The 10 Commandments of Weight Loss

Archive for April, 2010

Clinical features of pattern baldness in women usually occur during early teens and late middle age. This is shown by the gradual thinning of hair over the frontal area. Usually, pattern baldness in women is not accompanied by increased shedding of hair, but unlike telogen effluvium, hair loss may be seen from the start. The scalp becomes more and more visible as the disease progresses.

Most of the time, the central part of the head widens due to diffused reduction of the hair’s density, which involves the frontal scalp and crown. Some women may experience hair loss on some small areas of the frontal scalp while others may experience the effect on the entire scalp including the areas of parietal and occipital. During hair loss, women usually retain a rim of hair along the frontal hairline.

Laboratory Evaluation

Most women with pattern baldness have normal menstruation, normal fertility, and normal endocrine function, including correct levels of circulating androgens. Therefore, they would only need extensive hormonal testing when symptoms and signs of androgen excess become really visible. Laboratory measurement of serum total or free testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and prolactin are appropriate when hirsutism, severe unresponsive cystic acne, virilization, or galactorrhoea are present. Measurement of serum thyrotropin, serum iron and ferritin, and complete blood count may eliminate common causes of hair loss.

Differential Diagnosis of Androgenetic Alopecia

Androgenetic alopecia in women can be confused with the former condition. This is in spite of the fact that features of chronic telogen effluvium are distinct. Anyway, horizontal sections of a scalp biopsy help to distinguish the two conditions once the ratio of terminal hairs shrinks.

Morphology

As time goes by, the hairs in pattern baldness become progressively miniaturized. These hairs include the papillae and matrices, as well as the hair shafts. However, the degree of hair loss in women is not as extreme as it is with some men. Women with pattern hair loss have a mosaic of variable-diameter hairs in the affected region of the top of the scalp. Increased spacing between hairs makes the central part appear wider over the frontal scalp compared to the occipital scalp.

In some cases, hair volume may still appear normal but the hair would stop growing to its previous length and normally results to thin distal ends. Female pattern hair loss is seen on women by visual decrease in hair density while in men, it is by baldness on the affected areas.

Treatment of Androgenetic Alopecia

Hair loss is a result of abnormal hair cycle. Because of this, it is theoretically reversible. However, the current treatment options have limits in their performance and in some cases, only small improvements in hair density can be seen. Advanced pattern baldness may already be difficult to treat because irreparable damages may have already taken place on the follicular stem cell when inflammation surrounded the bulge area of the follicle. Some systematic treatment plans for this case include:
• The current treatment for pattern baldness is Minoxidil. The exact mechanism by which Minoxidil works is not known but the treatment appears to affect the hair follicle in three ways: it increases the span of time follicles spend in anagen, it rouses follicles that are in catagen and it enlarges the actual follicles. In effect, vellus hairs enlarge and are converted to terminal hairs, and shedding is reduced.

• Exogenous estrogen can be used to treat pattern baldness, but this regimen is no longer much in use because of Minoxidil’s efficacy.

• Finasteride has been effective on men with pattern baldness but definitely it was risky on women. This regimen is not advisable for women who are still in their childbearing age because of the presence of 5a-reductase inhibitors that may cause external genitalia abnormalities in male fetuses.

• Hairstyling, teasing, coloring, permanents, and the use of hair spray are means of coping with the cosmetic effects of pattern baldness. However, when the hair loss is grave, the affected person may opt to use wigs.

• Hair transplantation is another option since it has already been accepted in treating pattern baldness on men. Now, it is also being used to treat female hair loss although only a very few women go for this type of treatment because of the cost and the possible trauma that may go with it.

• For those women who have encountered ineffective and unsuccessful treatments for hair loss, surgery may be another option and thus, the most suited method for them.

Conclusion

Pattern hair loss in women is made up of many factors whose traits are genetically determined. It is possible that both androgen-dependent and androgen-independent mechanisms contribute to this strange form of hair loss. In women, it is usually patterned with the most marked thinning over the frontal and parietal scalp, and with greater density over the occipital scalp. Unusual hair loss in women may frustrate self-esteem, psychological well being, and body image. Because of this, it is quite vital for the physician to inform their affected patients that hair loss could bring about adverse effects on the quality of a person’s life.

