I didn’t indict Jonathan over ‘savings’ statement – Okonjo-Iweala

 

The immediate past Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on Friday denied indicting the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan on its inability to save for the rainy day.

 

The former minister said in a statement issued by her Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu that while the Jonathan administration was willing to save for Nigerians, the plan was opposed by the state governors at the time.

It is not all about Drugs

He concluded his lecture yesterday by saying, 'Good Nutrition could offset so many presenting symptoms'. The lecture topic was on public health nutrition, an interesting angle, in the Department of Community medicine.

The example he gave to drive home his point, was outstanding. I believe that the practice in most hospitals, here in Nigeria, is to begin to reel out prescriptions for patients that would otherwise benefit from a detailed chat on eating right.

With the adverse side effects and complications arising from ingesting of drugs, it is better and serves a better good to explore all available, less unnatural means, like eating a good balance diet.

Doctors Quarter Blog enjoins all to stay stag health and strong..
A moderate of exercise and eating the right food sources are all that is needed..

New low-temperature plasma treatment for prostate cancer developed.

Researchers from the University of York in the UK have discovered a potential new treatment option for patients with early-stage prostate cancer - low-temperature plasmas.

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, seeks to address the current inadequacy of long-term treatment forprostate cancer, despite the continual improvements that have been made to methods of treatment in recent years.

At present, patients who develop early stage organ-confined tumors can be treated with a focal therapy, such as cryotherapy or radiotherapy.

"However, around a third of patients will experience recurrence of their disease following radiotherapy," explains study co-author Adam Hirst. "This may be due to the inherent radio-resistance of a small fraction of the tumor - the cancerstem-like cells. Furthermore, numerous side effects are often experienced following treatment."

According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), prostate cancer is the second-most common cancer in American men and the second leading cause of cancer death among this group. Around 1 in 7 will be diagnosed with the disease during their lifetime, at an average age of 66.

"In recent years, the rapidly advancing field of low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasmas has shown considerable promise for future translational biomedical applications," write the study authors, "including cancer therapy, through the generation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species."

Low-temperature plasmas are formed when a high electric field is applied across a gas via an electrode, breaking down the gas. As the plasma is formed, a unique reactive environment is formed that contains high concentrations of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species.

The plasmas are subsequently used to transfer reactive oxygen and nitrogen species to a target, leading to oxidative damage and cell death that differs from the kind caused by other forms of therapy.

While other therapies cause apoptosis, prompting cells to die through natural mechanisms that cells can eventually become resistant to, low-temperature plasma breaks up cells and causes necrosis. In necrosis, cell death occurs through the rupturing of cell membranes.

Low-temperature plasma therapy could be a viable, more cost-effective treatment option

The researchers used tissue samples from a single patient in order to take both healthy prostate cells and prostate cancer cells, allowing for a direct comparison of the effectiveness of the treatment.

"Through this research we have found that [low-temperature plasmas] induce high levels of DNA damage, which led in turn to a substantial reduction in colony-forming ability, and ultimately necrotic cell death," states Hirst.

As well as being effective at killing cancer cells, the use of low-temperature plasmas could also be a more cost-effective way of treating organ-confined prostate cancer in comparison with current forms of radiotherapy and photodynamic therapy.

"Using clinically relevant, close-to-patient samples, we have presented the first experimental evidence promoting the potential of [low-temperature plasma] as a future focal cancer therapy treatment for patients with early stage prostate cancer," Hirst concludes.

The researchers will now look at testing the application of low-temperature plasmas on three-dimensional replica tumors in order to assess the precision of plasma application.

"We believe that with appropriate imaging techniques to facilitate accurate tumor targeting and spare normal tissues, the multifaceted action of [low-temperature plasma] will provide advantages over other focal therapies," state the authors.

The team estimates that if all trials are successful, low-temperature plasma could be used to treat cancer patients in 15 years time.

Recently, Medical News Today reported on a study in which an international consortium of scientists reveals the genetic root of prostate cancers in individual men. Their discovery demonstrates that tumors share common gene faults that could offer new targets for treatment.

Source: Medical Institutions

Erectile Dysfunction Drug, Viagra; Effectiveness, Uses, Side-effects.

Reuters Health) - Viagra is the most effective treatment for erectile dysfunction, but it also has a higher rate of side effects than other options, according to an analysis of more than 150 trials.

Viagra is known generically as sildenafil. Men concerned about possible side effects of Viagra like headaches, flushing, indigestion and nasal congestion may want to start on Cialis, which is known generically as tadalafil, researchers report in European Urology. If that’s not effective, men in some countries can try Zydena (udenafil).

