Khaled Hosseni’s bestselling novel a thousand splendid suns is about two boys who grow up together in Afghanistan in the 1970s hit readers that they had to bring a film which could capture the story. The film itself is sometimes rushed and skimpy on the details but it has truly captured the main essence of the book. In San Franciso in 2000, Amir an author returns to Kabul, which is controlled by the Taliban, back then, Amir and his servant Hassan were friends and both the kids used to enter kite-flying contests to please their father. Amir starts to get jealous of Hassan because of how his father always encouraged Hassan. What breaks the friends' bond is Amir's cowardice when he does nothing to stop the rape of Hassan by a Pushtan thug, who figures later in the movie.
The movie is directed by Marc Foster, working from a short script by David Benioff and covering all the main scenes, the movie as a whole as a sensational job by the director. Both the actors Amir and Hassan give such heart-rending performances due to the horrific scenes that had to be shot the film release had to be postponed. The movie itself was truly a masterpiece.
Another similar movie came out later Slum Dog Millionaire which was about how children from the slums are abused and then used as a source of income. It was mainly about portraying the harsh realities of third world countries. Slum Dog Millionaire was later nominated in the Oscars but no credit was given to Kite Runners may be because of the reason that Kite runner focused on two boys who belonged to Afghanistan and not India? We don’t know, but this movie truly deserved an award for depicting such horrific realities with actors which gave brilliant performances. It must be said that these kind of tear-stained climaxes are much more earned here than in that previous ornament of a film. But for the stunningly captured and severe beauty of the landscape by the end one feels tired and more than a little manipulated, like one of those kites viciously jerking through the thin, cold air over Kabul.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza Controversy
Shoaib Malik has been under the lime light for quite some time now. His engagement to Sania Mirza has raised more questions than answers. GEO being one of our leading national news channels which claims to be the best among all the channels has not left a drop of respect or dignity for the nation by not only humiliating our own cricket player but making it evident to the world that Pakistanis are basically attention seekers and this nation jus CANNOT stop getting the maximum attention, regardless of if its terrorism or anything else. We have all the Hot Topics of the news ALWAYS!! Thanks to our media.
Shoaib Malik’s Controversy as being one of the headlines of every news channel, Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis player Sania Mirza has been a little too hard to digest for Pakistanis and Indians. Pak-Indo relationship haven’t been so smooth ever since partition. We had our first war in 1947. “the news of me marrying to sania is true” shoaib malik said on his twitter page according to the newspaper dawn, “inshallah will get married in April”. According to Sania Mirza she wants to plan her wedding privately without media intruding, she says she has been in the media glare for a very long time and would like to plan this occasion privately and would appreciate if people could just mind their business for a little while. Her father Imran Mirza confirmed by saying that they plan on getting married in Dubai. On the other side of the story, Ayesha Siddique who claims to be Shoaib Malik’s wife has been coming on national television and threatening Shoaib Malik. According to her Shoaib Malik and Ayesha Siddique had reportedly developed friendship on the internet and Siddiqui’s father had even threatened to take Malik to court. Malik has denied any serious relationship with Siddique. The dashing cricketer was also linked with Indian actress Siali Bhagat, and there were reports of the two meeting confidentially in 2008. This isn’t the first time that Pakistani cricketer has married a high profile Indian celebrity, former cricketer Mohsin Khan married Reena Roy, which later led to a separation.
I personally think in order for Pakistan to make progress as a nation it needs to have a low profile, a low key. The media needs to play its role as being a source of knowledge which is sensible and justified not exploiting people’s personal life on national television. We don’t know what the real story is, but at the end of the day what matters is we should respect our cricketers or any celebrity figure for that matter, because these people are an asset to the nation they represent our country, and by humiliating them we are not only humiliating ourselves but the entire nation.
Shoaib Malik’s Controversy as being one of the headlines of every news channel, Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis player Sania Mirza has been a little too hard to digest for Pakistanis and Indians. Pak-Indo relationship haven’t been so smooth ever since partition. We had our first war in 1947. “the news of me marrying to sania is true” shoaib malik said on his twitter page according to the newspaper dawn, “inshallah will get married in April”. According to Sania Mirza she wants to plan her wedding privately without media intruding, she says she has been in the media glare for a very long time and would like to plan this occasion privately and would appreciate if people could just mind their business for a little while. Her father Imran Mirza confirmed by saying that they plan on getting married in Dubai. On the other side of the story, Ayesha Siddique who claims to be Shoaib Malik’s wife has been coming on national television and threatening Shoaib Malik. According to her Shoaib Malik and Ayesha Siddique had reportedly developed friendship on the internet and Siddiqui’s father had even threatened to take Malik to court. Malik has denied any serious relationship with Siddique. The dashing cricketer was also linked with Indian actress Siali Bhagat, and there were reports of the two meeting confidentially in 2008. This isn’t the first time that Pakistani cricketer has married a high profile Indian celebrity, former cricketer Mohsin Khan married Reena Roy, which later led to a separation.
I personally think in order for Pakistan to make progress as a nation it needs to have a low profile, a low key. The media needs to play its role as being a source of knowledge which is sensible and justified not exploiting people’s personal life on national television. We don’t know what the real story is, but at the end of the day what matters is we should respect our cricketers or any celebrity figure for that matter, because these people are an asset to the nation they represent our country, and by humiliating them we are not only humiliating ourselves but the entire nation.
