Health News and Scoops

“Put harshly, we need more of a cancerlike sensibility around epilepsy,” Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham writes in the April 20 cover, “The Mystery of Epilepsy” (on newsstands Monday, April 13). “We cannot usually see our friends’ cancer, but we do not hesitate to invest the search for a cure for different cancers with the utmost cultural and political importance. We must now do the same with epilepsy.”

Meacham writes that the toll of epilepsy has been overlooked — and the research underfunded — for too long. Public and private funding for research lag far behind other neurological afflictions. “It is time to remedy that gap, and to raise epilepsy to the front ranks of public and medical concern,” he writes.

“Epilepsy in America is as common as breast cancer, and takes as many lives,” Meacham writes. A mysterious and widely misunderstood affliction, epilepsy is a disorder in which the brain produces sudden bursts of electrical energy that can interfere with a person’s consciousness, movements or sensations.

By some estimates, the mortality rate for people with epilepsy is two to three times higher — and the risk of sudden death is 24 times greater — than that of the general population. Yet epilepsy still receives too little attention, either from the medical community or the public at large. “One reason is that advances in drug treatments have created the popular impression that epilepsy is now an essentially manageable condition,” Meacham writes.

“Most people with epilepsy are not in a constant state of seizure — they are, rather, in perpetual but quiet danger — their condition can appear less serious than it truly is. It is all too human, but all too true, that a problem, including the problem of a serious medical affliction, stays out of mind when it is out of sight.”

Advocating the need for a medical Team Approach in the treatment and recovery from breast cancer, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), in partnership with the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBS), urges breast cancer patients, and their physicians, to insist that their treatment be handled by a team of healthcare physicians with the appropriate expertise for each procedure and level of care.

The Team Approach to breast cancer care brings together an interdisciplinary group of key medical professionals – gynecologist, radiologist, breast surgeon, medical oncologist, and a plastic surgeon – who work together at the onset of a woman’s breast cancer diagnosis to develop and implement a treatment plan tailored for each patient. When the Team Approach is implemented at the time of diagnosis through treatment and recovery, it can result in significantly improved patient outcomes and quality of life.

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Women in high risk groups for developing breast cancer are often given medications that reduce a particular genome of breast cancer but increase their risk for other breast cancers and blood clots according researchers from Oregon Health & Science University. Their findings were published in the September 15th issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Daily walking has been shown to be more effective in reducing breast cancer risks without dangerous side effects in numerous studies. According to a 20-year Nurses’ Health Study of 72,000 female nurses, walking for three hours a week, a mere 30 minutes a day is associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer.

Another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine focused on 26,000 women and found similar results with the risk of breast cancer reduced by 72%.

(Source) Press