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Diabetes glucose monitors ‘available to thousands more’
The decision comes after patients in some areas of England were denied access to the device.
Inspirational Holiday Quotes and Sayings
Motivational quotes on Christmas, life, love, and health.
Health24.com | My illness doesn’t define me, says happy diabetic
When Sipho Dlamini (33) was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 17, he was still in high school and came in for a lot of discrimination and family pressure.
“But that has never stopped me from living a happy life,” he said on the eve of World Diabetes Day, hoping to encourage other sufferers.
“I remember when I first had the diabetes symptoms: dizziness, tiredness, headaches and blurry vision. I was immediately rushed to our family doctor,” he remembered.
At the clinic the doctor asked for a urine sample and checked Dlamini’s blood sugar with a finger prick test.
“They found out that the level of my sugar was too high and few blood tests were done.”
Dlamini was diagnosed with diabetes and put on treatment. As the only son in his family, those close to him struggled to accept the news.
They did not understand the chronic condition and suggested that he rather use traditional medicine.
“The problem with our black communities is the lack of information about chronic illness. Because of that, when someone is diagnosed with diabetes, people will just believe it was caused by witchcraft. Some say it’s a white condition, and just because you lose so much weight they will say you have AIDS.”
But over the years Dlamini’s family has learnt about the condition, and have come to understand that he needs treatment. They have also come to understand that his grandmother died of diabetes. And then in 2014 his father had to have both legs amputated due to diabetes.
Managing diabetes
According to nurse Gugu Vilakazi, there are two main types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes and occurs when the body does not make insulin which is used to burn sugar in the body.
The onset is generally before the age of 30 and some children are even diagnosed with it. Type 2 diabetes is when the body manufactures some insulin, but may not be enough or the cells may not be able to absorb the insulin. This type usually occurs after the age of 40.
According to the International Diabetes Federation, South Africa is one of the 32 countries in the IDF African region. Globally 425 million people have diabetes with more than 16 million of them being in Africa.
Vilakazi warned that if diabetes goes undiagnosed or untreated, sufferers risk kidney and heart damage, affected vision, sores and wounds that don’t heal and can potentially lead to amputations and a coma.
“It is advisable to immediately go to the clinic to seek professional help if you suffer from dizziness, severe thirst, tiredness, headaches, a loss of feeling in the feet, unexplained hunger or blurry vision,” she said.
Vilakazi said while nothing can prevent Type 1 diabetes, steps can be taken to prevent getting Type 2 diabetes. These include following a healthy diet, stopping smoking, exercising three to four times a week and going for regular check-ups.
“Diabetes will never go away, but it can be managed so that the patients can stay healthy,” Vilakazi said.
She said diabetics should take their medicine as prescribed by the doctor to keep their sugar levels correct. And exercise was important for helping the body use insulin better.
– Health-e News.
Carbon goes with the flow
Many people see the carbon cycle as vertical — CO2 moving up and down between soil, plants and the atmosphere.
However, new Michigan State University research published in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters, adds a dimension to the vertical perspective by showing how water moves massive amounts of carbon laterally through ecosystems — especially during floods. These findings — which analyzed more than 1,000 watersheds, covering about 75 percent of the contiguous U.S. — have implications for climate change and water quality.
Carbon in the environment, specifically dissolved organic carbon or DOC, is a master variable that influences many of our planet’s fundamental processes, such as water chemistry, greenhouse gas emissions and pollutant transport across land and water, said Jay Zarnetske, MSU earth and environmental scientist and the study’s lead author.
“When water flows through ecosystems, it picks up organic carbon from plants and soils, and in many cases, water determines whether the ecosystem is a net carbon source or sink,” he said. “The massive amount of carbon that leaks out of ecosystems as DOC is about as big as the net amount of carbon taken up from the atmosphere each year. So accurate accounting is crucial when managing the ‘carbon bank account.'”
DOC in rivers is like making tea, Zarnetske added.
