Vitamin-D Important for your health

Vitamin D can be found in small amounts in a few foods, including few fish. To make vitamin D more available, it is added to dairy products, juices, and cereals that are then said to be “fortified with vitamin D.” But most vitamin D – 80% to 90% of what the body gets – is obtained through exposure to sunlight. Vitamin D can also be made in the laboratory as medicine.

Vitamin D is used for preventing and treating rickets, a disease that is caused by not having enough vitamin D (vitamin D deficiency). Vitamin D is also used for treating weak bones, bone pain, bone loss in people with a condition called hyperparathyroidism, and an inherited disease in which the bones are especially brittle and easily broken. It is also used for preventing falls and low calcium and bone loss in people with kidney failure. Vitamin D is used for conditions of the heart and blood vessels, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It is also used for diabetes, obesity, muscle weakness, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, bronchitis, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and tooth and gum disease.

It is estimated that around 75% of the Indian population has Vitamin D levels less than normal. But without a blood test, there is just no way to know for sure if the vitamin D levels are low. Low Vitamin-D conditions are a growing concern in people around the world. It is important and safe that one gets checked-up for such deficiencies.

People who are at a general risk of Vitamin-D deficiency are People:

• with naturally very dark skin
• with little or no sun exposure
• who wear covering clothing for religious and cultural reasons
• who deliberately avoid sun exposure for cosmetic or health reasons
• at high risk of skin cancers and who therefore avoid exposure to the sun
• hospitalized or institutionalized for long periods (Old people)
• with a disability or chronic disease
• In occupations with little sun exposure, such as office workers, taxi drivers, factory workers or night-shift workers.

Therefore, low Vitamin D can put a person at risk for various diseases and Vitamin D is considered as a “Universal Risk Factor”. It is as important as sunlight, water and food. Everyone should have their Vitamin D levels checked, including children.

Know your Family Medical History

Your family medical history, sometimes called a medical family tree, is a record of illnesses and medical conditions affecting your family members. You inherit half of your genetic profile from each parent. Along with the genetic information that determines your appearance, you also inherit genes that might cause or increase your risk of certain medical conditions. A family medical history can reveal the history of disease in your family and allow you to identify patterns that might be relevant to your own health.

Your doctor might use your family medical history to:

•  Assess your risk of certain diseases
•  Recommend treatments or changes in diet or other lifestyle habits to reduce the risk of disease
•  Determine which diagnostic tests are appropriate for you
•  Determine the type and frequency of screening tests
•  Identify any other possible conditions that could arise
•  Identify other family members who are at risk of developing a certain disease
•  Assess your risk of passing conditions on to your children

Your family might want to work together to develop a family medical history. Consider kicking off the project at a family gathering, such as a holiday or reunion. Keep in mind, however, that some loved ones might be uncomfortable disclosing personal medical information — perhaps due to guilt, shame or a reluctance to face painful memories. You might want to consult family documents, such as existing family trees, baby books, old letters, obituaries or records from places of worship. Public records — birth certificates, marriage licenses and death certificates — are usually available in county record offices. If you or your family members maintain electronic personal health records, use them.

 If possible, your family medical history should include at least three generations. Compile information about your grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren. For each person, try to gather the following information:

Sex, Date of birth, Ethnicity Medical conditions, Mental health conditions, including alcoholism or other substance abuse, Pregnancy complications, including miscarriage, stillbirth, birth defects or infertility Age when each condition was diagnosed, Lifestyle habits, including diet, exercise and tobacco use, For deceased relatives, age at the time of death and cause of death, Pay special attention to conditions that develop earlier than usual, such as high blood pressure in early adulthood, or conditions that affect multiple relatives. 

Give your doctor a copy of your family medical history and ask him or her to review it with you. Your doctor might ask you questions for clarification and can help you interpret the relevance of certain patterns in your medical history, including the need for preventive measures or screening tests. Going forward, update your family medical history every couple of years. Be sure to share updates with your doctor.

Are you prepared for your Health?

Have you ever had to face a situation where you were un-prepared for a function or a party or un-informed guests to your house? Don’t you just wish they had just informed earlier so that you could make yourself presentable or your house neater? Well, something similar goes into the thought process of our health and the un-invited or un-informed health issues that just over take our lives and we just wish if only we had a clue some time earlier. This is the reason why the typical ancient saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure”. It may sound cheesy to most of us, but what if it was to relate to you sooner or later?