Death by Exercise
by Zubair Ahmed
Hundreds of guys -- including some of the world's fittest men -- have taken their final breaths while wearing running shoes. Here's how to outsmart the reaper
Guy goes out for a run. It's just a 4-miler--nothing, really, to a seasoned marathoner who usually runs 10 miles a day, 7 days a week. Nobody knows why he stops 40 or 50 yards short of his front door--maybe he's checking his pulse, maybe he's tying a shoe--but everybody knows what happens next to Jim Fixx, the 52-year-old patron saint of running: He dies.
You've heard that story. But you may not know about Edmund Burke, Ph.D., who was to serious endurance cycling what Fixx was to running. He died on a training ride last fall, at age 53.
And you almost certainly haven't heard of Frederick Montz, David Nagey, or Jeffrey Williams, three brilliant physicians at Johns Hopkins University who died while running. The oldest of the three was 51.
You'd think that exercise icons should live to be 100. And yet, every year, a few of them go permanently offline at half that age.
Two questions arise. The first is obvious: Why do the hearts of such highly conditioned men fail during exercise designed to make their hearts stronger? The second is so radical it borders on treason against the health and fitness cause: Is there something wrong with the entire notion of endurance exercise as a healthy, life-extending activity?
I've been skeptical about the benefits of aerobic exercise for years. But the answers surprised even me. Pull up a chair--you'll want to be sitting down when you read this.
The Road to Nowhere
The idea that a well-trained endurance athlete could just drop dead was unfathomable a generation ago. Thomas Bassler, M.D., went so far as to say that anyone who could finish a marathon in less than 4 hours could not have serious heart problems. He conducted a study on 14 marathoners who had died of cardiovascular disease, and concluded that all were malnourished. Unfortunately, he reported this conclusion in the July 27, 1984, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Fixx had died 7 days earlier.
Nobody today believes that endurance training confers immunity to anything, whether it's sudden death from heart disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis. Every time you lace up your running shoes, there's a chance your final kick will involve a bucket, and every expert knows this.
"I think the risk is inescapable, and it's bigger than we're letting on," says Paul Thompson, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and a researcher who studies sudden death and exercise. One of Dr. Thompson's studies showed that 10 percent of the heart attacks treated at his hospital were exercise related. "Those heart attacks tend to be in people who aren't fit," he says. "But that doesn't mean that's the only group that gets it, unfortunately. There are these very fit guys who go out for a run and drop dead."
Dr. Thompson's studies and others show that the chances of sudden death are about one in every 15,000 to 18,000 exercisers per year. That comes to one death for every 1.5 million exercise bouts. Curiously, the most serious endurance athletes seem to be at the greatest risk. Here's how it breaks down, according to an often-cited 1982 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine: <* />
• One death per 17,000 men who exercise vigorously 1 to 19 minutes a week
• One death per 23,000 men who exercise vigorously 20 to 139 minutes a week
• One death per 13,000 men who exercise vigorously 140 or more minutes a week
I had to look at the chart twice to see its startling conclusion: The highest death rate is among the men who exercise long and hard, and is much higher than that of the men who exercise short and hard. Worse, the guys who do hardly any vigorous exercise had a lower death rate than the guys who do the most.
About a zillion studies -- I lost count in the millions -- have shown that aerobic exercise leads to a healthier heart and a longer life.
Exercise Caution
Stay Alive
You're young and you're extremely fit. Almost always, that's a good thing. But in rare cases, a high fitness level hides--and may even help cause--a heart disorder known as ARVD. It's a genetic condition in which the muscle of the right ventricle turns into fatty or fibrous tissue.
Signs of ARVD (arrhythmogenic right-ventricular dysplasia) and other stealthy cardiac disorders include the following:
• Passing out, especially during exercise
• Heart palpitations, especially during exercise
• Sudden death of a family member, particularly a sibling or parent, before age 60. A heart attack "out of the blue" might be an indication of a hidden genetic condition
In ARVD, as the right ventricular muscle changes, abnormal heart rhythms occur, leading to the symptoms. If you're worried, go to a doctor--a series of noninvasive tests can determine whether you have the disorder. The Web site arvd.com can give you more information.
Ironically, patients with ARVD can be very fit athletes; extreme exercise may trigger the condition in those with the inherited susceptibility, says Hugh Calkins, M.D., director of electrophysiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Moreover, young, athletic men often shrug off the warning signs
ARVD affects about one in 5,000 people but may be the cause of up to 20 percent of sudden cardiac deaths in people under the age of 35.
Coronary artery disease and heart attacks account for about 80 percent of the sudden cardiac deaths in America each year. ARVD and other inherited conditions cause the rest, Dr. Calkins says. These disorders, which affect men more than women, include long QT syndrome and Brugada syndrome (problems with electrical impulses in the heart), and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (thickening of the heart muscle
Hundreds of guys -- including some of the world's fittest men -- have taken their final breaths while wearing running shoes. Here's how to outsmart the reaper
Guy goes out for a run. It's just a 4-miler--nothing, really, to a seasoned marathoner who usually runs 10 miles a day, 7 days a week. Nobody knows why he stops 40 or 50 yards short of his front door--maybe he's checking his pulse, maybe he's tying a shoe--but everybody knows what happens next to Jim Fixx, the 52-year-old patron saint of running: He dies.
