Some very recent studies are showing that statin drugs can reduce inflammation in the body; specifically they are able to lower C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. According to Dr Christopher P. Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, USA, «CRP is a global screen for bad things in the cardiovascular system». If you have high blood levels of this substance, you are much more likely to have a heart attack.
Currently the mechanism by which statin drugs lower CRP is not known, but patients who have low levels (especially lower then 2mg/L) are less likely to have a heart attack, regardless of what their LDL level is. Perhaps statin drugs are exerting their protective effects on cardiovascular disease not by lowering cholesterol, but by lowering C-reactive protein.
It is good to know that statins can do something useful for your health, like lowering inflammation, but there may be a high price to pay. It is very easy to lower C-reactive protein with a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Maintaining a healthy weight, exercising regularly, and having a high intake of vegetable juices and antioxidants are simple ways to lower your CRP level. The thing is that these natural treatments don’t make much money. Drag companies make enormous profits on cholesterol lowering drags.
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Certain kinds of work may be linked with reduced fertility for both partners. This is backed up by substantial research.
For example, professional drivers spend long hours sitting which can result in a lower sperm count and higher numbers of abnormal sperm.
Likewise, welders exposed to intense heat may have reduced quantity and quality of sperm. In the same way, firefighters face intense heat, and they are also exposed to a large variety of chemicals which affect their fertility. Indeed, any man who works in a hot environment (such as a foundry or bakery) could find that his sperm production decreases.
Agricultural workers exposed to pesticides and other chemicals have low sperm counts. Research also shows that their partners have a high rate of miscarriages. In 1991, 1,500 men in Costa Rica became sterile after being exposed to a pesticide used to treat bananas. Other pesticides, such as DBCP (dibromochloropropane), have caused changes in sperm counts, of which were reversible after exposure had stopped. Women exposed to pesticides can have problems conceiving and an increase in miscarriages.
Healthcare workers can be exposed to waste anaesthetic gases, ethylene oxide, cytostatic drugs, mercury and X-rays. And, as we have already seen, s and their assistants experience fertility problems due to the mercury in amalgam fillings.
Painters and printers are exposed to solvents and pigments which can affect male fertility.
Women who are exposed to chemicals and heavy metals often have problems with their menstrual cycle, experiencing hormone imbalances and miscarriages, while taking longer to get pregnant.
Problems with fertility can occur if you or your partner works with lead (used to make storage batteries), radiation, pesticides and/or solvents. For example, workers in drycleaners and hairdressers come into contact with a wide range of chemicals.
In 1997 the Lancet, the leading medical journal, published a whole range of occupations and their implications for fertility. Agents toxic to sperm included inorganic mercury, dibromochloropropane, ethylene dibromide, ethylene glycol ethers, chloropropene and carbon disulfide. Certain other occupational risks were found, including heat, strenuous work, ionising radiation, exposure to lead, antineoplastic agents, waste anaesthetic gases, ethylene oxide, methyl mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls and carbon monoxide.
Visual Display Units
Like televisions, VDUs produce a range of electromagnetic radiation frequencies, including ultraviolet, infrared, microwave, radio frequency and extra low frequency (ELF). Even though so many workers, male and female, now sit in front of a screen all day, surprisingly little is known about the impact of VDUs on health and fertility.
The Health and Safety Executive, the UK’s main workers’ watchdog, found no evidence of an increased miscarriage risk among VDU operatives in a 1992 survey. But other studies point to dangers.
The length of time spent at the computer may be the key. One study found that women who spent more than 20 hours a week in front of the screen had twice as many miscarriages as non-VDU workers. But under 20 hours there was no increased risk. Researchers have also found that not only are miscarriages correlated to the amount of time spent on a VDU but also the same for premature births and stillbirths. Out of those spending up to 6 hours a day at a computer 66 per cent had a problem relating to either a miscarriage, premature birth or stillbirth compared to only 25 per cent for those women spending one hour a day on a VDU.
A number of studies on women VDU workers have also considered stress as a contributing factor to fertility problems. Working at a screen means that women can be sitting in the same position for long hours, doing repetitive work, and often under time pressure.
*15/73/5*
Breathing’s pretty much what it’s all about in the death-defying game. But more than 96,000 Americans each year stop doing it thanks to an increasingly rampant form of lung disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. This isn’t pneumonia or lung cancer but a group of conditions characterized by blocked air flow.
