Health and medical news Blog
Welcome to our look into the world of healthy lifestyle
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Eczema
Eczema of the nipple may sometimes occur as a result of irritation caused by the rubbing of clothes – contact eczema – or of a general skin infection. Some people are born with eczema, and it can occur on the nipple as on any other area of the body.
Once the diagnosis has been confirmed by a specialist, which may, rarely, be done by means of a wedge excision under local or general anesthetic, and the cause of the irritation has been removed, a short course of steroid cream may be necessary. Infection can be treated with antibiotics.
Paget’s disease of the nipple
Paget’s disease normally occurs in women over the age of 45, and is caused by a ductal cancer growing onto the areola. It is quite a rare condition which may be confused with eczema, but which spreads over the areolar region far less quickly and may destroy the nipple completely over a long period of time. If left untreated, it never heals and eventually forms an ulcer.
Wedge excision of the affected area, or the cytological examination of scraped cells under a microscope, will confirm the diagnosis. This is a far more serious disease than eczema and treatment may involve complete removal of the breast. A woman with persistent redness or nipple discharge should always report it to her doctor even if she has eczema elsewhere on her body as the cancer associated with Paget’s disease is not palpable.
Infective ‘mastitis’
This can occur in women who are breast-feeding their babies. It may be caused by the transfer of micro-organisms from the hands to the breast through a cracked or inverted nipple, by an infection passed on from the baby’s mouth, or by blood-borne infection such as a sore throat.
If the ducts become blocked when a woman is lactating, the milk may stagnate within them and an infection can develop. This may cause a dull pain with inflammation, tenderness and swelling or engorgement of the breast, and sometimes an infective discharge from the nipple.
Treatment with antibiotics is usually effective if given early, but breast-feeding will have to stop while these are being taken. Breast milk can be expressed with a breast pump, but, as the milk will contain traces of the antibiotic, it should not be given to the baby. Your midwife will be able to advise you in this situation.
Ulcers
Rarely, ulcers can develop on the nipple during breast-feeding. The baby’s sucking can irritate the skin, leading to pain and bleeding from the affected area.
Washing and drying the nipple carefully after each feed, and the use of Calendula ointment can help to prevent ulcers forming, but once present, frequent washing with a sterile solution and breast-feeding using an artificial nipple should help. If necessary, breast milk can be expressed with a breast pump.
Ulcers are more common in fair-skinned women, particularly those with red hair.
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Tags: Cancer
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Many-if not most-people believe that they should have ‘a thorough check-up’ now and again. There is a widely held misconception that a doctor (usually a general practitioner) can do a kind of 10,000 miles service of everything that really matters and do it in a few minutes. This is totally untrue. Even a very lengthy clinical examination by a highly expert physician might well miss even quite obvious disease which cannot be picked up by his or her bedside diagnostic skills. The problem with such examinations, even if they are very well done, is that if given an ‘all clear’ patients imagine themselves to be well and may as a result actually take less care of themselves because their current lifestyle, they argue, appears to be doing them no harm.
Young children and the elderly need more regular professional examinations because they get ill more often and can go downhill very quickly once something starts. Physical examinations in middle age are more worth while than in younger people because of the higher rates of heart disease and cancer.
Obviously it makes sense to limit physical examinations to those periods of life at which they are most likely to produce results. A thorough physical examination at birth and periodically throughout early childhood makes good sense because so much is going on developmentally that it is reasonable to try to pick up abnormalities so that they can be dealt with quickly. It is probably sensible to have a physical examination every five years after this up to the age of 40 and then every other year up to 65.
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Tags: General health
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Pete Falk never sets foot in a grocery store without a plan—a menu plan, that is. Writing down exactly what he needs to prepare each week’s meals keeps him away from all of the high-fat, high-calorie temptations that line supermarket aisles. It’s the key to how he lost 63 pounds.
Pete, a 35-year-old computer engineer from Denver, got in the menu-plan habit while attending a medical clinic specializing in weight loss. At the time, he weighed 257 pounds, too much even for his 6-foot-1 frame. “I had been heavy since I was a kid,” he explains. “I wanted to slim down, and I had tried numerous times on my own. I didn’t get really motivated until my allergies and asthma started getting worse. Then I knew that I needed help.”
At the clinic, Pete went on a physician-supervised eating plan for the first couple of months. Then, he worked with the doctor and a nutritionist, learning how to make smart food choices on his own. “They gave me sample menus, which I took to the supermarket with me so I’d know what to buy,” he says. “Eventually, I realized that by sticking with the menus, I was filling my cart with healthy foods, not the junk that helped me gain in the first place.”
