Signs your feet might be giving you

~The Sun Nigeria. Thursday, October 27, 2016.

When your feet ache after a long day, you might just put the blame on your shoes. After all, many people say their shoes hurt. But sometimes, the pain may not come from our shoes, not even from the sky-high heels some women put on, all in the name of fashion.Pain or any other condition of our feet that's is not due to our type of foot wear may arise from different health issues.

Do not ignore your feet, take time to note every new detail.What you observe can give you a clue to your state of health. Here's signs your feet might be giving you:

Swollen Feet: This is common and usually not cause for a major concern particularly if one has been standing/sitting too long, embarked on a long journey or is pregnant. On the contrary, feet that stay swollen can be a sign of a serious medical condition. The cause may be poor circulation, high blood pressure, toxic overload, hormonal issues, water retention, a problem with the lymphatic system, or a blood clot. Heart, liver, kidney disorder or under active thyroid can also cause swelling.

Cold feet:The most obvious cause of cold feet is the surrounding environment. When the temperature gets colder, people routinely experience problems with cold extremities. However, there are several different medical problems that can cause cold feet as well.Many cardiovascular concerns, diabetes, poor blood flow, circulatory problem, high blood pressure, heart disease, hypothyroidism, anemia maycause cold feet.No matter the underlying cause, cold feet can be uncomfortable, not just to you but also your partner. For instance, it can make your partner shriek when your toes touch his or her so-warm legs.

Burning Feet:Unlike cold feet, this is the sensation that your feet are painfully hot. Often times, I hear people say, they feel pins and needles in their feet. That's the sensation with burning feet. The sensation may be described as similar to an electric shock which could make walking uncomfortable for the sufferers. Burning of the feet may also be accompanied by numbness. And just like the needle and pin sensation, numbness in the feet can cause problem in walking. In this case, there may be a balance problem, as the sufferer may not really feel the feet moving or touching the floor. Often, burning sensations in the feet is due to some kind of damage or dysfunction in the nervous system. The problem is sometimes associated with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, chronic alcohol abuse and exposure to certain toxins.It can also be caused by a vitamin B deficiency, athlete's foot, chronic kidney disease, poor circulation in the legs and feet or hypothyroidism.

Foot sores:That will not heal are a major warning sign for diabetes. Diabetes can impair sensation in the feet, circulation, and normal wound healing, so even aninsect bite could become a troublesome wound. Those sores also are prone to infection. Slow-healing of sores also can be caused by poor circulation from conditions such as peripheral artery disease.

Foot cramps:Are contractions of the muscles of the feet. Cramps are usually brief, but they can be severe and painful.During an episode, one will definitely feel the muscle contracting rapidly and violently. The person may even be able to see it.Overwork and muscle fatigue are common causes. Other causes include poor circulation, dehydration, imbalances of minerals – potassium, magnesium, calcium, or vitamin D levels in the body. The changing hormone levels of pregnancy, thyroid disorders and the use of certain medications may all play a role.

Scientists find HIV-AIDs full cure

~Vanguard Nigeria. Monday, October 3, 2016

A British man with HIV undergoing a pioneering treatment to cure him of the disease has shown "remarkable" progress, doctors have told a newspaper.

Scientists treating the 44-year-old patient are now hopeful of a breakthrough in what has been described as "one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV".

Results showed the man's most recent blood test showed no detectable HIV was present.

Results showed the man's most recent blood test showed no detectable HIV was present.

The man, who has remained anonymous, is the first of 50 people to complete a trial using the two-stage attack on the deadly virus.

The research is being carried out by a collaboration of five of Britain's top universities organised by the National Health Service.

Mark Samuels, managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, told the Sunday Times: "This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV.

"This is a huge challenge and it's still early days but the progress has been remarkable."

The trial patient told the newspaper that recent blood tests showed no detectable HIV virus was present, although it was too early to confirm that the treatment had worked.

The new therapy aims to overcome a major barrier to clearing the virus from a sufferer's body that has challenged researchers for decades.

Current methods using antiretroviral therapies (Art) fall short of ridding patients of HIV, as the virus can hide out of the drugs' reach in the immune system's T-cells.

By sheltering in dormant T-cells the virus can later take over its host and use it to produce thousands of copies of itself, should Art no longer work.

The research by Oxford and Cambridge universities, Imperial College London, University College London, and King's College London, is testing a "kick and kill" technique to first expose, then destroy the virus.

First a vaccine helps the body find infected T-cells. This is then followed by a course of the drug Vorinostat that awakens the dormant T-cells, which then begin producing HIV proteins that act as a homing beacon to the immune system.

