"Consumption Of Suya, Isi-Ewu, Kilisi, Ngwongwo Killing Nigerians" - Health Minister

Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, has lamented the rate of death in Nigeria resulting from unhealthy diet such as ‘isi ewu’ (spicy goat head) and the much loved suya.

According to Adewole, hypertension is the leading cardiovascular disease in Nigeria and can result in stroke if untreated.

He remarked that 1 in every 5 Nigerians is hypertensive and at risk of premature death.

Presenting the keynote address in Lagos, during the First Annual Black Tie Gala event organised by the Tristate Heart Foundation (THF), to raise N500 million in support of cardiovascular care in Nigeria, he observed that unhealthy diets contributed significantly to the development of non communicable diseases in Nigeria.

He said,

“Sadly, there is widespread low consumption of proteins, fruits and vegetables and increasing patronage of fast food outlets by the population. There is also large promotion of sweetened products such as carbonated drinks, pastries, candies and other refined sugars, while excessive intake of salt is promoted by food additives such as monosodium glutamate common in delicacies such as suya, kilisi, isi-ewu, ngwo-ngwo, among others.”

He further added that current estimates, show that death rate from stroke is 40-50 per cent within the first three months of diagnoses, while 39 per cent of those who survived stroke after three months died within a year, with 12 per cent developing severe disability, Daily Post.

“I can say without fear of contradiction that at least five out of 10 adults seated here tonight have elevated blood pressure and more than half of these are not aware of their situation.

“This is frightening because the dire consequence of neglected hypertension is stroke without warning. Unless we take drastic and sustained actions, we will keep counting losses,” he said.

Healthy Tips!! Here Are 6 Reasons Why You Should STOP Drinking Coke And Fanta (No 4 Is So Shocking!!!)

Soft drinks etc is one of the most consumed beverages in the Nigeria, second only to water.

Here in Nigeria, we consumes up to 57 gallons of soft drinks per person every year as form of refreshment after a hectic day, on the road during a frustrating traffics form of entertainment and all that, as if it wasn’t full of sugary calories.

But what’s happening inside the bodies of soda consumers with each sip?sugary drinks increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.

Here are the  dangers of drinking soft drinks like Coke and Fanta:

1 High Risk of Cancer :

There have been many studies that have looked at the links between various types of cancer and fizzy drink consumption.
Drinking just one fizzy drink a day could increase a man’s chance of developing prostate cancer by around 40 per cent, secondly Drinking just one-and-a-half cans a day can increase a girl’s breast cancer risk by per cent and lastly Some chemicals that are used to colour soft drinks can cause cancer.

2. They Can Cause Diabetes:

Sugar-laden drinks have been proven to increase cases of Type 2 diabetes. A study conducted between 1990 and 2000 estimated that the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks contributed to 130,000 new cases of diabetes.

3. They Can Cause Premature Birth in Women:

Pregnant women were warned against drinking diet fizzy drinks after a study taken in Denmark on 60,000 women. Those who drank artificially sweetened soft drinks, whether fizzy or still, were found to be more likely to give birth prematurely. It was thought that the chemicals in the artificial sweetener changed the wombs of the women.
4. They Can Damage the Brain:

As well as affecting the body, fizzy drinks have been found to alter the protein levels in the brain, which could lead to hyperactivity.
5. They can Make One Violent:

A study carried out on teenagers found a link between drinking fizzy drinks, violence and the likelihood of them carrying a weapon. The researchers found that even teenagers who drank just two cans a week were more aggressive towards their friends and those who drank five or more cans a week were also more likely to have drunk alcohol or smoked at least once in the previous month.
6. Liver Damage :

A study from 2009 found that sugary drinks can cause fatty liver disease and drinking just two cans per day could lead to liver damage.

Will you stop drinking soft drinks after reading this?

See Some Useful Tips You Need To Know About Cancer

Cancer is one of the most well-known topics on the planet, yet there is so much that can reduce your personal risk of developing cancer that you might not know.

Cancer is the #2 killer in developed countries and #1 in underdeveloped countries.

Right now, due to poor lifestyle habits, poor diet, lack of information, the medical community’s refusal to embrace holistic therapies, and the exorbitant cost of conventional cancer treatment… 35% of those who develop cancer do not survive the disease.

Get the Cancer Facts

Know what you can do right now to lower your risk and prevent cancer from stealing your life or the life of someone you love. Know what you can do to fight this disease and win.

What you need is working knowledge about cancer. Who is most at risk? What factors increase cancer risk in the population at large? What can you do to get or stay cancer-free?

Even when you know, mentally and physically, that specific lifestyle choices raise or lower your cancer risk… you might not act until it’s too late. The time to act is now!

