Before that "High" Comes

SOMETIMES we can appreciate how much we let our minds go out of control when a certain weird sickness captures us, such as the so-called “white coat hypertension.” The American Heart Association defines this condition as: “You may have what’s called ‘white coat hypertension’; that means your blood pressure goes up when you’re at the doctor’s office.” A funny name that works as much like the healing effect of an inert substance called placebo, bringing forth the term “placebo effect” into common use.

Another term that American doctors coined not long ago was the condition called “pre-hypertension.” By its name alone, you can guess the meaning of this condition as not yet hypertension.

This new interim condition came up when... [Read more.]

This article appears in Sun.Star Cebu on 4 May 2011.

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Deadly X-Gene Mutants

A RECENT study on macrophages (i.e. defensive cells in our body that engulf threatening substances inside our body) introduced me to a lethal, genetic disease that targets the male population. This disease is called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), named after the French neurologist Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne, who described it in 1861. While it has an incidence of one in 3,500 newborn males, health experts consider this as the most common lethal disease of childhood around the world. Mutation in the male (X) chromosome [dystrophin gene, locus Xp21] causes a rapid degeneration of the muscles, leading into an eventual loss of walking ability and then death. While females do not exhibit symptoms, they can be carriers of these defective genes, especially if the father had this condition or the mother is also a carrier. Symptoms usually appear before age five; at times visible in early infancy. These symptoms involve... ( Read more .) This article appears in Sun-Star Ce...

Joy, Temperance and Repose

“I RECKON being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better,” wrote Samuel Butler in The Way of All Flesh (1903). The term “antioxidant” was originally used in the 18th century to refer to a chemical that prevents the consumption of oxygen in laboratory experiments. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, extensive study exploded... ( Read more ) This article appeared in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 02 June 2010.

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