GENITAL WARTS AND LYMPHOGRANULOMA VENEREUM
Monday, May 18, 2009 | 12:03 amWarts on the genital area are like warts elsewhere. They are due to a virus infection, but when on the genitals are usually spread by sexual contact. Podophyllin applied locally clears them quickly but can irritate normal skin. It should not be self applied but left to the doctor to treat.
Cauterisation by the application of intense cold from applying liquid nitrogen or by heat from an electric diathermy is also effective.
The warts may occur on the penis, the vulva, in the vagina, around or in the anus.
This virus may be one of the causes of cancer of the cervix.
This condition is also rare in Australia and seen mostly in the tropics. It develops some one to three weeks following exposure. Initially there is a painful blister which ulcerates and then the lymph glands in the groin become involved, swell, develop abscesses and may discharge pus. The tetracycline drugs are also effective for this condition.
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(posted in General health | tagged General health)
EYESIGHT – GENERAL INFORMATION
Friday, May 15, 2009 | 2:55 amDistance vision is normally tested from six metres.
The Americans test vision at 20 feet, and use this number rather than metres.
Thus normal vision for Americans is 20-20, while for us it is 6-6.
So a person who can see only the top letter at this distance has 6-60 of normal vision.
Similarly, the second line of letters should be seen by a person with normal sight from 36 metres.
If you can read no further than this, then your vision is 6-36.
Similarly, with the other lines which are equivalent to 6-24, 6-18, 6-12, 6-9 and 6-6 is normal vision.
Near-vision is tested by means of the Jaeger types, which simply consist of the ordinary printers’ types from the smallest upwards.
In hypermetropia or long-sightedness, the person complains of difficulty with near-vision, while his distance vision is good.
In the eye, the ciliary muscles constrict the lens and enable it to focus the light. However, the constant strain of doing this may cause headaches.
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(posted in General health | tagged General health)
WEIGHING ‘COST AGAINST ‘BENEFIT’ WHEN CHOOSING TREATMENT – CONTROLING SYMPTOMS OF CANCER
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 7:10 amThis leads me to a very important point—for every successful cancer treatment a price must be paid. Some treatments are much more ‘costly’ than others, some are much more effective than Others. What is important is the balance between ‘cost’ and effectiveness. To judge the possible cost you need to know about the nature and likelihood of any inconvenience, disruption to normal lifestyle, financial cost, and side effects. To judge the possible benefits you need to know both the aim of the treatment—whether control of symptoms of cancer, temporary control of the cancer or permanent cure—and what the chances are of achieving that aim. You need to weigh the nature and chance of possible ‘success’ against the possible cost. If there is considerable possible benefit, you may think a considerable cost is justified. For little benefit you would probably not be prepared to pay a great ‘price’. You cannot assess any treatment without knowing both sides of this balance— the likely cost and the likely benefit.
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(posted in Cancer | tagged Cancer)
CHOOSING YOUR TREATMENT – INTRODUCTION (IMPORTANT DECISION)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 7:01 amIf you’ve read this far, you are obviously keen to understand your disease. You are prepared to face the reality of being an adult person with a serious illness. You don’t want to be treated like a helpless young child. You deserve and expect explanations.
That’s great, as far as it goes. But I hope very much that you are not content to stop at that. I hope that you take it one step further, and use this understanding and knowledge as a stepping stone that enables you to make your own decisions. I can well imagine you are doubtful about taking this further step. Perhaps you’re thinking: ‘It’s nice to understand what’s happening, but surely it’s easier and safer to leave the decisions to the experts’?
