Meet the world's first HEARTLESS man who is able to live without a pulse

In March of last year, Craig Lewis, 55, was dying from a heart condition that caused build-ups of abnormal proteins-Amyloidosis-, and not even a pacemaker could help save his life.

But two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute proposed a revolutionary new solution – install a ‘continuous flow’ device that would allow blood to circulate his body without a pulse.

Dr Billy Cohn and Dr Bud Frazier installed the device after removing Mr Lewis’ heart. Within a day, the patient was up and speaking with physicians.

The two doctors had developed the device some time before and had tested it on nearly 50 calves.

They removed the animals’ hearts, and by the next day, the calves were doing everything they were the day before – eating, sleeping, and moving – but this time, without a heart pumping blood through their bodies.

Mr Lewis’ amyloidosis was getting worse, and doctors feared he would die soon without necessary efforts. Doctors grimly said he had 12 hours to live

Dr. Billy Con

Dr Bud Frazier

So, with the permission of Mr Lewis’ wife Linda, Dr Cohn and Dr Frazier installed the heart in March 2011

The device works by supplying a continuous flow of blood through the body, using blades to move it along. 

Dr Cohn said it contains ‘a moderate amount’ of homemade materials

Mr Lewis’ wife was astonished when she tried to listen for his pulse. ‘I listened and it was a hum, which was amazing,’ . ‘He didn’t have a pulse.'

The Texas Heart Institute said that prior to having the revolutionary new device installed, Mr Lewis was reliant on a dialysis machine, a breathing machine, and an external blood pump.

In March of last year, Texas Heart Institute president Dr James T. Willerson called it ‘medical history in the making.’

The first artificial human heart prototype was successfully implanted in 1969 by Dr Denton Cooley

Heart Stop Beating is the story of Billy Cohn & Bud Frazier, two visionary doctors from the Texas Heart Institute, who in March of 2011 successfully replaced a dying man's heart with a 'continuous flow' device they developed, proving that life was possible without a pulse or a heart beat.

Join the conversation and tweet #heartstopbeating to have your tweet featured on the Focus Forward website. Go to http://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/9/heart-stop-beating to see the discussion

Ladies,please don't bleed out! act on your fibroids now!!!

I was on call the other day, when i was called to see one of the nurses on duty. she had reported for duty that day, and was trying to change into her uniform when she started to feel dizzy. I raced upstairs to the changing room to see what the problem was.

 I was able to help her to a room nearby where i started to examine her. I noticed this bulge in the lower part of her belly, which was quite painful especially when i tried to touch it.  I further noticed she had a pad on, when i expected she was menopausal. I then asked if she was menstruating she replied in the affirmative, which precipitated my next question- "do you have a fibroid?"... it turns out she had known for almost a year, and had been experiencing the excessive bleeds, but was still temporizing on having the surgery done since she felt she would soon attain menopause.
I checked her vitals- pulse rate, blood pressure, all of which were relatively normal, and did a quick general exam. I thereafter ran a test to know her blood level, so we can have a baseline in case it dropped further.
I made it a point of duty to report her to my boss as i cant understand why someone would practice medicine and wouldn't want to use medicine.
Shes had her Hysterectomy and isn't bleeding out anymore.

Ladies dont wait till you are bleeding out. talk to your doctor about your fibroids today

xo

Fibroids and you

While in medical school, we learnt that fibroids are common in the elderly women without kids. However nowadays, that doesn't seem to be the case. there seems to be an increasing number of young ladies suffering with a fibroid.

What is it? A fibroid is a tumour (abnormal growth) of the uterus A.K.A womb.
This tumour distorts the normal structure and function of the womb, which causes the associated symptoms noticed by women suffering the disease.

