Health News resources and information

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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What is it?

Thrush is a yeast infection that affects both men and women but mostly women. The organism that causes it lives on our skin and in the mouth and is often found in the bowel. Usually this yeast causes no harm but sometimes it multiplies and produces problems. In babies it can produce a nappy rash.

Most commonly thrush causes a thick, white, very irritant vaginal discharge in women. There is soreness on intercourse and often pain on passing water.

What causes it?

• Pregnancy is a common cause. During pregnancy the raised level of oestrogen in the woman’s body encourages the yeast to grow.

• The contraceptive pill produces it for the same reasons (most pills contain an oestrogen).

• Wearing tights, nylon panties or tight-fitting jeans or trousers seems to raise the temperature and humidity in the woman’s vulval area and encourage the growth of the yeast.

• Antibiotics kill off other organisms in the bowel and in the body generally, leaving the yeasts free to multiply.

• Inflammation of the vulval area -caused by vaginal deodorants, bubble baths, talcum, perfumed soap, a scratch, etc. – can make thrush more likely.

• Poor health can make thrush more likely. Really run-down, overtired, and seriously ill women are more at risk.

• Sexual contact is an uncommon cause of thrush. In the vast majority of women the infection arises spontaneously but it can be transmitted sexually. Many doctors still think it is sensible to treat a woman’s partner so that the two do not pass the infection back and forth between them.

• Refined carbohydrates act as ‘food’ for thrush in the gut and can produce increased bloating, flatulence, soreness, itching, disturbed bowel function and a general increase of the symptoms. Eat no refined carbohydrates. Restrict your total daily carbohydrate intake to 60-80 grams. It helps to go on to a low-refined carbohydrate, no yeasty-foods diet for two weeks before starting Nystatin from your doctor. Keep on the diet even when taking the Nystatin, until all your symptoms disappear. Slowly, you can loosen up on your diet. If symptoms reappear avoid these foods for good.

Prevention

• Avoid tights, nylon panties, and tight-fitting jeans and trousers. Wear skirts, cotton panties or no panties and stockings.

• Use pads rather than tampons during a period.

• Avoid perfumed soaps, vaginal deodorants, and other irritants such as bubble baths and disinfectants.

• After going to the lavatory, wipe yourself from front to back so as not to drag any yeasts from the bowel opening to the vaginal area.

• Use antibiotics only when absolutely necessary and then eat two or three natural yoghurts (live) a day to replace lost bacteria in the bowel.

• (For a man) never have casual sex with a woman unless you use a sheath.

• Keep generally healthy.

Try a diet low in yeasts and refined carbohydrates for 2-4 weeks to see if there is any improvement. Yeasted foods include Marmite, frozen or concentrated orange juice, cheeses, bread made with yeast, alcoholic drinks, grapes and grape juices, unpeeled fruits, raisins, sultanas, food that has been ‘left around’ for some time, and B-vitamins (unless the label specifically says that they are yeast-free).

Follow your doctor’s advice about taking the drug Nystatin to kill the yeast and prevent its spread to your partner. As soon as you think you have thrush, stop having intercourse or you could infect your partner.

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• A sensible limit for men is 2 or 3 pints (or their equivalent) two or three times a week, and for women 2 or 3 standard drinks two or three times a week. Women are more affected by a specific amount of alcohol than men because a smaller percentage of their body weight is made up of water. Alcohol is distributed throughout all the body’s fluid and so is more ‘dilute’ in men than women. Also, women’s livers seem to have a smaller capacity for detoxifying alcohol than do men’s. Recent research shows that the effect of even very moderate drinking in pregnancy is harmful to the baby so the rule should be-if you’re pregnant, don’t drink.

If you are drinking the equivalent of 4 pints of beer or 8 whiskies a day (for men) or 2 1/2 pints of beer or 3 glasses of wine and 2 glasses of sherry (for women) you are almost certainly in for serious trouble with alcohol.

• Look back over your drinking diary and see if there are particular times or occasions (or even people) which encourage you to drink. Try to cast your mind back to how you felt at the times when you drank. Were you, for example, frustrated, angry, sad, depressed or tense? Could it be that by getting professional help from a doctor or counselor you could re-order your life to avoid the situations that make you drink in these particular moods? Sorting out the underlying problems, b they a failing marriage, a disappointing sex life, a poor job, or whatever, could be the real cure for your drinking.

• Reward yourself with something nice (such as some new clothes, a visit to the cinema, or a meal out) if you succeed in cutting down on the amount you drink in situations that have previously trapped you (as judged by your drinking diary). Start saving the money you would have spent on drinks and buy something you really want or save for a holiday you otherwise could not afford.

• When out with friends who by rounds say you would rather buy your own-that way you will drink less. Make drinks last longer (actually go by the clock if that helps) and alternate alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones.