“You start with relatively clear water falling as precipitation, and then the organic carbon in the landscape gets leached into the water,” he said. “This tea then gets flushed to streams during floods, often turning the water brown.”
Zarnetske’s new work suggests a better way to account for the carbon leaving ecosystems as DOC by including data from flood events. Citing logistical and safety concerns, scientists typically give rivers wide berth during floods. As a result, researchers know less about DOC behavior during floods. When water is flowing fast and brown, though, is when the most carbon is being transported out of most watersheds. In other words, this is a time when more sampling is needed.
What surprised the team of scientists is that floods readily flush carbon from landscapes in diverse ecosystems across North America, spanning from Michigan forests to the Sonoran Desert. They initially thought the DOC would be diluted by floods in many parts of the U.S. Floods, however, lead to the release of large amounts of DOC — or stronger tea, metaphorically speaking — from almost all environments in a relatively short time.
“We knew that DOC went up during floods in some areas, but we were surprised to see the same pattern in the vast majority of watersheds all across the country,” Zarnetske said. “Deserts don’t have as much DOC as deciduous forests, but when you have an event like a flash flood, the process is the same, and the torrents of water are chock full of carbon.”
Another important confirmation from the study’s massive data set was the significant role wetlands play in our watersheds. The DOC flushing behavior across the U.S. was primarily related to the acreage of wetlands in a watershed. Wetlands act as buffers or storage zones for DOC in watersheds. If floodwaters rise, water and DOC in the wetlands closest to the river can rapidly spill over.
Consequently, where natural wetlands are located within the watershed is important. Draining natural wetlands and “trading them” for another nearby swamp or building an artificial wetland might look good on paper, but it’s going to affect an area’s ability to store and release carbon, Zarnetske added.
“Wetlands are major controls for carbon balance and water quality, and they’re also some of the most vulnerable landscapes,” he said. “If you move them, you’re changing a region’s plumbing and the chemistry.”
For this research, the scientists used data from across the U.S., but they didn’t wade in a single stream or swamp. Their results came from scads of data collected over decades by state and federal government agencies, primarily the U.S. Geological Survey. The dataset’s sheer size can be intimidating, and mastering the skills needed to tease out its secrets is daunting. However, it is a true treasure trove of information. While collecting this long-term data may not seem as exciting as conducting new experiments, the historic data are valuable and their value only grows with time, Zarnetske said.
“It’s not flashy, but it’s powerful data,” he said. “These data were being collected long before we knew of computers and methods powerful enough to analyze it all. It’s another example of how long-term data collections are key to discoveries and worthy of continued funding.”
And such massive datasets play into MSU’s strengths, he added.
“Among MSU’s strong suits are data-intensive research, macrosystems ecology and interdisciplinary research,” Zarnetske said. “Our team leveraged this publicly available dataset in a novel way to refine many longstanding theories enabling better management of carbon balances, wetlands and other water-quality issues.”
Britain’s first specialist wound hub to open
Terror attack victims and injured soldiers are to benefit from research at the Birmingham centre.
‘Rare’ jellyfish not so rare
When the Rhizostoma luteum jellyfish was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar, only nine specimens were identified. For years, it was so inconspicuous that later, in the 20th century, it failed to turn up for six decades. A team of scientists, with the help of a citizen initiative, has now confirmed that it is not really as difficult to find as previously believed.
In 1827 the French naturalists Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard, while aboard the Astrolabe on a trip around the worlkd, discovered a new jellyfish species in the Strait of Gibraltar. Describing the Rhizostoma luteum (formerly called the Orythialutea) was made possible thanks to the analysis of nine specimens. This was the first and last time it was seen.
During the following decades, this jellyfish went unnoticed and there were no scientific records of it over the last 60 years. It was not until 2013 when a team of scientists, led by Laura Prieto of the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (CSIC), confirmed the presence of this species in Mediterranean waters by means of a phylogenetic analysis.
