Hemorrhoids aren’t exciting whatsoever. If you are suffering from them, you know how unpleasant and not comfortable they are often. In the following paragraphs, you will learn the best techniques to treat and forestall them. Shortly after subsequent these useful information, you will be entirely free of hemorrhoids completely.
If you are anticipating a new baby, rest in your still left aspect. This should help you to avoid placing force for the veins with your anus, and consequently assist you stay away from hemorrhoids. Carrying a child is really a time when you are particularly prone to hemorrhoids, so undertaking everything you can to avoid them is needed.
Stay away from using a doughnut molded cushion if you have hemorrhoids. These cushions are frequently promoted as helpful supports for all those struggling with hemorrhoids, however they can have the opposite effect. On one of these cushions for a long time will place extra anxiety on the blood vessels with your rectum, which will worsen your hemorrhoid signs.
If you have not reviewed stuff by using a medical professional currently than you shouldn’t be using any sort of non-prescription medicine for longer than a single week. This includes the conventional lotions which you discover, and also just about any suppositories. Next length of time, it is far better to go over points along with your medical doctor.
Right after possessing a bowel motion, it is essential to not use dry cells document should you be being affected by hemorrhoids. The dry cells pieces of paper is hard and will scratch the hemorrhoids when cleaning. In the event you damage the hemorrhoids, they might bleed. As opposed to dry up paper, use wet tissues pieces of paper or running water.
Use wet bathroom tissue or non-alcohol consumption wipes when cleanup your self around the toilet. Dry pieces of paper equates to hard document no matter the softness of the tissues. The paper could cause bleeding from the hemorrhoids and ought to be avoided if at all possible. When you have use of a bidet you should use this being an choice for document.
Eat just as much substantial-soluble fiber meals as possible. This will assist to soften your stool and help prevent hemorrhoids from creating. Most fresh fruits, like grapes, watermelon and papaya, has a lot of fiber in it. Any type of roughage will also be useful. It is possible to get soluble fiber tablets, also, to aid in the process.
In order to avoid hemorrhoids, don’t hold out to visit the restroom. Holding out can make your stools dry up up. These are then harder to successfully pass. When your stools are hard to pass you are going to tension the blood vessels all around your anus, and thus trigger hemorrhoids. To avoid this, just listen when nature phone calls.
There are some food that happen to be a little bit more likely to cause you to suffer from hemorrhoids yet others which are more inclined to help you. It is important to know which food items are excellent and that happen to be dangerous so that you are able to reduce your chance to formulate this.
As mentioned earlier, hemorrhoids can be a burdensome component of existence for many of us. When supplied together with the correct information, you could make them come to be just a distant memory space. After utilizing the information provided right here, you can expect to ultimately manage to find some relief and stay a happier, much healthier daily life.
2012年2月6日星期一
2012年1月11日星期三
Dog meat at Hanukka
A lighthearted fish-out of- water tale in which an innocent abroad finds himself, in turn, puzzling over cultural oddities and being exasperated by them.
One afternoon during an unexpected detour on my way home in Bangkok, I found myself at an open-air market staring at a wire-mesh cage of beige and black cobras in listless heaps. I had been invited along by a friendly shoe repairman who plied his trade at a rickety curbside bench.
He pointed to a fawn-colored specimen. Obligingly, the snakes’ guardian, a mattedhaired young fellow, unlatched the lid, hooked the five-foot reptile with a fire iron, and plucked it out onto a tabletop. Suddenly, he cuffed the snake from behind.
The cobra spluttered, and rearing, spread its collar in warning. He smacked the irate reptile again. He did so, I was later told, to get the snake’s blood up – literally. With adrenalin pumping furiously through its veins, a cobra’s blood is believed to turn its most magically potent.
The fellow then grabbed the hissing animal by the nape and carried it over to an elderly Chinese man, who looped a string of kitchen twine around the snake’s neck and tied the reptile to a vertically mounted aluminum pole. With scalpel in hand, he proceeded to eviscerate the live serpent while carefully collecting its blood in a tumbler.
Adding a drop of honey and two parts whisky, he offered the concoction to me. My friend stood by, smiling benignly.
Snake blood, I learned, is believed to have wondrous curative effects and aphrodisiacal properties. It’s said to heal rheumatism, hemorrhoids, impotence, even lethargy. It’s also lauded as a marvelous pick-me-up, although I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. I braced myself and gulped it back.
The concoction tasted like certain tonic beverages: part sweet, part piquant. As for the observable curative effects, I cannot much vouch for them, apart from a short adrenalin rush triggered by imbibing the rather unappetizing cocktail.
In Laos, meanwhile, I was offered fried rat. In Vietnam I saw locals slurp turtle meat soup, while downing rice wine from a bottle with a large black scorpion marinating in it. In Cambodia I was present at a wedding feast that included crocodile meat jerky and finely seasoned water beetles.
