Health YW

Archive for March, 2011

A once a year visit to the vet is a must for a healthy dog. During this annual visit your vet will check your dog’s heart rate, overall body health, perform a fecal and blood check to diagnose parasites, and keep your dog up to date on vaccinations. A simple annual visit to the vet may not seem like a very important aspect to your dog’s health, but it is.

Early diagnosis of diseases like cancer, early detection of any abnormalities like heart murmurs, and vaccines which prevent fatal diseases will all help your dog to live a longer life. Many cancers today, which dogs suffer from, are now treatable if they are diagnosed early, and dogs with heart problems can take medication to help their heart function well for many years. The key is ‘early diagnosis’, and without an annual veterinarian examination a life threatening illness could be missed until it is too late to

treat.

Identifying illnesses

An annual veterinarian check-up will also help your veterinarian to identify any illnesses in your dog such as ear infections, eye infections, parasitic infections, bladder infections, or teeth problems. Missed infections can cause wear and tear on a dog’s body, and if they progress serious damage to the body can occur. While these conditions are not always life threatening, they can stress the overall health of your dog and overtime harm your dog’s health, immune system, and organ function. Continual stress from constant infections, or severe infections that are not treated, can reduce the longevity of a dog’s life.

As comprehensive as you choose

A visit to the veterinarian can be as comprehensive as you want it to be. You can have the choice of just a short physical and vaccines, or you can have all the necessary tests performed to check the status of your dog’s health. In order for your dog to remain healthy, it is highly recommended that you have a comprehensive physical performed each year in addition to blood, fecal, and urine tests.

Don’t forget parasite control

Deaths caused by parasites are probably one of the most preventable causes of death in dogs. A high parasite load of worms and fleas can lead to malnutrition, reduced immune function, anemia, and poor health; the damage that these parasites can cause may reduce the longevity of a dog’s lifespan overtime. In addition, parasites such as ticks and mosquitoes can transmit deadly diseases. The parasites that you will need to protect your dog from include: ticks, fleas, worms, and mosquitoes.

Mosquitos and Heartworms

Many pet owners do not realize that mosquitoes can infect dogs with deadly heartworms. When a mosquito bites a dog that carries heartworms the mosquito can then transmit those worms to another dog. More and more heartworm infections are a leading cause of early death in dogs throughout the states.

Heartworm disease can be treated in dogs, but the treatments are not without risks; some dogs have deadly reactions to heartworm treatment. In addition, a heartworm infection that has continued for a long period of time may have caused too much damage to the dog’s health to treat. To protect your dog from the dangers of heartworms, always have a yearly test performed on your dog and keep your dog on a strict heartworm preventative regimen.

While tick diseases in some areas are rare, dogs that are exposed to ticks are still in danger of becoming infected with potentially lethal tick diseases. If you are in an area where your dog will be exposed to ticks, or you live in an area that has reported tick disease occurrences in dogs and people, it is essential that you keep ticks off of your dogs. There are products on the market today that will help to repel ticks from your dog, or that will kill the ticks once the ticks latch on to your dog’s skin.

But the truth is to enlighten the fact that, no matter how much you try to keep up with your health, age and lifestyle will certainly trap you into some disease or illness, even if it’s a smaller one. And there’s no doubt about one thing that with changing time not only the number, but also the severity of disease also increases.

This is where health news comes to our rescue. Earlier we could receive health news only through news papers and health brochures, but with the cyber revolution we have so many health news blogs, websites, and discussion boards to give us latest information on different health issues.

By keeping in touch with the latest health news we also come to know about public health concerns like blood donation camps, kidney or eye donation programs conducted by government health institutes.

There is no dearth of diseases in today’s world, but there are some fatal diseases which raise a lot of concern in society, like cancer, AIDS and diabetes are some of the volatile diseases that take thousands of lives every year. These are diseases that even the people not suffering from should be concerned about.

To commemorate the significance of these diseases and to spread awareness among people we dedicate certain days to them.

Like 1st December is celebrated as World Cancer Day and 4th February is the World AIDS Day and November 4th is the World Diabetes DAY.

Children health news is also very important, as they help us to get all the facts about infant and adolescence health, because with growing age every parent has concerns about their kids or teenager’s health. Change in hormones, proper growth of bones, height and weight ratio, puberty are few things every parent wants to talk about.

Even maternal health news is of equal importance because it involves both fetal and maternal health. Providing proper care to the mother and the baby, like the type of food exercise, or environment that can keep both the mother and the baby healthy is equally important.

Healthier the person better is his or her lifestyle, so why not keep in touch with the latest development in the health news and make our lives pink of health.

Dogs can be born with diabetes or get diabetes at any time in their life, just as humans do. When a dog has this illness, it is no different than the form that people have. Diabetes in dogs is a chronic disease. This means that treatment can not cure this and make it go away. Any person or dog with diabetes will need ongoing treatment to control it, manage it and keep symptoms from becoming troubling.

This illness causes a dog’s body to be unable to breakdown glucose (sugar). If not managed properly, this can cause the sugar level in the dog’s blood to be either too high or too low. The most devastating effects of this come in later stages if the diabetes in the dog is left to worsen: blindness can occur. Loss of digits, such as toes can happen as well because of improper blood flow to limbs. This can also cause kidney damage and heart disease. The final stages of an untreated diabetic dog will be death.

Therefore it is vitally important to have your dog begin treatment immediately if he or she is found to have this. The treatment or management of this illness will be the same as a human. Your dog may need to have insulin shots to balance the glucose levels. While most dogs will certainly not enjoy having daily shots; this is required to maintain your dog’s good health. After a while, a dog may become compliant to the injections. A very strict and exact diet is needed as well. Certain foods can shoot sugar levels to dangerous heights. Lack of certain foods can allow sugar to become so low that a dog can go into shock.

Your dog should have their blood checked at regular intervals for any type of illness, including dog diabetes. When found, treatment should begin right away. If you are in-between vet checkups there are some early warning signs to look out for. If you notice that your dog sleeps a lot more than normal, shows signs of dizziness or drinks excessively it is suggested to schedule a vet checkup right away for your dog.