“We believe that every time it was seen, it was mistakenly identified with such other jellyfish as the Rhizostoma pulmo, the Rhizostoma octopus and the Catostylus tagi,” as Prieto, the co-author of another study that corroborates that this jellyfish is actually more abundant than what was thought, has pointed out.
The new work, part of the future doctoral thesis by Karen Kienberger and recently published in the Marine Biodiversity journal, has made several historical and recent records of the Rhizostoma luteum since 1998, thanks to the observations of scientists and a citizen initiative.
The results confirm more than 150 observations in the last 17 years, “which shows that it is not such a rare species after all,” the authors emphasize.
“With this work, we did research work to see if what we thought was an unusual species was really one that had been ill-identified for many years,” explains Prieto. The R. luteum is frequent in the coastal waters of the west and south coasts of the Iberian peninsula and the west and north coasts of Africa.
Similar to the others
The jellyfish can reach a diameter of more than 60 cm with some specimens; the oral arms end differently and sometimes — but not always — they are very long, and can reach more than two metres.
“Its geographical distribution is very wide: from Portugal to South Africa in the Atlantic and in the Alboran Sea in the Mediterranean. With subsequent studies, we’ve been able to verify that the mother carries her protected offspring in her gonads until she releases them in an appropriate environment,” the researcher reports.
In order to detect the jellyfish, Laura Prieto and Karen Kienberger were helped by citizens who sent historical accounts, photographs and videos taken in the North-East Atlantic Ocean and the Alboran Sea. “Posters were distributed in diving and marine clubs and a lot of non-scientific outreach literature, such as books on diving or marine fauna, was subjected to revision,” says Prieto.
The scientists contacted many authors of the photos, and explored open social networks and open access databases on jellyfish that included photos. “Any citizen could (and can) send an email with the place, the date and the photo of a sighting,” the authors stress.
For the researchers, this type of work makes it possible to monitor biodiversity and the manner in which species respond to climate change in marine ecosystems.
Fish recognize their prey by electric colors
The African elephantnose fish generates weak electrical pulses to navigate its environment. This localization sense apparently shows an astonishing similarity to vision, as a study by the University of Bonn now shows. The study demonstrates that different objects have different electrical “colors.” Fish use these colors for instance to distinguish their favorite food — mosquito larvae — from other small animals or plants. The study is published in the journal Current Biology.
Elephantnose fish are nocturnal, which means they cannot rely on their eyes when hunting for prey. But they don’t need to: They carry a kind of “electric flashlight” in their tail, which they use to generate short electrical pulses up to 80 times per second. Their skin, especially their trunk-like chin, is covered with electroreceptors: small sensors with which they can measure how these pulses are reflected by the environment.
And in this they have become champions: With their electro-sense they can estimate distances, distinguish forms and materials, differentiate between dead and living objects. And more than that: Within fractions of a second, they can recognize whether mosquito larvae, their favorite food, are hiding in the gravel or sand at the bottom of their habitat. They can do this with considerable accuracy, largely ignoring the larvae of other insects.
How they do this was uncertain for a long time. Objects certainly change the intensity of the electrical signal in a characteristic way — some reduce it significantly, others reflect it better. “However, this is not enough to clearly identify prey animals,” explains Martin Gottwald of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Bonn. “For example, the signal strength also decreases as the distance increases.” But there is another characteristic of living organisms: They also modify the shape of the electric pulses. But even this signal change depends on distance, size and position.
The combination of the two signal characteristics could solve these problems. The human eye works in a similar fashion: Its retina contains receptors for red, green and blue light. Our brain then uses the “mixing ratio” to calculate the color of the object we see. And this remains largely constant, no matter how large or far away the object in question is.
Two different receptor types
However, until now there was no proof that a similar process occurs in elephantnose fish. Nevertheless, it is clear that the animals have two different types of electric receptors. One only measures the intensity of the signal, the other additionally measures its shape. “We have now been able to demonstrate that the fish uses the relation between these two measurements to identify their prey,” explains Prof. Dr. Gerhard von der Emde, who led the study.
