Directory of health resources for healthcare professionals.

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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Symptom

Yellow tinge to the skin and the whites of the eyes

Home care

Watch your newborn baby closely for signs of jaundice in the first week after the baby goes home from the hospital.

Inform the doctor if you suspect jaundice.

Precautions

-    Many newborns develop a normal jaundice in the first week of life; however, jaundice that develops in the first 24 hours after birth is not normal.

-    If the baby develops jaundice – or jaundice worsens – after the baby comes home, consult your doctor.

-    Consult the doctor immediately if your jaundiced baby is nursing poorly, seems excessively drowsy, or is fevered or irritable.

-    If your baby develops jaundice, follow your doctor’s instructions exactly.

The liver transforms a substance known as bilirubin, released when old blood cells are replaced by new cells, into bile. The bile is then passed into the intestine. When damage to the liver prevents or slows down this process, bilirubin accumulates in the body and jaundice results.

Sixty percent of full-term infants and 80 percent of premature babies develop a normal jaundice during the first week of life. This occurs because of the rapid destruction of the excess number of red blood cells with which all healthy babies are born. The jaundice usually begins in the second or third day of life and disappears between the fifth and tenth day. With rare exceptions, this jaundice is harmless. Its major importance is the difficulty distinguishing it from abnormal jaundice.

The two most frequent causes of abnormal jaundice in the newborn are blood poisoning and erythroblastosis fetalis. Blood poisoning, a generalized infection caused by bacteria or viruses, causes jaundice in the newborn by destroying red blood cells and injuring the liver. Erythroblastosis fetalis is due to an incompatibility between the child’s blood and that of the mother. The mismatch may be in the Rh factor (for example, when the mother is Rh-negative but the infant is Rh-positive), in the ABO factors (when the mother’s blood is type Î but the baby’s is type A or B), or in rarer blood factors. Because of the incompatibility, the mother’s blood forms antibodies (protective substances that form to fight off disease or anything the body interprets as an attacking organism). These antibodies rapidly destroy the infant’s red blood cells.

Breast-fed newborns may also develop jaundice because a substance in the mother’s milk interferes with the proper function of the baby’s liver. This form of jaundice by itself usually is harmless. There are many other causes of jaundice in the newborn, including certain forms of anaeimia, hepatitis, and German measles, but jaundice due to these causes is rare.

Because either erythroblastosis fetalis or blood poisoning can be fatal to newborn babies if not treated immediately, a doctor’s diagnosis must be made promptly. Other forms of jaundice can also be serious if the bilirubin in the blood exceeds a safe level. If jaundice is suspected, a doctor must monitor the bilirubin level closely.

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What is it?

Glaucoma is an eye disorder in which the eyeball becomes harder and the area of vision is narrowed down. It occurs in about one in 100 people over the age of 40. About 20,000 people are blind as a result of glaucoma in England and Wales alone. It is about ten times as common in close relatives as it is in the general population, and it is not catching. It can be treated, and loss of sight prevented, if it is caught early. Treatment is by eye drops, tablets and operation. Glaucoma usually affects both eyes, though frequently one more than the other.

What causes it?

Watery fluid is normally formed in the eye and then drains back into the bloodstream through a sieve-like area of tissue. If this becomes partly blocked the fluid gets dammed up in the eye and presses on the sight nerve. Parts of this nerve go out of action and this causes a loss of vision around the edge of the field of vision. Eventually, if untreated, only the centre of the field of vision is left, and it can even blind you.

Prevention

• Vitamin Ñ can lower the pressure and stem the disease. Research has shown that healthy people who consume about 1.2 g vitamin Ñ a day tend to have lower pressure inside their eyes than those who consume only 75 mg of the vitamin a day. Take 1 g a day to be sure.

• Thiamine (vitamin Bi) may also help glaucoma sufferers. A recent Californian study found that people with glaucoma usually have lower amounts of thiamine in their blood. A study in Guyana in the 1950s found that East Indians living there who ate a largely vegetarian diet, rich in  vitamins, rarely suffered from glaucoma while their fellow countrymen living on a different diet often developed the disease. This researcher relieved the effects of glaucoma with large injections of thiamine (100 mg a day for ten days) and followed this up with oral supplements.

• Modern medicines prevent the glaucoma from getting worse, even making an operation unnecessary, and saving sight. Possible side-effects of the drops are an increase in urine passed and a tingling in the fingers and toes. They generally work for only a limited time and have to be repeated every six hours or so, though the latest drops last longer and only need to be used twice a day. Tablets boost the effects of the drops and are needed in some patients.

This ‘medical’ treatment may make your eyes a little better and will certainly stop them getting worse. If you take certain tranquillizers or steroid drugs (including the contraceptive pill) you will have to be aware that your glaucoma could get worse and get your optician to measure your eye pressure more frequently than he otherwise would.

• Regular testing of your eyes for glaucoma is a simple and painless procedure which should be done every two years ii there is glaucoma in the family and every three years or so as part of a regular eye check-up for anyone over 40. This enables the condition to be caught early before irreparable damage is done to the eyesight. Screening for glaucoma, especially among ‘at risk’ groups, is an example of preventive medicine at its best. There are about 100,000 people diagnosed as having glaucoma in the UK but it is estimated that there are about 150,000 people who have the disease yet don’t know it. Given that this is a major preventable cause of blindness, as soon as you are diagnosed as having the condition do everything you can to ensure that your close family all have an eye test.

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The general feeling among doctors is that people with angina should take their own action, such as eating healthily, stopping smoking, and exercising regularly, to lower their blood cholesterol levels, and that very few actually need drugs to do the job for them.

This is not because the drugs do not work. They do, very successfully, lower blood lipid (fat) levels. However, there is little proof that they actually benefit patients, because the trials of lipid-lowering drugs have had equivocal results. Due to this, there are guidelines for doctors about prescribing such drugs for people with higher than normal levels of cholesterol and other related lipids in the blood.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs should not be considered until other risk factors for atherosclerosis have been controlled or eliminated. They list the most important of them as being smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and physical inactivity.

They then advise that people with total cholesterol levels above 200 mg/dl but below 250 mg/dl should receive dietary counseling involving the general principles of weight reduction, a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol and high in fiber.

Those with cholesterol levels above 250 mg/dl but below 300 mg/dl should be given a thorough diet overhaul. If they do not respond with a good reduction in cholesterol, especially if they have other risk factors such as hypertension and a previous heart attack, then drug treatment should be considered.

For those with cholesterol levels above 300 mg/dl, diet is still essential, but the majority will need drugs. Most people with this level of blood cholesterol have inherited their condition (familial hypercholesterolemia); they may need two drugs with different actions to lower their levels satisfactorily.

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Understand that stopping smoking is not an end in itself. Smoking has been part of your life, probably for many years. It was almost a friend to you. You must replace it with a new positive approach to life, one that takes in your new eating and exercise habits. They will take your mind off the cigarette routine. Eat more fruit, for example. Your rediscovered taste buds will really enjoy it. Try a new hobby, and meet new friends. Avoid places that you know will be smoky and be on your guard at all times. Resolve never to buy or accept another cigarette. Never risk “just one,” even when you have had alcohol and your resistance is low. Just one cigarette can lead to another, and you will soon be back where you started, in a matter of a few weeks.

If you have angina, you owe making the effort to stop smoking to your heart and your future, and to the future of your partner and your family. You are not alone. Several million Americans have given up the habit in the last ten years. Only one in four American adults now smokes. Now that you have stopped (I assume that having read this far you must have made that decision), you have simply joined the sensible majority.

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