You've heard that story. But you may not know about Edmund Burke, Ph.D., who was to serious endurance cycling what Fixx was to running. He died on a training ride last fall, at age 53.
And you almost certainly haven't heard of Frederick Montz, David Nagey, or Jeffrey Williams, three brilliant physicians at Johns Hopkins University who died while running. The oldest of the three was 51.
You'd think that exercise icons should live to be 100. And yet, every year, a few of them go permanently offline at half that age.
Two questions arise. The first is obvious: Why do the hearts of such highly conditioned men fail during exercise designed to make their hearts stronger? The second is so radical it borders on treason against the health and fitness cause: Is there something wrong with the entire notion of endurance exercise as a healthy, life-extending activity?
I've been skeptical about the benefits of aerobic exercise for years. But the answers surprised even me. Pull up a chair--you'll want to be sitting down when you read this.
The Road to Nowhere
The idea that a well-trained endurance athlete could just drop dead was unfathomable a generation ago. Thomas Bassler, M.D., went so far as to say that anyone who could finish a marathon in less than 4 hours could not have serious heart problems. He conducted a study on 14 marathoners who had died of cardiovascular disease, and concluded that all were malnourished. Unfortunately, he reported this conclusion in the July 27, 1984, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Fixx had died 7 days earlier.
Nobody today believes that endurance training confers immunity to anything, whether it's sudden death from heart disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis. Every time you lace up your running shoes, there's a chance your final kick will involve a bucket, and every expert knows this.
"I think the risk is inescapable, and it's bigger than we're letting on," says Paul Thompson, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and a researcher who studies sudden death and exercise. One of Dr. Thompson's studies showed that 10 percent of the heart attacks treated at his hospital were exercise related. "Those heart attacks tend to be in people who aren't fit," he says. "But that doesn't mean that's the only group that gets it, unfortunately. There are these very fit guys who go out for a run and drop dead."
Dr. Thompson's studies and others show that the chances of sudden death are about one in every 15,000 to 18,000 exercisers per year. That comes to one death for every 1.5 million exercise bouts. Curiously, the most serious endurance athletes seem to be at the greatest risk. Here's how it breaks down, according to an often-cited 1982 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine: <* />
• One death per 17,000 men who exercise vigorously 1 to 19 minutes a week
• One death per 23,000 men who exercise vigorously 20 to 139 minutes a week
• One death per 13,000 men who exercise vigorously 140 or more minutes a week
I had to look at the chart twice to see its startling conclusion: The highest death rate is among the men who exercise long and hard, and is much higher than that of the men who exercise short and hard. Worse, the guys who do hardly any vigorous exercise had a lower death rate than the guys who do the most.
About a zillion studies -- I lost count in the millions -- have shown that aerobic exercise leads to a healthier heart and a longer life.
Exercise Caution
Stay Alive
You're young and you're extremely fit. Almost always, that's a good thing. But in rare cases, a high fitness level hides--and may even help cause--a heart disorder known as ARVD. It's a genetic condition in which the muscle of the right ventricle turns into fatty or fibrous tissue.
Signs of ARVD (arrhythmogenic right-ventricular dysplasia) and other stealthy cardiac disorders include the following:
• Passing out, especially during exercise
• Heart palpitations, especially during exercise
• Sudden death of a family member, particularly a sibling or parent, before age 60. A heart attack "out of the blue" might be an indication of a hidden genetic condition
In ARVD, as the right ventricular muscle changes, abnormal heart rhythms occur, leading to the symptoms. If you're worried, go to a doctor--a series of noninvasive tests can determine whether you have the disorder. The Web site arvd.com can give you more information.
Ironically, patients with ARVD can be very fit athletes; extreme exercise may trigger the condition in those with the inherited susceptibility, says Hugh Calkins, M.D., director of electrophysiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Moreover, young, athletic men often shrug off the warning signs
ARVD affects about one in 5,000 people but may be the cause of up to 20 percent of sudden cardiac deaths in people under the age of 35.
Coronary artery disease and heart attacks account for about 80 percent of the sudden cardiac deaths in America each year. ARVD and other inherited conditions cause the rest, Dr. Calkins says. These disorders, which affect men more than women, include long QT syndrome and Brugada syndrome (problems with electrical impulses in the heart), and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (thickening of the heart muscle
Ways to protect your heart
by Zubair Ahmed
Did you know that open-heart surgery has a stink all its own? It's a burning-blood fragrance -- a whiff of baking roadkill you'd swerve to avoid during a bike ride. Only deeper, richer -- tinged with death, and sweetness. I know because I inhaled a lifetime's worth of open-heart fumes recently, standing at the elbow of Toby Cosgrove, M.D., chairman of cardiovascular surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. He was performing a valve repair and coronary bypass on an old high-school pal of his, and he had invited me, a heart patient at his clinic, to watch. And, surprisingly, sniff. Let me remind you: Mortality stinks.
