Aortic stenosis or aortic valve stenosis is a disease of the heart valve where the aorta joins the heart.

This aortic valve controls the flow of blood from the left ventricle of the heart into the aorta, which is the main artery leaving the heart to take blood around the body.

The valve allows oxygenated blood to flow freely from the heart, closing only to stop the blood going back into the heart.

In the case of aortic stenosis, the valve is narrower than usual which impedes the free flow of blood.

The prevalence of aortic stenosis in North America and Europe, where the general population is aging, is increasing. It has become quite a common disease and is considered a major health problem in these countries.

The condition may exist in a person without displaying any noticeable symptoms for years; but because the degree of blockage can worsen in time, symptoms will start to show as the person ages.

These symptoms are similar to other heart problems and include dizziness, general fatigue, palpitations and shortness of breath.

In people who have aortic stenosis, the heart has to work harder to keep the blood flowing through the narrow valve.

Marshall University students are not interested in too much fun this summer, as some are actually spending their break counting mosquitoes.

One of the three Marshall University environmental science majors who are participating in the project, Chris Chadwick, said the group has often counted 1,800 in just one day.

The group begins by heading out to the Huntington Wastewater Management facility and catching mosquitoes that are trapped in nets where they are then taken to the health department.  At the health department they are labeled, frozen, and set to a Charleston lab to be evaluated for disease.

The aim of the project is to allow the health department to identify potential health threats such as West Nile virus and St. Louis and LaCrosse encephalitis in mosquitoes that commonly carry the significant health threats.

Elizabeth Ayers, the public information officer for the health department, stated that the students are able to help study more mosquitoes at a time which allows them to monitor potential health threats much better.

Chadwick is joined by interns Taylor Brewer and Autumn Starcher who track down insects that reside in a swamp close to the Fox Fire Resort, the Huntington wastewater facility, and the Madison Avenue landfill.

For years we have been told that cooking our vegetables in a minimum amount of water, such as by steaming, was the best way to keep the nutrition in the vegetable.

A new study has turned that bit of traditional wisdom on its ear by discovering that some vegetables actually increase their antioxidant capacity when cooked in other ways. [Antioxidant supplements]

Researchers looked at 20 different vegetables, and cooked them several different ways, including boiling, baking, microwaving, frying, and cooking in a pressure cooker.

For most vegetables, microwaving the vegetables or cooking them on a griddle without added fat was the best choice. There were, however, some exceptions:

• Artichokes were the real powerhouse and kept their antioxidants no matter how you cooked them. Good news for those of us who like our artichokes boiled or roasted.
• Celery, a classic aromatic, actually increased its antioxidant capacity when cooked any way except boiling.
• Microwaving was no friend to corn, causing it to lose much of its antioxidant capacity.
• Frying increased the antioxidant capacity of eggplant, while asparagus fared better when boiled.

Body dysmorphic disorder is a chronic mental disorder in which a person is obsessed with flaws in their appearance, either real or imagined.

Even minor flaws are imagined as major problems, seen as deformities, and they don’t want to be looked at by other people.

People with this disorder are intensely obsessed over their physical appearance and may find ways to “correct” the problems although they are never satisfied with the results of any procedure.

While it is normal human behavior to care for your appearance, people with body dysmorphic disorder take this to extremes. They have a constant pre-occupation with how they look, they firmly believe they have a deformity that makes them ugly and they either avoid mirrors or spend excessive amounts of time grooming themselves in front of one.

They believe that other people are staring at their deformity, they feel very self-conscious, they probably avoid going out socially and wear clothes and make-up to hide their appearance.

Many sufferers have multiple cosmetic procedures to fix their imagined shortcomings; they may be continuously grooming themselves, comparing themselves to others and refusing to have their photo taken.

Health Canada released a statement that advised not to rely on home testing HIV kits particularly the new Clean Testing HIV Home Kit because they have not been approved by medical licensure boards and can produce false results that may cause infected parties not to seek proper treatment.

The federal department issued an advisory statement that the home kit has not been evaluated by Health Canada and encouraged consumers not to purchase it.

Health Canada officials also stated that the primary problems are that an infected person may be misdiagnosed or a healthy individual may have positive HIV results raising unneeded concern and stress.