The idea is simple. To be prepared, you need to be aware and for that you need to check yourself periodically. If your health condition has not shown any doubtful symptoms, the best time is the beginning of a year. By having periodical check-ups, you can be prepared two or more steps ahead of your un-healthy conditions if any. Of course, unexpected circumstances are part of life and are often unavoidable. Sometimes sudden accidents and illnesses can destroy our ambitions and seriously reduce our quality of life.

For this reason, it is extremely important for us to do everything in our means to mitigate the risks of the unknown. By educating ourselves as much as we can about our health and taking the proper measures to take care of our bodies, we can greatly increase our chances of avoiding or at least correcting and managing health problems as soon as they begin to surface. It’s found that tobacco, poor diet, physical inactivity, and misuse of alcohol have been estimated to be responsible deaths annually. With sound health, we are capable of fully enjoying the company of our friends and family as well as achieve our career and personal goals. The checkup is truly a powerful aid for us to live longer, healthier and happier lives. So, treating a condition at its early stage is easier and preventing it is easier than getting a disease and taking medications for the same which are mush severe and probably harmful.

New Hormone that controls supply of iron in RBC production discovered

A research team from UCLA has discovered a new hormone called erythroferrone, which regulates the iron supply needed for red blood-cell production. Iron is an essential functional component of hemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen throughout the body. Researchers found that erythroferrone is made by red blood-cell in the bone marrow in order to match iron supply with the demands of red blood-cell production. Erythroferrone is greatly increased when red blood-cell production is stimulated, such as after bleeding or in response to anemia.

The erythroferrone hormone acts by regulating the main iron hormone called Hepcidin. Hepcidin controls the absorption of iron from food and the distribution of iron in the body. Increased erythroferrone suppresses hepcidin and allows more iron to be made available for red blood-cell production. Lack of Iron causes anemia and iron overload accumulates in the liver and organs, where it gets toxic and causes damage.

This discovery could also lead to treatments for other common anemia-related conditions associated with chronic kidney disease, rheumatologic disorders and other inflammatory diseases. In these conditions, iron is "locked up" by the effect of the hormone hepcidin, whose levels are increased by inflammation. Erythroferrone, or drugs acting like it, could suppress hepcidin and make more iron available for red blood-cell production. Studies are being carried out to understand the role of the new hormone in various blood diseases and study the molecular mechanisms through which erythroferrone regulates hepcidin.

Jet-lag and Blood Donation

A new Austrian research has come out with a study that, frequent flyers that undergo Jet-lag and people who work under Shift are prone to Heart diseases. According to them, it is because of the effects that it creates on the Red blood cells in our body. But this can be taken care of by simply donating blood and allowing the production of fresh young red blood cells.

This finding came about a research under the leadership of Dr. Margit Egg (University of Innsbruck), where they experimented on an organism called zebra fish, a model organism which, like humans, which is active during the day. This fish was made to be active on an alternate basis varying from 7 hours to 21 hours, which is similar to the shift work time patterns followed in an industry. Through this they found out that, the fish which were made active on shift basis showed higher numbers of aged red blood cells, which accumulated in the blood vessels. It is come to the understanding that, these aged blood cells get accumulated in our spleen and liver since they are less flexible. Normally, these aged blood cells are removed from the blood by itself, but the Jet-Lag has disrupted this process and researchers are yet to find out the reason why.

These aged blood cells are prone to create clots and direct us towards heart diseases like heart-attacks and other cardio-vascular diseases. It also reduces the oxygen carrying capacity in the blood. The best solution is to generate new blood cells in the human system and the best way to do this is by donating blood on a frequent basis. Studies are carried out to find out if Jet lag may affect our physiological processes as well.

Gift of Living

Ever wanted to save somebody’s life or at least be a part of the whole generous cause? Something that each one of us can do and are capable of doing would be to give what we have in abundance, and that is nothing else than BLOOD. The Gift of Blood is called the Gift of Life.

Since blood is not something that we see on a daily basis, one may not think or bother to understand what blood is actually about unless in case of an injury or God forbid, an accident. Now we know that our heart pumps the blood required for our body. Blood provides oxygen and nutrients to every cell of our body.




