An Aspirin A Day In Texas May Keep Cancer Away
Individuals in Dallas, Houston and elsewhere in Texas who take an aspirin a day may lower the odds of colon, prostate and breast cancer if you are at high risk for those malignancies, researchers at the American Cancer Society report.
Men and women who used adult-strength aspirin daily for five or more years had about a 15 percent lower overall rate of developing cancer, particularly colon, prostate and possibly breast cancer, researchers reported. However, they also said that there’s not enough evidence that aspirin’s value as a cancer preventive outweighs its potential toxic side effects, which include a higher risk for bleeding.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) didn’t recommend using aspirin to prevent cancer, because aspirin has been known to cause serious gastrointestinal bleeding. In the study, researchers looked for a link between long-term use of aspirin — dosed at 325 milligrams or more a day — and cancer in almost 70,000 men and more than 76,000 women participating in the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort.
During twelve years of follow-up, more than 18,000 men and women were diagnosed with cancer. The researchers found that the 15 percent relative reduction in overall cancer risk was not statistically significant for women, but it was associated with a 20 percent reduction in the risk of prostate cancer and a 30 percent reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer in both men and women, compared with people who didn’t take the medicine.
The ACS researchers noted that aspirin had no effect on the risks of lung cancer, bladder cancer, melanoma, leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, and kidney cancer. Also, aspirin use for less than five years did not lower the risk for cancer.
If more evidence comes to light suggesting that aspirin curbs cancer risk, the American Cancer Society said that its recommendations might someday change. Future recommendations could take cancer prevention into account when deciding on the best dose for people who already need to take aspirin for cardiovascular protection. But researchers said that they were not there yet.
The Iowa Women’s Health Study, published in 2006, found that there may be an association between lung inflammation seen in asthma and increased risk of breast cancer spreading to the lungs. This study looked at more than 22,500 cancer-free postmenopausal women, recruited in 1996. Ten years later, as reported, the researchers found that women who regularly used aspirin were 16 percent less likely to have developed cancer and 13 percent less likely to have died of cancer than women who did not use aspirin.
This same benefit was not seen in women who regularly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) other than aspirin, said another 2007 study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.. This study suggests that reducing inflammation may help prevent cancer and it found that women who regularly used aspirin developed fewer cancers than women who didn’t.
And while aspirin helped protect former and non smokers from cancer, this was not reported to be the case for women who were active smokers.
The findings do not mean that women should not take NSAIDs or start taking aspirin on a regular basis, the Mayo Clinic researchers said. “This is just one study. However, it does provide provocative evidence that regular aspirin use may play a role in preventing the most common chronic diseases in western countries, namely cancer and heart disease,” Dr. Aditya Bardia, the lead author of the study said in a prepared statement.
It’s important to check with your physician before taking over-the-counter medicines, like aspirin, for a condition other than what they are designed for.
How you treat your body when you’re young will certainly affect your health as you get older. Eventually, it will also affect your wallet.
Pat Carpenter writes for Precedent Insurance Company. Precedent puts a new spin on health insurance. Learn more at http://www.precedent.com
What You Need To Know About Avodart
Dutasteride, which is commonly marketed under the brand name Avodart, belongs to a class of drugs called 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, which block the action of the 5-alpha-reductase enzymes that convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The drug was approved by the FDA for the treatment of prostate enlargement in men in 2002.
Avodart has not been approved for the treatment of hair loss, although physicians can use an approved medication in ways other than that it was specifically approved for. That said, the use of dutasteride certainly requires doctor supervision. Avodart is used mostly for men who have an enlarged prostate.
If your prostate is smaller, it will put less pressure on your urethra. AVODART has been shown to improve symptoms after 3 to 6 months, with continued improvement extending to 2 years, and this improvement can be maintained up to 4 years. By shrinking the prostate, it stops the symptoms associated with prostate enlargement from getting worse.
Like finasteride (the active ingredient in Propecia), dutasteride blocks the enzyme 5 alpha-reductase that converts testosterone to DHT (DHT causes hair loss). Unlike finasteride, which only inhibits the Type I form of the enzyme, dutasteride inhibits both the Type I and Type II forms. This combined effect lowers circulating DHT more with dutasteride than with finasteride, but also increases the incidence of side effects.
The Type II form of the enzyme (blocked by finasteride) is found predominantly in the hair follicle. The Type I form of the enzyme has been found in the scalp and sebaceous glands, but its exact role in hair growth has not been determined. It is felt that the ability of dutasteride to lower serum levels of DHT is what makes it a more potent medication in hair loss.
