Blog about medicines and adverse drug reactions.
May 21st, 2009 admin
Sometimes children have bald patches on the scalp due to hair loss. Many babies are bald from birth, or lose their hair shortly afterwards, which is a normal pattern before permanent hair growth occurs. Often babies have a bald patch at the back or side of the scalp due to friction caused by lying on the mattress of their cot or in baby seats. This is also normal and as soon as the baby is able to spend more time sitting up, hair starts to grow back in these bald patches.
Cause
The commonest cause of abnormal hair loss is ringworm. In rare cases, older children may pull out their hair (trichotillomania) and this usually signifies some emotional disturbance. If there is no identifiable cause for hair loss, your child may be suffering from alopecia areata, which is hair loss that runs in families. In this case hair may be lost from any part of the body.
Clinical features
If your child has ringworm or impetigo, he may complain of an itchy scalp. Otherwise the only sign of alopecia is a bald patch.
Treatment
Treating the underlying cause, such as ringworm, will usually solve the problem of hair loss.
Prevention
It is important to remember not to overdo it with brisk hairbrushing and very tight pigtails or ponytails, as this can sometimes cause minor hair loss.
When to see your doctor
• if your child has significant hair loss for no apparent reason;
• if your child has an itchy scalp;
• if in addition to hair loss your child is generally unwell.
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May 19th, 2009 admin
A child with a chronic medical condition may need to see a number of different professionals, not just doctors but also allied health professionals. This care may take place largely in hospital clinics, and his contact with doctors and other health professionals may not only be frequent, but also confusing or even overwhelming. It is very important for you as parents to feel in control of this process, and for you to understand the illness, its treatment, any tests and so on.
It is always useful to have one of your child’s doctors act as a central reference point, not only to co-ordinate the child’s care, but also to make sure that you (as well as the child) understand fully what is going on. Your child’s general practitioner is ideally placed to do this, and sometimes a paediatrician will also be helpful in this role. The co-ordinating doctor will normally have copies of all the medical reports and other relevant information about the child, and will be able to support the child and the family in coping with the chronic illness and its possible consequences.
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May 18th, 2009 admin
At those times in your life when you are behaving in a defeated, passive manner and feeling inadequate, helpless, and hopeless, you may experience some of the same problems in sexuality as the husbands and wives below.
DIMINISHED PRE-EJACULATORY FLUID: I used to feel real full, like my penis was ready to explode. My underpants would be wet even before I came. Now I just don’t notice that feeling. I just don’t see much of the fluid.
HUSBAND
While the aging process accounts for some diminishing of pre-ejaculatory fluid, emotional and interactional factors can also inhibit its emission. Sixty-three men reported experiencing this problem.
DIMINISHED LUBRICATION: I used to be too wet sometimes; now I just feel dry. It hurts when he enters. I feel turned on, but I’m dry.
WIFE
Aging, hormonal changes, some disease processes, other factors affect lubrication of the vagina, but emotional factors are also influential. While amount of lubrication does not indicate amount of arousal, a noted change in amount of lubrication can signal emotional states incompatible with this response. Five hundred sixty-five women reported problems with lubrication at least occasionally.
Prior work in the field of sexuality has equated male erection problems with female failure to lubricate. Female clitoral erective problems were essentially ignored. As you read above, male and female erective difficulty is related to hot-running times, to hyperarousal. Inhibition of secretion of lubricatory fluids in men and women is related to the cold-running times, those times when there is a lack of life energy, eagerness to be close, to merge. We don’t need to lubricate if there is little likelihood of the joyful friction of joining and staying together.
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May 18th, 2009 admin
Our sample couple scored high toward imbalance. The wife was clearly doing almost everything, and was even responsible for sexual frequency. “I am the Hunchback of Notre House. I walk around like this, hunched over, scanning for junk, mostly other people’s junk. I guess my family thinks that their dirty clothes have special magnets in them so they fly straight to the washer, rotate to the dryer, fold themselves into neat piles, and levitate to the correct drawer. Maybe they think I have magnets on me. Other people’s dirty clothes sure seem to cling to me.”
The husband reported, “I think I carry the major burden. If I don’t provide for our security, who will? I know it sounds kind of sexist, but I really am the breadwinner, you know. What would you think is more pressure, winning the bread or cooking it?”
