If you have hypertension (systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg or more and diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg or more) it should be adequately treated with approved drugs/medications and by dietary modifications and lifestyle changes. If yo have pre-hypertension (systolic blood pressure of 121-139 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure of 81-89 mmHg) it is time you adopt healthy lifestyle and healthy eating habits to prevent pre-hypertension from becoming a hypertension.

Generally goal of treatment of hypertension is to bring blood pressure to 120/80 mmHg if you have no complication and you are healthy. The goal of treatment of hypertension may be different for different individuals, e.g. if you are an elderly person the target blood pressure may be much higher than 120/80 mmHg (i.e. 140/90 mmHg).

For all patients of hypertension, lifestyle changes and dietary changes are essential for optimal management. Without lifestyle and dietary changes towards healthier side, the management of hypertension may be incomplete.

Medications form the mainstay of management of hypertension, because with lifestyle changes and dietary changes it may not be possible to bring blood pressure to the target level.

Commonly used anti-hypertensive drugs:

1. Thiazide diuretics:

Diuretics (commonly known as water pills) are commonly used for treatment of hypertension. Hydrochlorothiazide is most commonly used for this purpose. It is one of the first line medications for treatment of hypertension. These drugs reduce water and sodium content and improves elasticity of blood vessels.

2. Beta-blockers:

These drugs reduce workload of heart by reducing heart rate and force of contraction of heart. They also reduce sympathetic activity thereby reduce workload of heart. Examples of beta-blockers are atenolol, metoprolol, bisoprolol etc. If used alone they may not work well in blacks and should be combined with diuretics (Hydrochlorothiazide).

3. Calcium channel blockers:

These drugs helps in relaxing the muscles of blood vessels (arteries mainly) and thereby reduce blood pressure. Some of these drugs reduce heart rate also. Examples of calcium channel blockers are amlodipine, nifedipine, verapamil, diltiazem etc.

4. ACE (Angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors:

These drugs relax blood vessels by inhibiting natural chemical that constricts blood vessels, i.e. angiotensin-II. Examples of ACE inhibitors are enalapril, lisinopril, parindopril, ramipril, captopril etc.

5. Angiotensin receptor blockers:

These drugs act by blocking the action of angiotensin-II (constriction of blood vessels) at receptor level. Examples of Angiotensin receptor blockers are losartan, telmisartan etc.

There are also other anti-hypertensive drugs which are used for treatment of hypertension in special situations such as pregnancy, hypertensive emergencies (severe rise in blood pressure, e.g. systolic pressure of over 200 mmHg and need immediate medical intervention to reduce blood pressure) etc.

Centrally acting agents:

These agents prevent signals from brain that cause heart rate to increase and blood vessels to contract, e.g. methyledopa, which is commonly used to treat hypertension during pregnancy.

Vasodilators:

These drugs cause dilatation of blood vessels thereby reduce blood pressure. These agents are used for treating hypertensive emergencies. Example is sodium nitropruside.

Alpha-blockers:

These agents cause dilatation of blood vessels by reducing nerve impulse to blood vessels. Examples of alpha-blockers is prazosin, terazosin etc.

Image courtesy of scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related posts:

Know What Hypertension is

What are the Complications of Hypertension?

What is Hypertension or High Blood Pressure? My Explanation

Points to Remember by Hypertensive Person

What type of Diet should be taken in Hypertension

Diet and High Blood Pressure

Are You at Risk Of Hypertension? Find Out

Dietary Advise for Hypertension

Diet to be avoided in Hypertension

Know About DASH Diet

A prefectural officer carries a chicken on a poultry farm on October 15 on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, where chickens suspected of being infected with bird flu were found.

Prakash Mathema /AFP/Getty Images

A prefectural officer carries a chicken on a poultry farm on October 15 on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, where chickens suspected of being infected with bird flu were found.

Prakash Mathema /AFP/Getty Images

On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health in Maryland is holding a second day of talks about whether and how to continue funding some controversial scientific experiments.

Back in January, virologists agreed to temporarily stop research that was creating new forms of bird flu, because critics argued that the work was too dangerous. NIH officials are now seeking input from scientists and the public about how to proceed.

Scientists, national security experts and public health workers have come from all over â€" including places like the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Italy, Indonesia and Vietnam â€" to discuss thorny issues raised by the research.

"The subject of this meeting literally affects every individual in the world," noted Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, who is helping to run the conference. "Every citizen in every country has a stake in the research that will or will not go forward with respect to these highly pathogenic agents."

These pathogenic agents are altered forms of the bird flu virus known as H5N1. H5N1 is widespread in poultry in parts of Asia and the Middle East, but it rarely infects people. Over half of those who are known to have gotten sick, however, have died.

Public health experts worry that the virus might mutate, begin spreading from person to person, and start a pandemic. Last year, NIH-funded researchers showed that certain genetic mutations could indeed make H5N1 spread easily between ferrets, the lab stand-in for people.

When word got out that scientists had created these mutant viruses, there was an uproar.

"There was an explosion of reaction, sometimes bordering on the very extreme," recalled Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. One New York Times editorial called it "An Engineered Doomsday."

So flu virologists around the world agreed to temporarily hold off on this kind of research. But some, like Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, thinks it's essential to get back to work.

Fouchier says what is learned from this research could help public health experts do things like spot an emerging pandemic, or develop vaccines. In his view, it's irresponsible to not follow-up on his initial experiments.

"All of this research is aimed to prevent flu pandemics or to mitigate their impact if they cannot be prevented altogether," Fouchier says.

Others are not so convinced, and say that if an engineered bird flu virus fell into the wrong hands or escaped the lab, it could kill millions.

"Once novel flu gets going in the population it's unlikely we could stop it," says Thomas Inglesby, with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Inglesby thinks the moratorium should continue, but that if the NIH decides that it will fund more research on altered forms of H5N1 that everyone should acknowledge the risks.

"I think we should also proceed in unprecedented biosafety conditions and with international agreements on how to proceed," he says.

Officials have drafted a set of proposed criteria to help them decide whether and when to fund this kind of research in the future. For example, a proposed experiment would have to address a scientific question with high significance to public health, and there would have to be no feasible alternative methods to address the same question in a less-risky way.

One of the reasons NIH is holding this conference is to see what people think of that proposed framework.

This question of the moratorium can't be decided at this meeting because not all of the researchers who signed onto it are funded by NIH. But what the NIH says and does is influential, so what comes of this meeting and how it is incorporated into NIH decision-making could be important.

On the agenda for Tuesday is a discussion of what kinds of lab safety measures should be in place to do this kind of work. Some experts say it should be restricted to the most secure labs possible. Others say that would needlessly slow down research that's vital for understanding the threat of naturally-occurring flu pandemics.

A video of the meeting will be posted online for those who could not attend, and NIH officials say they'll be accepting emailed comments on their proposed framework for decision-making until January 10, 2013.

If you have hypertension (systolic blood pressure of 140 mmHg or more and diastolic blood pressure of 90 mmHg or more) it should be adequately treated with approved drugs/medications and by dietary modifications and lifestyle changes. If yo have pre-hypertension (systolic blood pressure of 121-139 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure of 81-89 mmHg) it is time you adopt healthy lifestyle and healthy eating habits to prevent pre-hypertension from becoming a hypertension.

Generally goal of treatment of hypertension is to bring blood pressure to 120/80 mmHg if you have no complication and you are healthy. The goal of treatment of hypertension may be different for different individuals, e.g. if you are an elderly person the target blood pressure may be much higher than 120/80 mmHg (i.e. 140/90 mmHg).

For all patients of hypertension, lifestyle changes and dietary changes are essential for optimal management. Without lifestyle and dietary changes towards healthier side, the management of hypertension may be incomplete.

Medications form the mainstay of management of hypertension, because with lifestyle changes and dietary changes it may not be possible to bring blood pressure to the target level.

Commonly used anti-hypertensive drugs:

1. Thiazide diuretics:

Diuretics (commonly known as water pills) are commonly used for treatment of hypertension. Hydrochlorothiazide is most commonly used for this purpose. It is one of the first line medications for treatment of hypertension. These drugs reduce water and sodium content and improves elasticity of blood vessels.

2. Beta-blockers:

These drugs reduce workload of heart by reducing heart rate and force of contraction of heart. They also reduce sympathetic activity thereby reduce workload of heart. Examples of beta-blockers are atenolol, metoprolol, bisoprolol etc. If used alone they may not work well in blacks and should be combined with diuretics (Hydrochlorothiazide).

3. Calcium channel blockers:

These drugs helps in relaxing the muscles of blood vessels (arteries mainly) and thereby reduce blood pressure. Some of these drugs reduce heart rate also. Examples of calcium channel blockers are amlodipine, nifedipine, verapamil, diltiazem etc.

