Dr. Fred Vagnini
DrTranquility Health Blog's Co-Editor in Chief. Dr Fred Vagnini aka Dr. V is a former Cardiovascular Surgeon, and an amazing wellness healer scroll down to find out more!
This month As we have so much new and exciting information to share with you for the upcoming holiday season.Don't forget to check out Holiday Stress Busters on DrTranquility's lifestyle blog, Relax,Refresh,Renew!
Our Health Editor here on Today's Health on DrTranquility.com. Dr. Susan Eisen DC, has an amazing new article for you to help reduce back pain with a cheep and cheerful method...in fact it's free, in "The Towel Will Save Your Life." Dr.V aka Dr. Fred Vagnini,MD is the new our Co-editor in chief with our very own DRtranquility Lydia Belton-Alabastro PhD., Ct.H.A. for a true Mind Body Spirit connection/communication here on our health blogs, has an incrediblly informative article on "Managing pre-Diabetes & and type 2 Diabetes!! We wish you Health and Wellness through the holiday season and through out the year!
Check out relaxation for travel, and through out the holiday's only on DrTranquility.com!
Psst don't forget our very own DrTranquility.com ..Just in time to break through holiday stressors. Click onto our Goodie Bag area for more info!
Managing Pre- and Type 2 Diabetes There is plenty we know about pre-diabetes, as noted in the two previous Longevity Reports. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other specialty health authorities are convinced that it is a real health problem with serious consequences, not the least of which the fact that a large percentage of identifiable pre-diabetes cases develop into full blown diabetes. But questions have arisen about the feasibility and benefit of various strategies to prevent or delay that from happening. The ADA’s Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) cites four recent international studies which report success in the treatment of pre-diabetes. The studies set out to determine whether lowering of glucose levels results in the prevention or delay of late onset (Type 2) diabetes. The presence of glucose in blood levels hovering around 100 mg/dl is pre-diabetes. (Strictly defined, in a fasting plasma glucose test, 100 to 126 mg/dl is pre-diabetes. But I like to consider treatment at lower levels.) The therapies applied in the international studies were both lifestyle interventions and drugs. In all four studies, the most effective treatment for lowering glucose was, by far, lifestyle interventions: diet and exercise administered as nutritional and exercise counseling. The drug used was metformin (Glucopage). It is the most widely used anti-diabetic drug – but is not as effective as diet and exercise. I will write about drug interventions in the next Report.
A Casual Prescription?
When clinical practice mobilizes to go aggressively at pre-diabetes and the health dangers it carries with it, diet and exercise are prescribed not as casual advice, but as strict guidance supported by a series of appointments with a nutritional counselor; and exercise must be a regimen of specific physical activities to be logged and reported at regular visits to the doctor’s office. It may be consoling to know that the research found that drastic weight loss is not required to effectively ward off diabetes. This is not extreme vanity dieting; rather it is described in the DPP reports as “modest” . . . something possible for everyone.
Who is Pre-diabetic?
The studies reported to the DPP involved subjects of both genders, various ethnic groups, and of a range of adult ages. In my practice, I watch for the metabolic syndrome characteristics – hypertension, central obesity – and where I suspect abnormal glucose levels, I order an 8-hour fasting plasma glucose test (FPG), or in some cases, an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). From this data, I can determine whether the patient exhibits impaired glucose tolerance (IPG), the slowdown of the body’s metabolism that accounts for weight gain and other symptoms that may lead to a diagnosis of pre- or rank diabetes. At this point the treatments are ordered.
Good Side-Effects
Among the positive effects of treating pre-diabetes successfully, these studies found an overall weight management benefit and blood pressure control. A patient has much to gain who follows my prescription for pre-diabetes management.
My Prescriptions
But..for more on this article can be found in the Library on DrTranquility.com along with many amazing articles in fact 22 new articles each day!
Dr Fred Vagnini is a master of wellness. A former Cardiovascular Surgeon and the medical director of the Heart Diabetes, and Weight loss Centers of New York. We are honored to have him as one of our senior medical advisors here on drtranquility.com,and this months guest Co-Editor in Chief who has been a firm proponent of good basic nutrition protocols, and a leading anti-aging expert,and has a very popular radio program,The Heart Show which can be heard on 710 am & xm radio,Sundays at 4pm
Dr. Fred Vagnini follows up his best seller "Counting Down your Age" with his new best selling book (right out of the gate)Your Health Is In Your Own Hands!"This book is one of the great tools in the anti-aging process. A tool you will need & cherish your first line of defense in the anti-aging process, while tracking your health and wellness progress!"
Make sure that you stop by DrTranquility Magazine our online magazine.Dr V has a fascinating article on women and cardiovascular disease entitled "Women and Heart Attacks" a MUST read!
