Get Daily Leg Therapy Support Hosiery

Youths take their legs for granted for walking, running, jumping, swimming, and naturally for dancing. Their legs are there to do their specific job and usually it is done quite well. But as we age and have to do sedentary office work, for example, the reduced activity coupled with the height of our body requires that blood has to be pulled back up from resting your legs to your upper torso. This alone should not be a problem, but it is aggravated by being sedentary for hours on and besides other medical conditions that can also affect circulation.

It is well documented in the medical books that the majority of older people have one of several disorders in the blood veins of their legs, which range from minor complaints like a chronically tired feeling in the legs, or the incidence of pains or swollen ankles, and then extending to the more serious conditions like deep vein thrombosis, lymphedemia, blood clots, etc. In most conditions of this sort there can be general relief obtained through wearing graduated-strength compression support hosiery. These therapeutic garments provide needed support to lower the discomfort and promote correct circulation of blood. The type of support hosiery available now has been made to appear much more stylish than in the past, and can even be construed as a fashion statement, even though they are actually acting as a medical device to yield much needed support and therapy.

Certain other situations exist that also can benefit from this kind of support. One of them comes up when taking long trips in a plane or other vehicle where motion is restricted. Another is the case of edema found in late pregnancy. These conditions are not usually chronic but are more transient and often pass given time. If a condition requires that a support stocking is used, the products available can give you the highest degree of compression treatment, if required. Several levels of supporting strengths are available and you may select the type that best fits your case. The different grades and types of support stocking are described in greater detail on the website. The featured ones from Sigvaris use a special two-layer covering process that provides a therapeutic four-way stretch, which makes them far more comfortable to wear than other types, yet without forfeiting a stylish appearance. Click to visit the support hosiery online product guide and to find out how these products can send your legs on a well-deserved holiday, after so many years of faithful service walking, dancing, jumping and running.

http://www.mylasiciliana.com/health-tips/get-daily-leg-therapy-support-hosiery.htm

Sun and Sunbeds at UV Band

Sun and sunbeds are sweet dreams of people who want a restful holiday. But you must take care of some health risks; especially cancer risks.

Here an article of world health organization:

"The desire to acquire a tan for fashion or cosmetic purposes has led to a large increase in the use of artificial tanning sunbeds in, mostly, developed countries. Use of sunbeds for tanning continues to increase in popularity, especially among young women.

Sunbeds used in solariums, and sun tanning lamps, are artificial tanning devices that claim to offer an effective, quick and harmless alternative to natural sunlight. However, there is growing evidence that the ultraviolet (UV) radiation emitted by the lamps used in solariums may damage the skin and increase the risk of developing skin cancer.

Some 132 000 cases of malignant melanoma (the most fatal kind of skin cancer) and over two million cases of other skin cancers occur worldwide each year. One in every three cancers diagnosed worldwide is a skin cancer. Most skin cancers are attributable to over-exposure to natural UV radiation. A fact sheet indicating the adverse health consequences from natural (i.e., sun) UV exposure issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) can be found at the link to the right.

This fact sheet is the complement of the above, providing information on artificial sources of UV. Primary among these artificial sources is sunbeds, and this fact sheet looks at the health consequences of sunbed usage and how they can be managed. Information for this fact sheet comes from WHO sponsored meetings and workshops, recent scientific literature, reviews by WHO Member States and the recommendations of international NGOs"

read more : http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs287/en/

Heal the world shoes

We had a lot of mail about heal the world shoes. Our web blog isn't related with heel the world. That company has own microblog. If you wanna see it:

http://heeltheworld.tumblr.com/

Tattoos and HIV acceptance

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

August 10, 2011 -- Updated 1330 GMT (2130 HKT)

Portland, Oregon (CNN) -- As he puts a straw in his fruit smoothie, Michael Lee Howard accidentally knocks over the cup, spilling the seaweed-colored liquid. "Well, it happens," he says. As he collects the smoothie overflow in the plastic lid, he exposes the tattoos on his wrists: a biohazard symbol on the right and a radiation symbol on the left.