Every channel flipper has done it: You're happily sampling the emptiness, click by click, when you flash into a gory moment on the Learning Channel. That was my life last summer: from Wild On! to a close-up of bloody surgical gloves in an instant -- only for real, with my own heart in the spotlight and no remote to press. And I have to watch this program to its conclusion.
Here's the deal: I'm 5'10'', 150 pounds, 46 years old. I've been wearing 32-inch-waist jeans since college. I've had blood work done every year for the past 7, just for the sheer pleasure of acing an exam: My LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers averaged in the low 140s, my triglycerides below 160. And, until recently, those were considered Get Out of Heart Disease Free scores.
The R.N. who evaluated my last blood test wrote, "Your chemistry results look great. CAD [coronary-artery-disease] risk is under the normal range. No recommendations at this time." She confirmed what I saw in the mirror: a guy who was doing everything right. I work out at least four times a week, lifting weights, running, playing flat-out full-court basketball for an hour at a time. I've completed two marathons in the past 5 years, and pulled myself to the top of Grand Teton. I'm also an editor at the magazine you hold in your hands, so I've learned and lived as much health advice as anybody. But none of that prevented a 99 percent blockage in my heart's left anterior descending artery. And if that can happen to me, friends, it most assuredly can happen to you. Who, you?
Well, only if you're an adult American male. (Men over 45 are the most likely to be incubating the clot that will kill them.) Fifty-one percent of you guys--and that makes 60 million of you strolling around, averting your eyes from articles like this one--will discover your heart problem by having what the cardiologists chillingly call an "event." That is, a heart attack.
For an estimated 80,000 of these men, the first symptom is one not even I would miss: death. It's pure luck that I wasn't one of those surprise stiffs, with a starring role in our feature "Death by Exercise," which you'll find later in this issue. If you consider my sorry case an indictment of everything this magazine preaches, you can stop reading here. To me, it says something else: If a guy with all the right numbers, the right exercise habits, and a live-forever diet--or so I thought--is at grave risk of sudden death, then a lot of us are. It also tells me that the long line of nurses and doctors who told me I was fine, just fine, had no clue. And that should make you wonder what might be happening in your arteries right now, as well. Here's something men are good at: dropping dead of heart disease. Every year, cardiovascular problems cause nearly half of U.S. male deaths--a third of them by complete surprise.
Don't follow that pack. Every year scientists discover new ways men can protect their hearts--from steps you can take to avoid problems, to drugs and gadgets that can help if you already have heart disease. We asked heart researchers to boil it down to 10 simple rules men can follow.
Get the Latest, Greatest Test
That's the highly sensitive C-reactive protein test, or HSCRP. A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this blood test is twice as effective as a standard cholesterol test in predicting heart attacks and strokes. It measures the levels of a specific blood protein that indicates that you have inflamed heart arteries--the kind that rupture and cause heart failure.
When researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston monitored 30,000 women for 3 years, they found that those with the highest levels of CRP suffered a much higher rate of heart attacks and strokes. And this result is perfectly applicable to men, says Paul Ridker, M.D., the lead study author.
"Since half of all heart-attack victims have normal cholesterol levels, the HSCRP test is a much better way to figure your true risk," he explains. Ask your doctor to perform the $15 HSCRP test (not the standard CRP test; that's important) along with your regular cholesterol test. "That gives you plenty of time to make some serious lifestyle changes to reduce the risk," concludes Dr. Ridker.
Keep up With Your Exercise
Over the past 4 decades, dozens of studies have shown that exercise is good for your heart. But here's the catch, according to a recent survey: You're only as strong as your last workout.
Doctors from the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts compared people who'd only recently started exercising with those who used to exercise regularly but stopped. Their finding: The cardiovascular mortality rate was 40 percent lower among the current exercisers.
"The benefits of exercise wear off quickly," says Scott Sherman, MD, of the UCLA school of medicine. Fortunately, the benefits of exercise also show up quickly, so if the only physical activity you ever have is moving pawn to knight six, you're not dead--yet. "The study shows that for sedentary patients, it's never too late to start being active," says Dr. Sherman.
Are you at risk for sudden death
Heart attacks aren't just for older, overweight men with high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors are seeing patients in their 40s come in with heart disease due to self-inflicted risk factors, according to Ilan Wittstein, M.D., an assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute. Middle-aged men need to be on guard. Even if you work out and eat healthy, you could still be at risk.
Beware of Risk Factors
"In half of the cases of heart attacks, the heart attack is the first time the patient finds out about heart disease," says Richard A. Stein, director of preventive cardiology at Beth Israel Medical Center and spokesperson for the American Heart Association. More than 60 percent of heart attacks have to do with simple lifestyle issues, such as diet, exercise and cigarette smoking, and easy to detect and treat medical issues such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. "Men need to know about the risk factors that predict the majority of heart disease cases," Stein says.
Stress Less
Research shows that not only do you have to watch your diet, exercise, and avoid smoking and excessive alcohol to prevent a heart attack, it's imperative to be aware of your family history and to manage your stress level. According to the 2004 INTERHEART study in the Lancet, stress is one of three main risk factors for coronary artery disease, and is responsible for a fifth of heart attacks worldwide.
