Take heart disease, for instance. This occurs when cholesterol and calcium build up in your coronary arteries, resulting in a lack of oxygen to the heart muscle and heart attacks. It turns out that a healthy lifestyle low in cholesterol and fats and high in exercise, fruits and vegetables can make a big difference in how your risk of heart disease is. Quitting smoking and maintaining an ideal weight are also things you can do to reduce your risk of heart disease. Blood pressure plays a role as well and the combination of risk factors lowers your heart disease risk by 75 percent.

You don’t need to do a complete lifestyle overhaul in order to have some heart disease prevention. Try changing one risk factor at a time until you’ve turned your risk for heart disease around. Try 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day for six days per week and you’ll lower your heart disease and cancer risk by a great deal.

By all means, quit smoking. You not only get heart disease from smoking but you can die from lung cancer, which is the number one cause of cancer deaths in many countries. Quitting almost immediately adds many years to your life. Think, too, of alcohol intake. Your risk of liver cancer goes way up if you drink more than one drink a day (for women) or two drinks per day (for men). Alcohol intake has been associated with breast cancer in women.

Seek help for depression. Suicides kill thousands of people per year. Men have a high suicide rate and accident rate—over and above women. Pay attention to the genetic components of disease. If something runs in your family, make sure you are screened for it or watch for early signs of the disease. Think about genetic testing if there is a disease, like breast cancer, that can be checked for before you actually get the disease. If alcoholism runs in your family, don’t drink because it can lead to alcoholism in you as well.

Most people do badly when it comes to preventative medicine. Get a flu shot every year and start having colonoscopies every ten years starting at age 50. A pneumonia shot can save thousands of lives. You only have to get one pneumonia shot once in your lifetime. And don’t forget about the chicken poxs, tetanus, heptatitis B, diphtheria and pertussis vaccination, which is done every 5-10 years.

Avoiding Health Risks is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

It is a good idea to see a doctor for a complete check up before attempting the task of training for a marathon. If you are older or are worried about your cardiac health, a doctor can order an exercise stress test, which can tell you if your heart can handle the stressors of running long distances.

Choose the distance you are intending to run and plan your training sessions accordingly. You can choose to run a marathon as short as 10 kilometers or you can go all out and choose to run a marathon that is as long as 42 kilometers or about 26 miles.

Don’t forget that training for a marathon can’t be done in a very short period of time. Begin your training session for your marathon as early as 4 to 5 months ahead of the date of the marathon. Your physical training is what is going to get you through the event so you need to give your body time to adjust to the rigors of running.

Understand the importance of an excellent diet plan necessary for success in a marathon. Your performance depends on eating a balanced diet with all the essential nutrients, including protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, fats, minerals and, of course, plenty of water.

On the day of the marathon, you need to dress lightly. While it may be cool or even cold in the morning when the marathon starts, the temperature will only continue to rise as the day progresses. If you overdress for the morning hours, it is too likely that you will become overheated and even dehydrated as it begins to warm up.

You need to select the right running shoe for you. Ideally, your shoe will be specifically for running, should fit you extremely well and should have already been broken in with several kilometers of previous running. That way, you’ll know exactly whether or not the shoe is right for you.

You need to pace yourself during the marathon. If you expend all your energy stores by trying to get ahead of the next person or fail to take time to slow your speed for periods of time, you will tire out too easily and will fail at the task of finishing the run.

Right Ways to run a Marathon is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

Signs and symptoms of stroke include paralysis of one or both sides of the body, lack of speech, vision abnormalities, and inability to understand the spoken word. There can be other, minor symptoms associated with the disease as well.

One of the most common ways to decrease stroke risk is to reduce blood pressure. This usually means taking antihypertensive medications to keep your blood press at 140/90 or less. This keeps the pressure off the blood vessels so they don’t burst and hemorrhage. You’ll need to have your blood pressure monitored on a regular basis. You can have your blood pressure checked at the drug store, the doctor’s office or at home with a home monitor.

You should decrease your level of depression and stress. Your emotional state is important when it comes to getting stroke symptoms so you should try to remain calm and socialize with others as much as possible. You can involve yourself in church and community activities in order to reduce depression and loneliness. Other ways to reduce stress include taking yoga classes, taking medication classes, playing music that relaxes you and mild walking outdoors in the sunshine. Therapy may be necessary if the depression and stress are too difficult to manage on your own.

