The hip bath is one of the most useful forms of hydrotherapy. As the name suggests, this mode of treatment involves only the hips and the abdominal region below the navel. A special type of tub is used for the purpose. The tub is filled with water in a way that it covers the hips and reaches up to the navel when the patient sits in it. Generally, four to six gallons of water is required. If the special tub is not available, a common tub may be used. A support may be placed under one edge to elevate it by two to three inches.
The water temperature should be 10°C to 18°C. The duration of the bath is usually 10 minutes. The weak patients should, however, take this bath for duration of five minutes or so. If the patient feels cold, a hot foot immersion should be given with the cold hip bath. The legs should be so adjusted that there is no pressure upon the muscles, ligaments and blood vessels of the knee region.
The patient should rub the abdomen briskly from the navel downwards and across the body with a moderately coarse wet cloth. The legs, feet and upper part of the body should remain completely dry during and after the bath. The patient should undertake moderate exercise after the cold hip bath to warm the body. A cold hip bath is very useful in all diseases, including cancer. It relieves constipation, indigestion and obesity and helps the eliminative organs to function properly. It thus relieves many symptoms of cancer and boosts the immune system for healing.
*49/355/5*
Not surprisingly, the manifestation of symptoms can have many dire consequences professionally, socially, and personally.
At work, an adult with ADHD may receive reprimands and poor work evaluations from superiors because of his inability to complete assignments as directed or remain focused on the task at hand. He may also have a poor relationship with coworkers and superiors because of concentration difficulties, mood swings, or a fiery temper. All of this, of course, can lead to depression and poor self-esteem, which only exacerbate his problems at work.
Socially, adults with ADHD often have a hard time making and keeping friends because of their impulsivity and inattention. They may misread common social cues and speak or behave in ways that make others dislike them. And their often unintentionally abusive behavior can put a tremendous strain on interpersonal relationships. ADHD has destroyed countless marriages because it takes an exceptionally strong, understanding, and compassionate mate to live with someone so unpredictable and difficult to be around.
On the personal front, unmanaged ADHD can, in extreme circumstances, result in a destroyed life and even suicide. As in childhood, adults with ADHD often feel that they’re stupid, untalented, and undeserving of whatever success they’ve managed to achieve. Their often addictive personality puts them at risk of alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling addiction, and other problems. And when inebriated or under the influence of drugs, they may get into fights that they can’t win or behave in a dangerous and reckless manner that puts them and others in jeopardy.
*37\173\2*
One of the special difficulties which anyone who has epilepsy faces is that they may be involved in an accident or found unconscious after a seizure and be given inappropriate treatment by someone who knows nothing of their condition.
Using the Medic-Alert service can help to avoid this danger. Medic-Alert is an organization which runs a special service to protect people with epilepsy. The organization provides a stainless steel bracelet or necklace engraved with the Medic-Alert emblem on one side, and on the reverse, a warning that the wearer has epilepsy, a serial number and an emergency telephone number.
Medic-Alert keep a file with details of your medication, your doctor’s phone number, and any other information that may be relevant. In an emergency they will give this information to any doctor or authorized person who telephones them. Calls can be made, reverse charge, at any time and from anywhere in the world. Life membership (which includes the bracelet or necklet) is ?13.80.
An alternative is to carry the necessary information about your epilepsy on your person at all times. SOS Talisman make a range of jewellery, which can be bought from most jewellers, incorporating a water-tight locket-style capsule containing an information strip giving your identity and any medical information which would be relevant in an emergency. Or you may prefer just to carry one of the identification cards issued by the British
Epilepsy Association. These are clearly headed I Have Epilepsy and give instructions about what should be done if you are discovered unconscious or during a fit.
DEALING WITH AN EPILEPTIC FIT
Most epileptic fits demand no action on the part of the bystander. Even a tonic clonic grand mal convulsion is not a medical emergency, though it is frightening to watch, especially if you have never seen one before. All you need to do is to let the fit run its course, making sure that the person is in no physical danger and that their airway is kept clear while they are unconscious. Remember that, however frightening it looks, this may have happened to the person many times before and they have always survived without your help!