I’ve sampled a few such treats and turned down most others. But never have I had to invoke religious dietary restrictions as an excuse to pass up on one.
Michael Levy has not been so lucky. One fine day in 2005, the young Jew from Philadelphia arrives in Unicorn Hill Village #3 (so numbered, one presumes, to distinguish it from several other Unicorn Hill villages) in central China for some acclimatization ahead of a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in a nearby city. Almost immediately he is faced with the prospect of offending his hosts at a welcome feast by declining an invitation to munch on a local delicacy: fried millipedes licked off a sugar-coated stick. Levy begs off by explaining he’s a Jew, or rather wo shi youtairen (which translates as “I am a person who is special, too” in Mandarin).
The foreigner’s dietary peculiarities baffle his hosts, and so begin Levy’s adventures, culinary and otherwise, as an English teacher at Guizhou University in Guiyang, the capital of an underdeveloped, ethnically diverse province in southwestern China. Before long, the erstwhile vegetarian who once kept kosher and studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva succumbs to nibbling on pork dumplings and celebrating Hanukka at a restaurant called Dog Meat King, where he samples the trademark dish.
Clearly, “Kosher Chinese,” Levy’s account of his time in China, is not meant to be a treatise on the challenges of keeping kosher in a land where people will gladly eat “anything with four legs but the table” – as well as creatures with no legs (snakes), with two (birds), and with six or more (insects). Rather, the book serves up a lighthearted fish-out-of-water tale, in which an innocent abroad finds himself, in turn, puzzled and exasperated by cultural oddities.
Right from the start, Levy is faced with such routine yet baffling challenges as squat toilets and the scrambling free-for-all that passes for queuing in China (“a Darwinian survival of the angriest,” in his words).
He gleefully mines local idiosyncrasies for their full comic potential. There’s the neighbor who wakes him every morning by meowing Sichuan Opera tunes while banging a gong. There’s the minor official who is shocked to discover that Americans know nothing of Guiyang, even though the city now boasts its own Walmart (in a warehouse right beneath People’s Park with its obligatory Chairman Mao statue). There’s the student who yells his answers at Levy as per the instructions of a popular local “Crazy English” guru who encourages Chinese learners to shout out sentences by way of gaining conversational confidence in the foreign vernacular.
Yet unlike many travel writers and expat authors, Levy doesn’t just treat locals as two-dimensional caricatures whose defining characteristic is their conformity to popular stereotypes. By befriending several locals, from fellow teachers to girls belonging to an impoverished ethnic minority, the Bouyei people, Levy seeks to see the world through their eyes. Inevitably, he rubs up against the contradictions that underpin life in China, where the phrase “with Chinese characteristics” turns familiar concepts – democracy, socialism, freedom – pretty much into their opposite.
China, he notices, is a country where party dogma condemns the material trappings of “soulless” capitalism even as party policy furthers the cause of rampant capitalism. As the nouveau riche of Beijing and Shanghai unabashedly flaunt their wealth, across the country’s vast hinterland hundreds of millions languish in grinding poverty. Frequently, Levy is confronted by the sad realities of moral ambiguity and intellectual stupor in a culture where the idea of meritocracy is the successful accumulation of guanxi: cultivating relationships with people of influence.
At the same time, rote learning in schools stifles creativity and fills students’ heads with suspect ideas. When Levy is asked to teach a graduate course on postmodern American literature, he wonders how his students with their limited English might handle novels by Nabokov, Pynchon and Heller. A fellow teacher is nonplussed by his doubts. “What is there for [the students] to discuss?” she tells the American. “They don’t know anything. You’re the expert, so you should just tell them what to think.”
“The Jewish People’s Secret for Success” is a bestselling self-help title in China.
Written by a former factory worker, it features snapshots of Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates as paragons of Jewish smarts and business acumen. The book’s success has clearly not suffered from its inclusion of the Russian leader and Microsoft’s chairman (one a Russian Orthodox, the other from a Congregationalist background) as members of the tribe.
The Chinese, Levy discovers, admire Jews for their storied business savvy. Whereas in much of the world Jewish success is merely seen by many as proving their avarice and perfidy, in China it’s endorsed as a virtue worth emulating. If there is anti-Semitism in the country, Levy clearly didn’t encounter any. A local bureaucrat even insists to the American Jew that the ultimate sign of China’s superiority over the US will be “[w]hen the Jews begin to immigrate here. [Then] we will know we have won!”
Shortly after he begins to teach at Guizhou University, Levy finds himself appointed honorary chairman of the ad hoc Jewish Friday Night English and Cooking Corner Club, set up by some local teachers and students. On Shabbat eves they gather in a small apartment, where Levy cooks matza ball soup and bakes challa for them.
