Saturday, December 29, 2012

Plantar Fasciitis- Taping for Foot Pain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1ZEJ-kKTg

Resolving Foot Pain:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=BM4g6lRSA_E&NR=1

Foot Massage for Heel Pain: Plantar Fasciitis
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBk0_cPxNSU

KT Taping of the foot:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH0o53Kghpw

Active Release for Foot pain:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO76Gz6X38g

Friday, December 28, 2012

International Design Summit- MIT (hosted by: Amy Smith)

http://iddsummit.org/


Sanitary Pad Inventor - Great Story, Funny !! (India)

Empowering women in India:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution.html?source=email#.UN6GEbhQYeI.email

http://on.ted.com/Sanitary

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Fat chance


Obesity

Fat chance

The state can do some things to encourage people to eat less, but not a lot

IN 1937 George Orwell suggested that “changes of diet” might be more important than “changes of dynasty or even of religion”. Now he is being proved right in a way he might not have expected. Having spent millennia worrying about not having enough food, mankind’s main concern is now eating too much (see our special report on obesity).
The story of human health in the past few decades is a broadly encouraging one. Life expectancy has increased—globally, by 12 years for women and 11 years for men from 1970 to 2010. But greater longevity means that people spend more years chronically ill (see article). Obesity makes things worse by raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease, strokes and some cancers. In much of the world, being too fat is now the single largest driver of sickness.
In 2008 obesity rates were nearly double those of 1980. One in three adults was overweight, with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or more (at least 77kg for a man 175cm tall); 12% were obese, with a BMI of at least 30. In America, ever the world leader, about two-thirds of adults were overweight in 2008. But Britain lumbered close behind, with six in ten too fat. The problem is not confined to rich countries. Thanks to economic growth, people around the world are eating more food. Workers burn fewer calories at their desks than in the fields. Even in China, one in four adults was too fat in 2008. In Brazil more than half were. Obesity rates in Mexico, Venezuela and South Africa matched those of America. The Pacific islands and Gulf states are home to some of the world’s fattest people.
For those (like this newspaper) who believe that the state should generally keep its nose out of people’s private affairs, obesity presents a quandary. “A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits,” Orwell pointed out; “an unemployed man doesn’t…You want to eat something a little bit tasty.” If people get great pleasure from eating more than is good for them, should they not be allowed to indulge themselves? After all, individuals bear the bulk of the costs of obesity, quite literally. They suffer at work, too: their wages are often lower and, in America, some employers also make fat workers pay more for health insurance.
Yet in most countries the state covers some or most of the costs of health care, so fat people raise costs for everyone. In America, for instance, a recent paper estimated that obesity was responsible for a fifth of the total health-care bill, of which nearly half is paid by the federal government. And there are broader social costs. The Pentagon says that obesity is shrinking its pool of soldiers. Obesity lowers labour productivity. And state intervention is justified where it saves people from great harm at little cost to themselves. Only zealots see seat-belt laws as an affront to personal liberty. Anti-smoking policies, controversial at first, are generally viewed as a success.
Whose fault is fat?
Obesity is, at its heart, the result of many personal decisions. But the rise of obesity—across many countries and disproportionately among the poor—suggests that becoming fat cannot just be blamed on individual frailty. Millions of people, of all cultures, did not become lazy gluttons at the same time, en masse. Broader forces are at work. The government can try to influence them by discouraging overeating. But how?
Drugs and surgery can help in the most extreme cases. They do not, however, offer a solution to the wider problem. Economists, faced with behaviour they don’t like, tend to favour imposing “sin” taxes. But eating fatty and sugary foods is not a “sin”, even in the fiscal sense, for unlike cigarettes, fatty foods are not uniformly unhealthy. Moreover, since poor people spend a higher proportion of their income on food than rich people do, such a tax would be regressive. It would also be an administrative nightmare, as the fat content of each item of food would have to be measured. Denmark, which imposed a fat tax in 2011, abandoned it after a year.
In the absence of a single big solution to obesity, the state must try many small measures. Governments, some of which already intervene a lot in the first few months of people’s lives, should ensure that parents are warned of the dangers of overfeeding their babies. Schools should serve nutritious lunches, teach children how to eat healthily and give them time to run around. Urban planners should make streets and pavements friendlier to cyclists and pedestrians. Taxing sugary fizzy drinks—which unlike fatty foods have no nutritional value—and limiting the size of the containers in which they can be sold may work. Philadelphia and New York, for example, have implemented a range of such policies, and have seen child-obesity rates dip ever so slightly.
There is a limit, however, to what the state can or should do. In the end, the responsibility and power to change lie primarily with individuals. Whether people go on eating till they pop, or whether they opt for the healthier, slimmer life, will have a bigger effect on the future of the species than most of the weighty decisions that governments make.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Scorpion Protein Illuminates Brain Tumors for Surgeons


Jim Olson, a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, was reviewing with his colleagues the case of a 17-year-old girl several years ago who had just undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor. An MRI scan revealed a thumb-size piece of tumor left behind. In the operating room, the tumor tissue had looked just like healthy brain tissue. During the review meeting, the hospitals’ chief of neurosurgery turned to Olson and said: “Jim, you have to come up with a way to light these cells up.”
So Olson and a neurosurgical resident started searching for a way to highlight cancer cells in the operating room. Eventually, they came across a report of a scorpion toxin that binds to brain tumors but not healthy cells. By linking a synthetic version of this protein to a molecule that glows in near-infrared light, the researchers think they may have found what they call “tumor paint.”
In their very first test, the pair injected the compound into the tail vein of a mouse whose body harbored a transplanted human tumor. “Within 15 to 20 minutes, the tumor started to glow, bright and distinct from the rest of the mouse,” says Olson.
A Seattle company called Blaze Bioscience has licensed the technology from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Olson says human trials will begin late in 2013.
The scorpion toxin is special not only because it binds to tumor cells, but because it can cross the blood-brain barrier—a cellular and molecular fortification that lines blood vessels in the brain and prevents most compounds from entering.
“Usually, peptides don’t get into the brain unless they bind to something specific that carries it in there,” says Harald Sontheimer, a neurobiologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, who first identified the neurological potential of the scorpion protein.
Although derived from venom, the toxin seems to be safe. A biotech company started by Sontheimer showed in early clinical trials that a version of the scorpion toxin tagged with radioactive iodine was safe in patients. However, the company closed before late-stage testing of the iodine-tagged compound, which is now owned by Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai.
The tumor paint developed by Olson may also light up cancer outside of the brain. Animal studies suggest it could also demarcate prostate, colon, breast, and other tumors. The potential the compound has to save healthy brain tissue and improve patients’ lives is told in a short film called Bringing Light, which is in the running for the Sundance Film Festival. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508351/scorpion-protein-illuminates-brain-tumors-for-surgeons/

Friday, December 7, 2012

Geo-Medicine: How your environment affects your health

Geo-Medicine: the value of "place history"

How where you have lived makes a huge difference on your overall and long term health.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_davenhall_your_health_depends_on_where_you_live.html

First Approved Gene Therapy Treatment starts

Very interesting article about a promising trial based on gene therapy. Patients may only need one dose on the treatment to cure their rare diseases. This brought and interesting question into my mind of, "If you get a single treatment to rid of one genetic defect or bad trait in your body, what would you choose?" This is a well-wishers fantasy question, but interesting none the less to ponder. Ponder I will

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508186/gene-therapy-on-the-mend-as-first-treatment-gets-approval/