RoadtoHealthBlog

(HealthDay News) — Your blood must clot to prevent deadly blood loss. But when blood has a tendency to clot too much, it results in a dangerous condition called hypercoagulation.

The American Academy of Family Physicians says risk factors for hypercoagulation may include:

• Sitting for extended periods, such as in a car or plane.
• Staying in bed for long periods.
• Having surgery.
• Having some types of cancer.
• Being pregnant.
• Being a smoker.
• Taking certain birth control drugs or hormone replacement medications

Margarine usually beats butter when it comes to heart health. Margarine is made from vegetable oils, so it contains no cholesterol, and it generally has more polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat than butter. But not all margarines are created equal, and some may even be worse than butter. Try to find margarine with the least amount of trans fat and less than 3 grams total of saturated fats plus trans fats.

The Esteem implanted hearing system is the first completely implanted system approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for adults with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss, a permanent lack of hearing, the agency said Wednesday.

Sensorineural hearing loss can be caused by genetic factors or by inner-ear damage resulting from causes such as loud noise, a viral infection or general aging, the FDA said in a news release.

Three implanted components comprise the system: a sound processor, a sensor and a driver that converts electrical signals transmitted by the sound processor to the inner ear, which perceives them as sounds.

The most severe adverse reactions resulted from the implant surgery, and included facial paralysis (7 percent) and taste disturbance (42 percent). Most of these reactions resolved during the one-year clinical testing of the device, the agency said.

The device is produced by Minnesota-based Envoy Medical Corp. As a condition of approval, Envoy must conduct longer-term studies of the device’s safety and effectiveness, the FDA said.

By HealthDay

- (HealthDay News) — While hearing loss may be present from birth or come on gradually as a person gets older, it isn’t always permanent.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine says temporary hearing loss may be caused by:

• A blockage in the Eustachian tube.
• Allergies.
• Wax buildup inside the ear.
• An ear infection, or an object lodged inside the ear.
• A head injury.
• A perforated or scarred eardrum.
• A reaction to certain medications, such as aminoglycosides, chloroquine, or quinidine.

The first national surveillance system to monitor problems in patients who receive blood transfusions was announced Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitals are being encouraged to join the surveillance network, which will summarize data in order to learn more about how to prevent adverse events such as reactions to blood products, medical errors, and process problems.

The Hemovigilance Module — which is part of the CDC’s Internet-based National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) — was developed by the CDC in collaboration with AABB, an international association representing organizations involved in transfusion and cellular therapies.

“Healthcare facilities that join the Hemovigilance Module will now have a yardstick by which to measure their current safety initiatives and their future efforts,” Dr. Dan Pollock, chief of the branch that leads CDC’s NHSN, said in a news release. “Through this system, healthcare facilities can also see how their performance stacks up to similar facilities nationwide, with a goal of designing the best processes to protect patients’ health and reduce healthcare costs.”

The Hemovigilance Module will be provided at no cost to hospitals and healthcare facilities, the CDC said.

You know some of your muscles are stronger than others. And you know some are tighter or looser than others. Maybe you’ve noticed the muscles in one leg are tighter than the muscle in the other leg for instance.

When a muscle or group of muscles overpowers the opposing muscle(s), you have a muscle imbalance. Think of it as a Tug-of-War that’s been going on for decades in your body without you noticing it.

When your muscles are out of balance they pull your bones and joints out of their normal position and this places them under constant and uneven stress.

For example, the position and curvature of your spine is determined by the amount of balance in all the muscle groups in your thighs, hips and torso.

When muscle imbalances pull your spine and body out of alignment, the level of stress on certain muscles, bones and joints increases.

And even the smallest muscle imbalance can over time pull you out of balance and place tremendous amounts of uneven pressure and wear and tear on your body… especially the vertebrae, discs, spine and its supporting muscles.

These muscle imbalances lead to physical dysfunctions and a life of back pain.

