Harmonious Eating

For the people of the industrialized world, and particularly in the affluent West, eating habits have changed more dramatically over the last century or so than in all the thousands of years. We no longer eat food gathered or grown in our neighborhood or even in our own country. We eat food from all over the world. We no longer eat what is in season, big thanks to aero planes, freezing and canning. We eat strawberries at special events, Brussels sprouts in midsummer, baby peas and avocados all the year around.

We may eat meat as often as three times a day. Bacon or sausage for breakfast, roast beef sandwiches for lunch, meat and two veg for dinner. We also eat denatured food white flour, white rice, white sugar, chemically refined dozens of different chemicals in the form of artificial additives as well as traces of the tons of chemicals used in Western style agriculture.

It’s hardly surprising that our digestive systems, programmed by thousands of years of far simpler eating, can’t take the strain. Digestive problems all the way from wind to constipation to full-blown ulcers are almost endemic in Western countries. If our digestive systems are not working at 100 percent efficiently the whole body suffers. Absorption of essential nutrients is impaired. Toxic wastes are not eliminated. The gate is opened to myriad health problems.

When Dr. William Howard Hay cured himself in the 1920’s of chronic ill health simply by changing the way he ate. After all his colleagues, had failed to help him with conventional medicines. He stumbled on the answer to many people’s problems. He called in Fundamental Eating, and it formed the basis of what is now known as the Hay diet.

The fundamental rule of the Hay diet is that concentrated starches and proteins are not eaten at the same meal. If you eat cheese, you don’t eat bread, roast beef, but no roast potatoes, chips or fish. According to Dr. Hay, the human digestive system is not adapted to the simultaneous digestion of starches and proteins. When it is challenged repeatedly with such combination, digestive problems result.

The nutrients in food are poorly absorbed. And as the digestive systems breaks down, other more serious health problems arise. The Hay diet has improved the health of millions throughout the world who have learned how to combine foods in the right way, avoiding mixtures of food that fight. Not just digestive problems but diseases respond to Hay’s concept, since the well nourished, self cleansing body has the increased resistance and raised vitality essential for nature’s own healing processes.

It’s not our recommendation that everybody should stick rigidly to Hay’s fundamental eating plan. But the pulse of Hay can be felt throughout his advices. The majority of recipes use the healthy combination of foods he recommended. And in most cases, the menus reflect these principles of Harmonious Eating, as we have called it.

Even if you feel perfectly healthy, try harmonious eating for a few weeks. You may be surprised by how much better you feel. If you are not well and particularly if you have a digestive or bowel or weight problem, then Harmonious eating will produce significant long terms benefits.

What to Eat With What?

In Harmonious Eating, all foods belong in one of three groups, Protein, Neutral and Starch. Starch foods can be combined with Neutral foods, and so can Protein food. But starch and protein foods should never be eaten at the same meal. Allow an interval of at least four hours between meals. And if you do snack in between, make sure it’s on Neutral foods.  

The Protein Foods are, meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, whole eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt, all fruits expect those in the starch group, all the legumes lentils and all dried beans.

The Neutral Foods are, All vegetables expect potatoes, all nuts except peanuts, butter cream, egg yolks, Cold pressed sesame, sunflower or olive oils, all salad stuffs, seeds and sprouted seeds, herbs, honey, and maple syrup.

The starch Foods are, potatoes, bread, flour, oats, wheat, barley, rice, millet, rye, Buckwheat, sweet fruits, bananas, Ripe pears, Ripe papaya, very sweet grapes, dried fruits, milk and yogurt,  and small amounts of honey.

You will be eating in a new pattern which at first sight may look like deprivation. So no more fish and chips, steaks, and kidney pie, burgers in a bun or cheese sandwiches. With a little imagination you will quickly find that you don’t need to discard all of your favorite foods. You just have to prepare them differently and change your eating patterns. With Harmonious Eating the urge to snack nibble at regular intervals throughout, the day is greatly diminished, and often disappears altogether, so that unwanted pounds melt silently away.

Super Foods that Build Body’s Resistance

In an ideal world, the food we eat would be organically grown in soil uncontaminated by heavy metals and acid rain. The vegetables we eat freshly picked from our own gardens. The water we drink spring-pure and the air we breathe mountain fresh. For the vast majority of us, this ideal is as remote as the Garden of Eden. So we need super Foods that Build Body’s Resistance.

Our bodies suffer the daily insult of pollutants, and the stress of food that is often deficient in essential micro nutrient. The fact that the human race has evolved at all is remarkable. That we survive on our polluted planet is miraculous. We do survive, but at what cost?

We are seeing today a dramatic increase in diseases which are linked directly to the failure of the body’s immune defense mechanisms. We are seeing diseases never before encountered such as Aids, different cancers types.

For which we appear to have no immunity. Many workers in the field of environmental medicine believe that our new vulnerability is a consequence of our diet of devitalized foods and the products of agribusiness and global contamination.

Even if you eat the healthy diet all the experts’ advice, vegetables, fresh fruits, salads, wholegrain, nuts and seeds you may be short of the vital nutrients that you think you are getting in abundance.

Some nutrition expert went shopping for oranges and found that while an orange bought from the grower and freshly picked contained as much as 180 mg of vitamin C, and orange bought in a supermarket, which looked just as fresh and glowing, contained not a single milligram.

A survey indicated that 35 percent of all men and 67 percent of all women had an intake of zinc that fell alarmingly short of the 11 mg per day recommended by the WHO. These figures were based on the food intake of the subjects, and assumed that these foods contained the levels of zinc set out in every nutritionist’s calculating tables.

A study by the Food and Agriculture Organization reported that severe zinc deficiencies in a wide range of soils in Europe and United States. Fruit and vegetables grown on depleted soils are often low in vital minerals and trace elements. Especially Zinc, magnesium and selenium, and there is no sign of an general improvement in farming methods.

