Curry Ingredient May Cut Cardiovascular Risks

(HealthDay News) -- Curcumin, an ingredient in the curry spice tumeric, can reduce heart enlargement and may lower the risk of heart failure, Canadian researchers say.

The scientists at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital tested the effects of curcumin in mice with enlarged hearts (hypertrophy) and found it could prevent and reverse the condition, restore heart function, and reduce scar formation. The study was published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

If human clinical trials support these findings, curcumin-based treatments may provide a safe and inexpensive new option for patients with heart enlargement, according to the researchers.
They said curcumin works directly in the cell nucleus by preventing abnormal unraveling of the chromosome under stress and preventing excessive abnormal protein production.

"Curcumin's ability to shut off one of the major switches right at the chromosome source where the enlargement and scarring genes are being turned on is impressive," Dr. Peter Liu, a cardiologist at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and scientific director at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, said in a prepared statement.

"Whether you are young or old; male or female; the larger your heart is, the higher your risk is for developing heart attacks or heart failure in the future," Liu said. "However, until clinical trials are done, we don't recommend patients to take curcumin routinely. You are better off to take action today by lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, exercising, and health eating."

Current clinical trials of curcumin-based treatments for pancreatic and colorectal cancer are yielding promising results, according to the study.

More information
The American Heart Association has more about enlarged heart.

When Worry Consumes You

(HealthDay News) -- Almost everyone worries about something -- credit card debt, car repair bills, an upcoming work review, whether your child will get into a good college. A little worry is natural and normal.

But when you become a 24/7 fret machine, that's not normal. You may have what doctors call generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD -- a condition marked by worry about most aspects of life that you feel you can't control. It can leave you feeling physically exhausted and emotionally drained, and also frustrate loved ones who must listen to you verbalize all that anxiety.

"This worry process never ends," said Dr. David H. Barlow, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Boston University and founder and director emeritus of the university's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

"The key psychological feature of GAD is a state of chronic, uncontrollable worry," he added, noting that about 6 percent of Americans suffer from the condition at some point in their life.

"They are always anticipating the worst," Barlow said. They worry about major concerns as well as ones most of us would consider minor, he explained. They can't seem to stop the worrying, even when they know it's unrealistic or unfounded. And once one worry is over, the next one surfaces.

"There is always the next crisis to worry about," Barlow said.

People struggling with GAD "know the worry is out of proportion" to reality, said Jerilyn Ross, a licensed clinical social worker and president and CEO of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. By way of example, Ross cited a woman whose husband is a wonderful family provider.

But she'll worry incessantly about finances, even though she knows the worry is unwarranted.
All this worrying leaves GAD sufferers living in a chronic state of physical tension, Barlow said.

Many have trouble sleeping, are irritable, can suffer from gastrointestinal distress, and can be left with frayed relationships. Other symptoms can include muscle aches and trembling and twitching, according to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

Fortunately, mental health professionals have been paying increased attention to the disorder, leading to successful treatment approaches. And the treatments don't take years, Barlow and Ross said.

The trend is toward targeted, goal-driven sessions, with intense treatment lasting a couple of months or so, then tapering off to occasional sessions. Usually, cognitive behavioral therapy -- including talk therapy, cognitive "restructuring" to change the way people view situations that typically trigger worry -- can help, Barlow said. So can exercise.

The goal, Ross said, is to get the person with GAD to experience the feeling of worry and "desensitize" him or her to it -- "to experience it over and over again almost until it gets boring."

Ross said she helps GAD sufferers learn to tolerate the discomfort of their anxiety, over and over, until it starts to diminish. She helps them do this by having them ask themselves about their areas of concern: Is this a realistic worry? What are the probabilities of this happening? Then, she suggests they attempt to let go of the worry.

Curiously, when a wave of worry sweeps over them, most GAD sufferers "try to stamp it out, not experience it," Barlow said. "But ironically, that only serves to increase the intensity of the emotion. We teach them new ways to experience emotions, how to experience emotions in more positive ways, to ride them through, to accept them, to let them run their natural course."

In addition to cognitive or behavioral therapy, medications can also help, Barlow said, including the antidepressants Prozac (fluoxetine), Paxil (paroxetine) and Effexor (venlafaxine).

More information
To learn more about generalized anxiety disorder, visit the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

What is Kama Rani?

What is Kama Raja?

Kama Raja is a natural herbal formula for penis enhancement that works on the body and mind to improve overall sexual health, increase libido, strengthen erections, improve ejaculation control, increase seminal output, and intensify sexual pleasure and orgasms.

In Sanskrit, Kama signifies sex, love, and the fulfillment of the desires (one of the four main goals of human life). Raja means king. Kama Raja is formulated to make you the King of Sex.

How does Kama Raja work?