Howard might not have come across as such a calm person in late 2005, when he found out he was HIV positive. After his diagnosis, he felt "dirty" in his own skin, and feared infecting others if he so much as cut his hand. Getting the wrist tattoos helped him in his journey toward self-acceptance. Howard is one of many people living with HIV who have chosen to get tattoos to represent living with the disease. They say these tattoos help start conversations, reduce stigma and serve as reminders of how living with HIV has changed their lives.

Tattoos like Howard's biohazard symbol are especially common in men who have sex with men, the subpopulation that bears the highest burden of new HIV infections in the United States. Men who have sex with men accounted for 61%, or 29,300, new HIV infections in 2009, federal health officials said last week. And although the number of new HIV cases has remained stable in the general population, new infections rose among young, black gay and bisexual men from 2006 to 2009. It was also among men having sex with men that U.S. doctors first realized, in 1981, that there was a never-before-seen disease that could destroy the immune system. That disease came to be known as human immunodeficiency virus.

"In the gay male community, we think about it (HIV) a lot more because it attacked our community first. It's wiped out a number of us," said William Conley of Pollock Pines, California. His tattoo, a biohazard symbol with the Celtic motif of a crown of thorns circling around it, means he's winning the fight against this disease.

Identification and awareness

"You're not a victim. You're a champion, you are a survivor, and that's the biggest part of the tattoo," Conley said. The origins of HIV-related tattoos are murky, but the biohazard symbol is recognized in connection with HIV among many gay men, said David Dempsey, clinical director at the Alexian Brothers Bonaventure House in Chicago and The Harbor in Waukegan, Illinois, both transitional living facilities for HIV-positive individuals recovering from alcohol and substance dependence.

"It's to let other men know that they're HIV-positive so that they don't have to come out and say it," he said. In situations of anonymous sex, it can signal status to potential partners and, in that sense, may help with prevention, because unprotected sex with an HIV-infected individual can spread the disease, he said.

For those with HIV, seeing someone else with a biohazard symbol is a sign this is another person living with the disease who might provide support, Conley said, like a "secret identification code."

There are less cryptic HIV tattoos, too. Dempsey has a red AIDS ribbon tattoo on his chest, which he chose even before he became HIV-positive (the organization Visual AIDS created the ribbon symbol in 1991). Dempsey has been a social worker in the HIV community for 11 years, and wanted to show solidarity with people living with the disease, as well as raise awareness.

In 1986, when AIDS was just starting to be recognized as a deadly illness transmitted through sex and intravenous drug use, conservative author William F. Buckley Jr. suggested HIV-positive people get tattoos to protect others. He wrote in The New York Times, "Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

Some HIV-positive individuals may have gotten tattoos in resistance to Buckley's article, said Richard Sawdon Smith, professor of photography and AIDS cultures at London South Bank University in the United Kingdom, who has been HIV-positive since 1994. This is not an oft-cited reason among people with tattoos today, although many of the people who got HIV in the '80s and may have gotten tattoos then have since died.

Another theory is that certain ACT UP activists sported biohazard tattoos in their massive demonstrations in the late '80s and early '90s, but founder Larry Kramer said he hasn't heard of these tattoos or of the organization's participation in the practice.

Kids and social networking: Pros and cons

Post this, comment on that. Social media are a part of the daily routines of many adults and children. And the identifiable pros and cons of social networking among kids are beginning to emerge, according to a presentation at the American Psychological Association meeting.

"While nobody can deny that Facebook has altered the landscape of social interaction, particularly among young people, we are just now starting to see solid psychological research demonstrating both the positives and the negatives," saidLarry D. Rosen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and technology researcher.

Rosen says ongoing research and preliminary results of studies suggest a few trends in kids.

On the plus side: In a world full of distractions, social networking and technology can provide tools for teaching in a way that engages and captivates young minds. Online social networking can also help young people learn how to socialize with their peers; users also show more "virtual empathy."

"It's almost like social networks are training wheels for life in a lot of ways - it teaches you to express empathy and see how people respond," Rosen said. "It teaches you to also just develop your sense of self of who you are. You float things out on a wall post on Facebook and then sit back and look at the comments that you get. It's a place where you can grow and develop."

However, the downside is becoming apparent, too. According to studies, middle school, high school and college students looking at Facebook at least one time during a 15-minute study break made lower grades. In addition, many young Facebook users show more tendencies to be narcissistic.

"It's a continual onset of I, me, mine," he said. "Your comments back and forth to people all reflect on you, not them."

