Wash your hands

Basic way of preventing getting infected is washing your hands frequently, especially after coughing or sneezing. You can use soap and water, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are also effective. Hand sanitizers can be used when water isn’t available.

Don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth

Germs spread when you touch your eyes, nose or mouth after touching something that’s contaminated.

Avoid close contact with sick people

If possible, avoid contact with possibly infected people. Avoid crowds. Swine flu spreads mainly when people cough or sneeze.

Avoid travel

Try to limit traveling, especially to high risk areas such as Mexico. If you’ve been to Mexico and have flu like symptoms visit a doctor.

Wear facemask or respirator

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing facemask in crowded settings to prevent getting infected and to not infect others. Respirator should be used if you have close contact with infected person (for example you’re caring of sick person at home).

Antiviral drugs

Swine influenza A (H1N1) is sensitive to Oseltamivir (sold under name Tamiflu) and Zanamivir (sold as Relenza). They are effective means of swine flu prevention and treatment. If taken for treatment, Tamiflu and Relenza are most effective if taken within 2 days after illness started. They are also effective for prevention if given to healthy person that had contact with infected people. Antiviral drugs are 70% to 90% effective means of flu prevention. According to CDC, number of days they should be used to prevent H1N1 influenza varies depending on each person’s situation.

Vaccine

Influenza A (H1N1) vaccine isn’t available yet, WHO and CDC are working on it.

Stay home if you feel sick

CDC recommends to stay at home for 7 days after symptoms begin or until you are symptom-free for 24 hours to not spread infection further.

Take care of your health

Sleep well, be active, manage stress, drink lots of fluids, eat healthy. This strengthens your immune system.

Watch the video related to swine flu

www.infowars.com

Help answer the question about swine flu

Obesity is affecting the lives and health of millions of people, according to the World Health Organization. It is an accelerating social problem in industrialized countries and is also growing in the former colonial world. Obesity is very often defined as an eating disorder. However, it is not a simple condition of eating too much.

Health experts believe that obesity is a serious and chronic disease prevalent in today’s society. As the “obesity epidemic” increases, so is the number of people that suffers from it. Approximately 300,000 adult deaths in the United States alone each year are directly attributable to unhealthy dietary habits and physical inactivity or sedentary behavior or obesity.

In the United States alone, nearly one third of the adult population is obese. In the Europe, they have a similar encounter of the disease. An astonishing 58 per cent of Britain’s adult population is considered overweight or obese, a report published in England said.

The National Audit Office of Britain reported last year that 20 percent of British women and 17 percent of men were as much as 70 pounds heavier than the recommended weight for their size. Obesity is not just a health issue. It is also considered as a socio-economic problem that utilizes $117 billion per year in the United States alone.

In Britain, obesity cost £2.6 billion in NHS bills and indirect losses to the UK economy. At least 18 million sick days a year can be attributed to obesity, it says, and the increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer and stroke reduces life expectancy by around nine years. When it comes to explaining these trends, not only media reports, but many scientific articles disparagingly refer to a combination of fast food, increasing car ownership and a sedentary lifestyle in front of television sets or computer monitors.

In the first place, such generalisations are often backed by little substantiated data. Some studies have found that the prevalence of obesity among children is directly related to the hours of television viewed, for example, but other studies have failed to establish a correlation. More fundamentally, these observations ignore the economic and social driving forces behind the changes in diet and lifestyle—including the profits generated by the food and entertainment industries—and the intense pressures caused by increasing working hours and declining living standards for the majority of working people.

Obesity can also lower the life expectancy of individuals. In addition to this, obese people are increasing their susceptibility and risks to a number of diseases directly related to obesity. This includes: type 2 (adult onset) diabetes; high blood pressure; stroke; heart attack; heart failure; cancer such as cancer of the colon or rectum; gallstones; gout and gouty arthritis; osteoarthritis; sleep apnea; and pickwickian syndrome.

-Health Matters-