(Akiit.com) SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A moment on the lips, forever on the hips? A bad figure is hardly the worst of it. Eating a lot of fat, especially the kind that’s in cookies and pastries, can significantly raise the risk of stroke for women over 50, a large new study finds.

We already know that diets rich in fat, particularly artery-clogging trans fat, are bad for the heart and the waistline.

The new study is the largest to look at stroke risk in women and across all types of fat. It showed a clear trend: Those who ate the most fat had a 44 percent higher risk of the most common type of stroke compared to those who ate the least.

“It’s a tremendous increase that is potentially avoidable,” said Dr. Emil Matarese, stroke chief at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Penn. “What’s bad for the heart is bad for the brain.”

He reviewed but did not help conduct the research, which was presented Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference. It involved 87,230 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, a federally funded study best known for revealing health risks from taking hormone pills for menopause symptoms.

Before menopause, women traditionally have had less risk of stroke than similarly aged men, although this is changing as women increasingly battle obesity and other health problems.

After menopause, the risk rises and the gender advantage disappears, said Dr. Ka He, a nutrition specialist and senior author of the study from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

He and another researcher, Sirin Yaemsiri, wanted to see whether dietary fat affected the odds.

Participants in the study had filled out detailed surveys on their diets when they enrolled, at ages 50 to 79. Researchers put them into four groups based on how much fat they ate, and looked about seven years later to see how many had suffered a stroke caused by clogged blood vessels supplying the brain — the most common kind.

There were 288 strokes in the group of women who consumed the most fat each day (95 grams) versus 249 strokes in the group eating the least fat (25 grams), Yaemsiri told the conference.

After taking into account other factors that affect stroke risk — weight, race, smoking, exercise and use of alcohol, aspirin or hormone pills — researchers concluded that women who ate the most fat had a 44 percent greater risk of stroke.
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(Akiit.com) Chemotherapy is the use of anti-cancer (cytotoxic) drugs to destroy cancer cells (including leukemia and lymphomas). There are over 50 different chemotherapy drugs and some are given on their own, but often several drugs may be combined (this is known as combination chemotherapy).

The type of treatment you are given for your cancer depends on many things, particularly the type of disease you have, where in the body it started, what the cancer cells look like under the microscope and how far they have spread, if at all.

Chemotherapy may be used alone to treat some types of cancer. Sometimes it can be used together with other types of treatment such as surgery, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, or a combination of these.

Chemotherapy drugs interfere with the ability of a cancer cell to divide and reproduce. As the drugs are carried in the blood, they can reach cancer cells all over the body. Healthy cells can repair the damage caused by chemotherapy but cancer cells cannot and so they eventually die.

Chemotherapy has to be carefully planned so that it destroys more and more of the cancer cells during the course of treatment, but does not destroy the normal cells and tissues.

There are several reasons why a doctor may decide to have a person consider chemotherapy treatment:

To cure cancer– with some types of cancer chemotherapy is likely to destroy all the cancer cells and cure the disease.

To reduce the chance of a cancer coming back – chemotherapy may be given after surgery or radiotherapy so that if any cancer cells remain but are too small to see they can be destroyed by the chemotherapy.

To shrink a cancer and prolong life – if a cure is not possible, chemotherapy may be given to shrink and control a cancer, or reduce the number of cancer cells, and try to prolong a good quality of life.

Now, here is the part that causes most people to view chemotherapy as an undesirable option.

Yes, there are potential side effects, and before you or someone you love decides against it, make sure you fully understand the side effects. Then, and only then, can you weigh the pros and cons as they relate to a specific case.

Chemotherapy can reduce the number of blood cells produced by the bone marrow. Bone marrow is a spongy material that fills the bones and contains stem cells, which normally develop into the three different types of blood cell.

The cells produced by bone marrow:

White blood cells are essential for fighting infections.
Red blood cells contain hemoglobin to carry oxygen round the body.
Platelets help to clot the blood and prevent bleeding.

If the number of white cells in your blood is low you will be more likely to get an infection as there are fewer white cells to fight off bacteria.
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(Akiit.com) The President made his eleventh-hour call for comprehensive health care reform on Wednesday, challenging Congress to have an up or down vote within weeks. Once again, he embraced a spirit of bipartisanship that will not likely yield a single Republican vote. But he also articulated a sense of urgency, and appropriately so, that time is up and Congress must take action now.

His speech comes on the heels of a letter to Congress, in which he said that he would incorporate Republican ideas into the bill, including:

1) engaging “medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs”;
2) $50 million to states for alternatives to resolving medical malpractice disputes, such as health courts;
3) additional funds for Medicaid reimbursements to doctors, and
4) an expansion of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

As a part of his last-minute push, President Obama plans to take health care on the road, with town hall events scheduled next week in Philadelphia and St. Louis.

On one level, President Obama chose a rhetorical middle ground, which was consistent with his self-appointed role as a bridge builder. “On one end of the spectrum, there are some who’ve suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with a government-run health care system. And though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic,” the president said. At the same time, he rejected the position of many congressional Republicans that government should loosen regulations on the insurance industry. “The argument is, is that that will somehow lower costs. I disagree with that approach,” he said. “I’m concerned that this would only give the insurance industry even freer rein to raise premiums and deny care.”