The new research suggests that overuse of media and technology can negatively affect health of children and teens, especially with psychological disorders- making users more likely to experience anxiety and depression.

"Everything you do on social networks, you're doing behind the safety of a screen," he said. "You're not paying attention...there's a real flesh and blood human being at the other end of cyberspace and your words might have consequences for that person."

Rosen suggests not having a computer program to monitor the child's social networking behaviors. He says parents who have such programs are wasting their time.

"As soon as you start monitoring your kids electronically, two things are going to happen," he said. "One- they are going to stop trusting you. Two- within five seconds, they'll find a workaround on the Internet to get around whatever electronic device you have installed."

"If you establish trust with your kids, which you do by having discussions with them about technology and about what they're doing, then they will come to you when something comes up that they're uncomfortable with," Rosen said.

But he says parents need to be aware of the latest technologies and trends in websites and applications that kids use.

Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and attending physician at Texas Children's Hospital, writes often about social media.

"As a parent, probably the best thing we can do for our teens is try to provide a solid example of how to balance our personal and our digital lives," Vartabedian said. "I think this technology is all here to stay. It's not going anywhere but the relationship that we share with that technology is something that we can influence and we can influence early on in life."

Vartabedian says it is OK to put software on a computer to monitor social networking. He says parents have a responsibility to know what their kids are doing.

"There will always be ways for kids to get around what we do to watch and listen to them," he said. "But we still have a responsibility as parents to put our best foot forward and openly discuss what's appropriate, online and off."

What are your thoughts?

CNNHEALTH

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/06/kids-and-social-networking-pros-and-cons/

Erectile dysfunction? Try losing weight

(Health.com) -- Viagra gets the job done, but it's a quick fix. For many men, weaning themselves off the little blue pill and finding a longer-lasting solution to their sexual dysfunction may require hitting the gym and putting down the doughnuts.

A new Australian study, published Friday in the "Journal of Sexual Medicine," found that losing just 5% to 10% of body weight over a two-month period improved the erectile function -- and revved up the sex drives -- of obese men with diabetes.

The study was very small (it included just 31 men), so the results should be taken with a grain of salt. But the findings are yet another reminder that obesity and erectile dysfunction (ED) often go hand in hand.

Excess weight -- especially excess belly fat -- can affect sexual function in many ways; it can interfere with the body's ability to supply blood to the penis, for instance, and it can cause testosterone production to plummet.

And though the research on weight loss and sexual dysfunction is still emerging, there's growing evidence that men who get active, eat healthier foods, and pare a few pounds will see their sex lives improve -- not to mention their overall health.

In fact, doctors express hope that the promise of an improved sex life will finally get through to all the overweight and obese men who haven't responded to dire warnings about heart disease, diabetes and stroke."You talk all the prevention you want," says Kevin Billups, M.D., an associate professor of urology at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. "When I talk about restoring penile health, I have their attention. When a patient comes to see him about ED, one of the first things Billups tells him to do is to stand up and look at his belly. "If you can't see your penis," he says, "that's a problem."

Psychological association calls for legalization of gay, lesbian marriage

By Alden Mahler Levine, CNN

(CNN) -- The American Psychological Association is calling on state and federal officials to stop anti-gay legal measures and to legalize same-sex marriage

The scientific and professional organization's guiding body voted unanimously at its annual meeting this week in Washington to declare its support for "full marriage equality for same-sex couples."

The resolution "clarifies the Association's support for same-sex marriage" in light of new research, the group said. A similar resolution in 2004 opposed discrimination against same-sex relationships, but refrained from a more formal policy recommendation.Dr. Clinton Anderson, APA associate executive director, said that the timing of the resolution is an indirect result of several states' legalization of marriage.

"We knew that marriage benefits heterosexual people in very significant ways, but we didn't know if that would be true for same-sex couples," said Anderson, who is also director of the APA's Office on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns.

The research, Anderson said, indicates that marriage "does confer the same sense of security, support, and validation" to same-sex couples as to heterosexual ones.

Now that six U.S. states permit same-sex marriage, researchers have been able to conduct studies with those couples.

Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, takes issue with the assertion that legalizing same-sex marriage would improve community acceptance of homosexuality.

