Medical Articles

Here is today’s biggest story, brought to you from Foxnews.com.

MELBOURNE, Australia — A team of 16 surgeons and nurses successfully concluded 25 hours of delicate surgery Tuesday to separate twin Bangladeshi girls who had been joined at their heads, sharing blood vessels and brain tissue.

It is too early to know whether the two-year-old girls, Trishna and Krishna, suffered any brain damage during the marathon operation — an outcome doctors said had a 50-50 chance. The girls will remain in an induced coma for monitoring for several days after the completion of the surgery.

The medical team began the work Monday morning on separating the girls, who were brought to Australia as infants by an aid organization.

“The teams managed to separate their brains and they are both very well,” Royal Children’s Hospital chief Leo Donnan told reporters. “Now we have the long task of the reconstructive surgery, which will go on for many hours.”

Plastic surgeons finished reconstructing the girls’ skulls using a combination of their own skin, bone grafts and artificial materials about five hours after the separation surgery ended.

“Their bodies have to recover from this, and we’ve got a lot of unknown territory we’re moving into,” Donnan said. “All I can say is that everything is in place for the best possible outcome. The main thing is that the girls are healthy.”

Earlier Tuesday, Ian McKenzie, a member of the surgical team, said the girls were improving as their bodies began to work individually.

“The twins are actually in better condition because the degree of separation has increased and this problem we’ve had with their circulation affecting each other has actually gotten less,” he said.

The girls shared parts of their skull, brain tissue and blood flow.

Before the surgery, doctors had said there was a 50 percent chance the girls could suffer brain damage and a 25 percent chance one of the sisters would die.

They were found in an orphanage in Bangladesh in 2007 by a representative from the Children First Foundation, who brought to them to Australia.

A young girl’s love of mathematics not only helped her excel in school – but it also saved her life.

Vicki Alex, who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in September, was placed in a medically induced coma after her condition started to deteriorate last month, The Daily Mail reported.

Doctors were unable to guarantee that she would regain consciousness, so they asked her parents Nick and Tracy to talk to her and try and trigger a reaction.

After hours of talking about her favorite subjects including music and her friends, her father finally turned to her other love of math.

“She’s always loved mental arithmetic and math is her favorite subject at school so I went for that,” her dad told the newspaper. “I didn’t want to overload her so I asked her really easy questions.”

He started by asking Vicki what one plus one was.

“To my amazement, Vicki grunted a response, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying,” he said. “So I asked her if the answer was two. She nodded.”

At the time, doctors said it was just a coincidence, until Vicki shook her head when her father asked her a question about English, which she dislikes. It was then that doctors agreed she might be coming round.

“It was magical,” her dad added.

The next day Vicki removed the breathing tube out of her mouth.

“It was pandemonium for a few seconds but they quickly realized she was breathing on her own. She was back,” her dad said.

Vicki has since been discharged from Leicester Royal Infirmary in England for a few days, but she must return to the hospital for further chemotherapy.

Click Here to read the article in its original form at the Daily Mail.

Well, this story from The Sun is one you don’t hear everyday!

A woman obsessed with eating cutlery had to go under the knife to remove 78 forks and spoons from her stomach.

Doctors said every time Margaret Daalman, of Rotterdam, Holland, would sit down for a meal, she would ignore the food and “eat” the silverware instead.

The 52-year-old eventually went to hospital complaining of a stomachache and was rushed into surgery after an X-ray revealed the dozens of forks and spoons clanking inside her.

“I felt an urge to eat the silverware. I could not help myself,” Daalman told doctors.

Rotterdam was eventually diagnosed with a “borderline personality disorder.” She has since made a full recovery and is responding well to therapy.

Original Article

I’m glad someone finally wrote this article! Here it is, brought to you by Claire Suddath of TIME Magazine.

Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will … do what exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all? This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the U.S., and yet scientists still haven’t reached a consensus about how safe (or harmful) artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn’t we have figured this out by now?

The first artificial sweetener, saccharin, was discovered in 1879 when Constantin Fahlberg, a Johns Hopkins University scientist working on coal-tar derivatives, noticed a substance on his hands and arms that tasted sweet. No one knows why Fahlberg decided to lick an unknown substance off his body, but it’s a good thing he did. Despite an early attempt to ban the substance in 1911 — skeptical scientists said it was an “adulterant” that changed the makeup of food — saccharin grew in popularity, and was used to sweeten foods during sugar rationings in World Wars I and II. Though it is about 300 times sweeter than sugar and has zero calories, saccharin leaves an unpleasant metallic aftertaste. So when cyclamate came on the market in 1951, food and beverage companies jumped at the chance to sweeten their products with something that tasted more natural. By 1968, Americans were consuming more than 17 million pounds of the calorie-free substance a year in snack foods, canned fruit and soft drinks like Tab and Diet Pepsi.

