Do You Want To Conquer Fear?

Fear is a natural instinct designed to help us in survival. But in modern age, our fears can become an impediment to lead a normal and successful life.

Image Courtesy:Pixabay

Unnecessary fears can lead to anxiety. Anxiety is defines as: Anxiety is a psychological, physiological, and behavioral state induced in animals and humans by a threat to well-being or survival, either actual or potential. It is characterized by increased arousal, expectancy, autonomic and neuroendocrine activation, and specific behavior patterns.

Fear makes the body release few hormones, increases heart rate and chronic fear is detrimental to good health.
Chronic fear can cause gastric problems like ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome, cardiovascular damage, weakening of immunity. Not to mention the psychological consequences. 

How do we overcome fear?

One of the exciting new research done on mice and which can be followed by us is "fasting"!

Yes, fasting tends to reduce fear. Isn't it a wonderful thing that with additional benefits to health from fasting, now we know that it can help us to overcome fear! No wonder, major civilizations have fasting as an integral component of life! 

How fasting helps?

Excerpt from NEJM 

"Fasting can be understood as enhancing the survival of the species by allowing more risk taking (less fear) when the animal is hungry and in need of food. But if the findings translate to humans, they may have important implications for behavioral treatment of anxiety and new pharmacotherapies. Fasting before an exposure therapy session might enhance exposure effects and would be relatively easy to translate from “bench to bedside.” In addition, better understanding of the feeding circuit might result in new anxiolytic medications targeting this circuit. "

Read more here...http://www.jwatch.org/na38388/2015/07/15/no-lunch-before-your-cbt-session?ijkey=oMfsLzPQUizNk&keytype=ref&siteid=jwatch&variant=full-text


The other traditional recommended ways of reducing fear can be read here

Do You Self-Diagnose Using Google? Then Watch This Video

We are in a revolutionary era where people prefer to search "Google" for everything. We trust google more and have abdicated our thinking to it. No denying that "Google" has made our life much easier.

But how safe and accurate is diagnosing oneself using google or any other symptom checker tool?

What is their accuracy?

When should you visit a doctor?

The study done by BMJ has few answers. Googling your symptoms to get answers is the most unreliable. Symptom checker do better! There is nothing like visiting a doctor for she/he is human and fallible!

Watch the video to learn more!

What Is A Calorie?

100 calories from vegetables is not the same as 100 calories from potato chips or a soda drink?

Learn in this video about calorie and how it affects us.

Any questions, you are welcome to ask us!

Death Of A Young Professional_A Husband_A Father_Who Should Be Blamed?

Since two days a post on Facebook is being shared widely. It is anguish, anger of a young wife who recently lost her husband allegedly due to medical negligence.
To prevent misinterpretation, we copy-paste the post as it is below.

Image Credit:Flickr_Ian Mckellar

"We say that doctors are angels sent by god to save human life. But for me the same doctors has come as demon in my life to ruin it in pieces.

Due to few doctors negligence I lost my husband’s life just like a water bubble. Few days back we were a happy family with ambition and future plans for our upcoming life.

But who knew life threatening danger was waiting on our way to shatter my family.

My Husband Girish had a heart blockage which we never knew until the last day of his life just because the doctor could not find it.

On 13th June after lunch he was playing with our 6 month old baby and suddenly he started vomiting then complained of stretching of throat and jaw muscle, breathing problem little pain in heart. As we stay in BTM, Bengaluru, nearest hospital was Gangothri hospital so I took him there. Attendant doctor checked him and asked us to do an ECG and blood test.

Both were done immediately. Then they admitted him and gave saline and few medicines. The main doctor of hospital Dr K.N.N Pai came for rounds and checked him and said this is nothing but dehydration and throat infection he will be alright soon.

I have no idea that whether he had checked the ECG report or not. That night we stayed in the hospital. Till then Girish was telling he was not filling comfortable as his arms are paining and he is not able to breathe properly. I went asked the attendant doctor about the ECG and blood report.

He said everything seems "Normal". He gave him pain killer and sleeping tablets and said you will be alright just try to sleep.

The next day morning 10 Am Dr K.N. N Pai again visited and checked Girish and tasked how he is feeling. Girish told he is little better as he took the pain killer medicines.

Dr said today they will discharge him and to take rest at home for 2 to 3 days he will feel batter. They gave some antibiotics and pain killer tablets and discharged him.

14th June 2 pm we came home. After we came home daily Girish was getting fever and complaining of breathing problem. Again 17th June evening I took him to same hospital to check why his fever is not coming down. For our surprise Dr K.N.N Pai refused to check him as we didn’t have appointment.

i requested them that its urgent as my husband was admitted here only. They said we can check with other doctors if we want. So we checked with general physician there and showed the previous reports. Still they could not find what the problem with Girish is and asked us to do a blood test. Test done in 1 hour and showed some infection.

Till that time the doctor (Dr.Rakhi) was gone and other general doctor came (attendant doctor on 13th June night) saw the blood report and told its nothing but throat infection and wrote high power antibiotics and sleeping tablets. I gave him those medicines after dinner but that night Girish could not sleep for a second also.

