CHRONICLES : BODY LANGUAGE & DIAGNOSTIC ( PART I)

WHAT OUR BODY IS  TELLING US...

PART I

·        Before any examination,  body  language happens to help sometimes. Notice how shape, color,movement, size & expression or attitude refer to deep

     health conditions.  

Bell's  Palsy

H

uman body never lies, according to a saying. In daily life as well as when affected by disease. Let’s see how it express itself in ailments.

      To people and clinicians acquainted with  healthcare conditions, there are some details that help map out the beginning and the worsening of a pathology. The body has a story on its own; and the following physical change gives very often some clues to pinpoint a lot of diseases when it is not about all of them.

This physical change comprises besides the BMI

1.      Shape

2.      Siᴢe

3.      Position

4.      Location

5.      Colour

6.      Sounds

       The BMI, the Body Mass Index refers to weight and height at once. Overweight people tend to develop current conditions such as stroke, hypertension, diabetes, colon cancer, lipidemia, coronary heart disease, sleep apnea and so forth. So do underweight ones when suffering from a proteino-calories deficiency like that happens in underdeveloped countries.

      By the same token, any modification in size, shape are also features of many underlying disorders.

     At the level of face, to begin with, the facial nerve, the WII, when affected, gives birth to some modifications. Bell’s palsy is the best example of the involvement of this nerve. Clinically Bell’s palsy reunites the following signs: eyelid drop, incapacity to close one eye, congested nose, and drop tear; Horner’s syndrome, with its cluster of clinical features and signs at the face is another example of expressive body language related to cerebral and nerve disorders.

CHRONICLES:THE ATM BATTLE PART 1

ATM % ( AIDS-TUBERCULOSIS-MALARIA)

SEX, AIR  &  MOSQUITOES

          

Tuberculosis is back, a Bronx Lebanon Hospital surgeon had been noting a few years ago. But the worst  of this returning is that  this  disease is now resistant to traditional  drugs.

What continues to matter about the ATM  Battle is how  these three infectious disease are transmitted. It is helpful to emphasize from the beginning that human being, protozoan and the breathing air have something to do with  the spreading of these three infections. The least we could say  is mother nature as a whole and living beings seem to play a key role in this dreadful ballet.

AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is a sexually transmitted condition and for so falls into the category of STD ( Sexually Transmitted Disease). 

Tuberculosis  involves person to person contact  through a medium named air.

Malaria refers to climate, water, marshes but transmission there involves a protozoan  through  Anopheles mosquitoes bites.

If we cannot eradicate these pandemics, we can at least put them under control.  A lot of preventive  measures  are still going on that help limit their spreading. 

MONTEZUMA'S REVENGE-E.COLI -TRAVELER'S DIARRHEA

B

esides serious illness linked to military forays into former colonies or due to climatic bad adaptation, change or weather disaster, Montezuma’s revenge refers to a kind of curse that European visitors, tourists from anywhere can go through.Natives and locals used to call these ailments: Montezuma’s wrath or revenge because of this last Aztec emperor  enslaved and killed by Hernan Cortes,  an illiterate conquistador whose name has survived his massive  killing among   Aztec Indians.

Today, it is considered that any visitor undergoing traveler’s diarrhea (TDs) is a sort of victim of the Montezuma’s curse. Te same can be said about Gandhi’s revenge, the Egyptian Mummy’s Tummy or the curse linked to the Slave route, or triangular Trade of the French in the late 18th century.

Montezuma

Whatever it might be, Traveler’s diarrhea is the most striking aspect of this so-called revenge. A parasite known as E. coli embodies this Inca revenge and seems to have something to do with drinking water, half-cooked food and poor sanitation. Add other parasites namely: Shigella, Salmonella, Yersinia, campylobacter as well as protozoans such as Giardia; all of them can cause TD too.

Montezuma and his fellow citizens can smile from their graves when watching their victors or   descendants’ pay any tribute to innocent and however vital drinking water of Aztec plateaus. As if, finally in this world, there exists neither victor nor defeated.

Sic Gloria transit mundi…

GEOGRAPHICAL MALARIA MAP

MALARIA....

A

n endemic disease  in more than 100 countries in the world,  malaria is hold responsible of millions  deaths every year. Scattered in Sub Saharian Africa, malaria is also present in Central America, Latin America, and mostly in Southwestern and Eastern Asia. Caused by bites of a  female mosquito named Anopheles mosquito, that grow in mares and stagnant waters, malaria is transmitted from person to person through several types of plasmodium that enters the blood before reproducing itself in the liver. Doctors acquainted with tropical diseases affirm that malaria can mimic a lot of diseases, which makes prevention the best way to fight this still deadly ailment.

Traditional antimalarial drugs  are part of the so called “ shot gun” cocktail that general practitioners used in the endemic areas.

Unfortunately, during these last decades, this endemic pathology has become unresponsive to  traditional   drugs. Epidemiologists and WHO policy recommend  the use of  a combined therapy including  artemisin to other antimalarial drugs.

