Archive for the Aging Category
We have all heard how taking aspirin can help guard one against heart attack. Now Canadian research may suggest that men benefit more. Read the following research brought to you in the BBC news site:
“The heart-protecting benefits of aspirin may be available mainly to men, Canadian experts have suggested.
Some research studies have suggested that the drug might cut heart attack risk by half.
But an analysis of trials involving 113,000 patients hinted those with a higher number of female participants were less likely to show benefit.
However, the BMC Medicine study was described as “potentially misleading” by one UK researcher.
Heart attacks happen when a narrowed or damaged blood vessel feeding the heart is blocked by a blood clot.
Aspirin can make it harder for these clots to form and studies suggesting this could prevent attacks, or make them less likely, have led to thousands of people worldwide taking the drug every day.
However, the precise benefit has been hard to gauge, with some research coming to the conclusion that it was unlikely to offer any protection whatsoever.
Physical differences
The researchers from the James Hogg iCapture Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research, part of the University of British Columbia, believe that gender may be one of the main reasons for this.
They say that the make-up of a woman’s heart and its surrounding blood vessels may be more resistant to the effects of aspirin.
They looked at the ratio of men and women taking part in major aspirin research projects – and found that those involving predominantly men were the most likely to find a benefit.
Conversely, those involving mainly women were more likely to find a lesser benefit, or none at all.
Dr Don Sin, one of the study authors, said: “We found that a lot of the variability in these trials seems to be due to the gender ratios, supporting the theory that women may be less responsive to aspirin than men for heart protection.
“From our findings we would caution clinicians on the prescribing of aspirin to women, especially for primary prevention of heart attacks.
“Whether or not other pharmaceutical products would be more effective for women is unclear; more sex-specific studies should now be conducted.”
This is unlikely to be the last word on who should be taking aspirin – a study of 80,000 women published in March 2007 claimed to have found heart benefits for healthy women who regularly took aspirin.
Long-term aspirin use does raise the risk of internal bleeding and some doctors are reluctant to recommend it for people who have not already suffered a heart attack for this reason.
One UK expert, Dr Colin Baigent, from the Clinical Trial
Service Unit at Oxford University, said that taking aspirin in the months and years after a heart attack delivered equal benefits to men and women.
He said: “This is potentially misleading – by far the largest trial included in this research was concerned mainly with the primary prevention of heart attacks – giving aspirin to people who had never had a heart attack.
“It would be a tragedy if women who are taking it because they had already had a heart attack stop doing so.”
News Source: BBC NEWS
In a story from the CBC News comes the bad news that the Botox chemical may spread and cause health problems. There are other cosmetic surgery possibilities though, for those who are looking for solutions and desire to combat the loss of volume in the face. Other possibilities include such solutions as Restylane, Perlane, etc.
“The toxin in Botox products may spread to distant parts of the body, with potentially fatal consequences, Health Canada said Tuesday in announcing new labelling information for the drugs.
Last February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the toxin had spread, both in products the agency approved and those that were not. Health Canada has been reviewing the safety of Botox and Botox Cosmetic.
No medically confirmed cases of the toxin having spread have been reported in Canada.
In its advisory, Health Canada said the symptoms of “distant toxin spread” include:
• Muscle weakness.
• Difficulties swallowing.
• Pneumonia.
• Speech disorders.
• Breathing problems.
Botox, made by Allergan Inc. of Irvine, Calif., is approved for treating muscle spasms in the neck, eye and foot, muscle pain and excessive sweating in Canada. Botox Cosmetic, which is made by the same company, is approved to treat facial wrinkling.
The drugs use botulinum toxin, which blocks nerve impulses to muscles, causing them to relax.
People with a history of neurological disorders, swallowing difficulties or breathing problems should be extremely cautious about using the products, Health Canada said.
When the U.S. issued its warning, the FDA said the deaths were all among children. Most had cerebral palsy and were being treated for limb spasms, which is not an approved use for the drugs in the U.S. or Canada.
