Herbal Health

Considering the complexities of the life of a child, it is often amazing they do not lose their tempers more often! They are not born with self-control. They have to learn it. Temper is due to anger, plus a sense of insecurity, plus helplessness. Many children can cope extremely well, but others seem involved in ongoing outbursts most of their lives.

Often the child’s tantrums are a direct reflection of upbringing. In families with a high level of emotional disturbance, where fighting and personality clashes are the rule, the child is more likely to reflect this by being involved in rages far more often. A child who normally lives in a calm, relatively serene atmosphere will lend to reflect this and be much less likely to be involved in temper tantrums, breath-holding bouts, sulky periods and similar emotional states.

Treatment

Children are usually the product of their environment and upbringing. A serene home life will invariably produce a child with a calm mental outlook and a tendency to fly into rages far less often than one who lives in a family ridden with mental stress and turmoil.

Children live by example. If parents only realized this, it would greatly ease the burden of treatment. Yelling, screaming and shouting, hurling abuse and chastizing verbally or physically will seldom do much good for frayed tempers. Indeed, it will tend to worsen the situation. Bribery will be equally disastrous, for the child may soon learn the pecuniary value of temper tantrums, and lack of self-control will be inevitable.

Self-control by parents is the best example. Adults are able to do this, and in so doing they will inevitably benefit their children and their children’s attitudes. Being neither overindulgent nor over-strict is also good admonition.

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The pleura are two delicate membranes which surround the lungs. The condition in which they become inflamed, as the result of either a bacterial or a viral infection, is known as pleurisy. It is characterised by sharp or stabbing pains in the chest or shoulder when a breath is taken.

Normally the pleura move smoothly against one another as the lungs expand and contract during breathing. A thin film of fluid lubricates the membranes. When an infection is present, the pleural fluid becomes sticky and the pleura rub against one another. This ‘pleural rub’ can be heard clearly through a stethoscope. Sometimes an excess of pleural fluid is produced, protecting the inflamed membranes from friction. This pleural effusion can be detected when a dull note is produced by tapping the chest wall. A raised temperature and general feeling of unwellness is a further symptom.

Pleurisy is generally a minor illness. However in some cases it may be a sign of a more serious disease such as pneumonia, a blood clot in the lung, lung cancer or tuberculosis. It is therefore imperative that a doctor be consulted before undertaking any form of complementary treatment.

Homeopathic remedies can be used to treat pleurisy. Chest and back compresses can help reduce internal inflammation. Large doses of Vitamin C and Vitamin A may be recommended by a naturopath.

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Mercedes is a social worker in her early fifties who makes a distinction between the two different kinds of emotional suffering that she has experienced in the course of her life. The first type, ‘the remains of a difficult childhood’, took her some time to sort out. But even after being satisfied that she had taken care of the residue of her childhood, she found herself left with ‘a light film of dysthymia, which lasted for years and was probably inherited from my parents, both of whom suffered from depression’. Dysthymia is a condition of chronic, persistent low-grade depression.

As a result of her low mood, Mercedes would procrastinate, putting off unpleasant tasks such as housekeeping or paperwork in favour of activities she greatly preferred, such as knitting, crocheting or playing with her birds and her dogs. Naturally introverted, she would withdraw in social situations, where she always felt as though she was holding back.

Mercedes decided to try St John’s Wort because it was natural and she understood it to cause few side-effects, starting with 300 mg three times a day. It took at least five weeks to notice an effect, and even then it was subtle though palpable. She stopped procrastinating as much and was more outgoing in social situations. Her husband noted the change, remarking that her dark moodiness had lifted and that she now seemed ‘lighter’. She experienced no side-effects whatsoever, plans to continue to take the herbal anti-depressant and is interested in recommending it to several of her clients.

