Archive for the 'General Health' Category

SMOKING is widely known to damage the body but new Australian research suggests the addictive habit could be taking a toll on the mind too.

A study of more than a thousand women has found that females who smoke are more likely to develop major depression.

Heavy smokers – those who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day – have almost double the risk of developing diagnosable depression than non smokers.

It has long been known that people with depression are more likely to smoke, but this longterm study is one of the first to suggest the habit may be triggering mental illness.

University of Melbourne researchers tracked healthy women for more than a decade, giving them a psychiatric assessment at the end.

“It was at this point we were able to determine if depression had developed and investigate whether or not smoking pre-dated the onset of depression,” said study leader Professor Julie Pasco.

Another study of 671 healthy women revealed 15 per cent of smokers went on to develop depression, compared to 6.5 per cent of non smokers.

Read more at News

As you all know, being a woman, you can experience various issues such as menstruation, pregnancy, menopause and many more.

But, are you aware of those particular health risks that can possibly ruin your healthy living?

It is very important for you to be aware with all kinds of health risks, if you really want to stay healthy and fit.

Educating yourself about the most common health risks is the first and foremost step that you have to consider, in order to reduce the chances of occurrence.

Diabetes!

Diabetes is the most common and also serious health condition that mainly affects the way your body uses blood sugar to perform its regular activities.

Once if you develop this particular health condition, it becomes very important for you to control it in all possible ways to avoid various heath risks associated with it.

Kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage are few potentially life-threatening health risks associated with advanced diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes and it generally develops after 40 years of age. You can easily prevent type2 diabetes by considering certain essential measures such as regular exercises, healthy diet and also healthy weight.

Everyone occasionally undergoes some sort of depression. But, the feeling is not same when it comes to genders.

Survey studies shows that it is more common in women than men. Depression in women is twice as often as in men.

Moreover, depression in women can develop at any stage of life. The reason for this difference is unclear, but fluctuation in a woman’s hormone levels is regarded as the major cause of depression.

Although depression is very common, it is a serious disorder and needs immediate treatment to recuperate.

Depressive disorder can occur in several forms and the most common are major depressive disorder (major depression) and dysthymic disorder (dysthymia).

Treatment to the depressive disorder can become successful and effective only when one recognizes what the symptoms of depression are.

However, not all women experience the same symptoms. Moreover, the severity and frequency of depressive disorder symptoms vary from woman to woman and her disorder form.

Determine and control your depressive disorder!

Although doctors are continuing to know about the effect of depression in women, here are a few symptoms that commonly develop in women:

• Persistent feeling of sadness, hopelessness and pessimism

Today, most women are still unaware of the fact that one of the most dangerous factors for the rise in heart-related problems is the ongoing substitution of healthy natural fats with artificial fats called trans fats.

These fats are largely artificial and synthetic. The fat is available only a minute amount in animal meat and a few dairy products.

Trans fats are also known as trans-fatty acids or hydrogenated fats. The trans-fat is a synthetically produced fat made by heating vegetable oils at high temperature and adding hydrogen to the vegetable oil (under pressure) through the process called hydrogenation.

Hydrogenation process makes the vegetable oil more stable by solidifying it and thus makes the oil a stiffer fat, a fat that is solid at room temperature. That is the reason why trans fats are different from other fats – saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats.

The polyunsaturated fats (available in vegetables) are good to the health, which lowers the cholesterol. Saturated fats are bad and trans fats are far worse than both.

According to a recent study, in women’s body, for every five percent increase of saturated fat, the risk of heart disease rises by seventeen percent, whereas an increase of two percent in trans fats rises the risk of heart disease by ninety-three percent.

Heart diseases are the main leading cause of death for most of the women, when compared with men.

Every minute that passes, another female dies with some sort of heart problem.

Certain heart diseases, which are mainly responsible for causing death, can mainly include coronary heart disease, heart failure, peripheral arterial disease, and also stroke.

That’s why as a woman, it becomes your responsibility to take care of yourself to prevent various types of heart diseases in your healthy life.

However, your genes play a vital role to determine whether you can develop heart complications or not, but there are certain steps recommended by experienced heart experts to avoid heart problems. Here are some of the most important steps to reduce heart disease risks:

Important steps to reduce the risk of heart disease

Maintain appropriate body weight!

If you succeed in maintaining your body weight at reasonable levels, with respect to your height, then you can dramatically reduce heart risks in your life.

A proper body weight normally assists in controlling your cholesterol level, blood sugar level and also blood pressure of your body. Once if you keep these particular things in control, you can certainly reduce the risk of heart disease in your life.

Younger women who smoke have more than double the risk of stroke compared to nonsmokers, with the heaviest smokers among them having nine times the risk, according to a U.S. study.

The research assessed stroke risk in women 15 to 49 years old who smoked cigarettes. Current smokers were 2.6 times as likely to have a stroke than women who never smoked, according to researchers led by Dr. John Cole of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Women who smoked the most faced the highest increased risk, said the study, published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke.

For example, women who smoked 21 to 39 cigarettes a day had a risk of stroke 4.3 times higher than a nonsmoker, while those who puffed at least two packs a day — 40 cigarettes — had a stroke risk 9.1 times higher than a nonsmoker.

It has been known for a long time that smoking increases the risk of stroke, along with many other health dangers such as lung and other types of cancer, lung disease and heart disease.

But Cole said less was known about how stroke risk was affected by the number of cigarettes a person smokes.

According to a research, Low vitamin D levels may contribute to chronic pain among women.

The findings are based on the blood analysis and pain scores of almost 7000 45 year old men and women from across England, Scotland and Wales, all of whom were born during one week in March 1958.

Smokers, non-drinkers, the overweight and the underweight all reported higher rates of chronic pain.

The extent of chronic widespread pain did not vary among men according to vitamin D levels. However, this was not the case for women.

Women with vitamin D levels between 75 and 99 mmol/litre had the lowest rates of this type of pain, at just over 8%.

Women with levels of less than 25 mmol/litre had the highest rates, at 14.4%.

There appeared to be a J shaped curve, with the prevalence of widespread pain at 10% or higher among those with vitamin D levels above 99 mmol/litre.

The findings were not explained by gender differences in lifestyle or social factors, such as levels of physical activity and time spent outdoors, say the authors.

Before menopause, women have a blood pressure advantage. Women’s blood pressure starts out lower than men’s, but the advantage doesn’t last.

Women’s systolic pressure — the top number in the blood pressure reading and the one that’s more closely associated with heart disease risk and stroke in people over age 50 — increases by about 5 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) with menopause.

A study done between 2001 and 2003 among people over age 60 showed that women had a higher systolic blood pressure than did men in every state in America.

According to the report, women tended to think they didn’t have high blood pressure when, in fact, they did.

For healthy adults, blood pressure less than 120/80 mm Hg is desirable. Untreated high blood pressure can cause the heart to work too hard. As a result, the walls of arteries can harden and impede blood flow. Restricted blood flow can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure and dementia.

When blood pressure rises above normal, it’s essential to work with a doctor on a treatment plan to control the condition. The plan might include medications as well as these basic steps. Even one can make a significant difference in blood pressure.