Doctorweblog. About Health & Medicine

For people living in close contact with a drug user or drinker, these signs are helpful. But many professional workers are not in such close contact. They may see the addict or the alcoholic only in the office, rather than in home surroundings. Addicts and alcoholics are past masters at putting on a good front when dealing with authority or people outside the home.
The best way to find out if they have a drug or drink problem is to ask a family
member – parents, partners, or sisters and brothers. These usually know enough about the relative’s way of life to realise what is going on, though they may be slow to use the word ‘alcoholic’ or ‘addict’ because they tend to look only at the meths drinker as alcoholic or the Piccadilly ‘fixer’ as an addict.
If you are asking a family member, make sure it is someone stable. Addicts and alcoholics sometimes marry or live with people with the same problem. Sometimes a family feels
stigmatised by the illness of one of the members and therefore denies the problem.
In addition to asking the family, you may be able to get an idea of the problem from various records. In the later stages of chemical dependence, the addict or alcoholic often becomes ill, has difficulties at work, or difficulties with the law.

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Anti-Smoking

Chemical dependence is a progressive illness, which over the years robs sufferers of their health, their happiness and often their lives. The longer it goes on, the more difficult it is for the sufferer, whether a drug addict or an alcoholic, to recover. In the early stages of chemical dependence, just as in any other illness, recovery is much easier than in the later stages when the addiction has taken such a firm grip.
Yet many professional workers either fail to recognise the illness in its early stages, or for reasons of social embarrassment, wishful thinking, loyalty, or misplaced kindness, do not confront or let the problems confront the addict or the alcoholic. In this way, they rob a sick person of their chance of an early recovery.
Failing to treat the illness in its early stages is not a kindness to the addict or the alcoholic. As we have said, it is like letting a woman with a small cancer lump in her breast go away untreated, leaving it to become a near terminal condition.
The result is that the addicts and alcoholics get more and more damaged and sick. Society is giving them permission to continue on the downward path. They become more and more ill, and more and more desperately unhappy.

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Anti-Smoking

If I had to pick the one "most vital" immune mineral, it would be zinc. Study after study has shown that zinc rebuilds every area of our immune health. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, a researcher at the Princeton Brain Bio Center, was the first to shed light on the amazing immune-positive effects of zinc, several years ago. Unfortunately, his work was largely unrecognized until recently, when scores of studies have confirmed his work.

Dr. R. K. Chandra, an internationally acclaimed immunologist now working at MIT, treated a group of children suffering from a rare and deadly skin disease. All of the children had very poor immune responses, and they had very low levels of zinc in their blood. Remarkably, their immune responses returned to normal only a short time after these children began taking zinc supplements.

I recently treated a patient for whom zinc spelled the difference between tragedy and hope. A sixteen-year-old named Jonathan was left severely brain damaged after a tragic auto accident. This once-bright young man was paralyzed, unable to talk or communicate, dependent on intravenous nutrition. He also developed raw, ugly sores on his arms, legs, and face. My tests showed two interesting facts: first, his immune system was severely weakened and couldn’t mount even an average immune response. Second, he had an abnormally low zinc level.

I started giving him zinc supplements, and an amazing change occurred. Within three weeks, his immune response was back to normal, and the angry skin sores were well on the way to healing. He began to be able to eat solid foods. After three months, his weight had increased to normal, he had learned to use a wheelchair, was more alert and, for the first time since the accident, he could communicate with others.

While zinc supplementation produces dramatic results in sick people, it also powerfully benefits those of us who seem absolutely healthy. For example:

Zinc keeps crucial immune organs like the thymus and lymph nodes healthy

Zinc boosts the number of your fighting T cells

Zinc makes your T cells fight microorganisms more effectively

Zinc strengthens your macrophages (scavenger cells)

It is vital to get enough zinc daily because your body is able to store very little of this essential immune mineral. You do have reserves of several kinds of "strategic minerals" (calcium, iodine, and iron, for example), but scientists have discovered that the body has very small zinc reserves. Because of this, if we do not get enough zinc in our diet, or if factors in our lives deplete our small reserves, we may find ourselves with a deficiency of this immune power mineral.

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Use ‘time-out’. This removes the child from the action and ensures he will not get attention. Here are some strategies for time-out:

• Pick a room for time-out. Usually the child’s bedroom is used, though it can be any room where he will be safe. Sometimes you can use the time-out technique in a chair in the corner of the room, although this is more difficult and used more in older children.

• If your child is doing something of which you disapprove, warn him that if he doesn’t stop immediately, you will put him in his room.

• Only warn him once — then act. Never warn and then fail to act on your warning. This undermines your whole strategy by creating uncertainty as to whether you are serious.

