Blog About Health & Medicine

From that moment on, Liz was like a woman possessed. She talked to pharmacists and called officials at the FDA. She was determined to get to the truth about this drug and its effects on the fetus. The response from the experts were unanimous. They were shocked and furious to learn that she had been treated with this drug during pregnancy. The warnings are clear. The drug, 17-hydoxy-progesterone caproate, a synthetic progestin, was known to increase your chances of certain birth defects, and should NEVER be used during pregnancy. Never!

“I believe in my heart more than anything that those shots caused my son’s bladder exstrophy.” Then, when she reviewed her medical records from her first pregnancy, she was shocked to discover that she had never been low in progesterone in the first place.

Liz continues to tirelessly research and network with other parents of children with similar defects. She is finding that several cases of children born with this very rare defect have corresponded with the administration of synthetic progesterone. She is determined to make people aware of this gross medical negligence and the real dangers of synthetic progestin treatments for pregnant women.

Her voice, no doubt, will one day be heard. The Discovery Channel has recently contacted the Association for Bladder Exstrophy Children asking these families if they would be a part of a story they will be filming on this defect. Liz has responded with an energetic “yes!”. Meanwhile Liz and her family live each day as it comes. Grateful to have each other.

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Your practitioner is trained to know the correct therapeutic doses for you, depending on your condition, body weight and height. They also know which products have quality standards and in-depth sourcing standards. If you are buying some supplements and are unsure about the information on the label, you should rmg the information line (the number should be on the label) to ask about the company’s sourcing and quality control standards. If this information is refused, then do not buy the product and again see your naturopath or trusted health food store to guide you to suitable brands.

The key words to look out for on labels of herbal medicine are ‘standardised extract’. The ‘standardised extract’ tells you how much of the active ingredient (the medicinal part) is present in that particular supplement. For example, a label for echinacea supplements should say that you are taking 600 mg of echinacea root, containing alkylamides 2.65 mg (the active ingredient). Research was carried out on several echinacea products in the market to see is they contained the active ingredient of alkylamides (from the echinacea root). Three products did not use the echinacea root at all and three other products did not contain any active ingredient. So be sure to check the label.

If you are taking any form of complementary medicine for the first time, start off by taking one thing at a time and see if there is improvement over a period of three weeks. You may then wish to introduce another recommended supplement for the next three weeks. If you feel no better there can be a few obvious reasons.

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The question of whether psychological stress and personality cause coronary artery disease, heart attacks, and sudden cardiac death is highly controversial. A great deal of research seems to suggest that your personality, the stressful events in your life, and your body’s physiological reaction to stress can increase your risk of heart disease. However, this theory is far from proven. Stress is a very difficult area to study because it is hard to measure psychological and physical responses to stress or to assess the social factors that may buffer the detrimental effects

of stress.

Many different situations can be a source of stress, and the response to a given situation may vary dramatically from one person to another. These are reasons why researchers have had difficulty identifying whether or how stress contributes to the development of heart disease.

It is common for people with heart disease to report that emotional peaks cause chest pain, and it is also common for heart attacks to occur during emotionally difficult periods. The added stress of emotional upset may  disrupt the balance between supply and demand of the heart for oxygen, causing chest pain.

Although in certain cases it seems possible that acute stress was a factor in precipitating a heart attack, it is not clear whether ongoing stress can cause the underlying coronary disease (atherosclerosis) that is usually associated with heart attacks. To try to answer that question, researchers have studied the subject of stress and heart disease in terms of people’s personalities, social support systems, and their body’s  physiological responses to stress.

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