The resolution also points to evidence that ongoing political debate about marriage creates stress for gay men and lesbians and perpetuates stigmas and prejudice about their communities. This stress can make people physically and psychologically sick, the APA says, calling the link between stress and illness "well established."

Both the National Organization for Marriage and the APA are skeptical of one solution to the gay-marriage debate: civil unions. Rhode Island NOM executive director Chris Plante is quoted in a press release on the NOM website calling the move "nothing more than a Trojan Horse that will usher in same-sex marriage sooner rather than later." Elsewhere on its website, NOM calls for dealing with legal and economic benefits separately from any discussion of marriage or unions"

There is no evidence that gay teens are better off in Massachusetts, a state that has gay marriage, than they are in Wisconsin, a state which has passed a marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman," she said in an e-mail response to CNN

Gallagher continued, "The release of this statement is unfortunately going to undermine confidence in APA statements generally, I would predict."

"That's the analysis that we've come to and why we've decided to support full marriage equality -- because domestic partnership or civil union will still convey the message that same-sex couples are not as good."

The APA also feels that civil unions miss the mark.

"Anything other than marriage is, in essence, a stigmatization of same-sex couples. Stigma does have negative impacts on people," Anderson said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/08/04/psychologists.gay.marriage/index.html

New H.I.V. Cases Steady Despite Better Treatment

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: August 3, 2011

Despite years of great progress in treating AIDS, the number of new infections with the virus that causes it has remained stubbornly around 50,000 a year in the United States for a decade, according tonew figures released on Wednesday by federal officials.

The American epidemic is still concentrated primarily in gay men, and is growing rapidly worse among young black gay men.

That realization is causing a rift in the AIDS community. Activists say the persistent H.I.V. infection rate proves that the government prevention policy is a flop. Federal officials are on the defensive even as they concede that the epidemic will grow if prevention does not get better, which they know is unlikely while their budgets are being cut.

And some researchers believe it is impossible to wipe out a fatal, incurable disease when it is transmitted through sex and carries so much stigma that people deny having it and avoid being tested for it.

Looking back, epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe that new cases peaked at 130,000 a year in the 1980s, sank slowly during the ’90s and reached a plateau at 50,000 around the year 2000.

Larry Kramer, a longtime AIDS activist and the author of “The Normal Heart,” a play about the epidemic’s early days, said: “It means I don’t see an AIDS policy, and I don’t see anyone in charge. It’s so dispiriting that it’s hard to find something to say about it. How many times can you yell ‘Help!’ without ever getting anywhere?”

Both Dr. Kevin Fenton, chief of AIDS prevention for the C.D.C., and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, chief of AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health, took issue with Mr. Kramer’s interpretation. While both agreed that 50,000 new annual infections was, in Dr. Fauci’s words, “a great concern,” both pointed to some areas where substantial progress had been made. They said that new studies were seeking ways to get more people tested and treated early in the course of the illness, which would make them less infectious and drive transmission rates down.

“The C.D.C. is absolutely not resting,” Dr. Fenton said. “It was a major accomplishment to drop infections from 130,000 to 50,000, and we’re dealing with an epidemic that is dynamic.”

But, he conceded, 50,000 is an “unacceptably high level,” and without better prevention efforts “we’re likely to face an era of rising infection rates.”

Philip Alcabes, a public health epidemiologist at Hunter College in Manhattan, noted that 50,000 is close to the number of Americans who die in road accidents each year — almost 40,000 — “and in some ways, we consider dying on the road an ordinary thing.”

By contrast, he said, nearly one million Americans a year die of heart disease and strokes.

“So it’s not clear that prevention is a failure,” he said. “The average adult’s chances of encountering H.I.V. infection — 0.02 percent a year — are rather low. It’s not reasonable to expect that a sexually transmitted virus will disappear in America, or anywhere else. But I agree with Larry Kramer that there has been a dearth of new policy ideas.”

For most risk groups, infection rates are stable, with 61 percent of cases contracted through gay or bisexual sex, 27 percent through heterosexual sex and 9 percent through drug injections.

But they are increasing rapidly in one subgroup: young gay black men. Black teenage boys who realize they are attracted to men are often too poor to move to gay-friendly cities like San Francisco or New York, researchers said, and often must keep their homosexuality hidden from relatives and friends, making it more likely they will have furtive, risky sex.

