Drug addicts: they are victims and they need rehab center

As the development in the technology field grows, the way people who do the crimes gets more sophisticated. The drug distribution for instance is getting harder and harder to track bay the authorities. It has a direct bad effect to the young generation. Because those drugs dealers are keeping their eyes on the young people to be their consumers.

Drug abuse has been around for years or even centuries, but it’s getting worse now. More and more people get addicted to it. And someone who gets addicted to it has no idea how to get rid of it. Therefore they need such kind of addiction treatment. By this treatment they are programmed to loose the addiction from their body. To do this sort of treatment they need rehab center. Alcohol rehab center is also now available so people with alcohol problem which can be suffered by drug users at the same time can be treated in this rehab center.

Drug rehab can be found in many places, especially in big cities like cities in U.S. Drug rehabilitation center is dedicated for those with drugs and alcohol problem. This effort is truly noble because the patients do not know what to do. It’s our responsibility to save them by signing them up in the rehab center. by saving one life, we are actually saving the mankind as a whole.

Video game helps young cancer patients take meds

Playing a specially designed video game can help adolescents and young adult cancer patients adhere more closely to their prescribed treatment, according to a report in the journal Pediatrics.

"Targeted video games can help improve the lives of young people with cancer, most importantly improve their adherence to their treatment," Dr. Pamela M. Kato of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Adherence is a major problem in this age group, Kato and her colleagues point out in their report. While dramatic improvements in survival have been seen in pediatric cancer patients, they add, death rates among teens and young adult patients have not followed this trend. "They're kind of a tough group that gets a little bit lost in the system," Kato said.

To investigate whether playing a video game might help, the researchers randomly assigned 375 male and female patients 13 to 29 years old being treated at centers in the US, Canada and Australia to play "Re-Mission" or "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb," a standard video game not focused on cancer care.

In Re-Mission (http://www2.re-mission.net), developed by HopeLab, a Redwood City, California-based non-profit company, players control a tiny robot called Roxxi who moves around in a 3-D environment representing the inside of the body of a young cancer patient. Players can use Roxxi to blast cancer cells and control side effects, and winning the game requires taking chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics, using relaxation techniques, eating food, and keeping up with other types of self-care.

Patients in both groups were asked to play their assigned game for at least an hour a week, and 22 percent of those in the comparison group and 33 percent of those in the Re-Mission group actually did so over the course of the 3-month study.

Electronic pill monitoring showed a 16 percent rise in antibiotic adherence in the Re-Mission group, who took 62.3 percent of their total prescribed antibiotic medications, compared to 52.5 percent for the Indiana Jones group. Adherence to a standard chemotherapy drug was also higher in the Re-Mission group.

Playing Re-Mission was tied to improvements in cancer-related knowledge as well, the authors note.

According to Kato, the game worked because it gave the patients a new way of looking at their illness; for example, thinking of chemo as a way to combat cancer, rather than as an annoyance that makes their hair fall out. "To me it was kind of changing their reward system for taking chemo and giving them a different insight," she explained.

The game can be downloaded free from the Web site by patients and medical professionals.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, August 2008.

Delay in body growth linked to prostate cancer

Boys who reach their adult body size in their early 20s may be more prone to prostate cancer later in life than their peers who achieve their adult size during adolescence, Italian researchers report.

"The study has underlined the potential effect of the 'timing' at exposure of sexual and (body growth) variables on the risk of prostate cancer," senior investigator Dr. Paola Muti told Reuters Health.

In the journal Urology, Muti of the Italian National Cancer Institute, Rome and colleagues note that adolescence is a critical period in prostate development.

In the new study, the researchers compared early body and sexual development in 64 men who developed prostate cancer and 218 similar men who did not. The age at which the subjects first started shaving was used to gauge sexual development, while the age that maximum shoe size was reached was used to assess body development.

On average, the prostate cancer patients reached their maximum shoe size at 20 years of age, roughly 2.5 years later than their peers without the cancer. By contrast, the age at first shaving was comparable in both groups, roughly 18 years.

The findings also showed that individuals who rated themselves as being thinner than their peers at 10 to 13 years were more prone to prostate cancer than those who rated themselves as being comparable or heavier than their peers.