On Yom Kippur, one of his Chinese friends even joins Levy in his fast as the plump woman is eager to marry her dieting regimen to a spiritual cause. Yet a Chinese woman fasting on Yom Kippur to lose weight, Levy, a self-described agnostic, points out, is “no more or less odd than a white guy from San Francisco lighting incense in his fancy loft apartment and practicing tai chi.” Or an Israeli backpacker seeking sudden Enlightenment at a Vipassana meditation retreat in Dharamsala in the Indian Himalayas, we might add.
Yet despite the implied premise of Levy’s book, which is played up by the cover design’s prominent skullcap with a Chairman Mao print on it, the Jewish element in “Kosher Chinese” is fairly tenuous. It’s more a conceit than an essential part of the narrative. The author’s Jewishness does lend an added dimension to his experiences in China, but it does not really define them. In fact, locals seem to view him far more as a typical American than as a religious minority, if only because of his primarily secular habits.
Equally, at times the book reads like repolished diary entries and its narrative arc doesn’t exactly make for high adventure: Levy teaches, observes, grapples with culture shock, adjusts, makes friends, and gets on the college’s basketball team as its token foreign star. What enlivens this fairly everyday story is the author’s self-deprecating wit (with liberal doses of scatological humor) and his tolerant humanism.
One afternoon during an unexpected detour on my way home in Bangkok, I found myself at an open-air market staring at a wire-mesh cage of beige and black cobras in listless heaps. I had been invited along by a friendly shoe repairman who plied his trade at a rickety curbside bench.
He pointed to a fawn-colored specimen. Obligingly, the snakes’ guardian, a mattedhaired young fellow, unlatched the lid, hooked the five-foot reptile with a fire iron, and plucked it out onto a tabletop. Suddenly, he cuffed the snake from behind.
The cobra spluttered, and rearing, spread its collar in warning. He smacked the irate reptile again. He did so, I was later told, to get the snake’s blood up – literally. With adrenalin pumping furiously through its veins, a cobra’s blood is believed to turn its most magically potent.
The fellow then grabbed the hissing animal by the nape and carried it over to an elderly Chinese man, who looped a string of kitchen twine around the snake’s neck and tied the reptile to a vertically mounted aluminum pole. With scalpel in hand, he proceeded to eviscerate the live serpent while carefully collecting its blood in a tumbler.
Adding a drop of honey and two parts whisky, he offered the concoction to me. My friend stood by, smiling benignly.
Snake blood, I learned, is believed to have wondrous curative effects and aphrodisiacal properties. It’s said to heal rheumatism, hemorrhoids, impotence, even lethargy. It’s also lauded as a marvelous pick-me-up, although I wouldn’t recommend it to the faint of heart. I braced myself and gulped it back.
The concoction tasted like certain tonic beverages: part sweet, part piquant. As for the observable curative effects, I cannot much vouch for them, apart from a short adrenalin rush triggered by imbibing the rather unappetizing cocktail.
In Laos, meanwhile, I was offered fried rat. In Vietnam I saw locals slurp turtle meat soup, while downing rice wine from a bottle with a large black scorpion marinating in it. In Cambodia I was present at a wedding feast that included crocodile meat jerky and finely seasoned water beetles.
I’ve sampled a few such treats and turned down most others. But never have I had to invoke religious dietary restrictions as an excuse to pass up on one.
Michael Levy has not been so lucky. One fine day in 2005, the young Jew from Philadelphia arrives in Unicorn Hill Village #3 (so numbered, one presumes, to distinguish it from several other Unicorn Hill villages) in central China for some acclimatization ahead of a two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in a nearby city. Almost immediately he is faced with the prospect of offending his hosts at a welcome feast by declining an invitation to munch on a local delicacy: fried millipedes licked off a sugar-coated stick. Levy begs off by explaining he’s a Jew, or rather wo shi youtairen (which translates as “I am a person who is special, too” in Mandarin).
The foreigner’s dietary peculiarities baffle his hosts, and so begin Levy’s adventures, culinary and otherwise, as an English teacher at Guizhou University in Guiyang, the capital of an underdeveloped, ethnically diverse province in southwestern China. Before long, the erstwhile vegetarian who once kept kosher and studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva succumbs to nibbling on pork dumplings and celebrating Hanukka at a restaurant called Dog Meat King, where he samples the trademark dish.
Clearly, “Kosher Chinese,” Levy’s account of his time in China, is not meant to be a treatise on the challenges of keeping kosher in a land where people will gladly eat “anything with four legs but the table” – as well as creatures with no legs (snakes), with two (birds), and with six or more (insects). Rather, the book serves up a lighthearted fish-out-of-water tale, in which an innocent abroad finds himself, in turn, puzzled and exasperated by cultural oddities.
