HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                                      Does it make any health difference whether you exercise by hiking up or down a steep incline? Researchers say that in some ways it might.   Taking the stairs regularly is a simple and practical means to improving health. Researchers asked 69 sedentary employees to use the stairs at their place of work instead of the elevators. After 12 weeks, the workers aerobic capacity had increased by 8.6 percent, which gave them a 15 percent reduction in all-cause mortality risk. The workers also saw significant improvement in their blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, fat mass, and waist circumference. A study conducted on a mountain in the Alps where for two months 45 volunteers hiked up the 30-degree slope and rode a cable car back down. Then, for two months ...

                                     A few drops of blood taken from a newborn can show whether the baby has a thyroid abnormality. If blood tests reveal a problem, physicians can take corrective measures. Lacking sufficient thyroid hormones, a child may become physically and mentally retarded, a condition called cretinism. Hence, babies are usually tested just days after birth.   Thyroid impairment may be the result of a diet poor in iodine, physical or mental stress, genetic defects, infections, disease [usually autoimmune disease], or side effects of medications prescribed for various        illnesses. An enlarged thyroid, or goiter, may be an indication of disease. The enlargement may be diffuse or in the form of nodules. Although genetically benign goiters shoul...

                         “Transfusion medicine will continue to be a little like walking through a tropical rainforest, where the known paths are clear but still require careful navigation, and new and unseen threats may still lurk around the next corner to trap the unwary.” –Ian M. Franklin, professor of transfusion medicine. After the worldwide AIDS epidemic cast the spotlight on blood in the 1980’s, efforts to eliminate its “unseen threats” intensified. Still, huge obstacles remain. In June 2005, the World Health Organization acknowledged: “The chance of receiving a safe transfusion … varies enormously from one country to another.” Why? In many lands there are no nationally coordinated programs to ensure safety standards for the collection, testing, and transport of blood and blood products. Sometimes blood supplies are even stored dangerously –in ...

                    Blood is to health care as oil is to transportation. Oil, is that the most precious of fluids? In these days when fuel costs often soar, many might think so. In truth, though, each one of us carries around a few liters of a far more valuable fluid. Think of it: As billions of barrels of oil are extracted from the earth every year to quench mankind’s thirst for fuel, some 90 million units of blood are drained from humans in hopes of helping those who are ill. That staggering figure represents the blood volume of some 8,000,000 people. Still, like oil, blood seems to be in short supply. Medical communities worldwide warn of blood shortages. What is it that makes blood so valuable?                               ...