Imperial College London consultant physician Professor Sarah Fidler said the treatment worked in the laboratory and there was "good evidence" it will work in patients.

However she added: "We must stress we are still a long way from any actual therapy."

Today's Health Matters: Things you must do to prevent heart disease

Topics:

Things you must do to prevent heart disease
Natural remedies for executive stress, metabolic syndrome
Correcting irregular menstruation
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Things you must do to prevent heart disease
Written by Kofo Ogunyankin, Consultant Cardiologist
~Punch Nigeria. Thursday, September 29, 2016.

Kofo Ogunyankin

The World Heart Federation designates every September 29 as the World Heart Day to raise awareness worldwide about heart diseases. This is with a focus on preventing or reducing cardiovascular deaths and stroke.

Current statistics show that heart diseases are responsible for about 17.1 million deaths worldwide every year. This is more than the cumulative global death rate due to cancer, HIV/AIDS and malaria fever.

In Nigeria, there is a significant lack of awareness of the burden imposed on the society by heart diseases and stroke, partly due to a lack of systematic data collection and our pre-occupation with fighting malaria and other communicable diseases.

The theme for the 2016 WHD is 'Power your Life'. This is broken down in to the following actionable components:

Fuel your heart

The food we eat and the calories in our drinks provide the fuel for our body. Overeating is a big problem worldwide and Nigerians are not spared from the obesity epidemic. Unfortunately, most people who are overweight are in denial of the role they have personally played through their eating and drinking habits.


When confronted about weight gain, the common excuses that the average Nigerian often gives include "I have heavy bones", "I eat less food than a child", "I eat only once a day" and so on. There is no doubt that there are genetically determined reasons for differences between individuals in how much weight that is gained from a given calorie intake.

However, if each person determines to eat only what is needed to live and no more, weight loss will occur. As the saying goes, you should 'eat to live and not live to eat'. I advise my patients to think of whatever they consume (food or drink) as a bank deposit and their weight as the monthly account balance.

Eating well is not complicated. The basic tenet is for each individual to make an effort to control what they eat. This might mean taking your lunch to work if the only choices available at work are not heart-friendly.

Inability to sleep at night can be managed

Written by Oladapo Ashiru, Professor of Anatomy/Consultant Reproductive Endocrinologist
~The Punch Nigeria. Wednesday, September 28, 2016.

Oladapo Ashiru

If you are one of these women aged 40 and over who find it difficult to sleep, know that you are not alone. Many women wake up every night between 12 midnight and 4 am and start prowling around the house. In frustration, you may begin pacing the house, cleaning the kitchen floor, surfing the Internet or watching CNN or movies on late night TV.

Getting a good night's sleep becomes more and more difficult as we age, but women in menopause find it particularly difficult to get such. In many cases this inability to sleep is due to too much estrogen in your system, which is not balanced by progesterone.

Before menopause, estrogen is the dominant hormone for about the first two weeks in the menstrual cycle and progesterone is dominant in the last two weeks of the cycle. When menopause occurs naturally these two hormones should continue to balance each other, but if you are a woman leading a stressful lifestyle during menopause, you may find that your production of progesterone is suppressed and or converted to stress hormones and you will have a dominance of estrogen in your system leading to sleeplessness and other unpleasant menopausal symptoms.

Using a little progesterone cream made from natural bio identical plant sources may help you to easily solve this problem. The right way to use progesterone cream or oil is to use about 1/8 to ¼ of a teaspoon daily for three weeks out of the month, with a week off each month to maintain sensitivity of the progesterone receptors.

Natural progesterone cream made from bio-identical plant sources is not the same as the synthetic hormone progestin, which is made from animal sources.

I know of some women who have not slept for longer than four hours since they started menopause. When they were given some progesterone cream they reported that they were able to sleep for eight hours. This was a major turning point in their recovery from a long list of menopausal and health problems.

”FOR THE MARRIED WOMEN AND THOSE INTENDING TO GET MARRIED, LISTEN AND TAKE HEED!!

Excerpts from Pastor Chris’ Teaching! 
~Christ Embassy.Org Online Missions

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome

Husband does not mean the male partner in a marriage, husband means master. The reason for most problems in Christian marriages is the fact that women refute God’s definition of marriage and form theirs. 

They believe they are equal partners. If most women had their fathers bold enough to talk to them, they will be very successful in their marriage and they will be very happy people. Most women have never been taught by their parents, their fathers particularly and that’s their biggest problem because they don’t know who a man is, they think he is another woman. 

