Your Pharmaceutical Home

2014-10-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

Sweet Benefits

Chocolate—sweet, rich, and delicious—is good for more than curing a broken heart. The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, is cheaper than therapy and you don't need an appointment.

· Here are nine healthy benefits that chocolate can provide:

Healthier Heart

A Germany study found that a square of dark chocolate a day lowers blood pressure and reduces risk of heart attack and stroke by 39 percent. The primary reason is that the flavonoids in dark chocolate increase the flexibility of veins and arteries.

Weight Loss

Danish researchers found that dark chocolate is more filling than the lighter kind of chocolate, and therefore lessens the craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods, which are the kind that you would want to stay away from if you are on a diet to lose weight.

Happier Kids

A Finnish study found that women who ate chocolate daily during pregnancy reported that they were better able to handle stress, and their babies were happier and smiled more.

Diabetes Prevention

In an Italian study, participants ate dark chocolate once a day for 15 days, and saw their potential for insulin resistance drop by nearly half. The explanation is that chocolate's flavonoids increase nitric oxide production which in turn helps control insulin sensitivity.

Stress Reduction

When people feel stressed, they tend to reach out for something sweet. Swiss scientists found a significant reduction of stress hormone level in very anxious people who ate an ounce and a half of dark chocolate every day for two weeks. So dark chocolate is better than ice cream after a breakup.

Sun Protection

Researchers in London gave their test subjects 3 months of chocolate containing high levels of flavanols, and found their subjects' skin took twice as long to develop the reddening effect that indicates the beginning of a sunburn. Subjects who ate conventional low-flavanol chocolate didn't get the same sun protection.

Higher Intelligence

Researchers from Oxford University and Norway tested 2,000 people over the age of 70, and found those who consumed flavanol-rich chocolate, wine, or tea, scored significantly higher on cognitive tests than those who didn't. Another study from the University of Nottingham found that drinking cocoa rich in flavanols boosted blood flow to key parts of the brain for 2 to 3 hours, which could improve performance and alertness in the short term, such as a test.

Cough Relief

Researchers found that chocolate quieted coughs almost as well as codeine, thanks to the theobromine that it contains. Chocolate also does not have the negative side effects as Codeine which makes people feel sleepy and dull. Chocolate certainly tastes better too.

Diarrhea Relief

People in South America where cacao is originally cultivated have been known to treat diarrhea with chocolate. Scientists at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute found that cocoa flavonoids bind to a protein that regulates fluid secretion in the small intestine, potentially stopping the diarrhea.

Source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/benefits-of-chocolate

http://seniorific.com/news/2014/feb/11/9-health-benefits-chocolate/#ixzz3HVE8S8zA

Sick alcohol & beverages

Many of us like to unwind in the evening with a nice glass of something. But the odd glass can quickly add up to two or three. And the more you drink, the greater the risk to your health. Drinking can have serious consequences.

Anemia

Heavy drinking can cause the number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells to be abnormally low. This condition, known as anemia, can trigger a host of symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, and lightheadedness.

Cancer

Habitual drinking increases the risk of cancer. Scientists believe the increased risk comes when the body converts alcohol into acetaldehyde, a potent carcinogen. Cancer sites linked to alcohol use include the mouth, pharynx (throat), larynx (voice box), esophagus, liver, breast, and colorectal region. Cancer risk rises even higher in heavy drinkers who also use tobacco.

Cardiovascular disease

Heavy drinking, especially bingeing, makes platelets more likely to clump together into blood clots, which can lead to heart attack or stroke

Heavy drinking can also cause cardiomyopathy, a potentially deadly condition in which the heart muscle weakens and eventually fails, as well as heart rhythm abnormalities such as atrial and ventricular fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation, in which the heart's upper chambers (atria) twitch chaotically rather than constrict rhythmically, can cause blood clots that can trigger a stroke. Ventricular fibrillation causes chaotic twitching in the heart's main pumping chambers (ventricles). It causes rapid loss of consciousness and, in the absence of immediate treatment, sudden death.

Cirrhosis

Alcohol is toxic to liver cells, and many heavy drinkers develop cirrhosis, a sometimes-lethal condition in which the liver is so heavily scarred that it is unable to function. But it's hard to predict which drinkers will develop cirrhosis. "Some people who drink huge amounts never get cirrhosis, and some who don't drink very much do get it," Saitz says. For some unknown reason, women seem to be especially vulnerable.

