Numbness and Tingling

Numbness and tingling are common symptoms, which could be due to a problem in nerves, blood supply or other systemic diseases.

Numbness and tingling are abnormal sensations felt usually in the limbs. The most common reason for numbness and tingling, which has been experienced by one and all, is keeping a limb in a particular position for a prolonged period of time. This feeling, referred to as “pins and needles,” subsides on moving the limb. It occurs due to pressure on the nerves as well as reduced blood supply to the limb due to compression of blood vessels.

Some cases of numbness and tingling are due to an underlying disease, which requires treatment. The cause of numbness and tingling is diagnosed based on the history and physical examination of the patient. The doctor may also ask for certain tests depending on the possible cause. 

Nerve–related Causes

 Causes related to peripheral nerves may be diagnosed with an electromyogram or nerve conduction study. 

 A cause suspected in the brain or the spinal cord may need a CT scan or MRI. 

 Blood tests may be necessary to diagnose causes like vitamin B12 deficiency. In addition, disease conditions like liver disease, kidney disease and diabetes can also be detected through blood tests.

 Examination of the CSF (the fluid that bathes the brain and the spinal cord) may be necessary to diagnose conditions like Guillain Barre Syndrome.

 A nerve biopsy may be useful to study any structural damage to the nerves.

The causes of numbness and tingling that involve nerves include:

 Peripheral neuropathy: Peripheral neuropathy is a condition where the peripheral nerves are affected by a disease condition. Common causes of peripheral neuropathy are:

 Herpes zoster: Herpes zoster is a viral infection of a nerve, caused by a virus called varicella zoster. Besides tingling and numbness, herpes zoster causes pain along the affected nerve. Small fluid-filled vesicles also develop along the nerve.

 Diabetes: Long-standing and uncontrolled diabetes can affect nerves, resulting in peripheral neuropathy. The patients may experience muscle weakness, pain, tingling, numbness and loss of sensation in the area of distribution of the affected nerve.

 Vitamin B12 Deficiency: Vitamin B12 is required for nerve function; hence deficiency of this vitamin affects nerve function and may result in tingling and numbness. This problem is more commonly observed in individuals on a strict vegetarian diet. Deficiency of other B vitamins can also affect nerve function to some extent.

 Use of certain medications: Medications like INH and rifampicin affect nerve function resulting in peripheral neuropathy.

 Exposure to toxic substances: Chronic exposure to toxic substances like lead, arsenic, mercury, and thallium result in damage to nerves. Besides, smoking and alcohol consumption could also affect nerves, resulting in peripheral neuropathy. Alcohol can cause direct damage as well as through a reduction of B complex group of vitamins.

 Carpal tunnel syndrome: Carpal tunnel syndrome is a condition where the nerves supplying to the hand are compressed at the wrist. Thus, the patient suffers from numbness, tingling and weakness of the muscles of the hand. Similarly, compression of the tibial nerve at the ankle results in tarsal tunnel syndrome, with similar symptoms in the feet. 

 Tumors: Benign as well as malignant tumors can press on nerves resulting in tingling and numbness.

 Multiple sclerosis: Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune condition where antibodies are produced against the covering of nerves, called the myelin sheath. The patient also shows other symptoms like loss of balance, muscle weakness, tremors, constipation, vision loss and depression.

 Seizures: A person with seizures may experience numbness and tingling. The symptoms may spread from one part of the body to the adjacent regions.

 Spinal cause: A condition that results in pressure over nerves exiting the spinal cord can result in numbness and tingling along the distribution of the nerve. For example, a herniated disc could compress on one of the spinal nerve. A neck or back injury may also compress nerves, resulting in tingling and numbness. The symptoms may increase with certain positions of the neck. A spinal cause usually results in tingling and numbness over a well-defined area.

Blood supply-related and Other Causes

Causes of numbness and tingling associated with reduced blood supply are:

 Migraine: A migraine headache is a one-sided headache caused due to alteration in blood supply to the head. The symptoms may spread from one part of the body to the adjacent regions.

 Stroke: Stroke results in reduced blood supply to a part of the brain. Consequently, the part of the body controlled by that part of the brain gets affected, often resulting in paralysis. The sensory nerves may also get affected, resulting in a feeling of numbness. In some cases, the stroke brings about temporary symptoms; this type of stroke is referred to as a transient ischemic attack.

 Raynaud’s phenomenon: Raynaud’s phenomenon is a condition where the blood vessels of the fingers and toes undergo spasm when exposed to cold or under certain emotional conditions. It commonly affects smokers and people with certain disease conditions like arthritis and frostbite. The numbness may be accompanied by pain and sometimes ulcers.

 Atherosclerosis: Atherosclerosis is a condition where the blood supply through an artery is reduced due to plaque formation. Atherosclerosis may cause tingling and numbness if the blood supply to a limb is affected, especially while walking.

