Showing posts with label health news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health news. Show all posts

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Mental Health Is Related to Financial Health

Financial health is often linked to an individual's mental health. Constant worrying can deteriorate one's mental health, leading to several mental disorders; whereas, an existing mental illness may deprive someone of his or her ability to manage finances efficiently.

In the United States, poor financial health is often associated with piling debts. According to a recent report from the Urban Institute, approximately 35 percent of Americans have debt in collections. An individual's debt, which could be a combination of credit card balances, medical bills and unpaid utilities, may have an adverse impact on his or her psychological state.

How mind and money are intertwined


While a healthy mind can deal with debt in an efficient manner, a healthy and smart financial condition can work wonders for the mind. Financial problems and challenges can lead to severe stress and worry, but one can always find a way out or use someone else's perspective to find a remedy.

Financial worries can have the following impact on the brain:


An excessive expenditure or increasing debt can cause tremendous anxiety in spite of having a healthy bank balance.
Spending may give some anxious people a temporary high, but dealing with financial crisis or debts can heighten the existing stress and anxiety about an unknown future.
Simple things in life, such as planning for food, accommodation or medications, may seem cumbersome in the absence of finances, causing further stress and anxiety.
Debts or financial problems can affect relationships and social life, which can have a debilitating effect on the mental health.
Studies have demonstrated a strong link between suicide and debt. People who committed suicide are eight times more likely to be burdened by debt. Additionally, those who are weighed down by debt are more vulnerable to problem drinking and drug dependence.
What comes first?

Some researchers believe that a chronic anxiety about one's financial difficulties and mounting debt can increase stress levels and reduce resilience against certain mental health issues. On the contrary, some other researchers view mental health problems as major obstacles in managing finances effectively.

Getting stuck in debts increases the possibility of being affected by a mental illness, and a mental health problem may increase the risk of a significant growth in debt and other financial problems due to inability to sustain a regular source of income.

Though debt is a manageable issue, constant struggles with anxiety and depression might ruin the ability to seek a solution to solve the financial crisis. Moreover, someone burdened with debts will certainly not be in a position to pay for his or her mental health treatment.

But whatever be the situation, it is important to deal with financial difficulties and ease one's stress, since money troubles can have a long-lasting negative impact on the brain.






Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Overcoming Carpal Tunnel Pain

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome


Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is very prevalent in our society. Just about everybody knows of someone who has experienced or continues to experience the condition. Although the condition is very prevalent many people still don't understand what the signs and symptoms are and certainly don't understand the treatment options available.

Symptoms of Carpal Tunnel

Tunnel Pain
Tunnel Pain

Symptoms of Carpal Tunnel includes numbness & tingling (feelings of pins and needles), pain or burning in the thumb and the first two and a half fingers. Swelling often occurs in the fingers. Weakness of the hand or diminished grip strength. It's not uncommon for sufferers of carpal tunnel syndrome to constantly drop things.

Carpal tunnel syndrome can occur in one or both hands. Most of the time when it's both hands, the patient's dominant hand is the most affected. It typically worsens at night interrupting sleep.

The symptoms may resemble other conditions. One of these other conditions which is often confused with carpal tunnel syndrome is Pronator Terres Syndrome. The difference is with the latter the patient will experience symptoms in the palm of the hand as well. There will also be symptoms affecting the forearm. It's important to differentiate between the two because the course of treatment is very different and if the wrong treatment is provided the patient will not get better. All too often Doctors will treat one syndrome when the patient is actually suffering from the other condition.

What Causes Carpal Tunnel?

Lets first go over what the carpal tunnel is. Well it's just what it sounds like, a tunnel. It is a tunnel in the wrist where nine tendons and the median nerve pass through. The border of the tunnel is made up of eight tiny bones called carpals that are arranged in a "C." At the open end there is a big thick ligament that is attached to either end of the "C."

Carpal tunnel syndrome is when there is pressure on the median nerve. This can range from slight irritation to total compression of the nerve. There are two causes of compression to the nerve. The first is a narrowing of the tunnel itself from bones that are misaligned and protrude into the tunnel. This is the most common cause of carpal tunnel sundrome. The second is something occupying the tunnel that is generally not there. This can be inflammation, a tumor or bone growth such as arthritis.