4. ACE (Angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitors:

These drugs relax blood vessels by inhibiting natural chemical that constricts blood vessels, i.e. angiotensin-II. Examples of ACE inhibitors are enalapril, lisinopril, parindopril, ramipril, captopril etc.

5. Angiotensin receptor blockers:

These drugs act by blocking the action of angiotensin-II (constriction of blood vessels) at receptor level. Examples of Angiotensin receptor blockers are losartan, telmisartan etc.

There are also other anti-hypertensive drugs which are used for treatment of hypertension in special situations such as pregnancy, hypertensive emergencies (severe rise in blood pressure, e.g. systolic pressure of over 200 mmHg and need immediate medical intervention to reduce blood pressure) etc.

Centrally acting agents:

These agents prevent signals from brain that cause heart rate to increase and blood vessels to contract, e.g. methyledopa, which is commonly used to treat hypertension during pregnancy.

Vasodilators:

These drugs cause dilatation of blood vessels thereby reduce blood pressure. These agents are used for treating hypertensive emergencies. Example is sodium nitropruside.

Alpha-blockers:

These agents cause dilatation of blood vessels by reducing nerve impulse to blood vessels. Examples of alpha-blockers is prazosin, terazosin etc.

Image courtesy of scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related posts:

Know What Hypertension is

What are the Complications of Hypertension?

What is Hypertension or High Blood Pressure? My Explanation

Points to Remember by Hypertensive Person

What type of Diet should be taken in Hypertension

Diet and High Blood Pressure

Are You at Risk Of Hypertension? Find Out

Dietary Advise for Hypertension

Diet to be avoided in Hypertension

Know About DASH Diet

Coronaviruses can cause a mild cold or severe pneumonia-like symptoms.

Dr. Gopal Murti/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis

Coronaviruses can cause a mild cold or severe pneumonia-like symptoms.

Dr. Gopal Murti/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis

The World Health Organization says a new coronavirus has killed two people in Jordan â€" the third country where the novel microbe has been traced.

That brings lab-confirmed cases to nine, with five fatalities.

The latest cases are actually the oldest known so far. They push the SARS-like virus's timeline three months back from the first reported case involving a 60-year-old man who died in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, last June.

Jordan's cases were found through new testing of blood and tissue samples from patients in a cluster of pneumonias of unknown origin that occurred last April at a hospital in Zarqa, near Jordan's capital of Amman.

Until now known cases have occurred further south in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The Jordan cases are also significant because they're part of an 11-person cluster of pneumonia that involved seven nurses and a doctor.

It's unclear whether either of the two new SARS-like cases involved health care workers, or whether the new coronavirus has been ruled out yet as the cause of the other pneumonias in that outbreak.

But whenever disease-trackers see clusters of infection involving caregivers, that raises their suspicion that a microbe has spread from person to person â€" most likely from patient to caregiver.

It doesn't have to mean that. Health care workers and patients could have acquired the infection from a shared environmental source.

But if the new virus is able to spread from person to person, even if inefficiently, that raises the possibility it can become more mobile, moving through human populations.

"Even if the cases in Jordan were human-to-human spread â€" and we don't know that â€" it wasn't sustained," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told the Canadian Press.

The possibility of person-to-person spread is also suggested by a cluster of coronavirus pneumonias reported on November 23 involving members of the same household in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Four men in that family fell ill with respiratory symptoms and two tested positive for the new coronavirus. The two others, one of whom died, are considered probable cases.

No one thinks that the new coronavirus is as big a threat as its notorious cousin, the one that precipitated the SARS epidemic in 2003 that quickly spread around the world and killed 916 people.

For one thing, health officials haven't found any cases of the new coronavirus among the millions of pilgrims who attended this fall's annual Hajj in Mecca, near the place where the Saudi man died in June.

On the other hand, nobody knows how big a problem the Arabian coronavirus may be â€" or even whether it is likely to be restricted to Arabia.

The WHO is urging medical and public health workers around the world to investigate clusters of unexplained pneumonia for a possible link to the new virus. It isn't calling for individual cases to be tested.

The agency "is convinced that whatever the source of the virus is, it is probably not unique to those countries," science journalist Helen Branswell writes in Scientific American.

Genetic testing suggests that the new virus is most closely related to one in bats. But that doesn't necessarily mean all human cases had direct contact with bats. There may be an intermediate carrier, and victims might have eaten food contaminated with dust, urine or feces from an infected animal.

At this point, it appears that researchers will find more human cases of the new virus. Each case, or cluster of cases, increases the chance that the source and mode of transmission will be found.

That effort will be accelerated by the development of a blood test for the virus, which Branswell reports may come in the next month or so. Right now diagnosis relies on a gene-amplification test, called PCR, which is cumbersome and sometimes hard to interpret. And it can't tell if someone had been exposed to the virus in the past but recovered.

Regular visits to the chiropractor help promote and maintain spinal health, including the nerves and bones. Chiropractors adjust and realign joints that are out of place due to accidents or uncomfortable lifestyles. One uncomfortable lifestyle that can benefit from chiropractic care is pregnancy.

What are the risks?

If you are pregnant and concerned about the risks of chiropractic care, then you can rest easy knowing that the risks are few. In fact, most chiropractors are trained to work with pregnant women. They are aware of special needs required of a pregnant woman’s body, and they know how to work with those needs.

Some chiropractors even have special tables for pregnant women that reduce unnecessary and uncomfortable pressure.

What are the benefits?

As you are surely aware, your body endures significant changes when you are pregnant. Of the changes that your body goes through, the following are a few that can lead to a joint or spinal injury: changes in your pelvis, changes to your posture, and a protruding abdomen coupled with a larger back curve.

Chiropractors working with pregnant women seek to create balance and alignment in the pelvis. If pelvic balance is off, the baby may have less space to grow in. This restricted space is known as intrauterine constraint. This also makes it hard for the baby to find the best position before delivery.

Chiropractic care can help a pregnant woman have a healthier pregnancy and less severe nausea symptoms. It can also decrease delivery and labor time, as well as pain in the neck, back, and related joints.

Another amazing benefit of chiropractic care during pregnancy is its ability to prevent a C-section.

What does chiropractic care have to do with breech deliveries?

The Webster Technique is a technique used by chiropractors to create a balance in the pelvis and relieve stress in the uterus and supporting ligaments of a pregnant woman. Larry Webster, the founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, created this technique to promote ideal positioning of the fetus.

The Webster Technique, when applied to babies in breech position, has proven to be successful 82% of the time. This significantly reduces all of the dangers that can come from having a breech delivery or relying on a caesarean section at the last minute. The ICPA recommends that chiropractors apply the Webster Technique to pregnant women no less than eight months pregnant.

The ICPA also recommends that all pregnant women should take advantage of chiropractic care to promote pelvic balance, regardless of the baby’s position in the womb. As we explained above, high pelvic balance allows the baby to move into a position more ideal for delivery.

What now?

If you are unsure about whether chiropractic care is right for you and your pregnancy, be sure to see your regular doctor, as well as a chiropractor that he or she recommends. If your doctor is unaware of the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy, ask her to find out more so she can advise you as best as possible.

Katie Robinson is a former nurse and health blog writer.  Katie turns to a Kissimmee, Florida chiropractor for regular spinal adjustments.  She was extremely pleased with the treatment her doctor provided while pregnant; Katie attributes the much shorter labor of her second son to the chiropractic care she received during her pregnancy.

Related posts:

Treatment of Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

Know the Warning signs of Tubal Pregnancy

Diagnosis of Pregnancy

Purchase A Suitable Health Insurance Policy And Cover Your Pregnancy

Importance of Nutrition Before Pregnancy

Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

How Early Can You Take a Pregnancy Test?

What Problems May Arise During Pregnancy?

How to Treat Hemorrhoids During Pregnancy?

Baby Grows: Fetus Size During First Semester of Pregnancy

Pictures like these helped British researchers gauge people's attitudes about weight.

Courtesy of Martin Tovee i

Pictures like these helped British researchers gauge people's attitudes about weight.

Courtesy of Martin Tovee

With most Americans fat or fatter, you'd think we'd be lightening up on the anti-fat attitudes.

Alas, no. Even doctors often think their overweight patients are weak-willed.

But changing negative attitudes about body size might be as simple as changing what you see. When women in England were shown photos of plus-sized women in neutral gray leotards, they became more tolerant.

When the women were shown photos of anorexic women, attitudes became more positive there, too. "Showing them thin bodies makes them like thin bodies, more, and showing them fat bodies makes them like fat bodies more," says Lynda Boothroyd, a psychology researcher at Durham University in England, who led the study. She calls it a "visual diet," changing what your eyes eat.

Why the unflattering leotards? Boothroyd and her colleagues wanted neutral clothing to sever the link between thinness and success that's so strong in Western cultures.

The researchers also tested photos of women in designer clothes and found the test subjects thought better of the well-dressed women, fat or thin. The glamour effect existed independent of the change in perception caused by repeatedly seeing the leotard-clad women.