The stories of Matthew and Mercedes illustrate how versatile an anti-depressant St John’s Wort is, capable of bringing someone out of the dark depths of despair, as in Matthew’s case, or of alleviating the milder and more subtle dysthymia which affected Mercedes. The dosages needed by these two individuals were quite different, with Matthew responding to 300 mg per day while Mercedes used the more conventional 900 mg per day dosing schedule. Optimal dosages of other types of anti-depressant medications vary widely and there is no reason to suppose that this will prove to be different for St John’s Wort. The size of the patient is not always a good guide to the best dosage, as these two cases illustrate: Matthew is 6-foot tall and weighs 13 stone, yet required only one-third the dosage used by Mercedes, who is a small woman. Another difference between Matthew and Mercedes is the time scale of the effects of the herbal anti-depressant, from the almost immediate beneficial effects experienced by Matthew to the five-week lag before the treatment kicked in for Mercedes. Such observations indicate why it can be useful to experiment with different dosages for different people and why it is important to persevere for several weeks before declaring a trial of St John’s Wort to be a failure.

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David Hart was eight years old when he was brought to me. His problems were obvious: his face was never at peace, but was wracked by spasms; he was continually sniffing, blinking, and squinting. His eyes were red and rimmed by dark circles. Although his grades were average, he had frequent temper tantrums at school and at home.

In addition, David had a hearing problem, which seemed to increase as he grew older. He complained of a ringing in his ears, a condition called tinnitus. This had been unsuccessfully treated with decongestants and antihistamines. Sometimes he complained of having a “bug in his ear.” The slightest noise in class distracted him, since then he could no longer hear the teacher distinctly.

The routine five-day water fast in the Ecology Unit worked wonders: the mouth tic, eye-blinking, and hyperactivity disappeared. So, too, did the bags under the eyes, which are called “allergic shiners,” a frequent sign of food or chemical susceptibility.

When single foods, known not to have been significantly contaminated with chemicals, were returned to David’s diet, some of them brought on attacks of spasms and facial contortions. The worst offenders in his case were wheat, beef, corn, and blueberries, followed by haddock, cherries, peanuts, and potatoes.

Many foods, however, could be eaten without causing any symptoms, such as crab, chicken, pork, lamb, and onion. When some of these acceptable foods were given to David in their commercial, supermarket form, however, they caused grimaces, hyperactivity, eye circles, and gassiness. The boy became progressively more grouchy and twitchy after the second feeding of “normal” food, and this increased with each subsequent feeding. The avoidance of such foods paved the way for David’s recovery, and the last time I spoke to his family, he was greatly improved and doing well in school.

Like Paul Rossi, David was one of those hyperactive children whose problem was actually caused by a highly individualized reaction to the food and chemical environment, and greatly helped by avoiding those items to which he was allergic.

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It may have occurred to the reader that air pollution plays a role in the problem of chemical susceptibility. This is true, but not in the way most people suspect. For while it is true that outdoor, or ambient, air pollution is a significant source of exposure, a far greater threat is posed by the presence of indoor, or domiciliary, air pollution.

Indoor air pollution? The term itself is unfamiliar and strange to most people, who tend to think of air pollution solely in terms of smog. Yet the home itself generates combustion products or is directly exposed to them, and many household products give off noxious fumes.

Indoor air pollution is particularly dangerous because exposure to it is so constant. Outdoor air pollution comes and goes; indoor pollution is ever-present, and thus its effects generally remain well hidden. In this it obviously resembles food allergy: as has been explained, allergy to uncommonly eaten foods is readily detected; the real danger comes from allergy to the ordinary foods which we take for granted.

My involvement with the problem of indoor air pollution dates from my earliest chemical-susceptibility cases. In the case of Nora Barnes, for instance, pine paneling and other pine products were implicated as a source of chronic illness. In Ellen Sanders’ case, natural gas and pesticide spray resulted in asthma, arthritis, and a host of other complaints. Removal of these pollutants has resulted in her enjoying reasonably good health over a twenty-five-year period.

