Your Thyroid, Your Synthroid

November 8th, 2008

When taking generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine), you should look out for side effects such as nervousness, palpitations, insomnia and difficulty sleeping, headaches, undesired weight loss, increase in appetite or a swelling of legs and ankles. Severe reactions to Generic synthroid (Levothyroxine) are rare, but they do occur. These include: swelling of tongue and face as well as difficulty breathing. You should learn to watch out for these symptoms. If they do appear, contact you physician immediately. You may buy generic synthroid (Levothyroxine) online or in your local drug store.

Patients taking Synthroid have had a lot of positive things to say about the drug. It has evidently helped them a lot in controlling and maintaining their thyroxine levels. However, some patients find that the effects of one form or Levothyroxine may differ from another. Some patients also find that they experience side effects such as palpitations and insomnia during the first 6 to 12 months of taking the drug. However, the symptoms did settle as the body gets used to generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine). Other patients experience the positive effects of generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine) immediately. They report an increase in energy as well as mood regulation.

The generic name for Synthroid is Levothyroxine. It is a synthetic form of the thyroid hormone called thyroxine. It is given to patients with problems in thyroxine production. Those with hypothyroidism (decreased thyroid hormone production) and goiters (enlarged thyroid glands) are often prescribed generic Synthroid.

It is recommended that you take synthroid on an empty stomach - taking it an hour before meals would suffice. This is done to ensure proper drug absorption. Patients are also recommended to take it with a full glass of water to facilitate swallowing and help the drug dissolve. It is recommend that you not take the drug together with iron and calcium supplements or medications with calcium and iron in the formulation. Those two minerals are known to decrease the effectiveness of generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine). If you started taking Synthroid while on Calcium and Iron supplements, your physician may have to readjust your dosage.

Caution should be practiced when taking other drugs with Generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine). Drugs such as Ketamine could induce hypertension (high blood pressure) and tachycardia (increased heart rate). Taking synthroid with the medication Lithium can cause hyperthryroidism (increase in thyroid hormones) but most of the time, Lithium works against generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine ) by depressing thyroid production.

Taking generic Synthroid alone or with other diet drugs to treat obesity is not advised. Generic Synthroid (Levothyroxine) has a slew of serious side effects that can be life threatening. An overdose of Synthroid may also cause irreversible conditions as well as death.

Bernie Mac was a sad loss

October 3rd, 2008

Sometimes, good comedian just hits the right note of humor and intelligence to pass through the television screen and feel like a real human being. Another such talent we’ve lost is Bernie Mac. Although the official cause of death this August was pneumonia, he had been fighting sarcoidosis for many years. This is an autoimmune disease that, somewhat unfairly, operates along racial lines. Black Americans are sixteen times more likely to die than white Americans.

Although there are some side effects if you use a steroid like Prednisone over longer periods of time, e.g. an increase in body weight, fluid retention, etc. these are prices worth paying for those with this disease. Often affecting the lungs and leaving you breathless, people are left without energy. If it enters the heart or brain, you get symptoms mimicking a stroke or seizures. That Bernie Mac kept going and entertained so many for so long is a testament to the kind of man he was and the therapeutic quality of Prednisone.

There is no cure for this disease. It can affect any part of the body where groups of cells clump together. Where these so-called granulomas occur, the body is damaged. The standard treatment is Prednisone. This corticosteroid modifies the immune system, reduces inflammation and, in many cases, induces remission. Bernie Mac had been in remission for some three years before his death.

Pain, pain go away

October 1st, 2008

Ask your physician how to deal with chronic moderate pain and the usual answer is to prescribe a painkiller like Ultram. The key issue is that, rightly or wrongly, painkillers have a bad press. Open a newspaper and you’ll routinely see stories of people arrested for dealing in narcotic painkillers, or hooked on them and going into rehab.