All the study participants still preferred thinner-than-average bodies, but their preferences did move up or down depending on what they saw.

Perhaps that's why we're so obsessed with thinness, even if most of the people around us are found to be larger. We're constantly fed images of very slim actresses and models, all beautifully dressed. "All you have to do is watch five minutes of TV and you see more thin bodies than you would all day on the street," Boothroyd says.

There's no question that culture affects not just attitudes about weight, but body size itself. When Zulu women move from South Africa to England, their body size preference shifted from the full figures favored in Africa to a midway point between that and the thin ideal in the UK, Boothroyd says. Her work is published in the current issue of the online journal PLOS One.

But that shift clearly hasn't happened in doctors. Another study in the same issue of PLOS One found that doctors are strongly biased against fat people, even if they don't think they are.

This comes from a fascinating crowdsourced study, Project Implicit, which is designed to tease out attitudes that people are unwilling or unable to articulate. Led by psychologist Brian Nosek, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, the project offers dozens of free online tests that let you test your implicit biases â€" and contribute to science, too.

Participants are shown photos of faces, and are tested on their speed to identify them and associate them with positive and negative words.

More than 359,000 people took the project's "Weight Implicit Association Test" online, and about 2,300 said they were doctors. Even though physicians are constantly reminded about their need to work with patients to maintain a healthy weight, they had the same strong anti-fat bias as the public.

"We don't know if this affects how doctors behave clinically," says Janice Sabin, an assistant professor in bioinformatics and medical education that the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the new study.

But other studies have shown that many doctors view obese patients as unattractive and difficult to work with, and that obese women get inappropriate comments about their weight from their doctor.

Given that, maybe it's time to show doctors some plus-sized photos â€" of hefty physicians.

Regular visits to the chiropractor help promote and maintain spinal health, including the nerves and bones. Chiropractors adjust and realign joints that are out of place due to accidents or uncomfortable lifestyles. One uncomfortable lifestyle that can benefit from chiropractic care is pregnancy.

What are the risks?

If you are pregnant and concerned about the risks of chiropractic care, then you can rest easy knowing that the risks are few. In fact, most chiropractors are trained to work with pregnant women. They are aware of special needs required of a pregnant woman’s body, and they know how to work with those needs.

Some chiropractors even have special tables for pregnant women that reduce unnecessary and uncomfortable pressure.

What are the benefits?

As you are surely aware, your body endures significant changes when you are pregnant. Of the changes that your body goes through, the following are a few that can lead to a joint or spinal injury: changes in your pelvis, changes to your posture, and a protruding abdomen coupled with a larger back curve.

Chiropractors working with pregnant women seek to create balance and alignment in the pelvis. If pelvic balance is off, the baby may have less space to grow in. This restricted space is known as intrauterine constraint. This also makes it hard for the baby to find the best position before delivery.

Chiropractic care can help a pregnant woman have a healthier pregnancy and less severe nausea symptoms. It can also decrease delivery and labor time, as well as pain in the neck, back, and related joints.

Another amazing benefit of chiropractic care during pregnancy is its ability to prevent a C-section.

What does chiropractic care have to do with breech deliveries?

The Webster Technique is a technique used by chiropractors to create a balance in the pelvis and relieve stress in the uterus and supporting ligaments of a pregnant woman. Larry Webster, the founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, created this technique to promote ideal positioning of the fetus.

The Webster Technique, when applied to babies in breech position, has proven to be successful 82% of the time. This significantly reduces all of the dangers that can come from having a breech delivery or relying on a caesarean section at the last minute. The ICPA recommends that chiropractors apply the Webster Technique to pregnant women no less than eight months pregnant.

The ICPA also recommends that all pregnant women should take advantage of chiropractic care to promote pelvic balance, regardless of the baby’s position in the womb. As we explained above, high pelvic balance allows the baby to move into a position more ideal for delivery.

What now?

If you are unsure about whether chiropractic care is right for you and your pregnancy, be sure to see your regular doctor, as well as a chiropractor that he or she recommends. If your doctor is unaware of the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy, ask her to find out more so she can advise you as best as possible.

Katie Robinson is a former nurse and health blog writer.  Katie turns to a Kissimmee, Florida chiropractor for regular spinal adjustments.  She was extremely pleased with the treatment her doctor provided while pregnant; Katie attributes the much shorter labor of her second son to the chiropractic care she received during her pregnancy.

Related posts:

Treatment of Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

Know the Warning signs of Tubal Pregnancy

Diagnosis of Pregnancy

Purchase A Suitable Health Insurance Policy And Cover Your Pregnancy

Importance of Nutrition Before Pregnancy

Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

How Early Can You Take a Pregnancy Test?

What Problems May Arise During Pregnancy?

How to Treat Hemorrhoids During Pregnancy?

Baby Grows: Fetus Size During First Semester of Pregnancy

The news for patients who had injections of fungus-tainted steroids just keeps getting worse.

Now doctors are reporting two new spinal conditions among patients successfully treated for meningitis, a brain infection. One involves epidural abscesses, pus-filled sacs of fluid around the spine. A more serious condition is arachnoiditis â€" inflammation of tissue around the nerve roots coming out of the spine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't yet have a good handle on the number of these new complications, but there appear to be dozens so far.

Most have been in Michiganand Tennessee, which together make up nearly half the 404 cases of fungal infections reported so far in 19 states. (Twenty-nine people have died.) But cases of spinal infections have recently been seen in Virginia and Indiana, too.

"What we're hearing is that patients have been treated for meningitis and improved. Then they returned with these complications," Dr. Tom Chiller of CDC told Shots. "We don't have a good understanding of why certain people are developing these conditions."

He says patients with these complications don't seem to be older or more immunocompromised, "so we're not able to predict who's going to develop this."

The New York Times reports that about a third of 53 meningitis patients treated at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., have developed epidural abscesses. Another 34 have had abscesses without prior meningitis.

Chiller says the situation is "an unprecedented event," so doctors and public health experts are learning how to cope with it as they go along.

The new problem affects different layers of tissue that encase the spine. The dura mater is the outermost layer. Next is the arachnoid, a delicate cobwebby membrane that carries much of the spinal cord's blood supply.

Of the two complications, epidural (meaning on or around the dura) abscesses are less dangerous and more amenable to treatment. If anti-fungal medication doesn't do the job, neurosurgeons can often debride or remove the infected tissue and drain the infection.

Arachnoiditis is much more difficult to treat. Delicate nerve roots are caught in a thick, fibrous material that compresses them, causing intense pain, numbness, paralysis, pins-and-needles sensations, sometimes loss of bladder control and other neurologic symptoms.

Surgery is not usually an option, if ever, and the success of drug therapy is uncertain. Chiller says experts don't think it's a good idea to infuse anti-fungal drugs directly into the spine because they can increase inflammation and make matters worse.

Patients who develop these spinal complications may need to be on anti-fungal medication, often intravenously, for six months to a year, Chiller says.

The trickiest problem for doctors is diagnosing epidural abscesses or arachnoiditis, because many of the patients exposed to the mold-contaminated steroids already have chronic back pain.

"That's why they were getting injections, right?" Chiller says. "So the real challenge is identifying whether the pain over the site of injection or where they have chronic pain is worse ... or is different."

There's no telling how many patients will develop the spinal complications. One indication is that so far most of the known victims previously had meningitis.

That appears to limit the risk largely to the 400 or so reported meningitis cases â€" and the others expected to be discovered in the coming weeks.

"We think the last of these products were given around Oct. 1, so we're already a month out from that," Chiller says. "We've passed the peak of the mean incubation period â€" the period between injection and onset of symptoms â€" which is around 20 days."

Other meningitis cases will be reported, he says, but they should begin to taper off quickly this month.

An estimated 14,000 Americans received injections of the mold-contaminated steroid made by New EnglandCompoundingCenter, a Massachusettscompany that has been shut down. Federal inspectors have found fungal and bacteria contamination in many samples of drugs made by theMassachusetts company.

A federal criminal investigation is under way, and a number of civil suits have already been filed.

Regular visits to the chiropractor help promote and maintain spinal health, including the nerves and bones. Chiropractors adjust and realign joints that are out of place due to accidents or uncomfortable lifestyles. One uncomfortable lifestyle that can benefit from chiropractic care is pregnancy.

What are the risks?

If you are pregnant and concerned about the risks of chiropractic care, then you can rest easy knowing that the risks are few. In fact, most chiropractors are trained to work with pregnant women. They are aware of special needs required of a pregnant woman’s body, and they know how to work with those needs.

Some chiropractors even have special tables for pregnant women that reduce unnecessary and uncomfortable pressure.

What are the benefits?