In fact, intensive farming today relies on ever increasing amounts of chemical fertilizer. And pesticides which linger in our food stuffs, further depleting our nutritional reserves. These days, it is not enough simply to rely on the traditional well balanced mixed diet.

To ensure super resistance, you must know how to supplement your diet. Not with pills and capsules, but with the Super Foods which are extra rich sources of the natural goodness we all need.

Together they will supply the vital bricks that build your body’s resistance to stress, disease and infection. Treat these foods as extra insurance at time of need, physical, mental or emotional. During pregnancy, Flu epidemics, periods of overwork or unusually high stress, or after an indulgent holiday.

Use them at times of illness to hasten your recovery. Above all make sure that these foods feature regularly in your everyday eating. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Also Read: How to Grow Best Flavors and Sweet Carrots

Why Regular Exercise is Essential Part of Your Life

As you all know, there are numerous Health benefits of Regular Exercise which tones your body, alerts the mind, increases resilience to physical and psychological stresses, firm’s muscles. Loosens joints, banishes stiffness and general aches and pains, builds up the efficiency of heart and lungs, lowers blood/cholesterol, helps; overcome insomnia, regulates appetite and generates a vigorous and vibrant sense of well being. Of all the beauty routines you could adopt, exercise is undoubtedly the most worthwhile.

Regular Exercise generates energy, the more you move run, stretch jump and bend the more vigorous and energetic you will feel. The next time lethargy descends try overcoming apathy with activity. Take brisk walk, jog up and down on the spot for a few minutes and see how much more alert and refreshed you feel. Now plant to increase the amount of activity you take during the day, first carrying out the general fitness test outlined in the personal profile to find out how active or inactive you are.

Moreover, you should also aim to Regular Exercise fairly vigorously for at least 20 minutes three times a week. Exercise is one of the easiest things in life to find excuse not to do. Cold weather, alternative arrangements indolence all undermines the best of intentions. So make it as easy as possible for yourself. You need to choose a sport or activity you enjoy, and set out gently. Sudden enthusiasm and frenetic bursts of activity can lead to fatigue, exhaustion, sore aching muscles, strains, sprains. 

Even fractures all signs that you have pushed your body too far and have asked it to something for which it was insufficiently prepared. Incorporate more than one exercise or activity into your fitness programmed for maximum benefit. Start gently, build up gradually and progress more vigorously as you become fitter. The more unfit and the older you are the more gradually you should do.

You should be especially careful if you are over 35 have not had a recent medical checkup have not exercised for a long period of time; drink or smoke heavily, are more than 9kg overweight; have a specific medical problems or a family history of heart disease. Check with your doctor first. However old you are and whatever the shape you are in always observe certain cautions when you begin exercising. 

Never rush it never pace yourself against someone who is younger or fitter than you are never push yourself beyond your limits or force yourself into positions that feel painful and learn to listen to your body. Stop when you feel fatigued or breathless, or when your pulse rate is approaching its maximum safety level. Never attempt to run off a sprain or a strain. If you do sustain and injury, it is better to rest instead and start more cautiously the next time round.

Moreover try to make sure; you should cover all three basic essentials of Regular Exercise are incorporated into you is programmed. A tailor made exercise sequence that does this for you to make 100% fit. The three essentials are strength, suppleness and stamina. While other aspects such as coordination, timing, balance agility, judgment and skill are also important. These are the three major benefits of exercise. If you are a keen jogger or runner, practice yoga or go dancing once or twice a week. Running and jogging are long on stamina and short on suppleness. Yoga and dance on the other hand, are two of the best suppleness exercises that there are.

Your physical strength and athletic ability are largely determined by the strength of your muscles which made is with Regular Exercise. Strong muscles are firm, give a sleek contour to the body and enable you to perform most types of movements with ease. The two exercises here are designed to test the relative strength of the upper and lower halves of your body. 

Poor ratings indicate that you need to work at toning and firming the major muscles groups. This is achieved through exercise. While the number of muscle fibers per muscle is determined genetically and cannot be increased or altered. Exercise will enlarge the diameter of the individual muscle fibers and increase the blood supply within the muscle, thereby increasing its overall strength.

One of the major advantages of a Regular Exercise, well integrated fitness programmed is that over a period of time, it will enable you to build up both muscular strength the ability of your muscles to exert maximum force at a given moment and muscular endurance their ability to perform repeatedly without fatigue. Inactivity will cause muscles to diminish in size and to atrophy, or waste away. 

Diminished muscle fibers not only weaken the muscle, but also make it much more susceptible to injury b sudden and unfamiliar stresses. As the joints are supported and moved by the groups of muscles on either side, weak muscles will also tend to make for weak joints that are more susceptible to dislocation or injury to some or all of the supporting ligaments.

The strength of the large muscle groups is increased by working them, either through specific types  of sports or activities or b using an exercise routine that combines certain movements to persuade the muscles to contract and then to extend. The second is the more reliable method provided of course, that the routine is sound, because it works systematically through each of the large muscle groups in turn. The most effective way of increasing the strength of the muscles is by long term resistant exercise that makes muscles work harder by providing a counter force. I.e. are swimming against the tide or using buoys to add drag bicycling into the wind or incorporating the use of weight into your exercise programmed.

Furthermore a sensible use of weights will not over develop your muscles. Instead it will firm and strengthen them, thereby protecting the joints. It will also greatly improve the general line and contour of your body, particularly those areas, such as thighs, buttocks and upper arms. That tends to be most resistant to weight reducing diets. By working muscles not commonly used in everyday activities, these exercises can help you to sculpt a better body shape. 

Dumb-bells and weights held in the hand will strengthen chest, arm, shoulder and upper back muscles commonly weak in women. Strap on weights that can be attached to ankles as well as to wrists will strengthen the muscles in the calf, thigh and abdomen as well as in the upper body. Both types are available from most sports shops and department stores or you can improve with cans of food or bags of sugar from your store cupboard.