Right from the start, Levy is faced with such routine yet baffling challenges as squat toilets and the scrambling free-for-all that passes for queuing in China (“a Darwinian survival of the angriest,” in his words).
He gleefully mines local idiosyncrasies for their full comic potential. There’s the neighbor who wakes him every morning by meowing Sichuan Opera tunes while banging a gong. There’s the minor official who is shocked to discover that Americans know nothing of Guiyang, even though the city now boasts its own Walmart (in a warehouse right beneath People’s Park with its obligatory Chairman Mao statue). There’s the student who yells his answers at Levy as per the instructions of a popular local “Crazy English” guru who encourages Chinese learners to shout out sentences by way of gaining conversational confidence in the foreign vernacular.
Yet unlike many travel writers and expat authors, Levy doesn’t just treat locals as two-dimensional caricatures whose defining characteristic is their conformity to popular stereotypes. By befriending several locals, from fellow teachers to girls belonging to an impoverished ethnic minority, the Bouyei people, Levy seeks to see the world through their eyes. Inevitably, he rubs up against the contradictions that underpin life in China, where the phrase “with Chinese characteristics” turns familiar concepts – democracy, socialism, freedom – pretty much into their opposite.
China, he notices, is a country where party dogma condemns the material trappings of “soulless” capitalism even as party policy furthers the cause of rampant capitalism. As the nouveau riche of Beijing and Shanghai unabashedly flaunt their wealth, across the country’s vast hinterland hundreds of millions languish in grinding poverty. Frequently, Levy is confronted by the sad realities of moral ambiguity and intellectual stupor in a culture where the idea of meritocracy is the successful accumulation of guanxi: cultivating relationships with people of influence.
At the same time, rote learning in schools stifles creativity and fills students’ heads with suspect ideas. When Levy is asked to teach a graduate course on postmodern American literature, he wonders how his students with their limited English might handle novels by Nabokov, Pynchon and Heller. A fellow teacher is nonplussed by his doubts. “What is there for [the students] to discuss?” she tells the American. “They don’t know anything. You’re the expert, so you should just tell them what to think.”
“The Jewish People’s Secret for Success” is a bestselling self-help title in China.
Written by a former factory worker, it features snapshots of Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Putin and Bill Gates as paragons of Jewish smarts and business acumen. The book’s success has clearly not suffered from its inclusion of the Russian leader and Microsoft’s chairman (one a Russian Orthodox, the other from a Congregationalist background) as members of the tribe.
The Chinese, Levy discovers, admire Jews for their storied business savvy. Whereas in much of the world Jewish success is merely seen by many as proving their avarice and perfidy, in China it’s endorsed as a virtue worth emulating. If there is anti-Semitism in the country, Levy clearly didn’t encounter any. A local bureaucrat even insists to the American Jew that the ultimate sign of China’s superiority over the US will be “[w]hen the Jews begin to immigrate here. [Then] we will know we have won!”
Shortly after he begins to teach at Guizhou University, Levy finds himself appointed honorary chairman of the ad hoc Jewish Friday Night English and Cooking Corner Club, set up by some local teachers and students. On Shabbat eves they gather in a small apartment, where Levy cooks matza ball soup and bakes challa for them.
On Yom Kippur, one of his Chinese friends even joins Levy in his fast as the plump woman is eager to marry her dieting regimen to a spiritual cause. Yet a Chinese woman fasting on Yom Kippur to lose weight, Levy, a self-described agnostic, points out, is “no more or less odd than a white guy from San Francisco lighting incense in his fancy loft apartment and practicing tai chi.” Or an Israeli backpacker seeking sudden Enlightenment at a Vipassana meditation retreat in Dharamsala in the Indian Himalayas, we might add.
Yet despite the implied premise of Levy’s book, which is played up by the cover design’s prominent skullcap with a Chairman Mao print on it, the Jewish element in “Kosher Chinese” is fairly tenuous. It’s more a conceit than an essential part of the narrative. The author’s Jewishness does lend an added dimension to his experiences in China, but it does not really define them. In fact, locals seem to view him far more as a typical American than as a religious minority, if only because of his primarily secular habits.
Equally, at times the book reads like repolished diary entries and its narrative arc doesn’t exactly make for high adventure: Levy teaches, observes, grapples with culture shock, adjusts, makes friends, and gets on the college’s basketball team as its token foreign star. What enlivens this fairly everyday story is the author’s self-deprecating wit (with liberal doses of scatological humor) and his tolerant humanism.
2012年1月3日星期二
It’s not easy to live with Hemorrhoids
Most often than not, people who have Hemorrhoids do not prefer to tell it to anyone and keep suffering silently. Hemorrhoids not only come with pain and bleeding but are a constant embarrassment to the sufferers. Both Internal hemorrhoids and External Hemorrhoids can be dealt with effectively if right treatment is sought in time.