Symptoms include:

• feeling of pressure or heaviness in the lower part of the abdomen
• bulge in the lower part of the abdomen
• changes in the menstrual cycle- duration become shorter, i.e one could experience 2 periods in a month.
• increased menstrual flow.
• tiredness during menstrual flow due to excessive blood loss.
• severe menstrual cramps. 
• inability to achieve conception or to carry pregnancy to term.

How to diagnose
Should in case you have any of  the above symptoms, its best you checked with a doctor. Who would prescribe you have a scan done to confirm the diagnosis.

Treatment
The ultimate treatment for fibroids is surgery. the procedure is called a Myomectomy (removal of the growth). However in some occasions following a myomectomy, after a number of years, a fibroid could still reoccur, hence in women who do not desire children anymore, it could be advisable to have the womb taken out a procedure called Hysterectomy.

Note, other forms of intervention given are supportive, and do not address the main problem.
The symptoms especially excessive bleeding could be very fatal if not promptly addressed.
If you or someone you know are suffering from a fibroid, please talk with your doctor, so you can choose a treatment option best for you.

xo

Vitamin D deficiency now linked with Diabetes.

Lose weight: It's the go-to recommendation for preventing diabetes.

But according to new research published in theJournal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, it may not be enough. Vitamin D deficiency also appears to increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes -- no matter your weight.

More than 29 million Americans have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's 9.3 percent of the population. Another 86 million have prediabetes (prediabetes is a condition where blood sugar is persistently high, but not high enough to be called diabetes, its also associated with high risks, and up to 30 percent of them will develop Type 2 diabetesin the next five years. In Type 2 diabetes, the body cannot properly use insulin, resulting in chronically high blood sugar levels. Blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and loss of toes, feet or legs are common side effects.

Meanwhile, up to 41.6 percent of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, according to 2011 a paper published in Nutrition Research. While previous research -- including one study published in Diabetes Care -- has suggested a link between vitamin D deficiency and diabetes, many experts believed obesity was the middleman. Perhaps vitamin D deficiency spurred weight gain, which, in turn led to diabetes? According to the Endocrine Society's 2012 scientific statement on vitamin D, people who have low levels of vitamin D are at increased risk of obesity as well as Type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and metabolic syndrome (characterized by high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels).

However, more than 10 percent of people living with Type 2 diabetes aren't overweight, according to the Obesity Society. That might not seem like a huge percentage, but 10 percent of 29.1 million people is still a lot of people.

So, to determine if vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of diabetes -- or if it simply causes weight gain -- a team of Spanish researchers examined the vitamin D levels, metabolic health and body-mass indexes (a measure of body fat based on height and weight) of 138 adults.

The researchers classified all of the participants from two Spanish hospitals by their BMIs as well as whether they had diabetes, prediabetes or no glycemic disorders. They then measured their blood levels of vitamin D and their adipose (fat) tissues' expression of the vitamin D receptor gene. (Vitamin D activates genes throughout the body. If the gene is in the fat tissue, vitamin D affects that fat tissue.)

Results showed that obese individuals with diabetes had lower levels of vitamin D than did their diabetes-free counterparts, and that vitamin D gene expression was higher in morbidly obese individuals than in those with lower BMIs. What's more, healthy-weight subjects with diabetes were more likely to have significantly low levels of vitamin D compared to normal-weight subjects without the disease, suggesting that vitamin D deficiency may throw off metabolic health all on its own -- not just by causing weight gain. In fact, vitamin D levels correlated with insulin resistance, but not with BMI, meaning that deficiency can put you at risk for diabetes, even if you're at a healthy weight.

"Our study shows that the deficit of vitamin D is associated with diabetes and less with obesity," says study author Manuel Macías-González of Complejo Hospitalario de Málaga (Virgen de la Victoria) and the University of Málaga. "We believe that vitamin D deficiency could be a new mechanism to promote metabolic disorders, such as diabetes."

He hopes future research will examine how vitamin D and substitutes could affect blood sugar levels and metabolic health in both overweight and healthy-weight individuals.

