Breakthroughs Today

The compulsive behavior can start with the first loss of money, or even before walking into a gambling den with minds full of dreams at winning big, or perhaps just enjoying the thrill. But once the unsettling feeling starts bothering the mind even outside the gambling floor, the problem can be leading for the worst it can be.   A VERY fascinating aspect of research is questionnaire validation. And by its nature it can be madugo, a Tagalog term that the English literal translation “bloody” cannot quite capture.   Your questionnaire must be acceptably sensitive (detects what it is designed to detect); positively predictive (predicts what it is designed to predict); and negatively predictive (does not predict what it is not designed to predict).   You also have the privilege of understanding better the behavior you want to study later on. A case in point is a study by Rachel Vilberg, Ingrid Munck and Nancy Petry that the American Journal of Addiction published ...

The skin, largest organ of the body, is created to protect the body from external threats as well as prevent moisture from escaping the body. But the second largest organ of the body--the liver--is vulnerable through the food that we eat. The question is: can we protect it from ourselves? Another question: can we rebuild it once we got it damaged through mindless eating habits?   THROUGH the years, researches seem to point out that most, if not all, human diseases always factor lifestyle into it. Infection? Stressful work, insufficient rest or sleep and dirty environment can certainly ensure that.   Another component to the lifestyle factor is the food we eat. We often eat based on how much time is available to us. If we have no time to prepare good food, then we have to go for quick-cooking canned goods or perhaps the high-fat, high-calorie dishes of fast foods. Conditions like these put an increasing load of toxins on our body that our liver must process every day...

HERE'S a question that requires you to answer another one: What is the second largest organ in the body? To answer the question, you must know first what the largest organ is. That’s the catch. Otherwise, there is no way for you to compare sizes.   But I will leave you to Google on that one and give you instead the answer about the second largest organ—the liver. It weighs around 1.5 kilos.   Large as it is, the liver appears the most taken-for-granted organ of the body—so disproportionate to the functions it performs to support life. And if you come to think of it, we simply presume it will continue to function well. So we keep on taking in the good, the bad and the worst. Think of what you eat today—canned goods, fried dishes, medications, alcoholic drinks—the list can go on. Whatever you eat or drink passes through the liver, your body’s principal detoxifying center.   The liver filters the blood that comes from the digestive tract, removes or metabolize...

Patients of today must learn the lessons of the superbug war in order not to get sucked into it themselves. And that begins by reading this article.   FIGURES available four years ago had estimated 44,000 new multi-drug resistant (MDR) cases recorded around the world. And around 150,000 people have died. The old strains continue to be more lethal even than that of the new entrants.   And experts the world over have agreed that the central cause of the blame has been the mismanagement in the treatment of tuberculosis. Know how these errors in treatment can help us detect any error made by the physician handling our case as well as our role in this debacle.   Based on the review that Meghna Adhvaryu and Bhasker Vakharia conducted and published December last year in Clinical Pharmacology: Advances and Applications, here are indicators of potential mismanagement to be wary of:   First is... [ READ MORE ]     This article appears in SunS...

Something humans let go for centuries since they adapted to modern conventions turns out to be an effective cure of insomnia.   THE ex-Marine protagonist in Andrew Peterson’s novel First to Kill (2008) believed in this rule: “Sleep when you can.” This serves well in military operations when, at the sight of enemies, no sleep becomes necessary until the mission has been accomplished.   But insomnia can make ordinary civilians behave like soldiers to their detriment. Who can beat insomnia at its peak? People of advanced age mostly have it, or at least their sleeping hours get shorter and shorter with age. Adults who have an increasingly hectic city lifestyle can be so primed up with stress that they may not put their heartbeats or their minds to rest even as the dawn breaks. Chronic insomnia has been estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars annually in the United States alone.   You cannot just pop down sleeping pills whenever you want it. Drug dependenc...

