Bitter gourd (also known as bitter melon) is common vegetable in tropics and subtropics, where it is cultivated abundantly and like by many people, for its special bitter taste and also for its various health benefits and medicinal properties, especially liked by diabetics for its anti-diabetic property. There are several health benefits of bitter gourd fruits as well as leaves. Different types of preparations are available, such as bitter gourd nutritional supplement capsules, juice etc.

One of the most important health benefit of bitter melon is that it is very low in calorie, have high concentration of various nutrients and high in fiber content. All these make bitter gourd full of health benefits and an ideal food for weight loss and also good food for individuals with constipation problem.

Bitter gourd has following nutritional contents (source wikipedia.org, UDA Nutrient Database) per 100 gram:

• Energy: 19 Calorie
• Water: 93.95 gram
• Fiber: 2 gram
• Sugars: 1.95 gram
• Protein: 0.84 gram
• Fats: minimal, in traces
• Minerals: calcium (9 mg), potassium (319 mg), sodium (6 mg), phosphorus (36 mg), magnesium (16 mg), zinc (0.77 mg) and iron (0.38 mg).
• Vitamins: A (6 mcg), C (33 mg), E (0.14 mg), K (4.8 mcg), B-complex (thiamine-51 mcg, ribloflavin-53 mcg, niacin-280 mcg, pyridoxine-41 mcg, folic acid-51 mcg). No vitamin B12 is present in bitter gourd.

The health benefits of bitter gourd are:

• Bitter gourd contains ingredients which can reduce blood sugar level in diabetics it is very much liked by diabetes patients.
• Bitter gourd has high fiber which is good for constipation. It can also stimulate digestion and helpful in dyspepsia.
• Rich in beta carotene, which is good for eye health.
• Very low in calorie and ideal for obese people to reduce weight.

Be cautious in bitter gourd consumption:

Bitter gourd/melon has several health benefits, but a word of caution is required, because excess consumption may have adverse health effects.

• Eating excess bitter gourd may cause diarrhea or abdominal pain.
• If you are a diabetic and take bitter gourd regularly (daily) and also you take oral hypoglycemic drugs or insulin, you may need to adjust the doses of your medication. Consult your doctor for dose adjustment.
• The seeds of bitter gourd contain a chemical called “vicine” which may trigger “favism” if an individual is susceptible to it. So be cautious.
• Pregnant women should not take bitter gourd (or its juice) in excess as it can cause stimulation of muscles of pregnant uterus and cause preterm labor (delivery before maturation of fetus/baby).
• Some parts of bitter gourd (such as red arils of seeds) are known to be toxic to children and they should avoid it.

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Enlarge Jim Urquhart/AP

A pharmacy buyer at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City holds a tray of magnesium sulfate, a drug in short supply.

Jim Urquhart/AP

A pharmacy buyer at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City holds a tray of magnesium sulfate, a drug in short supply.

President Obama is wielding a unilateral prerogative of his office â€" the executive order â€" to get something done about a worsening shortage of essential drugs.

It's a problem that earlier this month one administration official called "a dire public health situation." Many thousands of patients with cancer, life-threatening infections, cardiac disease, severe gastrointestinal disorders and many other conditions aren't able to get the drugs they need.

Every day, doctors, nurses and pharmacy managers scramble to find workarounds. Often, they say, patients aren't aware they're getting a substitute for the preferred, first-line drug that health providers would normally use.

With no immediate prospect of a congressional fix, the president is extending his recent penchant for executive orders to the drug shortage problem.

 

His order has three elements:

• The Food and Drug Administration will broaden its requirements and voluntary requests for drug manufacturers to report potential supply problems.
• The FDA will speed up reviews of manufacturers' applications to begin or alter production of a drug in potentially short supply.
• The FDA will tell the Justice Department about possible instances of collusion or price gouging among drug distributors taking advantage of shortages.

The White House says it's beefing up the FDA's staff to carry out the new mandates.

These are stopgaps. Obama also is expected to announce his support for pending legislation that would require drug manufacturers to notify the FDA six months in advance of a potential shortage. At the moment, companies are only required to notify the government is they're discontinuing production of drugs deemed medically necessary.

And expert observers say that legislation, if it passes, will only be a partial solution to a problem that's rooted in the gradual consolidation of drug production â€" especially the manufacture of injectable drugs used mainly in hospitals. Most of these are older, generic medicines with thin profit margins.

The Department of Health and Human Services has just put out a 20-page economic analysis of the problem.