In marriage, you have the man who is the head of that union and because he’s the head of that union, its important to understand him. You think he’s the one that needs to understand his wife and that is where you are wrong. 
He will eventually but you have to know the type of man you are married to and his needs.When you say you are marrying a man, you are coming under his authority. 
The Bible says, the man is the head of the woman (1 Corinthians 11:3) so when you marry him you come under his authority, you are not authority sharers even though you are both heirs to the kingdom of God.When you decide not to subject yourself to that authority, you are a rebel and God is not going to accept what you are doing because you are not functioning correctly. 

Why did God make the woman? Making woman was not God’s original plan because after God created Adam and before He made Eve, He said in Genesis 1:31 “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good”. 
God made woman because of man so woman was not His original idea. This is reality.Genesis 2:18a “And the Lord God said “for it is not good for a man to be alone..” The Bible didn’t say “lonely” but “alone”. 


There is a big difference. Man wasn’t lonely but alone. Genesis 2:18b “…I will make him an help meet”. He didn’t say a partner or a supervisor or a special advisor or someone to tell him what to do.
I will make him someone to help him. God gave man a responsibility so woman was made to help man achieve that responsibility. If this is understood in every home then you won’t have problems.

Crying is good for health, says expert

~Vanguard Nigeria. Tuesday, September 20, 2016.

Dr Uthman Mubashir, Public Health Physician of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, has said that emotional tears have special health benefits for people.

Mubashir revealed in an interview in Ilorin on Tuesday that crying had "therapeutic emotional freedom".

"Tears are protective and they lubricate your eyes, remove irritants, reduce stress hormones, and they contain antibodies that fight pathogenic microbes," he said.

He explained that tears might decrease arousal of distress and make people feel better.

According to him, reflex tears are 98 per cent water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying.

Mubashir said that emotional tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress.

The public health physician, who teaches at the College of Health Sciences of the University of Ilorin, noted that crying stimulates the production of endorphins, "our body's natural pain killer and feel-good hormones".

"Crying makes us feel better, even when a problem persists. In addition to physical detoxification, emotional tears heal the heart," he said.

Mubashir warned against dissuading people from holding back tears, saying that holding back tears was a form of bottling up emotions that could trigger stress and other problems.

"We are in a society that tells us we're weak for crying, in particular that powerful men don't cry.

"The new enlightened paradigm of what constitutes a powerful man and woman is someone who has the strength and self-awareness to cry," he said.

He reiterate that "it is good to cry, it is healthy to cry. This helps to emotionally clear sadness and stress."

Crying, he pointed out, was also essential to resolve grief when some someone lost a dear one.

"Tears help us process the loss so we can keep living with open hearts. Otherwise, we will be depressed if we suppress these potent feelings.

How to prevent blindness

Written by Tessy Umunakwe 
~Nigerian Tribune. Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Have you ever made a conscious effort to close your eyes for one minute? If yes, it is almost certain you didn’t wait for a minute before you opened them. Reason? The few seconds you had your eyes closed would have appeared as a long while, hence the belief that it was already a minute. If you find it hard to close your eyes for one minute at a stretch, then imagine how you will feel if you have to close them for, say, 30 minutes, one hour, three hours, an entire day, a whole week or even a lifetime.

Research has consistently proved that sight is the most valued of all the senses. Findings show that two thirds (68 per cent) of people value eyesight above other senses.he

Nonetheless, more than a third (36 per cent) of these people admit having eye problem for over a month- and in some cases (13 per cent) years- before seeking help, even after noticing that their eyesight is deteriorating.

Over 53 per cent said in a survey that they sometimes struggle to see what is on TV and a further 50 per cent struggle to read books.

But how soon should one visit an eye care provider after noticing certain abnormalities? According to Dr Camillus Asumu, the founder of Sight Foundation, Ibadan, there’s the need for people to visit the eye care provider every six months, even when there are no symptoms suggesting any problem. He said: “It is imperative to visit the eye doctor every six months for thorough examination of the eyes because certain eye diseases do not present any symptoms until it is too late for remedy and this should start. This goes to suggest that one must visit the eye clinic as soon as one notices any eye problem.”

Speaking further, the ophthalmologist disclosed that “the two most common eye defects are cataract and glaucoma. But unlike cataract, glaucoma can occur at any age- and it usually does not start with symptoms.”

Cataract, on the other hand, he said, is mostly age-related. While there are other forms of cataract which are not linked to age like the traumatic cataract (which occurs when a hard object hits the eye) and drug-related cataract, the medical expert asserted that advancement in age is a major factor in degenerating eyesight.