Stress played a very important role in what may have caused the heart attack of Ken Lay, the founder of Enron Corp, says Wittstein. Convicted of conspiracy and fraud, Lay faced 25 to 40 years in prison before his untimely death. "If we look at medical literature over time, we find many good examples of how stress can have a profound affect on the heart," says Wittstein, who co-authored last year's study on "broken heart syndrome" in The New England Journal of Medicine. "We can't prove that heart attacks can be caused by stress, but we know that people who are under higher stress, have a greater risk of developing heart disease," Whittstein adds.
Release the Pressure
But it's possible to lessen your risk of heart disease by using calming stress management techniques, say these experts. Duke University Medical researchers conducted a study with 107 patients who had a history of heart problems. To lower the risk of future heart attacks, researchers divided the patients into three treatment groups; a third of the group exercised, another third received standard care, and the last third learned stress management techniques through 4 months of therapy and training. The stress management group fared the best with a 74% reduction in cardiac events over the 5-year analysis.
Stress management techniques can include getting therapy, or be as simple as taking up yoga, practicing tai chi or using meditation techniques for five minutes every day. "It's proven that relaxation techniques lower blood pressure and improve bloodflow," Dr. Wittsetin says.
Did you know that open-heart surgery has a stink all its own? It's a burning-blood fragrance -- a whiff of baking roadkill you'd swerve to avoid during a bike ride. Only deeper, richer -- tinged with death, and sweetness. I know because I inhaled a lifetime's worth of open-heart fumes recently, standing at the elbow of Toby Cosgrove, M.D., chairman of cardiovascular surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. He was performing a valve repair and coronary bypass on an old high-school pal of his, and he had invited me, a heart patient at his clinic, to watch. And, surprisingly, sniff. Let me remind you: Mortality stinks.
Every channel flipper has done it: You're happily sampling the emptiness, click by click, when you flash into a gory moment on the Learning Channel. That was my life last summer: from Wild On! to a close-up of bloody surgical gloves in an instant -- only for real, with my own heart in the spotlight and no remote to press. And I have to watch this program to its conclusion.
Here's the deal: I'm 5'10'', 150 pounds, 46 years old. I've been wearing 32-inch-waist jeans since college. I've had blood work done every year for the past 7, just for the sheer pleasure of acing an exam: My LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers averaged in the low 140s, my triglycerides below 160. And, until recently, those were considered Get Out of Heart Disease Free scores.
The R.N. who evaluated my last blood test wrote, "Your chemistry results look great. CAD [coronary-artery-disease] risk is under the normal range. No recommendations at this time." She confirmed what I saw in the mirror: a guy who was doing everything right. I work out at least four times a week, lifting weights, running, playing flat-out full-court basketball for an hour at a time. I've completed two marathons in the past 5 years, and pulled myself to the top of Grand Teton. I'm also an editor at the magazine you hold in your hands, so I've learned and lived as much health advice as anybody. But none of that prevented a 99 percent blockage in my heart's left anterior descending artery. And if that can happen to me, friends, it most assuredly can happen to you. Who, you?
Well, only if you're an adult American male. (Men over 45 are the most likely to be incubating the clot that will kill them.) Fifty-one percent of you guys--and that makes 60 million of you strolling around, averting your eyes from articles like this one--will discover your heart problem by having what the cardiologists chillingly call an "event." That is, a heart attack.
For an estimated 80,000 of these men, the first symptom is one not even I would miss: death. It's pure luck that I wasn't one of those surprise stiffs, with a starring role in our feature "Death by Exercise," which you'll find later in this issue. If you consider my sorry case an indictment of everything this magazine preaches, you can stop reading here. To me, it says something else: If a guy with all the right numbers, the right exercise habits, and a live-forever diet--or so I thought--is at grave risk of sudden death, then a lot of us are. It also tells me that the long line of nurses and doctors who told me I was fine, just fine, had no clue. And that should make you wonder what might be happening in your arteries right now, as well. Here's something men are good at: dropping dead of heart disease. Every year, cardiovascular problems cause nearly half of U.S. male deaths--a third of them by complete surprise.
Don't follow that pack. Every year scientists discover new ways men can protect their hearts--from steps you can take to avoid problems, to drugs and gadgets that can help if you already have heart disease. We asked heart researchers to boil it down to 10 simple rules men can follow.
Get the Latest, Greatest Test
That's the highly sensitive C-reactive protein test, or HSCRP. A study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that this blood test is twice as effective as a standard cholesterol test in predicting heart attacks and strokes. It measures the levels of a specific blood protein that indicates that you have inflamed heart arteries--the kind that rupture and cause heart failure.
When researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston monitored 30,000 women for 3 years, they found that those with the highest levels of CRP suffered a much higher rate of heart attacks and strokes. And this result is perfectly applicable to men, says Paul Ridker, M.D., the lead study author.
"Since half of all heart-attack victims have normal cholesterol levels, the HSCRP test is a much better way to figure your true risk," he explains. Ask your doctor to perform the $15 HSCRP test (not the standard CRP test; that's important) along with your regular cholesterol test. "That gives you plenty of time to make some serious lifestyle changes to reduce the risk," concludes Dr. Ridker.