What to do
Don’t try to hold the person down or restrain their movements. You may need to move them gently away if they are in immediate danger (by being too near an open fire, for example). Otherwise, simply move any pieces of furniture so that there is a clear space around them, or put padding round any immovable objects which might cause injury.
Do not try to force the person’s mouth open or wedge anything between their teeth. They will not choke during the fit and although there is a small risk of them biting their tongue, there is a much greater risk that you will break a tooth by trying to prise their jaws apart. A sore tongue will heal, a broken tooth will not.
Undo any tight clothing around the person’s neck if you can do so easily, and put something soft beneath their head.
Once the violent movements of the convulsion have stopped, gently turn the person onto their side into the recovery position so that their breathing will not be obstructed while they are unconscious. Wipe any froth from their mouth.
Most people recover quite quickly after a fit, but some need to rest quietly for a while or may even fall deeply asleep. Let the person wake naturally if they are sleeping. Sometimes bladder or bowel control are lost during the fit and one of the most helpful things you can do for someone who has had a seizure is to make sure, when they regain consciousness, that there are clean, dry clothes available for them.
If this is the first time the person has had a fit, they should consult a doctor. But if you are helping someone who has had fits before and is under treatment, there is no need to summon an ambulance or send the person home. Once the seizure is over and they have rested for a while the best thing for them to do is to carry on quite normally and resume whatever they were doing when the fit occurred.
WHEN A SEIZURE IS AN EMERGENCY
Most fits last for only a minute or two. If the convulsions continue for more than five minutes, or if another fit begins immediately the first has finished, summon an ambulance immediately. Prolonged convulsions, called status epilepticus, are dangerous. You should call an ambulance, too, if the person does not regain consciousness within a few minutes.
What you should do
Make sure that the person’s airway is clear and they are able to breathe. Put them on their side in the recovery position if you can.
Gently wipe away any obstructing saliva or froth from their mouth.
If possible, stay with the person and ask somebody else to call an ambulance immediately. They should say that the person is in status epilepticus.
At the same time as letting the ambulance service know, ring your own doctor in case they can reach you more rapidly than the ambulance.
If the person has been prescribed rectal Valium suppositories (stesolid), give them one of these. If the seizures have not decreased in ten minutes, it would be reasonable to give a second.
Probably the seizures will have stopped by the time the ambulance arrives. However, if they have not, the patient must be given an intravenous injection to stop the seizures. It is therefore important to make sure that the doctor is on his way, as well as the ambulance.
*62\193\2*
Revolving disco lights are a notorious seizure trigger. But not everyone has the kind of epilepsy that is provoked by flickering lights. Those few people who do are said to have photosensitive epilepsy (PSE). In these people, watching television, flickering lights or even moving through shadows in bright sunlight may all trigger off a seizure. The rate of flicker seems to make a difference: 16—25 flashes per second is the rate most likely to precipitate a seizure. A rate of less than five flashes per second rarely induces seizures. The flickering must also be in the central part of your visual field to induce seizures; flickering that you see only out of the corner of your eye has little convulsant effect. However, going to the cinema very rarely provokes fits. About a third of people with photosensitive epilepsy are sensitive to pattern, especially chequerboard pattern.
Photosensitive epilepsy is mostly a disorder of children and adolescents. Although two per cent of people of all ages with seizures have PSE, in the age range 7—19 years the proportion rises to ten per cent. About one in four people lose their photosensitivity, usually before the age of 30.
Although television is the commonest trigger for seizures in people who have PSE, the fact that someone has a fit whilst watching TV does not necessarily mean that they have photosensitive epilepsy. In most Western countries people now watch so much television that inevitably some epilepsy sufferers will have a fit while sitting in front of the TV. Moreover, drowsiness is even more likely to induce fits than flickering lights, and a lot of TV-watching takes place in the evening, when people are drowsy anyway (or have TV-induced drowsiness). A diagnosis of photosensitive epilepsy can only be made from an EEG taken while the person is being stimulated by flashing lights.