These results, the team concludes, suggest "that risk determinants operating early in life affect men's subsequent prostate cancer risk."

SOURCE: Urology, July 2008.

Cancer patients often use "complementary methods"

In addition to conventional treatments aimed at improving survival, most cancer patients use "complementary methods" (CMs) to relieve symptoms and side effects and increase overall wellness, according to findings from a large study.

"We receive thousands of phone calls each year about CMs at the American Cancer Society (ACS) national cancer information center, and our web pages on CM are among the most popular on our website," lead author Dr. Ted Gansler told Reuters Health.

"The very large number of randomly chosen volunteers in the ACS Studies of Cancer Survivors and the availability of personal, medical, and psychological information provided an opportunity to study this topic in very precise detail and in some new ways," he added.

The study by the Atlanta-based research team included 4139 adults diagnosed with one of 10 common cancers who were surveyed 10 to 24 months after diagnosis. The results are reported in the medical journal Cancer.

Of 19 CMs included in the survey, the most frequently cited was prayer/spiritual practice, reported by 61 percent of respondents. Use of relaxation, faith/spiritual healing, and nutritional supplements/vitamins were each reported by more than 40 percent. Between 10 and 15 percent were involved in meditation, religious counseling, massage, and support groups.

Female gender, younger age, white race, higher income, and educational achievement were all predictive of using CMs. However, African Americans had a greater tendency to use "mind-body methods," including spiritual practices.

"One result we find especially interesting is the substantial differences in use of CMs by gender and type of cancer," Gansler said. The gender gap was particularly wide for energy medicine (tai chi and yoga) and for massage, while CMs in general were much more popular among breast and ovarian cancer survivors than among people with other cancers.

"Although complementary care providers at major cancer centers have conducted research on quality-of-life outcomes, I'd like to see that even more," the researcher continued.

"Learning more about which CMs help cancer survivors with pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, overall psychological adjustment, and overall physical functioning is very feasible," Gansler noted. "That information could increase attention and resources for providing CMs that are helpful and reducing the time and money spent on ones that are not."

For example, "recent studies suggest that acupuncture helps relieve some symptoms of cancer and some side effects of treatment, but it was used by only 1.2 percent of participants in our study."

"On the other hand, vitamins seem to be very popular," Gansler said. "Nonetheless, with the exception of people with clinically diagnosed deficiencies or those unable to eat enough, there is little evidence that high-dose vitamins help people with cancer and there is increasing evidence that high doses of some vitamins can be harmful."

SOURCE: Cancer, September 1, 2008.

Herbal life for your health

Without questions health is one of the most precious things we have in our life. Without it we will never really enjoy life, therefore it is important to be able and understand to maintain our health. Many experts have dedicated their lives researching the best method to maintain human’s health. Some others do the entire noble job finding the healing method and medicine to give hope to the million patients hoping for miracle. Health has something to do with what we eat and how our body responds to it.

Herballife diet is one of a method people around the world are now trying to apply in their life. Some surprising news saying that they have a better health condition after few weeks and months using herbal life. They say it help them in such a way that make them feel healthier. There are a wide range of herbal life products available around the world. We can find the right information about a particular product through The Herbal Nutrition Network. This is a Herbalife international network that will keep you well-informed about herbalife weight loss program. In order to have the products we can easily obtain the products through Herbalife Independent Distributor.

Luxury Drug Rehab Clinic

Drug issue has been around us for quite a long time. And it’s now getting more attention from many people arranging from the parents to doctors, social workers, drug addicts, and artists. This problem is significantly increasing nowadays. These phenomena make more and more people getting involved in solving the problem. There have been many drug rehab established recently. They are dedicated for those who desperately in need of treatment. There are many kinds of drug rehabs available for the drug addicts. So if we have a relative or two, we really need to take them to the right drug rehab clinic so as to enable us choose the sort of treatments that fit the need of the patients. Knowing the kinds of treatment a single drug rehab has is very important in order not to sign up in a wrong drug rehab clinic. Beside the kind of treatment we should fully understand before signing up we also need to consider other factors like sociological, geographical things because it has a significant influence to the success of the treatment.

