That snake in the grass may well help someone you lose with a stroke related disorder.

Stroke is a medical emergency and can cause permanent neurological damage or even death if not promptly diagnosed and treated. It is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of adult disability in the United States and industrialized European nations. It is predicted that stroke will soon become the leading cause of death worldwide.

The symptoms of stroke can be quite heterogeneous, and patients with the same cause of stroke can have widely differing handicaps. Conversely, patients with the same clinical handicap can in fact have different underlying causes.

Called ancrod, the fibrinogen depleting drug is an enzyme derived from the venom of the Malayan pit viper snake. This pit viper snake venom has been found to be a most potent natural anticoagulant. It is crucial that the drug which also acts to break up the clot and reduce blood viscosity be administered promptly within hours of the onset of the stroke.

The cause of stroke is an interruption in the blood supply, with a resulting depletion of oxygen and glucose in the affected area. This immediately reduces or abolishes neuronal function, and also initiates an ischemic cascade which causes neurons to die or be seriously damaged, further impairing brain function.

Risk factors for stroke include advanced age, hypertension (high blood pressure), previous stroke or TIA (transient ischemic attack), diabetes mellitus, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking, atrial fibrillation, migraine with aura, and thrombophilia. In clinical practice blood pressure is the most important modifiable risk factor of stroke, however many other risk factors, such as cigarette smoking cessation and treatment of atrial fibrillation with anticoagulant drugs, are important.

If a person has a stroke what occurs is that a blood vessel to the brain becomes blocked or non functional. Blood cannot flow through the blood vessel to the area of the brain it serves. The blood vessel may be narrowed by atherosclerosis (cholesterol crystals in the wall of the blood vessel), the artery may be blocked by a blood clot, it may be damaged or the heart just cannot pump enough blood into the artery. The snake venom may well help in the treatment of acute ischemic strokes.

Ancrod differs from previous drugs in that the current therapies must be administered within three hours or less. In real life, and with real life logistics, as well as travel and treatment admission times, often the stroke patient is limited with options for therapy by the time they reach their treatment options. The medications derived from this snake venom can be given up to six hours opening up a whole new therapeutic window.

Currently studies are underway at a number of major medical centers to evaluate stroke trials with this medication derived from the snake venom for the treatment of acute strokes. What will be looked at is if the drug is given within six hours of a person having a sudden ischemic stroke will those patients suffer less damage related to the stroke or not. That is will the snake venom drug help people to the extent that stroke victims given the Ancrod snake venom derived drug have a lower level of disability and a higher level of function than those who were given the drug - 90 days after the tragic event.

Who know it may well be that snake in the grass that best helps out your family member or friend return back to health and function after a sudden stroke attack.

That snake in the grass may well help someone you lose with a stroke related disorder. Stroke is a medical emergency and can cause permanent neurological damage or even death if not promptly diagnosed and treated. It is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of adult disability in the United States and industrialized European nations. It is predicted that stroke will soon become the leading cause of death worldwide. The symptoms of stroke can be quite he...
Morgellons and Lyme Garden Mantis Medical Tourism Solution

Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

by Steve Smith

Numerous studies have recognised the vitamin as a possible protector against coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, hypertension and cancer, to name but a few, and it is possible that all of these effects stem ultimately from vitamin C's acknowledged role as a powerful anti-oxidant, active in preventing the free radical damage which is a known cause of premature ageing and many chronic degenerative diseases.

So the absence of acute deficiency diseases such as scurvy in modern affluent societies should not be taken as implying that the typical Western diet contains an adequate intake of vitamin C for optimum long-term health.

The United States Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 90 mg per day for a healthy, non-smoking man and 75 mg for a woman. But these suggested requirements are increased to 125mg and 110 mg respectively in the case of smokers, a tacit acknowledgement of the increased requirement for this vitamin which increased toxic stress places on the body. But these RDAs nevertheless appear to be set at a level sufficient only to avoid outright deficiency disease.