I first discussed the topic of indoor air pollution in a series of articles published in 1961 and then in my book, Human Ecology and Susceptibility to the Chemical Environment (1962). Shortly afterward, the topic became a matter of public debate. In 1962, the government called a conference on air pollution, the first of its kind, in Washington, D.C. As often happens with such conferences, the program and speakers’ list were announced first, and then the public was invited to attend. Out of a three-day program, only one-and-a-half hours were allocated for open discussion. During the discussion, I rose to say how astounded I was that no reference had been made, in three days of speeches, to indoor air pollution as a separate topic. In my clinical experience, I added, indoor air pollution was eight to ten times more important as a source of chronic illness in susceptible people than ambient air pollution. Outdoor air pollution, I told the gathering, tended to be intermittent and variable, while indoor air pollution was constant. This very constancy made it a source of chronic disease. And of the various materials found in the home, the gas kitchen range, I said, was easily the worst offender. This left some of the experts without words, but on the far side of the room a gentleman rose and confirmed what I had said, adding some telling details of his own. He introduced himself as Francis Silver. He was an engineer from West Virginia, and later became a member of the Society for Clinical Ecology. We had never met before, but he and I had come to almost identical conclusions about the danger of indoor air pollution, as the result of very different experience—he as an engineer of buildings and I as a clinician studying the effects of such buildings on individual health.

In the following years, there were two conferences devoted solely to the topic of indoor air pollution. In general, these were productive, and I spoke at both.

Since the early 1950s, the extent of the problem of indoor air pollution has continued to grow larger. At the present time, it represents a major source of chronic illness among susceptible individuals in the United States. This can be best understood by considering the kinds of exposures which most frequently result in such chronic health problems.

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A draining ear occurs when any abnormal discharge or fluid comes out of the ear canal. The only material that normally comes from the ear canal is wax (cerumen). Earwax is ordinarily brown, though it may be beige or even yellowish if mixed with water when bathing, showering, or swimming. Normally, earwax has only a mild odor, contains no blood, and never flows out in large amounts.

Any other material discharging from the ear canal signals a potentially serious condition. It may be a symptom of a middle ear infection; a boil in the ear canal; swimmer’s ear (infection of the ear canal); rupture (break or tear) of the eardrum by injury or infection; a foreign object in the ear canal; tumour of the middle ear (cholesteatoma); or fracture of the base of the skull.

Signs and symptoms

Abnormal discharge from the ear may be thin and watery, bloody, odorous, cheesy, green, yellow, or white.

Home care

Any drainage from the ear canal (except typical earwax) should be considered abnormal. Do not try to treat a draining ear at home. It should be promptly seen by a physician.

While waiting to see the doctor, pain accompanying a draining ear may be temporarily treated with aspirin or paracetamol pain relievers.

Precautions

• A draining ear should be examined by a doctor within 12 to 24 hours.

• Do not pack cotton into a draining ear. Packing the canal may force the discharge back into the middle ear.

• Do not use a cotton swab or any other instrument to remove material still in the canal.

• Do not attempt to wash out a draining ear since the eardrum may be broken or torn.

Medical treatment

Your doctor will gently clean your child’s ear, inspect it, and diagnose the cause. Depending on what is found in the ear canal, treatment may require oral antibiotics, medicated ear drops, removing a foreign body, an X ray of the child’s skull or mastoid bone, or surgery for cholesteatoma (tumour of the middle ear). In the case of a ruptured eardrum, antibiotics may be required for a long time, until the eardrum is healed and hearing returns to normal.

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Your Forties

Age 40 is when it’s time to step up your tests, generally getting them every other year instead of every three. It’s also time to start tending to your lower half. Your risk for colon cancer rises sharply when you hit your mid-forties, and your risk for prostate cancer increases as well. In addition to the other aforementioned tests, get this test now, suggests Dr. Goldberg. He also notes that race and personal or family history of illness can change the timing and frequency of medical tests.

Rectal exam: Nobody wants one. Every 40-plus man needs one every year, says

Dr. Goldberg. A digital rectal exam (DRE) – in which your doctor inserts a gloved, lubricated finger into your rectum to feel your prostate-is your best line of defense against prostate cancer.

Your Fifties and beyond

Not much changes between 40 and 50, so long as you’re continuing your regular tests about every two years. At age 50, start getting physicals annually and continue getting the DREs you started getting in your forties. Just add a couple more tests, and you’re set for life, says Dr. Goldberg.

Stool sample: During a DRE, the doctor will also take a tiny sample of stool to test for any traces of blood-a sign of cancer growth or development. Like DREs, this should be done every year, says Dr. Coulehan.

