Coping With Telogen Effluvium

Telogen effluvium is a hair loss condition that is characterized by a general thinning of the hair over a period of months. It is usually found in people who have recently experienced trauma with common causes including childbirth, major surgery and severe illness.
It occurs when one or more factors interfere with the normal growth cycle and manifests when large numbers of hairs are prematurely pushed from the growth (anagen) phase into the resting (telogen) phase. The telogen hairs are loosely attached at the roots and fall out easily. Fortunately, this unnatural growth behavior is only temporary and completely reversible.
Diagnosis of telogen effluvium involves a three step process:
Assess the type of hair loss suffered - generally telogen effluvium is typified by a rapid thinning throughout the scalp rather than the localized loss evident in most other conditions.
Review life events over the previous six months - typically some sort of traumatic event will have occurred.
Undergo a hormone test to rule out other abnormalities.
As far as treatment is concerned, telogen effluvium usually disappears as the effects of the trauma previously experienced begin to wear off. Consequently, there are no treatments specific to this condition although a product such as minoxidil (Rogaine) may help to accelerate the regrowth process.
You can find out more about telogen effluvium and other forms of hair loss at the site listed below.

How High-Carb Diet Plans Treat Carbohydrates

A number of popular diets are focused on carbohydrates. Some demonize them. Then warn you against eating any carbohydrates. Others in fact, emphasize a high carbohydrate intake. Here is how high-carbohydrate diet plans treat carbohydrates. (Such as Ornish, Pritikin, and Food for Life)
For years you've been hearing that eating a healthy diet. Means cutting back on the total amount of fat. While eating more complex carbohydrates. Thousands of "low-fat" alternatives now crowd your supermarket shelves.
But is simply cutting back on fat. Then loading up on carbohydrates a healthy way to eat or to lose weight? Current research suggests that it isn't. Just like researchers have learned that not all types of fat are bad. They have also discovered that not all types of carbohydrates are good for you.
It's easy for you to fall into a low-fat trap. Gram for gram. Fat has more than twice as many calories as either protein or carbohydrates. Then it seems logical that choosing low-fat products will help you with your weight loss. However, all too often the low-fat products on supermarket shelves are packed with sugar. And highly processed carbohydrates. Making up for the taste that's lost when fat is removed.
These low-fat alternatives often contain just as many calories as the full-fat versions. Some may even have more! Another problem is that you mistakenly think that because a food is low in fat. You can eat as much of it as you want without gaining any weight.
As far as your body is concerned. Calories are calories. No matter where they come from. Eat too many calories (whether from fat, carbohydrates or protein) and you'll gain weight period.
Aside from weight loss. The popularity of low-fat food has broader implications for your health. Commercially prepared low- fat foods tend to be rich in highly processed carbohydrates. Thus causing big spikes in your blood sugar level. Over time this can increase the chances of you developing heart disease and diabetes.
For example, in a study of 80,000 nurses. Harvard researchers calculated that replacing a given number of calories from polyunsaturated fat. With an equivalent number from easily digested carbohydrates. Increased the risk for heart disease by over 50 percent.
Some other studies have found that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. Particularly one high in sugars. Can worsen your blood cholesterol and triglycerides levels. Both of which are risk factors for heart disease.
You can minimize or avoid any diet deficiencies associated with high-carbohydrates diets. When you approach your high- carbohydrate diet as an integrated part of your *-lifestyle-*, not solely an ingredient focus.

If You Have Diabetes, You May Be Entitled To No Cost Diabetic Supplies

This article is intended to inform people with diabetes in regards to their diabetic supplies. When I found out that my sister was diagnosed with the disease I started to research more and came across some useful information that might be helpful to others.
Diabetes is the country*s sixth leading cause of death by disease. As you may know it is the leading cause of blindness, kidney disease, heart disease and amputations. Diabetes claims the lives of more than 193,000 Americans each year. Approximately 18.2 million Americans have diabetes, but one-third of those are undiagnosed. And many people that do have diabetes pay for their diabetes supplies. If you have insurance and live in the United States, you may be eligible.
As of May 2004, forty-six states have some type of laws requiring health insurance coverage to include treatment for diabetes. The states not included are Alabama, Idaho, North Dakota and Ohio.
As of 2002, two states, Georgia and Wisconsin passed an expansion of current coverage requirements. In 2003 Hawaii adopted a resolution to clarify its mandate of diabetes education coverage. No new laws were passed during the first four months of 2004.
About 17 million Americans have diabetes today, including about 16 million with Type 2. In addition, at least 16 million more Americans have pre-diabetes -- a condition that raises a person*s risk of getting type 2 diabetes. However, a diagnosis of pre-diabetes does not mean that diabetes is inevitable, and the new campaign aims at encouraging people to take modest steps that will reduce their risks. Nationally, diabetes has increased nearly 50 percent in the past 10 years alone, according to CDC estimates.
It is good news that more states are passing laws to further expand health coverage regarding diabetes. If you have diabetes and insurance, most likely you can get your supplies at now cost.
Go to this url: http://www.nadmedia.net/diabetes-supplies-atnocost.asp and click on the "get more information" link to see if you qualify for no cost diabetes supplies.
This article was written using various sources. Some of the statistics may not be up to date at the time of this writing.