External Hemorrhoids can be very painful and uncomfortable. The good news is that these types of Hemorrhoids can be treated with easy-to-use home remedies. Here are a few which one must know about:
Sitz Baths – Warm Sitz Baths can relieve pain and inflammation to a great extent. A person just need to dip their body torso in a bucket with hot water for nearly 20 minutes to get maximum benefit from this method. Common salt is recommended to be added to the water.
Topical Ointments and Creams – Various herbal products like ointments and creams are also useful. These may include analgesic creams as well. However one needs to ensure that he/she does not have any sensitivity to such products.
Ice Pack Application – Ice packs or a cold towel can be used to wrap around the Hemorrhoids to get instant relief from pain and swelling.
Application of Warm Water – Clean sponge soaked in lukewarm water if applied directly works well too. Not only is this method easy to do but this is also an effective alternative to Sitz Baths.
Medications for Inflammation – A few non-prescription drugs like ibuprofen and Advil that can help shrink off the Hemorrhoids. These medications can be bought from any nearby pharmacy without the need of a medical prescription.
If one is trying to find suitable Hemorrhoids Home Treatment, he/she can give the above methods a try and can seek relief. It is however very important to identify External Hemorrhoids Symptoms well in time before they turn into Thrombosed External Hemorrhoid.
For all those looking to Cure External Hemorrhoids – they should look for methods to treat them immediately. Besides the symptomatic treatment, one should lay stress on increasing the fluid intake to avoid constipation which is the main reason behind development of Hemorrhoids.
A fiber-rich diet can be helpful for all Hemorrhoids sufferers. Doing sitz baths, warm water soaks, cold compresses or ice application to the affected area can help soothe the area and substantially relieve the pain. Also do not hesitate or feel shy to seek medical help. One person not the only one suffering from this disease - there are millions across the world. And most importantly many get cured every day and lead a normal life thereafter - that is much happier.
If anyone is searching for a cure that can actually work, giving the above methods a try can be worthwhile.
Help for Hemorrhoids is a one-stop information for every aspect of usually less talked about disease, Hemorrhoids. Also called Hemroids or piles, it affects a lot of people across the globe. People tend to shy away from this disease however one has to take it head on to win over it. And it’s curable both with and without surgery.
External Hemorrhoids can be very painful and uncomfortable. The good news is that these types of Hemorrhoids can be treated with easy-to-use home remedies. Here are a few which one must know about:
Sitz Baths – Warm Sitz Baths can relieve pain and inflammation to a great extent. A person just need to dip their body torso in a bucket with hot water for nearly 20 minutes to get maximum benefit from this method. Common salt is recommended to be added to the water.
Topical Ointments and Creams – Various herbal products like ointments and creams are also useful. These may include analgesic creams as well. However one needs to ensure that he/she does not have any sensitivity to such products.
Ice Pack Application – Ice packs or a cold towel can be used to wrap around the Hemorrhoids to get instant relief from pain and swelling.
Application of Warm Water – Clean sponge soaked in lukewarm water if applied directly works well too. Not only is this method easy to do but this is also an effective alternative to Sitz Baths.
Medications for Inflammation – A few non-prescription drugs like ibuprofen and Advil that can help shrink off the Hemorrhoids. These medications can be bought from any nearby pharmacy without the need of a medical prescription.
If one is trying to find suitable Hemorrhoids Home Treatment, he/she can give the above methods a try and can seek relief. It is however very important to identify External Hemorrhoids Symptoms well in time before they turn into Thrombosed External Hemorrhoid.
For all those looking to Cure External Hemorrhoids – they should look for methods to treat them immediately. Besides the symptomatic treatment, one should lay stress on increasing the fluid intake to avoid constipation which is the main reason behind development of Hemorrhoids.
A fiber-rich diet can be helpful for all Hemorrhoids sufferers. Doing sitz baths, warm water soaks, cold compresses or ice application to the affected area can help soothe the area and substantially relieve the pain. Also do not hesitate or feel shy to seek medical help. One person not the only one suffering from this disease - there are millions across the world. And most importantly many get cured every day and lead a normal life thereafter - that is much happier.
If anyone is searching for a cure that can actually work, giving the above methods a try can be worthwhile.
Help for Hemorrhoids is a one-stop information for every aspect of usually less talked about disease, Hemorrhoids. Also called Hemroids or piles, it affects a lot of people across the globe. People tend to shy away from this disease however one has to take it head on to win over it. And it’s curable both with and without surgery.
2011年12月27日星期二
An evolution in guidelines for research on chimps
Chimps are about 96 percent genetically identical to humans, and like us they are self-aware enough to recognize themselves in a mirror.
