Health And Pharmacy Blog

There are many ways to get relief from back pain. Back pain relief can be achieved by medical management, by surgical management, by physiotherapy, by use of alternative medicine like Ayurveda, Homeopathy, and Acupuncture etc. Acupuncture is a very old Chinese traditional system of alternative medicine which uses needle prick at particular anatomical site for relief of symptoms. Chinese have identified the different sites of needle prick for different disease & gathered knowledge since centuries.Ayurveda (knowledge of life) an Indian traditional medicine form uses herbal formulations for treatment of medical problems. Ayurveda is more than three thousand years old & still widely practiced in India. Indian Ayurvedic physicians used to perform plastic surgeries & suturing of wounds by using jaws of ants. Ayurveda is very effective in shoulder pain & back pain relief. Physiotherapy is very useful in treatment & relief of back pain & shoulder pain. In fact physiotheraoy is the best form of management for shoulder pain & back pain relief. For shoulder pain relief certain exercises should be done everyday. For relief of back pain following exercises can be done: a)      Lie down in supine position in hard floor & raise one leg at 45⁰ without      bending the knee & remain in this position for 15⁰seconds. Bring down the leg & repeat same thing with other leg. Do this exercise for ten minutes in morning & 10 minutes in evening on empty stomach.b)      Lie down in prone position & raise one leg at 30⁰ without bending knee & stay in this position for upto15 seconds & repeat same thing with other leg. Do this exercise for 10 minutes in morning & 10 minutes in evening.c)      Lie down in prone position & raise both the legs up to 30⁰ & stay up to 20 seconds than bring down the legs. Repeat this 10 times in morning & 10 times in evening.All these three exercises should be done twice a day. Within a few days one can find dramatic improvement in back pain relief. This should be continued for as long as one can.

Simply I love drinking tea. Since childhood, I grew up among tea trees as there is a big tea estate near our house and the scent of green tea leafs being processed for packagable products came from the factory. It fascinated me to see how green tea leafs are tansformed into finished products within couple of hours.

But that is not the reason why tea has become my favorite drink. Its the enormous health benefit that tea offers which has attracted me. The atioxidant present in tea makes our immune system stronger against many illness such as ovary cancer, gastrics. The less amount of caffeine in tea also keeps the body and mind calm.

These days I am changing my taste of tea again. Hearbal tea is rapidly becoming my favorite drink. Just to inform my readers that, herbal tea is not really tea in the conventional sense. It is not made from tea tress - but a mixturte of items from roots, spices, leafs from different plants. Although it does not have as much health benefit as that of conventional tea, it healps greatly towards keeping my body light and fitter. So you may also try out drinking tea regularly if you want to keep your body fit and your immune system stronger.

In a recent finding, researchers at the Queen Mary University of London have found that two glasses of beetroot juice per day may lower blood pressure by 10mm, a level that can normally be achieved with only proper medication. The study was done on healthy volunteers in UK. The report of the study, led by Amrita Ahluwalia, Professr at the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and the London School of Medicine, has been published in the latest edition of Hypertension.

According to Dr. Ahluwalia – “This is the kind of drop that would see in people effective drug therapy for high blood pressure”. Anoop Mishra, an internal medicine specialist at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi said “A 10mm fall in blood pressure is very significant”. Compared to this, a reduction of salt in foods causes only 5-6mm decrease in blood pressure.

According to the study on healthy volunteers, the effect of beetroot juice takes place one hour after drinking the juice and reaches its lowest after three to four hours. Sometimes the reduction stays up to twenty four hours. Researchers say that, the blood pressure lowers because of the formation of nitrite from dietary nitrite present in the beetroot. This formation of nitrite also brings into prominence the role bacteria play in the human mouth during the process.

However scientists are not going overboard as it has not yet been tested on patients with high blood pressure. But most agree that the findings of the study are promising enough to proceed to clinical trials. Some also point out that 500ml beetroot per day may add calories and if the patient is suffering from diabetes – there might be some complications

While most people were celebrating the arrival of another New Year on 1^st January, 2008 in the hope that the New Year would bring joy, peace and prosperity – some poor families in India were praying to God to save their livelihood. The dreaded AVIAN FLU has attacked their poultry stocks!

It has been almost 3 weeks since the first reported outbreak of the bird flu in the rural areas of west Bengal, India but government officials are still fighting to get the affected poultry stock culled. In the meantime, the virus has spread to many adjoining areas and now signs are that, the dreaded disease will hog the limelight for many more days.

It has been the 5^th time over the last two years that there have been confirmed reports of the avian flu being found in India. Fortunately, there has not yet been any confirmed report of the disease being transmitted to humans unlike the 2003 global outbreak that saw human casualty in Thailand, China, Vietnam and Indonesia. But scientists fear that, it is just a matter of time before the virus gain the strength to inject itself into the human body and triggers pandemic.

So what to do if such a situation arises? According to experts, people should follow some guidelines to avoid being infected by the virus especially if you are in the affected zone–

• Only fully cooked foods- Avian flu can survive at temperatures of up to 70 degree Celsius. So take only fully cooked rids/chicken/duck or egg preparations.
• Cross contamination – do not use same utensils for washing the raw meat/egg and that of other vegetables/items.
• Careful bird watching – Bird enthusiasts who flock water bodies to watch migratory bird should take the outmost caution. They should I no way come into contact with the water.
• Droppings – Avian flu spread through droppings and hence it is a must to boil the water before taking it in infected and nearby areas.
• Avoid direct contacts with strangers as they might carry the flu. Always wear protective mask or hand gloves if you have to come into direct contact with others.
• Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) and Relenza are the only two known anti-viral drugs that can fight the Avian Flu. Store it at your home if there is any chance of it reaching at your doorstep.

Science is morally neutral and cannot say what is right and what is wrong. An ordinary man has a certain belief of medicine. The Pre-Christian attitude to disease was that it was a punishment for sin committed by the sick person or his family or community. Jesus combated this notion by saying that it was a manifestation of the works of God in the sick man. Disease, according to scientist is a manifestation of natural law which can be cured or prevented by the knowledge of the law. Many religious or enlightened people think that diseases would be prevented by a return to nature. This is meaning less. Return to nature would involve going without clothing and so going with pneumonia. Civilized people live longer with savages. The causes are abolition of water-born diseases such as cholera, a rise in prosperity and consequent banishment of under-feeding. With the advancement of medical science, the application of its result has become hard.

Suffering from diabetes can regain full health and keep it long with insulin injections. A diabetic patient will not work without insulin as a motor-car without lubricating oil. But the patient sometimes breaks the syringe and stops taking insulin. Diabetes was not cured. The discovery of insulin has made no great difference to the mortality in England from diabetes. It has saved only a few intelligent people. If a cure for cancer is discovered it may likewise save some intelligent people. But if prevention is discovered, it will become less helpful. Individual action in case of prevention is almost useless. Typhoid fever requires for its prevention public control of the water supply. People should realize that microbes are as real as foreigners and much more likely to kill one. They will only arrive at a same view regarding diseases as the result of general education on scientific lines. The study of medicine apart from its scientific basis creates neurotics rather than scientists. Prevention medicine can be made into the moral equivalent of war. These rules of the darkness of this world are the demons, from bacteria to cyclones. These enemies cannot be conquered without the adaptation of the scientific point of view by man.