• If he does not stop after the warning, take him to his room immediately. Do not explain to him why you are doing this — explanation at this time is a form of reinforcement.

• Leave him there for 5 minutes, then go and tell him he can come out of his room. Treat him normally after the time-out — do not talk to him about the event.

Time-out is especially effective for aggressive behaviour such as hitting or biting.

Have appropriate expectations that are relevant to the age of the child, and remember that children differ from each other in temperament. Some children will inevitably be more active and curious than others, and may be more likely to test limits more often.

Do not blame yourself for your child’s behaviour. While it is true that some parenting practices may reinforce undesirable behaviour, parents do not cause a child’s behaviour problems.

Behaviour is always more difficult to manage when you are not in your home. Parents often report that their child plays up when they are visiting friends and relatives, or out shopping, for example in the supermarket. The principles of behaviour management are exactly the same as outlined above, although it is much more difficult to carry them out consistently. It is understandable that parents may feel embarrassed in front of friends or strangers, and be reluctant to maintain the principles of behaviour modification.

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Betty had worked extremely hard on her recovery. She had been able to return to work three months ago and was really happy to be back in the workforce. Although she’d had the occasional bad day, Betty was able to work through them and she had begun to feel that she had finally recovered. That was until last week. Now Betty was beginning to think the disorder was returning. Her anxiety was increasing and the attacks had returned. She knew that returning to work had been stressful, but she was happy in her job. She couldn’t understand why the anxiety and the attacks were back. To all intents and purposes life was normal. Her husband and children were fine. Although Betty realised it was hard to run a household and work at the same time, she felt it was worth the extra effort. Her father’s death two months ago had been traumatic but she felt that couldn’t be the reason. Betty wondered if it was the argument she had had with her mother and sisters. The issues had still not been resolved and each time they were together the atmosphere was quite tense. She knew the anxiety and the attacks were making her feel tense, but she couldn’t understand why they had come back. Betty thought that she needed to be more aware of what was causing stress in her life!

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The purpose of looking at norms is not to say that all children have the same needs and can be neatly categorized. Because you are reading this book, it is safe to assume that your child does not fit the pattern outlined. It is also safe to say that you are not pleased and you sense something is going wrong. The purpose of this section is not to make you feel worse about yourself or your child.

Norms are very useful to pinpoint problem areas—to help you establish where you are now. Using the norms, you can begin to look at your situation realistically. You will have something to compare your experience to besides, “When you were a child…” and “None of my children….”

Norms are also useful in setting realistic goals. When the problem is solved you will have clear comparisons for determining how far you have come. Read this section with these thoughts in mind.

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Breathing extra oxygen will make you feel easier, whatever the reason for your breathlessness. Ask about this if the reason for your breathlessness cannot be corrected, or if you feel that the cost of trying to correct it is too great for the likely benefit, or while you are waiting for treatment of the cause to work. It is quite feasible to have an oxygen cylinder at home and it also comes in small cylinders which can be fixed to a wheelchair or carried around fairly easily.

Feeling very breathless can be extremely frightening and stressful. You may find it very hard to relax or to sleep, even with oxygen. Having somebody sit with you may help. Taking a sedative is another possibility. In considering whether to take sedatives you should understand that they could make your breathing and coughing less efficient. This is a cost that you may well be prepared to accept, especially if your cancer cannot be cured and the reason for your breathlessness cannot be relieved. Some doctors take this choice out of their patient’s hands, either by prescribing a sedative without telling them or by refusing to prescribe one even when the patient asks for it. The choice should be yours. Insist that your doctors prescribe nothing without your agreement. Tell them if you would prefer to be either more alert or more drowsy than you are. You have the right to choose, even if the choice to be more drowsy could mean that you don’t live quite as long.

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Headache is probably the commonest symptom from which we all suffer. It may be due to physical and emotional causes.

Some headaches can all be classified and singled out as having a specific name, such as migraine.

There is often an overlap between the different types and sometimes two or three different forms may be present in the one individual.

Many headaches are caused by stimulation of the pain-sensitive nerves in the wall of the blood vessels both inside the brain and in the scalp.

These are vascular headaches and include migraine, cluster headache, the headache due to a hangover and even that associated with toxic states, such as fever.

Some are due to muscle contraction and this includes the common tension headache and the very rare headache due to eye strain.

It also includes pains around the temple due to spasms of the masseter muscle which moves the jaw when we chew and is caused by an imbalance of the bite.

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Menstruation — that most intimate part of every woman’s life — is still, despite modern education, often misunderstood.

So let’s consider exactly what this function is, and the parts of the body involved.