• Set yourself limits for a particular occasion and stick to them. If you are going to a wedding reception, for example, tell yourself that you will have only two drinks, plus the champagne for the toast, and have soft drinks the rest of the time.

• Most of the above advice about prevention can prevent the moderate drinker from becoming a real alcoholic. But millions of individuals are already further down the road than this and sadly an estimated 85 per cent of all dried-out alcoholics eventually go back to drinking. Why this should be is not known but undoubtedly many have psychological problems that make it likely that they will always need a prop of some kind.

An increasingly vocal group of doctors believes that better results would be achieved by more radical dietary approaches to alcoholism. They suggest a switch from sugar, cigarettes and coffee to whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables and vitamin supplements. Only a few US alcohol treatment centers use this nutritional approach but those that do claim good results. One expert in the field claims that alcoholics have a metabolic problem that makes them convert alcohol into a highly addictive morphine-like substance called tetra-hydro-isoquinoline (THIQ). Most alcoholics also develop hypo-glycaemia, she claims. They crave alcohol and sugar in any form. She puts them on a six-week programme which involves analyzing their mineral and vitamin status. This is often very poor in alcoholics and even in serious drinkers, as such people tend to eat little and what they do eat is often junk food. She then gives them full doses of vitamins  and Ñ and takes them off all refined foods, sugar, coffee and tobacco.

On this programme one US unit has 82 per cent of its patients still sober after a year. These results are, it claims, far better than the US National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism can achieve. The NIAAA’s figures show that only 15-20 per cent of all treated alcoholics are still dry after two years.

As long as twenty-five years ago Dr Roger Williams, the renowned US nutritional physician, used the amino-acid glutamine for the treatment of alcoholics. This reduces the terrible craving alcoholics have as they come off the alcohol. Â vitamins also reduce the craving.

If you are drinking more than a few drinks it makes sense to take a good vitamin  complex supplement and to change your diet to a healthy one as a preventive against the proven harm the alcohol will do you in the long term.

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Total T-Cells

T-cells are powerful immune soldiers. They are the natural killer T-cells which tackle the antigens, the helper T-cells, which spur the immune system to battle, and the suppressor T-cells that tell the others when the fight is over. T-cells are effective in fighting viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites and cancer.

You want to have the proper number of T-cells available at all times. Studies have shown that T-cells are reduced when immune function is diminished, and also in those people suffering from a nutritional deficiency.

Results: Approximately 75 percent of your total lymphocytes should be T-cells, with B-cells accounting for the remaining 25 percent.

Immunoglobulins

Immunoglobulins (Igs) are the antibodies that travel through your body in search of antigens. When B-cells are alerted to the presence of antigens, they produce plasma cells, which, in turn, churn out antibodies specifically programmed to destroy the antigens.

There are five main immunoglobulins: IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG and IgM. I often look at the levels of three immunoglobulins in the blood, IgG, IgA and IgM, which are sufficiently indicative measurements. (An easy way to remember this is to think of GAM.) Results: For adults,

IgA 76-390 mg/dl

IgG 600-1600 mg/dl

IgM 40-345 mg/dl

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Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic acid)

My own studies, and the work of others, have shown that vitamin B5 is positively related to the health of the immune system. Persons deficient in B5, for example, suffer from poor wound healing. One of B5′s jobs is to facilitate the release of antibodies from the plasma cells. Antibodies, as you remember, are like guided missiles that travel through your body to destroy disease-causing antigens. Lack of adequate B5 decreases thymolymphatico tissue, decreases the number of immunoglobulins in the blood, and upsets the T- to B-cell ratio.

Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)

One of vitamin B2′s jobs is to help keep the mucosal lining of your body in shape to ward off invaders. The mucosal lining is among our first barriers against disease, so it’s important to keep it strong. Deficiencies of B2 are associated with several immune-system weaknesses, such as deficits in antibody production, decreases in the numbers of T- and B-cells in the blood and shrinkage of thymolymphatico tissue.

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HERPES SIMPLEX (cold sores, fever blisters): Type 1 is usually found on the lips and skin. Type 2 is easily transmitted by sexual contact and usually occurs on the genital organs.

Signs and Symptoms: generally begins with the area to be involved looking OK, but there may be tingling, discomfort or a slight ache. Severe pain often occurs. Then a blister or blisters can form. Blisters generally last about a week, break, then crust over. By the third week all signs are completely gone. Herpes can be associated with fever or malaise.

HERPES ZOSTER (shingles): can occur at any age, most commonly after 50; is not easily communicable.

Signs and Symptoms: fever; weakness; malaise; chills; loss of appetite; nausea. Severe, unremitting pain, resistant to almost all treatment, may occur, following a nerve route. About the fifth day blisters occur following the same nerve route as the pain did, most commonly on the trunk.

