Because you have a family history of heart disease, remain vigilant, eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, doing aerobic exercise and taking essential nutrients that help maintain normal blood pressure and cholesterol.

Many drugs used to lower blood pressure just so happen to be drug muggers of magnesium, zinc, calcium and iron, so taking a multi-mineral supplement, or a trace mineral supplement a few hours after you take your medicine can mitigate side effects.

While blood pressure or cholesterol medications, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers and digoxin may be prescribed by your physician, it’s important to realize that their effect on your body is only temporary. The underlying disease and inflammation will continue to destroy the delicate pipeline, your blood vessels, arteries and capillaries. This is why vitamin C, lysine and proline help, because they keep your blood vessels flexible and help reduce plaquing. [Read more...]

One of the things that people happens to encounter with age is that there is a subtle diminishment in the joy of life. Sometimes they become more wary, less willing to try something new whether it is a food or a person or a prospective live. Unlike when they are still young where it doesn’t matter whether they eat chocolate, cake, chips, hotdogs, steak, mushrooms or whatever, so long as they’re eating. But for the age people, they tend to lose resilience, their ability to bounce right back after something happens the way that kids do. Towards this reason, it is time for you to take growtropin to boost your stamina and keep at pace with different people on the go. It uses natural ingredients that make your body feel the same way when you’re still younger. So don’t waste times now, better have yours too?

Patients prescribed antibiotics in primary care may develop a resistance that lasts up to 12 months, according to research published in the British Medical Journal today.

It is widely recognised that resistance to antibiotics is a major threat to public health. However, according to the researchers, this is not seen by most clinicians or patients as a reason to refrain from using them, with many regarding the problem as minimal.

To address a lack of systematic reviews in the area, the authors analysed 24 existing studies of resistance in individual patients prescribed antibiotics in primary care, mainly for respiratory or urinary infections.

They found strong evidence that individuals prescribed an antibiotic in primary care for a respiratory or urinary infection develop a resistance. The effect is greatest in the month immediately after treatment, but may last for up to a year, and this residual effect may be a driver for high levels of resistance in the community.

The review provides the evidence needed to quantify the link between individual prescribing decisions and the problem of resistance, the authors conclude. They say it highlights that the only way to avoid the “vicious cycle of resistance” is to avoid the initial use of antibiotics wherever possible. However, they also call for more clinical trials to strengthen the evidence base.

In an accompanying analysis, two specialists in economics and health policy argue that new antibiotics to tackle multi-drug resistant bacteria are much needed. They show how financial incentives might be used to persuade drug companies to develop new antibiotics, and suggest that such action needs to be accompanied by efforts to tackle overuse of antibiotics, which is currently fuelling the spread of resistant bacteria.

These views are reiterated in an editorial by three international experts who call for economic strategies to bring new drugs to market, and to conserve existing antibacterials. “Nothing less than the future of medicine, from organ transplants to chemotherapy, is at stake, and there will be no second chances,” they conclude. PhysOrg

Many children undergoing treatment for cancer use herbal remedies, vitamins or other types of alternative therapies, a new research review suggests.

The review, of 28 studies involving 3,500 children, found that anywhere from 6 percent to 91 percent of study participants used some form of alternative or complementary medicine at some point during their cancer treatment. In half of the studies, the rate ranged between 20 percent and 60 percent.

It is not clear from the studies whether some children were receiving alternative therapies instead of a particular standard cancer treatment, or whether they were only being used in addition to conventional medicine, according to lead researcher Dr. Felicity Bishop, of the University of Southampton School of Medicine in the UK.

What the studies do indicate, she told Reuters Health by email, is that “a substantial proportion of pediatric cancer patients use complementary and alternative medicine at some point in their treatment.”

The bottom line for parents, according to Bishop, is that they should discuss any use of such therapies with their child’s doctor.

She and her colleagues report their findings in the journal Pediatrics.

The public often perceives alternative therapies as “natural” and safe. But while some approaches are unlikely to cause harm — like relaxation therapies to reduce stress — other alternative treatments may present a risk to cancer patients. Research has found, for example, that high-dose vitamin C, St. John’s wort and green tea compounds may interact with certain cancer drugs and lessen their effectiveness.

And few alternative therapies promoted for cancer patients have been subject to rigorous clinical trials to test their effectiveness.

Some recent studies have had promising results; for example, a clinical trial last year found that the herb milk thistle may help limit liver inflammation as a side effect of chemotherapy in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Another found that adding flaxseed to the diets of men scheduled to undergo surgery for prostate cancer seemed to slow the cancer’s growth in some patients.

However, researchers caution that these are the first well-controlled clinical trials to evaluate those therapies, and more studies are needed before recommendations can be made.

In their review, Bishop and her colleagues found that herbal remedies were the most commonly reported alternative therapies, though use varied widely across the studies — with anywhere from 2 percent to 48 percent of children using herbs.

Between 3 percent and 47 percent of children used special diets or other nutritional therapies, while 3 percent to 30 percent used prayer or other forms of “faith-healing.” Other forms of alternative therapy included high-dose vitamins, mind-body therapies like meditation and relaxation techniques, and homeopathy.

In studies that asked parents why they had turned to alternative therapies, the most common reasons were “to cure or help fight the child’s cancer,” to help ease symptoms and to counter the side effects of conventional cancer treatment.

According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, patients considering alternative therapy should speak with their doctors first to make sure it fits safely into their overall care. Doctors or staff at a patient’s cancer center may also be able to recommend an alternative-medicine practitioner. Some cancer centers now offer alternative- and complementary-medicine programs that can be integrated into standard care. By Amy Norton, Yahoo Daily News