If you are using weights first make sure that you are relatively fit and able to carry out your basics exercise programmer without any straining of the muscles or joints, or stiffness or soreness afterwards then increase the amount of effort you put into you’re exercising by incorporating weight of between 1 and 3kg each. 

Also you can exceed this amount if taking part in carefully supervised weight training programmed. Twice a week workouts at 30 minutes a time will have an impressive toning and conditioning effect on the body when combined with stretching and aerobic exercises, but you must use it regularly not more than every 48 hours.

Suppleness is both an inherited and acquired characteristic and is determined by the relative ease with which you can move your joints through their full, or potentially full, range of movements to reach stretch bend, twist and turn with ease and grace. On the whole women tend to be more supple than men and we all grow gradually less supple as we get older. 

Touching your toes is not a good indicator of suppleness because the ability to reach the floor with your fingers is determined as much by the length of your upper body relative to the length of your legs and by the length of your hamstring muscles, as it is by your ability to bend in half from the hip. Try the four tests given here and over the page instead.  

While suppleness is certainly desirable, both extremes can have their disadvantages. The greater range of movement of the loose jointed carries a risk of dislocating or injury through moving the joints too far. If you are very supple concentrate on building up the strength of the muscles that stabilize and support to the joints, particularly the quadriceps at the front of the thigh. Which protect the vulnerable knee joint? 

The restricted range of the tight jointed tends to make for general stiffness and also renders the muscles more prone to strains and pulls. Concentrate on the simple lengthening and suppleness exercises to increase the mobility of the joints without in a way forcing them to move in an unfamiliar and potentially harmful direction. Do these regularly for at least a month before attempting any of the more demanding activities suppleness rating, such as gymnastics or yoga.

A general loss of mobility that comes with age imposes certain, sometimes severe limitation on the ability to move freely and easily. In order to keep joints moving freely and easily, everyone needs to build up and to maintain their suppleness, even those lucky enough to be born supple. To do this each of the major body joints should be exercised through its complete range of the movement at least three times a week and preferably once a day.

Exercise Increase Stamina

Stamina is staying power and it is the factor by which fitness is most commonly judged. Stamina enables you to go faster and further without becoming exhausted or breathless. How good your stamina is by carrying out the test, opposite. If you did not achieve the highest rating, aim to improve it. Any type of aerobic or oxygen using Regular Exercise will increase your stamina if carried out for a sustained period of time over a number of weeks or months.

While stamina depends to a certain extent on the strength of your muscles it depends first on the strength efficiency of your heart and lungs. Muscles run on oxygen which arrives from the lungs via the heart. The more oxygen the muscles require the harder the lungs and heart must work. When exercising really hard, muscles account for about 90% of the body’s total energy requirement. To meet this demand the lungs must work harder to supply the oxygen the muscles need and the heart must beat faster to deliver it. Unaccustomed exertion can cause the unfit heart to double its rate.

This may place unreasonable stresses upon it steady, regular exercise meanwhile will increased the capacity of the heart to pump blood through the system. Repeated studies have shown that with regular fairly vigorous exercise, the heart muscle actually becomes stronger and may increase its output by as much as 20%. By doing so, it will also lower the heart beat because; with each stroke a greater volume of blood is being sent around the body. Athletes in training tend to have pulse rates that are as much as 20 beats lower than average.

There are several ways of building up stamina by doing Regular Exercise while protecting your heart and lungs from the potential dangers of over exertion. When you start running, jogging, swimming or cycling, intersperse periods of activity with periods of rest. Start by running for 100 meters walking for the next 100 then running again over the same distance and then walking home. Alternatively if you are swimming take breathers every third or fourth length rather than swimming 12 to 14 flat out and feeling exhausted and nauseous at the end of them. As you get fitter and can manage more, prolong the distance you swim, run or jog and reduce the periods spent walking or resting.

A more scientific method of assessing your Regular Exercise capacity and keeping it within healthy limits has been developed by the Cardiac Research Unit at London City Gym This safe and practical method is called pulse rate control and is particular recommended for men over the age of 35. Ten examples of Regular Exercise and activities that will push your pulse rate up and so help to increase your stamina rated here in order to effectiveness. Source: CP

1. Running two miles in a maximum of 16 minutes
2. Skipping for 6 minutes with 30 seconds breathers after each minute
3. An energetic 30 minute game of squash or racquet ball.
4. Running up and down stairs for three minutes
5. Cycling at a moderate to fast pace for 15 minutes
6. Swimming for 10 minutes continuously.
7. A vigorous game of tennis, badminton or any other team game such as baseball.
8. Walking briskly up a steep hill for 10 minutes
9. Jogging for a mile in a maximum of 12 minutes
10. Brisk walking for two miles.

Also Read: 

• Hearing, the Vital Part of Your Personality
• Reasons to Take Good Sleep
• Natures Medicine Chest

Mesothelioma Symptoms, Diagonsis, and Treatment

Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that develops from the thin layer of tissue that covers several of the internal organs. Every year more than 40K people died with this type of cancer. The malignant mesothelioma is a rare but severe type of cancer. Most people who get it have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles. After being exposed to asbestos, it generally takes a long time for the disease to form. Mesothelioma rates varying different part of world, however Australia has higher rates, along with United Kingdom. Males are mostly prone to these disease then females, diagnosed often at the age of 65. The primary types of mesothelioma are pleural, involving the lung, and peritoneal, involving the abdomen. Mesotheliomas can be hard to treat, whether the cancer is recoverable or not. But it’s very imperative that you understand the goal of treatment before it starts.