When considering the safety of dutasteride, one should consider several facts. It acts on other parts of the body besides the hair follicle. Unlike finasteride, where families that had a deficiency of the Type II 5-alpha reductase enzyme were followed for years without any adverse effects, there is no natural biologic model to show the safety of dutasteride.
Avodart has been approved for prostate enlargement in an older male population. It is not approved for hair loss and, in fact, the clinical trials for hair loss were discontinued, so there is no safety data for its use in younger patients. There is a greater incidence of sexual side effects with dutasteride compared to finasteride.
I hope you have found this information helpful. In any case, you should consult your physician before using Avodart. It may or may not be appropriate, depending on your medical situation, to use the drug to treat hair loss. Be sure to disclose to your physician any other drugs you might be taking before requesting a prescription for Avodart.
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form
Medicine in Medieval Times
Oh, how fortunate the medical field is with its modern conveniences. You have the Internet to share knowledge on, digital imaging equipment to render your CT scans, and every gadget and gizmo up to and including “the machine that goes bing!” (a Monty Python reference to you new folks!). You have accredited universities and publicly-funded laboratories.
But how long the human race had to grope in the dark before finally arriving at our present enlightenment! You may even feel a sense of pity for a particularly bright mind that would have been living in the 16th century, shaking their heads over the “four humours” theory here and the astrology charts there, bleeding patients to restore their balance… and all the while with that nagging suspicion in the back of their mind: “There has to be more to this that I’m just not getting!” It would be quite fun to travel back in time and clue some of them in. Doubtless they’d say something like, “No wonder I’ve lost so many patients! There really isn’t anything to alchemy the whole time! I knew it!”
But actually, they weren’t quite as frustrated as all that, even if they did have poor luck with the occasional trepanation and the glum discovery that there was, in fact, no insanity-causing stone in the head to remove. Oh, yes, trepanation, the drilling of holes in the skull, was a common practice. No less than Hippocrates had given specific directions on the procedure based on its origin in the Greek age, and Galen elaborates on the procedure as well. At one burial site in France with an assumed date of 6500 BC, 40 skull had trepanation holes out of the 120 found. Many people survived this procedure and lived on for many years, able to regale their grandchildren with their unique cranial modification.
Alchemy itself was actually a very noble pursuit… in most cases. The whole business with turning lead into gold might have been a creative way to extract financing from kings, to then be applied to real research. Yet the alchemist’s contributions to science are significant! Much of chemistry owes its roots to alchemy, and the studies of medicine, astronomy, geology, and even physics got some boost as well. Since alchemists also spent a lot of time seeking the Panacea, the cure-all to every human ill, there is some cross-over between alchemy and medicine.
Alchemists are in fact the closest thing we have to the originators of the modern scientific method. After years of alchemists being more stage magicians than scientists, one Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493-1541) helped to cast alchemy into a new form by promoting the use of observations and experiments to learn about the human body. He demonstrated sneering contempt for the charlatans of his trade, rejecting both Occultism and Gnosticism in favor of Hermetical, neo-Platonic, and Pythagorean philosophies. In this manner, he is considered to be the tie-in between ancient practice and modern science, laying the path for the future accomplishments of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle.
You don’t get far in discussing medieval medicine without running into the four humours. The four humours, who were not a British pop band which combined Beatles rhythms with Monty Python lyrics, were the foundation of accepted medical practice all the way into the 19th century. The four humours, bodily fluids which regulated all functions, were Black Bile (Melancholic), Phlegm (Phlegmatic), Blood (Sanguine), and Yellow Bile (Choleric). Any sickness, be it psychological or physical, was attributed to the humours of the body being in an unbalanced state, with too much of one and not enough of the other. The solution was always to cut open the body and bleed off the excess fluid.
It took them centuries to think of trying herbs. Originally, the Church handed down the doctrine that God had made a cure for each ailment, and all that remained for mortals was to match up the herb to the disease. But even at this idea, quite a bit of fumbling around was needed before they had the system sorted out. At first it was thought that plants which looked like a body organ had to be the treatment for ailments of that organ, and so skullcap was prescribed for headaches, lungwort for tuberculosis, and so on. Monasteries took to keeping an herbal garden on the church premises, and clerics of the time had this primitive form of an apothecary resource from which to draw cures. Sometimes they picked a plant which did nothing, and sometimes they got lucky and discovered another kind of aspirin.
Of course, modern medical graduates already know the origins of the peculiar symbols of medicine; with the twined snakes and the mortar and pestle and all. This should serve as a constant reminder: even though we’ve made a lot of progress in our discoveries of the world around us, we will still have much farther to go. Perhaps the doctors of 5000 years in the future will likewise look back on our time with pity for our primitive understanding of medicine!
