Reflux Esophagitis and Bad Teeth

Many people have bad teeth, mostly due to bad eating habit, poor oral hygiene etc. etc. But did you know that reflux easophagitis or gastroesophageal reflux disease can cause bad teeth and even it can lead to tooth loss. Well if you think about it, its not surprising. Let me explain you why.

Well from the time our teeth appear, they are in constant state of demineralisation and remineralisation which is usually balanced by many factors. One of such factor is pH of our mouth which is slightly alkaline and it is maintained by saliva. When this balance is disturbed then demineralisation of teeth occur leading to tooth caries.

So in people with severe reflux esophagitis the pH of mouth becomes acidic due to massive acid reflux. This leads to increased demineralisation of teeth leading to caries and ultimately leading to teeth loss if not treated in time.

Treatment of this condition would be to treat your primary condition first i.e. reflux esophagitis. Visit your dentist immediately if you notice such condition.

Hearing Loss and Headphones: Is There a Connection???

Now a days with the invention of portable music players, ipod, it is more sort of became a habit for many to wear headphones while working, walking, cooking, sleeping and sometimes even during pooping. They keep listening to their personalised music play list for hours and after some time they start having ear aches. So they start thinking that may be these headphones are bad and should be changed. Did you ever think that your ears can get fatigued so called listeners fatigue due to long hours of listening to music. Well it is a phenomenon by which your in ear headphones can harm your ears.

How do headphones harm your ear: Well to understand that we need to understand what is stapedial reflex. Stapes is a bone in our middle ear (smallest bone in our body) which transmits the sound via oval window to the inner ear from outside. Now this bone is connected to wall of middle ear by a muscle called stapedial muscle. Whenever we hear a loud noise this muscle contracts and pulls the stapes bone away from inner ear so that amount of sound entering the inner ear is decreased. This is a normal protective mechanism.

Now when we start listening to music via our headphones, specially the in ear ones, which totally clog the external ear canal, the sound seems a bit loud to our inner ear. So it sends a protective signal to muscle, which in turn contracts and thereby decreases the loudness reaching the inner ear. We think that the volume is low and we crank up the volume. This leads to increased workload to the muscle and at last it gets fatigued. Now when it gets fatigued the muscle no more contracts leading to all of the loud noise reaching to inner ear. This causes inner ear cells to die and leads to hearing loss.

What to Do??

• Well 1st of all control the loudness of the device
• Limit the usage of the device
• Buy a good pair of noise cancelling headphones so that you don't have crank up the volume to listen to your songs or play lists. 

Hope you liked the article here. Please do add any other information or suggestion in form of comments to help people live healthier.

Health Effects of Noise Pollution

There are numerous effects of noise on health as it is one of the most influential factor of our life now a days. How much influencial?? Well read on to find out how much noise affects your daily life, your mood, your cardiovascular health, your learning capabilities. It basically affects almost every aspect of your life. Hope that we can understand these effects and do what we can decrease these problems so that we can live happier and healthier.

1. Hearing Loss: Well this is by far the most well known affect of noise on health. It usually causes high frequency hearing loss.

2. Sleep Disturbances: Yes noise can sleep disturbances which in turn leads to increased stress, leading to decreased social and household harmony as youll remain irritated if you cant get enough sleep. And stress is another factor there.

3. Dysgraphia or Learning Impairement: Noise leads to decreased attention and impairs ability to focus. These two have vital role in learning. So if it is impaired your learning ability will be impaired.

4. Cardio-Vascular Problems, like Hypertension

5. Annoyance

6. Vertigo, speech disturbance, fatigue etc...

There are many other effects of noise which can lead to serious health problem.

Noise Induced Hearing Loss: A Major Issue in Modern World

Hi friends, in today's world where science has advanced so much, along with its pros it has given us many cons.One of the major cons is the noised pollution like from cars, aeroplanes, industries with lots of noise. Apart from deafness or hearing loss noise has many other bad affects on our health.

1. Traffic induced noise is the most common form of noise in countries like India ( from where I belong). Most of these people driving cars are so impatient that they cant even stop at the signal and also they do not obey traffic rules. Most of the time they are in hurry because they are late. Anyways these cars are major source of noise pollution along with air pollution. You can avoid these when you obey the traffic rules and may be if leave for work on time (for Indians).

2. Other source of noise pollution is the mills. There are a few mills or industries where there is a lot of noise pollution. For these type of pollutions we have some rules in India like these workers should not work more than 5 days week for max 8 hrs per day.

3. The loudspeakers which we enjoy now a days is now becoming very common source of noise pollution as they are getting better and cheaper. We like to enjoy loud music for hours without having any thoughts of what other people might be experiencing due to this noise. It is our responsibility that we control that noise so that other may live in piece.