But physically, we show some remarkable differences. They don't get the same kind of heart disease humans get. They develop some of the brain abnormalities associated with Alzheimer's disease, but not others. And despite being more sexually promiscuous than humans, they don't get the same sexually transmitted diseases.
They heal better than we do and don't get sleep apnea, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, or acne. They aren't vulnerable to cancers of the breast, lung, stomach, pancreas, colon, ovaries, or prostate.
Physician-scientist Ajit Varki says these differences can be as informative as the similarities. With new restrictions expected soon on the use of chimpanzees in research, he and other scientists spoke about some types of research not mentioned in a new report, which they hope will continue or even increase.
The changes are expected to follow an Institute of Medicine report, released earlier this month, that stressed that biomedical research should be necessary, behavioral studies should be noninvasive, and animals should be housed and cared for appropriately. It was hailed as a positive step by animal-welfare advocates, such as the American Anti-Vivisection Society in Jenkintown. (According to the society's Sue Leary, there are currently no research chimpanzees in Philadelphia.)
The report said that most current research on chimpanzees is unnecessary. In response, the National Institutes of Health has called for a moratorium on new grants for chimp research until the agency can implement IOM's recommendations. But the new guidelines are not specific enough for scientists to predict which research projects will get the ax.
Some types of research should actually increase, said Varki, including studies that monitor the health of chimpanzees in research centers and sanctuaries. These, he said, can be conducted as part of the chimps' health care and can potentially benefit chimps, since they suffer their own unique set of health problems.
His bottom line is that scientists shouldn't do anything to a chimp they wouldn't be able to do ethically to a human. Researchers, he said, should consider invasiveness as well as any potential benefit to the chimps. Those criteria were not mentioned with regard to biomedical studies.
Varki said there is also a great deal we can learn through autopsy, and yet many sanctuary-housed chimps are incinerated when they die. Sanctuaries are not funded for autopsies or providing samples taken during routine medical care. "It's a lost opportunity to learn about them and us," he said.
Our opportunity to study chimps is also winding down. They are no longer imported for government-funded research. Research chimps are not bred in captivity, and, according to one estimate, will die out by 2037. Chimps in the wild are endangered, and may disappear as well.
Until that time, there is much that can be learned about ourselves from studying chimp behavior, said Emory University psychobiologist William Hopkins. Our evolutionary cousins are helping us understand the nature of our own language, culture, self-awareness, and social relationships. Studying chimps is helping us understand what makes us human.
"They exhibit abilities that other animals don't, so they occupy this unique niche in terms of information about how the brain works and how cognition evolved," Hopkins said.
He also sees no ethical problems with the behavioral work he is involved in at Yerkes National Primate Center, near Atlanta. Some of the studies involve brain scanning, but chimps can't sit still in a scanner without sedation. While darts are sometimes used to anesthetize dangerous animals, Hopkins said workers at Yerkes have trained chimps to accept getting a shot. That limits stress, which improves the accuracy of the scanning.
He is now investigating a form of nonverbal communication called joint attention, which happens when an individual looks at something and others follow his gaze. About 75 percent of chimps do this readily and the remaining 25 percent do not, he said. Genetic studies show those failing to follow another's gaze tend to have an altered form of a gene that codes for a hormone called vasopressin, implicated in bonding and social behaviors.
He also has found that chimps have varied and complex personalities. Some are more extroverted than others, some are more conscientious, and some are more neurotic, said Hopkins. "There are Woody Allens of the chimp world," he said.
He said he believed that the new guidelines might have little effect on behavioral research, and that they were more likely to restrict invasive biomedical studies.
Whether such studies will continue may hinge more on the potential benefit to human health. The IOM panelists were divided over the use of chimps to study Hepatitis C vaccines. The disease kills people, and chimp research may advance the search for a vaccine. But the process - infecting healthy chimps and subjecting them to liver biopsies - is not something any scientist would do to humans.
Regardless of how NIH decides to go on this, there's an unmistakable trend away from invasive research. "Seventy years ago chimps were sent off into space, given lethal doses of radiation, or infected with leprosy or TB," Varki said. "That kind of thing is fading away."
Some of this change comes from our understanding of evolution. "Chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom," said NIH Director Francis Collins. The connection between evolution and animal rights was an underlying theme in the film Planet of the Apes, in which two chimp scientists became enlightened about human rights as they recognized an evolutionary relationship between themselves and human beings. Now we seem to be moving in the same direction.
But physically, we show some remarkable differences. They don't get the same kind of heart disease humans get. They develop some of the brain abnormalities associated with Alzheimer's disease, but not others. And despite being more sexually promiscuous than humans, they don't get the same sexually transmitted diseases.