The menus encouraged Pete to make other healthful changes in his eating habits. He stopped skipping breakfast, he started packing his lunch on workdays, and he tried to have dinner at about the same time every evening. “Because of my job, I had been eating really late some nights—around 10 o’clock,” he says. “I was so hungry by then that I’d stuff myself.”
As Pete’s eating habits improved, his waistline shrank. He joined a local gym, where he worked out 6 days a week. Within 4 months he was 63 pounds lighter.
That was more than 2 years ago. Pete has since started lifting weights, which has added some bulk—all muscle—to his physique. He’s holding steady at a fit 200 pounds.
While exercising regularly has helped Pete get in shape, eating healthfully has kept him trim. These days, he writes his own menus, but he still takes them to the grocery store. “My menus help me shop conscientiously,” he says. “I get the right ingredients and buy only what I need—no junk food.”
WINNING ACTION
Get a plan. If you’re prone to straying down the wrong supermarket aisle, like Pete, get a plan. Decide on your meals for a full week. Write down what you need to make each meal. Use that as your shopping list. This
way, you’ll leave the supermarket with exactly what you §. went in for, and you’ll minimize impulse buys.
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Tags: Weight Loss
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There are two major problems in choosing a filter. Firstly, it is impossible to tell if the product is working properly, without chemical analyses, although if it has a serious defect, a smell of chlorine in the filtered water might be noticeable. Secondly, there are no British Standards for domestic water filters at present. As a customer, you therefore need to be well informed about what you are buying. Some of the filters at present on the market actually remove very few contaminants from the water supply. Others may work well at first, but their performance drops off sharply – long before they have filtered the number of gallons claimed by the manufacturer.
The only country to apply consumer standards to domestic water filters is the USA, where the Environmental Protection Agency requires filters impregnated with silver to be registered and sets a limit on how much silver can leach into the water. In Britain, the Water Research Centre operates an approval scheme for some aspects of water filters, but not for their overall performance. It seems likely that the approval scheme in Britain will be improved in the next few years.
The vast majority of water filters bought in Britain are of the jug type. The advantage of these is that the initial outlay is very low (£10-15). The cost per gallon is between 12 pence and 30 pence, which is cheaper than bottled water, although the taste of the water is not as good.
The prime objective of the jug filters is to improve the taste and appearance of water, and to remove hardness (calcium carbonate or ‘chalk’) so that kettles do not
become lined with scale. They contain an activated carbon filter to remove chlorine and another component, an ion exchange resin, which takes out the calcium carbonate. The latter component also removes lead and some other metals. Calcium carbonate is not injurious to health and cannot cause sensitivity reactions, so it is the kettle that benefits rather than the drinker.
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Tags: Allergies
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Once you have felt consistently better for three or four days then you should start the reintroduction phase. Don’t delay doing this. Write down exactlv how you feel at this point – it may be useful and encouraging to refer back to this later if you suffer a lot of reactions during food testing.
Feeling much bettei- quite quickly
This can happen, especially in children and young people – they seem to miss out on the withdrawal symptoms. Go on to the reintroduction phase.
Feeling much better, but with one or two lingering symptoms It looks as if you have cut out your main offending foods, but are still eating something that is a problem (assuming that you have ruled out all other problems, such as candidiasis, airborne allergens, hyperventilation and environmental chemicals. Think again about your previous eating habits – is there anything you used to eat quite frequently and are still eating? Cut all these out.
If your symptoms clear, then go on to the reintroduction phase immediately. If they don’t, then the best option is to go on to a full ‘rare-food diet’, only eating foods that you have never eaten before.
If the remaining symptoms are mild, and fairly constant from day to day, then you could go on to the reintroduction phase – you may get some sort of useful result from testing. If you can discover which foods are the main source of trouble, and establish a diet on which you are reasonably well, then you are in a good position to investigate further. It could be that the remaining symptoms are due to some other problem – see below, under Feeling about the same, for a list of possibilities.
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Tags: Allergies
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One thing that is thought to trigger off food intolerance is a heavy exposure to toxic chemicals. Such exposures are usually accidental and unforseen, of course, but there are some avoidable ones. If a house is to be sprayed with insecticides to eradicate woodworm, or with fungicides for wet or dry rot, then it is advisable to move out for at least a week, to allow time for the fumes to disperse. The company doing the spraying may claim that this is unnecessary, but there are instances of both children and adults being ill after spraying, even though they were not directly exposed to the spray. The fumes travel throughout the house, so even if only one part is being sprayed you should try to find somewhere else to stay for a while. Another hazard that can be very largely avoided is direct exposure to pesticides used on crops. If you see fields being sprayed, keep your distance, especially if they are being sprayed by a plane. The spray can easily drift. If you have a choice, don’t buy a house next to a large arable field. Avoid using sprays in your own garden and keep household chemicals to a minimum.