17 Cancer Facts You Need to Know Right Now

Prevention

Scientific experts worldwide agree that at least half of all cancers and cancer-related deaths are preventable. In 2012, two million deaths globally were attributed to cancer according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Preventing half of those deaths is an excellent place to start.

Definition

Cancer is the single name assigned to more than 100 diseases. Though cancer was once referred to as a “wasting disease,” it’s actually the result of abnormal cells that multiply and spread out of control, damaging healthy cells along the way. Most cancers result in tumors but those that affect the blood do not. Cancer can occur in any part of your body.

Genetics

Only a very small percentage of cancers (between 5-10%) have a genetic link. When the “experts” tell you most cancers are genetic, they’re not being truthful. However, despite the statement that research confirms most patients didn’t inherit some mysterious “cancer curse” from their parents, immediate families tend to have the same habits, eat the same foods, and are exposed to the same toxins. That’s a cancer fact that makes sense. Cleaning up your diet, exercising, and detoxification are extremely important for every member of your family

Pollution

Environmental factors can increase your risk of cancer. The air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat are all important. Pollution, heavy metal toxicity, and even personal care and household cleaning products can damage the cells in your body. Your home and workplace are the two places you spend the majority of your time. Evaluating (and then reducing) the possible toxins you’re exposed to on a daily basis is a strong step to cancer prevention.

Smoking

More than 90% of all lung cancer cases are caused by smoking and 22% of all cancer deaths are due to lung cancer resulting from smoking. Tobacco product use is the most preventable cause of cancer worldwide. Survival rates for lung cancer are less than 20% and if you’re a smoker who’s exposed to inhaled toxins where you work, your chance of survival drops to just over 3%. It’s the carcinogenic chemicals used in the process of manufacturing tobacco products that cause cancer – not the tobacco itself. A single cigarette contains 69 known cancer-causing carcinogens and over 4,000 chemicals. Someone dies from lung cancer every 30 seconds around the world… about the time it took you to read this paragraph.

Sleep

This is a cancer fact that many don’t see coming. Sleep deprivation – defined as getting less than six hours of sleep per day – increases your risk of colon cancer. Recent studies also showed a higher risk of cancer among those who work night shift schedules. It makes sense. The benefit of healing sleep is one of the most underestimated ways to keep your body strong and cancer-free.

Source: Thetruthaboutcancer

Checkout The Health Benefit And Diseases Transmitted Through Kissing

Kissing not only feels good, it's good for you. It relieves stress and releases epinephrine into your blood, making it pump faster, which may result in a reduction of LDL lipids. Kissing may even be a novel way to receive certain hormones, like testosterone:

"'Mucous membranes inside the mouth are permeable to hormones such as testosterone. Through open-mouth kissing, men introduced testosterone into a woman's mouth,' which 'is absorbed through the ,mucous membranes… and increases arousal and the likelihood that she will engage in reproductive behavior."1

Interestingly, Andréa Demirjian, author of Kissing: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about One of Life's Sweetest Pleasures, believes "a kiss a day really can keep the doctor away." And she recently shared eight reasons why with CNN

1.Reduce Your Blood Pressure
Kissing helps to dilate your blood vessels, which may help lower your blood pressure.

2.Relieve Cramps and Headaches
The blood-vessel-dilation effect described above also helps to relieve pain, particularly from headache or menstrual cramps.

3.Fight Cavities
When you kiss, saliva production increases in your mouth, and this helps to wash away plaque on your teeth that may lead to cavities. That said, cavity-causing bacteria can also be transmitted via a kiss, especially if the person you're kissing has poor oral habits. It's even been shown that cavity-causing bacteria can spread from a mother's kiss to her baby.3

4.Release Your Happy Hormones
Kissing prompts your brain to release a happy elixir of feel-good chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. This isn't only important for your happiness, it also may also help to strengthen your relationship. As MSN reported:4
"'This [oxytocin] is the hormone of love, and the better the oxytocin levels, the more capacity for love,' explains psychotherapist Arthur Janov, Ph.D., author of 'The Biology of Love' and the director of the Primal Center in Santa Monica, Calif. 'We have found that those who cannot commit in a love relationship are low in oxytocin.'"
Interestingly, kissing activates the same areas in your brain linked to reward and addiction.5 According to the researchers who revealed this finding:6
"Kissing may have evolved as a way to stimulate brain systems associated with sex drive, romantic love, and attachment so that humans are triggered to seek a variety of potential mates, then focus attention on one for mating, and finally be able to tolerate that mate long enough to raise a child as a team."
Your lips are also densely packed with sensory neurons, which are stimulated by the touch of another's lips. This prompts the release of sebum, which is thought to play a role in bonding.7

5.Burn Calories
It's not going to replace your workout session… but a vigorous kiss may burn 8-16 calories. Not too shabby for a kiss.