Kama Raja is based on the findings of Ayurveda, the world's oldest medical system. Herbs from throughout India are formulated into a blend that nourishes and stimulates the nervous system to relieve effects of stress, restores core energy by increasing hemoglobin production and removing toxins, stimulates liver functions to improve strength and stamina, elevates testosterone levels to intensify virility, stimulates the hypothalamus and pituitary glands to release growth hormone and boost sperm production, nourishes the reproductive system, makes erogenous zones more sensitive and promotes blood flow to the extremities to increase libido, enhances release of metabolic energy to "warm the loins", and calms the mind to avert premature ejaculation.

more information: Kama Raja

Harnessing the Mind to Manage Irritable Bowel Syndrome

(HealthDay News) -- When drugs and dietary changes don't provide relief from the pain, bloating and other unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, patients may want to try a different approach.

Recent studies show that using one's own thoughts in a process called cognitive behavioral therapy may help ease symptoms. Likewise, using hypnosis to visualize the pain and imagine it seeping away can be a powerful treatment strategy, too.

"Research indicates that the probability of achieving benefits is excellent with either approach, even for patients who haven't improved from standard medical care," said Olafur S. Palsson, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Functional GI & Motility Disorders.

As many as 45 million Americans may have irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders reports. Sixty percent to 65 percent of IBS sufferers are women.

In addition to pain and discomfort, people with IBS experience chronic or recurrent constipation or diarrhea -- or bouts of both. While the exact cause of the condition isn't known, symptoms seem to result from a disturbance in the interaction of the gut, brain and nervous system, according to the foundation.

Doctors generally advise patients to avoid certain foods that may exacerbate symptoms. Several different medications may be recommended for relieving abdominal pain, diarrhea and constipation. But these approaches don't always provide adequate relief.

"For some people, medications and dietary changes are the perfect match, but most of our patients -- the great, great majority of patients -- have not responded to medications and dietary changes," said Jeffrey M. Lackner, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York, and a behavioral medicine specialist whose research focuses on gastrointestinal disorders, particularly IBS.

For many patients, cognitive behavioral therapy, which uses the power of the mind to replace unhealthy beliefs and behaviors with healthy, positive ones, may be the answer. But, Lackner observed, very few facilities around the country specialize in this type of treatment.

Recognizing this, he and his colleagues set out to devise and test a treatment program that IBS patients could administer themselves.

Seventy-five women and men were divided into three groups. One group was placed on a "wait list" for 10 weeks while they monitored their symptoms. Another group received the standard treatment of 10 cognitive behavioral therapy sessions over 10 weeks. The third group had once-a-month therapy sessions over four months and practiced relaxation and problem-solving exercises at home.

Not surprisingly, people on the wait list did not do well at all, while those in the 10- and four-week sessions showed significant improvement. "They said at the end of treatment they had achieved adequate relief from pain and adequate relief from bowel problems, and a significant proportion of patients said they improved their symptoms," Lackner explained.

While more studies are needed, the findings suggest that traditional and self-administered cognitive behavioral therapy both provide adequate relief and improve symptoms, said Lackner, who first reported the findings at large meeting of GI professionals.

Hypnosis may be another option. A pair of Swedish studies presented at that same meeting found that patients who received "gut-directed hypnotherapy" had significant improvement in symptoms compared with those who did not receive this intervention.

Hypnosis treatment has been reported to improve symptoms of the majority of treated IBS patients in all published studies, noted UNCs Palsson.

For patients who've tried the diet-and-drug regimen to no avail, Palsson said he would recommend either of these two psychological treatments.

"If a patient's main goal is substantial relief of bowel symptoms, hypnosis is probably the better choice," he said, for the research literature strongly suggests that it improves the gastrointestinal symptoms far more reliably.

On the other hand, he added, if a patient wants to cope better with the illness or improve mental well-being, then cognitive behavioral therapy is equally good or perhaps even the better treatment option.

More information
For more on treating IBS, visit the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders.

Precancerous Breast Lesions Cause Unnecessary Worry

(HealthDay News) -- Many women diagnosed with a precancerous breast lesion known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are highly anxious about their prognosis, even though they face a low risk of a recurrence or of developing invasive breast cancer, a new study finds.

"Many of these women are living as if they're waiting for the other shoe to drop," said lead researcher Dr. Ann Partridge, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston.

Her team published the findings Feb. 12 in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The study noted that 28 percent of the participants "believed that they had a moderate or greater chance of DCIS spreading to other places in their bodies, despite the fact that metastatic breast cancer actually occurs following a diagnosis of DCIS less than 1 percent of the time."

DCIS involves abnormal cells in the lining of the breast duct that have not spread outside the duct, according to the National Cancer Institute. In 2006, DCIS accounted for more than 20 percent of all diagnoses linked to breast cancer in the United States -- about 62,000 cases, the study reported.

The increasing percentage of DCIS diagnoses over the last 20 years or more has been attributed to improved detection from the increasing use of screening mammography, experts say.

But all too often, women are unnecessarily frightened by a DCIS diagnosis, said the authors of the study, which involved almost 500 women newly diagnosed with DCIS.

