Monday, December 7, 2009

Multiple Sclerosis- what is it?

by Tatya H.P.

Multiple Sclerosis- what is it?

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS) where the body's own immune cells attack the nervous system. In Multiple Sclerosis, inflammation of nervous tissue causes the loss of myelin, a fatty material that acts as a sort of protective insulation for the nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord. This demyelination leaves multiple areas of scar tissue (sclerosis) along the covering of the nerve cells, which disrupts the ability of the nerves to conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain, producing the various symptoms of multiple Sclerosis.

Multiple Sclerosis-Causes, symptoms, and risk factors
The cause of multiple Sclerosis is unknown. Geographic studies indicate there may be an environmental factor involved. Multiple Sclerosis is more likely to occur in northern Europe, the northern United States, southern Australia, and New Zealand than in other areas.

Symptoms of multiple Sclerosis vary because the location and extent of each attack varies. There is usually a stepwise progression of the disorder, with episodes that last days, weeks, or months alternating with times of reduced or no symptoms (remission). Recurrence (relapse) is common although non-stop progression without periods of remission may also occur.

The exact cause of the inflammation associated with multiple Sclerosis is unknown. An increase in the number of immune cells in the body of a person with multiple Sclerosis indicates that there may be a type of immune response that triggers the disorder. The most frequent theories about the cause of multiple sclerosis include a virus-type organism, an abnormality of the genes responsible for control of the immune system, or a combination of both factors.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects approximately 1 out of 1,000 people. More women are affected than men are. The disorder most commonly begins between ages 20 and 40, but can strike at any age. Risks include a family history of multiple Sclerosis and living in a geographical area with a higher incidence rate for multiple Sclerosis.

Life After Multiple Sclerosis ~ An MS Patient Goes Public!

by Tatya H.P.

About the author, MS, and Why FSBO (in his own words):

I retired from real estate in SW Washington, but only when I could no longer walk. Over three years previous, the doctors had said I needed to "Get rid of stress and stop working." In denial, I was slow to accept Multiple Sclerosis. Who, after all, would embrace a diagnosis of the dread disease of no known cause, and for which there was no cure? I continued to operate my own real estate company, increasing the number of experienced agents who required less hands-on supervision.

Putting renters in my house, I moved closer to my office, using a handicapped scooter to get back and forth on those days when I didn't have appointments set up to 'List' or 'Show' homes. I refused to give up driving because one leg still worked, most of the time.

In hidden panic, I began to make more hasty decisions. On a week that required my personal intervention on behalf of two of my agent's real estate transactions, I decided to sell my company. For a coffee cup, I traded my principle share of the real estate corporation to my new partner (another hasty decision), just to get out. I had no problem obtaining an Associate Broker position with one of the major corporations.

When it became apparent, even to me, that I could no longer provide the level of service I expected my clients to have, I took the Social Security Disability option. Gritting my teeth, while the mandatory waiting period ticked away, I tried to decide what to do with the remaining years of my life. Although I had once owned art stores, even taught oil painting, always the optimist, even I could not paint a portrait of future prosperity. I think they had a special on despair at the time, and I considered trading in my depression on it. At 53 years of age, with a pre-teen daughter yet to raise, and an ex-wife who couldn't work, life looked pretty bleak.

A good friend suggested that I write a book. As I had published two poetry books twenty-five years before, I considered the possibility. In an attempt to overcome personal depression, I decided to write about making better choices. I chose a novel format because it allowed the freedom to develop hypothetical scenarios, involving fictional characters, while forcing awareness of real dangers. I wanted to make a compelling case for right choices, not just in marketing ones home, but in all aspects of life.

I've made a lot of mistakes. Most of us do. We live in troubled, unpredictable times. People must contend with changing economic issues, employment disruptions, family problems, health upsets, crime, and consequences. Through awareness, we can perhaps gain clarity when, standing flat-footed over home plate, the curve ball comes while we were expecting a fast pitch.

For Sale By Owners: FSBO www.FSBONovel.com is a novel about people. Not perfect people. It begs the question, "What would For Sale By Owners do if they knew they were really buying trouble?" As former real estate broker, I am qualified to shed some light on this often un-addressed area of concern. Most agents are reluctant to tell people just how dangerous it is to open their doors to strangers.

Understandably, people who must sell homes do not want to pay brokerage fees, if they can avoid it. It is, absolutely their right to sell their homes themselves. But all too often, the man says, "We can sell it ourselves, Honey," pops a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign in the yard, and goes off to his work. His wife then places an ad in the local newspaper, answers the phone, and sets appointments for the supposedly interested buyers to come see their home for sale. The danger is minimized.

I've had client wives tell me they had prayed that no one would call. Then, peeking out the curtains, they had decided not to answer the door. My father once told me, "Son, all crooks have honest faces." What dad meant is that you can't tell, by looking at someone, what their real intentions are.