It’s true that the medical profession is under pressure. Not enough doctors are prepared to work in general practice. But prescribing pills is a lazy answer. It gets patients out of the door quickly, but it’s not treating them as human beings with a problem to solve. People need reassurance that a drug like Ultram is safe (which it is when used properly). More importantly, they need options if they prefer to avoid taking medication for their problems. The medical profession has the resources to deliver physical therapy. Sometimes, it’s at the light end with massage. Other times, it’s at the heavy end with manipulation. If trust is established, people work their way through the fear of movement to find they can move without feeling pain or with reduced pain than they expected. This doesn’t mean people should avoid Ultram. It simply means they should take Ultram only for a limited time and work more at getting better naturally.

The old tried and trusted drugs are better

September 27th, 2008

Australian medics have just finished one of the world’s biggest studies into the treatment of pneumonia. Working for the University of Melbourne, Dr Patrick Charles took samples from 885 patients diagnosed with pneumonia in five hospitals over a two year period. He analysed swabs taken from the nose and throat, and samples of blood, sputum and urine.

He found that 95% of these patients had infections that could be treated with combination of penicillin and Doxycycline. In other words, almost all the people who fell sick, were victims of bacteria easily susceptible to the older drugs. They were all from nursing homes and other residential facilities where people had picked up bacteria resistant to the older cheap antibiotics.

There was no need to use the more expensive, broad-spectrum antibiotics. So what about the other 5% of patients? The moral of this research is very clear. You’ll do just as well by relying on penicillin and the other atypical antibiotics like Doxycycline. Don’t be misled by sharp advertising put out by the pharmaceutical industry. More importantly, don’t give all bacteria the chance to become resistant to the newer drugs. Save them for when the need is greatest (as in when you’re visiting a hospital or nursing home).

Cat almost kills her owner

September 16th, 2008

Headlines in newspapers are the life blood of media. Ever since the “Man bites dog” story, we’ve had every kind of animal story. Now this is the ultimate cat story because the headline misses out the vital reference to squirrels. The cat and the killer squirrels would have been more accurate. But we don’t do sensationalism for its own sake here. We kept it simple.

So you have to travel over to Smith Valley in Nevada. Richie Simmons’ cat was sick. She had visited with the local veterinarian to get drugs. One day, Richie cut her finger but thought nothing of it as she tended to the cat. A few days later, she was flat on her back with a high fever. It took a month for the lab to identify the problem. She had some kind of disease. Let me mention - it was highly contagious between humans and animals. How did the cat come to be infected? It’s going to remain a mystery. Did the cat travel back in time or just visit with some squirrel cousins in California? Who knows. It died before we could ask. The good news Doxy was an almost instant cure. Once you know which bacteria are making you sick, you get the right antibiotic and get better fast.

Men give up beer to lose weight!

September 15th, 2008

When several women get together, they often talk food. It’s all code for problems of self-image. When we eat too much, we put on weight and that is very dissapointing. It’s like that bit of Latin geeks use, quid pro quo, which actually means something for nothing. So we get this extra weight for that extra food. Cause and effect.

To reverse weight gain is very easy. Just eat less. Except it isn’t easy which is why there’s a whole industry out there to sell us diets. If you can’t help yourself with diets, there’s always the pills like Acomplia. All the clinical trials have shown this top European drug shaves an average 10% of your body weight and slims down those waistlines. I know no man who’d like to talk about diet with his friends. You never see them in a huddle comparing the results of only eating grapefruits as against cabbage soup. If they do get worried about their weight, they tend to do it behind closed doors. Most men I know walk in the house, open the refrigerator and pick out a cold one. It looks like ritual to mark the end of the hunter phase - gather a beer. But now men are giving up beer. They’ve done the math. They know how many calories are in each bottle or can. If that fails, there’s always a cold Acomplia.

What’s with the spam filter these days?