LAST month, we presented here the general picture of kidney transplantation based on the multicenter study conducted by Behzad Einollahi and colleagues as reported in the Journal of Cancer (June 2012).   This week you will know, in more detail, which immunosuppressant drugs have been causing it and briefly how. The study noted that the risk of developing malignancy in organ transplants is three-four times greater than general population.   Before 2000, patients received a two-drug maintenance regimen consisting of prednisone and cyclosporine or azathioprine (AZA); or, a triple therapy with cyclosporine, prednisone and AZA. Afterward, most patients received not just cyclosporine and prednisone but mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) as well. Today, immunosuppressive therapy is a three-drug therapy using cyclosporine/sirolimus, MMF/AZA and steroids.   The Einollahi study noted that more than half of the patients (61.3 percent) received AZA when they developed cancer....

Sometimes we equate health with life so that any mention of death becomes incompatible with a healthy lifestyle. But is it so? The mystery surrounding religious faith can help you understand the difference, noting how Saint Pedro of Cebu lived his life. THERE is a mystery that moves around and between the health of one’s soul and that of one’s body. And that mystery has deep implications in our lives as religious Cebuanos, as well as ardent believers of a healthy lifestyle. Today, we veer away from the stark numerical world of medical research into the realm of faith in celebration of the recent canonization of the second Filipino saint, Saint Pedro of Cebu.   But even in this subject we cannot always do away with scientific thinking, and the use of statistics as far as it can be applied.   Of the two Filipino saints—Lorenzo of Manila and Pedro of Cebu—there had been interesting similarities that can help us appreciate the religious charism of Filipinos. First, b...

New Agers and Eastern philosophy adherents may call the soil "Mother Earth." But whether we agree on it or not, recent scientific evidence indicate that the earth can help bring well-being to mankind more than we normally thought it can.   IN THE eyes of ordinary people, the soil is a mere resource from which all plants can be harvested. In the eyes of those who studied chemicals in the living environment, it is an unlimited source of electrons that can be a key to curing maladies that infect mankind.   The 1965 Nobel Prize winner in Physics Richard Phillips Feynman wrote: “When the body potential is the same as the Earth’s electric potential, it becomes an extension of the Earth’s gigantic electrical system.”   Scientists like cardiologist Stephen Sinatra, Gaetan Chevalier and James Oschman hold that the earth’s surface is negatively charged, and contact therewith allows electrons to transfer from the earth to the body. And since our immune systems functio...

One wonderful thing about nature is the balance between disease-causing and disease-preventing forces that can be easily recognized. And that is true about handling your case.   YOU can protect yourself from the “disease of kings” by eating foods for the “kings” (don't mind my play of words).Much of gout can be minimized through selectively eating foods that provide no new raw material for the production of uric acids.   First, let us cover what foodstuff to avoid. By plugging the dietary sources, you can somehow exert control on uric acid output. Here are foods with very high purine content (up to 1000 mg per 100 grams): anchovy, brain, gravy, kidney, liver, sardines and sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas).   Foods with moderately high purine levels (5-100 mg) include asparagus, bacon, beef, bluefish, calf tongue, carp, cauliflower, chicken, codfish, crab, duck, goose, halibut, ham, beans, lamb, lentils, lobster, mushrooms, oatmeal, oysters, peas, pork, shee...

This article has been reprinted on popular demand after it came out first in March 2011 at the heel of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident in Japan, following the devastation that that year's tsunami wrought in the country.   THE reactor fire in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has sent radioactivity into air, putting at high risk lives even as far away as Tokyo.   As of March 15, 2010, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported this radiation leak amounted to 400 millisievert (mSv) per hour. Exposure to over 100 mSv a year, said the World Nuclear Association, can already lead to cancer. To help control this radioactive cloud, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) considered using boric acid. So, what’s in boric acid that can help control radioactivity from spreading? [ Read to find out.]     This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 3 October 2012.

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...