Treatments for Carpal Tunnel

There are a variety of treatments available for carpal tunnel. The traditional standard of care for the medical approach is prescribing medication, physical therapy and bracing until it progresses and becomes severe enough to perform surgery. Unfortunately none of these methods actually fix the problem. Medication may relieve pain short term however will not re-arrange the bones into their proper position. Neither will bracing the wrist with splints. Surgery is performed by cutting the ligament across the opening of the "C" so that the tunnel is enlarged allowing the pressure to be relieved from the nerve. This leaves the wrist unstable and often the bones shift even more over time. All of these methods typically only offer a temporary or short term solution and only focus on pain reduction.

To correct the problem with long term success the mechanical dysfunction of the wrist must be identified and corrected. This is often caused by mis aligned bones. Once identified the bones need to be realigned by someone with extensive training such as a Hand and Foot Chiropractor.

After the correction and the bones are in the proper place the wrist will function as it is intended to do. Typically the patient will experience much relief after the first treatment. Other therapies such as cold laser will also be used to aid in healing of the tissue. Lastly physical therapy will need to be done however not until the mechanical dysfunction has been corrected.

Treatment with a non-invasive conservative approach should be sought out first. This may save a patient from spending thousands of dollars and recovery time from an un-necessary surgery that many times only offers short term relief. Remember that a patient may always opt to have surgery however cannot undo surgery or the side-effects which is why this approach she be the last on the list.


Sunday, September 4, 2016

Heineken House Food

THE place to be last Saturday for food, drinks, and entertainment was undoubtedly Heineken House.
On Friday, the brand had hosted an event focusing on fashion and art, but on Saturday it was all about food, drink, and music. Foodies and executives alike attended the affair, ready to enjoy delectable cocktail dishes, beverages and performances from special guests.

A full house meant many mouths to feed, and suppliers — Rainforest Foods and CPJ Foods — ensured appetites were fully satisfied. CPJ Foods served salmon cakes, steak sliders, baconwrapped shrimp, tempura-battered fish fillet, coconut shrimp, and deep-fried ravioli stuffed with cheese.

There was something for everyone. Rainforest Seafoods served quick and easy seafood burgers with a side of potato wedges. These dishes which were paired with Heineken Brewjito mixes or Heineken Star Cocktails certainly tantalised the taste buds.

If that wasn’t enough, you also got the chance to enjoy the sweet melodies of various artistes including Ras-I, Sevana, and Christopher Martin while relishing these delightful pairings. What a night!

8 things invented by accident

September 28 marks the anniversary of the discovery of penicillin by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. According to the story, on that morning in 1928, Fleming discovered that a petri dish of staphylococcus bacteria that had been inadvertently left out on the windowsill of his London laboratory had become contaminated by a greenish-colored mold — and encircling the mold was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth. After taking a sample and developing a culture, Fleming discovered that the mold was a member of the Penicillium genus, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Penicillin wasn’t the only unintentional discovery in history, of course. From kids’ toys to artificial sweeteners, all eight of these everyday items were invented entirely by accident.

Corn flakes
The two Kellogg brothers — Dr John Harvey Kellogg and his younger brother (and former broom salesman) Will Keith Kellogg — worked at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where John was the physician-in-chief.

Both were strict Seventh-Day Adventists, who used their work at the sanitarium to promote the austere dietary and moralist principles of their religion (including strict vegetarianism and a lifelong restraint from excessive sex and alcohol), and to carry out research into nutrition, and the impact of diet on their patients. It was during one of these experiments in 1894 that, while in the process of making dough from boiled wheat, one of the Kelloggs left the mash to dry for too long and when it came to be rolled out, it splintered into dozens of individual flakes. Curious as to how these flakes tasted, he baked them in the oven, and in the process, produced a cereal called Granose. Some tinkering switched out the wheat for corn, and that gave us our beloved corn flakes.