At first, the scientists determined how intensity and shape of the localization signal behave in relation to each other depending on the type of object. “We found that this ratio is always constant for the same objects,” says von der Emde. “And this applies regardless of their distance or other environmental parameters.” “A mosquito larva therefore actually has a constant ‘electrical color’, which is clearly different from that of other larvae, plant parts, members of the same species or other fish,” adds Gottwald.
The researchers now examined the extent to which their laboratory animals used this information. They presented them with various electronic “mini chips” with a diameter of only one millimeter. Some chips produced different electrical colors; for example, they glowed like a mosquito larva or like other insect larvae. Other chips were electrically ‘colorless’, similar to a pebble.
Hungry for chips
The effect was astonishing: If the chips were colored like their favorite food, the elephantnose fish chomped down reflexively. They let themselves be fooled in this way in 70 percent of all cases, even though the fake meals did not smell at all like typical prey. Even after numerous experiments, the animals did not learn to avoid the chips. They largely spurned differently colored chips, and even completely ignored electrically colorless ones. “This may suggest that the prey color is hardwired in the brains of the fish,” speculates von der Emde.
That would make sense: The electrical properties of living beings (and thus also their color) are decisively determined by their inner structure. And this cannot be changed easily. It is therefore barely feasible for a mosquito larva to simply add camouflage.
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Bonn. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Health24.com | Postpartum depression may raise heart risks
Otherwise healthy women diagnosed with postpartum depression may be at higher risk of a heart attack, stroke or heart failure, a new study suggests.
Acting on mounting evidence linking clinical depression to cardiovascular disease, researchers sought to explore whether other forms of depression might also increase the risk for conditions affecting the heart or brain.
They examined a registry of 1.8 million California women who did not have a history of cardiovascular disease or chronic depression. Of those women, 40 276 were diagnosed with postpartum depression.
Within roughly five years of giving birth, the women who had postpartum depression had a nearly 70% higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, including heart attack, stroke and heart failure. And that was even after adjusting for traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes and high blood pressure, pregnancy-related conditions such as preeclampsia, and social and behavioural factors such as smoking, alcohol use and insurance access.
The findings will be presented on 11 November 2018 at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago.
Cause is still uncertain
What’s causing these women to be more at risk is uncertain, said Dr Punag Divanji, the study’s lead researcher and a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
Among the possibilities is a link to the drop in oestrogen and progesterone after childbirth. These two hormones increase exponentially during pregnancy, and women with postpartum depression may have a greater decline in levels after childbirth than other new mothers.
But more research needs to be conducted before actual causal reasons can be pinned down, Dr Divanji said.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done in terms of better understanding cardiovascular risk in women,” he said, particularly risk factors other than high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.
Dr Leslie Cho, director of the Women’s Cardiology Center at The Cleveland Clinic, agreed that more research would help validate the findings, as well as shed light on the mechanics behind them.
Depression can lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices
“What we do know is that if you’re depressed, straight-up depressed, you tend to eat badly. You tend to drink. If you’re depressed, you don’t tend to exercise,” said Dr Cho, who was not connected with the new study. “It goes with so many other unhealthy lifestyle choices.”
Past studies have shown a link between clinical depression and its impact on cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, Dr Cho said.
“It’s been linked with platelet reactivity – your platelets are more sticky when you’re depressed,” meaning there’s a greater chance they could clump and form a blot clot, she said. “So, there are all sorts of interesting heart-brain connections there.”
She noted that women of all ages should consider having their cardiovascular risk assessed anyway because heart disease is the leading cause of death for women.
Dr Divanji said he hopes the study will help raise awareness about the potential link between all types of depression and cardiovascular disease.
“This level of evidence isn’t sufficient enough to say we need to sound the alarm but rather, this is something to be aware of and think more about,” he said. “When we see patients, we should be cognisant that depression plays a role in future cardiovascular disease risk.”
