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A physically active lifestyle or hard exercise taken regularly every day make losing weight and staying slim very much easier. According to Science Digest (94#4:41), these beneficial effects are due to the fact that muscular activity burns up the body’s fat stores while at the same time increasing the bulk of its muscles.

Muscle is a much more active tissue than fat and, pound for pound, has more cells and needs more calories just to maintain itself. Thus, people who have replaced fat with muscle develop a much more active metabolism that burns up more calories at rest and helps them to stay slim.

Dieting without exercise, on the other hand, results in loss of both fat and muscle tissue, and when the dieting is over, lost weight is quickly regained. Worse yet, weight regained under these circumstances is mostly due to fat. Cyclic loss and gain of weight due to dieting without exercise results in a new loss of muscle tissue that makes slimness even more difficult to attain in the future.

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Signs and symptoms

Depending on where the object is lodged, it may cause choking, gagging, pain, discomfort in the throat or chest, or difficulty swallowing. Once a foreign object passes into the stomach it does not produce any symptoms unless it obstructs or penetrates the digestive tract. Then abdominal pain, vomiting, and fever may develop. If the child has swallowed a metal object it will be visible on an X ray, but wood, plastic, or glass will not. Usually, however, the diagnosis is suggested by the circumstances and the symptoms that do appear.

Home care

If the swallowed object is small and smooth, no treatment is necessary. If the object is long, sharp, or large, examine the child’s stools carefully for several days to be sure the object has passed from the body. Each bowel movement must be passed through a sieve until the object is passed. If the child has been trained, place in the toilet bowl a basin fashioned of window screening. Then, after the child has passed a stool wash it through the screening with hot water.

Precautions

• An object lodged in the oesophagus must be removed within hours, preferably by a doctor.

• No known food, drink, or medication will speed up the passage of a foreign object through the body.

• If an object has not passed from the child’s body within one week, see your doctor. Try to bring a duplicate of the swallowed object to show your doctor.

• Do not give your child a laxative in an effort to speed passage of a swallowed object.

Medical treatment

Your doctor will carefully inspect the throat and observe the way your child swallows. The doctor may order X rays of the throat, neck, chest, or abdomen. If an object is wedged in the throat or oesophagus, your doctor will remove it with a surgical instrument. If the object is in the stomach the doctor will watch the child’s condition for three or more weeks before trying to remove it surgically. If the object is in the intestines and does not pass within a week the doctor may remove it surgically.

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