September 12th, 2008

Every minute my inbox gets another of those annoying spam messages telling me how wonderful Viagra is (or how many times another celebrity has had sex with the Boston Philharmonic). Gone are the days when I could just tweak the filter to include the latest permutation on Viagra or derivatives. Images are too hard to filter out. It’s not that I mind being reminded every now and then what the wonderful little blue pill can do. After all, there was that time a year or so back when I had a bad patch and found out how good Viagra is. Of couse it’s good to know last news about medications from all around the world, but not every minute. Why this article? Well, I’ve just had a déjà vu moment all over again. When I was just starting out in IT back in the 70s, one of the standard tools was American Standard Code for Information Interchange - a code for characters and other symbols, etc. And what did we clever people do when we got bored? We made pictures out of all those characters. And guess what’s just popped into my inbox. You’ve got it. It’s a headline, “Viagra - $1.10″ with the message built out of ASCII. So it made me sit up and take notice - just like taking Viagra really. Another way to beat the firewall is opened

It’s official. Win gold at the Olympics with Cialis

September 2nd, 2008

One of the world’s leading scientists specialising in sports drugs, Dr Robin Parisotto, has gone on the record. There are now new uses for existing and some new drugs that will fly under the radar of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s tests. Perhaps some of the better informed athletes have been using these techniques at the Olympics at Beijing. If so, we’ll never know. So what are these new techniques? Well, let’s start with the go-faster tattoos. These are very interesting ideas, recent studies showed that taking a drug through tatoo can be more effective than direct injections of medications right into sportsman’s veins. So, you get the same effect with one-sixteenth of the dose and that makes the dose so much harder to detect. But the most interesting ideas are the use of Cialis and nitrous oxide gas. Yes, friends, inhaling laughing gas makes you go faster, jump higher, and so on. The point is that both operate as vascular dilators - they open up your blood vessels. Then blood flows increase and bring more oxygen and glucose to those working muscles faster. The advantage of Cialis is that it stays in the body for longer - it’s not called the “weekend” pill for nothing. Next time you see a runner coming down the street towards you covered in tattoos, popping pills and breathing from a gas canister, this is your next Olympian in training.

Hot spots in Indonesia. What’s that all about?

September 2nd, 2008

Can you imagine anyone thinking spots are hot? Jeez. There you are in the morning, looking in the bathroom mirror in despair. Your acne spoils all your positive features and leaves your alone with it. You’re lining up to take the Accutane - signing up for the iPledge is a real pain but it will all be worth it when the acne’s gone. Foreigners are really weird. Indonesia is just so way out there. If you’re born in USA, i’m sure, you don’t even know where Indonesia is. So you stop and then smile. It’s not quite what you thought. You’ve just got acne on your mind. It seems those Indonesians burn their forests and our great network of spy satellites can see the hot spots where the fires are burning most fiercely. That’s why you’ve signed the iPledge and your parents are going to buy drug online. With a little luck, it will all be gone in six months time.

Xanax details

August 27th, 2008

Xanax is a prescription pill given to you by your doctor for the treatment of anxiety and the subsequent disorders of anxiety. When you experience anxiety, xanax’ll be your best friend. Marked by nervousness, and apprehension that may be unexplainable, anxiety attacks or panic attacks occur without any warning. With the help of your family physician, you can learn to live your life without worry or anxiety. There are many different types of anxiety. These include the inability to be around crowds, new people, or new places. With the help of Xanax you can slowly become less inclined to having attacks. Soon, you will be able to understand the way your body reacts to crowds, people, places, and anything unfamiliar so that you can take the doses as needed or properly as prescribed by your doctor. Xanax is prescribed to mainly treat any form of anxiety. This may include the treatment of panic attacks and irritable bowel syndrome. Your doctor will be able to determine what your needs are and prescribe you the doses accordingly. You can also take Xanax for extreme anxiety disorders which may include agoraphobia. Be sure to follow the doctor’s prescriptions exactly as they are ordered so that you do not suffer the more extreme cases of withdrawal. While the sufferer may be feeling fear for nothing at all, the perceived danger is extremely real to the person experiencing it. Because of this, anxiety is a disorder that should always be taken seriously, especially if the sufferer has any family history of mental illness or other disorders.

Side effects

Side effects of Xanax may include changes in weight, decreased libido, fatigue, impaired coordination in addition to others. There are also food allergies that should be considered when you take Xanax. Overdosing on Xanax is possible if you are not careful and if you think an overdose has occurred, call your emergency doctor immediately.