More younger people suffer hearing loss

Hearing problems in youth? Could it be due to the iPhone illness?
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SINGAPORE - Being hard of hearing is no longer only an affliction of the elderly. More younger people, particularly men, are also being affected by the problem these days.

Statistics from the Changi General Hospital (CGH) show that 40 per cent of those diagnosed with hearing loss are younger than 40 years old.

This figure is a two-fold jump from what CGH was seeing five to eight years ago.

Dr Yuen Heng Wai, a consultant otolaryngologist at CGH, explaining this trend, said males - more so than females - are more frequently exposed to noise such as that at night outlets and from audio devices.

Acknowledging that higher awareness of the issue could contribute to the figures, Dr Yuen is, however, more concerned about getting youth to seek treatment.

"To them it is a big blow ... as hearing loss has always been associated with old age ... they feel they have become less complete (and stigmatised)," said Dr Yuen.

To make matters worse, these hearing-impaired youths are resisting the use of hearing aids.

At Raffles Hospital, one to two young men - between the ages of 15 and 30 - are seen every week for the treatment of hearing difficulties.

The hospital's specialist in ENT surgery, Dr Stephen Lee, noted that "there has been a perceptible increase" over the past two years. He recommends that those who use audio devices go for a test at least once to check if their hearing ability has been affected.

Engaging in water sports is another emerging cause.

Bacteria in dirty water stays in the ear and causes discomfort, said Dr Yuen of CGH. When patients try to ease the discomfort by "sticking all sorts of things" into their ears, the situation worsens.

In the past year alone, he has seen more than 10 patients who have experienced hearing problems after swimming in places like the Kallang River and the sea off Batam Island.

There is also the need for regulation of working conditions in sectors such as the construction industry, suggested Dr Raymond Ngo, consultant at the National University Hospital's Department of Otolaryngology. He cited his concern over young construction workers and their constant exposure to excessive levels of loud noise.

But, fortunately, only a few of the afflicted have suffered total irreversible hearing loss as most recover partial or full hearing capacity after treatment.

One safety guideline for those who could suffer impaired hearing would be to seek treatment if they experience difficulty in understanding what others are saying or having to ask them to repeat themselves, said Associate Professor Low Wong Kein, director of the Centre for Hearing and Ear Implants at Singapore General Hospital.

- TODAY/rl


From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:More younger people suffer hearing loss
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Young and diabetic

Sickness doesn't choose the age of the afflicted...
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SINGAPORE - Like many diabetics, Ms Wong Wai Shi, who has Type 2 diabetes, has to take medication twice daily to control her blood sugar levels. Unlike most of them, however, Wai Shi is only in her teens.

Three years ago, Wai Shi was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. She was 15, and did not know in detail what the condition was.

"I was very scared. I didn't dare to eat properly for a few days," said the ITE student, recounting her initial reaction upon learning that she had diabetes. "My parents were very upset when they found out. They thought only adults get it."

Type 2 diabetes was once associated with grown-ups, but not anymore.

According to doctors TODAY spoke to, this form of diabetes, which is often linked to obesity, is becoming increasingly common among kids and teenagers in Singapore.

Traditionally, the young ones were much more likely to have Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes. Type 1 diabetes occurs when the child's immune system attacks and destroys the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin.


Kids get it, too

Two decades ago, Type 2 diabetes formed only five to 10 per cent of childhood diabetes. Today, that number has increased to more than 30 per cent, said paediatric endocrinologist Associate Professor Lee Yung Seng, senior consultant at National University Hospital's University Children's Medical Institute.

KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) has seen a similar trend of where the number of children with newly-diagnosed Type 2 diabetes is rising.

In 2004, there were only 10 newly-diagnosed cases. By last year, the number had tripled to 30. Presently, KKH sees 136 Type 2 diabetic children.

Assoc Prof Lee put it down to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Genes can also up a child's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

He added that if the mother had diabetes during her pregnancy, the child also faces a higher risk of developing the disease during childhood.

Children undergoing puberty are the most vulnerable because hormonal changes can cause them to be more insulin resistant, explained Associate Professor Fabian Yap, senior consultant and head of endocrinology service, department of paediatrics at KKH.

However, the disease can also hit those who are younger.

At KKH, the youngest patient was only six years old when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, noted Assoc Prof Yap.

Warning signs of Type 2 diabetes include persistent thirst, frequent urination and ants being attracted to the urine.

However, like adults sufferers, the symptoms for diabetic children aren't always obvious.

For Wai Shi, her condition only came to light after she visited her family doctor, who urged her to get blood sugar levels checked.


Coming to terms with the illness

Psychologically, living with the lifelong condition can be tough for young diabetics.

Said Assoc Prof Yap: "It disrupts their lives and imposes lifestyle changes that they are usually not mentally prepared to make or emotionally ready to accept."

Having to turn around their lifestyles and diet can be especially difficult for diabetics in this age group.

"I really love desserts and fried food. It was hard for me to cut down on carbs and sweets," said Wai Shi. Although she is aware of the risks, Wai Shi let on that she would still occasionally "break the rule and just eat" her favourite snacks, especially during celebrations or family gatherings.

"Teenagers, especially, undergo a lot of changes both physically, emotionally and within their social circle. They may have more risk-taking behaviour and may omit insulin injections, medications or forgo their dietary control," said Assoc Prof Lee.

Long-term poor sugar control can be catastrophic for diabetics.

According to the experts, diabetic children are at risk of diabetes-related complications such as nerve problems, renal failure, eye disease and heart disease, if not worse.

"Having diabetes in their childhood or teens means they are more likely to develop these chronic complications in young adulthood, which is the prime of their life. The impact on their lives and the associated healthcare burden is expected to be severe," said Assoc Prof Lee.

