Acidity occurs when there is excess secretion of acids in the gastric glands of the stomach. When the secretion is more than usual, we feel, what is commonly known as heartburn, which is normally triggered off by consumption of spicy foods.

Here are some home remedies to cure acidity…

- Skip the aerated drinks as well as the caffeine. Opt for herbal tea instead.
- Have a glass of lukewarm water everyday.
- Include banana, watermelon and cucumber in your daily diet. Watermelon juice is great for curing acidity.
- Nariyal paani is known to soothe the system if you suffer from acidity.
- Drink a glass of milk – everyday.
- Have your last meal at least two to three hours before you hit the sack.
- Keeping long intervals between meals is another cause for acidity. Have small but regular meals.
- Try to avoid pickles, spicy chutneys, vinegar, etc.
- Boil some mint leaves in water and have a glass of this after meals.
- Sucking on a piece of clove is another effective remedy.
- Jaggery, lemon, banana, almonds and yogurt are all known to give you instant relief from acidity.
- Excessive smoking and drinking will increase acidity, so cut down.
- Try chewing gum. The saliva generated helps move food through the esophagus, easing symptoms of heartburn.
- Ginger aids in digestion. Either buy powdered ginger in capsule forms or add the herb to your recipes.
- A simple preparation of lemon water with sugar can be sipped on an hour before lunch to reduce uneasiness.
- Have vegetables like drumsticks, beans, pumpkin, cabbage, carrot and spring onions.

In the African-American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension, or AASK, trial of 1,094 patients, researchers found that keeping blood pressure readings at about 130/80 mm Hg reduced the risk of disease progression by 27 percent for patients with protein in the urine (proteinuria), which can be a marker for kidney disease. Intensive lowering of blood pressure in all African-Americans with hypertension and kidney disease, however, did not slow disease progression during four years of follow-up.

Overall, lower blood pressure levels had no effect on disease progression to dialysis, kidney transplantation or death when those with and without proteinuria were included.

“We were surprised by the study’s finding that more intensive lowering of blood pressure initially did not improve outcomes for most patients,” said Dr. Robert Toto, professor of internal medicine and clinical sciences at UT Southwestern and an author of the study. “During the cohort study all patients had their blood pressure lowered to less than 130/80 mm Hg, and we found that those with proteinuria who were assigned to more aggressive blood pressure control during the trial fared better in the long run. We are very proud of the fact that we were able to extend the results of the trial and learn more about progression of kidney disease in this population.

“Doctors should think about the long-term effects reported in this new study and consider whether it is appropriate to control blood pressure more aggressively in African-American patients with chronic kidney disease who have protein in their urine, and not target all kidney disease patients with a lower blood pressure level. We need more studies on any potential benefits of that practice.”

In 2006, treating end-stage kidney disease cost the federal government $23 billion, and chronic kidney disease cost $49 billion. In the U.S., hypertension causes about 30 percent of end-stage kidney disease. African-Americans make up a disproportionate number of patients with end-stage kidney disease attributed to hypertension.

Observational studies have shown that treating kidney-disease patients to help them achieve lower blood pressure has prevented progression to end-stage kidney disease, but few formal trials have tested the idea. In the limited studies that have, African-Americans were not well-represented.

In the current study, patients ranged in age from 18 to 70, with an average age of 55. Nearly 40 percent of the patients were female. The patients came from 21 centers throughout the United States; 77 patients were treated at UT Southwestern.

Data from two large placebo-controlled trials — part of the Women’s Health Initiative program — showed that the annual rate of kidney stones in women getting estrogen was 39 per 10,000 women, according to Naim Maalouf, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and colleagues.

On the other hand, among women getting placebo in the two trials, the rate was 34 per 10,000 women per year, Maalouf and colleagues reported in the Oct. 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

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Note that kidney stones are more common in men than women under the age of 50, but this discrepancy is much less prominent in older patients. That fact has led to the suggestion that estrogen is protective against the formation of kidney stones, in contrast to the findings in this study.

Note also that the type of kidney stone and the mechanism of stone formation in this study are unknown.

The concomitant use of progestin had no effect, the researchers found.

Kidney stones are common among postmenopausal women, affecting between 5% and 7% of the population in the U.S., the researchers noted. They are less common among pre-menopausal women than among men in the same age group, but the disparity lessens after menopause — an observation that has led to the suggestion that estrogen may play a protective role.