Dementia

As people age, their brains shrink, on average, at a rate of about 1.9% per decade. That's considered normal. But heavy drinking speeds the shrinkage of certain key regions in the brain, resulting in memory loss and other symptoms of dementia.

Heavy drinking can also lead to subtle but potentially debilitating deficits in the ability to plan, make judgments, solve problems, and perform other aspects of "executive function," which are "the higher-order abilities that allow us to maximize our function as human beings," Garbutt says.

In addition to the "nonspecific" dementia that stems from brain atrophy, heavy drinking can cause nutritional deficiencies so severe that they trigger other forms of dementia.

Depression

It's long been known that heavy drinking often goes hand in hand with depression, but there has been debate about which came first -- the drinking or the depression. One theory is that depressed people turned to alcohol in an attempt to "self-medicate" to ease their emotional pain. But a large study from New Zealand showed that it was probably the other way around -- that is, heavy drinking led to depression.

Seizures

Heavy drinking can cause epilepsy and can trigger seizures even in people who don't have epilepsy. It can also interfere with the action of the medications used to treat convulsions.

Gout

A painful condition, gout is caused by the formation of uric acid crystals in the joints. Although some cases are largely hereditary, alcohol and other dietary factors seem to play a role. Alcohol also seems to aggravate existing cases of gout.

High blood pressure

Alcohol can disrupt the sympathetic nervous system, which, among other things, controls the constriction and dilation of blood vessels in response to stress, temperature, exertion, etc. Heavy drinking -- and bingeing, in particular -- can cause blood pressure to rise. Over time, this effect can become chronic. High blood pressure can lead to many other health problems, including kidney disease, heart disease, and stroke.

Infectious disease

Heavy drinking suppresses the immune system, providing a toehold for infections, including tuberculosis, pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases (including some that cause infertility). People who drink heavily also are more likely to engage in risky sex. "Heavy drinking is associated with a three-fold increase in the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease," Rehmn says.

Nerve damage

Heavy drinking can cause a form of nerve damage known as alcoholic neuropathy, which can produce a painful pins-and-needles feeling or numbness in the extremities as well as muscle weakness, incontinence, constipation, erectile dysfunction, and other problems. Alcoholic neuropathy may arise because alcohol is toxic to nerve cells, or because nutritional deficiencies attributable to heavy drinking compromise nerve function.

Pancreatitis

In addition to causing stomach irritation (gastritis), drinking can inflame the pancreas. Chronic pancreatitis interferes with the digestive process, causing severe abdominal pain and persistent diarrhea. Some cases of chronic pancreatitis are triggered by gallstones, but up to 60% stem from alcohol consumption.

source: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/features/12-health-risks-of-chronic-heavy-drinking

PROPER ILLNESS MANAGEMENT

2014-10-28T06:06:00.001-07:00

Years before and now a days a lot of people believe in the capacity of faith healer especially in the third-world countries like Philippines. Because of not having much money, they go to a certain person (albularyo) who is believed to have the capacity to heal their illness when they are are sick or when they feel that they have to be treated. The faith healer uses different kinds of leaves and prays different kinds of prayers which he believes given or dictated to him by God to use as his arm in defeating illness.

There are different kinds of faith healer. Some say they are being commanded by God, some say good spirit come upon their body and the spirit is the one who heals, and some says they just felt that something is pushing them to do so that they cannot even explain for it is a gift.

"Albularyo"

"A herb doctor lives in a village and has an occupation. He may be a farmer, a plow maker or a carpenter. He is well sought after. He will not perform surgery, He will accompany his patient all the way to the hospital. But even there his task is not always finished. When the relatives of the patient feel that the hospital treatment is not adequate, they may still resort to the herb doctor. One such "doctor" said: "At times the parents or relatives still call me in. I remember several instances where I would be smuggled into the hospital posing as a visitor. When the doctors and nurses are out of the room I treat the patient, using herbs and oraciones (prayers)."

The matter of treatment seems strange to the Westerner. If the herb doctor attributes a relatively mild case of fever in a child to the spirits, he may try to drive them away through the offering of prayers and food. Dr. Juan M. Flavier, president of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines, interviewed some herb doctors. He asked one, "What types of illness do you feel doctors don’t know about?” The herb doctor replied, "Those of the spirit and those that are unseen, as for example, the sickness of the soil." The "sickness of the soil" refers to being struck down with illness brought on by spirits living in the ground. The disease may take various forms. The herb doctor commented to Dr. Flavier, "No one can deny the existence of such spirits but doctors continue to deny them as causes of some diseases. That is why there are illnesses doctors cannot cure. Those cases eventually end with albularyos."