People who buy prescription medications over the Internet, especially drugs purporting to treat erectile dysfunction, are playing Russian roulette with their lives, a new study contends.

At best the drugs won’t help you and at worst they could kill you, the review article said.

“You may be wasting your money or you may actually be hurting yourself,” said Dr. Margaret E. Wierman, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver and chief of endocrinology at the Denver VA Medical Center, who was not involved with the study.

Counterfeit Internet drugs are a mushrooming problem. Seizures of fake drugs in Europe quadrupled between 2005 and 2007. And the number of investigations undertaken by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration increased by a factor of eight between 2000 and 2006, according to the study, published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

The sale of counterfeit drugs has almost doubled in the last five years, and will hit $75 billion in 2010, according to one estimate, making it one of the more lucrative illicit drug markets.

As many as 2.5 million men in Europe may have taken counterfeit sildenafil (Viagra), the study authors stated.

“It’s a very significant problem and I think there are people who are being injured,” said Dr. Ira D. Sharlip, a spokesman for the American Urological Association and clinical professor of urology at the University of California, San Francisco. “The only way to avoid the problem is not to buy on the Internet.”

Viagra-like tablets bought on the Internet aren’t necessarily any cheaper than the real thing, but they do allow buyers to avoid the shame factor often associated with asking for this type of drug.

“The motivation is the anonymity of buying drugs on the Internet. It’s embarrassing to some men to go to a pharmacy and pick up his Viagra prescription, and it’s also embarrassing for some men to go to a doctor and say, ‘I have erectile dysfunction. I need some Viagra,’” Sharlip said.

The problem of fake drugs isn’t limited to impotence treatments. According to the study, two pregnant women died after they were given injections of a counterfeit iron preparation for anemia, and 51 children died in Bangladesh of kidney failure after taking paracetamol syrup that was contaminated with diethylene glycol, which is often used as antifreeze in cars.

So many things can go wrong with Internet purchases.

“The purity of the medication or the quality of the medication is under no sort of scrutiny or any type of oversight to determine if, first of all, it is the correct medication. And second, if it is correct is it in the correct dosage?” said Dr. Michael Chehval, chief of urology at St. Louis University.

Study author Dr. Graham Jackson, a cardiologist at London Bridge Hospital in the United Kingdom, said: “The first danger is people don’t know what’s in it. Some are just talcum powder or brick dust, while some have a bit of Viagra or Cialis and some chemicals that have nothing to do with it. One batch actually contained amphetamine, which is an addictive drug. Tablets are made shiny with road paint or shoe polish. The content of the medication could be anything.”

In 2008, four men in Singapore died after ingesting counterfeit impotence drugs that had been contaminated with a blood-sugar-lowering agent, the study reported.

And bypassing the involvement of a competent doctor means red flags could be missed.

“Erection problems can be an early warning sign of heart disease or diabetes,” Jackson said. “If you do have a problem and don’t see a doctor, diagnosis of those important conditions can be missed. Men with no symptoms at all who get an erection problem usually are an average of three to five years away from a heart attack. Instead of going to the Internet, they should be going to their doctors to find out if they are at risk and to do something about it.”

Problems also can occur when the impotence drugs actually do contain phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE5), the main ingredient in Viagra, as well as vardenafil (Levitra) and tadalafil (Cialis).

“People with underlying heart problems are at risk for cardiac events if they take this class of medication,” Chehval said.

According to the review article, about one-third of men reported sidestepping a health-care professional when buying erectile dysfunction drugs.

“This is a really serious issue. We can fix the erectile dysfunction and we can also fix the chances of getting a heart attack,” Jackson said.

Jackson is editor of the journal and reported multiple ties to pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, which makes Viagra. The review article covered more than fifty studies published between 1995 and 2009 and was conducted by British, Swedish and American researchers.

More information

The World Health Organization has more on counterfeit medications.
By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay Reporter