As is it mentioned above there are many drug rehabs which are ready to give the best treatment to the patients. All states in the US for example have at least one representative drug rehab clinic. Some states even have more then one drug rehabs. It basically depends on the policy of particular states. California drug clinic for instance has a pretty much different drug rehab compared with the drug clinics exist around the United States. It has a specific treatment offered to the drug addicts and will help the patients with specific treatment.

The treatments offered in the California drug rehab arranging from medicinal and clinical to psychotherapy. These kinds of therapies absolutely will smoothen the process of healing and recovering the drug addicts. Besides the treatments they offered medically, they also have a luxury. Luxury in this case is very important since it has something to do with the psychological state of the drug addicts and of course the social workers or the professionals working in the rehab clinic. With the luxury they offered, patients and the family feel they are on the right track in fighting their problems.

The question asked by many is probably ‘why bother providing luxury?’ the answer is simply because the treatment is obviously a painful process, so it is a really good idea to provide them with a little comfort so as to make them stronger and will finally finished the rehabilitation in time.

In nutshell knowing the right treatment for a particular patient and understanding the facilities offered by a certain drug rehab clinic will significantly help the drug addicts get rid of their problem.

Radiation Therapy Prolongs Life In Men With Recurrent Prostate Cancer

Previous studies of radiation therapy for recurrent prostate cancer found that it reduced disease progression, but this study demonstrates that it significantly prolongs survival, as well, according to Bruce J. Trock, Ph.D., associate professor of urology, epidemiology, oncology, and environmental health studies, and director of the Division of Epidemiology in the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins.

"What this new study tells us is that even men with aggressive disease that has recurred after surgery appear to benefit from radiation therapy. It also means that we may be able to give radiation selectively to those who are really likely to benefit from it," advises Trock.

"I found the results of this study remarkable," says Patrick C. Walsh, M.D., University Distinguished Service Professor of Urology at the Brady Urological Institute. "Previously, we believed that these men -who have aggressive disease defined by a rapid doubling of PSA in six months or less -- had distant metastases and would not benefit from any form of local salvage therapy."

PSA, or prostate specific antigen, is the blood-based protein shed by the organ that signals the likely presence of cancer. Rapid rises in PSA levels after surgical removal of the prostate signal the recurrence of cancer and often convey a poor prognosis.

Approximately 30 to 40 percent of men with high-risk tumors experience no recurrence of their cancers after surgery and can be spared the side-effects, that is, urinary and bowel problems, that may come with radiation. So, the Johns Hopkins researchers were looking to determine whether radiation could improve survival in men with recurrent prostate cancer and the optimal timing for the therapy.

In the new study, the researchers reviewed records of 635 men who developed recurrent cancer following radical prostatectomy at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions between June 1982 and August 2004. Of these, 397 received no salvage radiation therapy, 160 received only salvage radiation, and 78 received both salvage radiation and hormonal therapy. Median follow-up was six years after recurrence.

Among men who had received radiotherapy for prostate cancer recurrence, the probability of surviving 10 years was 86 percent, compared to 62 percent among those who did not have radiation. For patients with rapidly growing tumors, defined by a PSA doubling time of less than six months, the benefits of salvage radiation therapy existed regardless of Gleason score, a numerical value that measures prostate cancer aggressiveness.

"This review suggests that even patients with aggressive cancer at the time of surgery not only benefit from salvage radiation therapy, but also actually live longer without a second prostate cancer recurrence," says Theodore L. DeWeese, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences. "This is the most important news for this group of patients in a long time."

DeWeese suggests that radiation oncologists and urologists now consider salvage radiation therapy for a broader group of patients with recurrent prostate cancer following surgery.

In addition to Trock, Walsh and DeWeese, the research team included Misop Han, M.D., of the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins; Stephen J. Freedland, M.D., of the Surgery Section, Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Duke Prostate Center, Departments of Surgery and Pathology, Duke University School of Medicine; Elizabeth B. Humphreys, M.S. of the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins; and Alan W. Partin, M.D., Ph.D., of the Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins.

Funding for this study was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute, gifts by Dr. and Mrs. Peter S. Bing, the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program, and the American Urological Association Foundation's Astellas Rising Star in Urology.

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