Appeal is made to the faith of the patient. Dr. Flavier inquired of a herb doctor about the many methods of treatment used. He answered, "Five; prayers, spitting, rubbing, plastering and murmuring." "Can you explain each so I can understand?" asked Flavier. He replied that prayer is nothing more than the use of prayers to invoke some saint or God. Spitting is associated with chewing and spitting on the object for a cure. For example, in circumcision, tobacco mixed with guava leaves is chewed. Then the mixture is spat on the newly cut foreskin. Rubbing may include little massage with the use of an ointment or a liniment, Kerosene is used to rub on the joints that are painful or aching. Plastering means that the herbs are pounded in the mortar and applied with a piece of cloth. Murmuring means a special secret phrase with specific wonders on certain ailments. This is not directed to God or a saint. The words themselves are responsible for the results. They can also be used to ward off evil.

As modern medical practices are beyond the reach of a vast percentage of Filipinos who live in rural areas, the herb doctor will continue to function for years to come."

(source: http://www.reformedreflections.ca/studies/faith-h-in-philippines.html)

Thus, many believe that this kind of healing is effective. However, people who believe in this kind of healing or medication may risk their lives because it has no scientific proof. With all due respect to them, i might say, people are only clinging to them because they have no money to go to the hospital for proper medications and care. For me, hospitals are the safest place to be healed because there are doctors that are highly capable of doing so and all their way of healing are proven not only scientifically but also by people who get healed through the proper care of doctors.

HELLO DRUGS

2014-10-28T05:36:00.001-07:00

Drugs are commonly combinations of chemicals that are made to be medicines later on. These are used to heal different kinds of illnes. However, sometimes, some people use drugs not to heal illness, It is used to satisfy themselves and get addicted to which we call drug addiction.

Basically drugs are commonly used by everyone or as prescribed by the Physician to save life and reduce fatality of human life. Drugs are more highly effective than the use of any leaves used by the "albularyo" in healing sickness.  To know how drugs work and effect in our body, i qouted an article in the internet.

"What medicines do for us

Medicines work in a variety of ways depending on what they are taken for and in what form.

Some examples of why we take medication are:

pain relief
to fight infection
to fight disease
to supplement a deficiency
to assist a body mechanism to correct itself
to decrease an over abundance of a body substance
to balance systems and organs in the body

But in addition to what we take, there is also the route and form by which a medication is taken:

Oral - tablet, capsule, syrup, drops etc.
Sub-lingual, (under the tongue) - tablet, drops.
Skin preparation - cream, ointments, gel, patches and so on.
Injection - by hypodermic needle.
IV - Intravenous - needle into a vein.
Into the bowel - suppository/enema.
Inhalation - steam inhalation, crystals, and inhaler.
Drops - ear/eye/nose.

How medicines are processed by the body is an intricate process, but we can simplify this by breaking the steps down into four main areas:

Administration - we take in the medicine by the form and route as mentioned earlier.
Delivery - once the medicines are inside our body they move into the blood stream then into organs and tissues.
Performance - medicines will produce or induce effects.
Elimination - the body will wash out medicines and waste products associated with them.

Therefore the type and route will have an affect on where the drug will enter the body and what areas the drug may target. For example, inhalations are primarily to assist with breathing.

The route and type of medication also has an effect on how quickly a drug will act. Intra-venous (IV) is a rapid method of medication administration, since the chemicals enter directly into the blood stream.

Injection into muscles – which are full of blood vessels - is also a very fast method of medicines getting into the body.

Suppositories and enemas inserted into the bowel through the anal opening can also be swift acting. This is due to the large surface area of the bowel that is packed with blood vessels, so absorbing the drugs very quickly.

These last 3 routes also by-pass the stomach where some or the entire drug could be destroyed or diluted by the hydrochloric acid."

   (source:http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Do-Medicines-Work-In-The-Body)

Thus, drugs are very effective to cure illness if they are used properly and not being abused by the user. Drugs are scientifically proven and come from different researches for its effectivity and capability to heal illness.

2014-10-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

EMOTION - EMOTION

Refers to complex and usually strong subjective human response .Although and emotion are sometimes, interchangeable; feeling is the more general and neutral. It’s is the moving or upsetting of the mind, it was overcome by with emotion like joy, fear, anger, love, jealousy. Some person they feel depressed when they have emotional problem it affect their works, health.