LUTH builds Colon Surgery Capacity of Doctors

Against the backdrop of ensuring proper treatment of bowel conditions in Nigeria, Lagos University Teaching Hospital has trained surgeons on the use of staplers to ensure better care for Nigeria’s teeming population.

Dr Olujimi Coker, Chief of Surgery, Lagoon Hospital, Lagos while speaking on the training done in collaboration with Ethicon Inc and West African College of Surgeons, said it had become necessary to build Nigerian surgeon’s skills in joining bowels together safely so as to reduce the number of people going around the country with colostomy bag.

A colostomy is formed during surgery to divert a section of the large intestine (colon) through an opening in the abdomen (tummy). A pouch or bag is placed over the opening to collect waste products that would usually pass through the colon and out of the body through the rectum and anus.

A colostomy usually needs to be formed when there is a problem with an area of the colon. Some of the most common reasons for forming a colostomy include bowel cancer, Crohn’s disease (a condition that causes inflammation of the digestive system) and injury to the colon.

Dr Coker, who remarked that the colostomy was better managed using a special stapler, said the surgeon’s skills were being improved on how to manage the problem through key hole surgery.

According to him, “These surgeons are being taught how to be able to join the

 bowel together safely so that we can reduce the number of people going around with a colostomy.

“People wearing colostomy are quite common in Nigeria either because of gunshot and road traffic injuries. But more commonly, cancers of the bowel are getting more and more common.”

The expert, who remarked that the surgical training is intended to be stepped down to other surgeons by those currently been trained, added that the participants’ skill was also going to be built on how best to pass down the training to others.

A Post-mortem on Angelina Jolie's Health

While some celebrities are making life harder for their fans, others like Angelina Jolie-Pitt, are making things easier for their fans. This article best paint my thoughts. Enjoy.

I have always been one of Angelina Jolie’s biggest fans.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to reward her 1999 performance in Girl Interrupted with an Oscar, but I wasn’t well and truly smitten until the second Lara Croft Tombraider movie was released in 2003.  In that film, Jolie, who performs her own stunts, is seen galloping on a dark horse while spinning a heavy shotgun from side to side to shoot alternating targets.  And she is riding sidesaddle. In the Lara Croft movies, she is the epitome of a strong, athletic, intelligent and self-assured woman.  It may not seem like much, but I granted Miss Jolie a high honor indeed; in 2004 I named a dark, agile and fast deerhound puppy after her, the soon to be champion Caerwicce’s Lady Croft, a.k.a. “Angelina.”

In the years that followed the Lara Croft movies, Angelina Jolie went on to surprise her public in more ways than one.  The girl who initially achieved notoriety for wearing a vial of her second husband Billy Bob Thornton’s blood gained a different type of fame when she adopted a Cambodian child, and subsequently became a respected ambassador for the United Nations.  She has become well-known for her humanitarian efforts, devoting as much time to improving the lives of refugee children as she does to her own career.  Recently, she has added the titles of author, director, and Mrs. Brad Pitt to an already impressive resume.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of all came two years ago, when she went public in the New York Times with the revelation that she was positive for the breast cancer gene BRCA1. In a moving statement, she wrote of her difficult decision, at age 37, to undergo bilateral prophylactic mastectomies and reconstructive surgeries in the hope of staving off the cancers that took her mother, her grandmother and her aunt.  She was clear and concise, reasonable and dispassionate in her account.   Not only did she raise awareness of the heritable form of breast cancer, she gave courage to all women facing the challenge of a mastectomy.  If one of the world’s most beautiful and sexy women could undergo such surgery in the glare of the celebrity spotlight and come out looking stronger and even more beautiful, so could some of the rest of us. She has done it again.  

In a New York Times article entitled “Diary of a Surgery,” she reveals that she has recently undergone removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes to prevent ovarian cancer, the disease that killed her mother.  She describes precisely the terror she felt when informed that some recent blood tests were equivocal, the dreadful anticipation of the results of a PET/CT scan and the realization that now, at age 39, she has entered menopause.  But she also describes the relief she felt once she had made a decision to go ahead with the preventive surgery: “I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer’.”

There’s bravery, and then there’s true courage and grit.  It’s one thing to perform gymnastics while swinging from the rafters of the Croft estate, or to shoot a rifle off the back of a galloping horse.  It’s quite another to write clearly and objectively the story of being diagnosed with a genetic mutation, and of the careful informed decisions she made to minimize her risks, while at the same time admitting that her decisions were not necessarily the right ones for everyone.  As Angelina says, “Knowledge is power.”  We owe her thanks for sharing hers with us.

