Breakthroughs Today

I admit that well-designed tattoos can be very pleasant to the eyes (see this photo as an example). But that does not remove the fact that getting yourself tattooed just anywhere can be risky. And if you do tattooing in your more personal areas, that can be disastrous. There are many known causes of Priapism, a potentially painful medical condition wherein the penis does not return to its flaccid state, even without physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours. The low-flow type involves the blood not adequately returning to the body from the organ. This type represents 80-90 percent of all cases. The less common high-flow type involves a short-circuit of the vascular system along the organ. It can result from physical injury, urinary tract infection, and other causes that involve the nerves and other non-blood conditions. Treatment for priapism is considered a medical emergency. Priapism is diagnosed with high oxygen and low carbon dioxide contents in the penile

The new thing that we know of right now about MSG is that it does not result to long-term build up of glutamine in our blood, and thus gets easily flushed out of our system after intake.   SOME three months or so after the Breakthroughs article, Tasty Dish and the Risk You Know, came out in the last day of August last year, Dr. Josefa S. Eusebio, president of the Glutamate Association of the Philippines (GAP), wrote me to share what she knows about monosodium glutamate (MSG). The GAP objective is “to undertake programs and activities for generating and disseminating scientific, culinary and other related information about glutamates and its umami taste.” Dr. Eusebio shared to me how “96 percent of all glutamates (from food and MSG) are utilized in the intestines as major source of energy metabolism and for carrying out the vital functions of digestion and absorption.” The remaining four percent, she wrote, enters the blood, and “immediately” transformed into other amino

It is no accident that heart attack has been referred to as a "thief in the night," alluding to the biblical character that Jesus mention in the gospels. And one of our friends and readers, wants to know how to prevent it from happening. LAST Jan. 5, a regular reader of Breakthroughs through Sun-Star Network Exchange sent me an email: Dear Sirs, Having read your column, I'm interested in knowing more as I have a history of heart disease. And also how can I prevent heart attack? Awaiting your reply, Peter Parr, O.B.E. His letter led me to delve deeper into the challenges that heart attack prevention demands. And admittedly prevention is far better than cure. Heart attack (stroke) is a physical incident wherein the blood supply to a part of the heart gets interrupted, causing the heart cells to die. This incident results from the rupture of a plaque, an unstable collection of dense fats and white cells stuck in the wall of a heart artery. Its fragm

There many developments in health science and technology that most people today are not familiar of, unless they are working within the relevant field of interest. Even health professionals are not that well-informed as we assume they. One of these well-documented but obscure fruit of modern science and technology is the waist-hip ratio, or WHR. IN ADDITION to the body mass index (BMI), the waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a reliable alternative in predicting risk to heart diseases. For the same purpose, it is a measure of obesity, an indicator of other more serious health conditions such as heart diseases, diabetes, and hypertension. This method is popularized by the World Health Organization Stepwise approach to Surveillance (WHO STEPS). Research shows that people with apple-shaped bodies (have more weight around the waist) face more health risks than those with pear-shaped bodies (more weight around the hips). WHO STEPS defined abdominal obesity as a WHR of above 0.90 for