Are you aware that Osteoporosis is an illness that is affecting millions of women across the globe? This disease usually targets people after the age of 45 and is more common in post menopausal women. Often called the silent disease because bone loss occurs without symptoms, there is an urgent need for more awareness of osteoporosis. According to Consultant Orthopaedic, Joint Replacement and Hip Resurfacing Surgeon, Dr Sanjeev Jain, people may not know that they have osteoporosis until their bones become so weak that a sudden strain, bump or fall causes a hip fracture or a vertebral collapse. “Pain and weakness all over is a common symptom.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the first real “symptom” is a broken bone. Loss of height, with the gradual curvature of the back, (caused by vertebral compression fractures) may be the only physical sign of osteoporosis,” says Dr Jain. The best ways to prevent it and to protect your bones is to do exercises that help in strengthening bones. “Building bones through adequate calcium intake and exercises when you are young is an investment that will pay off years later with a reduced risk of hip and other fractures.

An inactive person should start these exercises slowly and gradually increase the intensity. Brisk walking, jogging, climbing stairs are especially good. Muscle building exercises are not recommended for people with osteoporosis. In pregnant, lactating, nursing, post-menopausal women and in men and women over 65 years, the requirement of calcium and vitamin D increases. Vitamin D can be obtained from eggs, liver or even spending about 15 minutes in the sunshine is good. Apart from calcium, Vitamin D, K, B 6, B 12 and minerals like magnesium, zinc, manganese and silicon are also important in strengthening bones. To prevent menopausal bone loss, estrogen replacement therapy, calcitonin, bisphosphonate, parathyroid hormone therapy and other medications should be considered,” he says.

Orthopaedic and Joint Replacement Surgeon, Dr Dilip D Tanna, says that the human body forms bones until the age of 35 years after which new bone formation is negligible. “This remains our highest bone mass. Post 35 years our bone mass remains steady until 45 – 50 years after which it gradually begins to lose bone mass due to menopause. Most women lose around one per cent of their bone mass each year post menopause. Osteoporosis can be detected only over a period of time with a few tests. Include a lot of calcium rich alternatives in your diet. These include dry beans, such as black-eyed peas, kidney beans and black beans, turnip greens, collard greens, broccoli, sardines, tofu and fortified orange juice. Almonds, sunflower and sesame seeds are also a rich source of calcium,” says Dr Tanna.

Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr Sanjay Agarwala, concludes saying that that osteoporosis isn’t always hereditary. “There can be a predisposition mediated through hormonal lack. The peak bone mass i.e. the amount and quality of bone is genetically linked. However, environmental factors and personal habits determine the final quality of bone. On needs to replenish stores of calcium and vitamin D and at times consider hormones that can makes bones grow. One can prevent this illness by going in for weight bearing exercises during young age and maintaining the intake of calcium and vitamin D,” says Dr Agarwala. By Zeena F Baria, The Times Of India

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An auto parts employee laid off from his job last year has been able to hang onto his health insurance because the federal government has picked up most of the tab. That subsidy ends Tuesday for Don Hall and thousands of other Americans.

Hall’s premiums will jump $500 a month, becoming unaffordable for him and his wife. A new study finds that many other workers will be in the same position unless Congress acts.

“That extra $500 is the difference between mortgage, insurance or a couple other items that are of course important to our health – food, utilities, those kinds of things,” Hall, of Castalia, Ohio, said in a phone interview Monday.

Will he be able to keep paying for health insurance for himself and his wife at the higher price? “Not for very long,” Hall said.

At issue is a provision of the economic stimulus bill signed by President Barack Obama in February that cut the price tag for COBRA, the federal program that allows workers to keep their company’s health insurance plan after they leave their job.

Prior to passage of the stimulus bill workers had to pay the full cost of their premium – both their share and their employer’s share, plus an additional administrative fee – in order to keep their coverage under COBRA. That made the policies so expensive that only a minority of eligible workers signed up.

