Quitting smoking is famously hard. However, according to recent findings, the sooner one stops, the better. Perhaps today is the day?
Smoking tobacco, as most of us are well aware, increases the risk of a wide range of serious health issues.
Associated conditions include heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and several types of cancer.
Despite many of these dangers being common knowledge, giving up tobacco is challenging in the extreme.
A new study suggests having six to nine drinks in one day nearly doubles the risk of heart attack and stroke over the following week.
Just having one drink was found to increase the risk of cardiovascular problems over the next 24 hours, according to Reuters. However, having two to four alcoholic drinks may reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke over the following week, the study found.
“There appears to be a transiently higher risk of heart attack and strokes in the hours after drinking an alcoholic beverage but within a day after drinking, only heavy alcohol intake seems to pose a higher cardiovascular risk,” lead researcher Elizabeth Mostofsky, Sc.D. of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said in a news release.
Emergency rooms in Denver, Colorado reported a surge in visits related to synthetic marijuana in the late summer and early fall, according to the Los Angeles Times. Experts say similar patterns may emerge in other parts of the country.
Between August 24 and September 19, area emergency rooms saw 263 patients, mostly young men, with symptoms related to synthetic marijuana. Most patients were treated in the emergency room, but seven were admitted to intensive care units.
In a letter in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Andrew A. Monte of the University of Colorado School of Medicine writes synthetic marijuana appears to be growing more potent. “Although the effects of exposures to first-generation synthetic cannabinoids are largely benign, newer products have been associated with seizures, ischemic stroke and cardiac toxicity, possibly due to potency,” he wrote.
Full story of synthetic marijuana emergencies at drugfree.org
Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have developed a therapeutic at-home gaming program for stroke patients who experience motor weakness affecting 80 percent of survivors.
Hemiparesis affects 325,000 individuals each year, according to the National Stroke Association. It is defined as weakness or the inability to move one side of the body, and can be debilitating as it impacts everyday functions such as eating, dressing or grabbing objects.
Constraint-induced movement therapy (CI therapy) is an intense treatment recommended for stroke survivors, and improves motor function, as well as the use of impaired upper extremities. However, less than 1 percent of those affected by hemiparesis receives the beneficial therapy.
“Lack of access, transportation and cost are contributing barriers to receiving CI therapy. To address this disparity, our team developed a 3D gaming system to deliver CI therapy to patients in their homes,” said Lynne Gauthier, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation in Ohio State’s College of Medicine.
Full story of 3D video game for stroke patients at Science Daily
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
High blood pressure during pregnancy could dramatically raise a woman’s lifetime risk of stroke, according to a study presented today at the Canadian Stroke Congress.
“We’ve found that women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy could be at higher risk of stroke, particularly if they had pre-eclampsia, which is a more severe form of high blood pressure,” says Dr. Aravind Ganesh, a neurology resident at the University of Calgary. “The elevated risk of stroke could be as high as 40 per cent.”
Dr. Ganesh, along with Neha Sarna (medical student), Dr. Rahul Mehta (internal medicine resident) and senior author Dr. Eric Smith (stroke neurologist), conducted a systematic review — basically, a study of studies.
Nine studies specifically looked at hypertension (high blood pressure) during pregnancy and its relationship to future risk of stroke.
The studies followed women for anywhere from one to 32 years after a pregnancy, and found consistent evidence that those with a history of hypertension in pregnancy are more likely to experience stroke in later life.
Full story of high blood pressure during pregnancy at Science Daily
Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education