Osteoporosis means “porous bone.” If you looked at healthy bone under a microscope, you would see that parts of it look like a honeycomb. If you have osteoporosis, the holes and spaces in the honeycomb are much bigger than they are in healthy bone.

This means your bones have lost density, or mass. It also means that the structure of your bone tissues has become abnormal. As your bones become less dense, they become weaker.

For some people affected by the disease, simple activities such as lifting a child, bending down to pick up a newspaper or even sneezing can cause a bone to break.

Many of the choices you make each day can affect your bones. By making healthier choices you can help to reduce your risk of osteoporosis as well as the painful fractures it can cause.

a) Calcium. Calcium is a mineral that is important for healthy bones. It is a building block of bone.

b) Vitamin D. Vitamin D is important because it helps your body use calcium. If you don’t get enough vitamin D or if your body does not absorb it well, you are at much greater risk for bone loss and osteoporosis.

c) Phosphorous. Like calcium, phosphorous is a part of the bones. Because this mineral is naturally present in many foods, most people get enough phosphorus. It is sometimes added to processed foods and soft drinks in the form of phosphate or phosphoric acid. While some experts say that Americans may be getting too much phosphorous, many experts believe that phosphorous intake is not a problem as long as people get enough calcium.

d) Other Minerals and Vitamins. Magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 are some of the many minerals and vitamins that are important for bone health. If you eat a well-balanced diet, you should be getting enough of these nutrients. Most experts recommend multivitamins or supplements for people who do not get what they need from foods.

e) Protein. Eating foods that supply protein is important for your health. But a very high protein diet, particularly animal protein, causes a loss of calcium through the kidneys. You can make up for this calcium loss by getting enough calcium to meet your body’s needs.

f) Caffeine. Found naturally in coffee and tea, caffeine is often added to soft drinks. Caffeine may decrease calcium absorption. One study suggests that drinking 330 mg of caffeine, or about four cups of coffee, daily increases the risk of fractures. To protect your bones, try not to have too many drinks with caffeine each day. You can also offset the calcium lost from drinking caffeine but increasing your calcium intake.

g) Soft Drinks. Some people are concerned that the phosphorous and/or caffeine in certain soft drinks may harm bone health. Other experts suggest the harm to bone is caused by people substituting soft drinks for milk and calcium fortified juices. In other words, when soft drinks take the place of milk and other sources of calcium, bone health may be affected.

h) Sodium (salt). Eating foods that have a lot of sodium may decrease your body’s ability to retain calcium. Eating too much sodium is bad for your bones and can cause bone loss. Try cooking without adding extra salt, and limit the salty snacks and processed foods that you eat.

i) Spinach. Spinach contains high levels of oxalate. Oxalate prevents the body from absorbing calcium from spinach. The body can absorb calcium found in most other green vegetables such as broccoli and kale. Although spinach can be part of a healthy diet, it just can’t be counted as a source of calcium. It does not affect calcium absorption from other foods.

j) Wheat Bran. 100% wheat bran is the only food that appears to reduce the absorption of calcium in other foods that are eaten at the same time. If you are taking calcium supplements, you may want to take your supplement two or more hours before or after eating any foods with 100% wheat bran. Although wheat bran may interfere with calcium absorption, foods with wheat bran are still considered a part of a healthy diet.

Courtesy: National Osteoporosis Foundation

As MJ Life preventive health screening followed the guidelines of WHO, i find it worth to share this “Principles and Practice of Screening for Disease“ from WHO what should constitute a good health screening program; it must cover 3 things: your general measurements, organ structures and organ functions.

I’m very proud to know that MJLife has put every effort in making sure that everything is in accordance to this 163 page Public Health Paper - from our questionaires, economic rates, data analysis, automated system to the counselling. But talk is cheap. Read it for yourself.

What exactly is health screening?

