Triglycerides can harm your body. – By Dr Harold Gunatillake Transcript: Triglycerides are a type of fat (lipid) found in the blood. When you eat, your body converts any calories it doesn’t need to be used immediately into triglycerides, which are stored in your fat cells. High levels of triglycerides in the blood can be caused by a few factors, with obesity and poorly controlled diabetes is the most common ones. If you have excess weight and are not physically active, your triglyceride levels maybe high, mainly if your diet is high in carbohydrates, sugary foods, or alcohol. “You are concerned about cholesterol levels in your blood, including bad LDL and good HDL. It is also essential to consider your triglyceride levels, as they play an important role in your health but can also cause harm if they are too high. Triglyceride levels usually fall into the following categories: Healthy: ...

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Are you someone’s perfect match? If you’re aged 18 to 35, you can volunteer to be a blood stem cell donor. Why donate your stem cells? Over 110,000 Australians (and millions more overseas!) are living with blood cancer. For some, a transplant from a donor with closely matched blood stem cells is their only possibility of a cure. By joining the donor registry, you could be someone’s perfect match and their best hope of survival. That’s a powerful thing! Can I join through Lifeblood? If you’re aged 18 to 35 and in good health, probably! If you can give blood, you can volunteer to give stem cells through Lifeblood. In fact, if you can’t give blood, we may still be able to help you register. It’s best to give us a call on 13 14 95 to check. Did you know? There’s scientifi c evidence that younger people make the ...

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Can you turn around diabetes? – By Dr harold Gunatillake Website: www.Doctorharold.com Just walking daily for one to two hours intermittently and having strict dietary discipline is the secret to reversing diabetes type 2. Diabetes is a dreaded disease that kills millions of people, mainly due to not following the right lifestyle changesb and taking regular medication. It is a disease that can be controlled by you and reversed with persistent hard work. Prediabetes is much easier to reverse than full-blown diabetes where the insulin secreted by the pancreas is more resistant and needs to be converted to sensitive insulin. Just walking daily for one to two hours intermittently and having strict dietary discipline is the secret to reversing diabetes type 2. How many people have diabetes? 37.3 million people, or 11.3% of the U.S. population, have diabetes. An estimated 28.7 million people – or 28.5% of the population – ...

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What is the significance of eGFR? – By Dr harold Gunatillake Website: www.Doctorharold.com Transcript: It stands for-Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) Kidneys are vital for your body. Well-functioning kidneys remove waste and excess fluids from your blood, keep essential minerals in balance, help regulate blood pressure, and produce red blood cells and vitamin D. In other words, your kidneys make sure your body stays healthy and balanced. Now let’s talk about what a glomerulus is. The kidney’s filtering unit’s glomerulus is a specialised bundle of capillaries uniquely situated between two resistance vessels. These capillaries are each contained within the Bowman’s capsule, and they are the only capillary beds in the body that are not surrounded by interstitial tissue. Your kidneys filter your blood by removing waste and extra water to make urine. The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) shows how well the kidneys filter. An estimated 37 million adults in the ...

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Calcified arteries- what is the significance? – By Dr Harold Gunatillake Calcium deposition in arteries shows how much fatty build-up or plaque formation. Plaques, especially in your coronary arteries, are the leading cause of heart attacks, and when a piece of these plaques breaks off, a blood clot can form around it, blocking the flow of blood, and the heart muscles will be deprived of oxygen. Coronary artery calcification is a buildup of calcium that can predict your cardiovascular risk, as all plaques get calcified with time. Cardiologist depends on ECG tracings during exercise on a treadmill machine to check on the degree of blockage of coronary vessels, shown by the ST segment changes. The presence of calcified plaques is visible on CT scans, and the number of such spots can be counted and given as a coronary calcium score. This is referred to as the calcium score, which measures ...

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What are Vasodilators and what are they used for? By Dr harold Gunatillake   Transcript: Vasodilatation is the basic principle involved in control of high blood pressure. Narrowing of your blood vessels is a normal phenomenon as we get older due to thickening of the vessel walls, narrowing the lumen, and to the action of angiotensin 11 derived from inactive angiotensin 1 due to catalyzing effect by angiotensin converting enzyme, and making the heart pump with more force for the distribution of oxygenated blood with micro-nutrients- resulting in high blood pressure. All antihypertensive medication aims at causing vasodilatation of blood vessels and slowing of the heart rate. Vaso refers relative to blood vessels and dilatation of such vessels is possible due to the smooth muscle content in the vessel wall. Widening of blood vessels do occur that aren’t due to underlying diseases. Examples include warm temperatures such as time spent ...

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