More and more medical studies have shown a strong link between the stomach bug, Helicobacter pylori, and stomach cancer. Scientists now have new evidence to show that stomach cancer can be prevented by treating and eradicating the stomach bug.

H. pylori is known to cause as much as 80% of stomach and duodenal ulcers and was previously thought to be linked to stomach cancer. Now a recent study has indirectly proven this to be true. This study treated 2 groups of stomach cancer patient who have previously been treated for their cancer. One group was given the treatment to eradicate H. pylori while the other group was not. The group that was treated reduced their chance of a recurrence of stomach cancer by as much as 67%.

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Treating stomach bug to treat stomach cancer

A new study has found the link between sleep and memory. Good sleep boosts your ability to learn and retain memory. Apparently, adequate sleep is necessary for you to assimilate and hard-wired new tasks that you have learned and harden your memory so that it does not fade away easily.

So if you are facing some problem with learning or remembering, make sure you get enough quality sleep. Then observe and see if you learn and remember better. You might be surprised by the results.

However, the study is still in its preliminary stage. It has not determined how many hours is necessary for a good sleep yet. More needs to be done.

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Our immune system plays an essential role in our fight against cancer.

In most instances, our body mount an attack against cancer cells by producing immune cells that can fight these mutated cancer cells. However, the amount of these immune cells are too small to be effective. What happens if we could increase these cancer fighting cells?

In a recent experiment, scientists remove these immune cells from a patient suffering from advanced melanoma, a type of skin cancer, and cloned them in the billions before infusing them back into the patient.

The result?

The cancer disappeared after two months and the patient is still cancer free after two years.

However, the scientists involved are quick to caution that this method is only practical for certain types of cancer, and may not work for all.

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If you have a gay brother or a lesbian sister, how would you react?

Many people have had the dilemma of confronting this gay issue in the family. As society becomes more open and accepting, gays and lesbians who were once living their lives secretly are now openly declaring their sexual preferences. This means families of gays and lesbians will have to confront this issue head-on.

A recent study on the brain of gay men and lesbian women may help shed some light onto the issue. The study shows that gay men have brain similar to straight women and lesbian women have brain similar to straight men, which may explain their sexual preference.

A notable comment in this study is that whatever changes in the brain may have happened very much earlier, either while in the womb or in early infancy. This would contradict the belief that gay men and lesbian women were somehow conditioned to lean towards same sex partners by their environment. Rather, their preference may have been inborn.

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A 10 year old boy had an “incident” at the pool he was swimming in, was able to walked home with his mom, chatted with her, then felt tired and went to sleep, and died in his sleep.

Doctors determined that the boy had died of drowning because of water in his lungs.

Apparently the boy had inhaled water into his lungs while playing and swimming at the pool but did not appear to have difficulty in breathing at the time. However, he soon complained of extreme tiredness and went to sleep and never woke up.

“Dry drowning”, as this case is classified under, is an extremely rare presentation of drowning. In most cases of drowning, the victim immediately suffers from difficulty in breathing due to the lack of oxygen being absorbed through the lungs to the blood stream. In dry drowning, this difficulty in breathing is not obvious. Instead, the rarer symptoms of extreme tiredness or change in behaviour - also indicating lack of oxygen to the brain - is experienced later. The fact that the 10 year old boy “soiled” himself should alert us to this sudden change in behaviour.

If diagnosed early, oxygen can be forcefully pumped into the lungs to allow oxygen to seep through to the blood stream, giving the lungs time to recover.

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Resveratrol is a chemical that is found in red wine. Recent studies have shown that it may contain powerful anti-aging properties.

One study noted that people taking red wine tend to stay healthy despite taking questionable diets. In addition, certain aging processes that comes with old age can be slowed down by resveratrol.

This finding has triggered quite an interest in the commercial viability of resveratrol.

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A recent study shows that mediterranean diet that is rich in fruits and vegetables, cooked in olive oil, may prevent Type 2 Diabetes by up to 83%. The finding is, however, from just a preliminary study as more studies need to be done with larger groups of people.

The finding is not surprising as olive oil is already known to help reduce blood sugar and lower blood pressure.

For the full report on this study, go here.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) of USA recommends that people above 60 years of age be given the vaccine against shingles. It is estimated that the vaccine can reduce the risk of shingles in those above 60 by 50%.

Shingles present as vesicular rashes on the body, usually along the path of a nerve. It happens in those who had a history of chicken pox when the chicken pox virus, varicella zoster, does not get totally eliminated. Instead, the virus continues to survive in the nervous system. When the patient becomes depressed immunely, usually as a result of old age or certain diseases, it appears as shingles.

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A recent study has found that vitamin D deficiency in breast cancer patients increases the risk of metastasis. Apparently, breast cancer patients with vitamin D deficiency has a 94% risk of spread and a 73% risk of death compared to those without the deficiency. Moreover, researchers found that more than 75% of patients with breast cancer have vitamin D deficiency at the time of diagnosis.

These findings may lead to a new look at the role vitamin D plays in the development and/or prevention of breast cancer.

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Babies and infants are now routinely given vaccines against meningitis. So far, 3 types of vaccines are available against childhood meningitis - H. influenza, pneumococcal and meningitis c. Vaccine for Meningitis B, which causes the most cases of meningitis, has so far not been available, until now.

A preliminary study on the use of a new vaccine against meningitis b has shown promising result. However, more studies need to be done for its true benefits to be realised.

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