Slinky
In 1943, naval engineer Richard T. James was working at a shipyard in Philadelphia when he accidentally knocked a spring (that he had been trying to modify into a stabilizer for sensitive maritime equipment), from a high shelf. To his surprise, the spring neatly uncoiled itself and stepped its way down from the shelf and onto a pile of books, and from there onto a tabletop, and then onto the floor. After two years of development, the first batch of 400 “Slinky” toys were sold out in just 90 minutes when they were demonstrated in the toy department of a local Gimbels store in 1945.

Teeflon
Polytetrafluoroethylene — better known as PTFE, or Teflon — was invented by accident at a DuPont laboratory in New Jersey in 1938. Roy Plunkett, an Ohio-born chemist, was attempting to make a new CFC refrigerant when he noticed that a canister of tetrafluoroethylene, despite appearing to be empty, weighed as much as if it were full.

Cutting the canister open with a saw, Plunkett found that the gas had reacted with the iron in the canister’s shell and had coated its insides with polymerized polytetrafluoroethylene — a waxy, water-repellent, non-stick substance. DuPont soon saw the potential of Plunkett’s discovery and began mass producing PTFE, but it wasn’t until 1954, when the wife of French engineer Marc Grégoireasked asked her husband to use the same substance to coat her cookware to stop food sticking to her pans, that the true usefulness of Plunkett’s discovery was finally realized.

Safety glass
Safety glass or laminated glass, was accidentally discovered by French chemist Édouard Bénédictus when he knocked a glass beaker from a high shelf in his laboratory and found, to his surprise, that it shattered but did not break. His assistant informed him that the beaker had contained cellulose nitrate, a type of clear natural plastic, that had left a film on the inside of the glass. He filed a patent for his discovery in 1909, and it has been in production (albeit in various different forms) ever since.

Post-IT Notes
In 1968, a 3M chemist named Dr. Spencer Silver was attempting to create a super-strong adhesive when instead, he accidentally invented a super-weak adhesive, which could be used to only temporarily stick things together. The seemingly limited application of Silver’s product meant that it sat unused at 3M (then technically known as Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing) for another five years, until, in 1973, a colleague named Art Fry attended one of Silver’s seminars and struck upon the idea that his impermanent glue could be used to stick bookmarks into the pages of his hymn book. It took another few years for 3M to be convinced both of Fry and Silver’s idea and of the salability of their product.

Silly Putty
At the height of the Second World War, rubber was rationed across the United States after Japan invaded a number of rubber-producing countries across southeast Asia and hampered production. The race was on to find a suitable replacement — a synthetic rubber that could be produced inside the U.S. without the need of overseas imports — which eventually led to the entirely unexpected invention of Silly Putty. There are at least two rival claims to the invention of Silly Putty (chiefly from chemist Earl L. Warrick and Scottish-born engineer James Wright), both of whom found that mixing boric acid with silicone oil produced a stretchy, bouncy rubber-like substance — that had the unusual ability of leaching newspaper print from a page (an ability that changing technology has now eliminated).

Popsicles
The first popsicle was reportedly invented by 11-year-old Frank Epperson in 1905, when he accidentally left a container of powdered soda and water, with its mixing stick still inside, on his porch overnight. One unexpectedly cold night later, and the popsicle — which Epperson originally marketed 20 years later as an Epsicle — was born.

Saccharin
In 1878 or ‘79 (sources differ), Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist studying the properties of oxidised coal tar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered while eating his meal one evening that food that he picked up with this fingers tasted sweeter than normal. He traced the sweetening effect back to the chemical he had been working with that day (orthosulfobenzoic acid imide, no less) and, noting its potential salability, quickly set up a business mass producing his sweetener under the name Saccharin.

A New Pair of Running Shoes You Need

A comfortable and supportive pair of shoes are a runner’s best friend, but even the best aren’t built to last forever. Avid runners know working out in worn-out sneakers can cause unwanted running injuries like shin splints or runner's knee. But how do you know it’s time to trash your sneaks and invest in a new set? Here, two running experts share the signs that cue a much-needed trip to your local shoe store.

You’re racking up miles

“As a rule it’s best to update your running shoes every 300 to 400 miles,” says Nikhil Jain, senior footwear product line manager at Brooks Running. Since wear and tear on the shoe itself isn’t always obvious, this method ensures you get new shoes before your worn ones cause pain or an injury.