As you are surely aware, your body endures significant changes when you are pregnant. Of the changes that your body goes through, the following are a few that can lead to a joint or spinal injury: changes in your pelvis, changes to your posture, and a protruding abdomen coupled with a larger back curve.

Chiropractors working with pregnant women seek to create balance and alignment in the pelvis. If pelvic balance is off, the baby may have less space to grow in. This restricted space is known as intrauterine constraint. This also makes it hard for the baby to find the best position before delivery.

Chiropractic care can help a pregnant woman have a healthier pregnancy and less severe nausea symptoms. It can also decrease delivery and labor time, as well as pain in the neck, back, and related joints.

Another amazing benefit of chiropractic care during pregnancy is its ability to prevent a C-section.

What does chiropractic care have to do with breech deliveries?

The Webster Technique is a technique used by chiropractors to create a balance in the pelvis and relieve stress in the uterus and supporting ligaments of a pregnant woman. Larry Webster, the founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, created this technique to promote ideal positioning of the fetus.

The Webster Technique, when applied to babies in breech position, has proven to be successful 82% of the time. This significantly reduces all of the dangers that can come from having a breech delivery or relying on a caesarean section at the last minute. The ICPA recommends that chiropractors apply the Webster Technique to pregnant women no less than eight months pregnant.

The ICPA also recommends that all pregnant women should take advantage of chiropractic care to promote pelvic balance, regardless of the baby’s position in the womb. As we explained above, high pelvic balance allows the baby to move into a position more ideal for delivery.

What now?

If you are unsure about whether chiropractic care is right for you and your pregnancy, be sure to see your regular doctor, as well as a chiropractor that he or she recommends. If your doctor is unaware of the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy, ask her to find out more so she can advise you as best as possible.

Katie Robinson is a former nurse and health blog writer.  Katie turns to a Kissimmee, Florida chiropractor for regular spinal adjustments.  She was extremely pleased with the treatment her doctor provided while pregnant; Katie attributes the much shorter labor of her second son to the chiropractic care she received during her pregnancy.

Related posts:

Treatment of Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

Know the Warning signs of Tubal Pregnancy

Diagnosis of Pregnancy

Purchase A Suitable Health Insurance Policy And Cover Your Pregnancy

Importance of Nutrition Before Pregnancy

Herpes Zoster during Pregnancy

How Early Can You Take a Pregnancy Test?

What Problems May Arise During Pregnancy?

How to Treat Hemorrhoids During Pregnancy?

Baby Grows: Fetus Size During First Semester of Pregnancy

The news for patients who had injections of fungus-tainted steroids just keeps getting worse.

Now doctors are reporting two new spinal conditions among patients successfully treated for meningitis, a brain infection. One involves epidural abscesses, pus-filled sacs of fluid around the spine. A more serious condition is arachnoiditis â€" inflammation of tissue around the nerve roots coming out of the spine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't yet have a good handle on the number of these new complications, but there appear to be dozens so far.

Most have been in Michiganand Tennessee, which together make up nearly half the 404 cases of fungal infections reported so far in 19 states. (Twenty-nine people have died.) But cases of spinal infections have recently been seen in Virginia and Indiana, too.

"What we're hearing is that patients have been treated for meningitis and improved. Then they returned with these complications," Dr. Tom Chiller of CDC told Shots. "We don't have a good understanding of why certain people are developing these conditions."

He says patients with these complications don't seem to be older or more immunocompromised, "so we're not able to predict who's going to develop this."

The New York Times reports that about a third of 53 meningitis patients treated at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., have developed epidural abscesses. Another 34 have had abscesses without prior meningitis.

Chiller says the situation is "an unprecedented event," so doctors and public health experts are learning how to cope with it as they go along.

The new problem affects different layers of tissue that encase the spine. The dura mater is the outermost layer. Next is the arachnoid, a delicate cobwebby membrane that carries much of the spinal cord's blood supply.

Of the two complications, epidural (meaning on or around the dura) abscesses are less dangerous and more amenable to treatment. If anti-fungal medication doesn't do the job, neurosurgeons can often debride or remove the infected tissue and drain the infection.

Arachnoiditis is much more difficult to treat. Delicate nerve roots are caught in a thick, fibrous material that compresses them, causing intense pain, numbness, paralysis, pins-and-needles sensations, sometimes loss of bladder control and other neurologic symptoms.

Surgery is not usually an option, if ever, and the success of drug therapy is uncertain. Chiller says experts don't think it's a good idea to infuse anti-fungal drugs directly into the spine because they can increase inflammation and make matters worse.

Patients who develop these spinal complications may need to be on anti-fungal medication, often intravenously, for six months to a year, Chiller says.

The trickiest problem for doctors is diagnosing epidural abscesses or arachnoiditis, because many of the patients exposed to the mold-contaminated steroids already have chronic back pain.

"That's why they were getting injections, right?" Chiller says. "So the real challenge is identifying whether the pain over the site of injection or where they have chronic pain is worse ... or is different."

There's no telling how many patients will develop the spinal complications. One indication is that so far most of the known victims previously had meningitis.

That appears to limit the risk largely to the 400 or so reported meningitis cases â€" and the others expected to be discovered in the coming weeks.

"We think the last of these products were given around Oct. 1, so we're already a month out from that," Chiller says. "We've passed the peak of the mean incubation period â€" the period between injection and onset of symptoms â€" which is around 20 days."

Other meningitis cases will be reported, he says, but they should begin to taper off quickly this month.

An estimated 14,000 Americans received injections of the mold-contaminated steroid made by New EnglandCompoundingCenter, a Massachusettscompany that has been shut down. Federal inspectors have found fungal and bacteria contamination in many samples of drugs made by theMassachusetts company.

A federal criminal investigation is under way, and a number of civil suits have already been filed.

Regular visits to the chiropractor help promote and maintain spinal health, including the nerves and bones. Chiropractors adjust and realign joints that are out of place due to accidents or uncomfortable lifestyles. One uncomfortable lifestyle that can benefit from chiropractic care is pregnancy.

What are the risks?

If you are pregnant and concerned about the risks of chiropractic care, then you can rest easy knowing that the risks are few. In fact, most chiropractors are trained to work with pregnant women. They are aware of special needs required of a pregnant woman’s body, and they know how to work with those needs.

Some chiropractors even have special tables for pregnant women that reduce unnecessary and uncomfortable pressure.

What are the benefits?

As you are surely aware, your body endures significant changes when you are pregnant. Of the changes that your body goes through, the following are a few that can lead to a joint or spinal injury: changes in your pelvis, changes to your posture, and a protruding abdomen coupled with a larger back curve.

Chiropractors working with pregnant women seek to create balance and alignment in the pelvis. If pelvic balance is off, the baby may have less space to grow in. This restricted space is known as intrauterine constraint. This also makes it hard for the baby to find the best position before delivery.

Chiropractic care can help a pregnant woman have a healthier pregnancy and less severe nausea symptoms. It can also decrease delivery and labor time, as well as pain in the neck, back, and related joints.

Another amazing benefit of chiropractic care during pregnancy is its ability to prevent a C-section.

What does chiropractic care have to do with breech deliveries?

The Webster Technique is a technique used by chiropractors to create a balance in the pelvis and relieve stress in the uterus and supporting ligaments of a pregnant woman. Larry Webster, the founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, created this technique to promote ideal positioning of the fetus.

The Webster Technique, when applied to babies in breech position, has proven to be successful 82% of the time. This significantly reduces all of the dangers that can come from having a breech delivery or relying on a caesarean section at the last minute. The ICPA recommends that chiropractors apply the Webster Technique to pregnant women no less than eight months pregnant.

The ICPA also recommends that all pregnant women should take advantage of chiropractic care to promote pelvic balance, regardless of the baby’s position in the womb. As we explained above, high pelvic balance allows the baby to move into a position more ideal for delivery.

What now?

If you are unsure about whether chiropractic care is right for you and your pregnancy, be sure to see your regular doctor, as well as a chiropractor that he or she recommends. If your doctor is unaware of the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy, ask her to find out more so she can advise you as best as possible.

Katie Robinson is a former nurse and health blog writer.  Katie turns to a Kissimmee, Florida chiropractor for regular spinal adjustments.  She was extremely pleased with the treatment her doctor provided while pregnant; Katie attributes the much shorter labor of her second son to the chiropractic care she received during her pregnancy.

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Ambulances line up outside New York University Langone Medical Center to evacuate patients after backup generators failed when Sandy knocked out power in Lower Manhattan Monday.

John Minchillo/AP i

Ambulances line up outside New York University Langone Medical Center to evacuate patients after backup generators failed when Sandy knocked out power in Lower Manhattan Monday.

John Minchillo/AP

When a storm hits, people count on the local hospital to be ready â€" no matter what.

But when Sandy slammed into New York City, one of Manhattan's biggest hospitals buckled. After the power went out in Lower Manhattan, New York University Langone Medical Center's backup power generators failed, too.