Miranda Fielding is a radiation oncologist who blogs at The Crab Diaries.

Parents Check This Out About Your Child

This is to ensure your child is growing optimally. Enjoy

Growth and development go hand-in-hand. In fact, normal growth is an important indicator of your child’s overall health and wellbeing as he or she ages.

It’s important to understand the difference between height and growth. Height is simply how tall or short your child might be at any given point in time. Your child’s growth is the dynamic measure of how your child’s height changes over time, and is used to determine any health or nutritional abnormalities, or underlying growth disorders.

Parents often worry about how short or tall their child will be, so it is always a good idea for them to have some idea of what to expect. A quick and easy way to figure an approximate target for your child’s ultimate height is to use the following formula:

• If your child is a boy, you can add five inches to his mother’s height in inches and then add this number to his father’s height in inches. Take this number and divide it by 2 to get an approximate height target.
• If your child is a girl, subtract five inches from her father’s height and then add this to her mother’s height in inches. Take this number and divide it by 2 to get an approximate height target.

Again, this gives you an approximation of what the genetic height potential is for your child.

Source: Pfizer

Discussing Cancer With Your Doctor

When faced with a cancer diagnosis, you need to find a doctor with whom you feel comfortable and can speak openly. But just what should you and your doctor talk about?

Knowing what questions to ask can help you feel prepared for your doctor visits. While it may take more than one visit to ensure that all of your concerns are addressed, making a list of your questions in advance can help you get the answers you need.

Read over the following list of questions, then check off those that you would like to discuss with your doctor. You can also add your own questions at the bottom. When you’re finished, print out your personalized doctor discussion guide and bring it to your next appointment.

* What type of cancer do you have and at what stage or extent of spread is it?

* In your opinion what is my outlook of the future?

* What treatment options do you suggest at this time and why?

* What is the intent of these treatment; is it to cure the cancer, or slow down its growth or to take care of symptoms?

* When would my treatment start and how long will it last?

* How wil each treatment affect my lifestyle? Will I need to make any adjustments in my family or at work?

* What are the odds my cancer will come back after each treatment options.

* How much will each treatment cost?

Please you can add any additional question on the 'comment' section, you my want to ask a Doctor. Remember, you need to have no doubt in your kind. So get all questions answered. 

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Benefits of Water to your Skin.

Drinking water is one of the best things you can do to keep your skin in shape. It keeps your skin moist — and that makes fine lines and wrinkles less noticeable. It also helps your cells take in nutrients and get rid of toxins. And it helps with blood flow, keeping your skin glowing. The common advice is to drink 8 glasses of water a day, but you may not need exactly that many. The water in fruits, veggies, juice, and milk counts toward your total.

Violence against women, still a hurdle - UN

Its really so good to set aside a day for women who go through alot in our present day world. I saw some of this heart breaking statistics about women on the UN Women site and i thought you must see it too.

According to a 2013 global review of available data, 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.

Hear this please! Even Twitter save smokers

When people in a smoking cessation programme tweet each other regularly, they are more successful at kicking the habit, says a study.

Specifically, daily "auto-messages" that encourage and direct the social media exchanges may be more effective than traditional social media interventions for quitting smoking.

"Our results indicate that incorporating social media-delivered auto-messages from trained counsellors were effective in promoting smoking cessation," said Cornelia Pechmann from the University of California-Irvine.

"The twice-daily messages encouraged people to tweet their group members, which made them more accountable for quitting," Pechmann added.

The researchers found that overall engagement in two consecutive Tweet2Quit groups was high, with 78 percent of members tweeting their fellow study subjects at least once during the 100-day study.

The average number of tweets per person was 72, and 60 percent tweeted past the 30-day mark.Group No.1 had a smoking cessation rate of 42 percent. Using lessons gleaned from that trial, researchers tweaked the auto-messaging process, and Group No. 2 had a success rate of 75 percent.

Members of the Tweet2Quit's two closed, 20-person groups communicated online via Twitter for 100 days. Participants each received a free supply of nicotine patches, along with daily automated text messages.

They were encouraged to use a web-based guide to develop a cessation plan and were asked to tweet their group at least once a day about their progress.

There were no expert facilitators in the groups; the smokers themselves supported one another. However, the daily auto-messages encouraged and directed peer-to-peer discussions, and distinct tweeting spikes occurred when the messages were sent."The Twitter environment created a sort of party dynamic," said Pechmann.

"That's especially important for social smokers. In addition, group leaders naturally emerged, facilitating the online conversations. These leaders played a critical role in keeping people engaged," the researcher added.

