PREVENTION OF OSTEOPOROSIS

Many of the things that raise your chances for osteoporosis are things you can’t change, like your genes, your age, and your sex. But that doesn’t mean you can’t prevent the disease. The things you do every day can be part of your plan to build strong bones.

Exercise Your Bones

Just like your muscles, your bones get stronger if you give them a workout. Weight-bearing exercises are best for your bones. They’re the ones that force your body to work against gravity as you move. That prompts the body to make new bone.

Weight-bearing exercises include:

• Aerobics
• Climbing stairs
• Dancing
• Jogging
• Tennis and other racket sports
• Running
• Tai chi
• Walking
• Water aerobics
• Yoga

Strength training is also key to preventing osteoporosis. Your muscles pull on your bones when you work them. That builds bone strength. These workouts also make you more flexible and lower the chances that you’ll fall — the No. 1 reason for broken hips.

Any of these workouts can help you build muscle and bone:

OSTEOPOROSIS

A condition that affects especially older women and is characterized by decrease in bone mass with decreased density and enlargement of bone spaces producing porosity and fragility

Your bones are alive and constantly growing — not static, like you see them drawn in books. Bones continually change throughout your life, with some bone cells dissolving and new bone cells growing back in a process called remodeling. With this lifelong turnover of bone cells, you replace most of your skeleton every 10 years.

But for people with osteoporosis — a thinning of the bones — bone lossoutpaces the growth of new bone. Bones become porous, brittle, and prone to fracture. Look at an X-ray of a hip with normal bone density, and you see a dense matrix of bone cells. But look at a hip with osteoporosis, and you see mostly air. The bony matrix has all but dissolved, with only a few thin strands left.

Bone density is greatest in your early 20s. But as you age, you can lose bone mass from a variety of factors. Osteoporosis or its early warning sign, osteopenia, signals an imbalance in the remodeling process: Too much bone is broken down, and too little new bone is built back up. Brittle bones result, prone to fracture.

You probably know that you need calcium to build strong bones, but a low-calcium diet isn’t the only culprit. There are lesser-known causes of osteoporosis. The experts now believe that a combination of causes is often to blame for bone loss.

TREATMENT OF HEART DISEASE

OPEN SURGERY

Open-heart surgery may be done to perform a CABG. A coronary artery bypass graft may be necessary for people with coronary heart disease.

Coronary heart disease occurs when the blood vessels that provide blood and oxygen to the heart muscle become narrow and hard. This is often called “hardening of the arteries.”

Hardening occurs when fatty material forms a plaque on the walls of the coronary arteries. This plaque narrows the arteries, making it difficult for blood to get through. When blood can’t flow properly to the heart, a heart attack may occur.

Open-heart surgery is also done to:

• repair or replace heart valves, which allow blood to travel through the heart
• repair damaged or abnormal areas of the heart
• implant medical devices that help the heart beat properly
• replace a damaged heart with a donated heart (heart transplantation)

HOW OPEN HEART SURGERY IS PERFORMED

According to the National Institutes of Health, a CABG takes from three to six hours. It’s generally done following these basic steps:

• The patient is given general anesthesia. This ensures that they will be asleep and pain free through the whole surgery.
• The surgeon makes an 8- to 10-inch cut in the chest.
• The surgeon cuts through all or part of the patient’s breastbone to expose the heart.
• Once the heart is visible, the patient may be connected to a heart-lung bypass machine. The machine moves blood away from the heart so that the surgeon can operate. Some newer procedures do not use this machine.
• The surgeon uses a healthy vein or artery to make a new path around the blocked artery.
• The surgeon closes the breastbone with wire, leaving the wire inside the body.
• The original cut is stitched up.

Sometimes sternal plating is done for people at high risk, such as those who’ve had multiple surgeries or people of advanced age. Sternal plating is when the breastbone is rejoined with small titanium plates after the surgery.

causes of heart (cardiovascular) disease

Heart or cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and often can be attributed to the lifestyle factors that increase the risk of atherosclerosis or narrowing of arteries. Smoking, along with poorly controlled hypertension (high blood pressure), and diabetes, causes inflammation and irritation of the inner lining of the coronary arteries. Over time, cholesterol in the bloodstream can collect in the inflamed areas and begin the formation of a plaque. This plaque can grow and as it does, the diameter of the artery narrows. If the artery narrows by 40% to 50%, blood flow is decreased enough to potentially cause the symptoms of angina.