The Last Line of Defense Against Medication Errors: What You Need to Know to Keep your Family Safe

his is a true story.
Yesterday, I picked up a new antibiotic prescription for my daughter from my local pharmacy.
(We recently adopted my daughter from India where she had recurrent ear infections resulting in severe hearing loss. And, she is about to undergo the second of several planned surgeries in order to try to repair the damage.)
Before putting her to sleep, I got the new medication out of the bag, glanced at the instructions, and prepared to give her the drug according to the instructions on the label.
Just before doing so, I had a quick double-take.
Something seemed to be wrong. I looked at the instructions again, and thought to myself slowly, *What*s going on...this doesn*t seem right.* Then, it hit me that the dose seemed awfully high for her.
It took me a minute or two to put the pieces together (it had been an unusually tough fight getting her ready for bed, I was tired, I was confident in my daughter*s physician, and I was thinking perhaps less critically that I should have). And then I noticed it. The label had a stranger*s name on it.
After another moment or two, I saw what had really happened.
The medication came in a box. Each side of the box had a different label...one label was for my daughter and one label was for a stranger. And, the stranger*s dose was more than double what my daughter*s surgeon had recommended.
(This error didn*t happen in a mom-and-pop pharmacy. It happened in a modern new chain pharmacy whose name you would recognize from advertisements on TV.)
I*m not a surgeon...and I*m not a pediatrician...but I am a physician trained in internal medicine and I have spent most of the last twelve years writing about, speaking about, and developing systems to reduce the frequency of medication error and improve the safety of pharmacy practice.
This pharmacy error brought the topic of drug safety home to me...literally.
What I can tell you is that this sort of error occurs all too often in the United States (and around the world). And, that it can have devastating consequences for the people involved.
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that 25% of patients who take one or more prescription medications will experience an adverse drug event within three months-and 39% of these are preventable or avoidable.
The Harvard Medical Practice Study found reported in JAMA in 2001 that 30% of patients with drug-related injuries died or were disabled for more than 6 months.
And, what almost everyone who studies this problem agrees is that current systems for selecting drugs, dosing them, communicating a prescription to a pharmacy, dispensing drugs, and instructing patients on their safe use are woefully inadequate.
In this series, we are going to take a close look at the processes that cause medication errors (some things that your physician and pharmacist may not even want you to know) and what steps you can specifically take to make sure that you and your love ones are protected from this hazard.
Ten years ago, your ability to get current, objective, reliable information on your medications in a quick and easy way was practically non-existent. It probably would have involved a trip to the library and required considerable knowledge about pharmacology to get the answers.
Today, that*s not the case. There is a host of on-line tools, databases, and resources that allow you to learn information about medications that even your physician and pharmacist may not know.
We*re going to talk about them, show you were to go, tell you the key things you need to know about medications, expose some myths, and let you know the questions you should be asking. It*s not as hard as it may seem.
In fact, you need to become the final line of defense in the battle against medication errors.
Throughout, we are going to give you some key rules that should guide your defense.
So, Rule Number 1. Trust, but verify. Never assume that the medication you have received is the right medication for you or that it is dosed correctly for you. Specifically, you should check: the name of the patient on the bottle; the name of the doctor on the bottle; the name of the medication (and cross check it to be sure that it treats a disease or problem you actually have... there are lots of look-alike/sound-alike drug names out there); the dose (from an independent source...to make sure that it is a plausible dose for you); the *route* (to make sure, for example, that eye drops are being prescribed for the eye, and not the mouth, or the ear...amazingly injuries from drug misplacement occur all the time); the expiration date.
We*ll talk about some specific resources that will help with each of these throughout this series.
The result, we hope, will be the piece of mind to know that you and your family are getting your 7 rights: right drug; right patient; right dose; right time; right route; right reason; right documentation.
Right on!