Only seven companies make the vast majority of these drugs. So when a particular company has contamination on its production line, or can't get an essential ingredient from abroad, other manufacturers can't pick up the slack.

Meanwhile, the problem is getting steady worse. Last year the FDA reported 178 drug shortages, although some sources say the number was really 211. Earlier this month, the number for 2011 had already surpassed that.

Bitter gourd (also known as bitter melon) is common vegetable in tropics and subtropics, where it is cultivated abundantly and like by many people, for its special bitter taste and also for its various health benefits and medicinal properties, especially liked by diabetics for its anti-diabetic property. There are several health benefits of bitter gourd fruits as well as leaves. Different types of preparations are available, such as bitter gourd nutritional supplement capsules, juice etc.

One of the most important health benefit of bitter melon is that it is very low in calorie, have high concentration of various nutrients and high in fiber content. All these make bitter gourd full of health benefits and an ideal food for weight loss and also good food for individuals with constipation problem.

Bitter gourd has following nutritional contents (source wikipedia.org, UDA Nutrient Database) per 100 gram:

• Energy: 19 Calorie
• Water: 93.95 gram
• Fiber: 2 gram
• Sugars: 1.95 gram
• Protein: 0.84 gram
• Fats: minimal, in traces
• Minerals: calcium (9 mg), potassium (319 mg), sodium (6 mg), phosphorus (36 mg), magnesium (16 mg), zinc (0.77 mg) and iron (0.38 mg).
• Vitamins: A (6 mcg), C (33 mg), E (0.14 mg), K (4.8 mcg), B-complex (thiamine-51 mcg, ribloflavin-53 mcg, niacin-280 mcg, pyridoxine-41 mcg, folic acid-51 mcg). No vitamin B12 is present in bitter gourd.

The health benefits of bitter gourd are:

• Bitter gourd contains ingredients which can reduce blood sugar level in diabetics it is very much liked by diabetes patients.
• Bitter gourd has high fiber which is good for constipation. It can also stimulate digestion and helpful in dyspepsia.
• Rich in beta carotene, which is good for eye health.
• Very low in calorie and ideal for obese people to reduce weight.

Be cautious in bitter gourd consumption:

Bitter gourd/melon has several health benefits, but a word of caution is required, because excess consumption may have adverse health effects.

• Eating excess bitter gourd may cause diarrhea or abdominal pain.
• If you are a diabetic and take bitter gourd regularly (daily) and also you take oral hypoglycemic drugs or insulin, you may need to adjust the doses of your medication. Consult your doctor for dose adjustment.
• The seeds of bitter gourd contain a chemical called “vicine” which may trigger “favism” if an individual is susceptible to it. So be cautious.
• Pregnant women should not take bitter gourd (or its juice) in excess as it can cause stimulation of muscles of pregnant uterus and cause preterm labor (delivery before maturation of fetus/baby).
• Some parts of bitter gourd (such as red arils of seeds) are known to be toxic to children and they should avoid it.

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Common Terms of Nutrition/Health: F to Z

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Roel Smart/iStockphoto.com

For some people at especially high risk of developing colon cancer, taking a couple aspirin a day appears to help protect them from the disease.

A study in The Lancet finds that people with Lynch syndrome, a hereditary predisposition to cancer of the digestive tract, who took aspirin twice a day for a up to 4 years were about 60 percent less likely to develop colorectal cancer than those who got a placebo.

Put another way, about 4 percent of the people taking aspirin got colorectal cancer compared to 7 percent of those getting the placebo over a follow-up period that averaged about 4 1/2 years.

 

The study found the protective effect took a few years to become apparent. In fact, a 2008 publication of results by the same study group found no benefit to taking aspirin, but follow-up wasn't as long.

The latest results sound promising, right? Well, don't run to the medicine chest without talking to your doctor.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, controversial as it can sometimes be, has a recommendation stretching back to 2007 that says the evidence doesn't support people at average risk fo cancer taking aspirin to prevent colorectal cancer. The benefits don't outweigh the risks.

Aspirin carries a risk of gastrointestinal bleeding. And it can increase the risk for strokes. Those risks increase with the dose dose.

The researchers for the Lancet study say the findings now support aspirin to help people with Lynch syndrome as the "standard of care." What's left to do is to figure out the right dose for those patients, probably a lower one than the 600 milligrams a day used in the study.

What about everyone else? Well, the USPSTF recommends that people ages 50 to 75 get screened for colorectal cancer, which can reduce deaths from the disease.

