More Than 8 Million Americans Sleepwalk, Surprising Scientists

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com

Adult sleepwalkers are more common than previously realized, with upward of 8 million American adults prone to nighttime ambulation, a new study finds.

In fact, about 3.6 percent of U.S. adults have walked in their sleep at least once in the previous year, researchers report Monday (May 14) in the journal Neurology. One percent experienced at least two episodes of sleepwalking per month.

Fried food raises stroke risk in older women

By Agence France-Presse

Older women who eat high amounts of the kind of fat found in fried foods and baked goods face a greater risk of stroke than women who eat lower fat diets, a US study suggested.

 

Older women who eat high amounts of the kind of fat found in fried foods and baked goods face a greater risk of stroke than women who eat lower fat diets, a US study suggested.

However, aspirin use could cut those risks, said the researchers from University of North Carolina whose findings are published in the Annals of Neurology.

The data came from the largest study to date of post-menopausal women and their eating habits, and included 87,025 women between the ages 50 and 79 who were generally in good health at the time of enrollment.

Women who reported eating diets high in trans-fatty acids, or 6.1 grams a day, showed a 39 percent greater incidence of stroke due to a blocked artery than women who ate 2.2 grams per day of such fats.

The researchers did not find any significant links between stroke risk and how much total fat the women consumed, or their level of dietary cholesterol.

But aspirin use was shown to slim down the link between trans fat intake and stroke, which affects nearly 800,000 people in the United States per year and is the fourth leading cause of US death.

"Our findings confirm that postmenopausal women with higher trans fat intake had an elevated risk of ischemic stroke, but aspirin use may reduce the adverse effects," said lead author Ka He of the UNC School of Public Health.

"We recommend following a diet low in trans fat and adding an aspirin regimen to help women reduce their risk of stroke, specifically following the onset of menopause."

Trans fat is on the decline in the United States due to a public health and legislation campaign which has banned its use in many fast food restaurants and in food preparation.

But it hasn't disappeared altogether.

"Trans fats are rare in living nature, but can commonly occur in foods as a result of food processing called partial hydrogenation when a liquid vegetable oil is turned into a solid fat," said Nancy Copperman, director of public health initiatives at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New York.

Copperman, who was not involved in the study, added that the behaviors of women who ate lots of trans fat were also unhealthy, including decreased physical activity, smoking, and higher levels of diabetes.

"Encouraging and supporting women consume a balanced diet avoiding trans fat and including healthy oils and daily physical activity can be a major step in preventing stroke and other lifestyle related diseases," she said.

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/world/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5947202

'Nodding disease' confounds experts, kills children By Max Delany

Patrick Anywar, 14, lies curled up naked in the dust and midday heat of a Ugandan village, struggling to look up at his younger brother and sister playing in front of the family home.

After a minute's effort to face his siblings, Anywar's head slumps onto his chest and his emaciated body is gripped by convulsions.

Anywar is one of more than 3,000 children in northern Ugandawho are suffering from a debilitating mystery ailment known as nodding disease, which has touched almost every family in the village of Tumangu.

For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness, which locals say has killed hundreds of youngsters.

What they do know is that the disease affects only children and gradually devastates its victims through debilitating seizures, stunted growth, wasted limbs, mental disabilities and sometimes starvation.

Anywar's mother, Rugina Abwoyo, has already lost one son, named Watmon, to the disease in 2010. Now she says she can do little but watch on helplessly as another child slips away.

"Before he was walking and running like other children, but now someone always has to stay home to look after him," Abwoyo told AFP. "The disease is terrible -- it does not let him drink or eat by himself."

Walking along footpaths cut through the sorghum plantations, Joe Otto, a volunteer health worker, explains how nodding disease has ravaged Tumangu, about 450 kilometres (280 miles) north of the capital Kampala.

"There are 780 people living in this village and we have 97 cases of the disease. It has affected almost every family," Otto, 54, told AFP.

Whenever sporadic deliveries of medicine arrive at the local health centre several kilometres away, Otto pedals his bicycle to fetch the drugs. But he knows that they only offer a short-term solution.

"We are giving out drugs for epilepsy, like carbamazepine, but this disease is different from epilepsy," Otto said.

Instead, as the disease has torn through their community, local residents have moved from fear to a grim acceptance, Otto says.

"We started saying that the patient who had died was the one who had been cured, because finally they were at rest from this painful disease," Otto said.

Scientists are trying to find a cure: since 2010, researchers ranging from epidemiologists to environmental experts, neurologists, toxicologists and psychiatrists have carried out a range of tests.

Investigations have looked at possible links between the disease and everything from a parasite that causes river blindness, to malnutrition and the after-effects of a civil war that ravaged northern Uganda for decades.

"We looked at all this, but unfortunately we were not able to pinpoint any significant contributing or risk factors," said Miriam Nanyunja, disease control and prevention officer at the World Health Organisation in Kampala.

"The search for the causative agent is still ongoing," she added.

Often the results have thrown up more questions than answers. Scientists do not know if the disease is linked to similar outbreaks in neighbouring South Sudan and Tanzania.

Efforts continue to understand if the disease is still spreading or has peaked -- and why it is seems confined only to certain communities.

Last month, after pressure from lawmakers from affected areas, Uganda's health ministry produced an emergency response plan to try to identify and control the disease.

However, Nanyunja says that while the search for the cause and a possible cure goes on, for now, doctors can only focus on trying to alleviate the symptoms.

"There are many diseases that we continue to treat symptomatically, without knowing the exact cause," Nanyunja said.

But for Patrick Anywar, any attempts to curb or cure the disease may come too late.

