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                                                                  Stress and Heart Health When you’ve got an unexpected bill, a dead car battery or family trouble on your hands, are you like a cartoon character with steam shooting out of your ears? Or a cool cat who manages your stress? Everyone  feels stress in different ways  and reacts to it in different ways. How much stress you experience and how you react to it can lead to a wide variety of health problems — and that’s why it’s critical to know what you can do about it. “When stress is excessive, it can contribute to everything from  high blood pressure , also called hypertension, to asthma to ulcers to irritable bowel syndrome ,” said Ernesto L. Schiffrin, M.D., Ph.D., physician-in-chief at Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hos...

                                       What is diabetes? Diabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by high blood sugar (glucose) levels that result from defects in insulin secretion, or its action, or both. Diabetes mellitus, commonly referred to as diabetes (as it will be in this article) was first identified as a disease associated with "sweet urine," and excessive muscle loss in the ancient world. Elevated levels of blood glucose (hyperglycemia) lead to spillage of glucose into the urine, hence the term sweet urine. Normally, blood glucose levels are tightly controlled by insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas. Insulin lowers the blood glucose level. When the blood glucose elevates (for example, after eating food), insulin is released from the pancreas to normalize the glucose level. In patients with diabetes, the absence of insufficient production of...

What your mouth says about      your health Open wide! Your mouth can tell you a whole lot about what’s happening in your body. We’ve uncovered eight warning signs to watch out for — and what you can do to fix them for good. Most of us think brushing is all about building a brighter smile, but it turns out good oral hygiene (and regular checkups) can help prevent everything from headaches to heart disease. In fact, it may even save your life, says  Chatelaine  dental-health expert  Dr. Rick Glassman , co-director of the department of dentistry at the California Health & Longevity Institute. Unfortunately, Canadians are getting a failing grade in oral health. A recent national smile survey revealed only 4 percent of people regularly brush and floss. (Dentists say we should be brushing our teeth — and tongues — at least twice a day, as well as flossing once a day to get at the third of each tooth’s surface that a brush can reach.) The good n...

                            Medical Advances Timeline Find key developments in the field of medicine, from the birth of Hippocrates to today. 460 BCE Birth of  Hippocrates , Greek physician and founder of the first university. Considered the father of medicine. Hippocrates bases medicine on objective observation and deductive reasoning, although he does accept the commonly held belief that disease results from an imbalance of the four bodily  humors (an idea that persists for centuries). c.130 CE Birth of  Galen , considered by many to be the most important contributor to medicine following Hippocrates. Born of Greek parents, Galen resides primarily in Rome where he is physician to the gladiators and personal physician to several emperors. He publishes some 500 treatises and is still respected for his contributions to anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology. 910 Persian physician  Rhazes ...