Sodium valproate is the most successful drug for photosensitive epilepsy. However, it may not even be necessary for you to take anticonvulsant medication if you take these simple precautions to reduce your chances of having a seizure.
Always watch TV from a distance of at least six feet (two metres).
Watch a colour TV if possible, rather than a black and white one.
You are less likely to get a seizure watching TV if the room is well lit. Put a small, lighted table lamp on top of the TV set.
Use a remote control panel to change channels; do not go close to the set to adjust it or to switch channels.
Avoid discos or any other situation in which you are likely to meet rapidly flashing lights or flickering patterns.
If you find yourself in such a situation, cover ONE eye with a hand. Do this if you have to go near a TV set too. Do not close both your eyes to protect against flicker; this only seems to accentuate the effect and make you more likely to have a fit.
Wear polarized sun glasses when you are out of doors on sunny days. They help to remove flickering reflections, especially beside the sea.
VDUs
In general VDUs cause no problems, because they do not have the same characteristics as TV sets. In very simple technical terms, most VDU monitors change the picture 70 times a second (70Hz), which is outside the photosensitive range of most people who have PSE, while in a standard TV monitor the picture changes only 25 times a second, which is much more likely to cause seizures.
If fits occur it is usually because the person is sensitive to pattern, rather than to flicker, or because a TV screen is being used as a monitor, with the person sitting closer to it than normal.
However, some of my patients have reported having seizures about two or three hours after a long VDU session. There is no real medical explanation for this, but if you notice such an association yourself, it is probably sensible to avoid using a VDU or to use it less frequently or for shorter periods.
CHILDREN AND VIDEO GAMES
Video games are unlikely to induce seizures. The monitors in games arcades have a picture change rate of 70 times a second, and hand-held video games have a liquid crystal display which does not flash in the same way as a VDU. Neither of these is likely to induce photosensitive seizures.
Seizures have sometimes occurred in children who have been playing video games, but in nearly every case it is because a TV screen was used as the monitor, or because the child was sensitive to pattern. Occasionally a specific game is found to trigger seizures; one American manufacturer devised a game which involved ‘bad guys’ with flashing plates on their chests and backs, and ray guns which were pointed towards the viewer and flashed. Unfortunately, an early trial of the game induced a seizure in a child who was watching it. Further research discovered that the flashes fell well within the sensitivity range of most people with PSE, and the game was withdrawn.
*59\193\2*
At certain times in the hormonal cycle of a woman, especially an adolescent, she may feel particularly drowsy or lethargic. In rare and extreme cases the cycle can produce bizarre behavior, including voracious appetite or unusual sexual activity, similar to that seen in men with Kleine-Levin syndrome. After menopause, another period of hormonal turbulence, deep sleep declines dramatically, which may lead to feelings of daytime somnolence.
Also, excessive sleepiness may be an early sign of pregnancy. Expectant mothers almost always extend their total daily sleep, usually by as much as two hours, throughout their pregnancies. As most mothers know, the effects of hormonal disruption can last for months after the baby is born. The desire to sleep persists, but the opportunity—what with nighttime feedings, diaper changes, and other changes in lifestyle—is no longer there. One of my patients jokingly told me she had designed the perfect cure for parental hypersomnia: send the kid to college. This therapeutic approach has drawbacks, she admitted: it’s expensive, and it usually takes eighteen years before you can actually begin the treatment.
*162\226\8*
There are many facets to the relationship between diet and cancer. We have to consider whether people’s food intake is an important factor in determining their risk of getting cancer of any kind. This is perhaps the primary question and it is the one upon which we will concentrate in this book. There are, however, other questions, and the second is whether altering the diet once a patient is diagnosed as having cancer will affect the outcome. The third question is whether altering diet during the period of treatment of cancer can improve a patient’s well-being and quality of life. The three questions have to be tackled separately. Factors influencing cancer causation are unlikely to be the same as those that influence either the progression of the disease once it is established or the patient’s well-being during treatment.