Emotion a short-term positive or negative affective state. Typically differentiated from mood in that an emotion is of shorter duration and evoked in response to a specific event, such as anger.

A state of arousal characterized by alteration of feeling tone and by physiologic behavioral changes. The external manifestation of emotion is called affect; a pervasive and sustained emotional state, mood. The physical form of emotion may be outward and evident to others, as in crying, laughing, blushing, or a variety of facial expressions. However, emotion is not always reflected in one's appearance and actions even though psychic changes are taking place. Joy, grief, fear, and anger are examples of emotions

Patient discussion about emotion.

Emotions My 68 years-old husband underwent his surgery for lung cancer several months ago and after that received chemo. Thankfully, it seems that he’s on the right track, but then lately he’s being very emotional. He says he’s always been this way since the diagnosis, but he just hid it. We try to talk about it, but it seems we just don’t communicate.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotio

LOCAL HEALTH PROGRAM:

Community health projects address a wide variety of health promotion and disease prevention issues, including chronic disease, HIV/STI, other infectious diseases, injury, adolescent health, reproductive health, immunization, tobacco, primary care, and mental health.

Healthy Communities Program

CDC's Healthy Communities Program works with communities through local, state and territory, and national partnerships to improve community leaders and stakeholders skills and commitments for establishing, advancing, and maintaining effective population-based strategies that reduce the burden of chronic disease and achieve health equity. Communities create momentum that assists people in making healthy choices where they live, learn, work, and play through sustainable changes that address the major risk factors—tobacco, physical inactivity, and unhealthy eating. Currently, 331 communities and 52 state and territorial health departments have been funded

Community health worker

Community health workers (CHW) are members of a community who are chosen by community members or organizations to provide basic health and medical care to their community. Other names for this type of health care provider include village health worker, community health aide, community health promoter, and lay health advisor.

In many developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are critical shortages of highly educated health professionals. Current medical and nursing schools cannot train enough workers to keep up with increasing demand for health care services, internal and external emigration of health workers, deaths from AIDS and other diseases, low workforce productivity, and population growth. Community health workers are given a limited amount of training, supplies and support to provide essential primary health care services to the population. Programs involving CHW in China, Brazil, Iran and Bangladesh, have demonstrated that utilizing such workers can help improve health outcomes for large populations in under-served regions. “Task shifting” of primary care functions from professional health workers to community health workers is considered to be a means to make more efficient use of the human resources currently available and improving the health of millions at reasonable cost.

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/programs/healthycommunitiesprogram/

2014-10-26T19:54:00.002-07:00

Hearty Dishes

If we say hearty dishes it means nourishing or as in big filling of meal. Better a dish of illusion and a hearty appetite for life, than a feast of reality and indigestion there with. Here are some examples of hearty dishes:

Musaka

Besides its amusing pronunciation, musaka is a delicious potato-based dish. Musaka is a popular dish that is served in Macedonia and other Eastern European countries. Musaka is a layered dish, mainly consisting of sliced potatoes. In between each tender and gooey layer lies a bed full of eggplant, onion, ground meat and an assortment of veggies. The top layer is usually finished with a beautiful egg-yolk glaze, giving it a wonderfully golden colour and crispy texture.

Sarma

Cabbage rolls may not be everyone’s idea of delicious, but I can seriously vouch for this particular recipe. Sarma does not necessarily have to use cabbage for the “rolls”. A common substitute for this dish is grape leaves, which are equally as tasty. Minced meat, onion, paprika and chopped veggies compose the filling of this dish. Sarma is typically served with a few heaping spoonfuls of plain yogurt.

Pastrmajlija

Pastrmajlija is an oval shaped fried dough pie. Pastrmajlija is usually topped with salted, cubed meat. There’s even a national festival for this dish in Macedonia - that’s how freakin’ good it is.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jovcov/delicious-macedonian-dishes-for-your-inner-foodie-h04v

Organic Drugs

The organic drug is substance produced by a living organism – found in nature. Usually restricted to mean purified organic compounds isolated from natural sources that are produced by the pathways of primary or secondary metabolism. Most drugs today, legal and otherwise, are synthesized in a laboratory. But most medical and recreational drugs originally began in the wild, growing naturally in forests, fields, and deserts. Some can still be found there. Here are some examples of organic drug:

Coca leaves (cocaine)

Coca leaves, mostly grown in South America, have to go through some pretty ugly steps to become cocaine. Steps involving powdered cement, gasoline soak, and battery acid baths are all needed to condense the naturally occurring leaves into an illegal narcotic. The leaves themselves have been used by native populations for centuries as a (much milder) stimulant and medication. Spanish physician and botanist Nicolás Monardes described the effect of the leaves in 1569: "When they wished to make themselves drunk and out of judgment they chewed a mixture of tobacco and coca leaves which make them go as they were out of their witted."

