Your Health

 

Sleep Restores Immunity and Lack of Sleep Destroys It – How To Burn This Problematic Candle From Both Ends…

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Previous studies have linked lack of sleep to a number of health issues such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Lack of sleep also affected the immune system and now new studies reveal that lack of sleep has the same impact on the human body as high stress does. As reported in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “Sleep deprivation effect on the immune system mirrors physical stress.” – ScienceDaily, 1 July 2012.

You’ve probably noticed yourself that after a stressful time like a new job, moving, exams and those kinds of things, you suddenly get flu?

Stress creates a type of fight or flight reaction in your immune system and it can take a long time to get back to full balance. But now it’s apparent that it’s not only stress that needs to be looked at and balanced, it is also sleep, or lack thereof.

In the clinical trial some of the steps taken to help the participants get a good night’s rest started before the trial itself. The steps were ensur
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Still shopping for a new medical aid? Here are 21 ways to cut your medical costs

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Money’s tight for everyone – whether you have a medical scheme, a hospital plan, or nothing. Here’s how to get the necessary treatment without breaking the bank.

Money’s tight for most people at the moment. Everyone’s cutting corners and cutting down on things that are thought not to be essential.

And what’s more medical schemes in SA are said to be five times more expensive than elsewhere in the world, when purchasing power is taken into consideration.

The cost of private medical care has been higher than the normal inflation rate for the last few years. A comprehensive medical scheme just for yourself could easily put you back between 10% and 20% of your income every month. Many people are scaling down to a hospital plan to save money, and many others are simply doing without a medical scheme of any kind – and hoping for the best.

“Your medical needs should be considered first and foremost,” says Johan van Tonder, independent medical scheme researcher. “I
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What a disgrace in our Hospitals, woman discharged from hospital, home in an ambulance (graphic photo’s)

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Mrs Kerns had been vomiting uncontrollably for three days by the time she eventually made her way to seek medical assistance.

On December 5 at 16:00 *Mrs Gracie Kerns arrived with her daughter, *Mrs Susan Coombs at Witbank Provincial Hospital.

Mrs Kerns had been vomiting uncontrollably for three days by the time she eventually made her way to seek medical assistance.

An ambulance had to be called to transport Mrs Kerns to the hospital due to her frailty.

Nearly exactly 12 hours after Mrs Kerns had arrived at Witbank Provincial Hospital, at approximately 04:00, she was finally able to see a doctor.

“The ambulance that took her to hospital was in a terrible state,” Mrs Coombs, Mrs Kerns’s daughter, explained; “the doors didn’t close. They’d apparently been kicked off of their hinges by a previous patient. The stretcher was also problematic as it wasn’t very manoeuvrable and lead to us having to shuffle my mother around the house to get her to
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Hard times lies ahead for the ANC’s Department of Health:- angry nurses says, No jobs, no vote

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“No jobs, no vote,” shouted disgruntled nurses who marched to the provincial health department in Pietermaritzburg.

Hundreds of nurses carried placards and handed over a memorandum demanding that unemployed nurses be employed by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health. Nurses from the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA) were part of the march.

The marchers said there were 15,000 unemployed nurses in KZN and 40,000 vacancies for nurses nationwide, according to a “study”.

But when GroundUp asked the provincial chairperson of HOSPERSA, Thamsanqa Zondi, the source of these figures, he said the figures were estimates and should not be used by the media. He said the union did not have a copy of the study.

Last year nurses marched three times demanding that the health department prioritise their demands.

United Nurses Forum president Bhekithemba Gumbi said nothing had changed. Quoting the same figures, he said there was
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Grandson laments treatment at PE hospital – ‘Not one nurse to help him’

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Life St George’s Hospital in Port Elizabeth has launched an internal investigation after the grandson of one of its patients posted photos of his grandfather soaked in urine and blood with “not one nurse to help him”.

This was despite the hospital knowing the elderly man needed 24-hour care for which he was signed up for, Jason Gordon wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

His grandfather was blind and suffered from dementia.