To be sure of obtaining all the optimum benefits of vitamin C, the authoritative Linus Pauling Institute has recommended a daily minimum intake of at least 400 mg. This amount has been shown to achieve saturation levels of the vitamin within the body's tissues in healthy young adults who are non-smokers. To get this in perspective, even the consumption of the recommended five daily servings of fruits and vegetables may provide just 200 mg of vitamin C, whilst even commercial multi-vitamin supplements typically provide only around 60 mg.

But the real story's actually even worse than this, not only because all too few people actually manage to consume the recommended quantities of fruit and vegetables, but because the nutritional quality of those that we do consume is poor, and getting worse.

As long ago as 1936, Senate Document 264 noted that the poor quality of American farm soils was leading to widespread nutritional deficiencies, and the 1992 Earth Summit reported that mineral concentrations in US farm soils were 85% lower than those of a hundred years ago.

Nor does the problem lie just in the soil. The modern Western diet's preference for highly refined grains, and the treatment of fruits and vegetables with preservatives, dyes, pesticides and even radiation is a proven disaster for vitamin and mineral retention, as well as a significant toxic assault on the body.

Indeed, the problem for us in the twenty-first century is that our environment seems as though it might have been expressly designed for ill-health. Daily we're exposed to a kind of toxic soup of pollutants such as industrial emissions, car exhausts, pesticides, herbicides, dyes and all kinds of everyday household chemicals. But as the liver works ever harder in an increasingly desperate struggle to detoxify the body, an unwelcome side effect is that it produces enormous quantities of the free radicals which are amongst the chief contributors to premature ageing and degenerative disease.

In these adverse circumstances it can only make sense to ensure that the body is as lavishly provided as possible with the top quality anti-oxidants of which vitamin C is certainly one of the most important.

Fortunately, high dosages of vitamin C are readily available as supplements and fortunately, too, it seems that the manufactured kind of l-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is chemically identical to that obtained naturally. This is not in any way to deny the importance of healthy eating, or to suggest that it doesn't make sense to try and eat the recommended five daily servings of fruit and vegetables, because these contain a myriad of trace nutrients which operate synergistically within the body, and which all need to be present for optimum health.

It does suggest, however, that to rely on diet alone, however apparently healthy, may well be to risk missing out on the vital anti-oxidant properties of vitamin C which may in time be reflected in chronic, degenerative, if not acute, disease. It should be noted as well, that as a water-soluble compound, any excess vitamin C is harmlessly excreted by the body.

So with all the health benefits of vitamin C at stake, it surely makes sense to err on the side of taking in too much rather than too little.

About the Author

Steve Smith is a freelance copywriter specialising in direct marketing and with a particular interest in health products. Find out more at http://www.sisyphuspublicationsonline.com/LiquidNutrition/Information.htm

source:www.goarticles.com

The right cereal makes all the difference

By Eileen Behan, R.D.

Hot or cold, a bowl of whole grain cereal with fresh fruit and skim milk starts your day the right way. It may even help lower your blood pressure: The National Institutes of Health’s key study, DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension), found that a daily diet low in saturated fat with plenty of fruits and vegetables and two to three servings of nonfat or lowfat dairy lowered pressure in those with elevated levels. But the version of the DASH diet that yielded the biggest drop also kept sodium to 1,500 mg per day. (The American average is 3,300 mg.)

A low sodium diet means fewer canned foods, salty snacks, fast foods—plus carefully chosen cereals. Popular breakfast cereals may contain 300 to 350 mg of sodium per small bowl; a cup of milk has 140 mg. So it’s easy to begin your day with nearly a third of your daily allotment of sodium.

It helps to switch to calcium-fortified soy milk (26 mg per cup), but the real key is lower-sodium whole grain cereals such as shredded wheat and oatmeal. Add fruit, rich in potassium, which neutralizes sodium, and you’re golden.

What to Do
Read labels to find a whole grain cereal that is low in sodium. Look for one that has less than 140 mg per serving.


Sources: New England Journal of Medicine, Jan. 4, 2001; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, March 2003; National Institutes of Health, Publication No. 06-4082.

source:www.healthyupdates.com