Although we shall concentrate on diet as a possible cause of cancer, it is worth making a few comments on the relationship between diet on the one hand and the progress of an established cancer and the patient’s well-being during treatment for that cancer on the Other hand. It is clear from a wealth of clinical experience that patients who pay careful attention to their diet feel better during treatment for their cancer and that they gain a great deal of satisfaction from the control that this gives them over at least one very important aspect of their lives. The quality of their lives is better when they ensure a balanced intake of protein and calories (often with vitamin supplements) once cancer is established and once they are undergoing treatments. To this extent diet is an important element in the management of the illness. However, although quite a lot of research work has been done on this topic and very many claims have been made, there is no good evidence that major modifications of diet will lead to people living longer, This is a controversial subject because of its implications for practitioners of ‘alternative medicine’, who sometimes advocate relatively extreme diets. It is not the purpose of this chapter to enter that controversy – our focus is on prevention.
The relationship between cancer cause, cancer prevention and diet is in itself pretty controversial. Great excitement has been generated by a number of experimental observations, and many people hold strong views on this topic. It seems very reasonable to speculate that diet will be an important determinant of cancer because it is such a large part of our environment Through our diet we take In complex mixtures, and consume literally thousands of chemicals every day. Some of these are well known and well characterized scientifically and others are not so fully understood. Many of the important cancers occur in the gastro-intestinal tract which involves tissues extending from the mouth through the gullet (oesophagus), stomach, small intestine and large intestine to the rectum. These tissues, with the exception of the small intestine, are prone to cancers and it does seem likely that the food with which they have continuous contact is likely to be an element in causing these cancers.
It is a great leap from this theory to any precise idea of how far and in what ways it may be true. What particular elements in food arc important and, perhaps more importantly, what conscious changes in diet might be acceptable and beneficial in actually reducing the incidence of cancer? Scientists, in association with government agencies, the food industry and a number of pressure groups, have been working on this problem for decades. It is one of the most difficult areas within which to unravel fact from speculation and it is beset by great difficulty in performing the necessary studies. Suspecting that food can be an important element in cancer cause is one thing; proving it is another; pinpointing elements in the diet that are guilty and can be eliminated from it by realistic and acceptable measures is yet another.
*50\194\4*
There are a number of practical ways to reduce exposure to allergens. Although we have more control over our home environment, some measures can be applied both at home and at work. Some trigger controls are relatively simple to enforce, but others, such as ripping up and replacing floor coverings, are more disruptive and costly.
How far you go in allergy-proofing your house depends on the severity of your symptoms. Keeping the family pet outdoors may be enough to prevent an allergy response for some people, but others may have to give the pet away before any improvement is noticed.
Many firms manufacture and distribute allergy aids. There is a strong market for these products, which include mite sprays, solutions for eradicating moulds, face masks, special pillow and mattress covers, air cleaners and filters. While some of these products have an obvious practical application, there is no scientific proof that any spray or solution will rid your house forever of dust or mites. Some doctors are scathing in their views on the effectiveness of allergy aids, but others highly recommend the same products. Ultimately it is up to the individual to decide whether to buy a particular product.
Allersearch, one of the largest Australian companies distributing and researching allergy aids, is convinced of the effectiveness of its products. Allersearch will supply a product catalogue upon request.
There are some very costly anti-allergy vacuum cleaners on the market. The ducted vacuum cleaner, for example, certainly raises less dust than standard models and has a stronger than normal suction. However, no vacuum cleaner can totally eradicate dust and dust mites. Some salespeople claim their products will cure asthma, and this seductive line has become something of a sales pitch in recent times. Talk with your doctor before spending a lot of money on these products.
*31\148\2*
Acne is a disease, and not just a phase teenagers go through. In fact, it’s on the rise in women over twenty-one.