"In the complex treatment decision-making process, it is often possible to lose sight of the fact that DCIS poses limited risks to a woman's overall mortality," the study authors noted.

Nevertheless, approximately 38 percent of those surveyed thought they had at least a moderate risk of getting an invasive cancer over the next five years, and 53 percent reported intrusive or avoidant thoughts about DCIS. That number declined to 31 percent 18 months after diagnosis, the researchers said.

Among the 487 study participants who were newly diagnosed with DCIS, 34 percent had undergone a mastectomy, 50 percent had radiation therapy, and 43 percent reported taking tamoxifen to reduce their chances of breast cancer. The type of treatment or combination varied by surgeon, hospital volume and geographic region, the study explained.

"Although decision-making about treatment is complex, there is little doubt that women will be limited in their ability to participate in informed decision-making if they harbor gross misperceptions about the health risks they face," the study authors said. Researchers found a "strong relationship between distress and inaccurate risk perceptions," they added.

One of the difficulties of such measures of anxiety about DCIS is that the study did not determine what these patients had learned from their physicians or from other sources -- such as the Internet -- about DCIS, and how accurate that information was, said Michael Stefanek, vice president of behavioral research for the American Cancer Society.

The choice of treatment depends upon the characteristics of the patient and the lesion, added Partridge, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The dilemma posed by the prospect of under- or over-treating DCIS is complicated by medicine's current inability to distinguish between "good actors and bad actors" -- lesions that don't recur or go on to become invasive breast cancer and those that do, she added.

Another expert agreed with that assessment.

Everyone would be more comfortable if there wasn't such a "big gray zone" between what is normal tissue and what is invasive cancer, said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and an expert on how well health care works for patients. Welch argued that as mammography continues to detect smaller and smaller DCIS lesions, there can be a tendency to over-treat. He recommends that the diagnostic threshold for DCIS be raised to doing biopsies on only lesions that measure 1 centimeter or greater in diameter.

"There is this ironic finding that women with this early precursor lesion may be treated more aggressively than women with invasive breast cancer," he said. "They may have mastectomies instead of just a lumpectomy. At some level we have to say, 'Does this really make sense?'"

Another study in the same issue of JNCI suggests that medical science is winning the war on breast cancer. The research, which involved nearly 5,000 breast cancer patients, was led by the National Cancer Institute of Canada's Clinical Trials Group. A total of 256 of the participants died during the four-year study.

The researchers found that older women who had survived for at least five years after a diagnosis of early stage breast cancer were most likely to die of causes unrelated to their breast malignancy. In fact, 60 percent of these deaths were not caused by breast cancer, the Canadian team found.

More information
For more on DCIS, head to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Health Tip: Giving Pain Medication to Your Child

(HealthDay News) - Giving your child medications, even over-the-counter medicines, should always be carefully monitored by your doctor.

The American Academy of Family Physicians offers these suggestions before you give any pain medication to your child:

• If a person younger than age 18 has the flu or chickenpox, never give the person aspirin, which could lead to a rare but deadly condition called Reye's Syndrome.
• Acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) is a generally safe painkiller for young children.
• Be careful about giving ibuprofen to children who are allergic to aspirin, as they may also be allergic to ibuprofen.
• Pain relievers may be dangerous for children with asthma, so don't administer them without a doctor's consent.
• Be careful not to give your child too much of the same medication. Sometimes the same active ingredient can be found in more than one medication.

Health Tip: Before Giving Yoga a Try

(HealthDay News) - While yoga is a relatively safe form of exercise, you should take precautions, especially if you're just beginning.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers these recommendations to practice yoga safely:

• If you have any medical condition, don't try yoga without consulting your doctor first.
• Learn the proper technique from a certified yoga instructor.
• Drink plenty of fluids.
• Be sure to warm up before starting your yoga routine.
• Start out slowly, making sure that you are performing each move and position correctly.
• Stop if you start to feel uncomfortable or notice pain.

9/11 Attacks Changed Way Americans Dream

(HealthDay News) -- The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not only caused huge political and social changes, they also altered the dreams of Americans.

That's the suggestion from a small study published in the February issue of Sleep.

Dr. Ernest Hartmann of Tufts University and Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Boston looked at 11 men and 33 women, aged 22-70, who'd been recording their dreams for at least two years. Each of the participants provided information about 20 consecutive dreams, 10 before 9/11 and 10 after 9/11.

The study found that dreams after 9/11 showed more intense images, but weren't longer, more dreamlike or more bizarre than those before terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In addition, the dreams after 9/11 did not contain more images of airplanes or buildings. None of the participants had dreams involving airplanes flying into buildings, even though they'd all seen such images many times on TV.

"The more intense imagery is very consistent with findings in people who have experienced trauma of various kinds," Hartmann said in a prepared statement. "The idea is that we all experienced at least some trauma on (9/11)."

More information
The U.S. National Sleep Foundation has more about dreams.