Heart Problems: Female>Male?

Research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicates that women often experience new or different physical symptoms as long as a month or more before experiencing heart attacks.

Among the 515 women studied, 95-percent said they knew their symptoms were new or different a month or more before experiencing their heart attack, or Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI). The symptoms most commonly reported were unusual fatigue (70.6-percent), sleep disturbance (47.8-percent), and shortness of breath (42.1-percent).

Many women never had chest pains
Surprisingly, fewer than 30% reported having chest pain or discomfort prior to their heart attacks, and 43% reported have no chest pain during any phase of the attack. Most doctors, however, continue to consider chest pain as the most important heart attack symptom in both women and men.

The NIH study, titled "Women's Early Warning Symptoms of AMI" is one of the first to investigate women's experience with heart attacks, and how this experience differs from men's. Recognition of symptoms that provide an early indication of heart attack, either imminently or in the near future, is critical to forestalling or preventing the disease.

In a NIH press release, Jean McSweeney, PhD, RN, Principal Investigator of the study at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, said, "Symptoms such as indigestion, sleep disturbances, or weakness in the arms, which many of us experience on a daily basis, were recognized by many women in the study as warning signals for AMI. Because there was considerable variability in the frequency and severity of symptoms," she added, "we need to know at what point these symptoms help us predict a cardiac event."

Women's symptoms not as predictable
According to Patricia A.Grady, PhD, RN, Director of the NINR, "Increasingly, it is evident that women's symptoms are not as predictable as men's. This study offers hope that both women and clinicians will realize the wide range of symptoms that can indicate heart attack. It is important not to miss the earliest possible opportunity to prevent or ease AMI, which is the number one cause of death in both women and men."

M-R-S-A

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a type of bacteria that can cause skin infection. These infections are being seen with increasing frequency -- once limited to people with weak immune systems in hospitals and nursing homes, MRSA is now affecting even healthy adults and children.

MRSA, while it is a type of staph bacteria that many healthy people can normally have on their skin, can be difficult to treat when it causes an infection. And while MRSA infections are sometimes limited to simple pimple-like infections, they can often become a much larger abscess and boil that needs to be drained.

Unfortunately, MRSA infections can also lead to much more serious infections, including infections of the bloodstream (bacteremia and sepsis), bone infections, and pneumonia.

Since MRSA infections can be so serious and are sometimes deadly, it is important to learn to recognize the symptoms of an MRSA infection so that you can get your child early treatment.

MRSA Symptoms

Like many other skin infections, MRSA symptoms typically include an area on the skin that comes up quickly and is:

• red
• swollen
• painful
• draining or is full of pus
• not getting better with typical antibiotic treatments for routine skin infections

Another classic sign of an MRSA infection is that people will describe the area as looking like a spider bite. In fact, many people mistake MRSA infections for spider bites.

Other symptoms, such as fever, difficulty breathing, chills, or chest pain, would typically be signs of a more serious MRSA infection that has spread beyond your child's skin and to his blood, lungs, or other part of his body. This would usually require immediate medical attention.

MRSA vs. Routine Staph

Even with classic MRSA symptoms, it is important to keep in mind that your child's skin infection could still be caused by the regular Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The only way to tell is for your doctor to do a culture on the drainage from the site of the infection. This can be helpful in case your child's infection doesn't get better, he keeps getting skin infections over and over, or if other family members get a skin infection too.

Since it can take several days to get the results from an MRSA culture, your pediatrician will likely treat your child with an antibiotic that works against MRSA if he suspects these resistant bacteria. These antibiotics most commonly include Bactrim (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) and Cleocin (clindamycin) or Vancocin (vancomycin) if your child has a more serious infection and IV medication are required.

Hotdogs Can Cause Brain Tumor?

I have heard that if a child eats a certain number of hot dogs per week that the probability of a brain tumor is tremendous. Is this correct?

Answer: No, a child will not be at a greater risk of forming brain tumors if he eats too many hot dogs. However, moms-to-be may want to cut hot dogs and other processed meats such as bologna, sausage, pepperoni and other packaged luncheon meats out of their diets for that reason.

Your question probably stems from research that looked for a possible correlation between the consumption of processed meats by pregnant women and the occurrence of brain tumors in their children. Laboratory research performed on lab animals showed that substances formed from sodium nitrites would cause neurological tumors in the offspring of female animals that were fed the nitrates.

These findings spurred researches to study human populations and they found that women who ate more processed meats had children who were more likely to develop brain tumors. Later research also found that women who ate diets high in processed meats were also more likely to have babies who weighed less than they should.

While there is a correlation between mothers-to-be and childhood brain tumors, that same risk doesn't extend to the children when they eat hot dogs. Actually, while rates of childhood brain cancer went up in the 1970s through the 1990s, the amount of nitrites used in processed meats actually went down.

Hot dogs, franks, wieners or whatever you wish to call them are certainly not healthy foods for children or adults to eat even if they don't cause brain tumors in people who eat them. Like other processed meats, they are high in calories and saturated fats. Plus they contain those nitrites, which may combine with other substances to form N-Nitroso compounds in the body.

These compounds may be part of the reason why eating processed meats has been associated with a higher risk of cancer, not just brain cancer in children of women who eat processed meats, but also for colorectal cancer in adults.

Another reason why hot dogs are unhealthy may be due to the overall diet of a typical hot dog eater. People who eat high fat diets including red and processed meats are more likely to be overweight or obese, plus that hot dog may be taking the place of a much more nutritious fruit or vegetable. Hot dogs are also prone to carry the bacteria called listeria that causes foodborne illness.
Hot dogs, like all processed meats, should be eaten only rarely. While the occasional hot dog at a baseball game may not ruin your health, frequent consumption of hot dogs and other processed meats cannot be part of a healthy diet.

12 Lead ECG Placement

ECG--- Watch and Learn

Diagnostic Tests---

Using the resources of the Brain Research Center at UCLA, this film illustrates the development of neuroscience, from its reliance on information from brain injuries and from autopsies, through to new insights discovered with electronic micro-scopes, EEG equipment, PET scans and MRI machines. These new means of exploring the brain have broadened and deepened the extent of research; each has its own uses and methodologies which are elaborated in the film. Throughout DISCOVERING THE HUMAN BRAIN: NEW PATHWAYS TO NEUROSCIENCE, examples of actual research that utilize current technology are presented, including a study on the role of mirror neurons in autism and the mapping of language areas of a patient prior to surgery on a brain tumor. Thus, this film provides students with an understanding of the methodology and power of current research in neuroscience.

Source:

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