Herbal Health

How common: Stroke is the third leading cause of death for people in the United States. About 550,000 people suffer a stroke each year, most of them men. About 150,000 of those people die each year, roughly 60,000 of whom are men.
Risk factors: Involuntary: age, gender, race (Blacks are more at risk), diabetes, previous stroke, heredity, previous heart attack. Voluntary: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diet, being overweight, smoking, heavy drinking, lack of exercise.
Age group affected: Men over age 55 are at an increased risk, and their chance for stroke doubles every decade thereafter.
Gender gap: Men are 30 percent more likely to have a stroke than women, but less likely to die.
Who to see: Emergency room physician ASAP, then a neurologist.
Actor Raul, Julia will always be remembered as the vigorous, sensuous Gomez Addams from the Addams Family movies. He danced with reckless abandon and brandished his fencing rapier with lightning speed. Yet, at only 54 years of age, Raul Julia died from the complications of a stroke.
Julia’s death was a shock. But that he died of a stroke is not. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, preceded only by heart disease and cancer.
Think of stroke as a heart attack of the brain—a “brain attack,” as the experts say. Like a heart attack, a stroke is quick, unexpected and often deadly. As a man, your chance of getting a stroke is 30 percent greater than that of a woman. Only 40 percent of men who suffer a stroke die, however, compared to 60 percent of women.
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A number of factors play a role in the onset of lung cancer, but three preventive steps stand out.
Stop smoking. “By far the most important thing you can do is to not smoke,” says Dr. Munzer. Overall, smokers are ten times more likely to die from lung cancer than nonsmokers. Once you stop, however, the lungs immediately begin to nurture themselves back to health, slowly but surely. Ten years after quitting, a smoker’s risk of lung cancer drops to 30 to 50 percent that of other smokers who continued their habit. After 15 to 20 years risk becomes similar to that of someone who never smoked at all. By one estimate, taking the “Don’t smoke” advice saves 434,000 lives a year.
Don’t get it secondhand. Studies have consistently found that breathing other people’s smoke is almost as bad as smoking yourself, which is why smokers are increasingly being booted out of public buildings, offices, restaurants and shopping malls. In 1993 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared secondhand smoke a cancer-causing substance and held it responsible for 3,000 lung cancer deaths in nonsmokers each year. By some estimates, having close contact with a smoker raises your risk of lung cancer by 30 to 70 percent, depending on how heavily the other person smokes. In short, if you don’t smoke, other people who do smoke provide a major risk factor for lung cancer.
Vent the cellar. It comes from beneath the earth, undetectable by smell, sight, taste or touch. It’s radon, a natural radioactive gas formed by the breakdown of uranium in rocks and soil. In the open air it’s harmless, but when trapped in airtight houses, it can build to dangerous levels. According to the EPA, radon is the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. It’s a controversial point: Many studies have failed to find strong links between radon exposure and lung cancer, but many others have/including long-term studies in Sweden that find high exposures over time boost the risk of lung cancer by 30 to 80 percent, depending on the amount of radon exposure. Smoking multiplies the danger.
To get rid of radon, first get a test kit from your local hardware store to determine household levels. If they’re high, one solution is to have a contractor install a simple system of venting pipes and fans to suck air from beneath your basement and release it above the house. In the meantime open a window: Even a small draft can cut radon concentration by half or more.
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Self-reproach; blames himself for not only his faults but for the faults of others also. Guilt feeling. Despondency. Pine relates to the soul qualities of regret and forgiveness.
In the positive state, the Pine person is frank to admit his own fault; expresses his sincere regrets for his failings, but having done so there is no trace of guilt left on his mind, and he does not brood over his past mistakes. True, he takes his lessons from the past mistakes and does not repeat them in future, but does not waste time in thinking of them again and again, or feeling despondent over them. He can easily forgive himself or forgive others for their past mistakes and helps them to overcome any feelings of guilt complex and despondency by offering them his sage advice, and meaningful help. But in the negative state the “Pine’ person makes himself a self-condemning machine.  He is always out to blame himself for any undesirable happening. If he arrives late in the office because of an accident to the bus in which he was travelling he would muse “Why did not I start earlier in another bus? It is my fault, in any case.”
If he is driving his scooter on his own side and a rash driver strikes him from behind, he would still blame himself for the accident. He would argue thus, “this is a busy street and I know there are rash drivers who ply their vehicles on this street. I should have taken care to drive to the extreme left, or I should not have used this street”.
If his office peon is reprimanded by the superior officer for dereliction of duty, he would still blame himself for not having guided him properly about his duties.
If his building falls in an earthquake, he would still blame himself for not having constructed it in a quake-proof design.
If he cannot find any justification for taking any blame on himself for such tragedies as cloud burst, earthquake or tempests, his guilt complex attributes such mishappenings to his bad ‘Karma’ in the previous life.
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