Symptoms of Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma signs and symptoms shows breathing problems due to fluid around the lung, a swollen abdomen, chest wall pain, cough, loss of appetite, sweating, Hoarseness, Fatigue or anemia, and weight loss. These symptoms normally come on slowly. Hence, over 80% of mesothelioma cases are caused by exposure to asbestos. Thus, high rates of disease occur in individuals who mine asbestos, produce products from asbestos, work with asbestos products, live with asbestos workers, or work in buildings containing asbestos. Prevention centers normally treatment often includes surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy.

About half can expect a mesothelioma life expectancy of two years, and one-fifth will have a mesothelioma life expectancy of five years following diagnosis. Immunotherapy, also called biologic therapy, is designed to boost the body's natural defenses to fight the cancer. It uses materials made either by the body or in a laboratory to improve, target, or restore immune system function. For mesothelioma, pembrolizumab and a combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab may be options for patients who have already received chemotherapy. Different types of immunotherapy can cause different side effects. Talk with your doctor about possible side effects for the immunotherapy recommended for you.

Diagnosis of Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is not easy to diagnose, however If your doctor doubts that you have it, he will ask you to go for tests to make sure of the diagnosis. You may need to go for several tests, i.e. Chest X-ray, CT Scan, Plural aspiration, Thoroscopy, Biopsy, Bronchoscopy, and Mediastinoscopy. Moreover in most of cases, mesothelioma patients are treated by specialists Doctors, who have experience with this specific form of cancer. These doctors are often thoracic oncologists who specialize in cancers of the chest, although some may specialize in other areas as well. Also depending on your tolerance, chemotherapy may affect you ruthlessly, mildly, or not at all. Chemotherapy side effects disappear gradually after treatment and varying according to the type of drug, amount of dose, and length of time it’s given. However, most common side effects experienced during chemotherapy are Hair loss, Loss of appetite, Nausea, Diarrhea, Fatigue. Also, targeted therapy is a treatment that targets the cancer’s specific genes, proteins, or the tissue environment that contributes to cancer growth and survival. This type of treatment blocks the growth and spread of cancer cells while limiting damage to healthy cells.

How Can You Improve Mesothelioma Life Expectancy?

You need to be very proactive about your health, which is a first step toward recovering your mesothelioma life expectancy after a diagnosis. First of all, you have to seek legal advice, and then you can start pursuing the compensation you deserve to afford the treatment you need. Then, you need to think about right healthy diet, which should be rich in plant foods and low in processed foods and red meats. Precise guidelines include eating at least 2.5 cups of fruits and vegetables each day, selecting whole grains over refined grains, limiting your consumption of processed meat and red meat, and limiting alcohol consumption.

Although many factors are doctors look into determine a patient’s prognosis and mesothelioma life expectancy, in order to increase the effectiveness of treatment options leading to an increased survival time, early detection is critical. The younger the better, as young fit patients have a higher mesothelioma life expectancy than their older counterparts when diagnosed with cancer. Further, clinical trials provide patients access to emerging treatments such as immunotherapy treatments, gene therapy and photodynamic therapy.

If cancer spreads to another body part from where it begins, doctors call it metastatic cancer. If this happens, it is a really nice idea to talk with your doctors who have experience in treating it. And when cancer cannot be detected in the body and there are no symptoms, it may be called having “no evidence of disease” or NED. Patient to understand that recovery from cancer is not always possible. If the cancer cannot be cured or controlled, the disease may be called advanced or terminal.

Mesothelioma diagnosis is nerve-racking, and for various people, advanced cancer is hard to discuss. However, it is imperative to have open and candid conversations with your doctor and health care team to express your feelings, preferences, and concerns. Also, patients who have advanced cancer and who are hopeless to live less than six months may want to consider a type of palliative care called hospice care. Hospice care is designed to offer the best possible quality of life for people who are near the end of his life.

At that time you and your family are encouraged to talk with the health care team about hospice care options, which include hospice care at home, a special hospice center, or other health care locations. You have to usually follow up appointments every few months to check your progress how you are and see whether you have any problems or worries. The appointments with your Doctors also give you the chance to raise any concerns you have about your recovery.

 

Hearing, the Vital Part of Your Personality

The sense of hearing develops early, may be well before birth. The developing baby is surrounded by sound. In fact, the natural synchrony of the two heartbeats the baby’s is twice that of the mothers is now thought to constitute our earliest appreciation of rhythm. So, experiments, showing that babies can be soothed to sleep by recreating sounds left behind in the womb, have borne this out.

New babies do not learn to recognize or to locate sound for some months. Like all information received by the senses, it must first be translated and made sense of by the brain, before it becomes meaningful. Association is all, whether it is the rattle of a spoon against a cup, earning food or the soothing words of the mother, meaning closeness security and pleasure. If a baby is not brought up in a world of sounds and more specifically words, he or she will fail to associate sound with meaning and may appear deafer and the age of two or three than the child whose hearing is actually impaired.

How do we hear?

Sound originates as a movement or vibration of air, which then sets up smaller vibrations which get fainter and fainter as they move through the atmosphere. The function of the ear is so receive and transmit sound to the brain first by amplifying the pressure of the vibrations as they travel through the ear and second by translating the vibrations into electrical nerve impulses, intelligible to the brain which then decodes them. As with sight we hear not with the ears, but with the brain.

Pitch and Loundness

Frequency of sound or pitch is measured in Hertz. One Hertz is one cycle, or vibration, per second. Middle C on the piano, for example, is 256 Hertz, or cycles per second. We all respond to certain frequencies at very subtle level, particularly at the lower end of the scale, because they set up and generate internal rhythms in the brain. Hence ht powerful effect of meditative mantras, chanting and rock music.

The human ear starts to pick up low frequency notes at about 20 Hertz and goes on hearing successively higher notes to a level of about 20,000 Hertz, after which sounds become too high to be heard. Some animals, however, can still detect them. Silent dog whistles, for example are pitched at about 22,000 Hertz, and bats actually navigate by ultrasonic’s, emitting high pitched squeaks and finding their way by means of the echoes bouncing off obstacles.