“This is not the first time I have visited him after work to find something wrong. The first time they had inserted his drip incorrectly. It took more than 3 days for the swelling to go down,” Gordon wrote.

“This is not the kind of care I would expect when you pay so much for medical aid; this kind of thing should not be acceptable in any state or private hospital. You would expect people in the medical profession to be compassionate and want to make sure their patients are comfortable, not leaving them in an embarrassing and unhealthy s
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A tech company, Proteus, just launched a ‘smart’ cancer pills that track you with tiny sensors stamped into your medications

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A US digital medicine company called Proteus makes ‘smart pills’ embedded with sensors that tell your doctor when you’ve taken your medication. The pills also track activity levels.

Backed by big name investors like Novartis, Proteus debuted the first medication made with the technology – a form of the depression and schizophrenia drug Abilify – in 2017.

Now, Proteus is expanding into cancer.

Still, the research on whether the pills actually help patients take their medications when they should remains somewhat unclear.

Would a notification from your doctor as soon as you forget to take your medication help keep you on track?

A digital medicine company called Proteus is betting the answer is yes.

The Silicon Valley-based company makes what have been called “smart pills”: essentially, versions of regular medications embedded with a tiny sensor that can be tracked by a patch worn on a patient’s stomach.

Since debuting the first medication made with t
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Let’s have a look at why doctors and nurses are facing unemployment

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It’s the age of austerity and it’s bad news for doctors, nurses and patients alike — unless the state can do more with less.

Almost 200 posts for doctors and specialists remain unfilled at Gauteng’s four academic hospitals — and many of these posts are likely to remain empty, the health department says.

Gauteng hospitals can only fill half of its critical medical staff vacancies — positions that normally go to doctors, specialists and nurses, Gauteng health department deputy director general for clinical services Richard Lebethe says.

Hospitals were first informed about this via an April circular sent to hospitals.

The head of psychiatry at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Wendy Friedlander, says medical officers are feeling the strain of almost 80 vacant posts.

“Doctors [now] have a much greater doctor to patient ratio. If you have more patients, what you can give in terms of time, facilities and resources to each patient is much
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Some researchers discover the brain cells that make pain unpleasant

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If you step on a tack, neurons in your brain will register two things: that there’s a piercing physical sensation in your foot, and that it’s not pleasant. Now, a team of scientists at Stanford University has identified a bundle of brain cells in mice responsible for the latter – that is, the negative emotions of pain.

Pain research has traditionally focused on the neurons and molecules at the frontline of pain perception — the cells in nerves that process stings, cuts, burns and the like — and ultimately convey a physical threat message. What Dr Grégory Scherrer, assistant professor of anesthesiology and of neurosurgery, and Dr Mark Schnitzer, associate professor of biology and of applied physics, are studying goes one step further. “We’re looking at what the brain makes of that information,” Scherrer said. “While painful stimuli are detected by nerves, this information doesn’t mean anything emotionally until it reaches the brain, so we set out to find
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There are so many complex reasons for South Africa’s organ donor shortage

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At any given time, there are around 4,300 people waiting for organ donations in South Africa. These patients usually need new livers, kidneys, lungs or hearts. But organ donors are in very short supply.

This isn’t unique to South Africa. Many countries around the world are unable to meet the demand for donor organs. There are a few exceptions, though. One example is Norway, where a surplus of deceased donor livers has been reported.

So what explains South Africa’s organ donor shortage?

Religious and cultural beliefs play a role, because they influence the decisions people make about the remains of their loved ones. Sometimes families prefer that a relative’s body remain whole and intact; in other cases it’s considered important to bury a person within a certain time frame. But attributing the shortages to these factors alone grossly oversimplifies the issue, as research has shown.

There are many complex elements that keep donor num
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South Africa needs stronger leadership and increased budgets in mental healthcare

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The psychiatric profession should play a greater role in advocating for patients’ rights and improving management of mental health in the public sector after a series of recent tragedies that highlighted the neglect of mental healthcare in South Africa.