It does not matter who is right or how dated and sexist this disagreement may seem. Neither partner felt a balance in their marriage. Sexually, the situation was the same.
“I told you before,” reported the wife. “I set the sexual frequency. I have to set it for both of us. If I am not in the mood-spontaneous, as he calls it—then I have ruined everything. He might even sulk. I guess he hopes for mercy sex, sex because he is sulking.”
“I have to work, really work at sex with her,” reported the husband. “She’s kind of like a big cement wheel. Once I get her started, I still have to work. My hand gets tired from rubbing her nipples, then her clitoris. I always make her come before I come. Not once have I come before she comes in bed.”
When this type of marital and sexual imbalance is present, both partners feel that they are the one who carries the weight. The situation resembles a scale, with both sides weighted down so heavily that the entire scale collapses. Who “starts it,” how often, and when are three of the most talked-about concerns in sexual therapy.
Remember that there are no “high” or “better” scores on this test. Too much balance, continued efforts to equalize, share, divide, assign, and assume marital or sexual responsibility robs the marriage of its spontaneous potential for a natural flow between partners, the sexual Tao. Too much attention, marital hypersensitivity, can smother the individual spouse and take away from both partners’ uniqueness for the other. Too much feedback can result in over- or premature adjustments within the marriage, making it and the individual spouses hyperreactive. Too much connection can result in stagnation related to lack of new and stimulating input for the marital system. Too much order prevents change and growth.
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May 15th, 2009 admin
When we get a fright, such as from a car rushing at us or someone jumps out and says “boo”, our brain sets off a chain of reactions.
A nervous impulse goes to the adrenal glands, which lie above each kidney. Adrenalin is poured out into the blood and this acts on various organs so as to key us up to deal with the danger.
The autonomic nervous system governs all those actions of the body which are not under voluntary control. The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic parts. These have both antagonistic and complementary functions.
Stimulation of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system acts to prepare the body to react to danger by either fight or flight. It may “overshoot” in this reaction and then the parasympathetic acts as a damper. Sometimes this also overshoots the mark.
Stop and think what happens when you get a fright.
Your heart starts to beat faster, it may even miss a beat. Your lungs breathe deeper, the pupils of your eyes dilate, your muscles tense up, you get a tight feeling in the throat and you may break out in a cold sweat. Digestion stops, there is a sinking feeling in the stomach and you may want to pass water or use your bowels.
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May 15th, 2009 admin
Deafness due to damage of the nerve from the effects of loud noise was once called “boilermaker’s deafness.”
Now we know it may also occur in those working in many industries and also from the modern phenomenon of the pop concert. Most sensible musicians who play in these bands wear ear protection but their enthusiastic fans don’t.
A sudden loud noise may cause temporary or permanent deafness but noise-induced deafness is more likely to be due to exposure over a prolonged time. At present, the law in Australia limits the amount of noise exposure of workers to 90 decibels for an eight-hour day. Above this, protection should be worn.
Most authorities accept that this may be too generous and the law is due to change, limiting the exposure to 85 decibels but there are some who will suffer loss at even lower levels.
A rough measure of whether the noise in which you work is too loud or not is to note whether you have to shout to be heard when you are about 30cm from the other person’s ear. Of course, the length of exposure is important and a moderate noise may be tolerated for some hours before the risk of damage becomes high.
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May 12th, 2009 admin
The Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, is not a new phenomenon. Its existence has been known for hundreds of years. And its incidence is not increasing. But because children are no longer dying of infection and congenital illness, SIDS is now the major cause of death in infants.
The scientific definition of this condition is “the sudden death of any infant or child which is unexpected by history and in which a thorough post-mortem examination fails to demonstrate an adequate cause of death”.
It commonly affects infants between the age of two and five months, but may occur up to the age of two. The story is usually that the child is well or maybe suffering from a slight cold when put down to sleep. The child is then found dead by the parents or whoever is minding him.
Cot death will strike about 500 children each year in Australia, with just over 100 in Victoria. There are about 60 per cent boys to 40 per cent girls.