Bitter gourd (also known as bitter melon) is common vegetable in tropics and subtropics, where it is cultivated abundantly and like by many people, for its special bitter taste and also for its various health benefits and medicinal properties, especially liked by diabetics for its anti-diabetic property. There are several health benefits of bitter gourd fruits as well as leaves. Different types of preparations are available, such as bitter gourd nutritional supplement capsules, juice etc.

One of the most important health benefit of bitter melon is that it is very low in calorie, have high concentration of various nutrients and high in fiber content. All these make bitter gourd full of health benefits and an ideal food for weight loss and also good food for individuals with constipation problem.

Bitter gourd has following nutritional contents (source wikipedia.org, UDA Nutrient Database) per 100 gram:

• Energy: 19 Calorie
• Water: 93.95 gram
• Fiber: 2 gram
• Sugars: 1.95 gram
• Protein: 0.84 gram
• Fats: minimal, in traces
• Minerals: calcium (9 mg), potassium (319 mg), sodium (6 mg), phosphorus (36 mg), magnesium (16 mg), zinc (0.77 mg) and iron (0.38 mg).
• Vitamins: A (6 mcg), C (33 mg), E (0.14 mg), K (4.8 mcg), B-complex (thiamine-51 mcg, ribloflavin-53 mcg, niacin-280 mcg, pyridoxine-41 mcg, folic acid-51 mcg). No vitamin B12 is present in bitter gourd.

The health benefits of bitter gourd are:

• Bitter gourd contains ingredients which can reduce blood sugar level in diabetics it is very much liked by diabetes patients.
• Bitter gourd has high fiber which is good for constipation. It can also stimulate digestion and helpful in dyspepsia.
• Rich in beta carotene, which is good for eye health.
• Very low in calorie and ideal for obese people to reduce weight.

Be cautious in bitter gourd consumption:

Bitter gourd/melon has several health benefits, but a word of caution is required, because excess consumption may have adverse health effects.

• Eating excess bitter gourd may cause diarrhea or abdominal pain.
• If you are a diabetic and take bitter gourd regularly (daily) and also you take oral hypoglycemic drugs or insulin, you may need to adjust the doses of your medication. Consult your doctor for dose adjustment.
• The seeds of bitter gourd contain a chemical called “vicine” which may trigger “favism” if an individual is susceptible to it. So be cautious.
• Pregnant women should not take bitter gourd (or its juice) in excess as it can cause stimulation of muscles of pregnant uterus and cause preterm labor (delivery before maturation of fetus/baby).
• Some parts of bitter gourd (such as red arils of seeds) are known to be toxic to children and they should avoid it.

Related posts:

Health Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Know about MonaVie

Health Benefits of Spa Baths

Long Term Health Benefits of Breastfeeding in Infants

Health Benefits of Breastfeeding for Mother

Health Benefits of Exercise Bikes

Some Common Terms Used in Health/Nutrition: A to E

Health Risks of Omega-3 fatty acids

Common Terms of Nutrition/Health: F to Z

Best Foods to Reduce Belly Fat

Gene Blythe/AP

Teenage drivers have fewer crashes after they've been driving for a while, but new research suggests that a few months behind the wheel doesn't improve their driving skills all that much.

Researchers persuaded 42 newly licensed teen drivers to have data-recording systems installed in their cars â€" a camera, a GPS, and an accelerometer to measures rapid stops, sharp turns and swerves. They also checked up on how their parents did when driving the same cars.

The idea was to compare the driving habits of novices with those of more experienced drivers under similar conditions.

How did it go? During the 18-month study, the teens experienced 37 crashes and 242 near-crashes, compared to two crashes and 32 near-crashes for the parents.

 

The accelerometer recorded some of the specific behaviors that were putting teens at risk, such as making 25-30 times as many sharp turns as their parents were.

The teens showed a high rate of accidents and near-accidents when they first started driving, which dropped as they gained experience, a pattern seen in previous studies.

But while the teens got more skilled at keeping their cars dent-free, "they did not improve in risky driving," Bruce Simons-Morton said in a media briefing Thursday. Simons-Morton, the lead author of the study, is a senior investigator at the Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The findings were published online by the American Journal of Public Health.

It's unclear whether the drivers continued their radical ways because they didn't know how to handle their vehicles or because they liked the way that type of driving feels.

Either way, they are putting themselves at risk for an accident by decreasing the amount of time they have to react to a situation and increasing the chance that they'll lose control of the car.

