May 15th, 2009
Some children lose their asthma at adolescence but find it comes back when they enter their 40s.
In asthma, there is an oversensitivity of the bronchial tubes and, in allergic individuals, a generalised hypersensitivity to certain foreign proteins or allergens. These may be animal fur, grass pollens, the house dust mite, sometimes chemicals eaten or breathed or even food.
Many things can trigger off the asthma. They are believed to stimulate mast cells in the lining of the bronchial tubes and these cells release chemicals like histamine which cause the muscle constriction, the swelling of the lining and the excess production of mucus.
These are infection, allergy, emotion, exercise or combinations of them all.
Asthma usually starts in childhood and it is then an accurate diagnosis should be made.
If asthma is the diagnosis, then how severe it is and how often it comes are important, because these things will influence the treatment.
Children may wheeze with any chest infection but asthma is the commonest cause of recurrent wheezing.
*210/71/1*
Categories: General health
Tags: General health
May 8th, 2009
In my practice, numbers of women who use tampons exclusively (or use them in combination with pads far heavy flow) worry that tampons may be implicated in the onset and progressive growth of endometriosis. There are a number of reasons for their concern:
If tampons block menstrual flow and keep blood in the vagina, they ask, won’t the tampon help push some of the blood back into die uterus?
What about the chance for infection? Aren’t tampons actually an unsanitary way to manage menstrual flow? They remember the scare years ago from toxic shock syndrome and its connection to tampons.
Finally, they might add, “I know something is wrong because sometimes my body seems to expel a portion of the tampon naturally. Isn’t this an indication that I might be doing something harmful to my health? Aren’t pads the safer choice?”
These issues have all been scrutinized by gynecologists and clinicians studying every subtlety involved in endometriosis. One such study, conducted by Karen Lamb. Ph.D., and Nancy Berg at the Medical College of Wisconsin, investigated the tampon-endometriosis connection with nearly five hundred respondents who were members of the Endometriosis Association and sufferers of the disease. The study resulted in a number of conclusions. Among the most significant of them are these: tampon usage for women with endometriosis was not greater than rates for the general population, and, as yet, there is no clue to the role tampons play, if any, in the disease.
The cardboard-encased tampon was invented in 1933 by an ingenious Colorado physician. Tampax Incorporated, which bought the patent three years later, popularized the product almost single-handedly over the next thirty years or so. Other companies then entered the tampon market, introducing their own version of the original. Although today Sanitary napkins outsell tampons by a small margin, to some women, tampons have the benefits of contained blood flow, comfort, and invisibility.
The tampon as we know it has not come this far without its own brand of controversy. The subject of some moral and scientific debate until the mid-1960s, the tampon triumphantly held its position as a safe and reliable women’s hygiene product. Then in 1980 a sudden wave of toxic shock syndrome (TSS) mistakenly focused on tampons as the cause of this illness. One fact used for validation was that the illness seemed to strike white women, many of whom were menstruating at the time, and most of whom were using tampons.
Researchers into toxic shock syndrome, however, postulate one link between menstruation, tampons, and the illness. “Supctabsorbent” tampons, most notably, expand to creat a pluglike effect, thereby trapping excess menstrual blood in a pool in the vagina. This pool of Wood in combination with the blood-soaked tampon may in some cases create an airtight culture medium. In such an environment, bacteria might flourish and the toxin may develop. Another variable was found by researchers; tampons left in the vagina for periods of time greater than the four or five hours recommended (for example, those worn overnight) might cause abrasions, irritations, or sores in the vagina thereby encouraging bacterial growth.
It is became tampons can stop the flow of menstrual blood out of the body that endometriosis sufferers bring up their first worry; couldn’t a tampon somehow create enough mechanical pressure to flush blood back into the uterus? The answer is no! Once menstrual blood has passed through the cervix and enters the Vagina, it will only leave the body. Since a tampon is placed in the lower part of the vagina, it does not block the blood’s exit from the cervix.