You can easily track your runs with apps such as Strava, MapMyRun, or Wahoo, or with a fitness tracker. You could also opt for an old-school approach and hand write your runs in a journal. If you’re looking to eyeball your mileage based on time, take advice from a pro: New York City-based running coach John Henwood says he replaces his own shoes every two months.

You feel aches and pains

“As soon as one of my runners feels a shin splint, the first thing I do is ask them how long they’ve had their shoes for,” says Henwood. Knee pain and shin splints, which cause pain in the lower part of the leg, could both signal you need new shoes, especially if you haven’t changed up your running routine at all.

RELATED: 7 Running Injuries and How to Avoid Them

Not ready to part with your precious sneakers? Jain suggests keeping them around for leisurely walks or running errands. “While they may no longer be in good condition to run in, it’s likely that you won’t need as much cushion and support in your other activities,” he says.

Your shoes look shabby

According to Henwood, there are three areas on the shoe itself that signal it’s time for a replacement: the sole, the tread, and the exterior fabric.

“The cushioning in your shoe will be the first thing to break down because midsoles are designed to absorb shock and protect the body,” says Jain. “The tricky part is that this wear isn’t easily visible.” If the soles are shot, the shoe may appear lopsided from putting more pressure on one part of your foot than the others.

The tread of the shoe will be the next area to wear out, so if the bottom of the shoe appears flat and smooth, chances are your soles have lost their support and cushioning. Any holes that appear in the shoe’s exterior fabric provide a third red light that they’ve deteriorated.

RELATED: 15 Running Tips You Need to Know

To prevent your shoes from wearing out before you hit 300 to 400 miles, Henwood suggests using them exclusively for your runs. “If you’ve got running shoes, don’t walk around in them,” he says. “Have your running shoes for running and other shoes for walking because how you use them changes how they last.”

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Health Tips

Sleeping seems like such a natural thing that should just “happen” but for many people it’s not so easy. If you’ve ever struggled with falling asleep or staying asleep you know how frustrating and helpless this can make you feel – since you just want to sleep! If you’re having trouble sleeping you’re not alone, other people are experiencing the same issue. And along with causing you to be tired, not getting enough sleep can lead to other problems like increased risk of getting sick, having depression or anxiety, gain weight, decreased performance at work or school.
The good news is there are things that you can do to help you get the much-needed rest you need. Jennifer Tsappis, a licensed therapist who sees patients using LiveHealth Online has a few tips to getting on a better sleep routine.  
  1. Stay on a consistent sleep schedule. Establishing a consisten
    t sleep-wake schedule, even on weekends, can dramatically improve the way you sleep and feel!  Our bodies thrive on consistency, once established (takes about 2-3 weeks) your body will respond to the rhythms you create to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and awaken refreshed!
  2. Find a bedtime routine that works for you. Create and stick to a regular, relaxing wind down routine before bed. Typically a routine that doesn’t involve screen time and includes reading, soothing music, calming baths and mindfulness exercise like deep breathing or meditation.
  3. Don’t be distracted while you sleep. Yes, we can also be distracted while we are sleeping! Eliminate “sleep distractors” such as TV, computers, cell phones and radios. 
  4. Stay active and healthy. Exercise regularly, but not too close to bed time. Finish eating heavy meals 2-3 hours before bedtime. Also eliminate soda and heavy caffeinated drinks in the late afternoon and evenings and switch to water. Some people enjoy a cup of “sleepy time” tea before bed.
  5. Don’t toss and turn all night long. If you cannot fall asleep in 20-30 minutes leave your bed and do something distracting and try going to bed again when feel tired.  Lying in bed feeling stressed about not being able to fall asleep, will only keep you awake.
  6. The bedroom is a relaxing zone. You should reserve your bed for engaging in relaxing activities or intimate activities.  If your body and mind associates your bed with an increased state of alertness such as doing work in the bed or taking conference calls, it may be harder to fall asleep.
While these techniques sound simple, change is hard and sometimes life’s stress and anxiety can get in the way! Reach out for help; you can visit a licensed-therapist using LiveHealth Online by scheduling an appointment to discuss any underlying worries that might contribute to insomnia or having a tough time sleeping and to support you in making difficult life changes.