AIDS

AIDS wasn't discovered until the early 1980s, when doctors in the United States noticed clusters of patients suffering from highly unusual diseases. First seen in gay men in New York and California, these illnesses included Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare skin cancer, and a type of lung infection carried by birds.

Soon cases were also detected in intravenous drug users and recipients of blood transfusions. By 1982 the illness had a name—acquired immune deficiency syndrome. AIDS has since killed around 25 million people worldwide, orphaning 12 million children in Africa alone.

AIDS is triggered by a virus acquired through direct contact with infected body fluids. The virus causes an immune deficiency by attacking a type of white blood cell that helps to fight infections. Because this leads to various diseases, not a single illness, AIDS is referred to as a syndrome. The virus is called HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

Unprotected sex is HIV's main route into humans, where it targets the white blood cell known as CD4. The virus replicates inside, eventually bursting out and flooding the body in the billions. The immune system then kicks in, and the body and the virus wage all-out war. During the height of battle billions of CD4 cells can be destroyed in a single day. As the cell count drops, the immune system begins to fail and opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis take hold.

Ape Origins

AIDS is thought to have originated in Africa, where monkeys and apes harbor a virus similar to HIV called SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus). Scientists believe the illness first jumped to humans from wild chimpanzees in central Africa.

How the disease crossed the species barrier remains a puzzle. The leading theory is that it was picked up by people who hunted or ate infected chimpanzees. Researchers have dated the virus in humans to about 1930 using scientific estimates of the time it's taken for different strains of HIV to evolve.

AIDS today is a global pandemic affecting every country. In 2006, an estimated 39.5 million people had HIV/AIDS. Almost three million of them died.

The region most devastated by the disease is sub-Saharan Africa. It accounts for two-thirds of the world's HIV cases and nearly 75 percent of deaths due to AIDS. Infection rates vary, with southern African countries worst affected. In South Africa, an estimated 29 percent of pregnant women have HIV. Infection rates in Zimbabwe's adult population exceed 20 percent, while in Swaziland a third of adults are HIV-positive. Poverty, inadequate health care and education, and promiscuity have all been highlighted to explain Africa's AIDS nightmare.

Treatments But No Cure

Efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS focus on sex education and the use of condoms. Other measures, such as male circumcision, may also help to cut the risk of sexually transmitted infection.

There is no cure for AIDS, but treatments are available that combat its onset. Antiviral drugs work by slowing the replication of HIV in the body. These drugs need to be used in combination because the virus readily mutates, creating new and often drug-resistant strains. Such treatments are expensive, however, and are still denied to millions of people in the developing world.

In the future, the hope is for an AIDS vaccine that would prevent HIV infection. Researchers are currently working on more than 30 potential candidates.

Brain Training Games For Adults and Seniors

Memory is one of the most difficult issues of aging with which people have to deal as changes will generate feelings of both fear and worry; thanks to brain training games, you can avoid it completely. But there is no reason to be overly concerned about your brain’s aging as keeping it active and aware will solve the problem of this bothersome issue. As they age, people are more prone to degenerative issues such as Alzheimer’s disease, but exercising your mind with activities such as word puzzles, board games and strategy games will be very helpful in staying in control. Numerous brain training games may be found on the Internet and the benefits will be equally advantageous to adults and seniors.

Free Brain Training Games
Regularly being involved in board games and working on computer puzzles which require concentrated effort and analytical skills have been shown to result in great benefit for adults and seniors. In addition, such brain training is known to have positive ramifications for mental health overall. Working out crossword puzzles or Sudoku or playing Scrabble all have positive impact in maintaining the cognitive ability of people as they get older. It has been estimated that playing games which are mind-stimulating may decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in adults and seniors by as much as forty percent. That is a statistic which should ease your mind a bit.

Online Brain Training Games
Brain training games for adults and seniors have been structured in such a way as to compel the mind to think and to provoke it to resolve the matter at hand, thereby enhancing cognitive capacity and enhancing memory prowess. In essence, this brain training by such games stimulate to activity sections of the mind which may not have had much recent use. Action computer games assist adults and seniors in enhancing their attentiveness and in stimulating their thinking about strategies they can use in the course of the game.

Studies have indicated that approximately two seniors out of three are seriously worried about memory issues and that the most effective manner of coping is to be involved in memory games on a regular basis. The traditional crossword puzzles are a perfect method of both increasing your vocabulary and of remaining mentally sharp. Another method of stimulating your mind is to play games with your grandchildren and such activity will also benefit you by reducing stress.

Nintendo Brain Training Games
There can even be fun ways to train your brain, such as by playing Nintendo DS brain training games like Brain Age and Brain Age 2. While a brain training game may be advantageous for adults and seniors by aiding in maintaining a vivacious mind, they also are helpful in keeping them occupied in a positive endeavor which wards off loneliness. So, brain training is an effective manner by which diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s may be addressed and countered. An active brain can decrease the deterioration of mental acuity.

New Brain Training Studies
Research studies have concluded that seniors and adults who took part in mental games a minimum of one time per week over the course of twenty years decreased the risk of dementia by almost ten percent and those who regularly became involved in such games cut the susceptibility to the disease by an amazing sixty percent. So, why are you procrastinating? Stimulate your mind’s activity and make it function. Luckily, many people indeed do take the improvement of their mental acumen to heart.