The objective of screening for disease is to discover those among the apparently well who are in fact suffering from disease. If the disease is communicable, steps can be taken to prevent them from being a danger to their neighbour.

The aim of early detection
The aim of early disease detection is simple. Early detection aims at discovering and curing conditions which have already produced pathlogical change but have not so far reach a stage at which medical aid had been sought spontaneously.

Which path would you rather take? Health Screening is just simply an evaluation of a person’s health condition by examining the major body organs so as to identify if there is any latent diseases before symptoms become apparent.

Wikipedia:

A disease is asymptomatic if you carry a disease or infection but experiences no symptoms. A condition might be asymptomatic if it fails to show the noticeable symptoms with which it is usually associated.

Asymptomatic conditions may not be discovered until you undergo medical tests (X-rays or other investigations). Some remain asymptomatic for a remarkably long time, including some forms of cancer. If a patient is asymptomatic, precautionary steps must be taken.

A patient’s individual genetic makeup may delay or prevent the onset of symptoms. The most common in the list is high blood pressure and osteporosis.

Have you given this subject much deeper thought today?

Increases in medical bills are outpacing the general inflation rate each year. That raises the question whether healthcare is reserved only for those who can afford it

“I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for”
- American bureaucrat, James H. Boren (1925)

WHAT is the value of a human’s health? Sixteenth-century English scholar and vicar at Oxford University Robert Burton put it at such: “Restore a man to his health, and his purse lies open to thee.”

That denotes that health is priceless, and almost everyone would pay anything to get well. (But why people does not pay to stay healthy? Aren’t human weird?)

With the doctors’ power to demand, medical services do not come cheap.

And with the continuous rise of investments in research and development as well as the adoption of the latest technologies to deal with the rapid emergence of new and complicated illnesses (and the re-emergence of some deadly ones), healthcare costs are soaring by the day.

So, who can afford to fall sick these days?

Across the world, the increases in doctors’ bills are outpacing the general inflation rate each year. It is estimated that the global medical inflation averages about 10% each year.

In Malaysia, medical inflation is estimated to be around 15% each year. That is to say, a simple appendicitis surgery that cost RM1,800 three years ago will set you back by about RM3,000 today.

Excerpt from TheStarBiz

Given a choice, would you rather detect your cancer at stage 0 and 1 OR stage 2 and above? Who can you blame when your doctor tells you ‘I’m sorry, but this is stage 4″?

It is say that your life is fated. Yes it is, we can’t stop earthquake or other catastrophe from happening. But if you can detect the disease early and you disregard screening as important in the first place, is this called fate?

No, it’s a result from your own ignorance, who can we blame when we put ourselves to suffer which results in suffering to family members, kids and relatives too?

Make it a point today to schedule for your yearly comprehensive health screening. You can’t be too busy for that. What is more important that your own health? If you never set priority for your health, it could be too late when you discover it.

Cancer is curable, but again it depends on the stage of the disease. The earlier you detect it, the higher your chances are and the lower the costs involved.

The irony is that most people do not seem to give this much thought when they feel no pain. Even if there’s a certain discomfort, we usually like to shrug it off as ‘normal’ symptoms. But the truth is once you feel something is wrong, 80% of the time it’s already too late.

“Colon cancer, nasopharyngeal (nose and throat) cancer are very curable types of cancer when you detect it early, and even lung cancer can be cured if you catch it in the early stages,” says Dr Low.

But if you are looking for proof of progress in the survival time of cancer patients, you do not have to look further than lung cancer.

“Lung cancer used to be fatal, once you get it, within a year you’ll die,” says Dr Low. “If you receive chemotherapy you’ll probably live for eight months to a year, but if you don’t, you could probably only live for six months,” he says.

Excerpt from TheStar.

So… go screen and do it the right way. The first unavoidable cause of cancer is being born. Yes, you can’t deny that.

Would you rather be safe today than be sorry tomorrow? You decide:

(just click on the picture to enlarge it)