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Archive for May, 2009
CHILD’S HEALTH/SKIN DISORDERS: COLD SORES
Author: admin
Cold sores are quite common in older children as well as in adults. Cause
Cold sores are due to the Herpes simplex virus, which lies dormant in the body until it is activated by illness, sunburn, exposure to strong winds, or stress and fatigue.
Clinical features
Your child may complain of an itching or tingling sensation around the mouth, lips or nose, and tiny blisters may appear soon after. These usually crust over in 2-3 days but can become quite painful and interfere with eating and drinking. Cold sores generally disappear after 7-10 days, although some children tend to have recurrent episodes several times a year.
Treatment
Simple cold sores usually clear up without specific treatment. If your child is miserable, some paracetamol in recommended doses, may help to ease the pain. In general, creams or ointments do not help speed up the disappearance of the cold sores. Encourage your child not to scratch the sores, and to avoid kissing other people.
When to see your doctor
• if the cold sores are weeping or starting to spread. This may indicate
secondary, or bacterial infection, and antibiotic treatment may be necessary;
• if your child has a fever in addition to cold sores and is generally unwell
• if you notice sores inside your child’s mouth. This may be due to an initial herpes infection;
• if the cold sores prevent your child from drinking fluids as this may lead to dehydration, especially in younger children.
Prevention
Cold sores are highly contagious, so avoid having your child kiss other people. Avoid direct sunlight and exposure to strong winds.
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read comments (0)YOUR CHILD’S HEALTH CARE: MAKING YOUR HOME SAFE
Author: admin
Making your house safe has two main advantages. Firstly, it decreases the chances of injury to your child and secondly, it lessens the chances of breakages around the house and subsequent anger and frustration on the part of the parents.
When your child is aged about 6 months, just before the age when he becomes mobile, it is a good idea to work your way through the house consciously and systematically and make sure that it is safe for a young child. The checklist below may be useful. You can check off items with a pen as you do them. Do not wait until there has been an accident or breakage — do it now.
• Electrical outlets: put plugs on power points, and curly cords on electrical appliances; install safety switches.
• Cabinets: check kitchen and bathroom cupboards to make sure that poisons and dangerous materials are out of reach, especially those that are sharp, heavy or breakable. Consider locks for the doors of some cabinets, or the purchase of a medicine chest which can be locked.
• Doors: consider door barriers and latches for doors that restrict the child’s access to the outside or to rooms where he can get into trouble.
• Install fire guards, and check heaters and stoves to prevent burns and scalds.
• Place cigarettes, matches, lighters and ashtrays out of reach.
• Check furniture for sharp angles and corners.
• Consider using table mats instead of tablecloths.
• Re-position things that your child can climb on.
• Put away all fragile, breakable and precious objects.
• Safety barriers: put safety barriers on stairs (at the top and bottom).
• Window latches: consider window latches to prevent your child from fully opening them and falling or climbing out.
• Fire extinguishers: consider purchasing a fire extinguisher and have it handy in the kitchen.
• Smoke detector: install approved smoke detectors at strategic positions throughout the house.
• Swimming pool: make sure that the pool has an approved child-resistant fence all around it.
• Gates: make sure all gates around the house have child-resistant latches and/or locks.
• Poisons: make another trip around the house to make sure that all poisons, detergents, dishwashing powders and liquids, medicines, tablets, are safely out of reach. Check the bathroom, kitchen, laundry, garage and bedrooms especially carefully.
• Keep all plastic bags out of reach.
• Take the doors off old fridges in the garage
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At those times when we are running “hot,” when we are feeling hostile, impatient, competitive, and suffering from “hurry illness, “we are in a phase of what I call maladaptive hyperarousal. My interviews indicated that asking about how people were “running” in this regard led to more information than asking how their genitals were working. In “diagnosing” your sexual relationship, ask first if the two of you seem on a “hot” cycle of personal and marital pressure: excessive responsibilities, and feelings of too much to do in too little time, of hyperreaction and agitation.