Health Canada requires that all home HIV test kits be issued a license from the department before they can be sold or advertised in Canada under the Medical Devices Regulations that are in place in Canada leading to the department to ask Clean Testing to cease selling the device.

Canadians are advised not to purchase the kits from the internet or any other source and the Health department will continue to monitor the activity of the company to decide if they need to take additional action.

If the heels of your feet are dry, rough, and cracked, they can be painful.

The cracked heels may be so severe that they bleed. There are several ways to address the problem.

First, you will want to exfoliate away the dead skin.

You can either do this with a chemical product designed to remove dead skin, such as Kerasal, or with a physical product, such as a pumice stone, microplane foot file, or exfoliating scrub.

Whatever method you choose, remove the buildup of dead skin slowly. Never use a knife, nail clippers, scissors, or a razor blade to remove dead skin.

Similarly, do not use a callus reducer to shave away dry skin. It is far better to remove the buildup of dead dry skin gradually over a period of about a week than remove too much dry skin at once and leave your feet excessively tender, or worse, bleeding.

You may find it easier to remove the dead skin if you soak your feet first. You can buy commercial foot baths, or you can use a mixture of baking soda and Epsom salts to soak your feet.

Hemoptysis is the name given to the coughing up of blood or blood-stained sputum.

The blood could come from any part of your airways or lungs.

Most commonly, it is because of bronchitis or pneumonia, but there are other possibilities as well.

Chronic smokers may develop lung neoplasm which can cause hemoptysis, as can tuberculosis, coccidiomycosis and pulmonary embolism, among other conditions.

If a child coughs up blood, it is most likely because they breathed a foreign object into their airway.

It is easy to tell where the blood has come from by the color it is. Bright red blood has come from the respiratory tract while dark red-brown blood will be from the gastrointestinal tract.

Major injury of internal organs can also be the cause of coughing up blood, as can anticoagulant drugs like warfarin. The most common cause is usually the least serious though, and it is most often a small ruptured blood vessel that was caused by coughing spasm or an infection.

If a person is at risk of lung diseases, which includes smokers, hemoptysis can be the sign of a serious problem.

Surgery dates back to Neolithic times, but some major advances have occurred in the last 20 years that have allowed for previously unthinkable procedures.

While many new techniques have been cool without being clinically relevant,  Jeffrey Matthews, the chairman of surgery at the University of Chicago Hospital, explains some of the advances that have actually helped save lives.

And we’ll look back at some aspects of surgery that haven’t changed over the decades.

Here are the most important surgical advances of the last 20 years, and some old surgical procedures that are still popular.

1. Laparoscopy
2. Endovascular Surgery
3. Robotic Surgery
4. Microsurgery
5. Fetal Surgery
6. Live Organ Transplant
7. Caesarian Section
8. Trauma Surgery
9. Amputation
10. Obesity Surgery

Read the whole article on PopSci.com

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. consumers should avoid two brands of pistachios tied to a salmonella-related recall because they may have been repackaged and sold in airports and hotels, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The federal agency identified the suspect brands late on Monday as California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards, which were repacked by Orca Distribution West Inc of Anaheim, California.

The potentially tainted pistachios came from Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, California, which issued a nationwide recall of its products in late March after salmonella was found in some nuts.

The bacteria can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.

read the complete story..

President Obama recently signed a bill that seeks to regulate the tobacco industry and introduces new measures to control the amount of nicotine addiction throughout the country.

As a result of the bill, the FDA will have two years to create color coded labels for every cigarette sold in the US as well reduce the amount of nicotine that can be contained in cigarettes.

The new legislation also places a ban on all flavored cigarettes in an attempt to reduce the amount of teens that are attracted to smoking and places very strict regulations on where companies that manufacture tobacco are allowed to advertise.

Reforms such as this have long been in the works and date back to Robert Kennedy’s efforts to ban tobacco advertising from the airwaves.

Despite the new regulations, the bill has been met with some resistance and criticism from those who say it does not go far enough as flavors such as menthol remain unbanned and that the role of the FDA in regulating cigarette addiction is not carefully defined.