walk to celebrate COPE’s 20th anniversary was informed by the fact that despite improved awareness on early detection, many Nigerian women are still presenting late.

“Our aim is solely to raise awareness about breast cancer as part of efforts to reduce the mortality of breast cancer in Nigeria. Early detection can cure breast cancer and reduce the mortality rate from the disease.

On treatment challenges face by cancer patients in Nigeria, Anozie appealed to the Federal government to build a comprehensive cancer centre to aid treatment of patients. According to her, a comprehensive cancer centre would reduce brain drain as well as stop the mad rush to other countries for treatment.

On his part, Representative of Chapel of Healing Cross, Idi Araba, Wale Ogundetoun raised alarm over increasing incidences of cancer in the country.

He called for a special fund for Nigerians who cannot afford the needed resources for their medical treatment. “The government should improve our healthcare facilities. We have many people who cannot afford the treatment and they are in the hospitals without hope. With improved healthcare facilities and provision of special funds for those who cannot afford it, more people will survive and the burden will be reducedon families.”

Speaking, a 17 years cancer survivor who is also the Vice President of COPE, Mrs. Kehinde Gbelee noted that there have been a lot of improvement in awareness, and treatment better than when she was diagnosed of cancer, adding that there is now chances of surviving cancer in Nigeria.

“To survive cancer, you must keep to your medicine and take your chemotherapy and radiotherapy as well as do all that the doctors advised because at the end of every dark tunnel there is always a bright light.”

Expensive treatment: Another survivor, Mrs. Funmi Olufumi layo Dada called on the Federal Government to address treatment problems in the country. According to her, the continued break down of radiotherapy machines across the country has further stretched the burden on the patients.

“Due to continuous breakdown of radio therapy machines, Patients travel from Lagos to Benin, Abuja and Kaduna just to get radio therapy or some special medical investigations.

“Treatment is very expensive, some of the treatment like chemotherapy cost as high as N10 million. They should liaise with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the prices of these drugs so that it can be affordable and people can live longer.”

Speaking, representative of Skye Bank, Head Corporate Communication Function, Mr. Rasheed Bolarinwa, who said they have supported COPE in the last 10 years said the bank decided to adopt breast cancer as their baby due to the devastating effects on cancer on families psychologically, and financially.

Bolarinwa who noted that breast cancer has the highest mortality rates globally, hence the need to support organisations like COPE to do more in order to save lives.

Sugar and its effects on you!!!

Overeating, poor memory formation, learning disorders, depression  – all have been linked in recent research to the over-consumption of sugar. And these linkages point to a problem that is only beginning to be better understood: what our chronic intake of added sugar is doing to our brains.

How Much Sugar Are We Consuming?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the average American consumes 156 pounds of added sugar per year. That’s five grocery store shelves loaded with 30 or so one pound bags of sugar each.  If you find that hard to believe, that’s probably because sugar is so ubiquitous in our diets that most of us have no idea how much we’re consuming.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) puts the amount at 27.5 teaspoons of sugar a day per capita, which translates to 440 calories  – nearly one quarter of a typical 2000 calorie a day diet.

The key word in all of the stats is “added.”  While a healthy diet would contain a significant amount of naturally occurring sugar (in fruits and grains, for example), the problem is that we’re chronically consuming much more added sugar in processed foods.  

That’s an important clarification because our brains need sugar every day to function.  Brain cells require two times the energy needed by all the other cells in the body; roughly 10% of our total daily energy requirements.  This energy is derived from glucose (blood sugar), the gasoline of our brains. Sugar is not the brain’s enemy — added sugar is.

BNDF Explained

Research indicates that a diet high in added sugar reduces the production of a brain chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Without BDNF, our brains can’t form new memories and we can’t learn (or remember) much of anything. Levels of BDNF are particularly low in people with an impaired glucose metabolism–diabetics and pre-diabetics–and as the amount of BDNF decreases, sugar metabolism worsens.

The Side Effects

In other words, chronically eating added sugar reduces BDNF, and then the lowered levels of the brain chemical begin contributing to insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which eventually leads to a host of other health problems.  Once that happens, your brain and body are in a destructive cycle that’s difficult if not impossible to reverse.

Research has also linked low BDNF levels to depression and dementia. It’s possible that low BDNF may turn out to be the smoking gun in these and other diseases, like Alzheimer’s, that tend to appear in clusters in epidemiological studies. More research is being conducted on this subject, but what seems clear in any case is that a reduced level of BDNF is bad news for our brains, and chronic sugar consumption is one of the worst inhibitory culprits.

