Study Shows Asthma Medications Prevent Hospitalization When Used Properly

The ICU is one place you don’t want to be if you have asthma.  Research shows that available medications for asthma are highly effective in reducing hospitalizations.  SS

Inhaled Steroids Lead to Big Drop in Asthma Deaths at Texas Hospital: Study

They reduce inflammation in the lungs, improving control of asthma symptoms

TUESDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) — Patient education and medication compliance contributed to a 74 percent drop in the number of patients with life-threatening asthma admitted to the intensive care unit at University Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, researchers report.

Their review of 30 years of hospital data focused on patients with severe asthma who didn’t respond to standard inhalers.

They found that there were 227 patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with 280 episodes of life-threatening asthma between 1980 and 2010. One patient died, but the death was from a different cause after the patient’s asthma improved, according to the team at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

“The main reason for the decline in cases is that more of our patients are taking their controller medications, such as inhaled corticosteroids, which reduce the amount of inflammation in the airways,” lead author Dr. Jay Peters, chief of pulmonary diseases at the Health Science Center, said in a university news release.

The researchers also found that insertion of a breathing tube, called intubation, when patients arrived in the emergency department did not lead to longer hospital stays.

“I think our methods of treating patients in the emergency department have improved so much that previous studies of issues with intubation don’t hold up anymore,” Peters said.

The study appears in the journal Respiratory Medicine.

“On the front end, this study reinforces the importance of staying on controller medications,” he said. “On the back end, it shows low mortality for patients in the medical ICU and that we don’t need to be afraid to intubate patients and place them on mechanical ventilation if necessary.”

Read more here

Lung Disease: What Is It and how Can You Prevent It

Did you know about 35 million Americans are suffering from one kind of lung disease or the other? Did you know that lung infections are believed to be one of the most important causes for infant mortality in America? Probably you also did not know that diseases related to lung claim one in seven lives every year. Well, it is an alarming statistics, isn’t it? But what does a lung disease mean? Precisely, Lung disease refers to any kind of disorder in which the functions of respiratory system get affected and impaired and this impairment manifest in several ways, such as, troubled breathing, nagging cough, short of breath, pain or uneasiness in the chest, inability of taking up physical labor and likes.

The medical science divides all kinds of lung diseases into two broad categories: Obstructive lung diseases and Restrictive lung diseases.

In obstructive lung diseases, the airways get narrowed or blocked and the result is a decrease in exhaled air flow. The disorders like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), emphysema, asthma, and bronchiectasis are cause by such obstructions of lungs.

Image source: dedeep.com

Restrictive Lung Diseases result into either loss of lung tissue or decrease in the lung’s ability to expand. It may also decrease lung’s ability to transfer oxygen or carbon dioxide into the bloodstream. The killer disease of lung cancer is a kind of restrictive lung disease. Pulmonary fibrosis and pneumonia are also caused by the same lung disorder.

Probably lung cancer is the most common form of ling diseases that the people are more familiar with. Another commonly found diseases among Americans–asthma– is also a kind of lung disorder. Tuberculosis is also the result of bad lungs. Then you might have heard of such diseases like Cystic Fibrosis, Emphysema or Mesothelioma…they all are the manifestation of some kind of lung disorders.

Are you a heavy smoker? Well, you run the maximum risk of developing lung disease. What did you tell, you don’t smoke? Well this is not adequate; you have to stay clear of the smokers, for it is the passive smokers who are at higher risk than the smokers themselves to develop some kind of lung disease, even cancer. Make it a point to request a smoker to enjoy his cigarette in a secluded place so that the others are not forced to inhale second hand smoke.

Then if you work in mines or somehow exposed to radon gas, you run the risk of developing a bad lungs. In the USA, radon is sometimes found in the households also and so it is important for everybody to invest in a kit for measuring the concentration of radon at your home and take the steps accordingly.

If you are working in the sectors which use asbestos, you are required by the Federal Law to use protective gears including a face mask. The same is necessary if you are constantly exposed to dust or harmful chemical fumes, for these also considerably damage your lungs in the long run.

Last of all, the medical authorities always recommend a healthy diet for preventing lung cancer. A diet consisting lots of anti- oxidant rich fresh fruits and vegetables, considerably reduces the risks of cancer. Also go for regular Spirometry testing to make sure that your precious lungs are in perfect shape.

Writer : Barney Garcia
Source : Ezinearticles.com

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Title: Lung Disease: What Is It and how Can You Prevent It
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Call for action: Sign petition to prevent US compulsory prescription of psychiatric drug to children

Founded in 2002 by former president Bush The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health was supposed to “…promote successful community integration for adults with a serious mental illness and children with a serious emotional disturbance.” as it is at the commission’s site.
But this is one of the health politics this commission propose:
The Ron Paul Parental Consent Act


“The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans. The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission’s report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as “ADD” or “hyperactive” and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents’ wishes.

Already, too many children are suffering from being prescribed psychotropic drugs for nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. According to Medco Health Solutions, more than 2.2 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at one time. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication.

Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence, and weight gain. Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents’ wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.

Universal or mandatory mental-health screening could also provide a justification for stigmatizing children from families that support traditional values. Even the authors of mental-health diagnosis manuals admit that mental-health diagnoses are subjective and based on social constructions. Therefore, it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person’s disagreement with the psychiatrist’s political beliefs a mental disorder. For example, a federally-funded school violence prevention program lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead to school violence. Because “intolerance” is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence. If the mandatory mental-health screening program applies to adults, everyone who believes in traditional values could have his or her beliefs stigmatized as a sign of a mental disorder. Taxpayer dollars should not support programs that may label those who adhere to traditional values as having a “mental disorder.” 

This is from the petition congressman Ron Paul wrote explaining very well the absurd.


What The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health is proposing, and is already being done, is nonsense for many reasons and one of them is the impossibility of diagnosing mental disease by any physical or psychological test or by taking a quick look at a person.
Surely the US government will not spend loads of money to have groups of psychiatrists being at schools all over US for at least six months observing the behavior of each child. How will these screenings will be accurate?
What they really want is to put more children taking Ritalin and other psychiatric drugs whose harms are explained at the petition.
What they want is prescribing drugs to healthy children but they have to pretend that these children were diagnosed and as in psychiatry nothing is detectable easily, worse, any behavior can be considered abnormal, even excess of happiness or mild happiness, “Let’s drug them. We want the money.”
Sometimes I think that some of the mental health politics being done by USA government with the help of the corporate-elite that is ruling the world, and they affect the world, makes US eugenicists, that inspired Hitler, look like philanthropists. And if we go back in history in 1926 the Rockefeller Foundation has donated money for the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry which was a great help in the construction of facilities to the “scientific experiments” done by Nazi scientists.  
Funny that they started by killed those who were considered mentally ill.
This is unacceptable.
Sign the petition HERE

Nazi propaganda for their compulsory euthanasia” program: 

“This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too.”

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