Society MD

Archive for the ‘Prevention’ Category

Life has become simpler, with car insurance quotes, shopping, and the online world making “instant access” a global truth. However, some complex areas remain.  With prescriptions, for example, one must navigate more laws and answer bigger ethical questions. But most people don’t see their drugs as being anything that has to be governed or regulated. For the most part, your medication is pretty simple, and is managed by most pharmacists without requiring special rules. If your medication is a schedule two narcotic, however, then there are many rules that need to be followed.

Presentation is first on the list. A schedule two narcotic must be handed in to a pharmacy. Doctors are allowed to phone in, fax in, or email a script for just about any drug, but for these top of the line pain killers and focus drugs legally require a hard copy being delivered in person.

There must also be a DEA number somewhere on the script. There can be no drug filled for a schedule two without having the doctor’s DEA number on it.  A pharmacist can call and ask for it and put it on the hard copy themselves, but they cannot go without it.

There is no partial filling of this medication. With your heart pills, if a pharmacy only has half the correct amount, they will gladly fill the prescription in two parts.  With a schedule two, the pharmacists are unwilling to fill the item unless it can be completed  within a couple of days.

These are just a few of the rules for schedule two narcotics.  Whether these rules are beneficial to consumers can be a challenging question, but the complex laws were certainly intended to protect people from these potent drugs.

No one in their right mind enjoys the idea of getting any kind of cancer. The bad news is, if you live long enough, some of your cells are just bound to mutate enough to be called cancerous. However, this is not some kind of “advanced stage of evolution” that will make you into a powerful superhero. Cancers tend to kill people, for all of the mighty advancements that medical science has been making over the years. And prostate cancer does have the potential to metastasize, and spread, and go to areas that will stop your breathing, your circulation, your brain function or your nervous control. In short, prostate cancer is potentially as dangerous as any other kind of cancer.

Unfortunately, that is not the full length of the bad news. The really bad part is how unbelievably sensitive the cancer tests we currently have happen to be. To put things into perspective, a woman can typically find out if she has breast cancer through a pap smear only once it has reached stage 3. At that stage of the game, it may have already spread elsewhere in her body, and death may only be months (or even weeks) away from occurring.

On the other hand, a man may have prostate cancer detected when it is only a few individual cells in his prostate. This barely qualifies as stage 1, and metastasis is not even guaranteed at that point. And while it is great to be able to know if you have cancer at a super early stage, it would seriously suck if you gave up your prostate (and your ability to ejaculate), without your life actually being under anything approaching an imminent threat. That is the kind of decision nobody wants to make – just make sure to make it while sober.

Medical science says that, like all muscles, a heart can only contract so many times before it is destined to fail. If this is true, then it would be antithetical to figure that getting your heart to beat more quickly would be anything but a bad idea. The irony of this supposition is that it neglects the fact that the heart is a muscle. And just like the muscles of your legs get stronger when you run and your arms get stronger when you pick up a weight, your heart grows stronger when it beats faster than its average speed. If you want to get into better shape, you need to jack up your heart rate.

The concept of a heart only having so many beats in its operational life span is a reasonable thought to carry on with. After all, a muscle carries physical stress forward, the same way that aluminum air plane bodies carry metal fatigue that they accrue with every flight they go on. When a plane’s body mysteriously rips apart in mid air (or especially during the especially damaging take off and landing phases of the flight), it is much like what could happen to your heart after a long enough life span. It might just explode, you never know.

But when your heart beats more quickly, its muscular components do something that airplane parts will not do. They take small amounts of damage, but then they heal themselves and become stronger for it. And as your heart grows stronger, it needs to beat less frequently when you are in a state of rest. So when you raise the rate at which your heart beats, you end up giving yourself the ability for it to beat more slowly most of the time. The notions starts out ironic, but quickly becomes very sensible.

While the phrase “for the love of grape juice” never quite caught on in the popular vernacular, it is a very good reminder of the health benefits of the humble grape. While it takes the tortuous process through which vineyards put their grapes to produce the high levels of resveratrol that give grapes their most modern shot of fame, grapes are not going anywhere. They have been popular since the first wines over 2,000 years ago, and they will continue to be popular, even in their non fermented form. After all, anything that is so purple and so sweet simply can not be denied its place of glory.