Professor Bonga Chiliza, incoming South African Society of Psychiatrists (Sasop) president, says the deaths of 144 patients in the now-notorious Life Esidimeni tragedy; allegations of abuse and human rights violations at the Tower Psychiatric Hospital in the Eastern Cape; and the suicide of UCT Health Sciences Dean Prof Bongani Mayosi following his battle with depression all point to need for better management of public sector psychiatry

Therefore, the organisation will ramp up its lobbying for mental healthcare to be allocated an equitable share of the national health budget. Chiliza says Sasop would also be doing more to encourage medical students to specialise in psychiatry, in order to grow the numbers of qual
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Doctors get a lifeline as government considers shortening internships from two years to one

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Shortening doctors’ internships from two years to one is being mooted to alleviate the strain in the training of doctors.

Health department spokesperson Popo Maja said: “What we know is that one of the health stakeholders did entertain the idea of internship training being reviewed. But it is too early for us to say anything about it.”

Two-year internships help medical students translate their theoretical knowledge into practice under the supervision of experienced doctors after their studies. One-year community service helps provide health care to under-served areas.

South African Medical Association (Sama) chairperson Dr Angelique Coetzee said there was currently a bottleneck, with too few internships to accommodate medical students graduating in SA and abroad, especially in Cuba.

“Where does one place that large amount of people coming in, plus these who you have already?” Coetzee said. “There is a big bottleneck at this stage, so if you can bring down
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New portable technology takes primary healthcare to the people

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Portable medical technology makes it possible to take primary healthcare to low-income populations that frequently have a disproportionate burden of ill health.

It allows mobile clinics and screening days to take healthcare services to schools and local communities that would ordinarily not have access.

Instead of expecting patients to travel to static clinics, they can be screened and diagnosed on the spot and receive preventive healthcare where they are, rather than incurring travel costs or having to take time off work. ”The South African medical environment is still in the early stages of adopting mobile solutions to preventive screening and healthcare.

“Screening for common health issues like loss of hearing or vision helps to avoid a heavier cost burden on constrained healthcare resources once the diagnosed conditions worsen,” says Dr Dirk Koekemoer, founder and CEO of eMoyo. “But this approach, when effectively managed through a collaboration betwe
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A cancer drug offers more affordable treatment for diabetic retinopathy

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Treatment for diabetic retinopathy can be expensive, especially in low and middle-income countries such as South Africa, but a recent doctoral study at Stellenbosch University (SU) found that a relatively cheap drug called bevacizumab could be effective.

“We found that injecting bevacizumab into the eyes could help treat diabetic eye disease and prevent blindness in people living in low and middle-income countries,” says Dr Jose Fernando Arevalo, chairperson of the Department of Ophthalmology at the Bayview Medical Center in the Wilmer Eye Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore in America.

Aevalo, who is also the president of the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology, obtained his doctorate in ophthalmology at the second ceremony of SU’s December graduation.

He says the rapid increase in the prevalence of diabetes means that by 2040 more people will be at risk of developing diabetic eye disease and therefore less ex
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Pietermaritzburg mortuary mess:- workers return to work after arrests

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The Fort Napier workers had been on a go-slow since November. They have been demanding a wage increase, back pay and better working conditions.

Seventeen employees of the Fort Napier Medico Legal Mortuary in Pietermaritzburg, who were arrested on Monday, were released with a warning on Tuesday. They were arrested after the Department of Health issued an ultimatum to workers to return to work or face arrest.

Department of Health spokesperson Ncumisa Mafunda said that on Tuesday, 16 forensic pathology staff members from Gale Street Medico Legal Mortuary in Durban had also been arrested. According to National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) provincial secretary Phakama Ndunakazi, they were released the same day.

Mortuary workers demand better pay
The Fort Napier workers had been on a go-slow since November. They have been demanding a wage increase, back pay and better working conditions.

“The 17 employees were release
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Warning to all Drivers for the holidays: These are the busiest roads – and days – to travel in December

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If you are looking to plot a Christmas getaway, make sure you don’t get caught up on the busiest roads at the worst times. We’re here to help.
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