Other causes of numbness and tingling are:

Systemic diseases: Other disease conditions can also result in tingling and numbness. These include:

 Kidney disorders: Kidney diseases result in high levels of metabolites like urea and abnormal levels of electrolytes like calcium, potassium, or sodium. These could give rise to a feeling of tingling and numbness.

 Liver disease: Liver disease could result in accumulation of toxic substances in the blood that affect nerve function.

 Hormonal conditions: Hormonal conditions including hypothyroidism could cause abnormal sensations.

 Other diseases like HIV/AIDS, Guillain-Barre syndrome, lupus, sarcoidosis and rheumatoid arthritis are also associated with tingling and numbness.

 Psychiatric causes: Psychiatric causes are often associated with numbness especially of a part of the face.

 Miscellaneous causes: Radiation therapy and bites from insects or animals could result in numbness and tingling. Bites may also cause additional symptoms of swelling, redness and localized pain.

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Herbs and Anti-oxidants that Fight Cancer

Nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction are the primary factors that help prevent development of free radicals in the body, build up the immune system and strengthen it.

Our immune system plays an important role in keeping free radicals in check, limiting the development of cancerous cells and combating  cancer.

What are these free radicals and why are they so dangerous?

The air we breathe in contains oxygen, a molecule that helps our body  to and function smoothly. Sometimes, metabolic processes, pollution in the air, smoking, and even junk food (yes, that’s right) can create unstable oxygen ions in the body. The oxygen radicals circulate in the bloodstream and ‘snatch’ electrons from the tissues thus destabilizing those ‘attacked’ molecules in the tissues  by making them short of electrons. They in turn circulate as free radicals on the lookout for molecules from which they can snatch electrons, thus kick-starting a  series of  chain reactions . This process is called ‘oxidative damage’.

Anti-oxidants are molecules that interact with free radicals and stop the chain reactions that damage the cells (including DNA) in our body. They help by destroying free radicals in the body and in the process reduce oxidative stress. Apart from building the immune system, they inhibit the gene expression for cancer and induce gene expression that promotes tumor suppression. . Further, they arrest uncontrolled cell division, thereby preventing the development of cancer.

Anti-oxidants that fight cancer include vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, phenolics and resveratrol among hundreds of other substances. And these are the substances that are easily available in most herbs and spices in your spice rack. Anti-oxidants in food are measured in units of Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC). The FDA recommends 3,000 units of ORAC a day.

It’s true that you can’t get all the anti-oxidants you need from the herbs but the anti-oxidants in herbs can supplement the anti-oxidants you get from fruits and vegetables.

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Anemia / Low Haemoglobin

 Anemia / Low Haemoglobin

RBCs in the blood have a very crucial role to play as they contain hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to the body tissues. Anemia leads to a host of health complications as body tissues are deprived of the required amount of oxygen to keep them healthy. Thus, victims of anemia often complain of extreme fatigue.

General malaise, weakness, fatigue, breathlessness on exertion, palpitations, and angina are some of the symptoms of anemia.

Anemia can be caused due to nutritional deficiencies, especially iron and vitamin deficiency. Inherited disorders also cause anemia. Exposure to a particular drug or toxin, and certain kinds of cancer also cause anemia. Anemia can set in either due to abnormal loss of blood, or insufficient production of RBCs or when RBCs are destroyed due to an existing medical condition.

Anemia is diagnosed after conducting a complete blood cell (CBC) count, which examines the different types of cells in the blood.

Treatment for anemia is targeted towards the cause of the condition and its outcome depends upon the cause, extent of the condition and general health of the patient. Generally, the prognosis is good for victims of anemia.

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Metastatic breast cancer rising in patients younger than 40

 Metastatic Breast Cancer Rising in Patients Younger than 40

Diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer in women younger than 40 has increased 2% a year, every year, from 1976 to 2009, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The increase was seen in women aged 25 to 39 of all races and ethnicities, living in both rural and urban areas.

It's a devastating diagnosis, particularly because a woman younger than 40 who is diagnosed with breast cancer is more likely to have an aggressive form of the disease and face lower survival rates.

But for perspective, the overall population of women who are affected still remains small.

"If you project these data out to the number of people in the U.S., there were about 250 cases per year ... in 1976 and that's now risen to 850 cases of breast cancer per year," said Dr. Rebecca Johnson, the study's lead author and medical director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology program at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Those numbers, she says, refer to metastatic breast cancer in women younger than 40. The rise, she says, was "really concerning."

Johnson is a breast cancer survivor. She found a lump in her breast and was diagnosed with the disease when she was 27. It was not metastatic.

In previous research, she found that a woman younger than 40 had a 1 in 173 chance of developing breast cancer. For this study, she wanted to look specifically at advanced breast cancer within that same population.

