Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

The reader will be aware by now, if you are suffering from second stage stress breakdown symptoms, that you got this way by using your will-power to ignore the anxiety signals of nervous system overload.
However, if you are experiencing stage one symptoms only, and if you followed all my suggestions so far, you should not develop stage two symptoms. But if you do, you will not be afraid of them, because you know that the second stage symptoms of losing control of your emotions and being unable to ‘psych’ yourself or motivate yourself into doing something you don’t want to do, are just a sign that you must now rest, get help to relieve the stress, and that you must now get some more sleep.
Second stage symptoms are your marching orders, your instructions that this is the end of your ability to stay in the stressful situation without behaving abnormally.
In stage three breakdown you will not be aware, usually, that your abnormal behaviour is due to stress and you will not be able to do anything meaningful to help yourself. When you develop stage three stress symptoms, you will need a ‘rescuer’ to take over and help you.
Therefore, you should regard the symptoms of stage two breakdown, the loss of emotional control and the inability to motivate yourself as easily as before, as a potentially serious threshold not to step over.
If, however, you either choose or are forced to ignore these symptoms and try to continue on under the stress as before, then you will experience serious stress breakdown. If you are to be helped out of your stage three breakdown, the person helping you will have to take into consideration those factors which caused you to ignore the stage two stress breakdown symptoms. You may, in fact, be too strong to stop yourself from breaking down further. You may not be weak enough to prevent breaking down. I know these statements seem paradoxical, but they indicate a basic truth about stress breakdown – strong people are more likely to break down than weaker people.

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ANTI-DEPRESSANTS

Tags: Anti Depressants

The plethora of possible therapies can be quite confusing to the new patient. In addition, most individual therapies are taught at a number of different training schools, which often vary in their emphasis and approach. What is important is to find both a therapy and a practitioner that suit you personally. Often the qualities of the practitioner as a person are at least as important as the techniques he or she uses.
The therapies described in the following pages can all be helpful for emotional stress, physical tension and pain, as well as insomnia. If touch is lacking in your life, you might receive particular benefit from a hands-on treatment like osteopathy, chiropractic, aromatherapy, or massage. If you feel taking medication is important or necessary, try homoeopathy or medical herbalism.
Before embarking on a course of treatment it’s worth checking out what the practitioner has to offer in addition to any specialization. Some train in more than one discipline, and can advise you on diet or nutritional supplements, or combine treatments like osteopathy and acupuncture.
You may find your practitioner using unusual means of diagnosis: some are trained in iridology, diagnosis through the iris of the eye, which reflects the state of the body: variations in the colour, dark or light spots and so on can indicate organic or functional weaknesses and nutritional deficiencies. Some use kinesiology techniques (see page 150) to test imbalances and nutritional needs; some use dowsing with a pendulum. Some are highly intuitive and can tell a lot about a patient simply by looking at them or touching them.
Assuming your GP is open minded, it’s as well to let him or her know that you are seeking additional treatment. Doctors today are conscious of the possible side-effects of tranquillizers and sleeping pills; they don’t want patients to become addicted, and many of them recognize the value of alternative forms of reducing anxiety.
However, if you are already taking medication you should discuss this with both your doctor and the natural practitioner you have chosen. Some forms of natural medicine really are alternative rather than complementary to conventional medicine; some herbal medicines, for example, may not be compatible with medical drugs, and the effect of some homoeopathic remedies can be counteracted by drugs like steroids. So you should talk to your doctor before making any changes in or adding to what he or she has already prescribed.
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Anti-Depressants/Sleeping Aid

Tags: Anti Depressants

Unusually for drugs developed to tackle chronic illness, both orlistat and sibutramine have strict limitations imposed by their SPA licenses on their length of use:

• Orlistat is licensed for use up to 24 months. NICE recommends that it is used for up to a maximum of 12 months normally and up to 24 months in exceptional circumstances.


• Sibutramine is licensed for 12 months of treatment.

Available data suggest that many patients receive only 2 or 3 months of treatment. The probable explanation for this is likely to be unmet and unrealistic expectations – on the part of the patient or clinician. The rate of weight loss in the first few weeks is often too slow to satisfy a patient who has been struggling to lose weight for months, and possibly years. Other reasons might include poor pretreatment counselling – in the case of orlistat leading to perceived unacceptable GI side-effects, in the case of sibutramine to unpleasant but often transient dry mouth, headache or constipation.