That led to the evacuation of more than 200 patients to other hospitals, including Mount Sinai Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Patients were still being moved Tuesday morning, the Huffington Post reported.

"I don't know why we waited so long to evacuate," an unidentified NYU nurse told the Huffington Post. "Everything was okay in terms of people working together, and us having enough staff to complete the transfer. But it seems like we waited too long, especially with all the news we had about the storm."

At a media briefing Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the evacuation of patients from NYU was "virtually complete." Two other hospitals â€" NYU-Downtown and the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Hospital â€" had been closed, he said. Coney Island Hospital had also been evacuated. Bellevue Hospital was still open, operating on backup power, he said.

"We've had significant challenges at many of our hospitals and health care facilities," he said. "Fortunately, as of now there has been no storm related fatalities at any them."

Here's a Storify roundup of some of the coverage.

Human embryos under a microscope at an IVF clinic in La Jolla, Calif.

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images i

Human embryos under a microscope at an IVF clinic in La Jolla, Calif.

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Doctors who specialize in treating infertility are making a big change in their position on a controversial practice. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has concluded that freezing women's eggs to treat infertility should no longer be considered "experimental."

The group plans to officially announce the change on Monday.

More and more women are using frozen eggs to try to have babies. Some older women use frozen eggs donated by younger women. Some younger women freeze their own eggs while they finish school, focus on their jobs or keep looking for the right guy.

That's why Jennifer Anderson did it last year.

"I really wanted to have the traditional experience of falling in love and getting married, and then having children. But I know every person's life path is different, and it hadn't worked out for me yet to fall in love and get married," says Anderson, 40, a consultant who lives in Arlington, Va.

So Anderson went to the Shady Grove Fertility clinic in Rockville, Md., to freeze some of her eggs.

"I guess I feel like I've stopped the biological clock, to some degree. That this gives me a few more years to find what it is that I'm really looking for," she says.

The practice of freezing eggs has long been controversial. Many experts argue there's too little data on how well it works or how safe it is. So they've mostly recommended it only for women whose fertility is at risk because they are undergoing chemotherapy or have some other medical problem.

But Eric Widra, an infertility doctor at Shady Grove, says that's changed. He chaired the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) Practice Committee, which prepared the report. It was the first time the group had reviewed egg-freezing since 2008.

"We no longer think that it should be covered under the experimental label. Sufficient studies have been done to warrant considering this a clinically available technique," Widra says.

The report reviewed nearly 1,000 published studies. Egg freezing and thawing techniques have gotten a lot better, he says.

"The available data for egg freezing indicate that it is safe and effective and has a good probability of success," he says.

So far, babies born from frozen eggs seem to be healthy. And a woman in her 40s or 50s seems to have about the same chances of getting pregnant as a woman in her 20s or 30s if she uses frozen eggs from a donor that young. "We think that is a reasonable expectation going forward," he says.

But the new policy, which is being published in the society's journal Fertility and Sterility, warns clinics against creating "false hope" by aggressively marketing egg freezing to women as a guaranteed way of stopping their biological clocks. There still haven't been enough studies to know for sure how well long-term egg freezing works, according to the assessment.

"Women who are considering doing this for elective reasons should understand that they are really at the leading edge of using this technology," Widra says, "and we're not yet certain that it will provide the promise that we hope it does."

That said, Widra says he thinks it's probably going to work for women seeking to postpone childbearing. "How good an assumption that is, time will tell. But at this point, we think the available data are strong enough to say it's reasonable to do," he says.

But the fertility society's shift is raising a lot of concerns. Some women's health advocates say there's still not enough data to really know how often frozen eggs actually produce healthy babies. The society's assessment was based on pregnancies, not healthy births, noted Amy Allina of the National Women's Health Network.

In addition, the hormone injections needed to get eggs to freeze can, in rare cases, cause potentially life-threatening complications in women.

"We're talking about a procedure that has some known risks and unknown benefits," Allina says.

There's also the worry that the policy shift will fuel the creation of frozen egg banks. Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society says that could lead to the exploitation of poor, younger women.

"It's pretty evident that there's usually a difference in socio-economic status between the women who are being asked to sell their eggs or rent their wombs, and the women who are using it," she says.

Some argue that society should make it easier for women to have kids when they are younger so they don't have to resort to technological fixes.

"It's an example of using technology to solve social problems," says Adrienne Asch, a bioethicist at Yeshiva University.

As for Anderson, she's just glad she had the option.

"To be honest, it just, it really took a lot of the anxiety away from my personal life, I guess, and my efforts to date and to find the right person," she says.

The fertility society plans to continue to collect data about the safety and effectiveness of egg freezing. In the meantime, Widra says the association hopes the new policy will encourage more insurance policies to pay for egg freezing.

Human embryos under a microscope at an IVF clinic in La Jolla, Calif.

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images i

Human embryos under a microscope at an IVF clinic in La Jolla, Calif.

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Doctors who specialize in treating infertility are making a big change in their position on a controversial practice. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) has concluded that freezing women's eggs to treat infertility should no longer be considered "experimental."

The group plans to officially announce the change on Monday.

More and more women are using frozen eggs to try to have babies. Some older women use frozen eggs donated by younger women. Some younger women freeze their own eggs while they finish school, focus on their jobs or keep looking for the right guy.

That's why Jennifer Anderson did it last year.

"I really wanted to have the traditional experience of falling in love and getting married, and then having children. But I know every person's life path is different, and it hadn't worked out for me yet to fall in love and get married," says Anderson, 40, a consultant who lives in Arlington, Va.

So Anderson went to the Shady Grove Fertility clinic in Rockville, Md., to freeze some of her eggs.

"I guess I feel like I've stopped the biological clock, to some degree. That this gives me a few more years to find what it is that I'm really looking for," she says.

The practice of freezing eggs has long been controversial. Many experts argue there's too little data on how well it works or how safe it is. So they've mostly recommended it only for women whose fertility is at risk because they are undergoing chemotherapy or have some other medical problem.

But Eric Widra, an infertility doctor at Shady Grove, says that's changed. He chaired the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) Practice Committee, which prepared the report. It was the first time the group had reviewed egg-freezing since 2008.

"We no longer think that it should be covered under the experimental label. Sufficient studies have been done to warrant considering this a clinically available technique," Widra says.

The report reviewed nearly 1,000 published studies. Egg freezing and thawing techniques have gotten a lot better, he says.

"The available data for egg freezing indicate that it is safe and effective and has a good probability of success," he says.

So far, babies born from frozen eggs seem to be healthy. And a woman in her 40s or 50s seems to have about the same chances of getting pregnant as a woman in her 20s or 30s if she uses frozen eggs from a donor that young. "We think that is a reasonable expectation going forward," he says.

But the new policy, which is being published in the society's journal Fertility and Sterility, warns clinics against creating "false hope" by aggressively marketing egg freezing to women as a guaranteed way of stopping their biological clocks. There still haven't been enough studies to know for sure how well long-term egg freezing works, according to the assessment.

"Women who are considering doing this for elective reasons should understand that they are really at the leading edge of using this technology," Widra says, "and we're not yet certain that it will provide the promise that we hope it does."

That said, Widra says he thinks it's probably going to work for women seeking to postpone childbearing. "How good an assumption that is, time will tell. But at this point, we think the available data are strong enough to say it's reasonable to do," he says.

But the fertility society's shift is raising a lot of concerns. Some women's health advocates say there's still not enough data to really know how often frozen eggs actually produce healthy babies. The society's assessment was based on pregnancies, not healthy births, noted Amy Allina of the National Women's Health Network.

In addition, the hormone injections needed to get eggs to freeze can, in rare cases, cause potentially life-threatening complications in women.

"We're talking about a procedure that has some known risks and unknown benefits," Allina says.

There's also the worry that the policy shift will fuel the creation of frozen egg banks. Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society says that could lead to the exploitation of poor, younger women.

"It's pretty evident that there's usually a difference in socio-economic status between the women who are being asked to sell their eggs or rent their wombs, and the women who are using it," she says.

Some argue that society should make it easier for women to have kids when they are younger so they don't have to resort to technological fixes.

"It's an example of using technology to solve social problems," says Adrienne Asch, a bioethicist at Yeshiva University.

As for Anderson, she's just glad she had the option.

"To be honest, it just, it really took a lot of the anxiety away from my personal life, I guess, and my efforts to date and to find the right person," she says.

The fertility society plans to continue to collect data about the safety and effectiveness of egg freezing. In the meantime, Widra says the association hopes the new policy will encourage more insurance policies to pay for egg freezing.

Diabetes is such as disease, where what foods you eat and what foods you avoid can make a lot of difference in the outcome (control of blood sugar) of the disease. The main aim of management of diabetes is to control blood sugar level within normal limit and prevent complications from developing (which can be done only by keeping blood sugar under control). As eating right food and wrong food can make a lot of difference, it is more important to know what foods to avoid in diabetes than what foods to eat in diabetes.