Acne sufferers usually have a genetic proclivity for the disease, a structural defect in the skin that makes pores function differently. But there are certain factors that do aggravate acne, and you should know them.
Acne Activators
Stress: It can be emotional or physical, negative or positive, even brought on by drinking too much coffee.
Ultraviolet Light: Too much sun can irritate the skin and worsen the condition.
Many birth control pills: Also other medications.
Certain cosmetics: For a list of acne-irritating ingredients contained in commonly sold cosmetics, send a self-addressed envelope and an international reply coupon covering postage to the ACNE Research Institute, 1587 Monrovia, Newport Beach, CA 92663. USA.
Oils or chemicals: Contact can be direct or as indirect as working in a garage or at a greasy grill.
Abrasive scrubs: Or too much rubbing of affected skin. Keep skin clean, but overdoing washing can aggravate acne condition.
Iodine, iodized salt: Eliminate all salted and processed foods, which are usually high in salt that has been iodized and can worsen acne.
• Multiple vitamins with minerals (but low in iodine), 1 daily
• Vitamin E (dry form), 400 IU, 1-2 daily
• Vitamin A, 25,000IU (water soluble), 1-2 daily, 5 days a week (stop for two)
• Zinc, chelated, 50 mg., 3 times daily with meals
• Acidophilus liquid, 1-2 tbsp., 3 times daily, or 3-6 capsules 3 times daily
*5/137/5*
When one stands erect, one’s weight is transmitted through the spine on to the hip and ultimately to the lower limbs. Yet most of the weight of the body is in front of the spine (all the internal organs – heart, lungs, liver, intestines, uterus etc are in front of the spine). The various curves in the spine pull the various organs back to bring that weight in line with the body’s axis. Thus these curves help to support the weight of the various organs as well as keep this weight balanced in the vertical position. A flexible plastic rod when pressed down on the floor or ground will develop curves to maintain the weight. These curves act like springs to accommodate the weight of the body. If one puts on a lot of weight and the spinal muscles are weak then these curves may be accentuated, causing problems. The discs are not the only shock absorbers. In fact the curvatures provide an element of shock absorption as well.
Consider yourself carrying a heavy weight in your hands. The natural reaction would be for you to increase or exaggerate the lumbar curvature to be able to evenly balance the weight, through the compensatory change in curve. If the weight is heavy, you will feel constrained in your lower back. Similar things happen in late pregnancy. Due to the increase in weight in the abdomen the lumbar curve increases and women get a continuous low backache. If they do not prepare themselves with exercises, the condition becomes very uncomfortable. People who have put on a lot of weight face similar problems.
In the case of women carrying weight (pitcher, fodder etc) on their heads in certain countries like Africa and India, the weight is distributed along the axis of the spine and weight-bearing muscles create the upward thrust, neutralising the load. This does not result in any increase in the spinal curves. Similarly men with powerful spinal muscles do not have exaggerated lumbar curves when they put on weight as the excess weight is well compensated for.
*67\330\8*
Remedies for headache prescribed by doctors have all passed the test of a placebo trial, carried out in the relatively calm atmosphere of university hospital out-patient departments. The trial reported here was done in a much more unusual setting in 1995 by a group of doctors and scientists from the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. All of us have had headaches, with which we coped as well as we could. This trial was carried out on 30 patients whose headache disturbed them so much that they had gone to a hospital emergency department. It is important to realize that these patients would have been unusually worried by their headache and would have been full of expectation that powerful medicine would be given. Everyone was given an injection: one-third were given an aspirin-like drug, ketoralac, one-third a narcotic, meperidine, and the other third received a saline injection, all double-blind. All three injections produced an identical reduction of pain. The reason for choosing this example of a placebo effect is to emphasize the effect of the patients’ expectation in exaggerating the placebo effect. The two drugs had normally been tested on relaxed patients and shown to be superior to placebos. In this case, where the patients had deliberately sought emergency treatment and had a high expectation, the placebo was as effective as the drugs. Clearly, we are dealing with a subtle but powerful effect.
*64\219\2*