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We have included some Tips for Healthy Living. Good nutrition is important at every stage of your transplant experience. Being healthy before your transplant will make it easier for you and your organ to stay healthy after your transplant.
Information on this page is general in nature and not intended to replace the advice of your professional medical staff.
A 56 year-old man walks briskly down a busy street on his way to work. Suddenly his face contorts with pain. He drops his briefcase, clutches his head in agony, and is dead before he hits the ground.
The killer? High blood pressure. The spectre of this quick and unexpected death haunts most of us, which is why Dr Mark Houston, associate clinical professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, starts his new book, "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Hypertension" (Warner Books), with such heart-stopping scenarios. High blood pressure is a silent killer. It creates conditions in the body that can lead to stroke, kidney failure, heart attack or vision loss.
Though it can be measured by a simple cuff-like device, you can walk around without knowing your blood pressure is hurting you because you can't feel anything wrong.
Singer Barry White died in 2003, aged 58 after years of chronic high blood pressure that caused him to go into kidney failure. Concern about the havoc high blood pressure can wreak has resulted in guidelines to define pre-hypertension - a reading of 120 over 80 which, until this year, was considered normal - so that people will wake up earlier.
Still, it remains the third leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for one out of every eight people dying. It's under-diagnosed and often under-treated and there may be no identifiable, controllable reason why you have it. Chris Evert, the former world champion tennis player, takes medication for high blood pressure.
Only 13 million of the 50 million people with hypertension in the US are both aware of it and are controlling it adequately. Houston thinks one of the main reasons is that the many medications are either too expensive or have too many side effects.
He advocates lifestyle control beyond the commonly prescribed weight loss, exercise and salt reduction. He's a proponent of the DASH diet - Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, first introduced in 1997 - which he covers extensively in his book, as well as creating a blood pressure-friendly way of eating: fruits, vegetables, and supplements.
The most compelling part of his book - and what he appears to be most eager to discuss during interviews - is an appendix that outlines his VascoGuard Therapy. It uses the "anti-hypertension effects" of celery, garlic and certain vitamins, which he says are less accepted by the major health organisations, although he claims they are well supported by science.
His entry into the alternative medicine field was in an effort to help his father. His father had prostate cancer and wasn't responding well to conventional treatment, so Houston began looking at natural treatments. "With different supplements and food he got amazingly better," Houston says. Eventually his father died, but by then Houston was convinced of the efficacy of alternative approaches.
By Carolyn Susman
Cox News Service
Release Date
March 15,2006Last Updated: 2006-03-10 14:24:00 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Renal transplant patients are at risk of deficiency in 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D), a new study shows, because of lack of sun exposure.
Because they are on immunosuppression, kidney transplant patients must protect themselves from sun exposure, Dr. Kerstin Querings of the Universtatsklinikum des Saarlandes in Homburg/Saar, Germany, and colleagues note in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Serum levels of the active vitamin D metabolite 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 are frequently monitored in patients with bone disease after renal transplant, the researchers add, but levels of this metabolite can be normal in patients with vitamin D deficiency. Less is known about 25(OH)D in patients after renal transplant, they add, and low levels of this metabolite -- the major circulating form of vitamin D -- can affect the body's ability to produce 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3.
To determine whether renal transplant patients might be deficient in 25(OH)D, the researchers compared 31 renal transplant patients and 31 age- and gender-matched controls at the end of winter.
Average serum 25(OH)D levels were 10.9 ng/mL for the renal transplant patients, compared to 20.0 ng/mL for the controls. Ten of the kidney transplant patients had undetectable 25(OH)D levels, while another five had levels below 15 ng/mL.
Dr. Querings and her team recommend a single 50,000 IU dose of vitamin D once weekly for eight weeks for patients with vitamin D deficiency, and 50,000 IU once or twice a month to maintain levels of the vitamin. Optimal levels of 25(OH)D are above 20 ng/mL.
"If we follow the guidelines discussed above carefully, these measures will protect renal transplant recipients sufficiently against the serious health problems of vitamin D deficiency without increasing their risk to develop UV-induced skin cancer," the researchers conclude.
J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2006;91:526-529.
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Transplant Australia is supporting the establishment of a Foundation to raise money for the late V8 Supercar driver Ashley Cooper's partner Casey and their young children Ella and Bailey.
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Click here to donate to the Transplant Australia Trust - Ashley Cooper Foundation.
Key members of the National Clinical Taskforce into Organ and Tissue Donation presented their final report to the new Labor Government on Thursday, February 14.
Transplant Australia has released the 2007 Annual Report.
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