Candy:

High sugar foods such as candy (sugar syrup, fructose syrup) lack nutritional qualities and contain only high calories in the form of simple carbohydrates. As it contains only carbohydrates and calories, it can increase blood sugar rapidly and also it can increase bodyweight, both of which have detrimental effects and can complicate diabetes. If you are fond of sugar and sweets, try to consume sweet foods with high quality complex carbohydrates such as fresh fruits. In diabetes eating fresh fruits such as apple, orange, berries, berries etc. is good, because these fruits contain lots of fibers (along with vitamins and minerals and other nutrients) and do not allow rapid digestion and absorption of complex carbohydrates and as a result do not cause rapid rise in blood sugar. Avoid candy and related foods, if you are diabetic for better control of blood sugar.

Fast foods:

French fries, potato chips and other fried foods should be avoided (potato has high glycemic index). They contain large amount of easily digestible carbohydrates which can cause tremendous rise in blood sugar rapidly. Fried foods are soaked in oil which is store house of calories and increase body weight as well along with increasing blood sugar. Obesity can complicate diabetes.

Bacon:

It contain high amount of saturated fats. Eating bacon may not cause rise in blood sugar but the saturated fats it contain can damage heart and cardiovascular system, raise cholesterol level and diabetics are already at high risk of cardiovascular diseases. To keep your heart healthy in diabetes, avoid bacon and other similar meat products.

Pancake, syrup and pastries:

These are loaded with simple carbohydrates (easy to digest and absorb) and cause tremendous rise in blood sugar very fast. Other than high calories (in the form of simple carbohydrates), these contain little else nutrients. These are made of refined flour, white flour, and sugar. Avoid these products and remain healthy and control blood sugar. These products should be avoided by normal healthy individuals too and not only by diabetics.

Raisins:

Although raisins and other dry fruits are better than candy/cookies, they should be avoided in diabetes. Because during process of drying (dehydration) the carbohydrate in raisins gets concentrated and when consumed can liberate high quantity of carbohydrate and raise blood sugar rapidly. The best alternative for raisins is fresh fruits.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related posts:

Seven Worst Foods to Avoid in Diabetes

What Cereals and Vegetables to Eat and Avoid in Diabetes?

Good and Bad Foods for Diabetes

Energy-dense Foods may Trigger Diabetes

The Ten Diabetes Super-foods

6 Tips to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

If You Have Diabetes, What Can You Drink?

Know about Diabetes

Eating Right to Control Diabetes

Diabetes and Eating Out

It's a troubling story authorities think will unfold over the next month or so. An untold number of Americans who got steroid injections in their spine to relieve back pain may end up with a rare fungal meningitis. The drug was contaminated with the spores of a common leaf mold â€" nobody knows how.

Dr. Lucille K. Georg/CDC

The head of an Aspergillus fungal organism, a common leaf mold that most people breathe in every day without getting sick.

So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded 35 cases of the fungal meningitis in six states: Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. Five patients have died.

The CDC conducted a joint media teleconference with the Food and Drug Administration Thursday, and has made the audio of the meeting available.

The potential problem is much bigger than the cases recorded so far. The contaminated drug, called methylprednilosone acetate, has been shipped to 75 hospitals and clinics in 23 states.

Three lots of the drug shipped out since July have been recalled. "Unfortunately, despite this current recall, we expect to see additional cases as this investigation unfolds," says Dr. Brad Park of the CDC.

 

More common types of meningitis, caused by bacteria and viruses, can have sudden and dramatic symptoms. But Park says the fungal form may be subtle at the beginning. It can cause headaches, nausea, stiff neck and stroke-like symptoms, such as difficulty finding words, numbness or weakness.

Patients and doctors who have had spinal injections of steroids recently should be alert to these symptoms. "It is possible that if patients are identified soon and started on appropriate anti-fungal therapy," Park says, "some of the unfortunate consequences may be averted."

The incubation period of fungal meningitis may be as long as four weeks. So cases could emerge over the next month or more, depending on how fast recalled vials are removed from the supply stream.

States that have received shipments of the contaminated lots of methylprednilosone:

California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas and West Virginia.

Surprisingly, the FDA says it has no idea how many doses of the tainted medicine have been shipped out. "We can't tell you when we'll find out," the FDA's Ilisa Bernstein said in response to a question from Shots.

The contaminated drug came from New England Compounding Center, a company based in Framingham, Mass., that abruptly suspended operations this week, took its main website offline and stopped answering phone calls.

FDA inspectors identified "fungal material" in a vial of methylprednisolone this week. And even though none of the company's other products has been implicated so far, Bernstein says the FDA urges doctors, clinics and hospitals to stop using any NECC medicine.

"Given the severity of the illnesses we have seen so far," Bernstein told reporters in the FDA-CDC teleconference, "we believe these precautionary measures are warranted to protect the public."

Compounding pharmacies, which provide up to 10 percent of U.S. pharmaceuticals, are more loosely regulated than traditional drug companies. As is common, NECC is licensed by a state pharmacy board, which doesn't have the staff to conduct regular inspections. The company has been cited for contamination problems in the past, as the Boston Globe reports.

The first case of drug-related fungal meningitis was identified last month at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

"Dr. April Pettit, one of our infectious disease colleagues, was caring for a patient with a troublesome form of meningitis," Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt told Shots.

The male patient, in his 50s, wasn't responding to conventional treatment. So Pettit sent a sample of his spinal fluid to the lab.

"When the microbiology laboratory informed her that Aspergillus had been recovered from culture, this was a stunning and totally unexpected result," says Schaffner, an infectious disease expert.

Aspergillus is the name of a common leaf mold. Most people breathe in its spores every day without being sick. People don't get Apergillus infections unless they have severely compromised immunity.

Pettit learned the man had gotten a spinal injection a couple of weeks earlier. She put two and two together and notified state health authorities. They've identified 18 Tennessee patients infected by the contaminated medicine so far. Three have died, including Pettit's patient.

Schaffner says fungal meningitis requires weeks and months of intravenous medicine. Survivors may end up with permanent neurologic damage.

There's one lucky aspect of this disaster: Unlike more common forms of meningitis, this type can't be passed from person to person.

Diabetes is such as disease, where what foods you eat and what foods you avoid can make a lot of difference in the outcome (control of blood sugar) of the disease. The main aim of management of diabetes is to control blood sugar level within normal limit and prevent complications from developing (which can be done only by keeping blood sugar under control). As eating right food and wrong food can make a lot of difference, it is more important to know what foods to avoid in diabetes than what foods to eat in diabetes.

Candy:

High sugar foods such as candy (sugar syrup, fructose syrup) lack nutritional qualities and contain only high calories in the form of simple carbohydrates. As it contains only carbohydrates and calories, it can increase blood sugar rapidly and also it can increase bodyweight, both of which have detrimental effects and can complicate diabetes. If you are fond of sugar and sweets, try to consume sweet foods with high quality complex carbohydrates such as fresh fruits. In diabetes eating fresh fruits such as apple, orange, berries, berries etc. is good, because these fruits contain lots of fibers (along with vitamins and minerals and other nutrients) and do not allow rapid digestion and absorption of complex carbohydrates and as a result do not cause rapid rise in blood sugar. Avoid candy and related foods, if you are diabetic for better control of blood sugar.

Fast foods:

French fries, potato chips and other fried foods should be avoided (potato has high glycemic index). They contain large amount of easily digestible carbohydrates which can cause tremendous rise in blood sugar rapidly. Fried foods are soaked in oil which is store house of calories and increase body weight as well along with increasing blood sugar. Obesity can complicate diabetes.

Bacon:

It contain high amount of saturated fats. Eating bacon may not cause rise in blood sugar but the saturated fats it contain can damage heart and cardiovascular system, raise cholesterol level and diabetics are already at high risk of cardiovascular diseases. To keep your heart healthy in diabetes, avoid bacon and other similar meat products.

Pancake, syrup and pastries:

These are loaded with simple carbohydrates (easy to digest and absorb) and cause tremendous rise in blood sugar very fast. Other than high calories (in the form of simple carbohydrates), these contain little else nutrients. These are made of refined flour, white flour, and sugar. Avoid these products and remain healthy and control blood sugar. These products should be avoided by normal healthy individuals too and not only by diabetics.

Raisins:

Although raisins and other dry fruits are better than candy/cookies, they should be avoided in diabetes. Because during process of drying (dehydration) the carbohydrate in raisins gets concentrated and when consumed can liberate high quantity of carbohydrate and raise blood sugar rapidly. The best alternative for raisins is fresh fruits.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Related posts:

Seven Worst Foods to Avoid in Diabetes

What Cereals and Vegetables to Eat and Avoid in Diabetes?

