Category — Health

Would you harm on your own six-month old baby to cause extensive physical injuries, including broken bones?

Well, a 25-old Canadian soldier did, and to all his 3 six-month-old sons (triplets). They suffered from a total of 19 broken bones.

His defence lawyer said ‘the father was stunned to see the extent of their injuries’.

The father was said to be suffering from acute stress disorder caused by several factors, including:

(a) his experience in Afghanistan. He was extremely frustrated for not being in the front-line actions (his job was to load equipment on to military planes and trucks),

(b) he claimed that he was drugged in a bar, beaten and robbed during a sidetrip to Budapest,

(c) he could not cope with having 4 infant sons (he already had an infant son before the triplets were born),

(d) he was abandoned by his own father at a young age,

(e) he was hearing voices in his head, telling him “you’re a failure”.

He withdrew from social life and his own family. He began to indulge himself heavily in playing video games, eating potato chips, staying up through the night, excessive drinking and using drugs.

Psychologist David Kolton wrote, “It seems evident that upon returning from Afghanistan he suffered with symptoms of acute stress disorder (ASD), which, after six months of symptoms, diagnostically became the more chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It also seems clear he experienced a . . . major depressive episode.”

Acute stress disorder (ASD) vs Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Before someone is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), they are often diagnosed with a disorder called acute stress disorder (ASD). Why? Because PTSD is considered more of a longer-term, even chronic, disorder, while acute stress disorder occurs more immediately and generally doesn’t last as long, especially if it’s treated. Left untreated, acute stress disorder often turns into post-traumatic stress disorder - a debilitating ailment that leaves patients panicky, angry and haunted by battle memories.

So what kinds of treatments are most helpful with acute stress disorder?
There are no medications approved for the treatment of ASD (although a medication may be prescribed for associated anxiety or depressive symptoms). So treatment usually is a type of psychotherapy.

“Virtual Iraq” - a new treatment
A new treatment known as “Virtual Iraq” uses digital technology designed to help returning combat troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This technology uses the latest video game technology - plus a smell machine and a vibration platform - to help patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

This treatment could help many soldiers who don’t find relief from medication or traditional psychotherapy.

Proponents of “Virtual Iraq” claim that it really jogs the patients’ memory, and puts them back there very powerfully, and makes them realize a lot of things they had consciously or subconsciously repressed. They believe that once these memories are available, patients can begin to talk with therapists, eventually making the phantoms less terrifying.

“Virtual Iraq” creates a digital world that is not only full of threats and stressors - roadside bombs, insurgents firing grenades, a bleeding U.S. soldier slumped in the Humvee’s passenger seat - but also the mundane details of a soldier’s everyday life in Iraq. It can also can create a variety of aromas, including sweat, burning trash and Middle Eastern spices.

Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder find it difficult to face their terrifying memories. They either refuse to enter into traditional therapy or don’t complete it, and these are the ones that will most benefit from virtual therapy, proponents say.

Once patients get immersed in the digital Iraq, they can recall painful emotions and events more easily. They still must endure the difficult process of imagining and talking about what happened to them, but they have help with the crucial first steps.

The entire virtual set-up - computers, software and other equipment - is estimated to cost about $7,000.

Experts say post-traumatic stress disorder is or will be a significant problem for many of the 1.7 million soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Doctors warn that Lyme disease is rising once again in the U.S, especially in Pennsylvania. This may be caused by the fact that people are spending more time outdoors in the warm summer weather. If this is true, this may spoil your summer fun.

What is Lyme disease? How dangerous is it to you?
Lyme disease is a bacterial illness spread by ticks when they bite the skin. Lyme disease affects different areas of the body in varying degrees as it progresses. The site where the tick bites your body is where the bacteria enter through your skin. Initially, the disease affects your skin, and causes an expanding reddish rash often associated with “flu-like” symptoms.

source: http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/lyme.html

The bacteria (known as pathogenic spirochetes) take weeks to months after the initial redness of the skin to spread throughout your body. Subsequently, disease and abnormalities can develop in your joints, heart, and nervous system.

