What Is the Common Cold?

The common cold (acute coryza) is the most widespread disease in humans. It is a highly infectious condition. The common cold causes prominent upper respiratory tract symptoms, specially in the nasal cavities, and mild symptoms in other parts of the body. It occurs due to a wide range of viruses, of which the rhinoviruses are the most prevalent. Other viruses include adenoviruses and coronaviruses. More than 100 types of rhinoviruses are responsible for the common cold. Therefore, it is difficult for your immune system to protect you from this infection. Most people suffer two to three common colds a year. However, the incidence gradually declines with age. It may be due to acquiring immunity to various types of viruses. Additionally, it is one of the well-known causes of school and work absenteeism.

How to Manage Acute Asthma in Adults?

Usually, bronchial asthma can be controlled, if the patient has a good compliance with medications and lifestyle changes. However, some patients with asthma can develop acute exacerbations (attacks).

Acute bronchial asthma should be managed under the supervision of health-care professionals. People with near fatal or life-threatening bronchial asthma should be admitted and managed as inward patients. Individuals, who have persistent severe attack following initial therapy, should also be admitted. Patients, whose peak expiratory flow (PEF) is more than 75 % of the earlier best or predicted value one hour following initial therapy, can be discharged from emergency department.

How to Diagnose Acute Asthma in Adults?

Bronchial asthma is a chronic (long-term) inflammatory condition of the lungs. It occurs basically in the airways. Usually, bronchial asthma can be controlled with medications and lifestyle modifications. However, some people may develop acute attacks (exacerbation) of asthma.

Features of acute asthma

It is important to identify and manage acute asthma. There are some features, which help identify or diagnose acute asthma attacks.

• Severe shortness of breath (breathlessness), which includes too breathless to complete sentences in one breath.
• Increased heart rate (tachycardia) or pulse rate
• Increased respiratory rate (tachypnoea)
• Poor respiratory effort without wheezing
• Collapsed patient
• Bluish discolouration (cyanosis) of lips, tongue, or fingers, which is due to low oxygen in the blood.

However, these are not specific features of an acute asthma attack. Their absence doesn’t rule out a severe attack. Why is it important to identify acute asthma attacks? People with acute severe asthma and one or more psychosocial risk factors have a higher risk of death.

Importance of Warming-up Your Body

Why is warm-up important? Why should you warm-up before any workout plan or active sport? It helps prepare your body physically and mentally for high-intensity as well as high-volume physical activities. Warm-up lowers the risk of injury too. It should be started with mild-intensity aerobic exercises and/or exercises, which raise the range of motion (ROM) of the joints. Then, it may be increased in intensity gradually until the person is prepared for more vigorous activities. The intensity of warm-up should be low and should not exhaust the particular person. Usually, warm-up lasts for about five to twenty minutes. Normal warm-up raises the body temperature in about one to two degrees of Fahrenheit.

Obesity in Children

Why is obesity in children important? The rate of obesity has increased two times in children and three times in adolescents during last 30 years. Over one-third of adolescents and children were obese or overweight in 2010. These results are basically due to the imbalance between calorie intake and expenditure. Lifestyle, genetic, dietary, and environmental factors affect overweight and obesity.

Weight-loss Surgery for Obesity

Weight-loss surgery is also known as bariatric surgery. It is offered in some instances of morbid obesity (BMI is 40 kg/m2 or above) or people with a BMI between 35-39.9 kg/m2 and obesity-related complications, following conventional medical treatments have failed. Bariatric surgery helps lose the most weight, but it may lead to some severe complications. A number of gastrointestinal surgical procedures belong to bariatric surgery. They help lose body weight, mainly in three ways. Bariatric surgery restricts the quantity of food the patient can comfortably eat (restrictive procedures) or lowers the absorption of calories (malabsorptive procedures), or both. Bariatric surgical procedures cause a significant weight loss with improvement in quality of life and the risk of complications. Sometimes, they help lose 50 % or more of the excessive weight. However, they do not guarantee that the patient will lose all the excessive weight or that him or her will keep up it for a long period. After bariatric surgery, the patient needs to follow exercise, a healthy diet, and lifestyle changes as usual.

Medications for Obesity

Usually, physical activities and a healthy diet help manage obesity. However, it may be difficult to treat obesity alone with them in some people. Therefore, physicians may consider offering some weight loss medications. These drugs are recommended to obese people with a risk of obesity-related complications.

Pharmacological Management of Obesity

The management of obesity is basically based on regular physical activities, lifestyle modifications, and a healthy balanced diet. However, it may be difficult to manage obesity alone with them. Then, your doctor may prescribe some medications to solve the problem. Medications can be used in the short-term (for several months) or long-term (even up to two years) as an adjunct to the diet, lifestyle modifications, and exercise. However, drugs do not substitute for them. If you use medications without lifestyle changes, you can't achieve the weight loss goal.

Tips for Diet in Obesity

Dietary control has a significant role in the management of obesity. There are various diet plans such as low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets.

• Every low-calorie diet helps cut body weight and fat in obese people, regardless of dietary composition. However, short-term weight reduction is faster with low-carbohydrate diets. It is due to loss of body water, which is regained following end of the diet plan.

• Very low-carbohydrate diets may be nutritionally insufficient. They may cause nutritional deficiencies. Very low-fat diets are usually deficient in zinc and some vitamins like B12 and E.

Obesity and Dietary Control

Dietary control is an essential factor for the management of obesity. It mainly depends on a reduction in calorie consumption. The most typical diet plans allow a daily consumption of roughly 1000 kcal. This may have to be closer to 1500 kcal for a person engaged in physical activities. Very low-calorie diet plans are also recommended by some, normally over shorter durations. However, if they are not combined with lifestyle modifications, body weight regain is likely. If you need large amounts of fat to be shed, you should follow the diet plan continuously. Additionally, a permanent change in dietary habits is necessary to keep up the new low weight. It is fairly easy to reduce initial kilograms of your weight. However, long-lasting results in moderate obesity are poor, having an overall success of no more than 10 %.

Complications of Obesity

Obesity is a global problem now because, the rate of obesity is rising in many countries. Why is obesity significant? It is associated with many diseases and health-related complications.

What Is Obesity?

Obesity means an excessive storage of fat in the body. It can easily be detected by looking at a person. Obesity is commoner in developed countries compared to developing nations. However, this issue is becoming a world-wide problem now because, the rate of obesity is increasing in many developing countries.