World Glaucoma Day fell on March 12.:

Beware of 'the silent killer of the eye'

Several awareness campaigns were conducted in hospitals islanwide recently, to educate the people on the seriousness of Glaucoma. In an interview with the 'Healthwise', Dr. D.R.R. Kodikara, Consultant Eye Surgeon, Kalubowila Teaching Hospital, Colombo South explained the importance of being aware of glaucoma as it is a major cause of preventable , irreversible blindness.

By Samangie WETTIMUNY

Dr. D.R.R. Kodikara, Consultant Eye Surgeon, Kalubowila Teaching Hospital, Colombo South

Glaucoma nicknamed as "the sneak thief of sight" or "the silent killer of the eye", is a condition in which the optic nerve (the main nerve of the eye) gets damaged leading to "progressive and irreversible" blindness. Quite often it is associated with the increased intraocular pressure . But it is not the case always. Anyway raised intraocular pressure is the major risk factor of glaucoma.

As noted by Dr. Kodikara there are two types of glaucoma-acute and chronic. Chronic glaucoma is the most common type .It is also called the Open Angle glaucoma.

"Patients who suffer from Acute glaucoma tend to visit an eye clinic as it is symptomatic. But Chronic glaucoma is relatively asymptomatic and is characterized by enlarging optic disc cupping and visual field loss. " Most of the times such patients come to us very late.

Also it may be an incidental or accidental finding- in most of the cases we detect it when they come for an eye check-up. If not, the asymptomatic nature of Chronic glaucoma would make patient wait till they begin to lose their sight!" As Dr.Kodikara explained very often it is too late when doctors detect it.

"That is the seriousness of glaucoma and that is why we should make people aware of it." It is a leading cause of preventable and irreversible blindness. If detected early, we can give the patients necessary treatment. Though glaucoma is incurable it is controllable."

In lay jargon glaucoma is commonly known as "eye pressure". It has been viewed as a diseased caused by increased eye pressure. When asked whether glaucoma is always associated with increased pressure of the fluid in the eye, Dr. Kodikara said that though the increased pressure is a major risk factor it is not the only cause. Increased pressure is the major risk factor of Chronic Open Angle glaucoma, he said.

Risk groups

The main risk groups are the people above the age of forty, first degree relatives of glaucoma patients, diabetic patients and myopic (shortsighted people) people. "Prevalence of Glaucoma is high in diabetic patients though the exact cause is not really known.

Myopic people are prone to glaucoma even if they are below forty or even very young."

Hypertension is also a risk factor. But it is not directly linked.

"As I mentioned earlier the most common type of glaucoma is asymptomatic. So if you belong to any of the risk groups it is quite necessary to go to an eye clinic and get your eyes screened.

We detect patients mostly when they come for an eye check up to buy glasses!"As Dr.Kodikara explained in Chronic Open Angle Glaucoma the aqueous humour(or the fluid in the front part of the eye) absorption is reduced due to resistance in that area (trabecular meshwork at the angle of the eye.)

Basic examinations

Significant glaucomatous cupping.

The basic examinations includes recording of intraocular pressure and optic disc cup appearance.

Then we do the visual field test. In some cases we do special investigations such as OCT, GDx VCC tests, and measuring the central corneal thickness..

The primary line of treatment is medical therapy. There are various drugs to control the intraocular pressure.

When maximum medical therapy fails only we resort to surgery to control intraocular pressure.

"There are several treatment methods used by doctors of which I need not go into detail. What you should do is just visit an eye clinic! The rest is in the hands of doctors" Dr. Kodikara assured.

Mind-reading experiment uses brain scans to eavesdrop on thoughts

Brain scans revealed with reasonable accuracy which short film lip volunteers were thinking about

Scientists have used brain scans to delve into people's minds and predict what films they are thinking about from one moment to the next.

Volunteers lay in an MRI brain scanner as they recalled film clips at random.

This is the first time brain imaging has been used to decipher such complex thoughts, which take place in the base of the brain in a region known as the medial temporal lobe.

The work follows an earlier study in which neuroscientists at University College London showed they could read a person's thoughts about where they were standing in a virtual reality simulation.

"In the previous experiment we were able to predict where someone was in a simple, stark virtual reality environment. What we wanted to know is can we look at 'episodic' memories that are much more naturalistic," said Eleanor Maguire, who led the study at the university's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. "The kinds of memories we form day-to-day are far more complex - they involve people and buildings and all kinds of actions."

The scientists recruited six women and four men, with an average age of 21, to watch three film clips, each lasting seven seconds. All three films were similar, and showed an actress performing a particular activity in a street. In one film, for example, a woman drank a coffee before binning the cup, while in another, a different woman posted a letter.

After watching the clips, the participants practised recalling the three films as vividly as they could.

The scientists then used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to look for memory traces in the participants' brains when they thought about each of the films in turn. At first, they were told which film to recall while the scanning was in progress.Using a computer program, Maguire's team was able to identify consistent and characteristic memory traces for the three films in each participant.

In a second series of experiments, the volunteers were asked to remember the movie clips at random while having their brains scanned.

The computer program was not good enough to predict which film a person was thinking about every time. With three films to choose from, a blind guess would be right 33% of the time on average. The computer predicted the right film 40-45% of the time.

The memory traces associated with each film stayed the same throughout the experiment, suggesting the memories were fixed, at least for the duration of the study. More striking was the finding that the memory traces for each of the three films looked similar in all 10 volunteers.