I know that’s what you’ve been taught to believe. I know that’s what you want to believe. But I also know that enormous numbers of cancer patients have suffered because they have believed it. I know that a great many cancer patients undergo unpleasant and pointless tests and treatments because they unquestioningly accept the decisions of experts—both medical doctors and other practitioners. I also know that it is extremely difficult for patients who do want to make their own decisions to get the necessary information. These are my reasons for writing this book. I don’t want you to suffer in this way. I hope that by the end of this book you will understand why the decisions of experts are often not the best decisions for people with cancer. I hope you will believe that you are the best person to make decisions about yourself. I hope you will have enough confidence and understanding to ask the right questions and get the information you need to make the best decisions for you.
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(posted in Cancer | tagged Cancer)
BREAST FEEDING – GENERAL INFORMATION
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 6:41 amThe composition of breast milk creates a low pH in the bowel and this favors colonisation with the lactobacillus bacterium which keeps out the bacteria which can cause infection.
Because breast milk is ideally suited to the baby’s digestion there are few digestive upsets in the breast fed baby.
There are a number of old wives tales about breast feeding and the one most wrong is that the mother’s milk is not suitable for her baby. This is often invoked as a reason to explain some failure of the baby to gain sufficient weight. The baby may not be getting enough milk but with very rare exceptions breast milk is always right for the baby. Those exceptions are due to some rare diseases.
If there is a strong family history of allergy, that is with family members suffering from hayfever, asthma and eczema, then avoiding the foreign proteins of cow’s milk and other substitutes and sticking to breast milk will reduce the risk of allergy.
Breast feeding has many emotional advantages both for the mother and child and leads to better “bonding” between them. Almost every woman can breast feed if she wants to. This decision is best taken during pregnancy and should be strongly encouraged by the health care professionals with whom she comes in contact. Attention and care to the breasts and nipples during pregnancy prepares them for more successful breast feeding.
Of course, breast feeding, while entirely natural, may not always be trouble free. Some feeding mothers run into problems because of retracted nipples or may get a cracked nipple which causes pain.
The breast may become engorged with milk and painful, or the supply of milk may be inadequate. The baby may be premature or sick and have difficulty in sucking strongly.
These are problems which can all be overcome.
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(posted in General health | tagged General health)
ETHICAL ISSUES IN OBESITY TREATMENT: ETHICAL DESICION MAKING
Friday, May 8, 2009 | 7:44 amThe client. Your clients, like you, are hurhan beings with complex motives and needs. Some of these will be well-understood by the clients and some will be more apparent to others than to themselves. It is not usually ethically acceptable to take clients at face value, especially when you are dealing with potentially very complex issues.
What is this client asking for? Why does he or she want that? With personal issues such as health, fitness and appearance the client’s expression of his or her needs can easily be distorted by anxiety.
The woman in the above example who wishes to get a satisfying relationship by losing fat is unlikely to give this initially as her reason for seeking help. If she is partially aware of and embarrassed about her insecurities, she may deny this even if you ask directly about it. You need to take some care in considering what the initial request for help really represents.
What are his or her strengths and weaknesses? Consider what the client is and is not capable of achieving. Sometimes you can teach the skills and knowledge required. Sometimes the client already has these, so they can be left out of the program. Sometimes you can refer them to someone else who can offer better help or modify your approach accordingly.
What are the probable consequences of this client successfully losing fat? Of staying the same? You should consider whether the gains that can be reasonably expected would be a worthwhile return on the effort and cost involved. You should specifically take into account potential unwanted effects, particularly if the fat loss efforts are unsuccessful. This should include some thought about how the client and other important people in her life are likely to respond to the client losing fat and how they would respond if she regained it. The responses will not always be entirely positive.
What is this client’s history of obesity management? How have these past efforts affected them? Most clients have already made many efforts to lose fat. This history of efforts to lose fat makes up a powerful set of learning experiences that shape what clients expect of you and of themselves. Unless there is good reason to expect a different outcome, it may be unethical to repeat things that have been unhelpful in the past. It is almost certainly unethical to re-expose the client to something that has already been found to be harmful.