Your pet is caught in a serious type of disease!

And do not be under the impression that this disease is the ‘privilege’ of human beings alone!

Feline Diabetes is one of the most common feline endocrine diseases. Its direct link is to the high carbohydrate diet of dry food. Many canned foods contain too many carbohydrates, which your cat may eat with great speed and gusto; but your poor choices, will definitely damage the health of your pet. Cats by nature are obligate carnivores and their system, as created by the nature is not suitable for a carbohydrate diet. Just don’t put anything and everything before your cat. Understand its requirements, from its biological point of view. Feline Diabetes is not a cat and mouse game.

Cats and insulin shots…sounds odd? But, it’s true.

If the diabetic condition in your cat is a longstanding one, then insulin shots are necessary. Once you start giving it the low carbohydrate diet, and once the cats recoup their original health, no further insulin shots are required.

“Feeding a diabetic cat with a high-carbohydrate diet is analogous to pouring gasoline on a fire and wondering why you can’t put it out.”

There are two types of diabetes – Type I and Type II. Type II is the more common, both in humans and in cats. But the cat has a unique metabolism.

Cats are obligate carnivores and are adapted to consume a diet that is high in protein, moderate in fat, and include a very small amount of carbohydrates (roughly 3 to 5%). Since nature designed them thus, cats do not have many of the important enzymes that are necessary to process these types of foods.

So, it is not sufficient that you love your cat. You have to understand the cat and its food habits! The food you give to your cat can put it in its grave!

One thing’s for sure in this world, you only have one body and you have to take care of it and all of its functioning parts if you want to live a long healthy life. As we age or get sick this becomes even more important.

At other times, besides preventative health maintenance we have to try to ease and repair the problems that we do have to help us live a more fruitful life.

Agel Enterprises has recognized this, and have taken it a step further when founder Glen Jensen noticed a hole in the health supplement market where vitamin pills and powders were not only hard to keep up with but also very inefficient for our bodies to absorb. So came about Agel and their proprietary Gelceutical blends, where simple single serving nutrients are included into a gel formula – suspended within – making the nutritional ingredients much more available and simple for your body to absorb. It’s a total revolutionary concept!

Agel has come up with four unique categories for their line in order to uphold an optimal level of health, plus provide for special health needs – as well as benefit athletes in constant motion and training and those who simple want to keep their youth alive.

Agel Nutritionals provide for better health and wellness with three different products:
• Agel EXO…a special blend of 14 super potent antioxidants to fight harmful free radicals giving you a much better chance at optimal health…
• Agel MIN…this is the ultimate multi-vitamin providing 100% of the recommended daily intake of 12 essential vitamins and 11 vitally important minerals that your body needs to function.
• Agel UMI…gives you one of the most effective chances for health with an immune balancing product so that your immune system does not become overactive which can be just as dangerous as an under-active immune system…

The Agel Wellness Category is meant to keep ultimately healthy with the ever important sports nutrition such as:
• Agel PRO…which provides the ideal amount of quality protein essential for the individual wanting to build and maintain muscle mass for much better and stronger performance – as well as have a ready to go mini meal when time is a factor…
• Agel OHM… keeps your energy levels up throughout the day…as well as helping men and women with sexual function and libido.
• Agel FIT…finally a product to make maintaining the ideal weight easier than ever, without pills and chalky powders that just keep you hungry through the day…

Agel Gelceuticals give you a natural non-prescription based therapeutic blend, but contains pharmaceutical formulas for easing pain and symptoms, including:
• Agel FLX…the first supplement to successfully blend the 4 crucial ingredients to ease and repair joint pain and damage…
• Agel HRT…a completely safe and natural way to keep your heart healthy, boost your myocardial system…

Everyone these days wants to stay not only feeling young but young looking as well, and so comes the Agel Ageless line.

Agel Ageless is a line of 7 different gelceuticals that work in conjunction to provide your skin everything it needs to:

• Stay healthy…
• Maintain a more youthful appearance…
• Make your skin glow…
• Reduce the appearance wrinkles…
• Strengthen your skin by enhancing Collagen production…

How can you go wrong with a line of revolutionary products that are so easy to use, work so effectively and efficiently, and take care of so many of your health needs? Well…you can’t!