When Cancer Takes Over Life

When Cancer Takes Over life

Cancer is an illness that all of us hope we don't succumb too. Every educated person knows that there are several causes for cancer and most of them lie within the lifestyles that we have. One of the main causes of cancer lies in the kind of foods we eat. Cancer causing foods are plenty. You need to know about them in order to steer clear.

Food that has been charred, for example a barbecue, creates what are known as heterocyclic aromatic amines that are carcinogenic or cancer inducing. Burnt toast is also included. If you must indulge in red meat, having it medium or rare is a better option than having it well done. Or better yet, just steer clear of red meat.
Stomach cancer is known to be higher in folks who loved pickled, salted or smoked foods. Aerated or artificially sweetened drinks contain sugars and additives that can turn carcinogenic. Foods fried in excessive oil have trans fatty acids that in the long run can cause cancer. These are just some of the foods to look out for.

If you have already developed cancer, the prognosis will tell you which stage you are in. Cancer staging simply is the extent of the illness and is generally categorized in stages of 4. If you are in Stage 4 of cancer, your doctor will be able to tell you how far it has moved in your case. You have to understand that each form of cancer has a different meaning to stage 4 and only your doctor will be able to explain to you clearly about it. It will also help him make an informed decision on the course of treatment for you to follow. Though it may sound terrifying, knowing the stage you are in gives you a clearly idea of what to expect.

As with any other illness, a lack of awareness always surrounds cancer. When it comes breast cancer, awareness bracelets were introduced in 2004. With time, these bracelets are being made by a number of organizations and foundations all aimed at spreading knowledge as well as collecting funds for research or medical care of those who cannot afford it. Many still do not know that men too can have breast cancer and that is just one of the messages that this little beauties set out to tell.

Cancer is an illness that we all have to work hard to keep at bay. But if any one of use does contract it, you should know that being surrounded by friends and family is what is most important.

By: Walt yoast

How to Get Over Your Fear of the Dentist

 How to Get Over Your Fear of the Dentist

Find a friendly dentist - they do exist!

How to Get Over Your Fear of the Dentist

Like every profession, different dentists have different personalities. 

Spend a bit of time selecting the one that you are most likely to get on with.

Don't settle for just meeting the receptionist or taking their word for the friendliness of their boss. Actually arrange a short chat session with the person who'll be glaring into your mouth and poking around in it.

Check how your dentist deals with nervous patients

You're by no means alone in your fear of dentists. When I quizzed my own dental practitioner on the subject a few years back, she admitted that she never looked forward to a visit to her dentist.

As with friendliness, some dentists will be more likely to put their patients at ease than others.

If their first reaction is that no-one is ever afraid of them, maybe they haven't thought about the subject or how best to deal with it. Or maybe their patients are all so big they would scare the dentist rather than the other way round.

Either way, you'll know from the reaction you get whether it's an issue they are happy to deal with or whether you should go to the next person on your checklist.

Drag a friend along with you

Sometimes all we need to quell our fear of dentists is the presence of someone we know and trust.

OK, your friend almost certainly won't stop the dentist from prodding around your teeth with what look like torture instruments. But the mere fact of them being with you, maybe holding your hand if they can prize it from its grip of the dentist's chair, is often a great help.

Learn to relax

Most people turn stiff as a rod as soon as they lie down on the dentist's chair. Myself included. It's the fear response kicking in.

But learning to relax is a way to get around this response or at least lessen the worry when you do encounter that grinning professional in the white coat.

Quieten those nagging voices

You know, the voices in your head that run through all the possible scenarios even though you're only going for a five-minute checkup.

Again, relaxation techniques can help you to turn down the volume control in your mind and send those awkward and worrying voices packing, helping to reduce your fear of the dentist.

Maybe give yourself the fun feeling of washing them down the receptacle with the pink running water that always seems to be next to a dentist's chair!

By: Trevor Johnson

The Macrophages

The macrophages

Resident tissue macrophages, e.g. Kupffer cells in the liver, alveolar macrophages in the lung, mesangial cells in the kidney, microglial cells in the brain and resident macrophages in the peritoneum and lymph nodes, derive from circulating monocytes which originate in the bone marrow. Tissue macrophages have a number of important functions (see the information box)
and via a range of surface receptors are able to respond in different ways to a wide range of external stimuli. Like neutrophils, resident macrophages can ingest and kill bacteria, but perhaps their major role in acute inflammation is to initiate and orchestrate the inflammatory response by the secretion of important cytokines (see table 1.4) and chemokines. For example, they can secrete large quantities of the neutrophils chemokine IL-8 and other chemokines that specifically attract monocytes to the inflamed site. These monocytes rapidly mature into inflammatory macrophages, which have huge phagocytic and bacterial killing capacity and which also have important scavenging function for damaged microorganisms and proteins and for aged and damaged host cells in the ‘clearing up’ processes during the resolution of the inflammatory response. Finally, resident and inflammatory macrophages can secrete a range of cytokines that are responsible for tissue repair processes, but clearly in effective control of these processes may underlie the excessive fibroproliferative response that characterizes chronic inflammatory diseases such as pyelonephritis and fibrosing alveolitis (see the information box). The Macrophages

 

MORE COMPLEX INFLAMMATORY RESPONSES

 INFLAMMATORY

While (Pneumonia) streptococcal pneumonia exemplifies and acute inflammatory response in which the recruited cells are virtually restricted to neutrophil granulocytes and cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage, in other situation, e.g. some viral infections, large numbers of lymphocytes are recruited. This more persistent tissue picture results from a combination of the inflammatory and classical immune responses. The further recruitment of eosinophils in a chronic inflammatory response is a feature of allergic inflammation, e.g. in filariasis and schistosomiasis.
However, these patterns of cellular responses can also be ‘turned against us’ in various diseases if they occur inappropriately or in a uncontrolled fashion. For example, an excessive or inappropriate acute inflammatory response is responsible for many acute tissue injury syndromes, acute goat and acute glomerulonephritis. A chronic inflammatory response and chronic tissue destruction or an excessive fibrogenic response are key features of reheumatoid arthritis, chronic pyelonephritis, fibrosing alveolitis and chronic bronchitis and emphysema. An allergic inflammatory response characterizes asthma and eczema. The vast redundancy of mechanisms displayed in various aspects of the inflammatory response may be advantageous in antibacterial host defense but it poses problems for the development of specific therapy in inflammatory diseases.