Health and medical information

ASTIGMATISM

Astigmatism usually causes either long- or short-sightedness. It is caused by a misshapen cornea, which is the transparent membrane covering the pupil of the eye, and which bends light onto the back of the eye. Glasses with special lenses can usually correct this problem.

BLINDNESS

Blindness can be either partial or full; the term ‘visually impaired’ is preferred nowadays. Approximately 1 in 2000 children are visually impaired in Australia.

Cause

These are numerous, but include congenital abnormalities (present at birth), cataracts, and trauma to either the eye, or the area of the brain that processes visual images.

Clinical features

A visually impaired baby will have difficulty focusing on your face or on objects at 4-5 weeks of age. His eyes may move rapidly from side to side (nystagmus) while trying to focus on something. If he does not react to a bright light being turned on in the room, this may indicate serious visual impairment.

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LEAVING YOUR CHILDREN SOMETHING TO LOVE BY: SOME ANSWERS TO THESE MISASSUMPTIONS REGARDING SEXUALITY

Here are some answers to these misassumptions regarding sexuality. In each of the twelve areas, I have included a quote from sessions with the children of the thousand couples to illustrate their concerns. The parents in the couples program were present for family sexual counseling sessions as a part of their super marital | sex program. Such sessions were optional, but 63 percent of the couples elected to have them. Fifty-two percent of those couples I requested additional sexual counseling sessions with their children, j I have found that dealing with the entire family system, not just the marital couple, is most effective in clinical work. The couples I am now seeing are electing this approach at an almost 75 percent frequency.

If you get turned on, you know, you get homy-like, you really don’t know what you’re doing. You might do anything. You can’t control it, so you shouldn’t get a boy turned on. You could end up attacked and not even know what happened to you.

TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL

Make sure you understand one thing about sex. You always are in control. It is just a story, a made-up thing, that you get out of control. Unless you do something dumb like take drugs or drink alcohol, you always know what you are doing, even when you are enjoying getting turned on in sex. Boys always know, too, even if they get really turned on. If you or the boy keeps saying that you just might not know what you are doing, then it can be an excuse for doing anything, for fooling yourself and each other. Your parents know that everything in life is a decision, and that applies to sex.

    Boys are always turned on. It’s all they ever think about. Just walk

down the hall at school, and they are ready to jump you. They say

things all the time. Boys are just all sexed up.

FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL

You’re right that it seems like boys are always all sexed up, because they seem to act that way when they are around each other. When you talk to them alone, face to face and seriously, you will find that they are not different from you. It’s just like with giris. There are certain ways you have to act to belong to the right group, to fit in. We all do that, even as adults. Some girls pretend they don’t ever think about sex, because that’s what other giris say, but everyone has strong sexual feelings sometimes. Remember, God didn’t give one set of feelings to boys and another to girls. Everybody got everything when it comes to feelings.

    Can’t you hurt yourself if you just fool around too much? I was told

that some guy had his testicles permanently enlarged by just playing

around and not going all the way. He said it was blue balls.

THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY

More people have gotten hurt, that is to say, have gotten into problems, by going all the way than not going all the way. There is no such thing as blue balls, and boys and girls cannot be hurt by not having intercourse after getting very aroused. As a matter of fact, feeling blue is more related to intercourse before you are really ready for it, so fooling around is a great choice if you feel enough love and respect to trust each other and really share the experience. Remember, there are ways to relieve the buildup of sexual feelings other than intercourse. Discuss some of these options with your parents.

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I’ve heard it said that men can be multiply orgasmic, but I never met one. Some of them are not only not multiple, they don’t even seem to be fractional.

WIFE

Masters and Johnson state, “Men are not able to have multiple orgasm.” They report this because in their view orgasm is a physiological response accompanied by feelings associated to these responses. They see the body as directing the mind. It is a fact however, that the mind also directs the body, and while men cannot continue to ejaculate indefinitely, they can have multiple experiences of pelvic contractions. “It was something unique. I almost thought I was broken,” reported one husband. “I couldn’t ejaculate, but I kept on being able to contract, to have spasms down there, like when I was a kid.”

Before øåé find female partners, they are taught to “get off quick” to avoid being caught while masturbating. After they find female partners, they struggle to last longer for fear of being seen as inadequate. Masters and Johnson report that the’ ‘quickest” time between ejaculations was about eight minutes in one of their male subjects. No one thought to ask the subject how he felt about each ejaculation.

Almost all pornographic films exploit not only women but men as well. Each scene ends with the mandatory ejaculatory episode, the indisputable evidence of male enjoyment. One producer of such films includes a hidden pump that shoots cream high into the air in large amounts. His men really enjoy sex! Men clustered around a projector or videotape player are being conditioned clearly to the fluid orientation.