Next day morning i.e 18th June i took him to a private clinic in indira nagar with the help of my brother. There the doctor was shocked to see the ECG report taken on 13th June and asked us why nobody has not seen this ECG report before. It was clearly mentioned there that Girish got his first attack that day.

We were dumb stuck with his words. Dr immediately referred us to go to Chinmaya missin hospital and get admitted. In CMH, the doctors told it’s too much delayed but still we will try our best and did angioplasty same day.

After 2 hours of operation Girish was fine but suddenly his condition got worst. Doctor called us and told chances of his survival is 1% only god can help him. At 11 pm night Girish left this world leaving us alone. The heart blockage was 100% so blood flow to few area was totally blocked and the cells were died off in that area.

As a result after clearance of the blockage also the cells could not accept the blood and his heart ruptured. If the doctors would have noticed the ECG report the same day of attack Girish would have survived.

Sorry for such a long post but i don’t want anyone else suffer like me so wanted all of you to know about it. Whenever any of your near and dear ones complain of breathing problem, jaw and throat muscle stretch, arms getting pain then immediately check with cardiology specialist without any delay. Because it’s a sign of heart attack.

I am going to put a case on Gangothri hospital for a such a negligence act. But mean time I want everybody to spread this massage as much as possible so that no one else should suffer like me in future.

Many people already asked if he had any BAD HABITS.. want to clarify right away.. NO he didn't have ANY bad habits"

Our condolences are with the family. It is an irreparable loss and we pray that the family has the strength to tide over the crisis.

We will defer in this post regarding the rights and wrongs, medical negligence, procedure done and risks associated etc.  We appreciate that the "wife" is eager to educate the public about other symptoms of heart attack. She also mentions that her husband did not have bad habits.

Now the question arises, what caused him to have the heart attack in the first place at such a young age?

1. Does he have a family history?

2. Did he have work pressure?

3. Did he use to sit for more than 6 hours a day? Which is considered to be equivalent to smoking a packet of cigarette.

4. Had he undergone any preventive health check up?

5. Was his diet healthy?

A young man, who probably is around 30 years old suffers a heart attack. Now what is the risk of suffering a heart attack at age of 30 years?

Indians are at an increased to suffer heart disease at an young age. According to  India Today-Saffolalife Study 2011 on 46,000 urban Indians shows that 78 per cent of men between 30 and 34 run the risk of a heart attack. And their hearts are ageing faster than their real age.

Let us look at the above questions?

1. Did he have a family history? If yes, did he do anything about it?  Link to read more 

2. Did he have too much of work pressure? Did he have a bad boss? Read more

3. Did he used to sit for more than  6 hours? Read more

4. Was his diet healthy? Read more  

We agree that this young man's life could have been saved. He might have had any of the above risks or none at all. It is our responsibility to prevent such deaths in the future.

Our anguish is from having seen few of our patients and colleagues having suffered the same..read here

It is time we need to prevent the failure at multiple levels. 

The aim of this post is to educate others about the potential lurking dangers. 

Isn't prevention better than cure?

Link to original Facebook post here. 

Other Readings

Indians Heart Disease -Nature vs Nurture

Are you at risk for Sudden Death?

Men at risk

Why You Need Second Opinions

Medical science has become very advanced and complex. Each speciality is having multiple sub-specialities. While as 90% of your ailments are taken care by a general physician or your family doctor, few require second opinions!
Here we share few stories of how second opinions made a difference!

Image courtesy: Sketchport

1. Recently we received an MRI  report of 70 year old man which showed disc bulge in the spine. He was apparently advised surgery for back pain. Unfortunately, the report also mentioned a solitary suspicious lesion on dorsal vertebrae and right kidney hydronephrosis with right ureter narrowing. The gentleman needs further investigation like PSA test and MRI pelvis to rule out Prostate Cancer. In absence of second opinion this person would have undergone unnecessary surgery and also a delay in correct diagnosis.

2. In another case, we got a request for home visit by Orthopedician. When we enquired for details, we came to know that the elderly gentleman was having lot of thigh pain and found it difficult to stand up from sitting position. His history indicated that he had heart problems one and half month back and was taking medications for the same. He was on Rosuvastatin 60 mg to keep his cholesterol low but unfortunately Rosuvastatin at such high doses causes muscle damage. His symptoms were because of the side effect. We recommended stopping Rosuvastatin and advised him to meet his Cardiologist. He improved dramatically with the stopping of Rosuvastatin.
Take home message from this: Have a family physician, seek second opinion!

Mail us with your story or concern and we will be happy to help you! 

Sugar Sweetened Beverages

Are you found of drinking soda and sugar sweetened beverages?

Not withstanding the other harms, almost 2 lakhs deaths per year can be attributed to sugary drinks.

“Many countries in the world have a significant number of deaths occurring from a single dietary factor, sugar-sweetened beverages. It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., senior author of the study and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University in Boston. 

Read more here ...http://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/sugary-drinks-linked-high-death-tolls-worldwide