Keep up With Your Exercise
Over the past 4 decades, dozens of studies have shown that exercise is good for your heart. But here's the catch, according to a recent survey: You're only as strong as your last workout.
Doctors from the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts compared people who'd only recently started exercising with those who used to exercise regularly but stopped. Their finding: The cardiovascular mortality rate was 40 percent lower among the current exercisers.
"The benefits of exercise wear off quickly," says Scott Sherman, MD, of the UCLA school of medicine. Fortunately, the benefits of exercise also show up quickly, so if the only physical activity you ever have is moving pawn to knight six, you're not dead--yet. "The study shows that for sedentary patients, it's never too late to start being active," says Dr. Sherman.
Are you at risk for sudden death
Heart attacks aren't just for older, overweight men with high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors are seeing patients in their 40s come in with heart disease due to self-inflicted risk factors, according to Ilan Wittstein, M.D., an assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute. Middle-aged men need to be on guard. Even if you work out and eat healthy, you could still be at risk.
Beware of Risk Factors
"In half of the cases of heart attacks, the heart attack is the first time the patient finds out about heart disease," says Richard A. Stein, director of preventive cardiology at Beth Israel Medical Center and spokesperson for the American Heart Association. More than 60 percent of heart attacks have to do with simple lifestyle issues, such as diet, exercise and cigarette smoking, and easy to detect and treat medical issues such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. "Men need to know about the risk factors that predict the majority of heart disease cases," Stein says.
Stress Less
Research shows that not only do you have to watch your diet, exercise, and avoid smoking and excessive alcohol to prevent a heart attack, it's imperative to be aware of your family history and to manage your stress level. According to the 2004 INTERHEART study in the Lancet, stress is one of three main risk factors for coronary artery disease, and is responsible for a fifth of heart attacks worldwide.
Stress played a very important role in what may have caused the heart attack of Ken Lay, the founder of Enron Corp, says Wittstein. Convicted of conspiracy and fraud, Lay faced 25 to 40 years in prison before his untimely death. "If we look at medical literature over time, we find many good examples of how stress can have a profound affect on the heart," says Wittstein, who co-authored last year's study on "broken heart syndrome" in The New England Journal of Medicine. "We can't prove that heart attacks can be caused by stress, but we know that people who are under higher stress, have a greater risk of developing heart disease," Whittstein adds.
Release the Pressure
But it's possible to lessen your risk of heart disease by using calming stress management techniques, say these experts. Duke University Medical researchers conducted a study with 107 patients who had a history of heart problems. To lower the risk of future heart attacks, researchers divided the patients into three treatment groups; a third of the group exercised, another third received standard care, and the last third learned stress management techniques through 4 months of therapy and training. The stress management group fared the best with a 74% reduction in cardiac events over the 5-year analysis.
Stress management techniques can include getting therapy, or be as simple as taking up yoga, practicing tai chi or using meditation techniques for five minutes every day. "It's proven that relaxation techniques lower blood pressure and improve bloodflow," Dr. Wittsetin says.
Health and fitness
by Zubair Ahmed
The basic foundation for a healthy individual starts from his foetal stage with proper and healthy nutrition derived from his or her mother. Hence, a pregnant woman's diet stands atop all diets.
Your food shall be your medicine. Ayurveda has postulated the role of food and especially nutritive foods for maintaining health as well as cure of diseases. Nutrients are necessary for the proper functioning of mental, physical, metabolic, chemical and hormonal activities. The body is like a machine that will repair and rebuild itself if proper nutrition is provided by way of food.
Sumptous nutrition is available in fruits and vegetables. Fruits have the capacity to give all that a body needs. How to consume? What to consume? Which fruit helps in which way? The answers to these questions can be found in our Nutrition and Healthy Diet Section
Exercise and Fitness
Simple fitness exercises can help to have a fitter and healthy life. Stretching exercises can help in many ways in mainting a fitter body. Weight loss can be achieved by following simple effortless regular exercises. Medical breakthroughs can happen by regular meditation and exercising. Yoga and other workouts which can be performed easily are available in this website to keep you fit and healthy.
Health and Fitness can make all that difference in one's life. Healthy living is all that one needs, and to achieve that we picked up the best of the articles from reliable sources and have presented here in an organized manner. You might not be able to spend your valuable time on complicated medications and diet controls, but, you can find articles to help you have a better living using simple and easy technics.
Ayurveda, a science in vogue practiced since centuries, uses a wide variety of plants, animal origin substances, mineral and metallic substances to rebalance the diseased condition in the sick. A few tips on simple treatment of life style diseases have been carefully picked for the visitors of this website. These tips can help reduce or control diseases like diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.
The basic foundation for a healthy individual starts from his foetal stage with proper and healthy nutrition derived from his or her mother. Hence, a pregnant woman's diet stands atop all diets.
Your food shall be your medicine. Ayurveda has postulated the role of food and especially nutritive foods for maintaining health as well as cure of diseases. Nutrients are necessary for the proper functioning of mental, physical, metabolic, chemical and hormonal activities. The body is like a machine that will repair and rebuild itself if proper nutrition is provided by way of food.