Other studies have focused on sugar’s role in over-eating.  We intuitively know that sugar and obesity are linked, but the exact reason why hasn’t been well understood until recently.  Research has shown that chronic consumption of added sugar dulls the brain’s mechanism for telling you to stop eating.  It does so by reducing activity in the brain’s anorexigenic oxytocin system, which is responsible for throwing up the red “full” flag that prevents you from gorging.  When oxytocin cells in the brain are blunted by over-consumption of sugar, the flag doesn’t work correctly and you start asking for seconds and thirds, and seeking out snacks at midnight.

What these and other studies strongly suggest is that most of us are seriously damaging ourselves with processed foods high in added sugar, and the damage begins with our brains.  Seen in this light, chronic added-sugar consumption  is no less a problem than smoking or alcoholism. And the hard truth is that we may have only begun to see the effects of what the endless sugar avalanche is doing 

800,000 women caught in VVF nightmare

Obstetric fistula, otherwise called Vesico Vagina Fistula (VVF), is a nightmare in the woman’s world. It is estimated that two million women suffer  from obstetric fistula globally.

But Nigeria has the highest prevalence of VVF in  the world, with 800,000 women living with the  problem and about 20,000 new cases occurring annually. It could even mean death.

Statistically, 90 percent of these cases go untreated. This implies that about 55 women are infected by VVF  and 18,000 cases  are untreated daily.

VVF  is an abnormal hole between the bladder or rectum and the vagina characterized by continuous and uncontrollable leakage of urine and/or faeces following childbirth. Obstructed labour without timely intervention is by far the most common cause of obstetric fistula.

With these great numbers of women suffering from this health nightmare, it indeed becomes a phenomenon that must be addressed.

The scourge has reached a stage where all well-meaning individuals need to rise up to tackle it.

Surprisingly, as critical as the situation is, majority of Nigerians are ignorant of VVF. When it happens to their colleagues or relatives or even wives, they see it as a sign of punishment from the ‘gods’, or a consequence of promiscuity.

This development propelled a celebrated Nollywood actress, Stephanie Linus, and the Fistula Care Plus Nigeria, with the support of the Federal Government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to premier a movie, ‘Dry’, to narrate the ordeal faced by women, majority of whom are from the northern part of the country.

The movie reveals child/early marriage, religion beliefs which prevent pregnant women from accessing medical care (antenatal) and the obnoxious African culture that forces them to resort to the use of traditional way of delivery, as major causes of VVF.

‘Dry’ is a movie based on the true story of Zara and Halima who find themselves in the same cultural trap regardless of their backgrounds. They struggle to give meaning to their lives.

Speaking during the premier at Silverbird Cinema in Abuja, the country manager of Fistula Care Plus Nigeria, Dr. Habib Sadauki, and Linus stressed the need to improve on primary health care system in the country.

Sadauki said; “We are at a critical time in Nigeria, where we can make even greater impact so that more women living with fistula can be treated. We also must help prevent fistula from happening in the first place.”

Linus explained that women were going through a lot in the country, but sometimes people pretend not to see their situations, stressing the need for a collective effort to address the problem.

According to her, the culture has relegated women to the background, takes away their voice and right to life as human beings. “The culture has made them to be like objects of exchange for wealth/money, sold into slavery for sexual pleasure and baby making purposes”, the actress stated.

“When your childhood, your innocence is taken away from you, you can never get it back. Allow them to be children, let them grow up, so that they can make positive decisions about what happens to their body, what happens to their lives, and they will become more productive.

“Give them access to education, good medical care and when you give them all of this, you know you are building women, who are sustainable  and can also be able to take care of the family.

“We have all the fantastic laws that we need to be enforced, we need the parents to play their roles; we need the medical part of it, doctors and hospitals to also play their roles.

“We ourselves need to change our perception of things, of cultural practices that are not moving us forward as a nation; even women are also to be blamed. We are complaining about men, but we are also causing the problems for  our own fellow women; so all of these people need to be aware.

“The first point of action is to bring it to the table; we don’t want to keep it in the background, because it is never going to solve any problem. It is not good to deny or pretend that we don’t have such in our society, but we are bringing it to the forefront, so we can talk about it and move forward especially in this 21st century.

“It is not only in Nigeria, it happens across Africa, across Asia; it is a world problem and that is why we want to shine enough  search light, and that also it is not a northern thing, something you can find it across Nigeria”.