August 13th, 2009
Modern lifestyles that include poor nutrition, smoking, unmanageble stress and other factors are said to be behind a new figure stating that 25 per cent of married couples in Kolkata, India are now infertile. And, environmental polution is said to influence the sperm quality of many married men, reports an article in The Times of India.
A related article, also in this newspaper, quotes doctors as saying that 60 per cent of their female patients have PCOS.
As Western habits and lifestyles are adopted by burgeoning countries such as India, a more prosperous economy always seems to include the negative sides. Sad.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/kolkata-/25-city-couples-infertile-SurveyJhimli/articleshow/4887752.cms
August 14th, 2008
By Aina Hunter
ABCNEWS.COM/Health
Aug. 13, 2008
Follow These Simple and Inexpensive Health Fixes to Stay Well for Less
Now that we’ve all been hit with the economic trifecta — the mortgage, food and gasoline crises — finding ways to cut back has become an imperative.
Of course, you never want to skimp when it comes to your health. Fortunately, there are ways to get well and stay that way for less.
1. Reduce Your Need for Allergy Meds
Dr. Beth Corn, an allergy immunologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, says that one of the most common mistakes allergy sufferers make is to keep stacks of books and magazines, stuffed animals, decorative pillows and other “dust-mite breeding grounds” in the bedroom.
Dust mites, she says, are the leading cause of indoor, year-long allergies.
And when it comes to outdoor allergens, about 60 percent of us suffer from ragweed, leaf molds and other harbingers of fall.
Good as it feels to sleep with your windows open to the sound of breezes rustling the trees, that might be why you wake up with a puffy, drippy, Garbage Pail Kid face.
Corn has a simple remedy: Close your windows and turn on a fan.
And if you’re a jogger, jog in the evening, she says. That’s because pollen counts are higher in morning.
And when you get home, remove your clothes immediately and shower to get rid of the pollen that has attached itself to your clothes, skin and hair.
But the worst enemies may be your best friends. Many people let pets sleep not only in room but in the bed.
It’s a touchy subject, Corn says. Getting allergy sufferers to stop sleeping in the same room or even in the same bed with Tiger is just not easy. But pet dander is one of the worst culprits.
Marty Becker, author of “The Healing Power of Pets” and host of the “The Pet Doctor” on PBS, has a few key tips on making the transition a smooth one:
No Mixed Messages: Keep your bedroom door closed.
A Bed of His Own: Your dog or cat needs a comfortable, secure place to sleep that he knows is his.
The Happy Place: Stroke, talk sweetly and give treats to your pet when he’s in his bed. Never send a pet to bed as punishment.
To continure reading:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5565922&page=1
April 23rd, 2008
by Martin Abbugao, News Yahoo.com
Wed Apr 23, 7:08 AM ET
The world risks wiping out a new generation of antibiotics and cures for diseases if it fails to reverse the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species, experts warned Wednesday.
Biodiversity loss has reached alarming levels, and disappearing with it are the secrets to finding treatments for pain, infections and a wide array of ailments such as cancer, they said, citing the findings of a coming book.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said more than 16,000 known species are threatened with extinction, but the number could be more.
“We must do something about what is happening to biodiversity,” he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the UN-backed Business for the Environment conference. “Societies depend on nature for treating diseases. Health systems over human history have their foundation on animal and plant products that are used for treatment.”
Technological revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries took the focus on finding cures away from nature as pharmaceutical companies relied on technical components to make medicines, he said.
These companies are increasingly turning back to nature as they run out of chemical combinations, he said.
But the world is “losing the intellectual patents of nature before we even have the chance to understand or unravel them,” Steiner said.
“This is the tragedy of not understanding biodiversity,” he said, adding it would be a “big fallacy” to think that biodiversity is not linked to the phenomenon of climate change.
The book, previewed at the conference, cited the example of the southern gastric brooding frog discovered in the rainforests of Australia in the 1980s. It has since become extinct.
Research on those frogs could have led to new insights into preventing and treating human peptic ulcers which affect 25 million people in the United States alone, according to the authors of the book, “Sustaining Life”.
Valuable medical secrets which the frogs held “are now gone forever,” the book’s key authors, Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, were quoted as saying in a press statement.
The book contains a chapter describing how seven threatened groups of organisms — amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, non-human primates, gymnosperms and horseshoe crabs — can be valuable in finding cures for diseases.
The Panamanian poison frog, for example, can make pumiliotoxins that may lead to medicines for heart disease, while alkaloids from the Ecuadorian poison frog could be a source for painkillers, it says.
Cone snails produce a compound which has been shown in clinical trials to be a pain reliever for advanced cancer and AIDS patients, according to the book.
David Suzuki, a Canadian scientist and environmental activist, blamed environmental degradation on the world’s heavy focus on economic progress.
“We are creating an illusion that everything is fine, and we are getting richer and richer. But we’re doing it at the expense of our children and grandchildren… all in the name of economic growth and progress,” he said in a keynote address via video conference.
One solution will be to “take our eyes off the economy,” he suggested.
“The real bottom line is clean air, clean water, clean soil that gives us our food, clean energy that comes from the sun, and biodiversity. These are ultimately the most important needs that we have to fight for at all cost.”
Hundreds of international business executives, government officials, environmentalists and others have gathered for conference.
It was organised by the UNEP and the UN’s Global Compact, an initiative which brings companies together with the UN and other agencies to support environmental and social principles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080423/sc_afp/unenvironmentclimatehealth
February 4th, 2008
By Dan Childs
ABC News Medical Unit
Feb. 4, 2008
Phthalates May Be Common in Baby Products; Some Health Experts Worried
Some environmental medicine experts worry that parents using any one of dozens of baby products could be exposing their children to chemicals that could hurt their reproductive ability later on in life.
In a new study, University of Washington researchers found evidence of chemicals called phthalates in the urine of 163 infants exposed to a baby product such as shampoo, lotion or powder. The study was released Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
However, there still exists little evidence that phthalates — manmade chemicals that are found in many products from tubing to cosmetics — cause any harm to humans.
Still, the researchers noted that the fact that evidence of the substances were found in the urine of more than 80 percent of the babies in the study suggests more should be done to identify products that contain these chemicals.
“We still do not know what the true long-term effects of these chemicals are,” said lead study author Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana, pediatric environmental health fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. “But we do have more evidence that they are linked to human health effects at concentrations we are exposed to every day.”
Some environmental medicine experts not affiliated with the study said the research should sound an alarm to both parents and pediatricians.
“Parents and physicians should pay close attention to these results,” said Bernard Weiss, professor of environmental medicine and pediatrics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, N.Y.
To continue reading:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ReproductiveHealth/story?id=4230408&page=1