If an effort to be professional, most agents do not wish to alarm or alienate home sellers who might list with them, later. I have no such vested interest.

Even real estate agents recognize they are placing themselves at risk when showing houses. Every year, many are abducted, robbed, murdered, and raped in this country. The National Association Of Realtors constantly warns agents to vigilant, careful whom they work with. Many Realtors© will no longer do "Open Houses" because it is simply too dangerous. The commission reward of marketing a home this manner, to them, is not in proportion to the risk. Yes, I am passionate about the problem. My book doesn't mince words. The serial rapist adds an eerie element, gives a fractured face to one possible perpetrator.

The diverse cast of characters, each with their own perspective, is largely unaware that they even have problems. Each is imperfect. All are preoccupied with their own survival. Maybe, through increased awareness, there is hope for us all?

I am Multiple Sclerosis

by Tatya H.P.

Hi, my name is Multiple Sclerosis. You know me as a chronic disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. I don't really like that name or title so lets stick with MS for short.

I can cause a variety of symptoms, which include:
- Changes in sensation
- Visual problems
- Weakness
- Depression
- Difficulties with coordination
- Difficulties with speech

Several people that I affect will lead full and often times even use the "R word" (Rewarding) lives. That isn't the case for everyone though as often times I can cause people the use of the "D word", being disability and impaired mobility in cases where my work didn't go quite as well as planned.

I, Multiple Sclerosis affect neurons, which are the cells of the brain and spinal cords that carry information. I'm quite crafy to choose these locations as they are some of the most important parts of your body, controlling the body, carrying information, and creating thought and perception. Around your neurons you have a layer of fat that helps your neurons carry electrical signals. Sounds weird, but it's true. My affect on Neurons is the gradual break down of this fat, throughout the brain and spinal cord, which will cause several different symptoms depending on which signals I am able to disrupt.

You might think that I work alone, but that is incorrect. I result from attacks by your immune system on its self. It's like a civil war inside of your bodies immune system. Because I happen as a result of this war, I am called an autoimmune disease. Once again I prefer MS for short.

Early Diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis: Difficult But Important

by Tatya H.P.

The principal dilemma in current management of multiple sclerosis is that while early diagnosis enables damage-sparing treatment to begin, diagnosing MS too early increases the likelihood of treating people who don't actually have the disease. Current disease-modifying drugs are all given by injection and cost about $14,000 per year. Apart from being inconvenient and expensive, there is some risk of harm from them which, if the patient doesn't actually have MS, occurs without any offsetting benefit.

The dilemma would not be great if multiple sclerosis was easy to diagnose, but unfortunately MS is among the most difficult diagnoses in all of medicine to make, at least while still in its early stages. Early in the course of symptoms, MS can resemble other conditions; moreover, other conditions can resemble MS.

Affecting 2.5 million people worldwide and 350,000 people in the U.S. alone, multiple sclerosis is not exactly a rare disease. It affects women at least twice as often as men and begins early in adulthood with most cases starting between the ages of 20 and 40.

MS is a so-called autoimmune disease, meaning that a person's immune system--ordinarily useful and essential in fighting off infections--becomes overactive and attacks the individual's own bodily tissues. Rheumatoid arthritis is another example of an autoimmune disease, but in MS the immune attack is not directed against joints as it is in rheumatoid arthritis. Instead, the immune system attacks large clusters of nerve-fibers generally deep within the central nervous system which includes the brain and spinal cord.

These attacks can produce a wide variety of symptoms depending on what the usual function was of the nerve-fibers that are under attack. When the attacked nerve-fibers have to do with vision, the symptoms are visual, like loss of visual clarity or even doubling of vision. When the nerve-fibers are involved with the process of bodily sensation, then the symptoms can be numbness or tingling. In fact, visual or sensory symptoms are the most common initial symptoms in multiple sclerosis. But initial symptoms might instead consist of dizziness, weakness, clumsiness or difficulty with urination. The sheer diversity of early symptoms that can be due to multiple sclerosis is one of the chief difficulties in recognizing it for what it is and properly diagnosing it.

It's useful in this regard to consider the twin issues of "false-positives" and "false-negatives." In short, every medical test and every diagnosis is subject to these errors. False-positive means that a test or a doctor indicates that a disease is present when it is, in fact, absent. A false-negative error occurs when a test or a doctor indicates that a disease is absent when it is, in fact, present. Despite the increased confidence that expanding medical knowledge and ever-more sophisticated tests provide, false-positives and false-negatives are a fact of life and still apply to every test and every diagnosis.

In multiple sclerosis there are three cornerstones to the diagnostic process. In usual descending order of importance they are the clinical evaluation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning and examination of the cerebrospinal fluid. Each of these is important in its own way, but one component almost never stands on its own merits, requiring one or both of the other components for corroboration.