The important thing is to use the drugs for as long as it takes, within the licensing regulations, to achieve the purpose for which they were started. After the initial weight-loss phase, drugs can play a crucial role in preventing weight regain, both prolonging the beneficial effects of weight loss and allowing more time for the patient to reinforce newly learned dietary and exercise habits.

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Tags: Weight Loss

Sometimes called ‘controlled crying’, this is a steplike way of achieving the same thing, and may be more acceptable for some parents, though in many ways it is more demanding. When the child starts to cry or call out, the parents should attend to him within a minute. They should go into the room, and stroke and reassure the child without picking him up, changing the nappy, or giving a drink. Once the child has calmed down, even if the crying has not stopped completely, the parent leaves the room. For continued crying, the parent then waits a longer period, say 3 to 5 minutes, before going in again, where the child is soothed by stroking and soothing, and then leaving. The next time the interval is increased again, until finally the child falls asleep. It is important to attend to the child in a less than enthusiastic way, so that he is reassured but not rewarded. This should continue each night until the child gets the message that the parents have no intention of backing down.

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Tags: General health

Jan

The wedding of Jan’s daughter was six months away and the planning for it was gaining momentum. Instead of feeling excited, Jan was feeling desperate. What if she had a panic attack on the day of the wedding? What if she had to leave the church or the reception? What would everyone think? She didn’t want to make a fool of herself or disrupt the wedding in any way. What if she couldn’t even make it to the wedding at all? She was feeling anxious about it already, yet it was still six months away. Jan wanted to prevent her anxiety from increasing, but she didn’t know how.

Marilyn

Marilyn’s counsellor had told her that clinging to the memory of her first panic attack was not helping her as she worked on her recovery. Marilyn felt quite angry with the counsellor. What did the counsellor know anyway? That first panic attack was dreadful. Marilyn had been in the local shopping mall when it happened. She had no idea what it was and had thought she was dying. She had asked a few people to help her, but they didn’t respond. They must have thought she was either drunk or crazy. Marilyn had.to get back to her car and drive herself home, where she stayed for the next four years. Although she had made it home safely every time she tried to go out since then, Marilyn would think of her first attack and naturally she would become anxious. She didn’t want to go through that again. How could she not think about that attack? It was that attack which caused all the ongoing problems. Marilyn thought the counsellor, like all the rest she had seen, didn’t really understand and wouldn’t be able to help her.

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Tags: Anti Depressants

The bags under your eyes, the weight you have been losing or gaining, the grumpiness and sheer exhaustion—these are the obvious reasons to make some changes. Your child’s physical and emotional well-being are also reasons.

Dr. Burton White, author of The First Three Years of Life, feels that sleep problems understandably occur in families where children are loved and whose needs have been met. So, in some ways, the emergence of sleep problems is not necessarily a bad sign. He notes that it is the continuance of sleep disturbances that can cause deeper problems.

Dr. Marc Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, states that the development of healthy sleep habits is not automatic. If your child has not learned them, then his functioning during wakefulness is not “optimal.”2 Put simply, a sleep-deprived child (waking several times a night or missing out on even an hour) is not at his best. His cognitive processes will be fuzzy and his social functioning will be marked by grumpy unpredictability.

A child can “adjust” to whatever sleep patterns he has fallen into. (Look at how you have “adjusted.” Do you say “I didn’t know it was possible to exist with so little sleep”?) However, there are signs—some subtle, some blatant—that he is not at his best.

It is the parents’ job to insist on healthy sleep, just as they insist on healthy nutrition, to give the child the strongest base from which to grow. Good sleep habits do not necessarily happen spontaneously. This is a skill that can be learned by children and facilitated by parents.

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Tags: Anti Depressants

Too much calcium in the blood usually means that your cancer has spread to the bones, especially if your cancer started in the breast. However, the reverse is not true—in general, cancer does not usually cause excessive release of calcium when it spreads to the bones. Some particular types of cancer can also cause high calcium levels in the blood without spreading at all, but this is unusual. The ones that can do it include squamous cancer of the lung and cancers of the kidney and ovary.