They often lack health insurance, meaning they do not get checkups where a doctor might suggest testing. And while new surveys find that they use condoms at about the same rates as young gay white and Hispanic men, sex tends to stay within racial groups and more older black gay and bisexual men are infected. Also, untreated syphilis, whose sores open a path for H.I.V., is more common among blacks.

The National Institutes of Health is supporting studies in the Bronx, Washington and other heavily black urban areas seeking new ways to reach these men, Dr. Fauci said. Results will be ready in two or three years.

Prevention has worked for two groups, Dr. Fenton said. The number of women infecting their children at birth or through breast-feeding has dropped to only 100 a year from about 1,300 two decades ago. In that respect, the United States is like Africa: scarce public clinics focus on women and children, and many poor women see a doctor only when pregnant.

Also, the number of infections through drug use has dropped 80 percent, although that may be a result of changing fashions among addicts: Fewer inject heroin and more smoke or inhale heroin, crack, crystal meth and cocaine or swallow prescription opiates like OxyContin. Only needle-sharing passes virus-tainted blood.

Chris Collins, director of public policy for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said the decade-long persistence of 50,000 infections “shows that we’ve failed to target prevention services adequately and have not gotten treatment coverage in many communities that would bring down community viral loads.”

A recent study has shown that getting people on antiretroviral drugs early makes them 96 percent less likely to infect others, so there is a growing outcry for “test and treat” — shorthand for actively seeking out gay men and those injecting drugs and asking them to get tested, and then helping them find medical care if they have the disease.

Dr. Fauci and Dr. Fenton said there was no discussion now of making such tests mandatory — as, for example, syphilis tests once were for marriage licenses.

San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia, have lowered new infection rates, Mr. Collins noted. But how applicable those lessons are to the United States as a whole is debatable; both cities have very small black populations, and Vancouver’s success relies partly on a government-approved center where drug addicts can shoot up under the eyes of a nurse and without fear of arrest — an experiment unlikely to be repeated in the United States.

The new C.D.C. figures are based partly on a new blood test that can tell recent infections from old ones, said Joseph Prejean, who led the team that made the new estimates. The test, invented in 2005 and nicknamed the “BED test,” for the B, D and E viral subtypes it uses, measures H.I.V. antibodies in the blood relative to total antibodies. That ratio rises rapidly from infection to about six months, then levels off, he said.

Dr. Alcabes, who was once a harsh critic of C.D.C. estimates, said he believed the new numbers were as accurate as they could get. “They’ve done an enormous amount of number-crunching with stupefying amounts of detail,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 4, 2011, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: New H.I.V. Cases Remain Steady Over a Decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/health/04hiv.html?_r=1&ref=health

New Product Detects Date Rape Drug in Cocktails

by Catherine Robertson, Last updated August 05, 2011

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, an estimated one in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, 73 percent of which know their assailants. These startling statistics may have been what prompted Israeli scientists to develop a sensor which they say can detect two of the most commonly used date rape drugs with 100 percent accuracy.

Co-creater of the device and chemistry professor at Tel Aviv University, Fernando Patolsky says, "It samples a very small volume of the drink and mixes it with a testing solution that causes a chemical reaction that makes the solution cloudy or colored, depending on the drug."

According to Patolsky, the sensor, that resembles a drink stirrer, should cost less than a drink and can be reused multiple times. The sensor alerts the user by turning on a small red light when GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid) or Ketamine are present in the drink. The team hopes to add Rohypnal—“roofies”—to these within a year.

Patolsky and partner Michael Ioffee agree that ensuring a fast, reliable and affordable product is not an easy feat however they are passionate about prevention and safety in order to prevent rape. Date rape drugs are commonly used to put a person under a sedative or hypnotic effect. Data from the U.S. Department of Justice reports that in 2007, nearly 200,000 women were raped in the United States due to the help of date rape drugs, though only 16 percent reported the incident.

"Preventing it is the best thing to do," said Patolsky, who has three young daughters. "I hope it will be sold in bars, in pharmacies."

http://www.healthnews.com/en/articles/2dVJJqgA171OO61_$6gCjm/New-Product-Detects-Date-Rape-Drug-in-Cocktails-/