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May 12th, 2009 admin
There is no single cause for cancer but many different factors which act together. You will remember I said earlier that it is likely that we all develop many cancer cells throughout our lifetime, but that in most cases our immune system destroys them before they have a chance to form a detectable cancer growth. The dangerous cancer cells are the ones which somehow escape the body’s immune system. This escape is made possible by weaknesses in the immune system, strengths in the particular cancer cell, occurrence of a large number of cancer cells or a combination of all three.
You might understand this better if we compare it to the growth of weeds. Imagine weeds as the cancer cells and you, the gardener, as the immune system. If you check on your vegetable patch every day and pull out every tiny weed that is peeping through the soil, no troublesome big weeds will ever have the chance to form. However, if you check your garden less often or less thoroughly, or only pull out part of each weed, you’ll have a problem. This is what can happen if the immune system is not working at full efficiency. Next, you could be unlucky enough to have very aggressive weeds in your garden which very quickly develop an extensive root system. In spite of careful checking and weeding every day, these particularly strong weeds might still overrun your garden. Thirdly, if a great number of new weeds appear every day, it might just be impossible to detect and pull out every one. There is no one simple reason why your garden should get overrun with weeds. It usually takes a combination of factors.
*42/40/1*
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May 8th, 2009 admin
The commonest side-effects are:
• feelings of nausea
• breast tenderness
• feeling bloated before a period
• slight weight-gain
• disturbances of the digestive system
• leg cramps
• headaches
• feelings of pre-menstrual tension and other complaints caused by taking progestogen.
Weight gain. This is usually short-lived. A small minority gain five pounds or more, but even those who put on weight at the start of HRT usually end up only about one pound heavier than when they started. Allow yourself two or three months for your body to adjust before worrying about any extra weight – you’ll probably lose it anyway, although the progestogen stage of the cycle may cause a weight gain of two or three pounds, like it did before the menopause, and this is lost again when the course of progestogen finishes. As we get older, we all start to burn calories more slowly than we did in our youth, so if you are eating the same amount of food as you did several years ago you will end up putting on weight unless you can take more exercise to burn it up. A thickening of the waist is not quite the same as weight gain, and is due to getting older, not to HRT. Before the menopause, a woman produces mainly female hormones, but also a small amount of male hormones too; the oestrogen causes the typical female shape of large breasts and hips and a small waist. But when oestrogen falls, the male hormones start to predominate, so the older woman tends to have a thicker waist, smaller breasts and a deeper voice.
Many of those who gain more weight are smokers who have been advised to give up smoking while they are on HRT – so they eat instead! Others lose weight on HRT. These are often women who were distressed and unhappy because of menopausal symptoms and who used to eat to ‘comfort’ themselves. Once on HRT they feel happier in themselves, so don’t feel the need to eat so much.
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May 8th, 2009 admin
Consumer organisations usually recommend that the first step to finding a health practitioner who suits your needs is a recommendation from someone whose judgement you trust. Your general practitioner may know of a gynaecologist who has expertise in treating your condition; although general practitioners sometimes ask patients if they know of anyone suitable. In this case, you might like to put forward the name of a gynaecologist who has been recommended to you by other women in your family or by your friends. If you have any doubts about whether the specialist recommended has suitable experience, you can check whether he or she belongs to the relevant professional association, such as the national College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and then ring that association and check that his or her training and qualifications are adequate.
The consumer guide Choice advises patients choosing a practitioner in alternative medicine to check if the relevant professional association has a code of ethics, disciplinary procedures for practitioners who break the code, and a complaints procedure for dissatisfied clients. ‘These factors aren’t a guarantee’, Choice says, ‘but indicate the organisation is serious about maintaining high professional standards.’
It does not bode well if you feel inhibited, rushed or unsettled with a particular practitioner or if he or she does not treat you with respect, dignity and consideration for your privacy. This is your cue to look elsewhere for help. Equally, it is reasonable to bypass any practitioner who suggests a treatment that seems extreme or very expensive, who speaks in incomprehensible jargon or who recommends a single treatment for all women. Sometimes a practitioner will recommend a particular treatment not because it is particularly well suited to your needs but because he or she is able to give that treatment or it is available nearby. Questioning your practitioner about why one particular treatment is preferable to others can be revealing.
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