Category Archives: Medical Tidbits

Some Easy ways to keep you in shape

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Some Easy ways to keep you in shape
  • Take the stairs instead of the elevators. Climb a little faster.
  • Park your car few blacks farther away. Walk this extra distance to work, to friend’s home or when on shopping.
  • Take a walk before lunch.
  • Avoid meeting friends on lunch or coffee. Instead have dates to take a walk or go dancing.
  • Take your dog for a walk. If you don’t have one, consider getting one.
  • Do not sit at a place for long hours. Break between prolong hours of work or while seeing TV. Walk to neighbour’s house or to co-worker’s desks. While talking on the phone for long period  try not to sit, pace around. It’s good to have a cordless phone and keep moving around while talking.
  • If you have to stand at a spot, you may exercise leg muscles by marching or rise to tip toes.
  • Wash and iron your clothes.
  • Mow the lawn. If you have power mover change it for a push model.
  • Gardening is a very good exercise. Digging, weeding, raking, cutting and hauling all build stamina..
  • Roller skating, jump rope are very good exercise. Swim or a bike ride or a row boat outing on a lake.
Calories Burned in Daily Activity Per Hour

  • Sitting, watching TV – 100
  • Standing – 140
  • Making Beds – 135
  • Housework – 150-250
  • Strolling – 210
  • Raking Leaves- 220
  • Lawn mowing – 250-400
  • Gardening – 300-450

Copperhead snake

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Copperhead snake
It is characterized by the rich copper colour with wide alternating bands that extend completely around even the underside. They can be expected to be seen in gardens, flower beds, and around houses.

Venom is Haemotoxic

Due to their usual small size, the copperhead’s bite is rarely fatal. Most adults of this type range in size from about 18 to 26 inches in length. It is a dangerous snake whose venom attacks the blood, but it is less aggressive, with shorter fangs and less potent venom.

When approached, they will either move away quietly or lay motionless, relying on camouflage to protect them. Occasionally, they will vibrate their tails. Bites usually occur when people unknowingly step on or touch unseen snakes.

It is found in hilly country from Massachusetts to northern Florida and westward to Illinois and Texas.

Broad triangular head, vertically elliptical pupils and a heat sensitive pit between each eye and nostril.

Mating takes place in spring and fall and females give birth to 4-8 young in August and September. Adult females usually give birth every two years.

  
 

Snake Bite

Moccasin

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Moccasin
Water moccasin or cottonmouth, common name for a poisonous aquatic snake, one of the pit vipers of the viper family. It is called cottonmouth because the lining of its mouth is white. It lives in swamps.

Venom – Vasculotoxic

It is a slow-moving snake with hollow fangs that inject a toxin destructive to red blood cells. The bite, however, is rarely fatal, although it is painful and can cause local tissue damage.

Brown or olive, with broad black bands across its body, the water moccasin averages 1.2 m (4 ft) in length. It feeds on fish and amphibians.

  
 

Snake Bite

Sea Snake

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Sea Snake
SEA SNAKE, common name for members of a family of poisonous water snakes. Sea snakes inhabit tropical waters from the Persian Gulf to the southwest Pacific Ocean; they are particularly abundant in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Usually about 1.5 m (about 5 ft) long, some species may reach 2.7 m (9 ft).
Sea snakes have no gills and must rise to the surface for air, but they can remain underwater for several hours, obtaining dissolved oxygen from water that they swallow and eject.They feed on fishes and seldom attack humans unless threatened.		  

Snake Bite

Gene for Longevity ~ Could there be one ?

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Gene for Longevity ~ Could there be one ?
Scientists are in a search for a gene that may be a deciding factor for a long life at least in some. In this pursuit Harvard scientist Tom Perls feel that they have found such a gene, a discovery they hope could ultimately be used to make a pill to lengthen life.

The scientists feel that they have strong evidence that an important longevity gene may be located in a small stretch of chromosome 4. The function of the gene is unknown and its possible that more than one gene may be involved. It is thought that the gene may be somehow conferring resistance to disease. That is why many centenarians remain remarkably healthy.

Conventional wisdom that diet, exercise, avoidance of smoking and other good habits prolong life is certainly true for most of us but there may be  something like a ‘genetic booster rocket’ that propels a very small percentage of humanity from 80 years-old  stage to centenarian status.

There is much evidence contrary to the postulations in favour of the longevity gene. A large body of scientific research suggests that environment counts for more. In 1993, a study of 600 Danish twins found that gene account for only 30 % of the reason that some people live to the ripe old age. But that may not be the last word.

But many researchers were surprised to find that many of the centenarians were not particularly free of vices. Many eat fatty foods regularly, and some were couch potatoes. French women Jeanne Calment, the oldest person in documented history when she died at an age of 122, were a smoker.

Four families in New England were found to have unusual cluster of centenarians. In one family, eight of the ten siblings lived to be at least 90 years old. The odds of that happening by chance are too remote. Similar clusters of centenarians were found in many families. Part of the clustering may be explained by the fact that the siblings share similar upbringing and habits. But some of the families included centenarians who lived far apart. In some families the spouses sharing many habits did not live particularly long.