But in the late 1960s, studies began linking cyclamate to cancer. One noted that chicken embryos injected with the chemical developed extreme deformities, leading scientists to wonder if unborn humans could be similarly damaged by their cola-drinking mothers. Another study linked the sweetener to malignant bladder tumors in rats. Because a 1958 congressional amendment required the FDA to ban any food additive shown to cause cancer in humans or animals, on Oct. 18, 1969, the government ordered cyclamate removed from all food products.

Saccharin became mired in controversy in 1977, when a study indicated that the substance might contribute to cancer in rats. An FDA move to ban the chemical failed, though products containing saccharin were required to carry warning labels. In 2000, the chemical was officially removed from the Federal Government’s list of suspected carcinogens.

In 1981, the synthetic compound aspartame was approved for use, and it capitalized on saccharin’s bad publicity by becoming the leading additive in diet colas. In 1995 and 1996, misinformation about aspartame that linked the chemical to everything from multiple sclerosis to Gulf War syndrome was widely disseminated on the Internet. While aspartame does adversely effect some people — including those who are unable to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine — it has been tested more than 200 times, and each test has confirmed that your Diet Coke is safe to drink. Nor have any health risks been detected in more than 100 clinical tests of sucralose, a chemically altered sugar molecule found in food, drinks, chewing gum and Splenda.

The fear-mongering and misinformation plaguing the faux-sweetener market seems to be rooted in a common misconception. No evidence indicates that sweeteners cause obesity; people with weight problems simply tend to eat more of it. While recent studies have suggested a possible link between artificial sweeteners and obesity, a direct link between additives and weight gain has yet to be found. The general consensus in the scientific community is that saccharin, aspartame and sucralose are harmless when consumed in moderation. And while cyclamate is still banned in the U.S., many other countries still allow it; it can even be found in the Canadian version of Sweet’n Low. Low-calorie additives won’t make you thinner or curb your appetite. But they help unsweetened food taste better without harming you. And that’s sweet enough.

To read this article in its original form, click here.

A new food rating system that analyzes both nutrition and cost value of food may now make it easier for people to find budget-friendly, nutritious foods in today’s tough economy. The Affordable Nutrition Index (ANI), unveiled at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo by leading nutrition expert Adam Drewnowski, PhD, professor at the University of Washington, is the first and only tool that assesses food’s nutritional profile and cost value to create a nutrition-value-per-dollar score.

The ANI is guided by recommendations in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans and calculates a food score based on nine essential nutrients to encourage (protein, fiber, iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, and vitamins A, C and E) and three nutrients to limit: saturated fat, added sugars and sodium.

Nearly 300 commonly eaten foods including fresh vegetables, fruits, grains from an independent food intake frequency questionnaire, and various convenience foods, including a variety of Campbell’s® soups, were assessed in the study. Results showed that dark colored vegetables, certain fruits and vegetable soups were among the most affordable, nutritious foods.

“In today’s economy, more people are making food choices based solely on cost, so it’s important to guide them on ways to get nutritious options without hurting their wallets,” said Drewnowski. “It is important to identify a wide range of affordable, nutritious choices that can help people build a balanced diet that fits their lifestyle and budget.”

In Drewnowski’s analysis, the ANI ranked two dozen soups as comparable to - and in some cases, higher than - many common fruits and vegetables. Drewnowski concluded that based on nutrition and price value, vegetable soups can be a convenient way to help people eat a more healthful, yet affordable, diet consistent with Dietary Guidelines. This new research further validates the importance of including affordable choices across multiple categories of nutritious fresh and prepared foods.

Among the specific findings:

* Carrots, sweet potatoes and broccoli were at the top of the ANI scale; oranges and bananas were the top-scoring fruits in the index.

* Twenty-five Campbell’s soups followed closely on the ANI scale, particularly condensed vegetable soup varieties that are lower in sodium, like Campbell’s® Healthy Request® condensed vegetable soups, which is certified as heart-healthy by the American Heart Association, and Campbell’s® Tomato soup, which recently underwent a 32 percent reduction in sodium and is one of the top-selling soups in the United States.

* Other fresh or cooked vegetables (peas, string beans, squash, lettuce) and fresh fruits (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, nectarines, apples) were also highly ranked.