To clarify the issue, Maalouf and colleagues turned to two major trials that examined the impact of hormone therapy on women with and without a hysterectomy.

In one, 10,739 post-menopausal women with a hysterectomy were randomized to receive 0.625 milligrams a day of conjugated equine estrogens or placebo and followed for an average of 7.1 years.

In the other, 16,608 post-menopausal women without hysterectomy were randomly assigned to get placebo or estrogen plus progestin (given as the same dose of conjugated equine estrogens with 2.5 milligrams a day of medroxyprogesterone acetate). Women in that trial were followed for an average of 5.6 years.

Both trials were eventually stopped because the harms outweighed the benefits, the researchers noted.

This post hoc analysis was stratified by a pre-study history of kidney stones, so that 2,727 participants were excluded because that data was missing, leaving a total of 24,620 women.

Maalouf and colleagues found there were 335 incident cases of kidney stones among women getting active treatment and 284 cases among women getting placebo. The corresponding annualized incidence rates yielded a hazard ratio of 1.21, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.03 to 1.44.

The researchers noted that the incidence of kidney stones was measured by self-report and was not confirmed by a review of records. As well, they said, only one dosage of each hormone was studied in the trials, so that the ability to apply the findings to other hormone therapy formulations is limited.

The mechanism behind the increased risk remains unclear, they concluded, but one clinical implication is that the finding should be considered when women and their doctors decide on post-menopausal hormone use.

Pharmaceutical company Abbott on Friday announced it would immediately stop distribution in Australia of the drug sibutramine, which is sold under the brand name Reductil.

The move came after a review by Australia’s medical watchdog and research showed it could cause overweight people to suffer a heart attack or stroke.

Abbott announced it had voluntarily ceased marketing and distribution of sibutramine in Australia though it still believed the drug “had a positive benefit risk profile when used appropriately”.

No decision has yet been made about the drug’s future in New Zealand.

“Abbott is having ongoing discussions with regulatory authorities [Medsafe] in countries where sibutramine is marketed and anticipates concluding those discussions in the coming days,” spokeswoman Jennifer Stevensonsaid.

Australian patients taking Reductil have been advised to discuss an alternative with their doctor and doctors have been asked not to issue any new prescriptions for sibutramine, a company spokesperson said in a statement

They found ‘strong evidence’ that passion flower extract and kava both combat anxiety disorders.

The results are based on an analysis of 24 studies involving more than 2,000 participants.

“Our review and summary of the literature on herbal remedies and dietary supplements for anxiety should aid mental health practitioners in advising patients,” the Scotsman quoted study leader Shaheen Lakhan, from the Global Neuroscience Initiative foundation, as saying.

The finding could offer new hope to sufferers and lead to better treatment for the one in five people who have the neurological disorder.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, along with colleagues in Canada, used DNA from people who experience migraines and their families.

They found that when a gene called Tresk is defective it can trigger pain nerves in the brain causing a severe headache.

The discovery could lead to the production of a new drug that can switch off the pain and consequently greatly improve a sufferer’s quality of life.

Dr Zameel Cader, from the Medical Research Council’s Functional Genomics Unit at the University of Oxford, said: ‘We have now made a major step forward in our understanding of why people suffer with migraine and how in certain cases, your family can literally give you a headache.

‘This finding should help lead to the key player which controls this excitability and will give us a real opportunity to find a new way to fight migraines and improve the quality of life for those suffering.’

Migraines can display different symptoms in different people but most commonly they are a severe, long-lasting headache usually felt as a throbbing pain at the front or on one side of the head.

Some people also experience nausea and sensitivity to light.

The challenge now is to find a drug that can capitalise on that discovery. So it’s likely to be at least 10 years before a new medicine is ready for clinical use.

Hayley Trezel, from south east London, had her first migraine aged 15 and has had nine days off work in the last year alone due to the severity of her symptoms.

She told UK Sky News Online: ‘A dark room is the only way to sleep them off and my longest migraine lasted four days.

‘I sometimes find that a dramatic change in weather can bring one on but they can hit at any time.’

The 25-year-old said the new research sounds promising: ‘I would certainly be extremely happy with a cure. At the moment pain killers dull the pain but sleep is the only way to cure it.’