Once free of this myth, men are not only able to be multiply orgasmic (not multiply ejaculatory), but they can also be multiply psychasmic. The men in my study cared less about numbers than they did about the experience of intimacy and fulfillment with their partner.

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Skin. Skin is the largest organ in our body. We tend to underestimate its function in the metabolism process and in particular its excretion capacity. When we sweat, glands in our skin expel toxic waste, which usually does not smell nice. We should clean the skin from such waste, because it clogs the skin, reducing its capacity to excrete more toxins. However, we should be careful which cleaning agents (solvents !) we use, because the skin also has the ability to absorb substances into our body. Techniques to accelerate skin excretion (sweating) are for example the sauna and moderate exercise

Bowel. By weight, most of the solid waste leaves our body here. So any improvement in the rate of detoxification should definitely start here. Colonic or even a simple enema can relieve your body from many kilograms of toxic waste, you should not be attached to at all.

Urinary system. Most of the liquid or water soluble waste leaves our body through the urinary system. How can we improve here ? Drinking a lot (2-5 litres) of pure water a day will make a great impact on the fluid exchange processes in our body, enabling improved flushing of unwanted waste. After all, our body is 75% water and our brain is 90% water. Pure water (in contrast to water polluted with chlorine, fluoride pesticides and other nasties) is necessary to the process of proper fluid exchange.

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Widespread spraying with insecticides and draining of swamps did bring the mosquito population under control but resistance to the insecticides has developed and, in many countries, economic and political factors have led to abandonment of eradication campaigns.

We can consider that all Africa, much of Asia and parts of the Pacific and Latin America are affected.

In Australia, more than 600 cases a year are now reported and most of these have been acquired in the Pacific area.

On a global scene, you can understand the enormity of this problem when there are over 300 million people throughout the world suffering from malaria and it kills over a million children each year in Africa alone.

Where malaria is endemic (occurring widely throughout the community) it leads to great loss of life and chronic infection saps the strength of the population.

Australians who now travel widely in Papua New Guinea and South-East Asia may acquire the infection abroad and only show symptoms on their return.

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This produces what is known as a “hammer toe.”

A corn is also prone to develop on the top of the toe from pressure of the shoe.

In the early stages of hallux valgus, where the bunion is present but not painful, relief may be obtained by wearing comfortable, wide-toed shoes, and sometimes by inserting a rubber wedge between the first and second toe to help preserve the normal alignment.

Operations should not be performed for purely cosmetic reasons as most people are not happy with the result.

But when the pain is severe the results of operation are excellent, and most accept the slight deformity which results and it still looks much better than the ugly deformity of the hallux valgus, bunion, hammer toe complex.

In operation the bunion or bursa is removed and any overgrowth of the bone or joint is shaved off.

The base of the first bone of the big toe is removed so that the toe is shortened and a false joint made.

This normally results in loss of control of movement of the toe, but no loss of stability.

If there is a hammer toe deformity as well, this is usually corrected by “filleting” or removing one of the small bones of the toe, or by shortening one bone and shaving its end to make it a spike and driving it into the head of the other phalanx, thus rendering the whole toe shorter and straighter, and the joint is removed.

These procedures usually involve less than a week in hospital but it may take two or three months for the person to walk comfortably, although return to work is usually possible in three weeks.

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Herbs are not simple spice* and should be treated with exceptional wisdom and respect. Medicinal herbal cures and treatments are as old as the first amateur botanist who most likely discovered the effects of plants quite by accident. A respectable percentage of modem drugs are made from plants, or were made from plants, before they were artificially reproduced. Penicillin and belladonna are two such drugs; Valium, the tranquilizer, may have had its roots in valerian, an herb known for its identical effect. How safe, then, arc herbs for the woman with endometriosis?

Abigail Rist, a registered nurse and registered acupuncturist with a specialty of herbalism, who has worked with midwives and treated many women with menstrual disorders, believes that sufferers of endometriosis may gain some benefits from a number of herbal remedies. She follows the Chinese school of thought, viewing disease as imbalances of female (yin) and male (yang) energies, heat and cold, expansion and contraction. The herbal teas or tinctures she recommends arc based on these evaluations.

Since this system of medicine does not specify the disease precisely, “endometriosis is diagnosed and treated by its more irritating symptoms,” Ms. Rist told me. “In this sense, endometriosis is a tightening and over cooling of what is called ‘the lower burner,’ or urogenital area. For this area, we prepare an herbal remedy to replenish heat (or yang) and reestablish a balance, in another example, it’s as if you have a fever or sore throat, accompanied by thirst. The remedy prescribed will bring down body heat, soothe the rawness of the throat, and help quench thirst. Dandelion tea, for example, induces these qualities. The same will be done for endometriosis.”