If you need help, contact SADAG. You can speak to a counsellor between 08:00 and 20:00 Monday to Sunday by calling 011 234 4837. For a suicidal emergency call 0800 567 567. The 24-hour contact is 0800 12 13 14. Alternatively, you can SMS 31393 and SADAG will call you back.
Image credit: iStock
Health24.com | This is why it’s so hard to quit smoking
The science behind why it’s so difficult to quit smoking is crystal clear: Nicotine is addictive – reportedly as addictive as cocaine or heroin.
Yet any adult can stroll into a drug store and buy a pack of cigarettes, no questions asked.
“From a scientific standpoint, nicotine is just as hard, or harder, to quit than heroin but people don’t recognise that,” said Dr Neil Benowitz, a nicotine researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
Smoking is the world’s leading preventable cause of death. More than 1.1 billion people worldwide smoke, according to the World Health Organization. And more are continually joining the ranks. Every day in the US alone, more than 3 200 youth 18 and younger smoke their first cigarette, while another 2 100 youth and young adults move from smoking occasionally to having a daily habit.
In 1964, the US surgeon general’s famous report, “Smoking and Health”, linked smoking to cancer. Two decades later in 1988, another landmark surgeon general’s report on nicotine addiction declared nicotine to be as addictive as cocaine or heroin.
“Every drug of abuse, including nicotine, releases dopamine, which makes it pleasurable to use,” said Dr Benowitz. “And when you stop smoking, you have a deficiency of dopamine release, which causes a state of dysphoria: You feel anxious or depressed.”
Nicotine also acts as a stimulant, said Dr Benowitz. “It helps people concentrate, and if they don’t have a cigarette, they have trouble focusing.”
Cigarette epidemic
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) intends to implement new rules that would reduce the level of nicotine in tobacco products to “minimally addictive” or “non-addictive” levels. It’s not clear when the FDA will issue its new ruling.
Dr Benowitz said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the FDA will force tobacco companies to make cigarettes non-addictive. “If they did, I think that would really be the end of the cigarette epidemic,” he said.
Meanwhile, debate rages over increasingly popular e-cigarettes, which are marketed as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes. E-cigarette vapour doesn’t contain as many toxic chemicals as the smoke from regular cigarettes. However, most e-cigarettes contain nicotine and some deliver dangerous chemicals such as formaldehyde.
Critics of e-cigarettes complain that makers are marketing them to youth by selling them in a variety of kid-friendly flavours, from pizza to cookies-and-cream.
“We still need a lot of studies on all of these chemicals,” Dr Benowitz said. “E-cigarettes may pose some harms we don’t yet know about.”
Get support
Many people find they are unable to stop smoking on their own. Dr Benowitz said nicotine patches, nicotine gum and smoking-withdrawal medications are all proven ways to increase a person’s odds of quitting. Support groups and quit lines can also help.
Gary A Giovino, a nicotine researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said as helpful as medication can be, people who really want to quit smoking also have to be willing to modify their lifestyle.
“People need to focus on behavioural change … they need the right skills and knowledge and social support. They need a plan,” said Giovino, a professor and chair of his school’s Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, who quit smoking 40 years ago.
Giovino said good nutrition may be an important factor in helping people quit. He hopes to launch a study that will look at whether there is a correlation between smokers’ vitamin D levels and their ability to stop smoking. He said he’d also like to see researchers explore whether plant-based diets, B vitamins and hydration impact nicotine addiction.
Giovino advises people to tap into the “mind-body connection” and try yoga and deep breathing techniques to help them quit. “After a meal, instead of taking a long breath on a cigarette, (a smoker could) try taking a long, deep breath and exhale without the 7 000 chemicals,” he said.
It’s also important for those who have decided to quit to prepare themselves for how difficult it will be, Giovino said.
“There’s this real roller-coaster ride of not feeling well and being irritable and having cravings,” he said. “The first few days might be very intense, then it might level off and come back again. But the longer you’re off cigarettes, the more your brain goes through the process of neural adaptation, the more you recover. And eventually, the ride subsides.”
Image credit: iStock
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