What of the feeling that the body expels tampons because they arc unnatural devices? If endometriosis sufferers find that a tampon dislodges itself and moves down the vagina the reason is tied to uterine contractions and menstrual cramps, not to “intuitive” biological knowledge, women with endometriosis almost always have menstrual cramps, and these cramps exist in differing degrees of intensity: In fact, uterine contractions can even be measured on a scale. For example, the average force required to drive a baby out through the cervix is 50 millimeter mercury. The low end of the scale is 10 millimeter mercury. The force of severe menstrual cramps has been measured at 100 millimeter mercury. This gives you a good sense not only of the pain a woman will feel but of why a tampon would move down the vagina.
The wisest use of tampons is to change them every four or five hours, which gives the vagina a chance to cleanse itself; and to wear sanitary napkins overnight. Until further research is completed, 100 percent cotton tampons should be used, instead of those with synthetic fibers or deodorants.
*34\43\4*
Categories: Women's Health
Tags: Women’s Health
May 8th, 2009
Hives, known medically as urticaria, are a very common problem They are sometimes known as ‘heat lumps’, appearing as raised’ red lumps which tend to come and go over any part of the body and which are extremely itchy. They are the result of increased capillary permeability, or ‘leaky bloodvessels’. The condition has been closely studied by allergists, dermatologists, pharmacologists, and immunologists. As a result the mechanism of action is reasonably well understood. It is thought that various processes, both allergic and non-allergic, lead to the release of certain chemicals, the most important of which is histamine. These chemicals influence the small blood vessels and capillaries of the skin, leading to skin changes which are characteristic of hives.
There are various known causes of hives (and probably as many unknown).
Foods and additives. Certain foods, including eggs, shellfish, and nuts, may be implicated. More important however, are the various food additives, in particular benzoic acid and its derivatives, which are used as preservatives, also the yellow azo dye, tartrazine. A carefully documented dietary chart may help discover whether a particular foodstuff is causing hives. Alternatively, a strict diet may be followed, reintroducing one item at a time. If food preservatives or colouring matter are suspected, then an appropriate diet excluding these may help sort this out.
Drugs. There are various medications which frequently cause niyes. These include aspirin and the various salicylates, such as Alka Seltzer. Codeine, Indocid, Brufen, Sulphonamides, and of course penicillin may also cause this condition. A little-known fact is that some cows are treated with penicillin for mastitis. Subsequently, individuals who have a history of penicillin allergy may be absorbing enough penicillin from the milk or other dairy products to cause hives.
Cosmetics, pollens, etc. Make-up, creams, soaps and shampoos may cause hives, though such cases are rare. Even metal bone prostheses, such as artificial hips or leg plates, may be implicated. Toothpaste containing menthol or fluoride has also been known to cause hives. The inhalation of such things as grass pollens or chromate fumes from welding occasionally cause hives.
*61\44\4*
Categories: Skin Care
Tags: Skin Care
May 8th, 2009
A preference for fatty foods may have developed during hunter-gatherer times because high-fat foods were both scarce and probably beneficial for survival.10 this legacy now counts against us in a world of greater availability of fatty foods with desirable textural qualities like thickness and smoothness.
Does a high-fat meal reduce appetite? Professor Blundell and his colleagues at Leeds university have studied the effects of dietary fat on feeding patterns in humans. They have shown that the most important determinant of the amount of energy consumed in a meal was the macronutrient content of the meal and not the prior level of hunger. For comparison, subjects were required to eat a high-fat dinner one day and then a high-carbohydrate dinner on another day. Surprisingly, the high-energy, high-fat meal did not suppress eating later in the day, nor did it have a significant effect on energy consumed the following day when compared to the lower energy high-carbohydrate meal.
This means that periodic exposure to high-fat meals will lead to over-consumption of energy which is never compensated for later. Fat can also leave a type of ‘fat hangover’ which causes a person to feel full or bloated, but still with an appetite to eat more. It is useful to learn to recognise this ‘hangover’ and to realise that it can be avoided (by reducing the fat content of meals). In a practical sense, it is always easy to slip some more fatty food (e.g. Chocolate dessert) in at the end of a meal, but this is much less likely to happen with carbohydrate.