"The patterns of neurons that are able to represent these different movies are certainly in a similar place across the group," Maguire said.

The researchers recorded memory traces from three different areas of the medial temporal lobe, including the parahippocampal gyrus, the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus. Of these, the hippocampus was the most important for recording everyday memories and held the most reliable memory traces.The study appears in the journal Current Biology.

The researchers are now trying to understand which aspects of people's memories they were reading. They may be only partial memories, such as the location each movie clip was set in. Previous studies have shown that the neocortex plays a major role in storing the content of memories, while the hippocampus orchestrates the recol lection of the memory."Now that we are developing a clearer picture of how our memories are stored, we hope to examine how they are affected by time, the ageing process and by brain injury," said Maguire.

Guardian

Tips for making your favourite recipe healthier

by Madeline Ellis

Trying to stick to a healthy or special diet can be very difficult.

It is likely that in doing so you have to file away most of those 'favourite' recipes, like the one your friend gave you for lemon cake which requires four eggs and tons of butter. Well, don't throw away those recipes just yet; there is a solution which will allow you to enjoy that cake and eat healthier at the same time.

Most recipes can stand an overhaul; either by substituting, reducing, or eliminating certain ingredients without affecting the quality of the finished product.

Using healthy substitutions reduces the fat and sodium in your recipe while increasing the nutritional content.

For example, using reduced fat or fat-free milk in place of whole milk in a recipe can save 63 calories and close to eight grams of fat per cup.

That may not seem like much, but if we look at the big picture, adding those saved calories and fat grams from many recipes, we can see the larger impact.

When baking, you can make your recipe healthier by replacing the fat source. Whether you use butter, shortening or oil, reduce the amount by half and replace the other half with unsweetened applesauce, mashed banana or prune puree. There are even fruit-based fat replacers which can be found in the baking aisle of your grocery store.

Also, using a healthier oil in salad dressings or to saute food, such as extra virgin olive oil, can add up over a period of time.

Adding spices and flavourings such as cloves, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, vanilla extract or almond flavouring enhances the sweetness of the food, allowing you to reduce the sugar content of your recipe by one-third to one-half.

This will typically work in cookies and pie fillings, but beware when making cakes or cupcakes, as altering dry ingredients can mean disaster.You can usually reduce or eliminate the sodium in your main dishes, salads, soups, and baked goods that don't require yeast.

Again, herbs and spices can amp up flavour, meaning you won't even miss the salt.

However, do not reduce the amount of salt for foods that require yeast, the salt is necessary for leavening.

You can also reduce the fat, sugar and sodium in your recipes by reducing ingredients which contain them.

For example, if your recipe calls for soy sauce, use less than is required to reduce your sodium intake, or use a reduced-sodium version.

You may also choose to eliminate an ingredient altogether. Some examples include butter, mayonnaise, syrup, jelly, mustard, pickles, and olives which can have large amounts of fat, calories, sugar and sodium. Other items, that are added for food appearance such as frosting, nuts or coconut are high in fat and calories.

Consider sifting powdered sugar on top of cake rather than spreading on an inch of frosting.

Utilize sugar-free jam and/or fresh fruit as a cake filling, and thin dark chocolate shavings and fresh fruit are a much healthier decorative option than sugared coconut.

Making a few small changes in our recipes can make for a healthier diet and a healthier YOU.

A healthy diet, combined with weight control and exercise can prevent, control, or reverse many diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and even diabetes. Make a positive change in your life today.

- Healthnews

Older people need less sleep 'a myth'

We sleep soundly when younger but this deteriorates with age and causes problems with brain performance The popular notion that older people need less sleep than younger adults is a myth, scientists have discovered.

While elderly people tend to sleep for fewer hours than they did when they were younger, this has a negative effect on their brain's performance and they would benefit from getting more, according to research. Sean Drummond, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego, said that older people are more likely to suffer from broken sleep, while younger people are better at sleeping efficiently straight through the night.

More sleep in old age, however, is associated with better health, and most older people would feel better and more alert if they slept for longer periods, he said.

"The ability to sleep in one chunk overnight goes down as we age but the amount of sleep we need to function well does not change," Dr Drummond told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego.

"It's definitely a myth that older people need less sleep. The more healthy an older adult is, the more they sleep like they did when they were younger. Our data suggests that older adults would benefit from continuing to get as much sleep as they did in their 30s. That's different from person to person, but the amount of sleep we had at 35 is probably the same amount we need at 75." In his research, Dr Drummond has compared the sleep patterns of 33 adults with an average age of 68 with 29 younger people with an average age of 27. They had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging, while they memorised a list of nouns.

"Older people who got less than six hours were the ones whose brains could not turn on the areas needed to memorise things," he said."Older brains look sleep deprived and the question is, are they really sleep-deprived. Our data suggests that yes, sleep does impact performance and brain function." The absolute number of hours spent asleep matters more for older people, while for younger people sleep quality is more important, Dr Drummond said. "If you were to fall asleep, never wake up until the alarm goes off and then jump out of bed, you have 100 per cent sleep efficiency. In older adults that happens less and less frequently. The most common characteristic of sleep as we age is that you wake up in the middle of the night.

"There's data to suggest that what breaks down as we age is not the need to sleep but the ability to sleep in a solid chunk. As we age the strength of our circadian rhythms breaks down. It's harder to be awake during the day and to be asleep at night."

- Timesonline