The clinical evaluation refers to the time-honored process in which the physician elicits the history of the symptoms and performs a physical examination. The physical examination consists mainly of the neurological examination, which is a battery of mini-tests that inventories the performance of different components of the nervous system.

Even a test as high-tech and powerful as the MRI scan can lead to diagnostic errors. False-positives often occur when a patient has a scan for a totally unrelated reason--like headaches, for example--and has pockets of increased signal within the brain for which the radiologist raises the possibility of multiple sclerosis. When the abnormal scan leads to consultation with a neurologist, the neurologist often determines that multiple sclerosis is out of the question, and the areas of increased signal are either benign or due to another problem entirely. MRIs less frequently produce false-negatives for multiple sclerosis, but even so, this imaging test is believed to show just the tip of the iceberg in this disease, failing to demonstrate important changes that occur at the microscopic level.

Examining the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is another valuable tool in diagnosing MS. The CSF bathes the inside and the outside of the brain and the outside of the spinal cord, so its cellular and chemical composition often reflects what's going on within those structures. CSF is obtained by means of lumbar puncture, also known as spinal tap, a safe procedure in which a needle is inserted through the lower back and into the CSF space. The fluid is collected as it drips out the back of the needle. In cases of active MS there are usually abnormal proteins produced by the immune system that can be detected and measured in the CSF. However, here too there are false-positives and false-negatives, so that some people with abnormal proteins don't have MS and other people with normal proteins still do have the disease.

So the diagnostic process--including clinical evaluation, MRI scanning and CSF examination--is fraught with the possibility of error at each step of the way. Yet there is considerable incentive to make the diagnosis as early in the disease as possible (which is also when the risk of diagnostic errors is greatest) in order to initiate treatment that tames the out-of-control immune system. Sifting through the diagnostic information to make a timely and accurate diagnosis almost always requires the assistance of a neurologist, and even with the help of these specialists in disorders of the nervous system, sometimes the diagnosis gets revised as time passes and clues become more definite.

(C) 2005 by Gary Cordingley

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Binge eating | Binge eating disorder | Compulsive exercising

by Tatya H.P.

The term bulimia means excessive or abnormal desire for food which is better described as ox-hunger. Bulimia Nervosa disorder has the character of repeating occurrence of binge eating which develops the person with lack of sense for having no control on eating behavior and encourages self-induced vomiting and intake of laxatives and drugs to get rid of this eating habit. This eating disorder is usually of three main types; Bulimia Nervosa, Anorexia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder. It involves long lasting and obsessive eating pattern in the person suffering from this eating disorder. From the past 20 - 30 years, the number of people suffering from this disease is enormously increasing at a faster pace.

Anorexia nervosa is a disorder which compels people to starve themselves in an obsession of becoming thin. This disorder mainly affects teenage girls but men are no longer remaining exceptional in this case.

Bulimia nervosa, abbreviated to bulimia generally, is a disorder where an individual goes through the binge-eating session, followed by their worsening health. They often develop self-induced vomiting feeling of guilt for having eaten much. People suffering from bulimia nervosa tend to develop bulimia symptoms like this. They usually scare and suffer from an artificial preoccupation of gaining weight in their own body. People who suffer from this disorder greedily consume food in a huge quantity in an attempt to get rid of their stress and in another to deal with their anxiety feeling.

People having binge eating disorder intake high caloric foods in a frequent manner but this does not induced themselves for vomiting unlike people with bulimia nervosa sufferers. Studies and research have reported that binge eating disorders are likely to run in different generations of the family, so it is obviously a case having genetic links.

This is a psychological disorder that mostly affects women and very occasionally, it affects men. Bulimia nervosa affects every individual physically as well as with the underlying cause in relation with the reaction of being overweight, self image issues, self consciousness and lack of food control. Therefore, bulimia treatment is a significant thing for every person suffering from this psychological disorder, although the complete treatment is bit difficult. Because the sufferer never admits to the problems they are suffering from and develop tendency to hide this eating habit. Getting embarrass is another issue they have but this disease can prove to be extremely hazardous effect to their physical health. If the immediate bulimia treatment is not given to the person, he/she may begin to have problems such as electrolyte imbalance, esophageal tears, cardiac problems, gastrointestinal disorders, stomach disorders and dental problems. In the later stage of the disease it is become difficult for the person to normal functioning and the person become more prone to illnesses and colds. They may also develop more bruising on the surface of skin and may intend to have more broken bones from a simple fall. if anybody would find with this disorder and bulimia symptoms, approach him to obtain bulimia treatment for this as soon as possible.

There are many options of treatments a person suffering from bulimia nervosa can adopt. It includes medications, psychological treatment and support treatments for in patient and out patient, and dental treatments with compulsive exercising. While going through a treatment, person strictly needs put away him/herself from overeating and night eating habits. If any body is suffering from bulimia nervosa, it is important for you to support them in any way otherwise, treatment alone will not going to help them with their problem in any case.