UK Sky News health correspondent Thomas Moore is also encouraged by the discovery: ‘This is a significant advance because it is the first time that scientists have found a gene with a direct role in migraines.

‘But the challenge now is to find a drug that can capitalise on that discovery. So it’s likely to be at least 10 years before a new medicine is ready for clinical use.’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) rates migraine as a leading cause of disability worldwide and it is estimated to be the most costly neurological disorder in Europe.

People with diabetes must take extra care to make sure that their diet is balanced with insulin and oral medications, and to exercise to help manage their blood glucose levels, says the American Diabetes Association. Sticking to a meal plan can help you improve your blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers, and also help keep your weight on track.

This might sound like a lot of work, but your doctor or dietitian can help you create a meal plan that is best for you, one that fits into your schedule and lifestyle. When you make healthy food choices, you will improve your overall health, and you can even help prevent complications such as heart disease, some cancers, and hypertension.

While air pollution is known to be a source of immediate inflammation, this new study provides one of the first pieces of direct evidence that explains how some ambient air pollutants could have long-term effects.

The findings, published in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, come from a study of 181 children with and without asthma in the California cities of Fresno and Palo Alto.

The researchers found that air pollution exposure suppressed the immune system’s regulatory T cells (Treg), and that the decreased level of Treg function was linked to greater severity of asthma symptoms and lower lung capacity. Treg cells are responsible for putting the brakes on the immune system so that it doesn’t react to non-pathogenic substances in the body that are associated with allergy and asthma. When Treg function is low, the cells fail to block the inflammatory responses that are the hallmark of asthma symptoms.

The findings have potential implications for altered birth outcomes associated with polluted air, much the same as those noted for the effects of cigarette smoke.

“When it came out that cigarettes can cause molecular changes, it meant the possibility that mothers who smoked could affect the DNA of their children during fetal development,” said study lead author Dr. Kari Nadeau, pediatrician at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of allergy and immunology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. “Similarly, these new findings suggest the possibility of an inheritable effect from environmental pollution.”

Forty-one participants came from the Fresno Asthmatic Children’s Environment Study (FACES), a longitudinal study led by principal investigator Dr. Ira Tager, professor of epidemiology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and co-principal investigator S. Katharine Hammond, UC Berkeley professor and chair of environmental health sciences. The researchers also recruited 30 children from Fresno who did not have asthma.

“I’m not aware of any other studies that have looked at how chemicals can alter cells so early in the regulatory process, and then connected that effect to clinical symptoms,” said Tager. “There are people who still question the direct link between air pollution and human health, but these findings make the health impact of pollutants harder to deny.”

Fresno was chosen because it is located in California’s Central Valley, where trapped hot air mixes with high traffic and heavy agriculture to create some of the highest levels of air pollution in the country. It is also a region known for its high incidence of asthma: Nearly one in three children there have the condition, earning Fresno the nickname, “The Asthma Capitol of California.”

The researchers compared the participants from Fresno with 80 children, half with asthma and half without, in the relatively low-pollution city of Palo Alto, Calif. The children were matched by age, gender and asthma status, among other variables. The children were tested for breathing function, allergic sensitivity and Treg cells in the blood.

Daily air quality data came from California Air Resources Board monitoring stations. The researchers calculated each child’s annual average exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a byproduct of fossil fuel and a major pollutant in vehicle exhaust.

The study found that the annual average exposure to PAH was 7 times greater for the children in Fresno compared with the kids in Palo Alto. Levels of ozone and particulate matter were also significantly higher in Fresno.

Not surprisingly, the study found that the children in Fresno had lower overall levels of Treg function and more severe symptoms of asthma than the children in Palo Alto. For example, the non-asthmatic children in Fresno had Treg function results that were similar to the children with asthma in Palo Alto.

The study authors correlated increased exposure to PAH with methylation of the gene, Forkhead box transcription factor (Foxp3), which triggers Treg cell development. Methylation effectively disables the gene’s function, leading to reduced levels of Treg cells. The connection between Treg function and the severity of asthma symptoms held for children in both groups.

While previous studies have found associations between pollution — especially motor vehicle exhaust — and an increased risk of developing asthma, few have traced its molecular pathway so completely, the study authors said.

