Vitamin A Deficiency can Cause Blindness

World Health Organization said that vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness among children and is considered a public health concern in more than half of all countries. While vitamin A deficiency can occur as a result of underlying medical conditions, it usually develops from inadequate dietary intake of the vitamin.

If you do not have enough vitamin A in your body, the light-sensitive proteins in your eye lack the vitamin A necessary to create visual images. A vitamin A deficiency initially manifests as night blindness, which is defined as difficulty seeing after dusk. Night blindness is due to an inability to regenerate rhodopsin, which prevents the eyes from adjusting from daylight to darkness.

Vitamin A deficiency, if untreated, can lead to a condition called xerophthalmia, which is characterized by severe dryness and damage to the cornea. Severe xerophthalmia can lead to blindness. “Nutrition and You” by Joan Salge Blake notes that up to 10 million children suffer from xerophthalmia annually and 500,000 of them go blind.

Meeting your needs for vitamin A is the only way to prevent a vitamin A deficiency. It is recommended that infants between the ages of 0 and 6 months receive 400 mcg per day, whereas infants from 6 to 12 months need 500 mcg daily. [Read more...]

Facts About Bonsai Trees

The term bonsai brings up a mental picture of miniature Japanese trees that are cut and pruned to certain specifications. However, the term bonsai literally translated, means plant in a tray. These trees are much smaller than what one might normally expect they do not really have to be just a few inches tall. They can be grown in pots in the garden.

A lot of people believe that the training and maintenance of a Bonsai tree is a very cruel practice. This is because these people assume that the cultivators of Bonsai trees starve the trees and cut them so much that they become very unhealthy. The truth is completely opposite to this misconception. It is true that Bonsai trees are cut and pruned regularly and more extensively than other plants in order to keep them small the cultivators transfer the Bonsai trees regularly from one pot to another. Bonsai trees are also fed and watered with much greater frequency as compared to when they are growing in the wild.

While Japan is usually believed to be the originator of Bonsai trees, this information in wrong. There are records containing evidence that Bonsai trees were grown in China as long as two thousand years ago. Of course, the Bonsai in those days are not exactly the same Bonsai that we see today. They were slightly larger and were grown outdoors. The Japanese influenced this by taking this art form and simply helping it progress until it reached where it is today. This is the reason why Bonsai styles are very different between China and Japan. Chinese Bonsai do not follow too severe restrictions, the style is a lot more free, and the pruning of the tree is not so heavy. Japanese Bonsai on the other hand are heavily pruned and actually look like they were miniature versions of their wilder counterparts.

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want to share my finds

I planned on completing my task today so I will have free time tomorrow. Hubby and I have some personal business to deal that may take some time. Good thing I’m already half-way the piles of task I had. I think I will be able to update this blog again. I just want to share my finds about Topamax lawsuit.

Topamax is an anti-convulsant used to treat epileptic seizures in children and adults, and is also prescribed to prevent migraine headaches. But, the use of it can result in cleft lip or cleft palate – birth defects that occur when the lip or palate fail to completely fuse together. The defect can result in a small, notched lip or in extreme cases, an open groove that extends from the roof of the mouth to the nose.

At O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath, their attorneys understand that your child’s injuries may not be your fault – instead, possibly a dangerous side-effect of Topamax. Their expertise and experience, combined with their highly trained staff, make them uniquely well-equipped to handle even the most complex products liability claims. O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath – Personal Injury Lawyers – 808 West Avenue, Austin, TX. 78701 – 512-494-9949.

Who Started Christmas?

This morning I heard a story on the radio of a woman who was out Christmas shopping with her two children.  After many hours of looking at row after row of toys and everything else imaginable, and after hours of hearing both her children asking for everything they saw on those many shelves, she finally made it to the elevator with her kids.

She was feeling what so many of us feel during the holiday season time of the year – Overwhelming pressure to go to every party, every house-warming, taste all the holiday food and treats, getting that perfect gift for every single person on our shopping list, making sure we don’t forget anyone on our card list, and the pressure of making sure we respond to everyone who sent us a card.

Finally the elevator doors opened and there was already a crowd in the car.  She pushed her way into the car, dragged her two kids in with her, and all the bags of stuff.  When the doors closed she couldn’t take it anymore and stated, “Whoever started this whole Christmas thing should be found, strung up, and shot.”

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Soya products linked to low sperm count

According to the Harvard University researchers, eating half a serving of soy food a day lowers sperm concentrations and may play a role in male infertility, particularly in obese men. The reason for this relationship between soy and sperm count isn’t clear. However, researchers speculate that soy increases estrogen activity, which may have a negative effect on sperm production and also interfere with other hormonal signals.

Research in animals has shown that isoflavones and estrogen can have a potentially negative affect on reproduction, including decreased fertility. However, there is very little evidence of how these findings apply to humans. The new research, lends support to how results of animal studies apply to humans. But researchers consider the findings preliminary and inconclusive. It’s way too early to say stop eating soy foods. It’s not time to worry about whether you’re eating too much soy. There’s not enough information to conclusively say that.

In addition, the researchers found that the link between soy and sperm concentration was stronger among overweight and obese men. Overweight and obese men produce more estrogen than thinner men, and soy may increase those estrogen levels even further, they speculated. The link between soy and sperm concentration was strongest in men with higher sperm concentrations. Men who have normal or high sperm counts may be more susceptible to soy foods than men with low sperm counts.

Natural Lifestyles are Natural for Women?

A lot of us wonder why there are more women shopping in any given natural foods store at a certain moment than there are men. Some questions that are asked are whether or not this is due to the shop being a natural foods store or whether it is an indication that women are still doing the majority of the grocery shopping. While both positions can certainly be argued, most women will tell you that not only do they do more of the grocery shopping, but also that they are much more concerned about healthy lifestyles than the men they know are. In the 1980s, having a healthy lifestyle meant doing aerobics; in the 21st century it means doing yoga and eating organic foods.

Women are so concerned with this type of a healthy lifestyle because they read much more about health and fitness than men do. Of course, these are generalizations and there are plenty of exceptions to the rules, but in general, as can be predicted by counting the number of women’s health and fitness magazines and the corresponding number of men’s health and fitness magazines, more women are reading about this topic than men are. Of course, in today’s day and age, just as many people are reading online as are reading in magazines (perhaps even more) but many websites for health and fitness are more geared toward female readers.

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ICU Diaries May Reduce Post-Traumatic Stress

According to a new study, diary can help reduce intensive care patients’ risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after a difficult stay in the hospital. The randomized controlled study included 352 intensive care unit (ICU) patients at 12 hospitals in six European countries. Of those patients, 162 were randomly selected to receive diaries about their time in the ICU. The diaries, completed by nursing staff and relatives, used plain language and included photographs. After the patients were discharged from the ICU, a nurse reviewed the diary entries with them.

The patients who received a diary were less than half as likely to develop PTSD as the control group that didn’t receive a diary, according to the report published in the September online edition of the journal Critical Care. On average, one in 10 patients who stay more than 48 hours in intensive care will develop PTSD, study author Richard Griffiths, a professor at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, said in a news release from the journal’s publisher.

“It is likely that the fragmentary nature of their memories and the high proportion of delusional memories, such as nightmares and hallucinations, make it difficult for patients to make sense of what has happened to them,” he explained. “These memories are frequently described as vivid, realistic and frightening, and may even involve patients thinking that nurses or doctors tried to kill them. Hard evidence of what really happened, in the form of a diary filled out by the treatment staff, may help to allay these fears,” Griffiths said.

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