The same principle is used for radar, depth sounders in submarines, burglar alarms and for medical canning when X-rays are unsuitable such as during pregnancy. Which sound becomes perceptible to most people? Some people with an extremely acute sense of hearing will be able to perceive sound at minus 10 decibels, but this is rare. Hearing tests work by measuring the quietest perceived sound for different frequencies.

Hearing Tests

One out of every 1,000 children is born with some degree of hearing impairment. If there is reason to suspect that the hearing might be damaged, a rudimentary test can be given at birth. All children should have a hearing test at seven months. Hearing deteriorates appreciable with age. By the age of 80, one in two people will have a moderate to severe degree of hearing loss.

This type of hearing loss is very similar in pattern to noise induced hearing loss. In fact, one study carried out in the Sudan among a people who live in a world unassailed by urban and traffic noise and who show a much sharper sense of hearing in old age. It is suggested that the hearing deterioration we normally attribute to advancing age might in part at least be noise induced.  

If you suspect that your hearing is not as sharp as it was, have a hearing test. The earlier any impairment is detected the greater the chance of compensating successfully for it. Using a hearing aid takes practice and concentration as it does not just amplify speech, but all foreground and background noise as well.

Noise

Because noise is invisible and often intermittent it is very difficult to assess both in terms of what the populations as a whole finds tolerable and of what constitutes a potentially damaging source of sound. Even so it is now well recognized that exposure to excessive noise can cause irreversible loss of hearing particularly of the lower pitched sounds. How loud is too loud? If you have to raise your voice to carry on a conversation with someone three to five feet away the noise level is potentially damaging.

Looking After Your Ears?

The less you interfere with your ears, the healthier they will be. The ear is an efficient self cleansing organ. The wax inside it picks up dirt and potential irritants as they enter the ear and prevents them from travelling further down. The warmth generated at body temperature melts the wax as it accumulates so that both it and the dirt can run out of the ear quite freely.

The most you should do is to wipe the outer ear with the corner of a face cloth. Poking around with a finger or any type of instrument will tend to push the wax further down towards the eardrum where it is less accessible and more likely to harden and affect your hearing.

If you suspect that an excessive accumulation of wax is affecting your hearing then to see your doctor who will arrange to syringe your ears. This is done by directing a jet of water at the eardrum not at the wax so that the wax is pushed out from the inside. If you have any history of trouble with your eardrum, you should not have your ears syringed your doctor will use an alternative method.

Earache is usually referred pain and often accompanies dental problems. These should be your first ground for suspicion when or if it strikes. If taking a painkiller every few hours does not help the problem, do not resort to homespun remedies, go to see your doctor or dentist.

Having your ears pierced is a perfectly safe procedure as long as it is carried out under sterile conditions. Stud sleepers are initially preferable to ring sleepers, as the dirt on your fingers may cling to the ring ad infect the ears as you turn the ring round. Choose gold in preference to other metals, as this is the least likely to lead to infection. If your ears are to flare up consult your doctor.  Keep your ears protected from the cold and use a good sunscreen while sunbathing. So, the cartilage at the top and back of the ear is particularly susceptible.Source: CP

Breast Cancer The Risk Factors

Quote: Health Care

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood….. Marie Curie

Well, knowing how your body works will stand you in good stead. Being aware of what can occur, being awake to the danger signs and having a baseline knowledge of what is and is not normal for you, means you are substantially reducing the risks, not of illness or infection occurring but of allowing it to develop to a stage when it may, indeed be ominous. This is your first line of defense and your most important one. It means taking the responsibility for your own good health, looking upon it and having the common sense to consult your doctor, should you find or feel your might have found anything potentially abnormal.

Breast

These days, how women feel about their breasts largely determines how they feel about themselves as women. Because of this, breast cancer and with it the thought of losing a breast, generates more fear among women than almost any other single disease. This fear keeps the average woman at home for 5 to 6 months before she consults her doctor about a lump she has found in her breast.

Not every lump, however, has to be a cancer. In fact very few are. Even so, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women and afflicts one in every 12 women at some time in their lives. For this reason, it is very essential to be a especially vigilant and vigilance begins at home.

Although there is a tendency to talk of breast cancer as a single disease, there are many different types. Some are very slow growing and may not spread much more rapidly. The doubling time for breast tumors it takes one abnormal cell to become two and two to become four can be as little as two months or as much as nine years. Whatever the type of cancer the chances of successful treatment increase dramatically with early detection.

Therefore, early detection depends first and foremost on regular, monthly self examinations. The more practiced you get at examining and feeling your breasts and the better acquainted you are with the natural differences  and irregularities between them, the greater your chance of spotting a significant change at the earliest possible opportunity. Early detection depends, on medical screening the breasts, clinical examination and mammography. With advances in technology it is possible that a third ultrasound may provide a major breakthrough.

While it is undesirable that any screening method should carry a risk however slight of aggravating the condition it is supposed to be protecting against, mammography is undoubtedly the earliest way of reliably detecting a breast lump before it has become large enough to be felt, by either doctor or patient. A breast lump usually only becomes palpable at about 2cm in size. The mammogram can detect a lump at ½ cm sometimes less, and will pick up between a quarter and a third of all breast cancers before they become large enough to be felt.

As long as minimal dose radiation issued, the risks carried by the screening process are virtually negligible when set against the considerable advantages of early detection. The comparative risk to benefit ratio of mammography are illuminating. Clinical records and various established factors enabled scientists to compute that if one million women were to be screened annually for 10 years, radiation induced breast cancers would be induced in seven in the meantime, more than 300,000 early cancer would have been detected.  