*115\186\4*
Categories: Weight Loss
Tags: Weight Loss
May 8th, 2009
When a doctor finally puts a name to all that pain and suffering you feel relieved. At last someone has recognised that you do have something wrong with you and it is not all in your head. No, you are not neurotic and your symptoms have a name. Endometriosis. You do not have cancer and you can at last do something about your problem.
Denial
Some women cannot accept that they have a disease. They will not accept the fact that it may cause infertility, may interrupt their lives, relationships and careers. They believe that if they ignore it the symptoms and disease will just go away. They turn a blind eye to it all and bury their head in the sand.
Confusion
For others, the relief of finally knowing what is wrong is clouded by fear and confusion, particularly if they have never heard of endometriosis or know only a little about the disease.
Many women are told the best ‘cure’ is to have a baby. For teenagers, those not in a relationship, or those who had decided not to have children, this can be a confusing and annoying ‘solution’.
It is normal to want to know the answers to several questions. The most common questions are:
What causes endometriosis
Can I have children
What treatment is available
Will the treatment I choose get rid of the pain
Can I be cured
Is it hereditary
Is it a sexually transmitted disease
Where do I go from here.
The more accurate information and support that you receive soon after you have been diagnosed, the less likely you will be confused and unsure of the next steps in dealing with this disease.
*104\83\2*
Categories: Women's Health
Tags: Women’s Health
May 8th, 2009
I started menstruating at the age of 13. For the first 12 months everything was fine, but I then started to develop acute pain in my right side. I went to my GP who referred me to a surgeon and I was then rushed to hospital to have my appendix removed. Strangely, my appendix was quite normal. I felt well for three months, but then the pain started up again. After having an ultrasound, I was admitted to hospital with a suspected ovarian cyst. A laparoscopy was performed, but everything appeared normal. I was sent home, having been told that it was quite normal to suffer some discomfort when having a period.
For the next year I tried to put up with the pain because I was sure the doctors would tell me it was ‘all in my head’. After another bout of severe pain my GP referred me to another specialist who ordered a barium enema. He said that I had an irritable bowel and to eat more fibre. Unfortunately, this made no difference to the pain. My GP then thought that perhaps I was suffering from pelvic inflammatory disease — a course of antibiotics made no difference. My mother wasn’t happy with the doctor’s explanations and so took me to another GP who immediately suspected I may have endometriosis even though I was only 17 years old. He sent me to a gynaecologist who immediately performed a laparoscopy and diagnosed endometriosis.
During the laparoscopy the gynaecologist ‘burnt off’ all the endometrial deposits that he could find. He explained to me that because there could still be microscopic endometrial deposits in the pelvis, I was to take Provera 30 milligrams a day for nine months. I am now pain free and have just finished the course of tablets. I am looking forward to starting university next year and enjoying life.
*45\83\2*
Categories: Women's Health
Tags: Women’s Health
April 29th, 2009
While there is a direct correlation between your sleeping pattern and back pain and sciatica, how well you sleep is also likely to have a major effect on your overall health and stress levels, which in turn may also affect your back problems. Here are some extra facts about sleep that underline the importance of this often-neglected aspect of our lives:
Most of us spend up to a third of each day in bed – that’s about 29,200 hours in bed every ten years.
New research has shown that people who try to cut down on sleep are more prone to infection and irritability. In a recent study of 9,000 British adults, it was found that those who slept between six-and-a-half and eight-and-a-half hours enjoyed much better overall health than those who slept for less.
Lack of sleep can sabotage diets and knock our immune system for six: exhausted people are far more likely to pick up bugs and infections because of the way lack of sleep upsets the normal cycle of chemical and hormone release. When a representative sample of more than 300 adults aged 30 to 60 years were asked about the effect a bad night’s sleep had on them, 79 per cent of people saw a direct link between the way they had slept and how they felt the next day. A staggering 52 per cent said that they regularly experienced tiredness/lethargy, irritability, poor concentration, depression or headaches which they attributed to poor quality sleep.