Dr. V's Your Health Is In Your Own Hands,and Counting Down Your Age can be found @ BarnesandNobel.com & Amazon.com. and on Drtranquility.com
Dr.Susan Eisen,DC
(Special note to your readers if you want)
I would like to take this moment to say hello to all of you, loyal readers, at DrTranquility.com. In these times of upheaval how lucky we all are to have someone like Dr.Lydia to guide us and help us through some dark and difficult times that we all may be experiencing right now. I also would like to say how grateful I am to have been a part of the history that we all experienced this November 4th. Irreguardless of who you voted for we, have all taken a HUGE collective step forward toward our own responsibility… … responsibility to ourselves, to our country, and to our planet. Well done.
I will be bringing health tips and advice here at DrTranquility.com. It is my hope to open up a dialogue with you readers to hear what you want most to hear about. I do have a list of topics I wish to discuss and these are very important issues to consider. Issues like Lyme disease, exercise and health alternatives… butwith our reader's across America and the world I want to hear from you,as your questions are of the utmost importance to me!
“The Towel Will Change your Life” by Dr. Susan Eisen
Spinal Molding for Proper Spinal Dynamics
All of us or, I daresay, at least 80% of us in America and the world over have suffered with back or neck pain at one time or another. Today, we are a society that spends too much time on the computer first at the office and then later on at home. And let’s face it, the desktop has largely been replaced by the laptop and not all together for the better. Add to that our now ongoing intermittent time on our iPhones, Blackberrys and our plain old cell phones texting, texting, texting. And well, you can see the problem. Our heads are in constant flexion.
All of our bad habits, poor posture, and long hours at work and at home have created a national epidemic of hunched over citizens. Flexion of our heads can create a loss of the normal curve in our neck as well as in our lower back. A young child will exhibit proper spinal curves in the neck and low back. These are developed when an infant begins to lift its head and develop proper muscle strength and again when she starts creeping or crawling. These are our secondary spinal curves, very important if we don’t want to develop degenerative disc disease or worse, bulging spinal discs.
Ah, but you ask, what can we do about this? My answer to you and every one of my patients is this. A very simple and effective regimen to do at home is to take two hand-sized towels. For anyone who is not sure of what a Hand towel is, they are clearly marked in the Towel Section at Bed Bath and Beyond! They are the smaller towel; the one that you fold over the towel bar, but not a guest towel.
Okay, so now you have two proper hand-sized towels. Fold each one in half lengthwise. Now fold one side over from left to right about one-third of the way in and roll tightly with your fingers applying firm pressure in the middle of the towel rather than the ends. Try to roll neatly without wrinkles. The ends should be bound with covered elastic bands which can be covered with a pretty ribbon.
Once both towels are rolled,Library on DrTranquility.com along with many amazing articles in fact 22 new articles each day!
Relaxation Response Can Influence Expression Of Stress-Related Genesan article released by Massacheusetts General Hospital
How could a single, nonpharmacological intervention help patients deal with disorders ranging from high blood pressure, to pain syndromes, to infertility, to rheumatoid arthritis? That question may have been answered by a study finding that eliciting the relaxation response - a physiologic state of deep rest - influences the activation patterns of genes associated with the body's response to stress. The collaborative investigation by members of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Genomics Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) appears in the open-access journal PLoS One.
"For hundreds of years Western medicine has looked at mind and body as totally separate entities, to the point where saying something 'is all in your head' implied that it was imaginary," says Herbert Benson, MD, director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute and co-senior author of the PloS One report. "Now we've found how changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented."
Towia Libermann, PhD, director of the BIDMC Genomics Center and the report's co-senior author, adds, "This is the first comprehensive study of how the mind can affect gene expression, linking what has been looked on as a 'soft' science with the 'hard' science of genomics. It is also important because of its focus on gene expression in healthy individuals, rather than in disease states."
More than 35 years ago Benson first described the relaxation response, which can be elicited by practices including meditation, deep breathing and prayer; and his team has pioneered the field of mind/body medicine. Over the years, studies in many peer-reviewed journals documented how the relaxation response not only alleviates symptoms of psychological disorders such as anxiety but also affects physiologic factors such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption and brain activity. While it became evident that the relaxation response was the opposite of the well documented fight-or-flight response, the mechanism underlying these effects was still unknown.
The current study was designed to investigate if changes in gene expression - whether specific genes are activated or ...read more of this fascinating article released by Mass General in the Library of DrTranqulity.com!
Benson is the Mind/Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where Libermann is an associate professor of Medicine. Hasan Otu, PhD, of BIDMC Genomics Center is co-lead author of the PloS One study. Additional co-authors are Ann Wohlhueter, Benson-Henry Institute; and Manoj Bhasin, PhD, Luiz Zerbini, PhD, and Marie Joseph, BIDMC. The study was supported by grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $500 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks in the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is a clinical partner of the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.
We are sure you found these pieces fascinating and informative and we invite you to stop by our Library on DrTranquility.com
read many wonderfully informative pieces..in fact we update with 22 new articles daily!
From The Family of DrTranquility.com and myself we wish for you to be happy,healthy,and well!
Be well and breathe,
Lydia,DrTranquility
Co-Editor in Chief The DrTranquility Health Blog
Editor in Chief DrTranquility.com
The DrTranquility Health Blog is a publication of DrTranquility.com