“The link between diesel exhaust and asthma could simply have been that the particulates were irritating the lungs,” said Nadeau. “What we found is that the problems are more systemic. This is one of the few papers to have linked from A to Z the increased exposure to ambient air pollution with suppressed Treg cell levels, changes in a key gene and increased severity of asthma symptoms.”

The researchers noted that Treg cells are important for other autoimmune disorders, so the implications of this study could go beyond asthma.

Other co-authors of the study are Dr. John Balmes, UC Berkeley professor of environmental health sciences; Elizabeth Noth and Boriana Pratt, UC Berkeley researchers at FACES; and Cameron McDonald-Hyman, research assistant at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.

The National Institutes of Health, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Lung Association helped support this research.

“The risk appears to be stronger for the opposite breast than for the breast that originally had the cancer,” said Laurel A. Habel, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.

Habel is lead author of the study published Oct. 7 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Women with the most dense breasts, as seen on mammograms, “were at about twice the risk of a second cancer, and the risk was closer to threefold for the opposite breast,” Habel said.

Dense breast tissue is made up mostly of ductal structures and connective tissue, while non-dense breast tissue is mostly fatty, Habel said. On a mammogram, dense tissue appears white; non-dense looks dark gray.

Experts can’t say for sure why density is linked with cancer risk, Habel said, but these findings echo the results of previous studies. In 2004, Habel’s team reported a link between denser breasts and a higher risk of second breast cancers among women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), very early breast cancer, who were enrolled in a clinical trial.

Other research, published in 2007, found that DCIS patients with higher breast density were at increased risk of a second cancer in the opposite breast.

In the most recent study, conducted from 1990 to 1997, Habel’s team followed 935 women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer (DCIS) who underwent breast-conserving surgery. The follow-up was for a median of more than eight years. During that time, 164 (18 percent), had a second cancer in the same breast, and 59 (6 percent) had a new cancer in the opposite breast.

Habel said she can’t explain the higher risk for the opposite breast. “What we do see is, the amount of density is quite similar in both breasts,” she said.

Previous research has established breast density, which is influenced by genetic factors, as a strong risk factor for getting breast cancer, although Habel said she suspects many women are still not aware of it as a risk factor.

Women aren’t routinely told if their mammogram reveals dense breasts, although doctors may mention extreme density, she said.

“It’s good to know if they’re dense,” said Dr. Joanne Mortimer, director of women’s cancer programs at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif.. A women can ask her doctor, she said.

Breast density declines with age, and obese women have denser breasts than leaner women, Mortimer said.

The new study, she said, confirms earlier research. The practical aspect may be to help women make treatment decisions, she said.

For instance, some women diagnosed with breast cancer choose to undergo a mastectomy on the unaffected breast as a preventive measure. “People do it for emotional reasons,” she said.

The new research suggests that breast density may be a factor to consider when debating treatment options, “but not as a single factor,” Mortimer said. More study is needed on the density-cancer link before it’s relied on strongly in decision-making, she said.

The new findings offer more evidence that excess fat around the mid-section is a health risk and suggest that studies of type 2 diabetes should focus on waist size along with traditional risk factors, said the American and British researchers.

Diabetes occurs in about 16 percent of American men, 14 percent of American women, and 11 percent and 7 percent of men and women in England, respectively, the study authors noted in a news release from the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization.

When the researchers analyzed studies about the health and lifestyles of people in the United States and England, they found no association between higher diabetes rates in the United States and conventional risk factors such as age, smoking, socioeconomic status, or body mass index (the height and weight ratio used to measure overweight and obesity).

But they did find that American men’s waists were an average of 3 centimeters (1.5 inches) larger than those of men in England. And American women’s waists were an average of 5 centimeters (2 inches) larger than those of women in England.

In addition, women in America were much more likely than women in England to face a higher risk of diabetes because of their waist size (69 percent versus 56 percent), while American men had only a slightly higher waist size-related diabetes risk than their counterparts in England, the study authors found.

“Americans carry more fat around their middle sections than the English, and that was the single factor that explained most of the higher rates of diabetes seen in the United States, especially among American women. Waist size is the missing new risk factor we should be studying,” study co-author James P. Smith, corporate chair of economics at the RAND Corp., said in the news release.

The study findings were published online Oct. 7 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.