Only 10 per Cent of people stated that they always had a good night’s sleep – these were the people who regularly got more than the average amount of sleep.
How much sleep do we really need? While this will vary greatly from person to person, the average amount of sleep needed each day, according to the Ushborne Book of Body Facts, is 16 to 20 hours for a new-born baby; 13 hours for a two-year-old; 10 to 11 hours for a five-year-old; 9 to 10 hours for a ten-year-old; 7 to 8 hours for an adult; and a mere 5 hours for an eighty-year-old. On the average, people sleep for just 6.7 hours before a working day and 7.1 hours before a day off.
*50\124\2*
Categories: Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers
Tags: Pain Relief
April 29th, 2009
Just as you need to have some sense of the weather in order to know how to dress and whether to take a raincoat or an umbrella along, so you need to have a good sense of your mood in order to make the necessary adjustments to your lifestyle. Sometimes fluctuations in mood occur during a single day. A piece of bad news, a valuable object mislaid or an encounter with an unpleasant person may plunge you into a gloomy frame of mind for several hours, only to be reversed later in the day by a piece of good news, the recovery of your lost treasure or a visit with a friend. Recognizing the connection between your mood and these external events turns out to be enormously useful in making the hour-by-hour adjustments to help even out your mood across the day.
Other mood fluctuations occur over days and are less easy to recognize. For example, people may become depressed a few days after the clocks are turned back at the end of autumn, after returning from abroad or after a big party. In these three situations the deterioration in mood may be due to the hour’s decrease in afternoon daylight, jet lag, or the delayed effects of alcohol respectively. One useful strategy for those who experience unexplained dips in mood is to keep a daily mood log, which will help you to recognize the connection between mood fluctuations and external events. At times such logs can be crucial in convincing you that a clear pattern exists. For example, it was only after she had kept a log for several months that one of my patients was willing to concede that the alcohol she consumed on Saturday night was responsible for the dip in mood experienced two or three days later.
Finally, there are mood changes that have a longer period of duration, such as the monthly mood changes of premenstrual syndrome or the annual mood fluctuations that occur with the change of the seasons in people with SAD or the winter blues.
Mood may change with the environment – physical, climatic or human. One of my patients would feel depressed every time she went to her office. This seemed strange as she liked her colleagues and was passionate about the work itself. The clues to her depression lay in her associated symptoms – headache, dizziness, fatigue and difficulties with short-term memory. She worked in an air-tight office block full of office chemicals – printer cartridges, copiers, FAX machines and other sources of organic solvents. She was a victim of the so-called sick-building syndrome, and depression is one of the key symptoms that affect people suffering from this disorder. One patient with seasonal affective disorder experienced depression after she moved from a bright high-rise block of flats to a dim ground-floor studio. A third patient became depressed every time she visited her mother-in-law. The patient was very self-conscious about her looks and was constantly battling to lose weight. Somehow her mother-in-law always managed to direct the conversation to the patient’s figure, often in the guise of a compliment. ‘That dress really suits you,’ she would say, ‘it’s just right for your shape. Where did you find it?’ This would invariably make the patient self-conscious and depressed. In all of these cases, the first step in handling the problem was understanding it. An old medical adage is that you cannot treat before you diagnose. I therefore recommend that if you are of a moody disposition, become your own diagnostician, find out what is depressing you and then proceed to take remedial steps.
*66\75\2*
Categories: Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid
Tags: Anti Depressants
April 28th, 2009
Although we hope that such gases will never be used, we have deliberately introduced the topic at this point to explain the difference between the diagnosis of ‘an epileptic seizure, and the diagnosis of ‘epilepsy’. It would clearly be ridiculous to label as ‘epileptics’ those soldiers who had convulsed on exposure to the nerve gas. The cause of their seizures is readily apparent, and, not only that, the tendency to convulse is present only in the presence of the nerve gas. Someone is said to suffer from epilepsy if he or she has a continuing tendency to epileptic seizures.