There are two principal players in this death act-chronic bronchitis and emphysema-and they often do a duet in the same victim. You may have had a bout with acute bronchitis, with all that coughing and mucus accompanying a severe cold. Imagine those symptoms as a permanent result of inflamed and scarred bronchial tubes and you know what chronic bronchitis is all about.
Emphysema weakens and breaks the inner walls of the air sacs in the lungs, impairing the flow of air into the lungs and the distribution of oxygen into the rest of the body. The damage is irreversible, and emphysema victims find themselves short of breath and unable to do much of anything that requires physical exertion.
About 14 million Americans suffer from chronic bronchitis (a 60 percent increase since 1982), and 2 million from emphysema, 61 percent of them male. The cause of this sad state of affairs is smoking, for the most part. It accounts for 82 percent of all COPD. Don’t smoke, and you’re 82 percent of the way there. Here are some other ways to keep on breathing.
Find clean air. Hawaii might start looking pretty good to you if you’re in the early stages of COPD. The best way to control chronic bronchitis is to keep your nose, throat, sinuses, and bronchial tubes away from things that can inflame or irritate them, says Dr. Steven Mostow of the University of Colorado. Those things include smog, dusty working conditions, and cigarette smoke. Air pollution also aggravates emphysema symptoms. If Hawaii’s out of the question, the American Lung Association recommends that you plan your activities in the early morning or evening when smog levels are at their lowest.
Nip infections early. Any cold or respiratory infection is going to make COPD symptoms worse. So it’s not wimpy to consult a doctor at the first sniffle of a cold. And ask your doctor about getting vaccinated against influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia, two illnesses that can severely hinder breathing, says Dr. Mostow.
Keep moving. COPD or no, general health is still a good way to fight off infections. The American Lung Association recommends regular exercise that doesn’t tire you out much for chronic bronchitis sufferers. You should also exercise with emphysema, but as part of a doctor-guided pulmonary rehabilitation program, says Dr. Mostow.
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A. Refusal to maintain body weight over a minimal normal weight for age and height, e.g.,
weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight 15 percent below that expected; or failure
to make expected weight gain during period of growth, leading to body weight 15 percent
below that expected.
B. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
Ñ Disturbance in the way in which one’s body weight, size, or shape is experienced, e.g., the
person claims to «feel fat» even when emaciated, believes that one area of the body is «too
fat» even when obviously underweight.
D. In females, absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles when otherwise expected
to occur (primary or secondary amenorrhea). (A woman is considered to have amenorrhea if
her periods occur only following hormone, e.g., estrogen, administration.)
The first guideline, Criterion A, gives physicians an objective means of measuring the degree to which a person is emaciated: 15 percent below minimum normal body weight. This 15 percent figure (a somewhat arbitrary number, but still useful) is considerably less than the 25 percent given in the earlier edition. The change reflects the reality: Like other clinicians, I have seen numerous patients who seem to have anorexia but who, like Paula, haven’t lost enough weight to meet the criteria.
You might be puzzled by the use of the term «refusal to maintain body weight.» Doesn’t the word «refusal» suggest that the patient has made a conscious decision to act (or not act) in a certain way?
Yes, that’s true, but it still doesn’t mean that the anorexia is the patient’s fault. You have to think of the «decision» to lose weight as one made under duress. In a sense, the brain is held hostage to the disease and can’t think clearly. Anorexia is not a well-thought-out, rational plan; it’s more like a compulsion.
Still, such refusal makes life difficult for doctors as well as patients. Many a hospitalized patient declares war on the doctors and the staff. She sees them as members of a conspiracy whose evil aim is to force her to become fat. Patients may feel that they are being hunted down and annihilated by the «fat-doctors.» The patients, who see themselves as valiant rebels fighting to preserve freedom, will do anything to thwart this scheme: hide butter under the tray, spit out bites of food into their milk glass, exercise frantically while lying in bed, even run away from the hospital. Naturally, it’s hard to build a sense of trust and mutual cooperation under such circumstances.
One more point. The first diagnostic guideline lets us think of body weight in one of two ways: either as weight actually lost or weight never gained. The difference is important. Some anorexics feel fat now, and thus want to shed pounds. Others, particularly the younger ones, fear becoming fat in the future, and thus starve themselves to keep from gaining weight in the first place. It’s not necessary for a woman to reach a certain weight and then lose it in order to be considered an anorexic.
Criterion  mentions the intense fear of becoming fat. The earlier DSM specified that this fear doesn’t diminish even as weight loss progresses. The new version lets us acknowledge the presence of anorexia even in those cases where the woman reports that the fear does lessen as her weight shrinks.
