Zulfiqar Rana, MD, MPH, FACP

Board Certified in Internal Medicine

Category Archives: chronic diseases

Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

Leave a comment Posted by on April 17, 2011

A growing body of research suggests that watching your diet and exercising a few times a week is not enough to offset sedentary time.

http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3e78bd1ed0544a365fe556be073f5f36

chronic diseases, Obesity

Hunger and Obesity

Leave a comment Posted by on April 6, 2011

Cover imageResearchers have long observed food insecurity- difficulty providing food for all one’s family members, known as hunger in its most severe form -and obesity occurring together in the same communities, families, and individuals. But the relationship of these two problems is not well-understood. The IOM held a workshop November 16-18, 2010, to explore the relationship between food insecurity and obesity, the current state of the research, and the data and analyses needed to better understand their relationship…

http://feeds.nap.edu/~r/nap/new/~3/Wt1EX8ydiDs/catalog.php

chronic diseases, Obesity

Breathing Dirt

Leave a comment Posted by on April 5, 2011

In the PARSIFAL study (6843 participants), researchers analyzed mattress dust samples for environmental bacteria via DNA signatures, which detect bacteria that cannot be measured by culture. In the GABRIELA study (9668 participants), researchers used culture techniques to evaluate bacterial and fungal taxa in dust from children’s rooms. Both studies showed that farm-dwelling children had a lower incidence of asthma and atopy and were exposed to a larger variety of environmental microorganisms than non–farm-dwellers. Microbial diversity was inversely related to asthma risk. An inverse relationship was seen between asthma incidence rates and exposure to certain fungal and bacterial species…

http://dermatology.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2011/401/1?q=featured_jd

 

chronic diseases

Healing the Hurt

Leave a comment Posted by on March 15, 2011

From TIME: Pain is the human bodyguard, the cop on the beat racing to the scene, sirens wailing, shutting down traffic. You\’ve been cut, burned, broken: pay attention, stop the bleeding, apply heat, apply cold, do something. It\’s one of life\’s most primitive mechanisms, by which even the simplest creature, if it has anything like a central nervous system, learns to avoid danger, stay out of bad neighborhoods, hunker down to give itself time to heal. Pain is protective. Don\’t do that, it commands — and the command is usually a wise one. So this sensation we seek most to avoid is in fact one of the most essential ones for our survival.But what happens when pain goes rogue, when it sends off false alarms so that all the

via Healing the Hurt – TIME.

chronic diseases ,

Troubles of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Start With Defining It

Leave a comment Posted by on March 5, 2011

From The New York Times:

Troubles of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Start With Defining It

For an ailment with no known cause and subjective symptoms, definitions differ, and so do diagnoses.

When reports emerged 30 years ago that young gay men were suffering from rare forms of pneumoniaand cancer, public health investigators scrambled to understand what appeared to be a deadly immune disorder: What were the symptoms? Who was most susceptible? What kinds of infections were markers of the disease…

http://nyti.ms/gwBjgg

chronic diseases