If you are running hot, your neurohormonal system runs hot too, and the biochemistry of your sexual system interferes with your natural sexual reflex system. These are the hot problems that might result:
MALE
Seminal seepage (losing ejaculate without contractions)
Hyperarousal
Ejaculatory urgency (feelings of not being able to control pelvic contractions)
Shortening of refractory period
Absence of psychasms
Diminished afterglow
Hypersensitivity of F- and/or and R-area response
Diminished contemplation
Pelvic reflex addiction or maladaptive hypersexuality (loss of intimacy)
Skene’s glands or urinary emission without contractions
Hyperarousal
“Emission” urgency (feeling of not being able to control pelvic contractions)
Shortening of refractory period
Absence of psychasms
Diminished afterglow
Hypersensitivity of G- and/or C-area response
Diminished contemplation
Pelvic reflex addiction or maladaptive hypersexuality (loss of intimacy)
All of these “hot” problems are natural responses to daily living styles. There is no reference to lack of orgasm or psychasm in intercourse because the couples reported that coital orgasm was not a major concern. They learned to focus on their feelings and interactions in the general sexual relationship and the interaction between sex and living. They were trying to learn “who,” not “what” was the matter with their sexual life.
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You’d think it would be great for us in bed. But somehow we just don’t mesh. It doesn’t work out. It’s not a Dr. Ruth problem, jusi that something is missing.
WIFE
As a review of this chapter and to get ready for the following lessons in super marital sex, I have provided a brief quiz for you and your spouse. Discuss each item together and score your marriage on a 0-to-10 scale. Scoring 100 points could mean two things. First, you are completely free of the pressures on American marriage I have discussed. Second, you are cheating on this test! We all have these pressures. The idea is to begin to reduce them to make way for a super marriage.
This test and others you will be taking in this book are based on a scoring system of degrees, not yes or no. All systems, particularly marital systems, change. Just the fact that you are taking a test on your marriage changes your marriage. Score and discuss each item in degrees, trends, indications, not absolutes. It will take some time for you to get used to this type of scoring, but learning to see your relationship as an adapting system is a major step in strengthening your marriage and helping it function in harmony with the rules of all world systems.
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PNEUMONIA – CONCLUSION
Author: admin
Acute bronchitis, like most of the other respiratory infections, may be due to either viruses or bacteria. It usually involves the trachea or windpipe first and then moves down to involve larger and then smaller bronchi. It may follow such illnesses as measles, influenza, whooping cough or typhoid fever.
There is a moderate fever with a cough, initially dry and then productive of sputum and sometimes, a wheeze. The condition can worsen and lead to bronchopneumonia.
Chronic bronchitis is not an infective disease. It is a condition where there is a marked and chronic increase in the amount of secretion by the bronchial tubes. Sputum is coughed up continuously. The illness is caused mainly by smoking and atmospheric pollution.
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CORONARY – MAINLY TREATMENT
Author: admin
Coronary artery disease has reached epidemic proportions in most of the highly developed countries. The risk factors are well known, but we have not accepted them nor taken steps to reduce their influence.
Once this disease is established, the treatment is mainly medical. Over the past 15 years, a surgical technique to improve the outlook has been developed. This is coronary bypass surgery.
In the past, operations to transplant arteries from the chest wall into the heart were tried and then abandoned as of no value.
There are three main coronary arteries and any, or all, may be involved in the atheromatous changes and narrowed.
What is done is that a vein, usually the long saphenous vein from the leg, is taken and implanted into the aorta. The other end is joined to the coronary artery below the narrowed portion.
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CIRCUMCISION – EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE
Author: admin
Circumcision just before or during puberty may produce considerable emotional disturbance.
Some psychiatrists talk of the psychological shock to the infant circumcised without anaesthetic but this is difficult to prove.
Your doctor is not being irresponsible if he carries out your request to circumcise your son. Many doctors still consider this a necessary procedure. Others have no strong feeling either way and will agree to operate if the parents wish, but will not recommend it. Others are strongly opposed to circumcision and will not accede to the parents’ wishes. As in other areas of medicine, there are different views on what is correct treatment.