Sigmoidoscopy: Your 50th birthday is a good time to start having this test and then get it done every five years thereafter, says Dr. Goldberg. A sigmoidoscope is a thin, flexible, lighted instrument that actually lets the doctor look into your rectum and large intestine for polyps, or growths that might signal cancer. The test takes just a few minutes. And don’t worry. The sigmoidoscope is so thin and flexible, doctors say that although the test is uncomfortable, it is not painful. If you are at higher risk because of family or personal history, your doctor may recommend more inclusive tests such as colonoscopy or a barium enema at an earlier age.

PSA screening: PSA (prostate-specific antigen) screening is a blood test that checks for a compound that is produced exclusively by the prostate gland. Significant increases in this compound can indicate a problem, such as prostate cancer. You should have this test done every year starting at age 50, says Dr. Goldberg, unless you are at high risk because of your family history or if you are an African-American.

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An operation to remove a lump from the breast will probably last about 20 to 30 minutes; mastectomies may take up to an hour. Therefore you are likely to be away from the ward for no more than 3 to 4 hours. You may feel drowsy and slightly sick as the effects of the general anesthetic wear off. If your mouth is dry, you can take sips of water, but drinking too much immediately after your operation can make any nausea worse. As your digestive system will not be affected by the operation, you will be able to eat as soon as you want to.

Following a mastectomy, you may be returned to the ward with a drip inserted into your arm. This contains a saline solution to replace the fluids that have been lost from your body during the operation, and will be removed after about 24 hours or when you are able to drink freely.

Drainage tubes

One or more small tubes will extend out of the side of the dressing covering your wound, each draining into a plastic bag or bottle, which will probably be placed beside you in the bed. Although the drainage system is cumbersome, you will be able to get up and move around the ward while it is still attached, but do remember to make sure the collecting bag(s) is supported before you do so. It may be taped to the.-side of your body or pinned to your nightdress. The weight of an unsupported bag will pull on the wound, causing discomfort.

During the first day following your operation, fresh blood and fluid will drain into the collecting bag. On the second day, the amount of fluid will probably have reduced substantially, and may be mostly clear, with a small amount of blood. Following a wide lump excision, the single drainage tube may be removed after about 24 hours. Each of the two tubes required after a mastectomy will be taken out when the drainage into them has reduced, which may be anything from 1 to 7 days after your operation.

The wound

Your wound will probably be covered by a clear dressing with an overlying pressure dressing to reduce bruising. The pressure dressing consists of a wad of gauze covered with Elastoplast strapping which is quite tightly applied after wide lump excisions and mastectomies. This will probably be removed after about 24 hours, once a doctor has visited you on the ward to check your wound.

If you do not want to be able to see the wound through the remaining clear adhesive dressing, do ask a nurse to cover it with gauze. You may find the sight of the blood-encrusted wound, the stitches and possibly some bruising upsetting. However, it will improve each day, and it should have healed and begun to look a lot better after a couple of weeks.

The wound may have been stitched with an absorbable material that will dissolve of its own accord in time, and only its ends may be visible. Alternatively, the stitches may be of a nonabsorbable material, possibly with a small white bead attached at each end. Stitches of this type will have to be removed 7 to 14 days after your operation. Many wounds are now stitched with a single continuous stitch, and appear as a single straight line.

The pull of the stitches may cause a feeling of tightness which will improve after a few days.

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A physical examination usually involves:

• testing a specimen of your urine

• taking your blood pressure

• examining your breasts

• examining your abdomen

• a pelvic examination (sometimes also known as an internal or a vaginal examination).

The purpose of the pelvic examination is to try to determine whether there are any indications that you may have some endometrial implants or cysts present. Sometimes, the pelvic examination will suggest the presence of endometriosis but often nothing abnormal will be found, especially in the early stages of the disease.

Knowing what is involved in a pelvic examination will help to relieve any anxiety that you may have and help you to relax and therefore make the examination more comfortable for you and easier for the doctor. Ask your doctor to explain the procedure to you before she or he begins.

It is best if you empty your bladder just before the examination as a mil bladder will make it difficult for the doctor to perform the examination satisfactorily.

