Breakthroughs Today

Many times wealth brings not only abundance in food and material things. It also brings lifestyle related diseases. And one of these is gout.   HISTORICALLY, rich man's disease was attributed to kings as well. Thus, its other name being “the disease of kings,” according to Wikipedia.   Maybe a look at the lifestyle of rich men and kings in history will answer the question, “why.” This lifestyle obviously has better access risk factors for gout—excessive quantities of wine (expensive kinds albeit); excessive protein-rich food (meat, fish, nuts, legumes, and purine-rich vegetables).   Unsurprisingly, gout is a metabolic disease; an offshoot of lifestyle excesses in younger years. It appears as acute or chronic arthritis (joint inflammation) with deposits of monosodium urate crystals in joints, bones, soft tissues, and kidneys. The latter can develop stones.   If a Cebuano says, “Taas akong uric” (My uric acid level is high), that does not mean gout h...

Sometimes the simpler way can prove more effective than the more complex ones. With AUR, there is nothing simpler and proven safer method of therapy.   WE MENTIONED last month a safe technique in treating acute urinary retention (AUR), which was investigated in the Hennenfent study in 2006. Compared to the 27.1 percent need for surgery within six months after drug therapy using alfuzosin and the need to perform surgery in a total of close to nine percent of patients, this new method allowed patients to avoid surgery for another 2.5 years.   This new procedure is called manual prostatic massage, a technique found in research literature way back in the early 20th century, particularly 1906. It is non-traumatic as it is scalpel-free.   The study published in Medscape General Medicine on Oct. 25, 2006 used an experimental dose of daily prostate massage for four days in the first week; then three times per week thereafter. The prostate is a male gland that produ...

Urban noise may have a mainstay in our lives for the years to come. Even rural areas in the country are getting noisy as vehicles and population increase. With this cacophony also comes problems that we must be aware of so we can do something about them.   NOISE is so much a part of our daily lives that we come to accept it with admirable tolerance. In fact, it can become the stimulant that some people seek, and believe that the decibels of "sonar energy" can keep them mentally alive.   Sylvia Plath, author of the book The Bell Jar, wrote: “The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”   But recent studies have noted that basking in the noise in our urban environment can be very unwise after all. A meta-analysis published lately in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health just unearthed many reasons why.   First... [ READ MORE ]     This article appears in Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on 12 Sep...

Sometimes some hopes can be as dangerous as well. And kidney transplantation can be one of those until medical science and technology can overcome the gap.   EVEN an ending life can be prolonged, given the right science, the right technology and certainly the right kind of prayer.   During the end-stage of renal disease (the point at which the condition of a kidney is a few steps toward failure) life can still be prolonged somehow. The best treatment for this condition is kidney replacement surgery. If a kidney is giving up, then replacing it can be wiser.   A serious risk with kidney replacement though, is with the body’s reaction to the donated kidney that can often come from sources not genetically related to the patient.   In the 24 years of kidney replacement history in Iran (1984-2008), 87.5 percent of kidneys used, came from living individuals not related to the patient.   Physicians who manage patients with kidney transplant use immu...