Sumptous nutrition is available in fruits and vegetables. Fruits have the capacity to give all that a body needs. How to consume? What to consume? Which fruit helps in which way? The answers to these questions can be found in our Nutrition and Healthy Diet Section
Exercise and Fitness
Simple fitness exercises can help to have a fitter and healthy life. Stretching exercises can help in many ways in mainting a fitter body. Weight loss can be achieved by following simple effortless regular exercises. Medical breakthroughs can happen by regular meditation and exercising. Yoga and other workouts which can be performed easily are available in this website to keep you fit and healthy.
Health and Fitness can make all that difference in one's life. Healthy living is all that one needs, and to achieve that we picked up the best of the articles from reliable sources and have presented here in an organized manner. You might not be able to spend your valuable time on complicated medications and diet controls, but, you can find articles to help you have a better living using simple and easy technics.
Ayurveda, a science in vogue practiced since centuries, uses a wide variety of plants, animal origin substances, mineral and metallic substances to rebalance the diseased condition in the sick. A few tips on simple treatment of life style diseases have been carefully picked for the visitors of this website. These tips can help reduce or control diseases like diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.
The Cultural Enigma
by Kamil Tariq
I don’t know whether I’m suffering from dementia or I am one of the few people that have this type of a mindset, but it really is rather astonishing that people do not observe that what is going around in their surroundings. By the surrounding I mean, not the situation of the country that we live in but more importantly themselves and the people they associate with. It may be vague that what kind of a point I’m trying to make, but in simpler terms I mean to point out the growing trend for the disregard of our culture. There may be several things that define culture, but basically it’s the morals and the norms of the society. Of all the people of the world belonging to different nationalities, we are the people that don’t need to be explained what culture is, or at least it wasn’t the case in the past. What I mean to say is that while most people may disagree with this but we are rapidly parting our ways with our ways. The norms and the standards in our society are changing with such ferocity that it seems that we will be a colony of different cultures and slave to the different trends in the near future.
By this I mean not only one particular social class in our society is changing but the different social classes are changing at different levels. The often targeted, “Upper Class” is always blamed to have western influences in their lives, which to an extent is correct that yes western influence is present in the society, not even going what our religion permits or forbids; because myself being a naïve and being a less of a pious person I cannot talk about religion; but what is happening around us is not even acceptable in our society or at least it wasn’t in the past. Vice is the order of the day; justice is no longer a word in the dictionary. The more the individual is influenced by western culture the more importance they get. It’s like; it is a simulated world with so many fake people posing to be someone they are not. Not only the targeted “Elite” have their influences, but the “Lower class” in our society is also not the ones that are living a life with their identity but are in fact are more deeply infused by the foreign influences. Just the difference is that their influences come from the nation of which, once we were a part of, India. This has increased to such an extent, that even while they are talking these people are using words that a core part of the Hindi language. The things that are becoming more and more popular in either of the social classes are many, firstly the main thing that gets influenced is the clothes, what Americans are wearing the same thing is being practiced here not just to the conventional clothing but also the exotic formal wear. What is being worn in India, the same thing gets far more popular locally. Apart from that, the weddings are like a place to show off your wealth, it’s ok to celebrate it with all your heart but going overboard is the thing that gets you the respect. These are just small glimpses of what I can recall from, on the top of my head let alone giving the matter serious thoughts.
From reading the text, one would think that it is the thoughts of an old man who’s still living in the past, but I am far from that, it’s just that to me; these things feel like a little piece of a stone when it gets in the shoe, it keeps on giving an uncomfortable feeling. What can be done? Well it’s not like it’s the end of the world and these are the words for a cultural requiem we can still look deep into ourselves and bring out what we really are.
I don’t know whether I’m suffering from dementia or I am one of the few people that have this type of a mindset, but it really is rather astonishing that people do not observe that what is going around in their surroundings. By the surrounding I mean, not the situation of the country that we live in but more importantly themselves and the people they associate with. It may be vague that what kind of a point I’m trying to make, but in simpler terms I mean to point out the growing trend for the disregard of our culture. There may be several things that define culture, but basically it’s the morals and the norms of the society. Of all the people of the world belonging to different nationalities, we are the people that don’t need to be explained what culture is, or at least it wasn’t the case in the past. What I mean to say is that while most people may disagree with this but we are rapidly parting our ways with our ways. The norms and the standards in our society are changing with such ferocity that it seems that we will be a colony of different cultures and slave to the different trends in the near future.
By this I mean not only one particular social class in our society is changing but the different social classes are changing at different levels. The often targeted, “Upper Class” is always blamed to have western influences in their lives, which to an extent is correct that yes western influence is present in the society, not even going what our religion permits or forbids; because myself being a naïve and being a less of a pious person I cannot talk about religion; but what is happening around us is not even acceptable in our society or at least it wasn’t in the past. Vice is the order of the day; justice is no longer a word in the dictionary. The more the individual is influenced by western culture the more importance they get. It’s like; it is a simulated world with so many fake people posing to be someone they are not. Not only the targeted “Elite” have their influences, but the “Lower class” in our society is also not the ones that are living a life with their identity but are in fact are more deeply infused by the foreign influences. Just the difference is that their influences come from the nation of which, once we were a part of, India. This has increased to such an extent, that even while they are talking these people are using words that a core part of the Hindi language. The things that are becoming more and more popular in either of the social classes are many, firstly the main thing that gets influenced is the clothes, what Americans are wearing the same thing is being practiced here not just to the conventional clothing but also the exotic formal wear. What is being worn in India, the same thing gets far more popular locally. Apart from that, the weddings are like a place to show off your wealth, it’s ok to celebrate it with all your heart but going overboard is the thing that gets you the respect. These are just small glimpses of what I can recall from, on the top of my head let alone giving the matter serious thoughts.