Health Canada has worked with Allergan to revise the labelling, and will continue to monitor the safety of Botox products, the department said. ”
News Source: CBC News
The door opened and in she walked – as skinny as a coat of paint with show-stopping cleavage, flashing the greatest smile money could buy.
Year-round tan, legs up to here. A Bond-girl body which had clearly been the regular recipient of sea-salt wraps and expensive exfoliations. Yet CC’s body was not quite the shape she wanted it to be.
A niggling layer of fat – virtually undetectable to the naked eye – clung stubbornly to her inner thigh, refusing to yield even in the face of a daily exercise routine rigorous enough to bring a Greek god to his knees.
Like many women in Los Angeles, CC demonstrates the sort of devotion to physical perfection which in some other parts of the world would be seen as obsessive.
In her case peer pressure undoubtedly plays a part. As host of her own internet TV show she mixes it with some of the most glamorous people on the planet.
A fixture at the very poshest parties and premieres, there is hardly a red carpet in town which has yet to cushion CC’s perfectly pedicured feet.
Yet when the time came for the love handles to leave she wavered. Uneasy about going under the knife she shopped around only to discover there was another option, a procedure called lipodissolve.
Lipodissolve represents a potential goldmine for doctors, which may explain why clinics are sprouting up faster than Starbucks
Once injected into the fat a chemical known as PCDC, which is derived from soya bean, breaks the fat down. After a short series of injections, a few weeks apart, those festively plump areas are soon a thing of the past.
Cosmetic surgeons call it a “miracle cure,” yet the treatment has been banned in several countries (including the UK) and has yet to gain regulatory approval here in the US.
“It’s the new Botox,” CC told me excitedly as a Beverly Hills doctor discharged a syringe of the magic potion into the perfectly brown flesh of her upper right thigh.
Botox, I need not remind you, is a derivative of botulism. A toxin used to paralyse muscles in the face, freeze frown lines, and iron out wrinkles.
It is now the most popular non-surgical procedure in America. Health regulators took a while to get enthused about that as well. Something to do with injecting a deadly toxin into your body – I can’t imagine why.
Yet amongst the rich and the famous, Botox is now de rigueur. The little vial of poison has become a latter day elixir, hailed by Beverly Hills “ladies who lunch” as a veritable fountain of youth.
Some believe lipodissolve could go the same way. It is a non-invasive procedure so there are neither cuts nor stitches to mar the body beautiful.
The injection takes about 15 minutes (hence its nickname ‘lunchtime lipo’) and unlike those old-fashioned methods of losing weight – such as dieting and exercise – the results are evident within a matter of days.
The only side effects, so it is said, are a slight swelling and numbness around the area where the needle pricked the flesh.
Try telling all that to the growing number of women who report problems with lipodissolve.
One, who wanted to lose some fat remaining from a pregnancy, reportedly developed a lump the size of a tennis ball after the treatment led to an infection in her abdomen. It took a week in hospital to recover, and her stomach is now the shape of a spoon. Another person who does not have a good word to say about lipodissolve is Dr Brian Kinney of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
A medical man of the old school he nonetheless proudly showed off his assistant’s nose job (“all my own work”) before rounding on the latest unproven practice in his profession.
The greatest concern is – what happened to the fat once it was dissolved?
Did it somehow find its way to the kidneys and thence into the urine? Or meander into the liver only to be metabolised? Or somehow wriggle into the muscles only to be burned up?
Nobody who carried out the procedure seemed to know.
“There’s a lot of basic science that still needs to be done,” Dr Kinney told me. “The danger is that instead of going out looking more beautiful the patient goes out maimed or disfigured.”
In a country suffering an obesity epidemic, the notion of an elite group spending thousands of dollars fine-tuning their fat seems self-indulgent to say the least.
Lipodissolve represents a potential goldmine for doctors, which may explain why clinics are sprouting up faster than Starbucks coffee shops.
Yet patients like CC say the results are amazing and contend the treatment represents the perfect answer for those who are not able or simply do not have the time to lose weight naturally.
With a flash of those perfectly white teeth she told me she would be back for another injection in a few weeks time.
News Source: BBC NEWS
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