Living with diabetes can be challenging, but medication, good dietary control, exercise and weight loss can help. For more serious cases, insulin injections may also be required.

Assoc Prof Yap said in some instances, mild cases of glucose intolerance can be reversed by managing weight and increasing physical activity, without medication.

"Those who choose to adopt lifestyles to reduce excess body weight and improve muscle strength and activity ought to be able to reverse glucose intolerance," he said.

Worried that she might be ostracised from her friends, Wai Shi recounted how she had initially kept her condition from them. She has now come to terms with her illness.

"I sometimes worry about other complications of my illness. It was also tough for me to control my diet but I've gotten over that. Right now, I am happy I feel normal and can still do what other people do," she said.

- TODAY/rl


From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Young and diabetic
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Are we still evolving?

I say if we are, it is the micro evolution type, not the macro type... And micro evolution is to enhance or perfect a faculty or skill for better use and survival.

Would that be helping me decide which ice cream to choose? Just kidding!
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by Project Syndicate

Many public-policy decisions are based on implicit assumptions about "human nature", and it is currently popular to speculate about how evolution might have shaped human behaviour and psychology. But this raises some important questions: Are humans continuing to evolve - and, if so, is our basic biological nature changing - or has modern culture stopped evolution?

For some traits, we do not have to speculate - we can measure and compare on the basis of studies covering thousands of individuals over several generations. Such studies have not yet been done on most of the traits where speculation is popular, but they have been done on some traits of medical interest. What have we learned?

Scientists are taking two approaches. In one, they sequence the DNA of particular genes in many individuals with or without some determined health condition and look for differences between the two groups. This genetic approach measures effects that have accumulated over hundreds to thousands of generations, and the message is clear: Humans have evolved in these respects fairly recently, some in one direction, some in another, depending on their environment and other conditions encountered.

From this approach, we have learned, for example, that the ability to digest milk as adults evolved within the last 10,000 years - and several times - in cultures that domesticated sheep, goats or cattle. Similar studies have taught us that sensitivity to alcohol consumption and resistance to diseases like malaria and leprosy also evolved within the last several thousand years.

Some scientists, myself included, have taken a different approach. Instead of looking for changes in genes that take many generations to accumulate until they can be detected, we have measured natural selection directly. This method can reveal selection in action, working over periods of time as short as one generation - so that it can answer the question of whether modern culture has stopped evolution.

The message of this approach is also clear: Natural selection continues to operate in modern cultures. Whether it will operate consistently enough for a long enough time to produce significant genetic change can be answered only by future generations. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see in what direction natural selection is starting to shape us. Some of the answers are surprising.

We measured natural selection operating on women in Framingham, Massachusetts, where a long-term medical study on heart disease produced the data that we used. The women were born between 1892 and 1956. We found significant selection and projected that if it continued for 10 generations, the women would evolve to be about two centimetres shorter and have their first child about five months earlier.

This is a surprising result, because women in developed countries have become taller thanks to better nutrition, and are having children later in life for many reasons, some of them cultural. So what is going on here? Three things:
First, we know that giving birth for the first time when younger carries a cost in increased infant mortality, but modern medicine and hygiene have strikingly reduced infant mortality, reducing the cost of younger age at first birth. We therefore expect a shift towards earlier reproduction, because the costs previously associated with doing so have disappeared - exactly what we found in Framingham.

And we expect those younger women to be shorter simply because they have had less time to grow. In five other cases, scientists found women in developed countries maturing earlier, in two of them at smaller size (in the other three cases, size was not measured). It is too early to say that this is a general trend, but right now, all signs point that way.

Second, we measured the effects of natural selection by noting that women who were shorter and first gave birth when younger had more children. But genes are only one of many factors that influence height and age at first birth. Personal decisions, nutrition, income level, education and religious affiliation all enter the mix.

When we estimated how much of the variation among individuals could be attributed to biology, the answer was less than 5 per cent. That left 95 per cent of the variation to be explained by the effects of culture and individual decisions. But, while the effects of biology on the traits that we measured are relatively small for humans living in complex modern cultures, even small effects, when repeated consistently, will accumulate.

Third, traits like these are always the result of interactions between genes and environment. A woman could have genes that would tend to make her taller than average but end up shorter than average if she had been poorly nourished as a child.

If evolution took its steady course and changed the genetic basis of height and age at first birth, we might not see women 10 generations later who were shorter and matured earlier, for the effects of nutrition and culture could more than compensate for the genetic change. As a colleague of mine likes to put it, one good school-lunch programme could be enough to obscure the biological effects.

Even when we focus on a simple physical trait like height, natural selection in humans turns out to be a multifaceted and nuanced process. Similar studies on human behaviour and psychology, where causation is more complex, remain beyond our grasp. In such cases, silence may be wiser than speculation.


The writer is professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University.



From TODAY, Science - Saturday, 09-Oct-2010
Are we still evolving?
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Got words?

Image via WikipediaASPIRING travel writers can try their hand at penning a guidebook in GuideGecko's International Writing Contest. The top three works will be displayed at the Insight Guides booth at the renowned Frankfurt Book Fair from Oct 6 to 10 while the winner gets a free trip to the city to attend the event.

The contest organised by the Singapore-based publishing platform for travel and lifestyle guides is open to casual writers, bloggers and established authors. Submissions, which have to be at least 32-pages long, will be judged by travel writers and editors as well as by online voters. Participation is free, and authors get full royalties and retain their copyrights. The contest ends Sept 15. Check it out at www.GuideGecko.com/writing-contest.


Lifted from TODAY, Travel; source article is below:
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