Reduce your chances of developing blood clots. This can mean taking a baby aspirin a day. It can also mean that you take medications like Plavix or Coumadin to really keep the blood thin at all times. Your doctor can help you decide which medication you should be taking.

You should lower your level of LDL or “bad” cholesterol. High levels of this lipoprotein can increase your risk of getting a stroke. There are anti-lipid medications you can take that lower the LDL level and increase your HDL or “good” cholesterol. When the bad cholesterol is high, you stand an increased chance of getting blood clots that cause stroke.

Your diet is important in the prevention of stroke. You should eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grain foods. Some small amounts of meat is acceptable if it is low in fat. These foods are low in cholesterol and fat so they do not contribute to an elevated LDL level. This results in a decreased risk for stroke.

Exercise regularly, at least three times a week for a half hour at a time. This gets your circulation going, helps lower blood pressure and makes you feel overall better about yourself. The activity should be of a moderate intensity. Talk to your doctor about what kinds of exercises and to what degree you should be exercising.

You should stop smoking. Smoking just happens to be a great risk factor for stroke. Talk to your doctor about ways you can lower your cravings for cigarettes.

Ways to Decrease Stroke Risk is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

What we’ve learned in the last forty years is that cancer itself is a complex and complicated disease. Genetics and our chromosomes play a large role in who gets cancer and who subsequently recovers from it. We have discovered how to use genetics in families to see who is at greater risk for getting certain types of cancer.

Research has been disappointing in the area of treating metastatic cancer. What is known is that people with metastatic cancer still almost always die. Newer treatments developed since 1970 have been able to prolong a patient’s life for at most, a couple months.

We’ve made our best strides in the area of early detection and prevention. More women get Pap smears, more people have been given screening colonoscopies and more women have gone for screening mammograms over the years, resulting in an increase in the number of people discovered to have cancer at an earlier stage, which means longer survival times and more cures.

Linkages between habits and the development of cancer have been discovered. Some of the more common ones include the link between smoking and lung cancer. It has now been discovered that smoking causes other cancers, such as bladder and pancreatic cancer. A total of fourteen different cancers have been found to be linked to smoking history. In addition, obesity and the eating of fatty foods have been found to be linked to cancer. These kinds of things have helped individuals get the choice to change their lifestyle and habits in order to prevent cancer.

Forty years ago, doctors had surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in the armament to treat cancer. During that time, other treatments have been added to cancer treatment. For example, hormonal therapy has been used especially in the treatment of male and female cancers, with good success. Similar treatments, such as those used on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in breast cancer have led to amazing successes in women who would otherwise die early deaths.

In 1970, better registries were created to identify cancer patients. This led to better pools of individuals from which to study the disease and hopefully find better treatments. What is known from these cancer registries is that we have made some progress. The death rate from 1991 through 2008 has decreased by 18.3 percent.

War on Cancer is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

Begin with aerobic activity—preferably light aerobic exercise. It can be as simple as walking three times per day for a half hour to 45 minutes at a time. You can add resistance training to this program for muscle strengthening and feeling better about yourself. You can do resistance training two to three times a week at the same time as aerobic exercise or alternate the two forms of exercise. The most research support has been in the area of light aerobic exercise. This kind of exercise can improve your mental processes such as multitasking and focusing on the task at hand. Memory is important as well and is improved with aerobic exercise. Some doctors believe that twice a week anaerobic exercise will add to the benefits of aerobic exercise.

Exercise seems to change brain chemicals that help you think better for many years to come. Doctors are trying to figure out exactly how and why exercise enhances physical health.

Being more productive at work helps your mental self esteem and makes you feel better about your job as an employee. Those who are more productive at work better manage their time better and have less absenteeism. Doing something like yoga or meditation also enhances the job market and you are a better employee on the job. These activities help improve your work function and help you be a better employee.

Stay focused in school. Those who partook in sports activities at school were able to focus better on other tasks, like math and reading. Just a little bit of exercise makes the difference when it comes to staying focused in school Treadmill students did better on tests than students that just rested.