Finally, the general health measures listed on p290 are recommended to anyone who might be at risk of developing food intolerance. Above all, don’t ignore symptoms such as recurrent headaches, regular bouts of indigestion or persistent fatigue. Living on aspirin, antacids, or strong coffee is going to make the problem worse rather than better, and experience suggests that the decline into severe food intolerance is a very gradual one that begins with symptoms of this sort. Treating a mild form of food intolerance – the early stages – is a great deal easier than trying to tackle entrenched symptoms and multiple sensitivities. The longer you leave it the more difficult it may be.
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Tags: Allergies
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It would appear, from more recent studies, that food additives are important in a great many children with hyperkinetic syndrome, but that it is unusual to find a child for whom additives are the sole problem. Most also show sensitivity to various commonly eaten foods, pollen, dust, other common allergens and chemicals. The role of natural salicylates seems to be a minor one. When food and other allergens are considered, as well as additives, 50-80 per cent of children respond, although not all of them are completely cured. Sensitivity to unavoidable synthetic chemicals, such as solvents and the contaminants of natural gas, may account for the partial success with some patients.
Although Feingold’s theory was not entirely right, he was correct to single out food additives for blame – they do seem to play a disproportionate role in hyperactivity, compared to other types of illness such as asthma or eczema. This suggests that enzyme deficiencies may contribute to hyperkinetic syndrome, because such additives need to be detoxified by the body’s enzymes. They may also prevent some enzymes from working properly. The involvement of additives may explain why the incidence of hyperkinetic syndrome seems to have increased dramatically in the last 20 years – a period that has seen the meteoric rise of junk food’, take-aways and instant-everything. All these convenience foods tend t6 be rich in colourings, flavourings, preservatives and other additives.
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Tags: Allergies
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Enzymes are specialized molecules found only in living things (the ones in biological washing powders are extracted from living things). They are absolutely essential to life, because they make specific chemical reactions happen. For example, they join other molecules together to build up the cells that make up living bodies. They also break down food (digestive enzymes), so that the energy it contains can be utilized, and break down toxins (detoxification enzymes) to make them harmless. They transform surplus food into fat stores, or break down the fat to yield energy when food is short.
Although they cannot be seen, even under a microscope, there are hundreds of thousands of different enzymes in the human body. Each enzyme has a very specific job to do: most of them only control one reaction, although others are slightly more versatile. For example, some of the digestive enzymes can break
down a variety of food molecules of the same general type. Enzymes themselves are controlled by smaller molecules which can turn a particular enzyme on or off.
Enzymes are just one type of protein molecule. Like all proteins, enzymes are made according to an inherited pattern which is passed on from parent to child. This pattern is stored in the genetic material, the DNA. In fact, DNA acts as a template, from which all enzymes and other protein molecules are made. If there is a change in the DNA – a mutation – then the enzyme which is coded for by that part of the DNA will be altered. Usually these changes are for the worse, and the enzyme does not work as well as the original version. What sort of effect this enzyme defect has will depend on how important the enzyme is, what sort of reaction it controls and how badly it has been affected. Defective enzymes may play a part in food intolerance.
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Tags: Allergies
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Scientific research is no doubt of great interest to the therapist and can tell him a lot. But when it comes to assessing the medicinal value of a herbal preparation, there is no substitute for practical experience with actual patients. A pure remedy, made from the whole plant, contains a complex of active elements, some of which are known and others unknown. For this reason, it is the practical treatment of a patient that really matters in determining whether a preparation is effective or not. This is why the medical researcher needs the cooperation of the herbal therapist in order to develop the best remedies from nature’s bountiful storehouse for the benefit of the sick. After all, is this not the real purpose of all medical research? At least, that is what it should be!
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Tags: Herbal
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A patient told me once that she had suffered from this troublesome problem for years despite all her efforts to get rid of it. The fungus had settled under her breasts and on her arms, causing frequent soreness, and for more than twelve years she had used all kinds of remedies without success. Then she learned about Molkosan and an African plant remedy, Spilanthes, which complements and reinforces the healing effect of Molkosan. After applying these two remedies in alternation for about two weeks, she was pleased to note great improvement. The skin had been rehabilitated and was clear once again.
It goes without saying that such a splendid result makes one glad, if only because of the great patience the sufferer must have had in order to endure the unpleasant problem and its bothersome effects in spite of years of treatment. Think of the discouragement and disappointment first of all, then the great relief when the stubborn fungus disappeared in a relatively short space of time, restoring the skin to normal.
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Tags: Herbal