The stimulus bill reduced the cost by 65 percent for workers laid off between Sept. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009. The measure was designed to stanch growth in the ranks of the uninsured as unemployment moved toward double digits. But the reduced-cost premium lasted only nine months, and with joblessness still high many workers are now facing the expiration of their health insurance subsidies before they’ve been able to find new jobs.

Those like Hall who started getting the subsidy in March – the first full month after the stimulus bill was signed – lose the subsidy Tuesday. After December it will no longer be available at all for laid-off workers, barring congressional action to extend it.

Democrats in the House and Senate want to act, but it’s not clear how or when that could happen. One option is to include the subsidy extension in a larger jobs bill that’s being discussed. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, whose office provided Hall’s name, has introduced a stand-alone bill that would increase the subsidy and extend it for an additional six months.

A report being released Tuesday by the advocacy group Families USA finds that, on average, unemployed families who lose the COBRA subsidy will see their premiums increase from $389 per month to $1,111 per month, an amount that few long-term unemployed families will be able to afford, the group says.

It finds that premiums of $1,111 would consume 83.4 percent of the average unemployment check, leaving little for food, housing, and other necessities. In nine states – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee – COBRA costs would actually exceed unemployment benefits.

The result will be tens of thousands of workers added to the rolls of the uninsured at a time when costs for people trying to buy insurance on their own are rising, Families USA says. Congress is searching for a long-term solution with Obama’s health overhaul legislation, but even if that does get passed, it would take years to implement.

Meantime, “The federal COBRA subsidy has been a real lifeline for laid-off workers and their families and the withdrawal of that lifeline will probably mean that the laid-off worker and family are likely to join the ranks of the uninsured,” said Ron Pollack, Families USA executive director. “So as an interim measure it is critically important to restore the COBRA subsidy so that health coverage continues to be affordable.”

It’s not clear how many workers are using the COBRA subsidy, though the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated early on that 7 million would do so. IRS spokesman Anthony Burke said Monday that the agency does not yet have figures. By Erica Werner, The Wichita Eagle

Climate disaster movies tend to show apocalyptic events happening in rich places, such as London being engulfed by rising seas or Manhattan obliterated by tidal waves.

These plots conveniently ignore that we, in the rich West, have the wealth and engineering capacity to protect our cities by building mammoth flood defences. These structures only depend on money and political will.

Bangladesh and many small islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans have millions of people living only a few centimetres above the high-tide mark but they are too poor to protect themselves. These countries are pinning their hopes on the Copenhagen climate summit to deliver the funding from rich countries, which will allow them to build their own defences. The Maldives is even preparing for permanent evacuation and wants money from the West to help to buy a new homeland.

Yet the summit looks likely to agree only a fraction of what these countries say they need. Rich countries have proposed a global fund of £100 billion a year, at least half of which would come from private companies. Poor countries want at least £240 billion a year and are deeply suspicious of funds that are dependent on the vagaries of a global market in carbon emissions permits.

Lack of agreement over funding is one of the main issues that could cause developing countries to walk out of the Copenhagen talks. The biggest developing countries — China, India, Brazil and South Africa — are expected to present an alternative negotiating text for the summit today that will make for uncomfortable reading in Western capitals.

They will refuse to sign up to a global agreement to cut emissions by half on 1990 levels by 2050. Lord Stern of Brentford says this is the minimum cut needed to have a 50 per cent chance of avoiding an increase in global average temperature of more than 2C. More than that and runaway global warming becomes much more likely, ice sheets melt and sea levels could rise by several metres.

The developing countries will also reject demands from the US for scrutiny of their own efforts to reduce their growth in emissions. They will argue that rich countries must agree to emissions cuts of at least 40 per cent by 2020 before they will even begin to negotiate a global reduction target that includes their economies.

All the while the Alliance of Small Island States is looking on in despair. Its members are calling for the temperature increase to be limited to 1.5C to give them a better than average chance of surviving. Today, at least, it is only their voices, not yet their people, that are being drowned out. The Times