Too much calcium in the blood can sometimes be treated by getting the responsible cancer into remission. Of course this may either be impossible or so costly that you decide that it is not worth trying. The main alternative is to work on reducing the high calcium levels, either instead of attacking the responsible cancer, or while you are waiting for anti-cancer treatment to work. Some of the ways of reducing high calcium levels include flushing the calcium through the system with a lot of intravenous fluids, or by using mithramycin, phosphate mixtures taken by mouth or corticosteroids.

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Tags: Cancer

The congestion of the internal veins which occurs from the pressure of the enlarged womb during pregnancy is also a common cause.

It is also said that, when man assumed the upright stance, he not ony threw a strain on his back but on his lower bowel as well. Except for a few old, fat dogs, haemorrhoids are rare in animals.

The most common symptom is bleeding. This tends to be bright blood and to occur at the end of a motion. The blood is not mixed with it but tends to splatter or drip into the pan. It may be noticed on the toilet paper. This is the sign of first degree piles.

Second degree piles prolapse outside the anal margin on straining at stool but go back of their own accord.

Third degree piles prolapse outside and remain there, unless replaced manually. They may also come out when the person stands for long periods or becomes tired.

Prolapsing piles may become squeezed by the tight anal margin and become strangulated. This pressure can lead to thrombosis, the formation of a clot, and is painful.

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Tags: General health

It appears everyone agrees induction of labor for purely social or medical convenience is bad medicine.

Normal, uncomplicated labor and delivery usually occur where the standard of pre-natal care is good and complicating factors are recognised and dealt with early in the pregnancy.

In these cases, home delivery would be possible. But most doctors are reluctant to return to this form of obstetrics, because, when complications arise, they are likely to do so quickly and it is then difficult to summon aid promptly.

A compromise, with delivery in surroundings approximating home conditions and with the husband and other family members present, seems to offer the advantages of both extreme positions.

A major objection to induction of labor is that it is difficult to be sure just when the baby has reached birth maturity.

Induction too early, with possible prematurity, constitutes a risk. Conversely, allowing the pregnancy to go on too long is associated with some risks to the baby, in the form of post-maturity (over-term).

The answer to what is best for both the mother and the child has not been universally accepted.

But what is best for the doctor and the hospital must remain subservient to the needs of the two patients involved for each pregnancy.

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Tags: General health

It’s not just your pre-and post-event meals that influence your performance. Consuming a high carbohydrate diet every day will help you reach peak performance. The G.I. factor of the carbohydrate is not important here, only the amount of carbohydrate. It has been proven scientifically, unlike many other rumours involving dietary supplements, that eating lots of high carbohydrate foods will maximise muscle glycogen stores and thereby increase endurance.

The reason for this is that carbohydrate stores need to be replenished after each training session, not just after a race. If you train on a number of days per week, make sure you consume a high carbohydrate diet throughout the whole week.

Remember that alcohol interferes with glycogen re-synthesis and lowers blood glucose levels, sometimes to dangerous levels. Keep alcohol intake moderate—no more than one to three standard drinks per day and try to have two alcohol-free days a week. A standard drink is equivalent to one glass of wine (120 ml), one middy of beer (285 ml) or one nip of spirits (30 ml).

Beer is not a good source of carbohydrate. When athletes fail to consume adequate carbohydrate each day, muscle and liver glycogen stores may eventually became depleted. Dr Ted Costill at the University of Texas showed that the gradual and chronic depletion of stored glycogen may decrease endurance and exercise performance. Intense work-outs often two to three times a day, draw heavily on the athlete’s muscle glycogen stores. Athletes on a low carbohydrate diet will not perform their best because muscle stores of fuel are low.

If the diet provides inadequate amounts of carbohydrate, the reduction in muscle glycogen will be critical. A heavily training athlete should consume about 500 to 800 grams of carbohydrate a day (about two to three times normal) to help prevent carbohydrate depletion. In practice, few Australian athletes achieve this enormous figure. As a comparison, a typical Australian man or woman eats only 240 grams of carbohydrate each day.

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Tags: Diabetes