Some research has shown that exercise might control ADHD without drugs. It seems to change the dopamine level in your brain, increasing concentration and improving behavior. Overall academic performance can be helped by exercise. Even so, there have been cuts in physical fitness classes and this is not a good thing when it comes to the rest of school performance. Increased physical fitness can improve childhood obesity so that children are leaner and work better at school.

Ways to Enhance your Mental and Emotional Health is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

Functional medicine involves preventative medicine, which has become more popular in certain countries and not so much in others. It may be the one thing that can turn around the extra costs of healthcare. Internationally, about 100,000 doctors in 69 countries have already put in the extra time and effort to learn functional medicine.

Functional medicine is not the same thing as alternative medical care. It looks at the roots of illnesses, such as our genetic makeup and our environment and habits. It recognizes that genetic factors cannot yet be changed but that those with the genetic predisposition to a disease need to work harder to change their habits and environment in order to avoid getting a disease.

There are several areas that those who study functional medicine are working on:

· Antioxidant imbalances and mitochondrial functioning.

· Neurotransmitter and hormonal malfunction.

· Biotransformation, detoxification, and excretory problems.

· Absorptive, digestive, and microbiologic imbalances

· Nutritional deficiencies

· Immune problems and inflammation

Functional medicine doctors treat people with nutritional supplements, herbal therapies, lifestyle changes, structural work and emotional or spiritual therapies.

There is plenty of clinical research to back the work of those who practice functional medicine. Physiological, pharmaceutical and case study research are all being done to show that functional medicine has its place in traditional medical practices. Functional medicine doctors practice medicine based on nutritional principles and biochemistry. It studies the immune system along with neurobiochemistry, the ecosystem of the bowel, fatty acids, minerals, and amino acids.

Functional medicine reminds us that none of our organs work in isolation from the others and should understand that some illnesses or body areas trigger problems in other body areas. For example, inflammation of diabetes triggers inflammation involved in getting arthritis.

Certification as a functional medical specialist requires completion of a course in functional medicine, taking six functional medicine practice modules and passing a functional medicine test. The course is a practical one that teaches all general practitioners what it takes to put preventative medicine into daily practice.

What is Functional Medicine? is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

Breathlessness can be associated with low blood oxygen levels although the oxygen levels can be normal while the patient experiences the sensation of being low on oxygen. There are many causes of shortness of breath, including emphysema, pneumonia, heart failure, dementia, asthma, Multiple Sclerosis and AIDS. Cancer patients often experience shortness of breath. This can be true even if the cancer does not originate in the lungs.

Being short of breath can be a frightening experience for those who suffer from it. If you experience shortness of breath, you should probably see a doctor to determine the cause of the condition and to make sure there isn’t something that can be done to help the problem. It is a problem that is worse when you exert yourself in most cases and doctors use a grading system to determine the severity of the condition. Grade I is the least severe and grade IV is the most severe and is associated with shortness of breath even when you are at rest.

There is a condition where you only are short of breath when lying down. This is caused orthopnea and is usually the result of heart problems causing shortness of breath. Shortness of breath can also be caused by deconditioning of the cardiovascular system so the patient is short of breath with even the smallest amount of exercise.

There are four main things that can lead to shortness of breath. They include having increased levels of carbon dioxide in the system, decrease oxygen levels, the decrease in the ability of the lung to expand and increased workload of breathing. There can be respiratory causes, such as obstruction of the air passages in asthma or nasal airway blockage. COPD, emphysema, bronchitis, pneumonia, pulmonary edema, restriction in the airway or a pulmonary embolism are other common causes of feeling short of breath.

There are several cardiac causes of breathlessness. These include mitral valve prolapse, cardiomyopathy, heart failure and pericarditis. These usually cause an accumulation of fluid in the lungs and a lesser area for oxygen to get into the lungs. The heart can’t pump enough oxygen through the lungs so you get less oxygen in the rest of the body and feel short of breath.

Cancer of the lungs can cause excessive shortness of breath. This is because it can cause pleural effusion or decreased oxygenation of the lungs because the cancer can cause bronchial blockages. In addition to shortness of breath, you often have bloody sputum and a cough.