How is the bacterium transported around your body?
After bitten by a tick, the pathogenic spirochete gets into the blood and travels through your body, gets out of the blood system and then gets into the heart, neurological tissue in the brain and in the joints.

Early symptoms of Lyme disease are:
** A circular rash near the area of the tick bite.
** Fatigue, chills and fever.
** Headache as wella s muscle and joint pain.
** Swollen lymph nodes.

Lyme disease bacteria are completely irrational and very destructive to the healing process. This bacteria can survive even if you freeze them, heat them, attack them with antibiotics, or put them into distilled water. When the bacteria encounter adverse conditions, they simply take on a dormant form and wait for the conditions to improve.

How can you treat Lyme disease?
Most Lyme disease is curable with antibiotics. The type of antibiotic depends on the stage of the disease (early or late) and what areas of the body are affected.

A patient at the early stages of the disease can usually take antibiotics orally to clear the bacteria. Therefore, if you find a typical skin rash (described above) developing in an area of a tick bite, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. Generally, antibiotic treatment resolves the rash within one or two weeks.

However, Lyme disease is harder to treat as it advances through the body. Later illness such as nervous-system disease might require intravenous drugs.

If left untreated, Lyme disease can lead to nervous system disorders, various neurological symptoms, arthritis or arthritis-like symptoms and extreme fatigue.

Prevention is better than cure - how do you protect yourself?
To protect yourself from tick attacks in the following ways:
(a) wear long-sleeved shirts and pants
(b) tuck your pants into socks or boots
(c) apply a bug spray containing DEER on your clothings
(d) inspect your clothes and skin for ticks after being outside.

Ticks are common around stone walls, shrubs and the edges of lawns and forests. Ticks don’t fly or jump. They attach to people. You can use tweezers to remove a tick and then drop it into alcohol to kill it.

There is concern that people who have symptoms of Lyme disease are not always taken seriously by doctors as many doctors don’t know enough about the disease. The disease is under-publicized and not enough people know about it. There is a need for better testing methods, more awareness of the disease, and a better warning system for the public.

Each year about 23,000 new cases of Lyme Disease are diagnosed in the United States, about 100 new cases are diagnosed in Canada. The United States for Disease Control has a detailed map on its website on where infected ticks can be found in the U.S., but no such map is available in Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has reported that, in the next year or so, maps like that will be available for general viewing by the public and for physicians to know where the ticks are established.

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An improved drug brings hope to cancer patients. This is exciting news. The drug is called lodamin.

Can lodamin overcome cancer successfully? Well, it did — in mice! So far.

Experiments using mice showed that lodamin worked against various types of cancer, viz. breast cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors. It also stopped the growth and spread of so-called primary tumors.

Researchers found that lodamin appeared to be able to fight liver cancer effectively in mice. Mice were given oral administration of lodamin, and it first reached the liver, thus efficiently preventing liver metastasis from developing in mice. This is encouraging because, according to researchers, liver metastasis is very common in many tumor types, and fatal most of the time. The livers of the treated mice were found to be almost clean.

Mice treated with lodamin had normal-looking livers and spleens, while all untreated mice had fluid in the abdominal cavity, and enlarged livers covered with tumors.

“20 days after being injected with cancer cells, 4 out of 7 untreated mice had died, while all treated mice were still alive,” Ofra Benny of Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School and colleagues reported.

How was lodamin discovered? Is it a new drug?

This drug was experimentally known as TNP-470, developed by Harvard’s Donald Ingber and Dr Judah Folkman (a cancer researcher who died in January). It was originally isolated from a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus fresenius.

This fungus was discovered accidentally by Ingber while he was experimenting with growing endothelial cells (the cells that line blood vessels). The mold affected the cells in a way that prevented capillaries (tiny blood vessels) from growing.

TNP-470, now called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Folkman who pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy, ie starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.

Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman’s team has been working to perfect for 20 years. His colleagues reported in the Nature Biotechnology journal that they had developed a formulation that worked as a pill without side-effects.

SynDexRx, Inc, a privately held Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company, has licensed the drug.

Related articles:
Jesus healed me of cancer - when all hope was gone
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