"We are hoping that the doctors work very hard to get the cure for this disease," his mother Abwoyo says.

"There is no future for us as so many children have already been affected, but we hope that our youngest can be saved."

http://news.yahoo.com

Gastric Bypass Surgery – A Personal Story

Gastric Bypass Surgery – The Beginning
My name is Courtney, and this is a personal account of gastric bypass surgery. I am a 25 year-old homemaker and have been an Air Force wife since June of 2000. I am the survivor of morbid obesity.

My health problems began shortly after I returned from my honeymoon. I began to feel sick most of the time, and I started gaining weight in leaps and bounds. I assumed that it was the new birth control pills that I had been prescribed shortly before my marriage. When my husband and I had talked about it and on Christmas Eve, we chose to go off birth control rather than try a new dose. We were eager to start a family. I conceived almost immediately, and shortly thereafter suffered my first miscarriage. Although it was heartbreaking we didn’t yet know that there was something seriously wrong.

Within one month of my first miscarriage I had an ophthalmologist appointment. They did all of the normal tests and things they do, and then they dilated my eyes. Do you know how frightening it is for a doctor to look into your eye, the window of your soul, and declare, “Oh, that is not good”? I do. They rushed to take pictures of my retinas and to do some kind of documentation. They sat me down and told me that I had a disease called Pseudotumor Cerebri (PTC). It is basically a buildup of spinal fluid in your brain that presses against your optic nerve and acts as a tumor. They believe that because of the way this ”tumor” was pressing on my brain, it caused my miscarriage.

They believed that I would be on medication and probably spinal taps for the rest of my life. My neurologist put me on a medication to reduce the production of spinal fluid that made my hands, feet, face, and sometimes legs go numb and tingly. It also made me dizzy and caused me to forget things. It wasn’t until they took me off of this medication a year later that they found out the damage was permanent. They told me later that one of the rare side effects of this medication is that it can literally burn holes in your memory similar to the effects of long term ecstasy use. There are childhood memories that I have no recollection of. My sisters will start a story, “Remember that time……?” and as hard as I try I have no idea what they are talking about. Those memories will never come back.

Gastric Bypass Surgery – The Weight Gain
Shortly after I was diagnosed with this disease, I began gaining weight. I was scared, as I had been told that the Pseudotumor can become complicated with quick weight gain. I gained over 100 pounds in just under three years and there was no way to stop it. I did all the doctor recommended diets, pills, exercises, you name it. Nothing worked.


Then in February of 2002, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). I was then diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I was sent to a new doctor, one that specialized in PCOS treatment. He was aggressive. He started me on a medication that was created for diabetic patients but that had been effective in the treatment of overweight women who had PCOS. It made me constantly sick and did nothing else. He believed that the medication couldn’t work because of all the other problems that were surfacing.


In September of 2003, I conceived again. I was assured that people of my size could carry a healthy baby to term with supervision. Not with my complications however. I miscarried for the second time the day after my 23rd birthday. Devastated doesn’t begin to describe how I was feeling.


Then in May of 2004 I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. My doctor then discovered that my PCOS was insulin resistant. When you eat, your body breaks down the nutrients in the food, and your insulin rushes those nutrients to your cells. Insulin resistant means that my cells rejected my own insulin. So my body kept telling me that I was hungry when in reality all the food I ate was going to my fat stores. I was gaining weight by leaps and bounds but my body wasn’t getting any nutrients. I was literally starving to death. My doctors finally gave up. That is when I was told I would be diabetic within a few years and would probably be dead by the time I was thirty. I had so many things wrong that all the medications couldn’t work. I was literally dying while taking 9 prescription medications. Every disease and syndrome was now compacted by the fact that I was now morbidly obese with five comorbidities. My doctors opted to go drastic. Given that I was 24, could not conceive, and had just been told I wouldn’t last more than another six years or so in my current condition, I was okay with drastic.

Gastric Bypass Surgery – The Surgery
My doctors recommended me for a RuenY Gastric Bypass surgery. I began going through the process and praying intensely about it with my family. The surgery took place on December 27th of 2004. It was four years and three days since the day we had thrown out the birth control.


Throughout all of this, I have received many questions about why I continued to have faith in the face of these odds. My answer would be that through it all God has always been faithful. As I look back over the last five years of my life I can see the path that I was choosing for myself and the path God had for me. I can see that His way was not my way, but His way was best. In the face of adversity, He held me up. When He knew I could not walk alone on the path that was before me, He sent me my husband to walk with me.


There were certainly dark moments -- moments when I found myself angry at God for all the things that I believed He was letting me go through; moments when I felt so alone, but never actually was. He held me in His arms when I wept over my lost children, and when I looked in the mirror and saw only an obese woman.


Just as in the book of Daniel and the story of Shadrach, Meshack, and, Abednego, I was thrown into a fire and tested. Just as in that story, the fire could not burn me because God was beside me. The fires of this world only have the power to burn away the bindings of this world. God has walked with me every step of the way.

Gastric Bypass Surgery – The Results
It has now been just over a year, and my gastric bypass surgery was a complete success. I had no complications and never became ill. I’ve been taken off of all the medications I took previous to the surgery, and have lost 135 pounds and nine dress sizes. I feel like I have become brand new.

These Bible verses have been a light in the darkest times in my life. I have clung to them throughout the last five years, and I cling to them still. 

allaboutlifechallenges.org

“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:1-3).

“For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

Courtney experienced God’s peace as she went through these life-threatening illnesses. Do you desire this same peace in your life?

allaboutlifechallenges.org