Criterion Ñ expands the concept of disturbed body image. The disturbance might now reflect the patient’s perception of her body size or shape, as well as her weight. It also identifies a common anorexic symptom: the tendency to isolate and focus on one part of the body in particular.
Not long ago I visited a patient named Caitlin in her room at the hospital. In the course of our conversation, I indicated that she was making progress and was now eligible to go for short walks outside the hospital.
«I can’t do that!» she wailed. She threw back the bedclothes to reveal her legs, each of which wasn’t much thicker than a baseball bat. She pinched the skin between her fingers-she had to try a couple of times before she could actually grab anything-and shouted, «Look at this fat thigh! I can’t go out in public looking like this!»
The final criterion, D, acknowledges a feature of anorexia that the previous guidelines ignored: the loss of menses (menstrual periods), specifically three periods in a row, at some time during the course of the illness. In about four out of five cases, the loss of menses (also called amenorrhea) occurs as a direct result of starvation. Without proper nutrition, the brain senses that there is not sufficient energy for menstruation and doesn’t supply the «on» signal to the reproductive organs. (In male anorexics the equivalent problem is a loss of interest in sex, usually due to a reduction in the amount of testosterone produced.)
In another 20 percent of female patients, however, amenorrhea occurs before significant weight loss-that is, before starvation takes its toll. Sometimes a report of skipped periods is nothing more than a figment of the patient’s faulty memory. But not always.
The fact that some anorexics stop having periods before they lose weight may be evidence of a biological problem, at least in some cases. Because the hypothalamus regulates both eating and the reproductive system, any malfunction may affect both systems.
Other problems can also cause the loss of menses before weight loss occurs. In order to menstruate, a woman’s body needs not just sufficient weight, but a certain reserve of energy as well. Female athletes, for example, may eat adequate meals and maintain proper weight. But they may expend so much energy during exercise that they deplete their reserves. Menstruation then stops. Also, through chemical changes we don’t yet fully understand, emotional stress can interrupt the monthly cycle.
*24/35/5*
When Tawni Gomes stopped making excuses, she started losing weight—almost half of her body weight, in fact.
Tawni’s epiphany came one day in September 1996 as she watched The Oprah Winfrey Show on television. Oprah’s guest was her personal trainer, Bob Greene. As Greene explained the basics of
weight loss to the audience, Tawni began to feel inspired. At 300 pounds, she knew that she had to slim down. So the San Francisco resident headed for the nearest bookstore and picked up a copy of Make the Connection, Winfrey and Greene’s book. She read it cover to cover that very night.
Over the next month, Tawni struggled to stick with the exercise program. Excuses like «There aren’t enough hours in the day» and «I don’t have a personal trainer» conveniently prevented her from making a serious commitment to slimming down.
Then she heard that Greene was coming to town to speak and do a book signing. Book in hand, she went to hear him. «A woman in the audience asked Bob how she was supposed to find time to exercise with four kids, a house, and a full-time job,» she said. «Bob looked her straight in the eye and without hesitation said, ‘You’re not ready to lose weight.’ He turned to the rest of the audience and said, ‘Next question.’»
Tawni’s jaw dropped. «I was so shocked by his bluntness. But I had to admit that I was making the exact same excuses,» she says. «Everybody has the same number of hours in a day. If people with kids and tighter schedules than mine can find time to exercise, then, I figured, so can I.»
The very next morning, Tawni rolled out of bed at 4:00 A.M., laced on her walking shoes, and headed out—alone—for a brisk walk. It was the start of what would become a daily ritual. «With my work schedule and family commitments, that was really the only time I had to exercise,» she says. «At that early hour, it was so quiet and peaceful that it gave me a chance to think about my life and clarify my goals.»
Over time, Tawni switched from brisk walking to running. She also began lifting weights and performing stretching and toning exercises. The combination enabled her to take off 125 pounds in 3 years.
«No excuses» remains Tawni’s life motto. At age 34, she continues to work out regularly, and her weight is holding steady at 175 pounds. «That’s about right for my height and bone structure, though I’d like to lose about 20 more,» she says. She now has an online support group to help others get on the road to «no excuses.»
WINNING. ACTION
Make time, not excuses. We all have things that we need to get done, so we end up doing what’s important to us. Decide what’s most important for you. When you make yourself and your desire to live a healthier life a top priority, that’s when weight loss will happen for you.
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