The organs concerned with menstruation are the womb, the ovaries, and the fallopian tubes.

The womb, or uterus, is a pearshaped organ roughly 7.6 cm (3 inch) long and 3.8 cm (IVi inch) wide, and it lies low down in the pelvis.

The womb is mostly thick muscle, but it is lined with several layers of cells known as endometrium.

The ovaries are two almond-shaped organs lying either side of the womb about 5 cm (2 inch) away. The fallopian tubes connect to the top of the womb, and their open outer ends lie very close to and partly enclose the ovaries.

The womb thins down to a narrow neck, the cervix, and sits on top of and projects into the vagina.

The beginning of a woman’s menstrual cycle really begins at the end of menstruation, or bleeding.

A hormone, oestrogen, is produced by the ovaries and causes the lining of the womb to thicken, to become soft and spongy.

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Taking care with what you eat is essential if you have diabetes. For some people with type 2 diabetes, this is all they have to do to keep their blood sugar levels in the normal range of between 4 and 8 millimoles per litre. Others also need to take tablets or injections of insulin. People with type 1 diabetes must have insulin injections. But no matter what the treatment, everyone with diabetes must take care with what they eat in order to keep their blood sugar levels under control Keeping the blood sugar near the normal range helps prevent complications of diabetes such as blindness, heart attacks, kidney failure and amputations.

For over a hundred years, people with diabetes have been given advice on what to eat Many diets were based more on unproven (although seemingly logical) theories, rather than actual research. In 1915, for example, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal advocated that the best dietary treatment for someone with diabetes was ‘limitation of all components of the diet’. This translated into a very low kilojoule diet interspersed with days of fasting. Unfortunately, malnutrition was often the result!

In the 1920s doctors began recommending high fat diets for their patients. Ignorant of the dangers of a high fat diet, they knew that fat, at least, didn’t break down to become blood sugar.

It was not until the 1970s that carbohydrate was considered to be a valuable part of the diabetic diet Researchers found that not only did the nutritional status of patients improve with a higher carbohydrate intake, but their blood sugar levels improved as well.

The only part of food which directly affects blood sugar levels is carbohydrate. When we eat carbohydrate foods, they are broken down into sugar and cause the blood sugar levels to rise. The body responds by releasing insulin into the blood. The insulin clears the sugar from the blood, moving it into the muscles where it is used for energy, so the blood sugar level returns to normal.

Some people think that because carbohydrate raises the blood sugar level, it should not be eaten at all by people who have diabetes. This is not correct. Carbohydrate is a normal part of the diet and at least half of our total daily kilojoules should come from carbohydrate. In fact, the more carbohydrate you eat the better because it automatically reduces the proportion of kilojoules you get from fat.

The secret to the diabetic diet is not so much the quantity but the type of carbohydrate.

Traditionally sugar was excluded from diabetic diets because it was thought to be the worst type of carbohydrate. The simple structure of sugar supposedly made it more rapidly digested and absorbed than other types of carbohydrate, like starch. This assumption was simply not correct. Even in the late 1970s, test meal studies showed that there was a great deal of overlap between the blood sugar responses to sugary and starchy foods. Fifty grams of carbohydrate eaten as potato caused a similar rise in blood sugar as 50 grams of sugar. Ice cream resulted in a lower blood sugar response than potato! Findings like these sparked research into the G.I. factor in an effort to learn more about how the body actually responds to different carbohydrate foods.

The emphasis through the 1970s and for much of the 1980s, was on the quantity of carbohydrate in the diet. ‘Portion’ diets were used to prescribe a set amount of carbohydrate to be eaten at every meal. (A carbohydrate portion* is an amount of carbohydrate-rich food which contains 10 to 15 grams of carbohydrate—depending on which country, or State of Australia—you lived in. So, not only was the portion system complicated, portion sizes varied throughout the world!).

An underlying assumption of the carbohydrate portions theory, was that equivalent amounts of carbohydrate, irrespective of the type, cause an equal change in the blood sugar level. This reasoning had no scientific backing and has since clearly been shown to be incorrect. Fortunately, good quality scientific research supports today’s dietary recommendations for people with diabetes. While the G.I. factor research has not negated the significance of the quantity of carbohydrate in the diet, it has shown us the importance of considering the type of carbohydrate food that we include.

The G.I. factor has shown us that the way to increase the quantity of carbohydrate in the diabetic diet, without increasing the sugar levels in the blood, is to choose carbohydrate foods with a low G.I. factor.

Our research has shown that blood sugar levels in people with diabetes are greatly improved if foods with a low G.I. factor are substituted for high G.I. factor foods.

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