BiTherapca Health

Whatever the case, good health is, first and foremost, through disease prevention and early detection/treatment of disease. Infectious diseases, chronic ones for that matter, are sometimes very difficult to treat. The chronic inflammation they cause cannot be treated with 'body's detoxifiers', good nutrition, exercise alone, although these measures may help to reduce the disease burden. Chronic infections, which present in biofilms and give flu-like symptoms, are a barrier to both antibiotics and the body's immune system. Most of these chronic infections have acquired multi-drug resistance and thus cannot be treated with currently available antibiotics. Aging is promoted by pro-inflammatory damage. The body's fat(white fat), toxins such as alcohol and smoke, lack of exercise, poor nutrition and stress, which jeopardize the body's detoxfying system and defence, make matters worse in chronic infections. The immune system itself can cause pro-inflammatory dam...

It is becoming more and more clear that obesity is responsible for high morbidity and mortality in our societies. From cancer, through cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart attacks, to diabetes and pneumonia, obesity has been implicated. The constant given in all this is that we gain weight when we eat more than we expend, in energy terms. It is also evident that exposure to toxins such as alcohol, smoking, food additives and environmental pollutants may be contributing to slowing our metabolism, making it difficult for us to shed the extra weight. Sedentary lifestyle, from the nature of our jobs and our modes of transport, is a major contributory factor in the upsurge of obesity that we are currently experiencing in our modern world. This is further compounded by the fact that we are equally eating more. The answer to this puzzle lies in both exercising regularly and eating wisely. A diet rich in proteins, especially plant proteins like beans, and low in refined carboh...

It happens, every now and then, that after being involved in or watched an exciting event or even received good news, someone collapses and dies in the euphoria of it or sometime later. The same goes for frightful events and sad news. In superstitious societies, in the case of good news or excitement, it is easy to point an accusing finger on X or Y for being responsible for the unfortunate outcome. But studies are constantly showing that stressful events, delightful or frightful, are responsible for most sudden deaths. It is common to hear of a coach dying after his team wins a major game or a candidate dying after winning an enviable scholarship. Stress raises stress hormones levels that in turn raise arterial blood pressure which may disembark plaques in blood vessels that move and lodge in the coronary artery in the heart, leading to heart attack, settle in the brain arteries, leading to stroke or in the renal artery, leading to kidney failure. Stress hormones also lead to ...

Lack of physical activity and binge eating, in my opinion, are the biggest culprits to be linked with the insurgence of obesity-related illnesses of our time. Diabetes, arteriosclerosis, hypertension and related stroke, heart-attack, kidney failure are causes of sudden deaths. Cancer and inflammatory disorders are direcly linked to obesity. Infections are secondarily associated with weight gain, which modifies the anatomy or biochemistry of the living system. Obesity,without doubt, makes the body to be less resistant to infections. Oxygen circulation is made worse. By my own estimation, obesity is linked, directly or indirectly, to more than half of deaths in our hospitals, today. It compromises organs that are failing from other causes and, more so, fats accumulate when many organs fail and this, itself, accelerates the failure. Not to mention, many surgical procedures are riskier with obese individuals than with, otherwise, lean counterparts. Obesity occurs when one eats more tha...

Medical science is advancing at an amazing pace. Think of genetic engineering and its impact on drug discovery; stem cell technology/genetic engineering on organ transplant and management of diseases like HIV/AIDS. All sorts of imaging techniques make for easy disease diagnosis and telemedicine makes it possible for experts to diagnose diseases and interprete results thousands of miles away. Of particular interest is the way medical scientists and practitioners now think of how we age from diseases. Aging is believed to be harvested from childhood or early adult life from infectious diseases and environmental pollutants that we had come in contact with or the lifestyle we had lived. We age faster than we are genetically predestined to. Most chronic diseases like diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer's disease, heart failure, arthritis, Parkinson's disease, emphysema are results of these early life harvests. Most of these diseases currently are managed but not cured because although...

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Mental illnesses are currently classified using a series of common symptoms. Hence, strictly speaking they are, in a sense, 'conditions'. The biological causes are still elusive but the belief is that, though not obvious, they actually do exist. There is no doubt that stress may trigger symptoms or even cause lesions that may be responsible for the manifestations of mental illnesses. Mitigating the predisposing psycho-social insults may effect cure in some instances and this is not surprising because spontaneous remissions do occur with mental illnesses. Psychopharmacotherapy, the use of drugs to treat mental symptoms, is only as useful as it enables the sufferer to become 'normal', which state is necessary in obtaining meaningful insight from the sufferer into the triggering or causal factors in the individual case, which can then be mitigated through psychotherapy or treated otherwise medically. There is no doubt that mental sanity, good nutrition and good phy...

Mental illnesses, a result of malfunction of the brain, are also accompanied by neurological motor problems. Nerves in the cerebral cortex will have suffered damage of some sort or the other either during development, from exposure to environmental pollutants or microbial toxins or due to psychosocial trauma. Personality change or deviant behaviors are the hallmark of many mental illnesses. It is therefore inconceivable that moral education without correction of the underlying problem will reverse the damage that is discernible in mental illnesses. Moral education and discipline are very important in child development as they help shape the character of the person by providing the necessary tools to suppress overt animal instincts and gain emotional control over events. Most mental health or penitentiary institutions may add to the trauma that is already being suffered by the patient and therefore make the condition worse. The anger generated against the society from incarceration...

It is evident that the rise in our standards of living has brought along with it some negative health outcomes to our lives. Our nutrition has changed from predominantly fresh, raw whole meals to highly refined sugars, saturated fats and cholesterol. Our calorie intake has increased because of the means at our disposal and better farming and produce refining techniques. We have changed from walking daily to moving in cars, on planes and trains. The result has been the plethora of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, high blood lipids which may remain silent in our systems, until one day we are struck with heart attack, stroke, hyperglycemic coma, kidney failure. The only window of opportunity for intervention may be a few seconds before we pass out for good. If emergency services are not close-by, we stand no chance of survival. To prevent these silent killers we need to exercise regularly, eat wisely and make it a duty to visit our health care provider for routine check-ups...