They heal better than we do and don't get sleep apnea, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, or acne. They aren't vulnerable to cancers of the breast, lung, stomach, pancreas, colon, ovaries, or prostate.
Physician-scientist Ajit Varki says these differences can be as informative as the similarities. With new restrictions expected soon on the use of chimpanzees in research, he and other scientists spoke about some types of research not mentioned in a new report, which they hope will continue or even increase.
The changes are expected to follow an Institute of Medicine report, released earlier this month, that stressed that biomedical research should be necessary, behavioral studies should be noninvasive, and animals should be housed and cared for appropriately. It was hailed as a positive step by animal-welfare advocates, such as the American Anti-Vivisection Society in Jenkintown. (According to the society's Sue Leary, there are currently no research chimpanzees in Philadelphia.)
The report said that most current research on chimpanzees is unnecessary. In response, the National Institutes of Health has called for a moratorium on new grants for chimp research until the agency can implement IOM's recommendations. But the new guidelines are not specific enough for scientists to predict which research projects will get the ax.
Some types of research should actually increase, said Varki, including studies that monitor the health of chimpanzees in research centers and sanctuaries. These, he said, can be conducted as part of the chimps' health care and can potentially benefit chimps, since they suffer their own unique set of health problems.
His bottom line is that scientists shouldn't do anything to a chimp they wouldn't be able to do ethically to a human. Researchers, he said, should consider invasiveness as well as any potential benefit to the chimps. Those criteria were not mentioned with regard to biomedical studies.
Varki said there is also a great deal we can learn through autopsy, and yet many sanctuary-housed chimps are incinerated when they die. Sanctuaries are not funded for autopsies or providing samples taken during routine medical care. "It's a lost opportunity to learn about them and us," he said.
Our opportunity to study chimps is also winding down. They are no longer imported for government-funded research. Research chimps are not bred in captivity, and, according to one estimate, will die out by 2037. Chimps in the wild are endangered, and may disappear as well.
Until that time, there is much that can be learned about ourselves from studying chimp behavior, said Emory University psychobiologist William Hopkins. Our evolutionary cousins are helping us understand the nature of our own language, culture, self-awareness, and social relationships. Studying chimps is helping us understand what makes us human.
"They exhibit abilities that other animals don't, so they occupy this unique niche in terms of information about how the brain works and how cognition evolved," Hopkins said.
He also sees no ethical problems with the behavioral work he is involved in at Yerkes National Primate Center, near Atlanta. Some of the studies involve brain scanning, but chimps can't sit still in a scanner without sedation. While darts are sometimes used to anesthetize dangerous animals, Hopkins said workers at Yerkes have trained chimps to accept getting a shot. That limits stress, which improves the accuracy of the scanning.
He is now investigating a form of nonverbal communication called joint attention, which happens when an individual looks at something and others follow his gaze. About 75 percent of chimps do this readily and the remaining 25 percent do not, he said. Genetic studies show those failing to follow another's gaze tend to have an altered form of a gene that codes for a hormone called vasopressin, implicated in bonding and social behaviors.
He also has found that chimps have varied and complex personalities. Some are more extroverted than others, some are more conscientious, and some are more neurotic, said Hopkins. "There are Woody Allens of the chimp world," he said.
He said he believed that the new guidelines might have little effect on behavioral research, and that they were more likely to restrict invasive biomedical studies.
Whether such studies will continue may hinge more on the potential benefit to human health. The IOM panelists were divided over the use of chimps to study Hepatitis C vaccines. The disease kills people, and chimp research may advance the search for a vaccine. But the process - infecting healthy chimps and subjecting them to liver biopsies - is not something any scientist would do to humans.
Regardless of how NIH decides to go on this, there's an unmistakable trend away from invasive research. "Seventy years ago chimps were sent off into space, given lethal doses of radiation, or infected with leprosy or TB," Varki said. "That kind of thing is fading away."
Some of this change comes from our understanding of evolution. "Chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom," said NIH Director Francis Collins. The connection between evolution and animal rights was an underlying theme in the film Planet of the Apes, in which two chimp scientists became enlightened about human rights as they recognized an evolutionary relationship between themselves and human beings. Now we seem to be moving in the same direction.
2011年10月30日星期日
Blood in stool is a reason to see doctor
Most people have experienced blood in their stool. The simple fact is that when there is blood in the stool, this is an abnormal finding. A person that does experience any blood in the stool should see their family doctor.
When a person does experience blood, they need to think back as to whether or not there was any other symptom associated with the blood. It is important to determine if there is a small amount of blood, was it bright red, it is a dark red, did it occur spontaneously, was there any straining associated with it, was there any abdominal pain associated with it. These things can help your family doctor determine what the source is.