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Complements are plasma proteins that circulate in the blood. Many complements, such as CI, C2, C3 and so on, make up the complement system. When not engaged in battle, they drift in an inactive state. When activated, the tough little complements line up and go for the kill.

Individually, the various complements can’t harm antigens. It takes all of them, assembled at the right time, in the right place, to act. And assemble they do, at just the proper time and place.

Imagine the complements zeroing in on bacteria. Picture the first little complement attaching itself to the bacteria. The next complement attaches to the first, then another and another. When they’re all in place, the bacteria ruptures and dies, its cell wall eaten away By enzymes secreted by the complements.

Complements can also neutralize antigens by attacking their molecular structure; by changing the surfaces of antigens and making them stick together; and by prompting inflammation that will, among other things, block off the antigens so that they can’t spread to other parts of the body. The complements can also send out a chemical call for help that brings more neutrophils and macrophages to the scene. At the same time, the complements change the surface features of the antigen in such a way as to make them more “appetizing” to the cell-eaters.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

Even though we know it’s not good for us to bask in the sun, many people still strive to develop a deep, rich tan all over.

However, if you don’t make a habit of sunbathing and your calves become brownish in color all on their own, it’s probably a side effect of long-term heart failure. If this is the case, you probably experience chronic leg swelling and recurrent phlebitis. Due to the weakened blood vessels and poor circulation, blood slowly leaks out of the vessels, resulting in the brownish pigmentation of the skin.

Treatment

Although the brownish discoloration of the calves due to phlebitis or heart failure is not a health problem in itself and is essentially a cosmetic problem, there is no treatment for the condition besides wearing trousers or flesh-colored stockings.

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Traditionally, doctors have prescribed estrogen replacement therapy to women who have entered menopause to ease the physical and emotional discomforts that are caused because the body is no longer producing estrogen.

When ERT was first initiated on a widespread basis in the 1950s, women pretty much believed that their doctor and the medical establishment knew what was best for them. However, times have changed. ERT is no longer the panacea it was once purported to be, and the fact is that there are some women who shouldn’t take estrogen medication at all.

Here are the facts about estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal woman.

Estrogen replacement therapy comes in four different forms. You can take it orally, in tablets in dosages ranging from 0.3 milligrams to 2.5 milligrams, though the typical dosage is one 0.625-milligram tablet taken once a day for three weeks. A vaginal cream called Premarin is also available, as is a transdermal patch called an Estraderm patch; the latter is worn on the skin and changed twice a week and allows a steady stream of estrogen to be absorbed through the skin. Make sure that it is changed at the same times each week.

One of the main advantages of estrogen replacement therapy is that it helps prevent osteoporosis, since estrogen helps keep bones strong. Estrogen also helps keep the genitals and reproductive organs from atrophying and losing their elasticity and support; this helps prevent the uterus from falling, which is a common condition among postmenopausal women. ERT also helps reduce the risk of heart disease because it increases the amount of the “good” HDL cholesterol in the system while lowering the level of “bad” LDL cholesterol. Estrogen is also frequently used during premenopause to reduce the severity of symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings.

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After surgery, because the cancer may have spread to the lymph nodes, many women who have had a lumpectomy or mastectomy may also be treated with radiation therapy. Chemotherapy may also be an option, though it is most often recommended for women who have not gone through menopause. It is also most often prescribed for use before and/or during the surgery, but not after, when the drug tamoxifen is usually prescribed. Tamoxifen is the most commonly prescribed drug for breast cancer because it has almost no side effects, which is unusual for an anticancer drug. In fact, tamoxifen is actually a hormone that is often prescribed in combination with other hormonal therapy. It can slow or reverse the spread of breast cancer when a tumor has not responded to other treatment methods.

Tamoxifen works by depleting the estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells, which, in essence, starves the cells, since they thrive on estrogen. The side effects of tamoxifen include mild pain in the bones, an increased need for calcium, and hot flashes in postmenopausal women. Because estrogen naturally strengthens bones, there is some concern that tamoxifen, an antiestrogen hormone, may increase a woman’s risk of developing osteoporosis after treatment, but usually this can be offset by increased intake of calcium and exercise. The advantages of using tamoxifen to treat breast cancer are that these side effects are minor compared to those of other anticancer drugs and that it reduces the risk of a recurrence of the cancer.

However, breast cancer can be fickle in the way it responds to treatment. Some tumors will shrink and go into remission in response to estrogen hormones, while others will completely disappear with antiestrogen hormones such as androgens and progesterone. Because it is difficult to predict how a tumor will respond to a given hormone, if your doctor is treating you with chemotherapy, you may feel like a guinea pig at times. But tumors are fickle, and what may have worked successfully to shrink a tumor once may not succeed on the next go-round. So your doctor will keep trying, with the final goal being complete remission. If hormonal therapy fails to work, your doctor may try a corticosteroid such as prednisone, which can also be effective in treating breast cancer.

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