Breast Cancer The Risk Factors

Although isolating specific risk factors is difficult with any disease, the following are now regarded as being the major ones for breast cancer and the ones at the top of the list are considered to carry the highest risk. They do not suggest that you are likely to get breast cancer, accounting as they do for at least half the female population. But they do suggest that you should be especially vigilant.

·         If you have already had cancer in one breast or have any other type of hormone dependent cancer, such as cancer of the cervix, uterus or ovaries.

·         If you have a close relative who has had breast cancer particularly if the cancer occurred at an early age 35 or younger and was bilateral in both breasts.

·         If you have never been pregnant or particularly if you had your first full term pregnancy over the age of 35. While childbearing in your teens and early to mid 20’s seems to have a definite protective effect, breastfeeding does not appear to have a significant one.

·         If you are over 35, then breast cancer is extremely rare in women below this age group, when a lump in the breast is most likely to be a benign tumor or cyst.

·         If your periods started early at 12 or younger and finished late at 50 or over.

·         If you have had benign breast disease. Some breast lumps, though benign occasionally show signs of abnormal, pre cancerous growth.

·         If you have undergone prolonged hormone replacement therapy, after hysterectomy or over the menopause, you may be at a slightly increased risk. The progesterone component of bothe the combined hormone replacement therapy and the combined contraceptive pill seems to confer a protective effect against benign breast diseases.

Healthy people who carry no special risk, such as a family history of heart disease, do not necessarily need an annual checkup. A more realistic schedule would be would be every two years from the age of 35 to the age of 50 once every year after that. Every month just after your period has finished; on the first day of each calendar month if you have been through the menopause. Mammography once at the age of 35, a single view can be done annually thereafter. If you fall into one of the higher risk categories your doctor may suggest that you have mammograms taken earlier and or more frequently. If a female relative has had breast cancer, you should start mammography screening at the age earlier than that at which the relative cancer was detected.

Moreover, cervical smear soon after the time of first intercourse and against one year later, thereafter at three yearly intervals up to age 35 and at five yearly intervals up to age 60. If all results have been negative testing can be discontinued. You should have annual smear test if you have had the herpes virus.

How to Take Good Sleep

Don’t go to bed as advised by Mark Twain, insomniac and humorist, because so many people die there. But the truth is that if you did not you would soon find yourself yearning for cool sheets and a soft pillow. As you know, that sleep is essential to all living things, which have their own cycles of waking and sleeping, activity and rest stop and go.

It is the balance between them that generates energy and interest. During sleep, the body gathers its resources, regenerates its energies rebalances its metabolism and orders its psyche. Just how much it refreshes the brain and the body becomes apparent as soon as you are deprived of it. Lack of sleep quickly diminishes the quality of life when awake.

Fortunately this does not happen very often. Sleep is so natural and vital that the body tends to take just as much, or as little, as it needs 14 hours or more as a baby, 6 hours or less as an octogenarian. But it is not just age that determines your sleep requirements. The amount of sleep needed varies considerably from person to person and with the state of the mind and emotions. The eight hours rule stands corrected experiments in sleep laboratories have consistently shown that some people need as few as five hours sleep before walking refreshed and alert while others may need as many as 11. Body and brain seem to restore themselves at different rates in different individuals.

If you are worried and stressed out that you’re not getting enough sleep considers first that you may in fact be getting all the sleep that you need and that you are only suffering from unreal expectations. Use your diary to record how much sleep you got, over a two week period and how you felt the following day. If you are habitually wake up feeling un-refreshed and carry on feeling excessively tired throughout the day. Then you may not be getting your full quota.

You should bear in mind that if you are going through a particularly demanding phase in your life and are getting very little sleep, you do not have to make it all up. Studies on students kept up for three nights in a row at the University of Florida, USA showed that they only needed three to four hours extra sleep to make up for the 24 they actually lost.

Keep in mind that sleep cannot be forced. It is easy and effortless and seeks you out. It does not come with trying still less with anxiety. As worrying about not getting off to sleep is almost certain to keep you awake, relax using and of the methods detailed on the previous pages and let sleep surprise you. It almost certainly will. Even so, there will be times in most people live when sleep is elusive. You may take hours to go off to sleep and then find that your time asleep is disturbed by periods of wakefulness or you may wake up at dawn, overcome with tiredness and yet find it impossible to drop off again.

You may get up in the morning and somehow struggle irritably through the day, only to go to bed at night to find that exactly the same thing occurs. Sleeplessness has become a pattern. While it is a pattern that usually resolves itself spontaneously, prolonged periods of insomnia can lead to considerable strain and should be discussed with a doctor in order to rule out any medical cause.

Moreover, if you are suffering from sleeplessness, then do not automatically reach out for the sleeping tablets. These should be a last not a first, resort and should be prescribed only for a short period of time in order to help you ride through a particularly difficult period. Despite their evident drawbacks, however sleeping pills are still widely prescribed. In fact it has been estimated that every tenth night’s sleep in the UK is hypnotically induced. While the newer generation of sleeping tablets may be safer than the previous ones the barbiturates and the highly addictive mandrax, they still work in large general areas of the brain, often depressing the central nervous system in amounts above that simply required to produce sleep. They may linger in the system long enough to give feelings or handover on awakening together with impaired concentration and alertness the following day. In addition, these sleeping tablets which are almost identical in chemical composition to tranquillizers, can lead to dependency. With long term use, it becomes increasingly difficult to get to sleep without them so treat them with respect.

Tips for Sound Sleep

1.       Go to sleep when you are tired, not when it is time for bed. If you feel wide awake, stay up. Capitalize on having a little extra time. The best idea is to read a book or take short walk. Fresh air and gentle exercise are two of the best sleep inducers, particularly if taken an hour or so before going to bed.

2.       The most effective ways of counter acting difficulties in getting off to sleep at night is to get up an hour early morning. It takes a certain amount of discipline, but persevere and you will soon find that you start feeling sleepy at bedtime if not before.