One of the leading causes of blood in the stool is a condition known as hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids can be internal or external. This can only be determined by a person's physician. Hemorrhoids are swollen veins that occur in and outside of the anal canal. When the veins are swollen on the outside of the anal canal, they are known as external hemorrhoids. When they are on the inside of the canal, they are known as internal hemorrhoids.
The leading cause of hemorrhoids are too much pressure on the veins. It is known that diarrhea or constipation can lead to this strain and can cause hemorrhoids. Pregnancy is yet another cause of hemorrhoids, especially during the last few months of the pregnancy. Just being overweight is known to cause hemorrhoids as well.
The most common symptoms associated with hemorrhoids are bleeding, itching, and rectal pain.
If a person is experiencing hemorrhoids, they should see their doctor.
This is a common condition that usually is treated medically without the need for surgery.
When a person does experience blood, they need to think back as to whether or not there was any other symptom associated with the blood. It is important to determine if there is a small amount of blood, was it bright red, it is a dark red, did it occur spontaneously, was there any straining associated with it, was there any abdominal pain associated with it. These things can help your family doctor determine what the source is.
One of the leading causes of blood in the stool is a condition known as hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids can be internal or external. This can only be determined by a person's physician. Hemorrhoids are swollen veins that occur in and outside of the anal canal. When the veins are swollen on the outside of the anal canal, they are known as external hemorrhoids. When they are on the inside of the canal, they are known as internal hemorrhoids.
The leading cause of hemorrhoids are too much pressure on the veins. It is known that diarrhea or constipation can lead to this strain and can cause hemorrhoids. Pregnancy is yet another cause of hemorrhoids, especially during the last few months of the pregnancy. Just being overweight is known to cause hemorrhoids as well.
The most common symptoms associated with hemorrhoids are bleeding, itching, and rectal pain.
If a person is experiencing hemorrhoids, they should see their doctor.
This is a common condition that usually is treated medically without the need for surgery.
2011年8月14日星期日
Anatomy of hemorrhoids
The arteries supplying blood to the anal canal descend into the canal from the rectum above and form a rich network of arteries that communicate with each other around the anal canal. Because of this rich network of arteries, hemorrhoidal blood vessels have a ready supply of arterial blood. This explains why bleeding from hemorrhoids is bright red (arterial blood) rather than dark red (venous blood), and why bleeding from hemorrhoids occasionally can be severe. The blood vessels that supply the hemorrhoidal vessels pass through the supporting tissue of the hemorrhoidal cushions.
The anal veins drain blood away from the anal canal and the hemorrhoids. These veins drain in two directions. The first direction is upwards into the rectum, and the second is downwards beneath the skin surrounding the anus. The dentate line is a line within the anal canal that denotes the transition from anal skin (anoderm) to the lining of the rectum.
Formation of hemorrhoids
If the hemorrhoid originates at the top (rectal side) of the anal canal, it is referred to as an internal hemorrhoid. If it originates at the lower end of the anal canal near the anus, it is referred to as an external hemorrhoid. Technically, the differentiation between internal and external hemorrhoids is made on the basis of whether the hemorrhoid originates above or below the dentate line (internal and external, respectively).
As discussed previously, hemorrhoidal cushions in the upper anal canal are made up of blood vessels and their supporting tissues. There usually are three major hemorrhoidal cushions oriented right posterior, right anterior, and left lateral. During the formation of enlarged internal hemorrhoids, the vessels of the anal cushions swell and the supporting tissues increase in size. The bulging mass of tissue and blood vessels protrudes into the anal canal where it can cause problems. Unlike with internal hemorrhoids, it is not clear how external hemorrhoids form.
The anal veins drain blood away from the anal canal and the hemorrhoids. These veins drain in two directions. The first direction is upwards into the rectum, and the second is downwards beneath the skin surrounding the anus. The dentate line is a line within the anal canal that denotes the transition from anal skin (anoderm) to the lining of the rectum.
Formation of hemorrhoids
If the hemorrhoid originates at the top (rectal side) of the anal canal, it is referred to as an internal hemorrhoid. If it originates at the lower end of the anal canal near the anus, it is referred to as an external hemorrhoid. Technically, the differentiation between internal and external hemorrhoids is made on the basis of whether the hemorrhoid originates above or below the dentate line (internal and external, respectively).
As discussed previously, hemorrhoidal cushions in the upper anal canal are made up of blood vessels and their supporting tissues. There usually are three major hemorrhoidal cushions oriented right posterior, right anterior, and left lateral. During the formation of enlarged internal hemorrhoids, the vessels of the anal cushions swell and the supporting tissues increase in size. The bulging mass of tissue and blood vessels protrudes into the anal canal where it can cause problems. Unlike with internal hemorrhoids, it is not clear how external hemorrhoids form.
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