There is no substitute for human blood and for this very reason there are certain concerns regarding blood:

• It is estimated that every 2 seconds someone needs blood. 
• The blood type most often requested by hospitals is Type O. 
• Sickle cell patients can require frequent blood transfusions throughout their lives. 
• More than 1 million new people are diagnosed with cancer each year. Many of them will need blood, sometimes daily, during their chemotherapy treatment. 
• A single car accident victim can require as many as 100 units of blood 
• A single pint of blood can save up to 3 lives. 

And these concerns can and would go on with the changing scenario. There is an existing need for Blood at various hospitals and blood banks. One does not lose blood or become incapable of producing or our heart does not stop pumping blood just because you donate some of it.The different blood groups existing are A, B, AB and O.

Donating Blood is a noble cause. Doing so, we are helping other people in a not so harmful way and saving lives as well. As many as 3-4 lives can be saved when you donate your blood a single time. Imagine the no of lives that could be saved by the no of donations you can make. Blood is valuable and is always in need. You also get other benefits like a free health check-up; reduce the risk of heart diseases, burns calories, etc; One can donate blood for themselves as well in case one is in an accident or surgery and requires blood at some later stage. This is usually done when the blood group is rare and the procedure to do this is the same. If you are healthy and fit, don’t think twice, because it’s about your health and others lives. Take a chance.

An Accurate Blood Report or Food Report?

Life as we know exists due to one major aspect that is very much vital for each and every one of us. Blood is one of those substances that connect each and every organ of our body. This is the reason why anything at all in the blood will affect our whole body and disrupt our entire living mechanism.

Keeping this fact in mind; it is necessary that we all have our blood tested once in a while. Our changing lifestyle and daily food habits have knowingly or un-knowingly opened doors for a lot of unwanted substances into our precious blood. And there exists many types of danger that one cannot be completely aware about in their whole life-time.

Now since you have decided to get your blood tested, let us understand how one must prepare themselves for a Blood Test. For starters, there exist many kinds of blood tests. This would depend on the reason why one does a blood test. For e.g. After you read this article, a sudden realization that you are not aware about the details of your blood, so you go in for a General Blood Test. Such General Blood Tests usually requires a person to Fast for a certain period prior to the test.

Now you may wonder why? Or how is that going to make a difference?

As mentioned in the earlier paragraph, our food habits have huge contribution to the blood. Every solid or liquid that we consume goes partly to our blood, now that can include the very juice, soft drink, milk, etc. you just had. The measurement of blood sugar (glucose) and some blood lipids (fats and cholesterol) are common examples.

Let’s imagine a situation wherein you just had some form of meat for the first time ever in your life, that is rich in fat and that contributes to the cholesterol level in your body. You immediately go for a blood test and what’s the result?...your blood report will show that you maybe dieing of cholesterol and may have to be admitted and treated immediately or Doctors may state that you are prone to heart diseases, when in reality it was the meat that you just had over the delicious lunch at you friends place.

 Surprised?? Well, there have been many cases where some doctors and various Laboratories do not give much importance to emphasizing the necessity of fasting before a blood test only because they would presume that you might be aware about the same.

Generally food requires a minimum amount of time to get settled and dissolved into our body and blood and show a case or normalcy in our entire system. The constituents of the food or drink you last consumed would stay strongest and reveal unnecessarily.

A blood test is done to understand how your blood is doing on a normal day and for that your entire system needs to settle down at a normal state which is why you need to Fast or in simple terms not eat or drink anything (apart water in some cases), till your blood is withdrawn, for a particular period that should and would be mentioned by your doctor.

• When you fast, you refrain from eating or drinking anything (except water) for a good period of 8-10 hours generally and otherwise specified by your doctor.

• You are allowed to take your medications unless interrupted by your doctor.

• Nothing else is permissible during this period (no coffee, no smoking, and no alcohol, not even chewing gums because even the slightest juices can bring about variations in the blood).

• Try and rest before you blood test.

• Once your blood is withdrawn you can immediately consume some juices and have some snack as per your preference.

• It is advisable to schedule your blood test for early morning, so that the hours your go without food can be used up by your Good Night Sleep.

• Always remember, Fasting is usually considered for an accurate blood report and for further treatments. If in doubt, feel free to ask your doctor regarding anything.