Most of these factors are manageable by us. So should try to mange the situation. Because if we don't care for our surrounding nobody will.

Ways to Gain Weight

Now in this era of modern fast foods and obesity there are people who are trying to gain weight. The problems with obesity is so much that we forget to talk about underweight or skinny people. Now here in this article i am trying to mention some of the ways to gain weight.

To gain weight you need to make your eating habbit a bit smarter. Hmm... what do i mean by that... I mean you need to calculate the amount calories you eat, the frequency of your meal, what type of diet you are including in your meal i.e protiens, carbohydrates or fats. Are you exercising or not.

1. Frequency of meals is very important. You can divide your meals in six parts... three large meals each alternating with small meals. You should plan this in such a way that you never remain hungry for more that 4-6 hrs.

2. Exercise particulary the anaerobic ones i.e the resistant exercises help to build muscle mass... so it is very important that you do some exercises. This will help you to become muscular rather than overweight with nothing but fat which would again be a problem and youll start looking for ways to loose weight :D.

3. Do include high protien meal after the exercises which will help the muscles to get the resources to expand. Some of these food include red meat, soya, pulses like dal, fish, low fat dairy products, almonds etc.

4. Doing all these please Do Stay Away From Junk Food as they containg nothing but excess amount of trans fat which are bad for health.


Do give your feedback about the article in form of comments. Thank you for giving your valuable time in this reading this article.

Food That Burn Fat

Now a days obesity is a very big problem, with all those junk fast food around which don't do any good to health but they are certainly rich in high cholesterol and trans fats which are very bad for health and especially for heart. Fast food should certainly be avoided. There are many food that can help you loose weight and keep you fit. Some of these food are listed below:

1. Citrus Fruits and other fruits that are rich in vitamin C. Vit C is an antioxidant that helps in maintaining the lipid profile by decreasing the amount of oxidised LDL in the body. Oxidised LDL tends to get deposited in the blood vessel leading to diseases like atherosclerosis which is the basic foundation for other diseases like myocardial stroke and angina and some other diseases. It also certainly does help to reduce fat in the body. Be sure to include cirtus fruits like oranges, lemon, kiwi in your diet.

2. Vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, spinach are very low in carbohydrate content and thry also stop coversion of glucose to fats in the body.

3. Spices like turmeric, chillies and cardamom. Turmeric with its active component curcumin helps in reducing bad cholesterol and decreases blood clotting on regular intake.
Cardamom is a thermogenic herb that increases metabolism in the body and helps burn fat. It is believed that it also has soothing affect on digestive system and helps in propper digestion of food.
Chillies have capsaicin that increases metablic rate of the body and thus helps in burning fat.

4. Garlic: Garlic has a sulphur containing compound called allicin which has antibacterial actions, and also decreases unhealthy fats.

5. Nonvegetarians should avoid eating red meat as it contains a lot of fat. They should rather eat chicken, which is white meat and contains very less fat.

6. Eggs have dietary cholesterol which are important for the body as it reduces endogenous cholesterol production. It is rather good to eat one or two eggs a day than not having at all.

7. Pulses like dal, jwar, bajra etc are low on fats and highly nutrtious.

8. Honey It is a home remedy for obesity. It mobilises the extra fat deposits in the body allowing it to be utilised as energy for normal functions. One should start with about 10 grams or a tablespoon, taken with hot water early in the morning.


Please do try to add these food items in your diet as they have multiple properties i.e. not only fat lowering but also most of them help in improving circulation in body. Do add suggestions in form of comments what else to added in the list make the list complete.

Stress and Acne: Are They Related???

Here in modern world, stress is the most common problem a person would have because it leads to so many other diseases the list of which would never be complete. It influences health in a large spectrum of ways. Recently in a study it has been found that it can flare up an acne reaction in an already acne prone patient. Although the exact mechanism is not know, it increases the receptors in skin for different stress hormones. These hormones increase the sebum production. Eventually sebum mixes with dead skin and block the pores leading to acne cyst or comedone formation. The study was done on few college students (around 20-22) with acne during exam period and increased acne pimple was noted.

Stress doent lead to new acne formation, but flares up the old ones. These acne cant be treated only with stress relieving unfortunately, but some anti acne cream like benzoyl peroxide etc or isotretinion tablet for resistant cases are used.

Stress: How It Affects Sex Life

Stress is a major problem in this modern era, especially with our hectic work environment. Stress can affect many aspects of our life and cause many illnesses like insomnias, stomach problems, mental problems. Not only these but stress has major effect on sexual life also.

How does stress affect libido:

When we are under stress our body releases different hormones like cortisol, adrenalin which prepare our body for fight or flight reaction. Cortisol has many effects on our body one of which is decreased libido that is decreased desire for sex.