In the meantime, he believes that -- whatever you weigh -- you may be able to reduce your risk of diabetes through a healthy vitamin D-rich diet and by spending more time outdoors.

That's because vitamin D, nicknamed the "sunshine vitamin," is by and large produced in our bodies when sunlight hits our skin. While it can also be absorbed from the few naturally high-D foods (think eggs and fatty fish such as salmon and tuna) as well as fortified foods (e.g., some milks and cereals), sun exposure is the largest contributor to healthy vitamin D levels. Those who suspect they're not getting enough vitamin D through food and sun exposure can talk to their doctor to see if they have deficiency and, if so, whether supplementation is needed.

Apart from Type 2 diabetes, vitamin D deficiency has been linked with rickets, weak bones and  other serious conditions including cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis and depression. Learn more about vitamin D and how to get enough of the health-boosting nutrient

source: yahoo news

Fever- temperature

Please pardon us doctors when we go all medical on our patients, it's just when we learn new words, we can like to show off... it takes a while for us to learn some if them;)

So this post is just to let you know what to do to help reduce temperature at home pending when you can get to a hospital

High temperature aka fever is dangerous especially for children because it can cause them to convulse. 

Once you notice a fever in your child, you can help them cool down by:

Removing their cloth to expose them to fresh air.

Giving the child a cool bath or using a cool wet towel for them

Giving the child paracetamol syrup in appropriate dosage. (< 1 yr- 2.5 ml, 1-3 yrs- 5ml, 4-6 yrs 7.5 ml, 6-9 yrs 10ml, 9-15yrs 1 tab-500mg)
Adults- 2tabs of paracetamol not more than 3 times a day.

This steps could help bring down the child's temperature for a couple of hours till you can get to a hospital and find out the cause of the fever.

Pls note the dosages given are approximate and should be safe as children's doses are given according to weight. You could cross check with a doctor or registered pharmacist to be certain the dosage your child would maximally benefit from. Paracetamol shouldn't be used more than 3 times daily. All drugs have potential side effects! Let's be careful.

Have a fever free week!

Big, Bigger, Biggest

Comparative and superlative was an aspect of English I enjoyed in primary school.
But today, I would be attacking our weights. How big is big?

We live in an age and time where everyone is appearance conscious. Many big looking people are trying to shed the excess kilos whereas the slim looking are looking to gain some weight. This is also a period where mothers who have children with healthy appetites and are smallish in stature automatically thinks something is wrong with the kid and she's forgotten to look for the answer in her husband' small frame; or when people around you are  extremely worried you may have been terminally  ill when you shed some weight.
True there are some big boned people- the category I eagerly claim to be in when I'm not too pleased with the report on the weighing scale. However, fat is something else. Excess fat or Obesity as it's called happens to be a major health challenge as it puts it's sufferers at risk of other diseases and illnesses which include-  high blood pressure aka hypertension, diabetes, joint diseases with persistent joint pains, some forms of cancer etc.
The degree of obesity can be measured according to the persons BMI- body mass index, which tells the relationship between your weight and your height. BMI is considered normal when it's between 18-24. You are considered obese when it's greater than 30.

Tips to combat obesity
Diet change. This is easier said than done. I know how cravings can be and keeping up can be very challenging. However, there are many health forums that deal with diet. I recently found one doctor, who has recreated many Nigerian dishes to give healthier options. Drop the sugar. Challenge your self to cut sweets and excess carbohydrates for 1 week and then look at the scale afterwards, I know it works.- Instead of having rice and vegetables,  try vegetables and rice. ;)

Lifestyle change- get up, and get moving!
Find someone who can motivate you and stick with them like a parasite on a host...

I wouldn't recommend slimming pills because of some of the reported risks associated with them.

For people with severe obesity, consider talking with your doctor about surgical options (bariatric surgery). They improve chances of weight loss, then consider a diet, stick with it, and throw in some exercise.

Have a fat free week!

xoxo