If you are a juice drinker, you are no doubt familiar with how much vitamin C so many fruit juices contain. And if you are not, you ought to be tied down and forced to do shots of juice until you turn the color of the fruit it is made out of. And grape juice is as good as any of the rest (and far better than that urine looking apple nonsense). The fact is, grape juice is about as maddeningly healthy as anything you will ever be able to drink, acai and goji notwithstanding.

If you are a fan of grape juice, you are part of an elite group of individuals who associate purple with royalty instead of homosexuality. And as well, the grape lovers of the world are the people who keep the noble tradition of wine from turning into a tiny niche of elitists. After all else is said and done, grapes are for everyone, wealthy plutocrat and common pauper alike. The love of grape juice is the kind of affliction that should strike everyone at some point in their lives, as grapes are simply the best fruit that ever grew on a vine.

You may have noticed that there is a feeling that comes over you most every day. It makes you feel as if the world is darker than you know it is, and as if everything is moving very quickly. After awhile, it can even seem as if your energy has all been drained out of you, and you might even be dying. But fear not, for this is nothing more than common, garden variety fatigue. It happens to everyone, and it might actually be a bad thing if it did not happen to you at some point in life. Being tired is a natural part of being human.

In order to relieve these fatigued feelings, there are three things you can do. For one, you need to eat a reasonable amount of calories. For another, you need to drink a goodly portion of water. And for a third, you need to get a good night’s sleep every single night. While getting a few good nights a week can somewhat compensate for having generally bad sleeping patterns, you will eventually end up “paying the piper” for every hour that you miss. And while you can not make up for it by “catching up” over the weekend, you do have the power to make up for lost time.

For one thing, just sleep every night (unless you work at night, in which case you might want to sleep during the day – unless your boss is really cool). This is not an overly complicated arrangement here. If you get good sleep as a regular occurrence, you will be accustomed to doing things in “the right way,” and you will have far less sleep or fatigue related problems in life. Generally, since we solve problems best by not having them in the first place, you can pretty much sleep away your fatigue. It works like magic.

Everybody knows that water is great for your body. But not everybody knows why this is the case. In fact, a lot of people in gyms and health clubs all over the world have never really taken the time to read up on why water is so great for you in every possible way. While it is possible for you to get “drunk” in a way, if you drink too much water in too short of a time frame, the likelihood is that you would simply throw up if you did that. Which is kind of a waste of the water in the first place. But provided you take in just enough water, your high level of hydration can do wonderful things for you.

For one thing, a high level of hydration can keep you awake and alert for longer. Some statistics estimate that up to half of all instances of daytime fatigue (when you have only been up for a few hours, and yet feel as tired as if you are most of the way through pulling an all nighter) are as a direct result of dehydration. The reason for this is that the nutrients which allow your body to produce energy are transported through your system. When you are low on water, your blood flows less effectively, since a significant component of your blood is nothing more than the water you take in. And when your blood flows less effectively, less nutrients reach your cells, which results in a feeling of fatigue.

Also, less water in your system allows for less efficient removal of waste products. This can lead to lactic acid build up and cramps in your muscles, and can also be a contributing factor in that feeling of lethargy we talked about just a moment ago.

If you ever run into one of those wackos who think that skin is not necessary for survival and good health, smile politely and back away slowly. Then, when you are about ten to twenty feet away, run away with all of the power you can summon up. And if one of your shoes flies off, do not stop to pick it up, as doing so will only allow such a crazy person to take you down from behind. This is generally their plan, in the first place. The fellow who skinned women in The Silence of the Lambs was not the only person who likes skin just a little bit too much.

Fortunately, you can take great care of (and absolutely love having) your skin, even if you are completely clinically sane. The major trick is to take in good food (plenty of protein and monounsaturated fats) to keep it well nourished, to drink plenty of water (roughly a gallon each day, depending on your size and activity level), and avoid excessive amounts of sun exposure (under an hour of full sunlight, unless you have on an SPF 30 or higher sun screen). If you do these things, you skin will be the kind that psychopathic skin coat makers will covet.

One caveat as far as the hydration angle is necessary, though. While having plenty of water in your system facilitates the orderly moving or nutrients and the orderly removal of wastes from your cells, putting water on your skin does not moisturize it. In fact, since water can wash off the oils that hold moisture inside your skin, water can actually have the exact opposite of its intended effect. This is why you need to drink the water, in order to extract the maximal health benefits it can bestow.