Being Short of Breath is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

Hypertension is defined as having persistent blood pressure readings of 140/90 or greater. Borderline hypertension is having a blood pressure of about 130/80 consistently but not higher. Diabetics are treated for high blood pressure when the reading is slightly elevated earlier because of the possibility of damage to the kidneys.

The goal of treatment is to have a blood pressure reading that doesn’t increase the risk of dying from heart disease. Hypertension is one of the major risk factors of heart disease. In Malaysia, nearly half of all adults of age 30 or older suffer from high blood pressure. How is it best treated and what can you do yourself to reduce high blood pressure?

Exercise can reduce high blood pressure. It improves your overall cardiovascular health and leaves you with a reduced blood pressure at rest. Your blood pressure increases during exercise but it improves your blood pressure overall. Eating less salt will reduce blood pressure. Adults are eating a great deal more than the recommended 2000 mg of sodium per day for hypertensive patients.

There are a number of medications you can take for high blood pressure, including angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors or ACE inhibitors, centrally acting medications and calcium channel blockers or beta blockers. Each medication works on the blood vessels, the heart, the brain or the kidneys to alter the blood pressure of those who take it.

The other part of treating risk factors for heart disease involves lowering cholesterol. You can do this by eating less cholesterol, taking in more soluble fiber, which binds cholesterol in the gut and by taking statin medications, which lower the amount of cholesterol in your bloodstream.

Treating High Blood Pressure is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

1) The Amara Corporate Tower is undergoing a main power grid shut-down and testing on 14 April 2012.

2) As such, all business activity in the building will be suspended.

3) MHC Medical Centre (Amara) will therefore be closed for that day.

4) Normal clinic operations will resume on 16 April 2012, Monday, 9 am.

5) We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and seek your understanding in this.

6) For enquiries and rescheduling of appointments, you may contact us at 6225 5220 during clinic operation hours. You may also reach us via email at gp@mhcAsia.com.

7) Our clinic operating hours are:

• Mon to Fri – 9 am to 5 pm ;
• Sat – 9 am to 1 pm ;
• Sun & Public Holidays – Closed.

Thank you for your steadfast support despite the building works, and we look forward to serving you again.

Sincerely,

Management, MHC Medical Centre (Amara)

Closure of medical centre on 14 April 2012 Saturday for Power Upgrading is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness

The FDA is getting in on the discussion and plans to hold public hearings on the matter. This is because this is a new paradigm in healthcare that promises to put healthcare into the hands of the consumer at costs that are much cheaper than having a doctor be the middleman or middle-woman. This might mean that there will be simpler access for diabetes treatments as well as treatments for cholesterol—two common conditions that have self testing available to interested parties. Things like blood pressure, high cholesterol, migraine headaches and asthma can be self-diagnosed and self treated.

Screening can be done at health kiosks, pharmacies, on websites or at a grocery store. The person could have the option of consulting a pharmacist for the right medication to choose or could use internet sites to pick a medication, order it online or get it off store shelves, and treat their conditions much like they treat a fever or the common cold. It would be far cheaper to do medicine this way and most people are smart enough to see a doctor if things aren’t going the right way.

More people are searching the internet for health information each and every day. Many are using sites to search symptoms and some are going to their doctors well prepared for the visit they are about to have with their doctor—so well prepared, in fact, that they almost don’t need the doctor’s intervention.

Health apps have become a part of people’s mobile phones and computers so they can keep track of their cholesterol numbers, their weight, and their blood pressure. Blood pressure monitors can be attached to iPhones and iPads so the data is directly included in the app.

Health kiosks are popping up all over, doing blood oxygen levels, blood pressures, and blood sugars. Some give the information to the person’s physician while some just give it to the patient who requested the test to do anything they want to with it. Some kiosks expect soon to connect you to a doctor, pharmacist or nurse who can guide you to whatever medications or lifestyle changes you may need.

Screening by oneself appeals to those who are bright and who want to be the controller of their own health destiny. They understand what it takes to get well and are willing to go through what it takes to get there, whether or not a doctor is involved.

DIY Health Screening for Disease is a post from: MHC Health & Wellness