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(posted in Weight Loss | tagged Weight Loss)
THE G.I. FACTOR: THE CARBOHYDRATE/G.I. FACTOR LINK
Friday, May 8, 2009 | 6:44 amNewer studies are revealing that the physiological responses to food (how food acts in the body) are far more complex than was previously appreciated. What is true is that different carbohydrate-containing foods do have different effects on blood sugar levels.
Only in recent years have scientists begun to study the actual blood sugar responses to hundreds of different foods in real people, healthy people and people with diabetes. They gave them real foods—not solutions of sugars and starches in water. They measured the blood sugar levels at frequent intervals, for as long as two to three hours after the meal. To compare foods according to their true physiological effect on blood sugar levels, they came up with the term ‘glycaemic index’.
The glycaemic index (or G.I. factor as we have called it) is a ranking of foods from 0 to 100 that tells us whether a food will raise blood sugar levels dramatically, moderately, or just a little.
This research has turned some widely held beliefs upside down.
Secondly, they found that moderate amounts of most sugary foods (confectionery, ice cream etc.) did not produce dramatic rises in blood sugar as had always been thought. The truth was that foods containing sugar actually showed quite low-to-moderate blood sugar responses, lower than foods like bread.
So, it is time to forget the old distinctions that were made between starchy foods and sugary foods or simple versus complex carbohydrate. These distinctions are based on chemical analysis of the food, which does not reflect the effects of these foods in the body. The G.I. factor takes us nearer to a full understanding of how the body responds to carbohydrate foods.
The G.I. factor is a ranking of foods based on their overall effects on blood sugar levels. Blood sugar or blood glucose? Blood sugar and blood glucose mean the same thing, although the latter is technically more correct However, we use the term blood sugar in this book because It is more widely understood. ‘Glycaemic’ refers to ‘blood sugar’.
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(posted in Diabetes | tagged Diabetes)
THE SELF-MANAGEMENT OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAIN:
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 | 4:35 amTHE SELF-MANAGEMENT OF SUDDEN UNEXPECTED PAIN
This is a different clinical problem again. The difficulty with sudden unexpected pain is that the pain is likely to get out of hand and overwhelm us. It is then easy to be overcome with distress before we can compose ourselves. It happens in the case of an unexpected blow, a broken bone, a burn, or even a severe sprain.
Our studies in the self-management of pain help in two ways. If we have learned something of the approach and have had some experience in the mental exercises, we do not react so drastically to sudden pain. This has been my own experience, and a number of patients have volunteered a similar observation. In the second place, if we should find that we are suddenly threatened with loss of control in this way, we now have the means to bring ourselves quickly under control and restore our composure.
As in each of the other aspects of pain and anxiety, we work to bring our principles of
self-management more and more into our everyday life. So when we experience some sudden and unexpected pain, even if it is only of minor degree, we immediately restore our composure by momentary mental relaxation instead of giving vent to our feelings as we have done in the past. Be warned that there is a good deal of false teaching by psychiatrists and those who should know better that it is good to give vent to our emotions and feelings. If we give vent to our feeling of pain, we too easily become distressed, and the intensity of the pain is increased.
Four years ago a dentist came to me. He has a degenerative condition of his backbone so that the nerves are pinched as they come from the spinal cord between the bones. He suffered sudden unexpected twinges of acute pain as well as quite severe chronic pain. His work as a dentist with the long hours on his feet and the necessity of leaning forward over the patient made him very vulnerable to this condition.
He has learned to control the pain. He is still working full-time. Between patients he occasionally lies down in a side room for a few minutes to re-establish his mental and physical relaxation.
A seventy-two-year-old single woman was referred to me in the hope that I might be able to help her with the pain in her tic douloureux. This is a shockingly painful condition characterized by sudden jabs of acute pain in the side of the face. The first attack had come on eleven years previously, but this had settled down. She was now subject to continual jabs of pain when she was talking or eating. On occasions the pain was excruciating. Three years previously she had developed trigger points on the face and tongue, and if these were touched, it would precipitate excruciating pain. At night if she moved in her sleep and the bedclothes brushed her face, pain would be precipitated in this way.