Drewnowski’s research indicates that food, nutrition and price are typically viewed independently by experts. He believes a more inclusive concept of nutrition-per-dollar must be embraced broadly by health experts and the government, as it more accurately reflects the way people actually make food decisions.

“The obesity epidemic in this country has the potential to get even worse if people are unable to find nutritious choices they can afford and that also fit with their lifestyle,” said Drewnowski. “I’m hoping the Dietary Guidelines set to be released in 2010 will include the importance of affordable nutrition in its recommendations.”

Drewnowski points out that soup has added value and appeal for people because it can easily be found in most supermarkets and local convenience stores, is simple to prepare and highly satisfying. Plus, there are many varieties to choose from, which helps make affordable menu planning enjoyable.

“Ease, familiarity and enjoyment are critical to developing lifelong habits,” said Drewnowski. “If nutrition and health professionals can get people to include affordable, nutritious and convenient foods as part of a balanced diet, we have moved them a step in the right direction toward healthful eating.”

This article was published on Medical News Today, found here.

This article from Fox Health blew me away- Read it. I am sure you will be impressed too!

Monday, October 12, 2009

The oldest female athlete at the World Masters Games in Sydney, Australia has broken a world record in the shot put — at the age of 100.

All eyes were on Ruth Frith, from Brisbane, as she arrived for day two of the World Masters Games, hoping to win gold in the shot put and feeling pretty confident as she was the only competitor in the over-100s category.

But her 13-foot 4.2 inch throw on Sunday didn’t just win her gold, but also broke a world record.

“As long as I didn’t foul I was going to win it,” Frith told Reuters Television.

The great grandmother is also a keen hammer and javelin thrower and believes other senior citizens should follow her example.

Frith trains five days a week, regularly lifting 77-pound weights. She doesn’t drink or smoke and she doesn’t eat vegetables either, claiming she hasn’t liked them since she was young.

Frith was clearly a star of the World Masters Games — an event which attracts about 28,000 athletes — and despite her age, said she has no plans to retire just yet. She contested her first World Masters Athletics Championships at the age of 74.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

The mother of the nation’s first double hand transplant patient says he’s out of the hospital and looking forward to returning to his wife and daughter in Georgia.

Doris Schafer told the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era that her son, Jeff Kepner, visited her over the weekend in Lancaster. She says he plans to return to Augusta, Ga., at the end of this week.

Schafer says Kepner is considerably happier than when she saw him in June at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, about a month after the transplant.

She says her son still has no feeling in his fingers but is learning how to catch a ball and pick up small items. His doctors have said nerves grow about an inch a month.

Kepner lost his hands a decade ago to a bacterial infection.

To see the story in its original form, click here.

This is a pretty amazing story from the New York Post:

A New York City girl who survived a 7-story fall says the medical care she’s received has inspired her to want to become a doctor.

Eight-year-old Destiny Antonio fell from a broken window in her family’s Bronx public housing apartment in August.

She’s recovering from a shattered hip and broken leg at a Westchester County children’s hospital. A metal rod and pins keep her hip in place. Doctors aren’t sure whether she’ll walk normally again.

Destiny remains in good spirits. She wants to study medicine so she can help others.

Her mother, Robin Antonio, says she’d complained about the window, which shouldn’t open more than 4 1/4 inches.

The Housing Authority didn’t immediately return a message.

Information from New York Post: nypost.com

I just read a great report from Fox News Health, on the benefits of dog companions for children living with autism. Studies show children accompanied by these “autism dogs” prove to be calmer in stressful situations, navigate transitions with ease and are less likely to run or walk into traffic.

The current debate is whether the dogs are true “service dogs” — necessary to managing a disability — or simply companions providing comfort.

To read the article in its original form, click here.

Fewer Americans are afraid that they will be unable to pay for health-care services and fewer expect to postpone medical treatments due to costs, according to a Thomson Reuters survey published on Monday.

Researchers found a steady increase in people’s confidence about their ability to pay for health-care services — it rose 12 percent between March and July this year.

The survey of 3,000 households showed, unsurprisingly, that people who made more money were more confident they could pay for medical care, and people who had insurance were far more confident about paying than those who lacked insurance.

“These findings are consistent with data we’ve been seeing for everything from hospital discharge trends to opinions about health-care reform,” said Gary Pickens, chief research officer for the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters.

“There is growing optimism among many healthcare consumers, but (there) also is a clear disparity in outlook between those with higher income levels who have insurance coverage and those who are uninsured. This gap needs to be an area of focus for health care professionals and policymakers,” Pickens added in a statement.

To finish reading this article in its original form on Foxnews.com, click here.