Causes of Distention of Abdomen

Distention of abdomen can be due to an underlying disease or due to accumulation of fat. Normal abdomen distention needs to be differentiated from that due to disease.

Generalized distension occurs in ascites, obesity and patients with excessive flatus. Localized distension occurs with individual visceromegaly and with neoplasms.

Here are the differentiating points. Read more

How To Examine A Patient of Abdominal Complaints

In a patient with an abdominal disorder, the following points must be asked whilst taking the history and noted on examination.

History

History is of paramount importance in clinical examination. It enables you to narrow your examination to a region and also guides you about the likelihood of particular disorder. Following points should be asked in patient of abdominal complaints. These points cover whole abdomen in general and can be individualized depending upon the complaint. Read more

Experts Back Brain Boosters For The Healthy

Critics say wider use of memory stimulants may lead to addiction

Healthy people should have the right to boost their brains with pills, like those prescribed for hyperactive kids or memory-impaired older folks, several scientists contend in a provocative commentary.

College students are already illegally taking prescription stimulants like Ritalin to help them study, and demand for such drugs is likely to grow elsewhere, they say. “We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function,” and doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night’s sleep, these experts wrote in an opinion piece published online Sunday by the journal Nature. Read more

Sipping Hot Tea Can Cause Throat Cancer

People who drink their tea piping hot run a higher risk of throat cancer than counter parts who prefer a cooler cuppa, according to an investigation published on Friday by the British Medical Journal.

Cancer of the oesophagus is linked especially to smoking and alcohol abuse but hot beverages have also been considered a risk factor, possibly because of damage to throat tissue. Interested in finding out more, Iranian researchers went to Glestan province, which has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in the world.

Inhabitants there sip large quantities of hot black tea typically drinking more than a litre per day per person but also have a low incidence of tobacco and alcohol use. Read more

Skipping Sleep Can Trigger Heart Disease

Just 1 hour extra shuteye reduce risk of calcium deposits in arteries, A precursor to an attack.

Just one extra hour of sleep a day appears to lower the risk of developing calcium deposits in the arteries, a precursor to heart disease, US researchers said.

The finding adds to a growing list of health consequences including weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure linked to getting too little sleep. “We found that people who on average slept longer were at reduced risk of developing new coronary artery calcifications over five years,” said Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago Medical Center, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “It was surprisingly strong.” Calcium deposits in the coronary arteries are considered a precursor of future heart disease.

Unlike other studies looking at the risks of getting too little sleep, which use people’s own estimates of their sleep patterns, Lauderdale’s team set out to measure actual sleep patterns.

They fitted 495 people aged 35 to 47 with sophisticated wrist bands that tacked subtle body movements. Information from these recorders was fed into a computer program that was able to detect actual sleep patterns.

The team used special computed tomography, or CT, scans to assess the buildup of calcium inside heart arteries, performing one scan at the start of the study and one five years later. Read more