President Obama laid out a $100 billion-a-year proposal that he said would give consumers more control over their insurance, and hold insurance companies more accountable. He argued that his proposal will change three things about the present system:

1) End the worst practices of insurance companies, including denying of coverage based on a preexisting condition, dropping coverage because of an illness, and random, massive rate hikes;
2) Give uninsured individuals and small businesses the same insurance choices that members of Congress enjoy, and
3) Provide tax credits to those who cannot afford insurance.

Obama hinted he is open to Congress passing legislation through the reconciliation process. Missing from Obama’s address was any mention of a public health insurance option, which enjoys majority support throughout the nation, and is more popular than the Senate plan, according to recent polls. Meanwhile, three more senators have signed onto a letter calling for Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to pass a public option through reconciliation. The special procedure used for budgetary items would require a mere 51-vote majority for passage, as opposed to a filibuster-proof supermajority of 60 votes.

There is a strong argument in favor of reconciliation. Evoking memories of segregationist Dixiecrats’ attempts to block civil rights legislation in the 1960s, and then some, the Republican minority’s voracious appetite for the filibuster has brought business in that legislative body to a standstill of late. With individual lawmakers able to hold up votes on crucial bills–blocking everything from the extension of unemployment benefits to votes on nominees to cabinet posts–the Senate looks increasingly like a paralyzed, dysfunctional body.

So, the President is hedging on the public option. His willingness to drop the public option has angered the Obama base, reflecting more of a Rahm Emanuel-inspired, Washington-insider move, rather than the convictions of the bold campaigner and change agent of 2008. Nevertheless, he did leave it to Congress to get the job done in the next few weeks, and it is up to them to access the public option route, should they choose to do so.

Despite his seemingly quixotic quest for bipartisanship, President Obama apparently understands its limits. He laid a trap for Republicans should health care succeed and they refuse to vote for it. “Even those who acknowledge the problem of the uninsured say we just can’t afford to help them right now — which is why the Republican proposal only covers 3 million uninsured Americans while we cover over 31 million,” he said of his GOP adversaries.
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(Akiit.com) Are black children an endangered species? The answer is yes, according to billboards posted throughout Atlanta by anti-abortion groups. Although their answer is correct, their reasoning behind that answer is completely wrong.

The anti-abortion organizations Georgia Right to Life and the Radiance Foundation have placed 65 billboards throughout the city of Atlanta, with more to come. The signs feature a sad-faced black boy with a caption that reads “Black children are an endangered species.” The billboards have caused controversy because, as critics would suggest, they single out black women and unfairly paint them as criminals who kill their children.

According to the groups’ website, toomanyaborted.com, legalized abortion is a crisis in the black community, with 40 percent of pregnancies among African-Americans ending in induced abortion. In their eyes, abortion in the African-American community is an evil like Jim Crow segregation and eugenics, with abortion clinics placed in “urban areas where Blacks reside.” They claim that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to reduce the black population. Further, the groups suggest that the Roe v. Wade decision–which legalized a woman’s right to choose– has led to the deterioration of black families, sexual promiscuity, child abuse and urban decay.

The two organizations also point to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that 57.4 percent of abortions were performed on black women in 2006, although blacks only make up 30 percent of the state’s population. Georgia is second only to New York and Texas in the number of black women who have abortions. Meanwhile, the CDC data provides no evidence that black children are an endangered species because of abortion.
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(Akiit.com) It may seem like we are seeing an increase in deaths of folks we know, as well as popular public figures. Truth is, it is mostly about aging. The older you get, the people dying will more and more be folks you know. It’s just that simple.

What amazes me is how many of us are not willing to accept this very final event in life as a reminder to “get our affairs in order.” I don’t know about you, but it is increasingly difficult for me to see the anguish and suffering for both patients and their families, as a result of not preparing. As though they don’t think they will ever die.

Come on people, nobody gets out alive!

In the continuing spirit of providing useful information on health issues, I decided to revisit a the topic of preparing for the end-of-life.

More than any subject, avoiding talking about death ranks at the top of the list. Death of a loved one is also the one thing that causes the most damage to the survivors, when it had not been discussed fully in preparation for the end.

How many of us have made clear to our family and friends, who understand all too well what we liked in living, how we wish to die?

Our families and friends know our favorite foods, vacation spots, the music and movies we love, even the cars and clothes we like best. But, nine times out of ten, those same people aren’t prepared to make decisions about what circumstances we should die under.

You see, we are all a car accident, a fire, or a heart attack away from being in a situation where someone else will determine how we will die. Many times there is no sudden tragedy, but simply the final chapter of a terminal illness, or just the closing of a long and wonderful life.

People need to openly discuss their end-of-life care beliefs and choices with their families and doctors.
One needs to consider what he or she personally values in life and communicate that to people you love through conversation and even better, also in writing.

Patients who are seriously ill and their family members need to ask questions of doctors and other health-care providers to get all the information needed to make appropriate decisions.

It’s important to ask your doctor ‘what if’ questions. For example, ‘What if the surgery is unsuccessful? What is my option then?’ People sometimes have difficulty discussing such issues because it is hard for them to consider that the treatment might not work. They may worry that a failure to remain positive could actually have an adverse effect on their outcome

People should hope for the best while planning for the worst.

It doesn’t mean that you are giving up; it just means you are considering all of your options so that you can make the best decision regardless of what you find.

In general, it is much easier to make this decision when you feel relatively healthy and are able to openly express your wishes to a family member or friend.
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