The findings were published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Death? When Exactly Do We Say Someone is Dead, Science Reveals!!

To declare someone dead, could be a tough call!! Most times doctors depend on their clinical acumen to say if a patient is dead or alive. Some wrong calls have been made in the past, only for the patient to spring out of bed, hale and hearty.   So you can agree with me it could be a hard decision to make, declaring one - dead. Thanks to ever evolving tecnological advancements, this call is made lighter....

Now read about how to exactly declare a patient dead or not.

WHY SOME PARENTS FEAR ADMINISTRATION OF VACCINES TO THEIR CHILDREN

As a medical student, I strongly support vaccination. It works, it's safe, and it doesn't cause autism. But I also understand why many parents don't believe me and the medical community when we beg them to vaccinate their kids.

Medicine has come a long way from "Do No Harm". Now we talk about risks and benefits: and none of our tests, medicines, or procedures are without risks. Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies have been caught concealing those risks from doctors and the public.

Cortical 'Modem' Inplants To Give You Terminator Vision - Scientist Proposes

For your sight to be like terminator's sight, you just have to pay a token. Technological advancement is nudging further beyond all imaginable limits. Read the latest as written by Rich Tremholm for CNET.

Forget HoloLens, forget smart glasses and forget augmented reality -- scientists have proposed a "cortical modem" that plugs into your DNA and your visual cortex to cure sight loss and show a heads-up display in front of your very eyes.

Energy Drink and Booze: A Dangerous Mixture..

Students love to experiment. I was among friends recently and we were chilling with a few bottle of drinks, including alcohol, energy drinks, soft drink. It was a case of make your choice. Some stuck to soft drink, others went for a mixture of energy drink and alcohol. I thought it was unhealthy but i had no proof. Here is proof!!

USMLE: Innervation Of Diaphragm

Diaphragm is our topic today.
Now innervation of the diaphragm is by C3, C4, C5, all are from the brachial plexus.
This is directly related to respiration of individuals.

SCIENCE: Why Weed Makes You Super Hungry

Finally, science has discovered why marijuana gives people the munchies.

Potheads and doctors have known for a long time that smoking weed increases appetite, said Tamas Horvath, a neurobiologist at Yale University School of Medicine. But how does a drug make people ravenously hungry?

“What drives that, nobody has ever really known. We accidentally bumped into that,” Horvath told The Washington Post.

Saving Tiny Hearts

I saw this beautiful piece about saving hearts on dailyRx.com
Do enjoy the article!!!

Did you know 1 in 125 babies in the US is born with a congenital heart defect? It is the most common birth defect and occurs more often than spina bifida, Down syndrome and hearing loss.

According to Little Hearts, Inc., a national organization dedicated to providing support and education about this issue, congenital heart defects take the lives of twice as many children as childhood cancer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 1 in every 4 babies born with a heart defect has a critical congenital heart defect. Babies with a critical congenital heart defect need surgery or other procedures during their first year of life.

The CDC says that, typically, these types of heart defects lead to low levels of oxygen in newborns and may be identified using pulse oximetry screening at least 24 hours after birth. Doctors at St. David's Women's Center of Texas in Austin and other hospitals have implemented this special screening for every newborn delivered in the hospital.

In an interview with dailyRx News, Annette S. McCormick, medical director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. David's Women's Center of Texas in Austin, said this screening is the first step toward identifying any problems. If a child's oxygen levels fail this screening, he or she is then referred to a pediatric cardiologist for an echocardiogram — which uses ultrasound waves to produce an image of the heart.

The tiny hearts do stand a better chance after a repair and usually the first expert to recognise the condition is the Paediatrician. A diagnosis is usually made after the paediatric cardiologist have concluded the echocardiogram.

LEPROSY; A Disease Worse Than Others

In church today, the sermon dwelt on issues, topical issues. The priest (for I am a Roman Catholic) centered his sermon on a leprosy and lepers as in the bible. At first I got the whole analogy he tried to make; trying to let us know of the deprivation and neglect a leper suffers; but all that is regained in Jesus Christ who truly liberates us from our limitations.

 But while he spoke, I kept thinking of the reason for the actions that the early Jews took. Leprosy makes a person unclean and that person is cast out of society until wholeness is regained. A leper had to announce his entrance into any place by ringing out loud a bell tied to his waist. It was that bad.

Study: Musical training protects brain!!!

I have always known that there is more in to music than just singing at the top of your lungs, just as it has been shown that there is more to smoking pots. Studies have shpwn that smoking of pots shrinks the brain but nobody ever knew what music does to the brain up until now.