Good and Bad Foods for Diabetes

Energy-dense Foods may Trigger Diabetes

The Ten Diabetes Super-foods

6 Tips to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

If You Have Diabetes, What Can You Drink?

Know about Diabetes

Eating Right to Control Diabetes

Diabetes and Eating Out

Eric Kayne for NPR

Sara Terry and her son, Christian, in Spring, Texas. After sequencing Christian's genome, doctors were able to diagnose him with a Noonan-like syndrome.

Sara Terry's first clue that something was wrong with her son, Christian, came just three weeks after he was born.

"We went to check on him, just like any parents go and check on their kids just to make sure they're breathing," says Terry, 34, of Spring, Texas. "And we found him in his crib, and he wasn't breathing. He was blue."

She and her husband were horrified. They rushed Christian to the hospital and learned he had several medical problems.

That terrifying night was the beginning of a long, frustrating odyssey. For the next six years, Sara Terry and her husband went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was behind Christian's strange constellation of problems: developmental delay, low muscle tone, sleep apnea and a heart murmur, among others.

The Terrys got every test every specialist could think of, but no one could answer the big question: What's wrong with Christian?

 

"With a child who goes undiagnosed, you don't know how to treat it, and you don't know maybe what their life expectancy is, or what you can expect from this child," Terry says. "Or how you could push them, or what you can do with them. So it can be very difficult. And you don't know if you're doing everything you can for them."

The Terrys finally ended up at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. A doctor there told them about something they'd never heard of: whole genome sequencing, which can test for every genetic syndrome that's known.

The Terrys agreed, and sent off their son's sample for testing â€" and waited.

Until recently, genetic tests only scanned small parts of someone's DNA, such as the parts carrying genes that can cause Huntington's or Alzheimer's or breast cancer.

Whole genome sequencing spells out the entire genetic code â€" all 3 billion letters.

"For those of us in the field, it is sort of a holy grail," says Arthur Beaudet, who chairs Baylor's genetics department. "We now have the ability to get very complete genetic information about individuals and interpret in the context of whatever problems they may have."

It wasn't all that long ago that it took hundreds of scientists years, and billions of dollars, to do this on just one genome.

But now, a few lab techs using high-speed sequencers can unravel anyone's DNA for just thousands of dollars, in weeks.

"To me, it's a spectacular advance," Beaudet says. "It changes everything, in the sense that we really begin to understand at an individual patient level exactly which gene is altered, and we can begin to think about ways to intervene."

So far, doctors are using sequencing mostly on two kinds of patients. The first are patients like Christian, with mysterious illnesses no one can seem to sort out.

"Any patient who has one of these rare diseases will tell you about the misery and the agony of this process, which is going from doctor to doctor, undergoing test after test after test, and getting equivocal answers to what's wrong with them or their child," says Leslie Biesecker of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

"This process can take months or years of a patient's life," says Biesecker. "And sometimes at the end of that odyssey you still don't have an answer. And it's a miserable process for patients to go through."

The second big group of patients getting sequenced includes cancer patients like Jamie Zweig. He's been fighting esophageal cancer for more than two years. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic sequenced his cancer to see if they could target treatment at the precise genetic mutations that caused his tumors.

They discovered that his cancer was vulnerable to a drug normally used to treat breast cancer.

"I feel much more on the track of beating this disease than being subject to the disease," Zweig says.

This is all very new, but it's becoming more and more common.

"Physicians now want to use sequence in the same way that they had used X-rays, MRI and CAT scan," says Jonathan Rothberg of Ion Torrent, which makes high-speed sequencers. "They want to use it as a normal part of the practice of treating cancer patients."

But there are lots of issues that need to be worked out before whole genome sequencing starts being used a lot, many experts say.

"We'll have to worry when you're sequencing a kid with an unknown syndrome and also checking the parents to see what he inherited from which of his parents," says Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University.

"That can be really medically useful, but we have to worry about: How accurate is the sequencing? How good is our interpretation? And how well are we conveying an accurate message to the patients?"

It's far from clear how often it will yield truly definitive, useful information. The danger is scary, but vague results will send patients down long, frightening dead ends filled with lots of tests and useless treatments that themselves could be dangerous and expensive.

Another fear: What if doctors stumble across something they weren't even looking for? After all, when a child is sequenced, it reveals a lot about their parents' genes, too.

So another question is: Should we even be looking for other stuff?

"A huge question in front of the genetics community right now is: If you do sequencing for one purpose, what is your obligation to look and to report on findings elsewhere in the genome?" says Robert Green, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

While the experts try to sort all that out, whole genome sequencing is helping to save lives, and providing more patients with answers they've been seeking â€" often for years.

Terry remembers the day doctors called to tell her the results of sequencing Christian.

"I was just kind of speechless. And I just kind of sat there for a little while thinking, 'Am I dreaming? Like, did I really just get a phone call?' We were just so happy to have a diagnosis and to know that they'd found what we had been searching for all these years," Terry says.

Doctors discovered Christian has something rare called a Noonan syndrome-like condition. Christian is now 6 years old. There's no miracle drug that will cure him.

But his mother says the diagnosis helps in lots of ways. Doctors know they can safely give him shots to help him grow better. The Terrys know he won't suddenly develop a fatal complication. And they now know that it's not something that's likely to affect any kids they might have in the future.

"This has made such a huge difference in our lives," she says. "I can't even tell you. We are just so relieved."

This is the third story in the "$1,000 Genome" series. Our online survey will close after the final story in the series airs on Oct. 5.

Diabetes is such as disease, where what foods you eat and what foods you avoid can make a lot of difference in the outcome (control of blood sugar) of the disease. The main aim of management of diabetes is to control blood sugar level within normal limit and prevent complications from developing (which can be done only by keeping blood sugar under control). As eating right food and wrong food can make a lot of difference, it is more important to know what foods to avoid in diabetes than what foods to eat in diabetes.

Candy:

High sugar foods such as candy (sugar syrup, fructose syrup) lack nutritional qualities and contain only high calories in the form of simple carbohydrates. As it contains only carbohydrates and calories, it can increase blood sugar rapidly and also it can increase bodyweight, both of which have detrimental effects and can complicate diabetes. If you are fond of sugar and sweets, try to consume sweet foods with high quality complex carbohydrates such as fresh fruits. In diabetes eating fresh fruits such as apple, orange, berries, berries etc. is good, because these fruits contain lots of fibers (along with vitamins and minerals and other nutrients) and do not allow rapid digestion and absorption of complex carbohydrates and as a result do not cause rapid rise in blood sugar. Avoid candy and related foods, if you are diabetic for better control of blood sugar.

Fast foods:

French fries, potato chips and other fried foods should be avoided (potato has high glycemic index). They contain large amount of easily digestible carbohydrates which can cause tremendous rise in blood sugar rapidly. Fried foods are soaked in oil which is store house of calories and increase body weight as well along with increasing blood sugar. Obesity can complicate diabetes.

Bacon:

It contain high amount of saturated fats. Eating bacon may not cause rise in blood sugar but the saturated fats it contain can damage heart and cardiovascular system, raise cholesterol level and diabetics are already at high risk of cardiovascular diseases. To keep your heart healthy in diabetes, avoid bacon and other similar meat products.

Pancake, syrup and pastries:

These are loaded with simple carbohydrates (easy to digest and absorb) and cause tremendous rise in blood sugar very fast. Other than high calories (in the form of simple carbohydrates), these contain little else nutrients. These are made of refined flour, white flour, and sugar. Avoid these products and remain healthy and control blood sugar. These products should be avoided by normal healthy individuals too and not only by diabetics.

Raisins:

Although raisins and other dry fruits are better than candy/cookies, they should be avoided in diabetes. Because during process of drying (dehydration) the carbohydrate in raisins gets concentrated and when consumed can liberate high quantity of carbohydrate and raise blood sugar rapidly. The best alternative for raisins is fresh fruits.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Courtesy of the Humane Society of the United States

Federally funded chimps at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana will retire to either a lab in Texas or a chimp sanctuary in Louisiana.

One hundred ten chimpanzees will retire from biomedical research, the National Institutes of Health announced today. The move comes as some groups are pushing for a ban on all medical chimp research.

The NIH has been reviewing its chimp research since December. That's when a report from the Institute of Medicine said that there was almost no scientific need for doing biomedical research on chimps.

According to the report, about 1,000 chimps are available for research in the U.S. â€" roughly half are owned by the government. Now, the NIH says its chimps at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana will be moving. And starting next August, the facility won't receive any more NIH funds.

"This is a significant step in winding down NIH's investment in chimpanzee research based on the way science has evolved and our great sensitivity to the special nature of these remarkable animals, our closest relatives," NIH Director Francis Collins told The Washington Post.

 

Aaron Martin, communications director at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, which maintains NIRC, says that the facility will continue to house roughly 240 privately owned chimps.