She was a very courageous, stoic woman, and I have no doubt that at times she experienced really terrible pain. However, she wanted to avoid the orthodox treatment by injection or the operation of cutting the nerve, both of which leave that part of the face without feeling and so open to injury.
She was a particularly good patient, as are many people who are in extreme pain. I only saw her on four occasions. She then claimed that she could reduce the pain to quite bearable proportions; and she did in fact allow me to touch the trigger spots, which previously had been so exquisitely tender.
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(posted in Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid | tagged Anti Depressants)
PIGMENT DEPOSITS IN THE IRIS: LIPOFUSCIN: THE ‘WEAR AND TEAR’ PIGMENT
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 | 3:35 amThis Fe-free pigment can appear in the iris in a range of colours varying from light yellow to black-brown. It is formed within the ganglion cells of the Nucleus niger and Locus ceruleus, and appears mostly as ‘wear and tear’ pigment in old age. However, it can also originate from protein metabolism without such regressive changes.
Lipofuscin (never melanin) is a constituent of the extra-pyramidal system. In the Zona reticularis of the suprarenal body, lipofuscin can be recognised microscopically as a dark brown colouring in conditions of old age. Although lipofuscin is described as a product of old age, it can also exist as a degeneration product in young people and as a sign of exhaustion of particular organs, hence the terms: liver-, renal- and pancreas-pigment.
At this point, I would like to include the group of rheumatic-gouty deposits. In my view, the duration of the condition can be assessed from the colour of the signs. The longer the disease has been present, the darker is the colour of the pigment.
Even though the above-mentioned pigments are topolabile, the presence of the flecks in the different zones of the iris can still be assigned to definite organ systems. If the light reddish pigment, as described in detail in the literature under the term—Nux vomica pigment, appears in the stomach and intestinal zone (first major zone), then it shows that a condition of fermentation affects these organs. If the discolouration extends outwards beyond the iris-wreath, then other organ systems can be affected.
The yellow to brown deposits which extend from the iris -wreath to the outer margin of the iris (Berberis pigment) indicate general disease of the body (Maubach: Reibekuchen-iris). In this case, the condition arises from a gouty disposition of hereditary origin. Indications of the acute phases of gout appear white, and generally lie next to dark signs in the bone area (fifth minor zone).
The pigments described as liver-, renal- and pancreas-pigment are likewise found in the ciliary zone.
Pigment deposits may appear in the iris if an organ is affected. However, since the differences of colour and localisation of pigment-flecks are insufficient for diagnosis, one must look for other signs in the organ areas of the iris in order to reach a definite opinion. Iridologists have been concerned with iris pigment-signs from the first beginnings of irisdiagnosis, commencing with Liljequist and continuing with Attila von Peczely, Schnabel and Angerer. In spite of their extensive works, there still remains a wide field for further research.
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(posted in General health | tagged General health)
TREATMENT FOR THE ACHING MISERIES: PROGESTOGEN
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 | 2:25 amHowever, there are synthetic forms of progesterone, called progestogens, which can be in pill form. The trouble is that you can’t depend on getting the same results with a substitute as you can with the real thing. If you take progestogen, your body will cut back rather than increase the amount of progesterone it will produce. And remember the object of the exercise is to provide you with more progesterone. However, doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital who treat their patients with progestogen, under the trade name ‘Duphaston’ are pleased with their results. They claim that this drug can relieve many of the symptoms for a majority of their patients. Unfortunately, the picture isn’t entirely rosy. I feel it’s only right to warn you that Duphaston can and does have some unpleasant side effects for some of the women who take it. On the other hand, doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital are encouraged by the success of their trials of this drug, which they say helped seventy per cent of their patients.
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(posted in Pain Relief-Muscle Relaxers | tagged Pain Relief)