"Along with my colleague, Dr. Archie Bleyer, a couple of years ago, we just wanted to ask the question, how common is this? Because once I was diagnosed, I had friends and friends of friends getting diagnosed and I didn't know if this was happening more or if I was hearing about it more," she says.

Johnson and her team used three U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) databases of the National Cancer Institute to obtain data about breast cancer incidence from 1973 to 2009, 1992 to 2009, and 2000 to 2009. They chose 1976 as their starting year.

Not only did they find an increase in incidence of metastatic breast cancer in women younger than 40, the team also calculated that the average age of diagnosis was 34.3 years of age in women aged 25 to 39.

"From a cancer point of view, it is an important study because it suggests an early signal that there's a significant increase, a sustained increase over a prolonged period of time," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, who was not affiliated with the study.

"There's a suggestion this rate is accelerating and it could have a much greater impact so it's important we ... continue to monitor this, we try to understand what its influences are."

There is no solid explanation for what's driving the increased incidence, but  Johnson and her team suggest there's likely more than one cause.

Yet neither she or Lichtenfeld believe the study's findings should change current screening guidelines for breast cancer.

"If there is an action item, at this time it's awareness: Breast cancer can happen (in younger women) and if it gets to be metastatic by the time it's diagnosed, that's a problem," said Johnson.

Yet while the rate of breast cancer incidence in young women has increased, Johnson and her team found that mortality rates over the last 30 years have been stable.

"It's great, except it's not great - the five-year survival rate used to be 15%, and now it's 30%. So that's something to be thankful for, but it's still very bad,"  she said.

"If women could be diagnosed earlier (before the cancer spreads), then each individual woman that that happens to stands to do a whole lot better, stands a better chance of living."

Lichtenfeld agreed. "This study reinforced the message, know your body better than anyone else does," he said.

"If there is a lump on the breast ... swelling in the breast, discharge from the nipple, redness in the skin of the breast, or unexplained pain in the breast, see your doctor."

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Nutrition All Men Need

Nutrition All Men Need

A healthy diet is necessary for well being and prevention of lifestyle-related diseases, irrespective of whether you are a man or a woman. But nutrition varies a little depending on your gender and age.

Here’s an account of nutrition all men need. The calorie requirement depends on your age, lifestyle and size (weight). For example, an active man of 70 kg requires about 2700 to 3000 calories per day depending upon the intensity of his physical activity. On an average, a healthy man needs about 2500 calories to maintain his weight. Men older than 50 years of age need 2000 to 2800 calories depending on how active they are. Factors such as thyroid hormones, some medications like steroids, or illnesses can affect the calorie expenditure.

ProteinIn general, 10 to 35 percent of your daily calories must come from protein. Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is 52g per day for boys aged 14 to 18 years while men aged 19 and above require 56g of protein per day.
For example, a 5ft 10 inches tall man physically active 30 to 60 minutes a day requires 7 ounces of protein foods in his 2800 calorie diet. Lean meat, poultry, fish, milk and milk products, eggs, and cheese are considered high-quality proteins. Legumes, nuts and seeds, and tofu are good vegetable protein sources.

There’s no harm if you take more than the recommended portion of protein unless you have kidney disease or are counting calories on a weight-loss mission.

CarbohydratesFoods high in fiber content include dried, fresh or frozen beans, peas and other legumes; whole grains, rye, oats, buckwheat and stone-ground cornmeal; nuts; dried fruits; broccoli; baked potato with skin; spinach, kale and other greens; Brussel sprouts, plums, pears and apples (high in pectin). Almonds, Brazil nuts, walnuts and peanuts, and coconut are also high in fiber content but they are high in fat content as well; so, consume these sparingly.

Fats For well being and weight control, only 20 to 35 percent of your diet must come from fats and that too from unsaturated fats (MUFA and PUFA) such as extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, sesame oil, almonds, walnut and avocado. 

Vitamins and Minerals
Fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals; and whether fresh, frozen, canned or dried, they are ‘good-for-you foods’ according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly called the American Dietetic Association).

Older men require more vitamin D and calcium to maintain healthy bones and avoid osteoporosis. Low-fat and fat-free milk and yogurt, fortified cereals and fruit juices, dark green leafy vegetables and canned fish with soft bones are rich in calcium. If you are not getting enough of these products, take calcium supplements and multivitamins containing vitamin D.

If you are a sportsman or work out a lot, make sure you eat every two to three hours so that your body gets a constant supply of nutrients. Also, carbohydrates are the main source of energy and must be included in every meal.

Eating a well-balanced diet that includes whole grains, fruits and vegetables, good proteins, and low-fat dairy products is the best way to stay healthy and free from lifestyle-related diseases.