Artemisin is a sesquiterpene lactone containing an unusual peroxide bridge. This peroxide is believed to be responsible for the drug's mechanism of action.

PAIN & ASPIRINE

HOW  DOES ASA FIGHT  PAIN ?

Aspirin, acetyl salicylic acid, known also as salicin, is  considered  wonderful and labeled  “the wonder drug” according to  many writers. Among the four signs of inflammation described  in Roman times by Celsius, 30 AD, namely: redness, heat, swelling and pain, in Latin: rubor, calor,  tumor and  dolor ,aspirin continue to address the most important one which is dolor.

Dolor, in English pain, tells us about “any physical feeling caused by disease, injury or something unpleasant. As usual, pain is transmitted to the brain as an information or a signal that something is wrong in human  homeostasis. The messengers aware of this imbalance are the ending nerve about which  Wikipedia writes : Free nerve ending ( FRE)  is an “unspecialized afferent nerve ending meaning it brings information from the body’s periphery toward the brain.  Any FRE  functions as cutaneous receptors and are essentially used  by vertebrates to detect pain.

Acetyl Salicylic Acid act at this level.  How so?

By reducing the productions of prostaglandins and thromboxanes and binding to an enzyme named cyclooxygenase,( COX), required for prostaglandin and thromboxane synthesis, aspirin  plays a key role. Prostaglandins are local hormones (paracrine) produced in the body and have diverse effects in the body, including but not limited to transmission of pain information to the brain, modulation of the hypothalamic thermostat, and inflammation As an acetylating agent “where an acetyl group is covalently attached to a serine residue in the active site of the COX enzyme, aspirin stops and reverses the  pain process. Put shortly, a former Nobel Price Sir John Robert Vane  summarizes  these steps  in a few words: aspirin achieves its goal by blocking the production of prostaglandins.

Next time you get some pain, think about aspirin as  your angel guardian.  Thromboxanes are synthetized in endothelial cells lining our vessels and end up sometimes building up dreadful clots. Thromboxanes are responsible for the aggregation of platelets that form blood clots. There also, aspirin doesn’t give up. A blood thinner, aspirin fights on as well. As so, it becomes over the years the main drug to prevent heart attack and stroke.

Never had preventive medicine relied on such a weapon.

CHEST PAINS THAT ARE NOT RELATED TO THE HEART

Not all chest pains are heart related. An acronym NCCP (Non Cardiac Chest Pain) refers to this condition.

Needless to say  how much  deceptive it might be by missing  a MI or an ACS  while  discharging as a result  from the Emergency Department a patient complaining of chest pain  with the so-called GI cocktail. Even though  every year a good percentage of Americans go to see their doctors or rush into the emergency service with a disastrous chest pain, there still are chest pain that are  not heart related . Here are some :

• ·         GI Disorders such as : Esophagitis, gastro-duodenal ulcers, pancreatitis, 
• ·         GERD ( gastroesophageal reflux disease) gallbladder inflammation,
• ·         Lungs Diseases: pleuritis, pneumothorax
• ·         Aorta Dissection
• ·         Chest wall inflammation

Without doubt , it pays off to have available  these life saving drugs used  it the first hours of an acute myocardial infarction: nitroglycerine, aspirin, oxygen, artery relaxers, clot-busting drugs, and blood thinners, to name them.  But, by considering another alternative to the current ischemia based chest pain thanks to a better approach, physicians help patients not only to overcome chest pain fear but also benefit actually  from the main underlying condition

HEALTH CARE CHRONICLES: THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF HAPPINESS

HEALTH CARE CHRONICLES:  THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF HAPPINESS  

Conchita, the famous toreador

THE 3As and  THE 3 Ls

Western societies tend to refer to income when it happens  to consider  the level of happiness among individuals. However, despite  healthcare improvement and early detection of deadly ailments along with  modern lifestyle,   materialistic items are far from  measuring  well being and happiness.  There is  a lot to emphasize  when evaluating how much people  really enjoy life.

Here is  in a nutshell what authors and researchers think   to be able to  benefit  human beings with regards to their behavior and daily life aspect.

First the 3 As.

THEY ARE APPLE, ASA, ASPIRATIONS

·         An apple a day keeps the doctor away, according to a saying.

·         ASA, aspirin today regarded as the wonder drug, even able to fight cancer and infertility

·         Aspirations finally. Aspirations embrace our dreams, projects and a busy life.

Second the 3 Ls.

THEY ARE LOVE, LIGHT, AND LAUGHTER

Monica Lewinsky
the power of smile

•      Love is a powerful energy. It makes us live in a kind of enduring expectation. It was said that love cleans up the heart, triggering  better beeping and as a result better circulation.
• 
  
•      Light is well known for its influence on the pituitary gland and the release of hormones everywhere in the body. Lights boosts the immune system and treats a lot of diseases.
• 
  
•       Laughter acts on our lung, “ releases the endorphins, protects the heart and relaxes the whole body”. The book: The Secret emphasizes laughter as the best medicine. “ it is a strong medicine for mind and body".