Ten chimps will go to a federally supported sanctuary called Chimp Haven, which will then be at or near full occupancy. The others will go to Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, which has the facilities to care for them â€" but the chimps will not be used for biomedical studies.

Animal advocacy groups are pleased, to say the least.

"NIH's announcement is a significant step forward in our goal toward ending invasive experiments on chimpanzees and facilitating the move of the current population of chimps in laboratories to reputable sanctuaries," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, in a statement. The HSUS and similar groups are pushing a bill currently before Congress that would gradually phase out invasive chimp research altogether.

Maintaining fresh breath is an important part of overall good hygiene. Sometimes a person can have bad breath without even realizing it. Therefore, finding natural ways to ensure that your breath smells fresh and your teeth remain healthy can be a smart precaution. Everyone knows that flossing and brushing their teeth is the first step to good oral health. Many people do not realize, however, that flossing and brushing alone is often not enough to maintain fresh-smelling breath. Rinsing with mouthwash often merely masks the problem. Fortunately, there are other ways to produce fresh smelling breath naturally. If your doctor has ruled out any serious health problems that can cause bad breath, then using natural remedies could be the perfect solution.

One of the easiest ways to make sure that you have fresh breath is simply to brush your tongue. The bacteria and germs that cause bad breath love to cling to your tongue. This can give you less than a pleasant smell when smiling or speaking. Simply taking the time to brush your tongue after your other oral care can have a significant impact on your bad breath problem.

Chewing on parsley can help freshen your breath. Parsley contains natural chlorophyll that will help to prevent bad breath in the first place. Mint leaves can also be chewed, or you can make them into tea. Mint also contains chlorophyll and has a distinctive, pleasant odor that can help your mouth feel as good as it smells. It is often found as a garnish on many restaurant dishes, so make sure you take advantage of this natural breath freshener when you dine out. Lemons are also helpful for taming bad breath; they, too, are frequently used as garnishes in drinks and on entree dishes.

If you are a smoker, the solution to your bad breath is simple: quit. Extremely bad breath is just one item on a long list of unpleasant consequences of smoking. Eating garlic, especially in large amounts, can also be a common cause of bad breath. Garlic, unlike smoking, is very beneficial to your health, however, so finding a way to naturally deal with garlic breath is a good idea. Some studies have shown that the fat content in milk can help neutralize garlic. Chewing on coffee beans and then spitting them out has proven beneficial also. If you love garlic, you may also find that chewing on anise, fennel or drops of pure peppermint oil can all help with your offensive breath.

A common root cause of bad breath is having a dry mouth. Many people sleep with their mouths open, drying their mouths out and aggravating terrible morning breath. Some medications also cause dry mouth. Drinking plenty of water and chewing sugarless gum can help with this problem. Chewing small pieces of lemon can also help by stimulating saliva production.

Keeping your breath always fresh naturally is completely possible using these simple tips, especially when they are combined with good oral hygiene. After using them, you can be confident that every time you speak or smile, your breath will be pleasant.

Author Bio:
Guest post contributed by Robert Anders, on behalf of RockCenter Orthodontists. Robert is an experienced dental technician and in his spare time he enjoys passing on helpful dental tips.

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Enlarge iStockphoto

Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors.

iStockphoto

Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors.

In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations â€" specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach.

The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal, who in 1964, did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco.

The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, and so Rosenthal took a normal I.Q. test and dressed it up as a different test.

"It was a standardized I.Q. Test," he says, "Flanagan's Test of General Ability, but the cover we put on it, we had printed on every test booklet, said 'Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition.'"

Rosenthal told the teachers that this very special test from Harvard had the very special ability to predict which kids were about to be very special â€" that is, which kids were about to experience a dramatic growth in their I.Q.

After the kids took the test, he then chose from every class several children totally at random. There was nothing at all to distinguish these kids from the other kids, but he told their teachers that the test predicted the kids were on the verge of an intense intellectual bloom.

As he followed the children over the next two years, Rosenthal discovered that the teachers' expectations of these kids really did affect the students. "If teachers had been led to expect greater gains in I.Q., then increasingly, those kids gained more I.Q.," he says.

But just how do expectations influence I.Q.?

 

As Rosenthal did more research, he found that expectations effect teachers' moment-to-moment interactions with the children they teach in a thousand almost invisible ways. Teachers give the students that they expect to succeed more time to answer questions, more specific feedback, and more approval: They consistently touch, nod and smile at those kids more.

Researcher Robert Pianta offered these suggestions for teachers who want to change their behavior toward problem students:

Watch how each student interacts. How do they prefer to engage? What do they seem to like to do? Observe so you can understand all they are capable of.

Listen. Try to understand what motivates them, what their goals are and how they view you, their classmates and the activities you assign them.

Engage. Talk with students about their individual interests. Don't offer advice or opinions â€" just listen.

Experiment: Change how you react to challenging behaviors. Rather than responding quickly in the moment, take a breath. Realize that their behavior might just be a way of reaching out to you.

Meet: Each week, spend time with students outside of your role as "teacher." Let the students choose a game or other nonacademic activity they'd like to do with you. Your job is to NOT teach but watch, listen, and narrate what you see, focusing on students' interests and what they do well. This type of activity is really important for students with whom you often feel in conflict or who you avoid.

Reach out: Know what your students like to do outside of school. Make it a project for them to tell you about it using some medium in which they feel comfortable: music, video, writing, etc. Find both individual and group time for them to share this with you. Watch and listen to how skilled, motivated and interested they can be. Now think about school through their eyes.

Reflect: Think back on your own best and worst teachers, bosses or supervisors. List five words for each that describe how you felt in your interactions with them. How did the best and the worst make you feel? What specifically did they do or say that made you feel that way? Now think about how your students would describe you. Jot down how they might describe you and why. How do your expectations or beliefs shape how they look at you? Are there parallels in your beliefs and their responses to you?

"It's not magic, it's not mental telepathy," Rosenthal says. "It's very likely these thousands of different ways of treating people in small ways every day."

So since expectations can change the performance of kids, how do we get teachers to have the right expectations? Is it possible to change bad expectations? That was the question that brought me to the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, where I met Robert Pianta.

Pianta, dean of the Curry School, has studied teachers for years, and one of the first things he told me when we sat down together was that it is truly hard for teachers to control their expectations.

"It's really tough for anybody to police their own beliefs," he said. "But think about being in a classroom with 25 kids! The demands on their thinking are so great!"

Still, people have tried. The traditional way, Pianta says, has been to sit teachers down and try to change their expectations through talking to them.

"For the most part, we've tried to convince them that the beliefs they have are wrong," he says. "And we've done most of that convincing using information."

But Pianta has a different idea of how to go about changing teachers' expectations. He says it's not effective to try to change their thoughts; the key is to train teachers in an entirely new set of behaviors.

For years, Pianta and his colleagues at the Curry School have been collecting videotapes of teachers teaching. By analyzing these videos in minute ways, they've developed a good idea of which teaching behaviors are most effective. They can also see, Pianta tells me, how teacher expectations affect both their behaviors and classroom dynamics.

Pianta gives one very specific example: the belief that boys are disruptive and need to be managed.

"Say I'm a teacher and I ask a question in class, and a boy jumps up, sort of vociferously ... 'I know the answer! I know the answer! I know the answer!" Pianta says.

"If I believe boys are disruptive and my job is control the classroom, then I'm going to respond with, 'Johnny! You're out of line here! We need you to sit down right now.'"

This, Pianta says, will likely make the boy frustrated and emotionally disengaged. He will then be likely to escalate his behavior, which will simply confirm the teacher's beliefs about him, and the teacher and kid are stuck in an unproductive loop.

But if the teacher doesn't carry those beliefs into the classroom, then the teacher is unlikely to see that behavior as threatening.

Instead it's, "'Johnny, tell me more about what you think is going on ... But also, I want you to sit down quietly now as you tell that to me,'" Pianta says.

"Those two responses," he says, "are dictated almost entirely by two different interpretations of the same behavior that are driven by two different sets of beliefs."

To see if teachers' beliefs would be changed by giving them a new set of teaching behaviors, Pianta and his colleagues recently did a study.

They took a group of teachers, assessed their beliefs about children, then gave a portion of them a standard pedagogy course, which included information about appropriate beliefs and expectations. Another portion got intense behavioral training, which taught them a whole new set of skills based on those appropriate beliefs and expectations.

For this training, the teachers videotaped their classes over a period of months and worked with personal coaches who watched those videos, then gave them recommendations about different behaviors to try.

After that intensive training, Pianta and his colleagues analyzed the beliefs of the teachers again. What he found was that the beliefs of the trained teachers had shifted way more than the beliefs of teachers given a standard informational course.

This is why Pianta thinks that to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors.

"It's far more powerful to work from the outside in than the inside out if you want to change expectations," he says.

In other words, if you want to change a mind, simply talking to it might not be enough.