Blue agave (Tequila)

Alcohol is unique in the world of drugs because it's made through the process of fermentation, not a particular basic ingredient. Fermentation occurs when yeast eats the sugars of whatever plant you're using, the by-product being ethanol (drinkable alcohol). In tequila, named for the Mexican town where it originated, the sugar comes from the beautiful blue agave. The center of the blue agave looks like pineapple. After it's roasted and mashed, it provides the sugar that, once properly rotted, leaves behind alcohol.

Source: http://theweek.com/article/index/244623/8-drugs-that-exist-in-nature

A certain virus might be already lurking in your gut!

2014-08-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Researchers have found a previously undetected virus that lives in almost half of the world’s population.

Image: vitstudio/Shutterstock

It may be hiding cosily in your gut. Or perhaps your partner's or your neighbours. In fact, it's been hidden inside millions of people for years and never been noticed before. But now researchers think it’s the most common and abundant virus in the human stomach.

The ‘cheeky’ virus, dubbed crassphage, is quite a master of disguise. Researchers hadn’t spotted it before because it lives inside gut microbes known as bacteroides—gram-negative bacteria that may play an important role in the development of obesity and diabetes. These type of bacteria include most of the ones usually found in the human gastrointestinal tract, but they are also responsible for certain diseases, such as bacterial meningitis.

And just like many other discoveries scientific, this one happened by accident.

The virus was discovered by scientists at the San Diego State University in the US, who were analysing faecal samples from people in America, Korea, Japan and Europe.

According to Michaeleen Doucleff at NPR, the researchers noticed that a “few genes from the same virus kept of popping up over and over again. So they painstakingly stitched together the virus’s genome inside the computer."

And they found the virus in 75 percent of the 466 samples analysed—and they couldn’t find information about it in the scientific literature.

“It’s not unusual to go looking for a novel virus and find one,” team member, bioinformatics professor Robert A. Edwards, said in a press release. “But it’s very unusual to find one that so many people have in common. The fact that it’s flown under the radar for so long is very strange.” Edwards believes the virus may be as old as humans are.

The researchers still need to figure out what role the newly found virus has in our gut. Because it’s attached to bacteriodetes, it could also play a role in obesity and gut-related diseases, but we won't know for sure until further studies are conducted.

Source: Science Alert

Indeed it’s very alarming that this virus “crAssphage” has invaded GI tract, half of human populace adversely affected. The fact that this microorganism replicate so fast inside our stomach unnoticed is frightening; has vastly affected millions of people within the ratio of 75% of the samples studied.

Studying the topic further, there was no incubation period mentioned, that is length of time for the infection to develop from exposure until manifestations of symptoms are detected. And as stated, more scientific informations has yet to be reached regarding this virus, which lives, grow increasingly but undetectable because it lives inside bacteriodetes inside our stomach. We who acquire it are unaware it is already actively replicating in our GI tract. Moreover, its role could also be significant in the control of bacteria. Scientists are trying to isolate the virus and manipulate it probably, as vaccine constituent.

More information on scientific nature of such virus is yet to be found like incubation period. The prophylaxis or preventive treatment is yet to be discovered, although Robert Edwards tells us it started since human beings came in to being. You too, might have already acquired it without knowing it.

Welcome to our home, Your Pharm Home!

2014-07-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

Your Pharm Home takes responsibility in seeking information and knowledge that is considered essential in the society providing better lifestyle practices and possible remedies for everyone’s daily living.

Bringing a dose of medication to a patient is what this blog tries to cater to everyday viewers through 3D - Daily Dose of Data. Not just a simple data but we make sure that it will help everyone achieve a healthy living.

A house will never be called home without the presence of love, care and comfort provided by each members living in it. Same case with this blog’s main purpose – Your Pharm Home will never be called home without sharing something that would make them feel loved, cared for and something that would make them feel comfortable. It is our home, Your Pharm Home!