In some circumstances, the plaque can rupture or break open, leading to the formation of a blood clot in the coronary artery. This clot can completely occlude or block the artery. This prevents oxygen-rich blood from being delivered to the heart muscle beyond that blockage and that part of the heart muscle begins to die. This is a myocardial infarction or heart attack. If the situation is not recognized and treated quickly, the affected part of the muscle cannot be revived. It dies and is replaced by scar tissue. Long term, this scar tissue decreases the heart’s ability to pump effectively and efficiently and may lead to ischemic cardiomyopathy (ischemic=decreased blood supply + cardio=heart + myo=muscle + pathy=disease).

Heart muscle that lacks adequate blood supply also becomes irritable and may not conduct electrical impulses normally. This can lead to abnormal electrical heart rhythms including ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. These are the heart arrhythmias associated with sudden cardiac death.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

• The classic symptoms of angina, or pain from the heart, are described as a crushing pain or heaviness in the center of the chest with radiation of the pain to the arm (usually the left) or jaw. There can be associated shortness of breath sweating and nausea.
• The symptoms tend to be brought on by activity and get better with rest.
• Some people may have indigestion and nausea while others may have upper abdominal, shoulder, or back pain.
• Unstable angina is the term used to describe symptoms that occur at rest, waken the patient from sleep, and do not respond quickly to nitroglycerin or rest.

Not all pain from heart disease have the same signs and symptoms. The more we learn about heart disease, the more we realize that symptoms can be markedly different in different groups of people. Women, people who have diabetes, and the elderly may have different pain perceptions and may complain of overwhelming fatigue and weakness or a change in their ability to perform routine daily activities like walking, climbing steps, or doing household chores. Some patients may have no discomfort at all.

Most often, the symptoms of cardiovascular disease become worse over time, as the narrowing of the affected coronary artery progresses over time and blood flow to that part of the heart decreases. It may take less activity to cause symptoms to occur and it may take longer for those symptoms to get better with rest. This change in exercise tolerance is helpful in making the diagnosis.

Often the first signs and symptoms of heart disease may be a heart attack. This can lead to crushing chest pressure, shortness of breath, sweating, and perhaps sudden cardiac death.

 

HEART(CARDIOVASCULAR) DISEASE

The heart is like any other muscle in body. It needs an adequate blood supply to provide oxygen so that the muscle can contract and pump blood to the rest of the body. Not only does the heart pump blood to the rest of the body, it also pumps blood to itself via the coronary arteries. These arteries originate from the base of the aorta (the major blood vessel that carries oxygenated blood from the heart) and then branch out along the surface of the heart.

When one or more coronary arteries narrow, it may make it difficult for adequate blood to reach the heart, especially during exercise. This can cause the heart muscle to ache like any other muscle in the body. Should the arteries continue to narrow, it may take less activity to stress the heart and provoke symptoms. The classic symptoms of chest pain or pressure and shortness of breath that often spreads to the shoulders, arms, and/or neck due to atherosclerotic heart disease (ASHD) or coronary artery disease (CAD) are called angina.

Should one of the coronary arteries become completely blocked — usually due to a plaque that ruptures and causes a blood clot to form — blood supply to part of the heart may be lost. This causes a piece of heart muscle to die. This is called a heart attack or myocardial infarction (myo=muscle + cardia=heart + infarction= tissue death).

Cardiovascular disease, ranges from minimal blockage that may produce no symptoms to complete obstruction that presents as a myocardial infarction.

Who is at risk for heart (cardiovascular) disease?

There are risk factors that increase the potential to develop plaque within coronary arteries and cause them to narrow. Atherosclerosis (athero=fatty plaque + sclerosis=hardening) is the term that describes this condition. Factors that put people at increased risk for heart disease are:

• Smoking
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• High cholesterol
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Since cardiovascular disease, peripheral artery disease, and stroke share the same risk factors, a patient who is diagnosed with one of the three has increased risk of having or developing the other

Prevention

There’s no proven way to prevent throat cancer from occurring. But in order to reduce your risk of throat cancer, you can:

• Stop smoking or don’t start smoking. If you smoke, quit. If you don’t smoke, don’t start. Stopping smoking can be very difficult, so get some help. Your doctor can discuss the benefits and risks of the many stop-smoking strategies, such as medications, nicotine replacement products and counseling.
• Drink alcohol only in moderation, if at all. If you choose to drink alcohol, do so in moderation. For healthy adults, that means up to one drink a day for women of all ages and men older than age 65, and up to two drinks a day for men age 65 and younger.
• Choose a healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables. The vitamins and antioxidants in fruits and vegetables may reduce your risk of throat cancer. Eat a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables.
• Protect yourself from HPV. Some throat cancers are thought to be caused by the sexually transmitted infection human papillomavirus (HPV). You can reduce your risk of HPV by limiting your number of sexual partners and using a condom every time you have sex. Also consider the HPV vaccine, which is available to boys, girls, and young women and men.

Types of throat cancer

 

 

Throat cancer is a general term that applies to cancer that develops in the throat (pharyngeal cancer) or in the voice box (laryngeal cancer). The throat and the voice box are closely connected, with the voice box located just below the throat.

Though most throat cancers involve the same types of cells, specific terms are used to differentiate the part of the throat where cancer originated.

• Nasopharyngeal cancer begins in the nasopharynx — the part of your throat just behind your nose.
• Oropharyngeal cancer begins in the oropharynx — the part of your throat right behind your mouth that includes your tonsils.
• Hypopharyngeal cancer (laryngopharyngeal cancer) begins in the hypopharynx (laryngopharynx) — the lower part of your throat, just above your esophagus and windpipe.
• Glottic cancer begins in the vocal cords.
• Supraglottic cancer begins in the upper portion of the larynx and includes cancer that affects the epiglottis, which is a piece of cartilage that blocks food from going into your windpipe.
• Subglottic cancer begins in the lower portion of your voice box, below your vocal cords.

Risk factors

Factors that can increase your risk of throat cancer include:

• Tobacco use, including smoking and chewing tobacco
• Excessive alcohol use
• A sexually transmitted virus called human papillomavirus (HPV)
• A diet lacking in fruits and vegetables
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)

THROAT CANCER

Throat cancer refers to cancerous tumors that develop in your throat (pharynx), voice box (larynx) or tonsils.

Your throat is a muscular tube that begins behind your nose and ends in your neck. Throat cancer most often begins in the flat cells that line the inside of your throat.

Your voice box sits just below your throat and also is susceptible to throat cancer. The voice box is made of cartilage and contains the vocal cords that vibrate to make sound when you talk.

Throat cancer can also affect the piece of cartilage (epiglottis) that acts as a lid for your windpipe. Tonsil cancer, another form of throat cancer, affects the tonsils, which are located on the back of the throat.

Symptoms

Signs and symptoms of throat cancer may include:

• A cough
• Changes in your voice, such as hoarseness or not speaking clearly
• Difficulty swallowing
• Ear pain
• A lump or sore that doesn’t heal
• A sore throat
• Weight loss

Causes

Throat cancer occurs when cells in your throat develop genetic mutations. These mutations cause cells to grow uncontrollably and continue living after healthy cells would normally die. The accumulating cells can form a tumor in your throat.

It’s not clear what causes the mutation that causes throat cancer. But doctors have identified factors that may increase your risk.

SCREENING

Lung cancer screening can help find lung cancer at an early stage when it is easier to treat.At this time, studies have shown that a low-dose CT scan is the only lung cancer screening tool that reduces the risk of dying from lung cancer.Lung cancer screening is not right for everyone.

One reason why lung cancer is so serious is that, by the time you have symptoms, it has likely already spread and has become more difficult to treat. Screening is looking for cancer before you have any symptoms, which can help find cancer at an early stage when it may be easier to treat.

Early detection of lung cancer can save lives for those at high risk and in turn, reduce the lung cancer burden in the world. Lung cancer screening for those at high risk needs to be part of preventive care strategy to catch more lung cancers early and significantly improve the low survival rates.

To help determine whether or not a screening test is recommended, scientists study screening tests to find those with the fewest risks and most benefits. They look at results over time to see if finding cancer early decreases one’s chances of dying from the disease. Data show that screening for lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) reduces the risk of dying from lung cancer in the high-risk population studied. Other screening tests such as chest X-rays and sputum cytology have not been found to be effective, and are not recommended for screening.