One of the main goals of any adult is to enjoy lifelong good health. To give the best possible chance of achieving this, it is likely that several key lifestyle choices should be made, ideally from an early age. Firstly, it is important to undertake a program of regular exercise throughout life.
This should match your current fitness level and may be designed so that your strength and endurance levels improve over time. In addition, it is vitally important to avoid smoking tobacco products and only consume alcohol in moderation as the long term use of both can cause serious medical problems in later life.
Serious medical problems can occur even if you enjoy a healthy lifestyle although, you may be less likely to suffer from them by staying fit. In this article two serious medical conditions will be discussed, along with some potential treatment options to manage them.
Stroke
It is estimated that strokes occur 152,000 times each year in UK patients. A stroke is a medical emergency where either a clot is formed in the blood vessels of the brain or bleeding occurs in this area. These two forms of stroke are known as ischaemic and haemorrhagic respectively.
In each case, it is vital that the patient receives timely emergency medical interventions. Thrombolytic drugs may be used in ischaemic stroke patients to remove the blood clot. After a stroke, patients may be left with some form of paralysis (often in the face or limbs) and in such cases may need to receive forms of speech and physiotherapies to improve their changes of making a full recovery. Known risk factors in stroke include smoking tobacco products, being overweight and having high blood pressure.
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is another serious medical condition that results in the person suffering from repeated seizures over a prolonged period of time. The exact causes of epilepsy are not fully understood but the condition can affect both children and adults. People may be more susceptible to epilepsy due to a genetic predisposition or as the result of suffering a severe traumatic injury to the brain (such as after a car accident).
Treatments vary, but in recent years a new form of potential treatment has started to be introduced in the UK. In limited circumstances, medically produced cannabis may be prescribed to treat epilepsy in some people. Often this is achieved by applying for a cannabis card uk and demonstrating that the patient has not had success in managing or reducing the seizures with other drugs.
Research in this field is still limited, but you can read more about it here. A drug derived from cannabis was used in clinical trials in Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. It was demonstrated to reduce seizures by 40% in children with Dravet syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy.
To sum up
Stokes and epilepsy are two forms of serious medical conditions that can affect patients worldwide. Strokes are more common in older age (but can affect younger people too), whereas epilepsy may affect a range of different age groups. Treatments vary for each condition; the use of cannabis-derived products for epilepsy patients is still in the early stages and is considered to be quite controversial as the drug is illegal for recreational use in the UK.