6.Boost Your Self-Esteem
One study found that men who received a passionate kiss before they left for work earned more money.8 This suggests the kiss (and perhaps the happy home-life it suggests) makes people happier, boosts self-esteem and, ultimately, more productive at work.

7.Tone Your Facial Muscles
A vigorous kiss helps you shape up your neck and jawline by working out a number of facial muscles.

8.Check Out Your Partner's Compatibility
A kiss can be a powerful measure of your initial attraction to a person, so much so that the majority of men and women surveyed reporting that a first kiss could be a turn-off. Women, in particular, place more importance on kissing as a "mate assessment device" and as a means of "initiating, maintaining, and monitoring the current status of their relationship with a long-term partner.source
However, kissing can also be a very bad idea as it can be a means of spreading some infections like:

 - Mononucleosis
This disease, usually caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), spreads through saliva and is often referred to as “mono” or “the kissing disease.” Symptoms are very similar to those of the flu and include a fever, sore throat, fatigue, muscle weakness and swollen lymph glands.

The infection and related symptoms usually last anywhere from one to two months. Young people between the ages of 15 and 30 and those who regularly come into contact with a lot of people are the most at risk. While no treatment for mononucleosis exists, resting, staying hydrated and taking over-the-counter pain medications often help.

- Cytomegalovirus
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a virus in the herpes family. This disease spreads through saliva, as well as through blood, urine, semen and breast milk. Like all herpes viruses, CMV can remain dormant in the body for long periods of time, especially if you’re healthy.

Though this virus can infect almost anyone, symptoms usually appear in those with compromised immune systems. Symptoms can include fatigue, fever, muscle aches and, in more serious cases, pneumonia, encephalitis, seizures and visual impairment. While there’s no cure for CMV, treatment for the virus generally isn’t needed in healthy children and adults.

- Gum Disease
Bacteria, mucus and other particles constantly live in our mouths and can build up to form plaque. Brushing and flossing helps get rid of plaque, though if not cleaned thoroughly, plaque can build up under the gum line and cause gum disease. Though gum disease (also known as periodontitis and gingivitis) does not spread through kissing, the bad bacteria that cause it can. Brushing and flossing your teeth regularly is your best defense

Source: Yakshub

HIV Cure At Last? Doctors Make Remarkable Breakthrough

Just like Malaria and other similar ailment, the fear of HIV is coming to an end… UK scientists and clinicians working on a groundbreaking trial to test a cure for the HIV infection say they have made remarkable progress after a test patient showed no sign of the virus following treatment.

The research, being carried out by five of Britain’s top universities with NHS support, is combining standard anti-retroviral drugs with a drug that reactivates dormant HIV and a vaccine that induces the immune system to destroy the infected cells.

Antiretoviral drugs alone are highly effective at stopping the virus from reproducing but do not eradicate the disease, so must be taken for life.

Fifty patients are taking part in the trial and early tests on the first person to complete the treatment show no signs of the virus in his blood, the Sunday Times reported.

There is still a long way to go before the treatment can be deemed a success as the virus has previously re-emerged in people thought to have been “cured” and the use of antiretroviral drugs means the researchers cannot be sure the HIV has gone. Nevertheless there is optimism over the findings.

Mark Samuels, the managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infra­structure, told the Sunday Times: “This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

HIV is able to hide itself from the immune system in dormant cells where highly sophisticated modern testing cannot find it and therefore resist therapy. The treatment endeavours to trick the virus into emerging from its hiding places and then trigger the body’s immune system to recognise it and attack it, an approach that has been called “kick and kill”.

There are approximately 37 million people living with HIV worldwide and about 35 million people have died from the virus.

The difficulty of declaring a patient clear of HIV was illustrated by the case of a girl in Mississippi, who was put on a strong course of antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of her birth in 2010 after her mother was found to be HIV positive.

Treatment continued until the hospital lost contact with the mother 18 months later. When mother and child reappeared five months later the baby had no detectable virus in her blood, raising hopes that early intervention had cured her, but two years the virus had re-emerged.

The only person believed to have been cured was Timothy Ray Brown, an American treated in Germany. He needed a bone marrow transplant to replace his own cancerous cells with stem cells that would remake his immune system and his doctor found him a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV infection due to a genetic mutation that blocks HIV from entering the cells in the human body.

However, stem cell transplants are difficult and potentially dangerous for the recipient and only undertaken where they can save a life.

Source: The Guardian