Freelance writer for over eleven years.
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What Should Avodart Be Used For?
Dutasteride, which is commonly marketed under the brand name Avodart, belongs to a class of drugs called 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, which block the action of the 5-alpha-reductase enzymes that convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The drug was approved by the FDA for the treatment of prostate enlargement in men in 2002.
Avodart has not been approved for the treatment of hair loss, although physicians can use an approved medication in ways other than that it was specifically approved for. That said, the use of dutasteride certainly requires doctor supervision. Avodart is used mostly for men who have an enlarged prostate.
If your prostate is smaller, it will put less pressure on your urethra. AVODART has been shown to improve symptoms after 3 to 6 months, with continued improvement extending to 2 years, and this improvement can be maintained up to 4 years. By shrinking the prostate, it stops the symptoms associated with prostate enlargement from getting worse.
Like finasteride (the active ingredient in Propecia), dutasteride blocks the enzyme 5 alpha-reductase that converts testosterone to DHT (DHT causes hair loss). Unlike finasteride, which only inhibits the Type I form of the enzyme, dutasteride inhibits both the Type I and Type II forms. This combined effect lowers circulating DHT more with dutasteride than with finasteride, but also increases the incidence of side effects.
The Type II form of the enzyme (blocked by finasteride) is found predominantly in the hair follicle. The Type I form of the enzyme has been found in the scalp and sebaceous glands, but its exact role in hair growth has not been determined. It is felt that the ability of dutasteride to lower serum levels of DHT is what makes it a more potent medication in hair loss.
When considering the safety of dutasteride, one should consider several facts. It acts on other parts of the body besides the hair follicle. Unlike finasteride, where families that had a deficiency of the Type II 5-alpha reductase enzyme were followed for years without any adverse effects, there is no natural biologic model to show the safety of dutasteride.
Avodart has been approved for prostate enlargement in an older male population. It is not approved for hair loss and, in fact, the clinical trials for hair loss were discontinued, so there is no safety data for its use in younger patients. There is a greater incidence of sexual side effects with dutasteride compared to finasteride.
I hope you have found this information helpful. In any case, you should consult your physician before using Avodart. It may or may not be appropriate, depending on your medical situation, to use the drug to treat hair loss. Be sure to disclose to your physician any other drugs you might be taking before requesting a prescription for Avodart.
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form
Lexapro May Pose Risks To Your Health
Lexapro, also known by its scientific name Escitalopram, is a very popular antidepressant used to treat depression associated with mood disorders. It is also used in certain cases to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety. If you have never used Lexapro before, you need to familiarize yourself with the drug interactions and the side effects associated with it.
The recommended dosage of Lexapro is 10-20 mg a day. The elderly should take smaller doses and pregnant women should avoid taking the drug altogether. However, the effectiveness of Lexapro over an extended time period has not been sufficiently studied. So, if doctors are prescribing Lexapro to a patient over a long period of time, continuous evaluation of the patient is necessary.
Citalopram and other SSRIs have been shown to cause sexual side effects in most patients, both males and females. Although usually reversible, these sexual side effects can sometimes last a very long time after discontinuation. This disorder is known as Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. Weight gain is another possible side effect associated with Lexapro.
Discontinuation from antidepressants, especially abruptly, has been known to cause certain withdrawal symptoms. One possible discontinuation symptom from Escitalopram is a type of spontaneous nerve pulse known as paresthesia or “electric shock sensations”, described by some patients as a feeling of small electric shocks, which may be accompanied by dizziness.
Lexapro withdrawal symptoms can occur at any dosage. Lexapro withdrawal symptoms can begin within eight hours of a missed dose and can last from one to eight weeks. Some patients have reported hallucinations as a side effect experienced from the withdrawal.
If already using Lexapro, the best advice is to taper off slowly instead of quitting suddenly. It is important to develop a specific tapering schedule with your health care provider to minimize Lexapro withdrawal symptoms. Anyone discontinuing Lexapro runs the risk of suffering from withdrawal symptoms.
Other discontinuation symptoms include extreme sensitivity to loud sounds and bright lights, chills, hot flushes, cold sweats, reddening of the face, abdominal pain, weight gain and extreme mental fatigue. Also possible is severe irritability and sadness/depression like symptoms.
I hope you have found this information helpful. Be sure to disclose to your physician any other drugs you might be taking before requesting a prescription for Lexapro. Although the aforementioned side effects do not occur in some people who take the medication and may be mild in those who do experience the effects, they can happen to even the most healthy individuals, so you should be cautious when using this drug.
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form