Using this reasoning, the overcooling effects of endometriosis would need to be treated or counteracted with warmth. The herbs used would tonify the blood, stimulate and warm the organs. “In traditional Chinese medicine,” Ms. Rise continued, “doctors attribute the function and regulation of some aspects of the blood to the liver and spleen. If a woman has dark clots during menstruation, it is attributed to an imbalance of the liver. If a woman has lighter red blood but profuse bleeding, this would be related to an imbalance of the spleen. The herbs prescribed would be “tissue specific,’ that is. herbs with some affinity to each organ which can, if possible, influence and regulate its function.”

There are teas and tinctures that Ms. Rist recommends. The white peony has specific liver action, so it will actually decrease abdominal tightness and pain. The peony, which may be either dry-roasted or cured, depending on what the herbalist decides for each case, is often one of four other herbs blended in a concoction and prepared to be taken as tea. “Its nature is to be cooling,” says Ms. Rist, “so when it enters the spleen and liver channels, it can tonify the blood. The herbs can also help stop pain by relaxing the tendons and tissues.”

Another popularly used herb is dong quai, considered a “female” root plant, the way that ginseng it assigned male properties. Dong quai is found in many “female trouble” herb blends that are commercially made and distributed to hearth food stores. It is a cured root that, says Ms. Rist, “is thought to help establish an endocrine balance, increasing tissue sensitivity to estrogen and helps with ending menstrual cramps and pelvic congestion.”

Another tea suggested by this herbalist is raspberry tea, handed down as a remedy from grandmother’s rime to its use by present-day midwives. It is reputed to help relax muscles and dilate the cervix. Other teas that are toning or can help reduce inflammation or relieve pain arc rosemary tea, licorice tea, chamomile, and witch hazel tea.

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There are a number of relatively minor disorders of the nails and the surrounding skin. These are fairly common in the community, and for this reason will be mentioned. Most of the more major disorders are fortunately less common, so only some of these will be discussed.

Fungal infections of the nail are also a reasonably common problem. Several fungi may be involved, including the common tinea fungus responsible for ‘athletes foot’. Initially the infected nail is merely discoloured at the end, but as the infection spreads, it may become softened, fragile, and later thickened.

Eventually the nails will separate and lift off, or become grossly distorted. Most commonly, the toenails are the ones affected.

Unfortunately surface applications are rarely sufficient to remedy the situation, nor is removing the affected nail. The most effective treatment is regular clipping of the nail, plus the taking of specific anti-fungal tablets. Because of a toenail’s slow rate of growth, and the necessity to take the medication for the entire growth period of the nail, this treatment may be required for anything between 6-18 months.

An ingrown toenail forms when the edge of the nail penetrates the adjoining soft tissue. The first symptoms are redness and pain, followed by swelling and a discharge. Secondary infection then frequently occurs. The most common causes of this problem are ill-fitting shoes, nails that have been cut too short, excessive curvature of the nail, and flat feet. The first three of these problems may be avoided by wearing adequately wide and long shoes, as well as by cutting the nails straight across and not too short. Mild cases may be treated with wet dressings and packing sterile cotton wool under the affected edge of the nail. Antibiotics may also be necessary. Severe cases may require an operation.

A corn is a cone-shaped overgrowth of hard skin with a central core. Corns usually occur over bony prominences, such as toe joints, or between the toes. They are a result of chronic pressure or rubbing for long periods. Poorly fitting shoes are the most common cause, but arthritis, improperly positioned toes or bony spurs may also be involved. Prevention requires shoes to fit properly and, occasionally, mechanical devices to position the toes correctly. Otherwise the corn may be padded over or gradually pared down. The latter may be done with either a salicylic acid paste or the help of a podiatrist. If there is an underlying bony spur, then an orthopaedic surgeon may have to deal with it.

Psoriasis frequently affects the nails, resulting in deformities which may precede all other manifestations of the disease. Although the nails may occasionally be the only part of the body affected, in most cases of psoriasis, the symptoms are much more widespread. Almost all patients with psoriasis find their nails are affected at some time during the course of their disease. This, however, may be quite transient. The character istic changes are fine thimble-like pitting, lifting, discolouration, and gross thickening of the nails. Treatment of nail psoriasis is most unsatisfactory. Some cases clear spontaneously, whereas others respond to rather painful cortisone injections into the nail-fold.

Eczema or dermatitis affecting the hands will often affect the nail as well. The usual symptoms are transverse ridging, coarse pitting, discolouration, and eventually marked deformity of the nail. This will all correct itself once the eczema or dermatitis is controlled.

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