During the pelvic examination you will usually be asked to lay on your back with your legs spread apart, knees bent and feet together.

While the doctor is examining you it will help if you tell him or her when you can feel any pain or discomfort. A pelvic examination may cause a little discomfort but it should not be painful. If the examination does cause pain ask your doctor to stop for a moment to allow the pain to subside while you relax again. After the examination has been completed ask the doctor to describe what he or she felt.

The doctor will begin by examining the external genitalia, which includes the vulva, clitoris and labia, for any signs of inflammation, irritation or infection.

The doctor will then insert an instrument, known as a speculum that holds the sides of the vagina apart to examine the vagina and the cervix. The doctor may also take a Pap smear or a sample of any unusual discharge using a cotton swab or a wooden spatula. Once a thorough examination has been made the doctor will remove the speculum and perform a bimanual pelvic examination.

In the bimanual examination the doctor inserts two gloved fingers into your vagina and places the fingers of the other hand on your lower abdomen in order to feel the outline, shape, size and location of the pelvic organs between his or her hands. The doctor will also feel for any nodules, lumps, growths, enlargements or areas of tenderness.

During the examination the doctor may be able to feel nodules of endometriosis in the Pouch of Douglas, on the utero-sacral ligaments or in the recto-vaginal septum. It may also be possible to feel if the ovaries are enlarged, which may indicate cysts on the ovaries. The doctor will also be able to feel if the uterus is lying in the normal position or if it is stuck in a retroverted position.

Occasionally, the doctor may feel that it is necessary to perform a recto-vaginal examination if you are complaining of symptoms involving the bowel. This examination is similar to a bimanual pelvic examination but the index finger is inserted into the vagina and the middle finger into the rectum. The fingers of the doctor’s other hand are placed over the lower abdomen to help outline the organs and feel for any enlargements or growths.

If a pelvic examination does not indicate anything abnormal and if it was not performed near the time of your period it may be worthwhile having another examination just before, or during, your period when the endometriosis is most active thus making the implants more tender, larger and easier to feel.

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To many, if not most, of us living in the West, the notion that some of the diseases we all take for granted as the major killers are preventable is indeed hard to accept. Strokes, heart disease and cancers between them kill most westerners yet they are relatively uncommon in the non-westernized world. Why should this be, and is it possible that by altering the way we live we could reduce or even abolish these conditions?

At first, the suggestion that it is our western lifestyle that causes many of our major diseases seems quite ridiculous, but the pioneering work of a group of doctors who spent decades in non-westernized parts of the world must make us think again. They noticed that certain non-infective diseases were very much less common in traditional societies than they were in the West. They wondered at first what to call these diseases. ‘Diseases of civilization’ (meaning modern, western civilization) is not quite right because evidence suggests that some of them were around but uncommon in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, India and China. Given that the conditions they found to be so common were now mainly seen in communities that had adopted our western, technological way of life, they decided to call them ‘western diseases’.

The first two criticisms that are immediately thrown at such a suggestion are, first, that people in the Third World tend not to live to be old enough to get ‘our’ diseases, and second that their medical systems are so poor that they simply do not diagnose the conditions even when they are present. Neither of these criticisms stands up when examined in depth, and studies which show that migrant populations (originally without western diseases) adopt the diseases of their westernized brothers in their new country, prove without doubt that it is not simply that whole populations in the non-industrialized world are somehow immune to westernized diseases. It is also impressive (if depressing) to watch peoples with traditional lifestyles take on our disease pattern as they adopt our way of life.

So what could possibly be causing these western diseases? Obviously motor-car accidents can only occur where there are motor cars, and pollution from industrial effluent or cigarette smoke is only found where these two abound, but these are not the diseases I mean when I refer to western diseases. The conditions in question are such disorders as: high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, appendicitis, piles, varicose veins, gall-stones, kidney stones and cancer.

Of course, any of many changes in western lifestyle in recent years could account for the frequency of all these conditions today and their virtual absence until the last century in the West and in most of the world today, but because many of them seem to affect the digestive system it makes sense to start looking for clues in the food we eat. Modern technology has radically altered the production and preparation of food and it now seems that food changes are at the heart of many of these ‘new’ western diseases.

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