This example polarizes, as it were, the explanation, but there are many grey areas, some of which we explain here. Take for example the case of a young man who has a single seizure at the age of 19, after a rather-too-good office party at Christmas time. It would be justifiable to assume that alcohol played some part in the genesis of the seizure—but there were others who drank just as much who did not have a seizure. So we must presume that the man has a lower convulsive threshold than his colleagues. A single seizure is not considered sufficient to make the diagnosis of epilepsy, as, until time has passed, it will not be known whether or not this seizure will prove to be the first of others.
Doctors will make a diagnosis of epilepsy when they hear of more than one seizure of any type not associated with fever. Convulsions associated with illness. Clearly there is no difficulty in doing this if the time scale is short, but what do we call a man who has one fit at the age of 19 and another at the age of 80? It would seem a bit nonsensical to tell the elderly man that he had been an epileptic all his life, as we would be obliged to do if we followed rigidly the definition of ‘more than one non-febrile seizure’. Another problem—what do we call a woman aged 40, who has had ten seizures between the ages of 15 and 25? We cannot, unfortunately, say that she is a ‘woman cured of epilepsy’, as experience shows she is still slightly at risk from further seizures.
These examples clearly show that the label ‘epilepsy’ has to be applied with common sense. It is not one of those tidy diseases such as myocardial infarction, in which there is little argument about the heart attack or the coronary disease causing it.
These medical uncertainties are reflected in patients’ minds. After all, if a doctor cannot give a crystal-clear definition of a disease, how can the patient be expected to understand it? The uncertainties in peoples’ minds are compounded by a series of half-or un-truths that, perhaps because epilepsy is so common, are held in the collective imagination as folk lore—that epilepsy is inherited; that it begins in childhood; that it is always convulsive in nature; and that it is related in some ways to mental illness. Glimpses of this stereotype of epilepsy are seen in the clinic when a patient, or his relative, says ‘it can’t be epilepsy because . . . .’ We hope that this book will dispel some of these confusions.
Part of the difficulty in understanding about epilepsy is a hangover from the ideas of the great physicians of the nineteenth century. ‘Diseases’ were described—for example, Bright’s disease of the kidneys. Such diseases have proved unexpectedly more and more complex with further research. For example, Bright described the dilute urine containing protein, and changes associated with high blood pressure that are merely symptoms common to a number of processes resulting in chronic kidney failure.
With these comments in mind, an epileptic seizure should be regarded as a symptom—an event that is just one of the few ways that the brain has of reacting to untoward internal processes. The continuation of such reactions constitutes epilepsy. As to the causes of epilepsy, it is the doctor’s task to disentangle, if at all possible, the factors that result in seizures.
We have had some difficulty in deciding what to call the child or person with epilepsy. There are some who instinctively dislike the word—or label—’epileptic’. It is of course an adjective, and one does not talk about those with heart disease or multiple sclerosis as ‘cardiacs’ or ‘multiple sclerotics’. We admit, however, that those with diabetes seem quite happy to be known as ‘diabetics’. We find the word person too impersonal, but to write and read ‘a man, woman, or child with epilepsy’ takes too long, and to write each time ‘those with epilepsy’ seems archaic. We have avoided the use of the word patient, except in a medical context, as people with epilepsy should only become patients for brief moments in their lives. We therefore use whatever phrase seems most appropriate in the context.
*5\188\2*
Categories: Epilepsy
Tags: Epilepsy
April 28th, 2009
Warts are local accumulations of skin cells which have become abnormally large and adherent to one another as the result of infection with one of nine possible wart viruses. In people whose warts have become widespread and unusually persistent (warts normally disappear in about nine months), an additional factor — decreased immunity — is also at work.
Treatment of common warts on the hands and fingers, according to the Resident and Staff Physician (26:58), need not be traumatic to be effective. Even applications of relatively mild lotions, such as salicylic acid, may disturb the walls of the wart cells sufficiently to let some wart virus escape into the patient’s bloodstream. This boosts production of antibodies against the virus which eventually attack the warts and destroy them.
So, if you have warts on your fingers, it is better to let your own body deal with them. If you rush to have them burned off, your immunity never gets stimulated and they may quickly come back again.
*195\143\2*
Categories: General health
Tags: General health