Simons-Morton noted that the degree to which a driver engages in these risky driving behaviors seems to be a good predictor of who will have a crash in the near future (that's the subject of a follow-up study not yet published). But unfortunately, teens are unlikely to adopt more cautious habits even after they've had an accident.

Learning to steer, brake and check rear-view mirrors only takes a couple of hours. But developing good judgment requires time, an exposure to a wide variety of situations and â€" more often than not â€" the exercise of bad judgment.

"The dilemma is that teens only learn by driving, but the more they drive, the greater the risk," Simons-Morton said.

Most states now have a graduated drivers license program designed to protect brand new drivers from the temptation to speed down the highway at midnight with their cell phone in one hand and a seat full of friends in the back. But the specifics and effectiveness of those programs vary, and some young drivers are finding ways to skirt the system.

Simons-Morton recommended that parents take an active role in their teens' learning process by setting rules that encourage safe driving, like limiting night driving, access to high-speed roads, and the number of passengers allowed in the car. While cruising around town with mom may not be as fun as taking trips with friends, teens can benefit from the guidance and judgment of a more experienced mentor.

Have you come across some words/terms such as antioxidants, BMI, essential amino acids, Probiotics, omegas etc., while reading a topic on health/nutrition? The chances are; you have come across such words/terms, but could not understand clearly what the meaning of these words. To solve your problem of not understanding commonly used terms in nutrition/medicine/health I came up with this article.

Alcohol:

The term alcohol usually denotes ethanol or ethyl alcohol, the commonly consumed alcoholic drinks, such as whisky, vodka, scotch, brandy, beer, wine etc. It contains high calories (7 calories per gram).

Amino acids:

These are smaller building blocks of proteins. A protein molecule is made up of several (a few to several hundreds or thousands) amino acids joined together in different sequences (which differentiate it from other protein). Proteins are made up of 20 different amino acids. A protein may have all the 20 amino acids or may not have all 20. Examples of common human proteins are albumin, globulin etc.

Essential amino acids: There are eight essential amino acids (out of total 20), which our body can not synthesize and must be consumed in diet.

Antioxidants:

These are molecules (such as vitamin E, vitamin C, some minerals etc.) which protect cells/tissues from damage by free radicals, which are free reactive electrons. They give away one electron and stabilize free radicals.

BMI or Body Mass Index:

This is a scale to determine if a person’s body weight is healthy for his height. A BMI of 18.5 to 25 is considered healthy. BMI below 18.5 is thin and BMI of more than 25 is overweight. BMI of more than 30 is obesity. BMI is calculated by dividing body weight in kilograms by height in meter square. For example if you have body weight or 70 kilo and your height is 1.75 meters, your BMI is 70/(1.75×1.75)= 22.85 (a healthy BMI).

Calorie:

This is a measure of energy expenditure by us. This is a measure of energy required to raise temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius (from 14.5 to 15.5 degree Celsius). In nutrition calorie indicate amount of heat (form of energy) released after combustion of food.

What we see in nutrition articles is actually kilocalorie (i.e. thousand calorie), for example if a healthy man need 2500 calorie per day, it actually means 2500 kilocalorie of energy requirement in a day.

Carbohydrates:

One of the three major ingredients of nutrition (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) and made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Contain 4 calories (4 kilocalories, to be precise) per gram of carbohydrate.

Complex carbohydrates: they are large molecules of carbohydrates, formed by joining of hundreds of monosaccharide (glucose) or disaccharides (fructose). Examples are fibers, starch etc.

Cholesterol:

This is like a two edged sword. It is an essential nutrient and required for performing normal physiological functions. But excess of cholesterol leads to several serious and chronic cardiovascular health problems we all are aware of. Cholesterol is produce in liver from saturated fats. It is required for synthesis of hormones such as steroid hormones.

HDL (high density lipoprotein) cholesterol: this is good cholesterol and help in removing excess cholesterol from bloodstream to liver.

LDL (low density lipoprotein) cholesterol: this is bad cholesterol. LDL carries cholesterol to different parts of the body and deposit in walls of the arteries and cause atherosclerosis (major cause of cardiovascular problems). Intake of high amount of saturated fats can lead to increased cardiovascular problems.

Enzymes:

Enzymes are protein in nature and they act as catalyst for different chemical reactions. For most chemical reactions, such as metabolism of food, enzymes are required. They are synthesized in our body.

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