3.       Another tip is to avoid over loading the stomach just before going to bed. Meals are best eaten early in the evening and proteins, despite their unearned reputation for causing bad dreams make much better bedtime foods than carbohydrates. Cheese milk and yogurt are ala good, late night foods. Milk is especially suitable because it contains high levels of an amino acid that seems to play a significant part in mobilizing the sleep inducing chemicals in the brain.

4.       Make sure that your system is not running on overdrive by the time you go to the bed, our intake of all stimulants including alcohol, sugar, salt, coffee, tea and cola drinks. The caffeine present in the last three speeds up the metabolism and its buzz may last for up to seven hours. If you go to bed at mid night, coffee or tea drunk at six o’clock in the evening could well be keeping you awake. While caffeine tends to interfere with sleep in the early part of the night, large amounts of alcohol, though sleep inducing will cause you to wake early. Because the alcohol is still in the process of being metabolized, it can react upon the digestive and nervous system, causing restlessness and gastritis not to mention handover.

5.       Take a warm bath before going to bed, use an aromatic essence to soothe and relax you. Some of the pure, essential oils, such as chamomile, Melissa and orange blossom, are deliciously relaxing. As you soak, try going through a simplified progressive relaxation procedure, r simply lie there and enjoy it. Letting your mind drift, do not drift off altogether though.

6.       Make yourself a sleep pillow, to place a pot pourri of herbs dried hops, lime blossom, rosemary, lavender, jasmine and chamomile in a flat linen envelope and tuck it inside your ordinary pillow. Hops and lime blossom, in particular have very strong sleep inducing properties.

7.       Check that is you comfortable in bed. This may sound obvious, but it is crucial. There are no hard and fast rules about what meals one bed and bedroom preferable to another it is your own comfort that counts. If you find you tend to sleep better in other beds, your mattress may be too soft or too hard, or your bedroom too cold or too hot.

8.       Is your sleep disturbed by background noise, some people find sound, whether the indistinct rumble of traffic or the louder ticking of an alarm clock, conducive to sleep. Others find it infuriating. In addition there is the possibility that your sleep is being disturbed by noises of which you are unaware. If you do find it difficult to get off to sleep, keep waking up during the night or feel excessively tired the following day, embark on an anti sound strategy. Move to another bed room away from street noise, have double glazing fitted to bedroom windows or buy a pair of earplugs.

If sleep still eludes you try building up the amount of carbon dioxide in your body. It is easy to fall asleep in a crowded room when the windows are tightly shut, because the amount of oxygen available is gradually being displaced by carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide acts as a natural tranquillizer in excess as a poison too, of course, numbs the brain, slows the body responses and produces a range of symptoms identical to stage one sleep. This breathing technique will temporarily raise your carob dioxide levels, without dangerously depriving you of oxygen. Take three deep breaths and at the end of third, hold on to the outward breath for a count of six, so that the lungs are completely emptied of air. Repeat this twice, and then do it once again but this having exhaled as deeply as possible breathe minimally not gulping for air but breathing from the top of your chest in short, shallow breaths. This will increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your system and can be repeated every ten minutes or so if you are still awake.

 

Nature’s Medicine Chest

There animals and plants both on land and in the seas that are a rich source of remedies, painkillers and health supplements. Killer venoms can ease pain and save life, snakes scorpions, frogs, jellyfish and ants, which are the stingers prisoners and paralyses of the animal world, produce a range of venoms and secretions powerful enough to kill or immobilize their prey. Many of these poisons, scientist have now discovered, that contains chemical compounds that can be used in medical treatments.

 

Pit viper venom is used in a number of drugs. The venom of Brazilian pit viper, which induces the constriction of blood vessels and increases blood pressure, has been used to develop a drug for treating people with high blood pressure.  Russell’s viper of India and Southeast Asia has venom used for a drug that controls bleeding in hemophiliacs, and vital ingredient of a drug for treating thrombosis comes from Malayan pit vipers. And from the venom of African’s which include the deadly 14 feet long black mamba, scientists have isolated proteins that can help in the treatment of brain diseases.

Natural substances that effectively block pain have been found in the skin secretions of frogs. The skin toxins from some of the brightly colored arrow poison frogs of Central America have been made into a painkiller to be more effective than morphine. Scientists have also investigating the toxins used by certain spiders to immobilize their prey for up to three weeks without impairing the victim’s vital function. These secretions may be useful for the production f new drugs that could sedate patients for long periods without ill effect, perhaps during lengthy operation.

If you look in history, you will find that in 1870’s Joseph and Thomas Bancroft of Brisbane Australia a father and son team of Doctors, heard of a narcotic brew made by Aborigines They decided to investigate the medicinal potential of  this brew, made from water stored in the bark of a small tree of the eastern Australian rain forest. Experiments with extracts from the tree, a Duboisia known locally as a corkwood, resulted in the production of a highly effective dilator for use in eye surgery. Other doctors used the brew to treat inflammations and fevers. Before long rate forest it was being exported to Europe.

But with the move towards synthetic medicines at the beginning of the 20^th century Duboisia and many other local remedies fell out of favors. The 2^nd world war when synthetic drugs were in exceedingly short supply, did Australian researchers begin to look once more to the rain forest as a source of natural medicines. Testing different plants at random, the researchers discovered almost 500 alkaloids potent poisons made by certain plants to protect themselves against animals that strip them of their leaves.

They found too, that there are more poisonous plants growing in tropical rain forests than in temperate forests. This is because tropical forests have a far greater number of animals competing for food so tropical plants need much better defenses against animals. Duboisia leaves were found to contain several alkaloids one of which hyoscine, is a highly effective treatment for motion sickness, shell shock and stomach disorders, as well as the side effects resulting from cancer therapy. This led to the cultivation of Duboisia once again becoming a commercial proposition. Now the hyoscine rich leaves of a hybrid of two Duboisia species are exported in powdered form to pharmaceutical companies in many parts of the world.

