Guide Easy For Health

The term “trichotillomania” comes from the Greek words “thrix,” meaning “hair” and “tillein” meaning “to pull” and “mania,” the Greek word for “madness” or “frenzy”. As the name suggests trichotillomania is a psychiatric condition in which an individual has an uncontrollable urge to pull out his or her own body hair. For people suffering from trichotillomania, hair pulling is more than a habit. It is rather a compulsive behavior, which the person finds very hard to stop. The cause of tricholomania is supposed to be the imbalance of chemicals in the human brain.

People with trichotillomania pull their hair out of the root from places like the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, or even the pubic area. Some people even pull handfuls of hair, which can leave bald patches on the scalp or eyebrows. Other people pull out their hair one strand at a time. Some inspect the strands after pulling them out or play with the hair after it’s been pulled. About half of people with this condition also have the habit of putting the plucked hair in mouth.

Trichotillomania has been mentioned as a disorder in very early historical records. But clinically the condition trichotillomania was first described in 1889 by the French physician Francois Hallopeau. The condition is rare – statistics show it affects only 1% to 3% of the population, although new research suggests that the rate of hair pulling may be around 10% or higher. Read more…

Answering a growing demand for radiation dose reduction in cardiac CT scanning, GE Healthcare announced the release of napShot Pulse?at a national meeting earlier this month. This advancement in technology will achieve up to an 83% reduction in the patient’s radiation exposure as well as improve image quality. Los Angeles CT Scan expert explains.

The average American’s total radiation exposure has nearly doubled since 1980, largely because of CT scans. Medical radiation now accounts for more than half of the population’s total exposure; it used to be just one-sixth, and the top source was the normal background rate in the environment, from things like radon in soil and cosmic energy from the sun. But CT use continues to soar. About 62 million scans were done in the U.S. last year, up from 3 million in 1980.

Los Angeles CT scans became popular because they offer a quick, relatively cheap and painless way to get 3D pictures so detailed they give an almost surgical view into the body. But they put out a lot of radiation. In a few decades, as many as 2 percent of all cancers in the United States might be due to radiation from CT scans given now, according to the authors of a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine. A CT scan of the chest involves 10 to 15 millisieverts (a measure of dose) versus 0.01 to 0.15 for a regular chest X-ray, 3 for a mammogram and a mere 0.005 for a dental X-ray. The dose depends on the type of machine and the person ?obese people require more radiation than slim ones ?and the risk accumulates over a lifetime. Read more…

Every day, in the United States, more than 2000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed. Type II diabetes, the most prevalent form of diabetes worldwide, often shows few or even no symptoms!

After eating, food is broken down into what is known as glucose, a sugar carried by the blood to cells throughout the body. Using a hormone known as insulin, made in the pancreas, cells process glucose into energy.

Because cells in the muscles, liver, and fat do not use insulin properly in the body of a person with type II diabetes, they have problems converting food into energy. Eventually, the pancreas cannot make enough insulin for the body’s needs. The amount of glucose in the body increases, and the cells are starved of energy.

This starvation of the cells, paired with the high blood glucose level can damage nerves and blood vessels. This leads to complications such as kidney disease, nerve problems, blindness, and heart ailments.

There are a lot of factors that can help to attribute to diabetes cases – lifestyle, environment, heredity – and those who are at risk should be screened regularly to prevent diabetes. Those that are already diagnosed with diabetes should aim to keep their glucose level under control. Read more…