If circumcision has been the habit in your family, discuss with your doctor whether you should go ahead and have your son circumcised. You have the right to request it but your doctor also has the right to refuse if he does not think it necessary.
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Cancer growths are made up of cells which belong to our body but which have stopped behaving in a cooperative and orderly fashion. The following four features apply (with a few minor exceptions) to all malignant growths or cancers:
1.The cells cannot differentiate normally.
2. The growth of the cells is, to a large extent, outside of the body’s control.
3. The cells can spread to other parts of the body (metastasize).
4. The cells can invade and damage nearby normal body cells.
There is a great deal of variation in the differentiation of cancers. Even with one cancer growth, some areas are more differentiated than others. This is one of the reasons why the pathologist might ask for another specimen if he or she has trouble making a definite diagnosis. The pathologist would be hoping to get a more differentiated specimen which contained more clues to the origin of the cells.
As a general rule, the more differentiated a cancer is, that is, the more closely its cells resemble those from which they originated, Wgt. more favourable the outlook. More differentiated cancers tend to grow more slowly, spread later and damage adjacent cells less than the undifferentiated cancers.
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Social causes. One of the social factors that contributes to sexual problems is alcohol; it affects a man’s ability to achieve and maintain an erection, and a woman’s ability to produce enough lubrication. Many older men and women drink much more than they did in their youth.
Another is the lack of a sexual partner due to death, divorce or separation, and the decreasing opportunities to find another as you get older. Most older women would be restrained by their upbringing from seeking a sexual partner other than within a fairly permanent relationship. One way in which many women choose to keep their sexual interest alive is by masturbation. Some religions do still prohibit it, but contrary to traditional church and public-school thinking, masturbation does not make you either blind or mad, nor is it unnatural, degrading or a form of ‘beastliness’. It certainly isn’t something you should feel guilty about. During the course of their lives, most people masturbate; and although men do it more than women, and younger people more than older people, there is nothing abnormal or unnatural about masturbation at any age. Many women feel it is no more or less satisfying than having sex with a partner, just different. In fact, for women who are unable for any reason to have sexual relations now but who feel they might want to in the future, it is a good way of keeping their ’sexual apparatus’ functioning well, by maintaining their sexual responsiveness, by producing regular vaginal lubrication with mucus, and by keeping the necessary muscles in good working order. Sexual pleasure is closely linked with how well your vagina is working – a case of ‘use it or lose it’; so if you feel that masturbation is right for you, then don’t stifle this natural urge.
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Emotional highs and lows are common after hysterectomy with many women experiencing tearfulness and irritability. One explanation is the stress of the surgery and the effect of the anaesthetic. In addition, the removal of the ovaries, or their inadvertent damage, will quickly lead to changes in sex hormone levels and, with this, mood fluctuations.
Hot flushes, night sweats and associated sleeplessness may follow close on the heels of a hysterectomy, particularly if the ovaries have been removed. These effects are blamed on rapid changes in the levels of oestrogen, progesterone and other sex hormones circulating in the bloodstream. The symptoms diminish over the space of months or years but they can play havoc with the lives of women and their loved ones until then. Hormone therapy is often regarded as a simple solution to these problems and in some women this appears to be the case. Others, however, cannot tolerate hormone therapy or they may be concerned about possible long-term effects, for example the increased risk of developing breast cancer with prolonged (more than five years) use of hormone therapy.
On returning home, some women expect to resume everyday activities without missing a beat. Unfortunately, pain or other problems may prevent this and partners, children and relatives should be on call to lend a hand. If this sort of help is not available, it may be possible to arrange for assistance from the local council, a nursing service or another organisation. The decision about when to resume driving is important as lives can hinge on it. Emergency braking requires quick reflexes and leg strength. By the time women are able to climb stairs quickly and do the garden, they are usually fit enough to drive.
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