Doctors Advice
Let’s face it: Getting quality doctors advice is not only very difficult, it’s time-consuming. You have to make an appointment, sit in a waiting room for who-knows-how-long, only to be granted about five minutes with your doctor. Do you really expect to get your doctors advice on all your health questions with just one appointment? But with the Doctors Health Press, you not only can get one doctors advice, you can get doctors advice from a whole team of doctors. Whether it’s subscribing to a newsletter, reading a book or special report, or getting our free Doctors Health Press e-Bulletin delivered to your inbox, you can count on free doctors advice without having to go through the hassles of visiting your doctor. Sure, we encourage you to see your own physician for any of your health problems or for checkups. But if you’re looking for doctors advice… real doctors advice from real doctors and our editorial team, then you can count on the Doctors Health Press to be there for you with quality doctors advice from the doctors you can trust.
Whether you’re concerned about preventing breast cancer, lung cancer or any other form of the dreaded disease or you want to know how to prevent the onset of diabetes or properly maintain your diabetes or you simply want to maintain your healthy blood pressure, you can count on the doctors advice, every day, from the experts at the Doctors Health Press.
How Cancer Affects More Than Just the Patient
Sometimes in health it’s the thing that you don’t think about that sneaks up and causes major disruptions. While a person is focused on their partner who has breast cancer, for instance, certain issues might be materializing.
That is what a new study is warning after finding that men whose partners have breast cancer are at greater risk of developing mood disorders. Mood disorders so severe that they have to go to the hospitalization. Published online in Cancer, the study shows the value of staying aware of the mental health of a cancer patient’s loved ones.
Diseases can compromise the mental health not only of affected patients, but also of their closest relatives as well. Partners can develop high stress and also be deprived of emotional, social and economic support. A few small studies have suggested that partners of cancer patients often develop major psychosocial problems. But what about severe depression?
A team just analyzed how frequently male partners of women with breast cancer are hospitalized with disorders such as major depression and bipolar disease. The data were from over one million men with no history of hospitalization for an “affective disorder.” They had lived with the same partner for at least five years.
Over a 13-year period, 20,538 female partners developed breast cancer. Of these corresponding men, 180 were hospitalized with an affective disorder. Men whose partners were diagnosed with breast cancer were about 40% more likely to suffer through this than men whose partners were cancer-free.
The risk was higher with the more severe the breast cancer. Men whose partners experienced a relapse were also more likely to develop an affective disorder than those whose partners remained cancer-free. Men whose partners died after breast cancer had a 3.6-fold increased risk of developing an affective disorder compared with men whose partners survived.
Researchers suggest that partners of cancer patients be screened to help prevent this “devastating consequence of cancer.” Any partner of a cancer patient should be careful about where their mental patterns take them, as stress, worry and feeling lost can take their toll. Speak to your doctor about steps to help yourself.
Tags: affective disorder, cancer, cancer and mood disorders, cancer stress, depression, Health Articles, Health News, mood disorders
How to Spot Diabetes Before It Happens to You
Healing often means paying attention to your body.
Spotting anything that may be suspicious — anything that is out of the ordinary — can be extremely important in getting an underlying health condition diagnosed as quickly as possible.
A new study is very interesting, as it suggests that your waistband could help predict your risk for one of society’s biggest ailments: diabetes. Diabetes is commonly associated with obesity or being overweight. Published in March’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, this study says a man’s waistline is a better gauge of diabetes risk than what doctors commonly use: body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure of one’s height and weight.
The reason this article refers only to men is that it comes from a long-term trial called the Harvard Health
Professionals Follow-Up Study. It tracked only men — 27,000 to be exact — over a period of 13 years. The
intriguing waistline finding was as such: when researchers compared waist circumference with men who developed diabetes, they found that the bigger the waist, the greater the risk. This is true whether or not the man is overweight.
Specifically, men who had the largest waistlines — 40 inches or more — had a 12 times’ greater risk of developing diabetes than those with the smallest waists. Here are some other facts on the link between diabetes and men’s waistlines:
- Waists between 34.3 and 35.9 inches = twice the risk
- Waists between 36 and 37.8 inches = three times the risk
- Waists between 37.9 and 39.8 inches = five times the risk
Researchers speculate that the explanation behind the diabetes link may be due to the characteristics of the fat around the waist. This would support earlier studies suggesting that the fat around your waist has a more
negative health impact than fat found elsewhere on the body.
Moreover, the researchers say that the federal government’s suggested waist size — which currently sits at 40 inches in the U.S. — needs to be lowered. So, if you have a waist measurement that falls into one of the risk areas (and let’s be honest, most of us do, or are very close), then focusing on your stomach area during exercise is a good bet. If you are at risk, then now is the time to lose some weight, or else face an increased threat of developing diabetes. Easier said than done, of course.
Tags: diabetes
Treat High Blood Pressure and Save Yourself
High blood pressure often goes untreated. It doesn’t really cause any symptoms until something serious happens. High blood pressure can lead to a stroke, heart disease, and heart failure.
Getting your blood pressure checked regularly is something you can and should do for yourself. You can book an appointment with your doctor, or you can monitor your blood pressure at self-serve stations located in most pharmacies. Your blood pressure reading should fall between the normal range listed — usually at or below 120/80 (systolic/diastolic).
If you are over the age of 35, or if you or your family have a history of high blood pressure or heart or kidney
problems, you should monitor your blood pressure.
Anyone can develop high blood pressure. There are many things that can raise your blood pressure. Just being over the age of 55 increases your risk for this condition. Men are more likely to develop high blood pressure, as are African Americans. Smoking increases your risk, as does an inactive lifestyle with little or no exercise. Being overweight can lead to blood pressure readings that are higher than normal.
There is also a number of dietary risk factors that lead to high blood pressure levels, such as salt intake. Certain drugs and medications can increase your blood pressure.
And finally, medical conditions that affect your kidneys, such as diabetes, can raise blood pressure levels. This is because the kidneys are regulators of long-term blood pressure.
If you find that you do have high blood pressure, make sure you take the diagnosis seriously. A recent study suggests that, for those who are over the age of 80, treating high blood pressure means directly reducing the chance for having a stroke or heart failure, and/or dying from cardiovascular disease.
A team of researchers treated 3,845 people with high blood pressure with either a diuretic or a placebo. After two years of therapy, blood pressure among the patients taking the diuretic was significantly lower than among those receiving the placebo.
The rate of stroke was reduced 30% in the diuretic group compared to the placebo group. There was also a whopping 64% drop in the rate of heart failure among patients receiving the diuretic.
Make sure you visit your doctor if you haven’t had your blood pressure checked recently. It’s a painless test and could save you from suffering through some pretty serious complications.
Tags: blood pressure, solution