The Senses

All our knowledge has its origins in or perceptions, to the ancient Greeks sensitivity constituted the essential difference between plants and animals, and between animals and humans. It was not that anyone specific sense was better developed in human’s just one glance at the animal kingdom will give examples of more acute vision (birds of prey), hearing (dogs and bats) or smell (insects). Rather it was that between them they provided a range of information that the intelligent brain could sift through and use for the purposes of communicating, socializing, improvising and inventing.

Every moment of our waking lives, millions of sense signals from the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and skins are sent to the brain most of which are never perceived on a conscious level. All these signals are constantly being adjusted analyzed edited eliminated, even completed by the brain. It is for example hard to find the blind spot in the eye not because it is not there but because the brain fills in the missing part of the visual jigsaw. The world of perception is very different from and much more selective than the world of sensation.

Moreover, in adulthood, the senses have a strict hierarchy, ruled first by the eyes and then by the ears the distance senses of sight and hearing and only later by the skin, the mouth and the nose the proximity senses of touch, taste and small. You can see how this sensual hierarchy organizes itself simply by closing your eyes. What happens? Your subjective inner world becomes filled with sound you can pick up the rhythm of your own breathing and back ground noise, which you may not have been aware of before, seems amplified. You do not need absolute quiet to before, seems amplified. You do not need absolute quite to hear a pin drop when your eyes are shut. If you carry this experiment one stage further and place your hands over your ears, you will now find that sensation arrives predominantly from your sense of touch.

You will suddenly become aware of the comparative softness or hardness of the chair on which you are sitting, of the texture of the clothes you are wearing and of sensations arriving from different parts of your body, your neck, your back, and your shoulders even your scalp. These are not new sensations they are continually being communicated to the brain via the skin. The difference is that you have only just begun to perceive them.

Further, we are all much more receptive to the messages arriving from our senses than we, perhaps, realize although most of the time we make use of just a fraction of their full potential. Think of the virtuosity displayed by the piano tuner, who carries all the notes of the scale I his head and can detect and adjust the slightest variation in the pitch, or the discernment of the master of wine, who has educated his senses of smell and taste to such a point of refinement that he can identify not only the vintage of a certain wine, but the locality and even the vineyard that produced it.

Migraine or Headache Symptoms

Migraines are very common these days. The migraine is common; suffer a headache at some time in their lives which may be classified as migraines. Classically the condition starts with disturbances of vision caused by a constriction of blood vessels supplying oxygen to the eye.  These may include seeing bright lights zig-zag lines, auras or haloes around bright objects or vision may be burred or even double. Less commonly, tingling or sensations of numbness may be experienced in the hands and feet. This stage usually lasts for about 20 minutes. A migraine usually lasts from four to 72 hours if untreated. The frequency with which headaches occur varies from person to person.

The headache, unbearably oppressive in nature, often starts on one side of the head and in up to 90 percent of the cases, is also accompanied by feelings of nausea, if not by actually vomiting. Migraine seems to run in families about 50% of sufferers can trace and hereditary factor usually arrives before the age of 40 and afflicts three times as many as men. While the cause is not yet established the most likely theory is that it is caused by a blood disorder causing the vessels to spasm and dilate attacks have been fairly convulsively linked to a number of factors. Migraines may progress through four stages: prodrome, aura, headache and post-drome, though you may not experience all stages.

Principal among these are stress anxiety and tension are common precursors of migraine attacks menstruation and foods containing nitrite, glutamate and other yet unidentified chemicals. Recent studies suggest that migraine sufferers maybe unable to metabolize proteins present in certain foods. Higher levels of these proteins still circulating in the bloodstream are then thought to act as stimulus of trigger for the attack. In one study on 500 migraine sufferers the following foods were most consistently implicated.

1.        Chocolate

2.        Cheese and dairy products

3.        Citrus Fruits

4.        Alcoholic Drinks

5.        Fatty fried foods and vegetables

6.        Tea or Coffee

7.        Meat, Especially pork

8.        Seafood

Moreover, other contributing factors may include a change in routine, physical or mental fatigue too little or too much sleep travel, a change in climate or temperature, high winds, bright glaring sunlight, noise, sleeping tablets, oral contraceptives, hunger, head injury, high blood pressure, toothache and other pains in the head or neck. Because migraine is triggered by so many different things and because each sufferer will have particular sensitivities to some, but not all of these trigger factors the best preventative course lies in working out which one you are sensitive to and talking steps to avoid them. An estimates show that 6 to 18 percent of the adult population suffers from recurring migraines (about 6 percent of men and up to 18 percent of women.

Keep a diary or note in your mobile for a period of at least three months and record your attacks of migraine together with any associated factors. Hence as the stage of the menstrual cycle, foods eaten meals missed and particular stresses. You can also help yourself by recognizing the warning signals that precede an attack and taking appropriate action. Along with or in place of visual disturbances you may experience dizziness, numbness, nausea, increased sensitivity to noise or light, unusual energy or hungery, yawning, trembling, changes in mood and outlook, unusual parlor or an increase in frequency of passing water. When these occur, do not solider on. Use any of the relaxation methods i.e. lie down in a darkened room and try to sleep.

If you feel very sick, anti-emetic drugs, which your doctor can prescribe for you can help. Take soluble aspiring or paracetamol for the pain and if attacks are severe, consult your doctor. Stronger analgesics may then be given or occasionally, drugs to reduce the dilation of the blood vessels and thus to prevent or at least minimize, the headache. But some of these such as ergotamine do have slid effects over frequent doses leading to incessant headaches for example and are therefore rarely prescribed. Moreover, medicines may also support in to alleviate their severity once they have started as well as supplements, coloured lenses in glasses or contact lenses and alternative therapies.