Friday, July 2, 2010

Heatlh Tips For Those Who Are Old Enough To Know Better!


The Best Way To Survive a Heart Attack

If you have a heart attack, your best chance of survival is to have the blocked artery opened within 90 minutes of the onset of symptoms. Unfortunately, not every hospital has the facilities to perform this procedure, called angioplasty. If you are at risk for coronary artery disease, find the nearest hospital with a catheterization lab now, so that you can ask to be taken there directly in an emergency. If there isn’t a catheterization lab nearby, go to the closest hospital and start treatment with medicine alone. While not as effective as angioplasty, it still will help.

A New Tune On Pacemaker Safety

Good news for music-lovers with pacemakers: The FDA recently found that there is not enough voltage from an Apple iPod’s magnetic field to interfere with cardiac pacemaker function. The study, which contradicts reports issued last year, does not include other portable media players. To be safe, hold your MP3 player more than 2 inches from your chest while listening—don’t stick it in your shirt pocket!

Are You At Risk For Gout?

Men who drink two sugar-sweetened soft drinks a day are at 85% greater risk of suffering from gout, a painful condition that afflicts one in every 400 Americans. Research published recently in the British Medical Journal reveals that the fructose in many soft drinks raises blood levels of uric acid, whose crystals settle in joints and inflame them. The effect of fructose has not been determined in women. If you have gout or are vulnerable to it, add soft drinks to the list of foods to avoid, along with beer, red meat, yeast and oily fish.

New Hope for Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

A study out of Melbourne, Australia, indicates that adjustable gastric banding—in which a silicone band is inflated around the top of the stomach to limit the amount of food a patient eats—can cause enough weight loss to reverse type 2 diabetes. After two years, 73% of those treated surgically went into remission, compared to only 15% of patients prescribed conventional therapy. Weight loss is key: Those who had the surgery lost almost 21% of their weight, compared to 1.7% with diet and exercise alone. Researchers found that a patient must drop 10% of his body weight for blood sugar to return to normal.

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