Apart from physical stress there is mental stress which is more common now a days and is increasing more and more. Mental stress can be related to work, money, how to pay your monthly electricity and phone bill and more importantly your Internet and Cable Tv bills :D.These stresses lead to low mood and ultimately to depression. In this case you are not able to concentrate on what you are doing, and also you loose interest in almost everything else which you enjoyed earlier including sex.


What to do??

Hmm... this is a difficult part as there are thousands of solutions available and still remain ineffective as they entirely depend on individual ability to cope with stress. Its only you who can relieve your stress. Others can only give advices. As of me all I can say that you can relieve your stress by doing something which you like, something which cheers you up even in sad mood, whichever activity it is, it will surely make you stress free. Rest all those yoga, excercises and everything else depends on you, if you wanna do it... do it, if dont then no harm done. I hope i helped. Enjoy life..:)

Earwax: A Common Problem

Excessive earwax production is a fairly common problem in day today life. It may cause some hearing loss if it gets impacted, may cause infections, irritation in ear.

Ear wax is made up of secretions from sebaceous gland ( which are present in the outer 1/3 rd of external auditory canal), cerumin, hair, dird, desquamated cellular debris. It plays a protective barrier role in ear canal. It lubricates the ear canal and entrapes any foreign material that happens to enter the ear canal.

 Normally a small amount of ear wax is produced which later dries up and is expelled out of ear due to movements of jaw. But in some people there is higher production of wax than normal which forms a plug. It may later dry up and form a hard impacted mass.

These people may complain of decreased hearing (as impacted wax causes a hearing loss of 30db), ringing in ear. They might develope some sort of infection.

Dont use ear buds to clean these impacted wax ( infacted ear buds should usually be avoided in general) as it may push the wax further inside the canal.

Do consult your doctor. He may advice to go through a procedure called Syringing in which luke warm water is injected in the canal an when water comes out it takes the wax plug out with it.

In case of hard impacted wax plug which is hard to remove by syringing it is softened by sodabicarbonate ear drops, hydrogen peroxide, liquid paraffin, or olive oil. Paradichlorobenzene 2% ear drop is available commercially.

Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: Dos and Donts

GERD gastroesophageal reflux disease, this disease is fairly common in the population particularly in obese people. This disease usually occurs when the lower esophageal sphincter tone is decreased leading to reflux of acid from stomach to esophagus. Few symptoms of this disease are heartburn, belching, asthma, acid reflux in mouth, bad teeth. I am not going to discuss about the whole disease here i am going to give a few lifestyle modification advices which will help you to reduce the symptoms.

Dos:-

• Elevate the head end of your bed to around 20-30 degrees. This helps to keep the food in the stomach due to gravity during sleeping.
• Divide your meals in several small parts during the whole day rather than taking one large meal. E.g. youcan divide your lunch into four separate meals 2hrs apart.

Donts:-

• Dont go to bed immdiately after a meal.
• Dont eat a heavy meal as it will not allow the lower esophageal shincter to close properly.
• Dont drink tea, coffee or eat chocolates too much as these affect the normal physiology of lower esophageal sphincter and reduce its force of contraction.
• Dont drink lots of water just after the meal. You should wait for atleast 45 mins to drink water after meals.
• Do not smoke or atleast try to quit as nicotine also decreases lower esophageal shincter tone.

Hope this information helps you keep yourself  heathy . Do read some other articles on the blog.

Dos and Donts in Kidney Stones

While many patients suffer from kidney stones in the world and are prescribed for medications no dietary advices are given to these patients like which food will increase the process of stone formation and will lead to recurrence of kidney stones after their removal and which diet leads to decreased stone formation even spontaneous dissolution of the stones. So here is an advice on dietary modifications in kidney stones.

Dos:-

• Drink plenty of water around 8-10 glasses per day
• Eat fruits and vegetables rich in citrate (vit C) as they lead to decrease precipitation of calcium oxalate like orange juice and coconut water rich in potassium and other electrolytes
• Drink Cranberry Juice as it decreases the chances of urinary infections due to stones which can be disastrous
• Eat fruits rich in vit B6 like banannas

Donts:-

• Avoid soyabeans and nuts
• Avoid vegetables like cauliflower, brinjal, tomatoes, beatroots, dark leafy vegetables
• Avoid nonvegetarian food like red meat, fish
• Avoid dairy products
•  Avoid carbonated drinks like coca cola, pepsi etc as they are rich in oxalates leading to stone formation

This dietery modification usually helps to reduce kidney stone formation i  patients who are prone recurrent stone formation. Also after the removal of kidney stones the contents of stones are analyzed and dietary modifications are adviced according to that.