From reading the text, one would think that it is the thoughts of an old man who’s still living in the past, but I am far from that, it’s just that to me; these things feel like a little piece of a stone when it gets in the shoe, it keeps on giving an uncomfortable feeling. What can be done? Well it’s not like it’s the end of the world and these are the words for a cultural requiem we can still look deep into ourselves and bring out what we really are.
Remembering Rock.
by Kamil Tariq
Metallica’s new Album:
Thrash pioneers Metallica are still bearing the metal flag at this time, with their latest release “Death Magnetic”. Although the music has changed since their first album “kill‘em all in” in the early 80’s, but the quality and the soul of the music is still pure. All 12 tracks of the album including the second sequel to the legendary track “unforgiven” , are not characterized by the speed and the intensity that was found in the earlier albums, but a true metal fan cannot say no to a Metallica album. Whatever the critics have to say they are …. Not welcome to cause we give respect to the people who defined and still are defending “Thrash Metal”.
The Song remains the same:
Everything that exists today has its roots in some past time. Today we talk about new bands releasing albums and going on world tours, but we should remember where it all began. England was the Place and “led-zeppelin” was the name. I think that about sums it up if it’s the roots of rock n roll that we’re talking about. Led-Zeppelin laid the founding stone and provided inspiration to all artists from different genres of music let alone Rock music. Led-Zeppelin has come up with a DVD that is a compilation of all its greatest tracks and also some new tracks. The 2 DVD pack named “Mother ship” is a complete rock music dictionary, Robert’s versatile and steady vocals, jimmy’s legendary blues cum heavy metal guitars, along with john Bonham’s exceptional drumming. Sadly, as everything has to end, this would be the bands last release but for always we will follow the lyrics “To be a rock and not to roll”.
Going back into time:
In this edition we give our readers a little history of who were the main bands and which were the tours that were instrumental for bringing rock music to the front. Early rock/Heavy metal was heavily influenced by Blues music. Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, Eddie van Halen, Jeff Beck etc. were all basically blues musicians but most of the heavy metal musicians and musicians of other extreme genres of metal were influenced by these people. Just a little while ago we were remembering Woodstock which was in 1969, a rock concert the most massive at the time. Similarly later on different concerts helped promote the genre, in the 80’s “The clash of the titans”, “Metal Mania”, “Wacken” named after a place in Germany an event for the true metal fan still is a yearly festival, but probably the most u can say flamboyant or glamorous events of all is “Ozzfest” named after and started by Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osborne in the 70’s and still continuing till date.
Metallica’s new Album:
Thrash pioneers Metallica are still bearing the metal flag at this time, with their latest release “Death Magnetic”. Although the music has changed since their first album “kill‘em all in” in the early 80’s, but the quality and the soul of the music is still pure. All 12 tracks of the album including the second sequel to the legendary track “unforgiven” , are not characterized by the speed and the intensity that was found in the earlier albums, but a true metal fan cannot say no to a Metallica album. Whatever the critics have to say they are …. Not welcome to cause we give respect to the people who defined and still are defending “Thrash Metal”.
The Song remains the same:
Everything that exists today has its roots in some past time. Today we talk about new bands releasing albums and going on world tours, but we should remember where it all began. England was the Place and “led-zeppelin” was the name. I think that about sums it up if it’s the roots of rock n roll that we’re talking about. Led-Zeppelin laid the founding stone and provided inspiration to all artists from different genres of music let alone Rock music. Led-Zeppelin has come up with a DVD that is a compilation of all its greatest tracks and also some new tracks. The 2 DVD pack named “Mother ship” is a complete rock music dictionary, Robert’s versatile and steady vocals, jimmy’s legendary blues cum heavy metal guitars, along with john Bonham’s exceptional drumming. Sadly, as everything has to end, this would be the bands last release but for always we will follow the lyrics “To be a rock and not to roll”.
Going back into time:
In this edition we give our readers a little history of who were the main bands and which were the tours that were instrumental for bringing rock music to the front. Early rock/Heavy metal was heavily influenced by Blues music. Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, Eddie van Halen, Jeff Beck etc. were all basically blues musicians but most of the heavy metal musicians and musicians of other extreme genres of metal were influenced by these people. Just a little while ago we were remembering Woodstock which was in 1969, a rock concert the most massive at the time. Similarly later on different concerts helped promote the genre, in the 80’s “The clash of the titans”, “Metal Mania”, “Wacken” named after a place in Germany an event for the true metal fan still is a yearly festival, but probably the most u can say flamboyant or glamorous events of all is “Ozzfest” named after and started by Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osborne in the 70’s and still continuing till date.
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