Food allergies – unusual reactions or increased sensitivities to food or drink – are more likely to occur in infants than in older children. The condition involves vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps and occurs from minutes to hours after the child has had certain foods, beverages, or medications. Non-pasteurized cow’s milk is the most common cause of food allergy, but eggs, wheat, soybean formulas, orange juice, tomatoes, chocolate, fish, berries, and melons may also be responsible.

A malabsorption syndrome, which occurs when the digestive system lacks certain natural chemicals to digest food, may produce symptoms similar to those of a food allergy. Normally, the body produces natural chemicals called enzymes that break down starches, fats, proteins, and sugars into forms that the body can use. In a malabsorption syndrome an enzyme is missing, which means that the child cannot digest certain foods. For example, a condition called celiac disease may interfere with the digestion of gluten (starch found in wheat and rye), and the disease cystic fibrosis may hamper the digestion of fats and proteins.

Signs and symptoms

Hives, eczema, runny nose, and asthma can all be signs of food allergy. Sometimes blood appears in the baby’s stool. If a particular food brings on abdominal cramps and diarrhea (with or without vomiting), a food allergy can be suspected. By changing the diet and observing your child’s reactions, you may be able to identify the problem. Often, however, specific and complex tests are required to diagnose a food allergy. If the child does not seem to tolerate several kinds of foods and is not doing well generally, the cause may be a malabsorption syndrome.

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Home care

The only danger in fainting is possible injury from falling. Try to catch the child before the fall or as the child goes down. Place the child flat on the back, raising the legs to return blood to the head. Although not required, the coolness from an open window or air conditioner may help. Keep your child lying down for five to ten minutes after consciousness returns.

If your child is not yet unconscious, but feels a faint coming on, have the child sit with his or her head between the knees. Place your hand on the back of the child’s head, and have the child push the head up slightly against your hand. This manoeuvre forces extra blood into the head.

Precautions

• Sometimes a first convulsion is mistaken for fainting. If fainting occurs often, or if there are any signs of epilepsy, see your doctor.

• If the child’s skin turns bluish during an apparent faint, or if your child is not completely well before and after fainting, consult your doctor. Extremely rare heart conditions might resemble fainting.

• Smelling salts are not necessary and are not always helpful. If you use smelling salts to revive your child, be careful not to burn the membranes inside the nose.

Medical treatment

If there is any question about the cause of your child’s fainting, the doctor will examine your child for various causes of unconsciousness. Your doctor may order an electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, blood chemistries, or a chest X ray.

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Smoking will do in more than internal organs. It takes a pretty heavy hit on health-care budgets, too. A Dutch study figured that health-care costs for smokers can be 40 percent higher than for nonsmokers. So we’d all save a bundle if everybody would just quit smoking, right?

In fact, total health-care costs would actually rise in a smokeless society. The reason is obvious: More people would be living longer to run up medical bills in other ways.

But that’s not going to happen any time soon. If you’re a smoker, you know why: It’s hard to quit. It should never be told to a smoker that quitting is easy, says Dr. Thomas Glynn of the American Cancer Society. “But nobody ever said that addiction can’t be beat,” he says. Here’s how.

Really mean it. When it comes to losing the cigarette habit, the road to failure is paved with halfhearted resolve. “Motivation is the absolute determinant,” Dr. Glynn says. “Nothing will work unless you woke up that morning and said to yourself, ‘This is it. I’m not smoking anymore.’”

Take a walk. Exercise can give you that extra motivational boost and make you feel better while you’re trying to quit smoking. “Do something really easy, particularly if you haven’t been exercising,” Dr. Glynn says. “Take a daily 15-minute walk at a time when you would ordinarily want a cigarette, like in the morning after you’ve had coffee.”

Delay the diet. You really do tend to gain weight as you try to stop smoking, Dr. Glynn says. But his advice is to concentrate on the immediate challenge, which is kicking butts. “A diet is a tough thing to handle at the same time you’re quitting smoking,” Dr. Glynn says. “Wait until you’re safely past the first two or three months of not smoking.

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Our refined, fast-food diet also leaves us lacking in a couple of essential minerals, says Dr. Tucker-magnesium and calcium. Though it doesn’t get a whole lot of press, magnesium has been linked to protection from diabetes, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, some headaches, and osteoporosis (yes, bone loss is a man’s problem, too). Yet Americans routinely consume less than the 400 milligrams (the Daily Value) they should each day. And the National Academy of Science’s calcium intake recommendations-1,000 milligrams a day for men ages 25 to 65-is a dosage so high that few get enough without supplementation, Dr. Tucker says. As you know, calcium prevents bone loss in your later years, and men lose a significant amount of bone density, too, she says. Taking a multivitamin with 100 milligrams of magnesium and 200 milligrams of calcium (provided you’re getting about 800 milligrams from three to four servings of low-fat dairy foods a day) is smart insurance, she says. However, people with heart or kidney problems should not take supplemental magnesium.

Finally, surveys show that zinc may be the mineral most lacking in our diets. That’s a serious omission since zinc not only helps keep your immune system strong so that you can fight infections and heal wounds but also is also a main component of your manhood. Zinc helps you produce sperm and maintain healthy semen and testosterone levels. Since you can lose up to 5 milligrams-one-third of the 15-milligram Daily Value-of this sexy mineral with each ejaculation, make sure that you eat enough turkey, oysters, lean beef, or fortified cereals to get what you need each day. Or take a multivitamin/mineral supplement that contains 15 milligrams of zinc. Just don’t supplement above that level, according to Dr. Kawachi, or you risk throwing off your body’s balance of other important minerals, especially copper, and can lower the body’s beneficial high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

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According to a study conducted at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD, frequent douching may increase a woman’s risk of cervical cancer. Until now, scientists had not been able to separate the effect of douching from that of sex—especially from a young age and with multiple partners— which has long been linked to an increased risk of cervical cancer.

To isolate the effects of douching, researchers focused on Mormon women whose religion strictly forbids extramarital sex. The researchers compared the douching habits of over 250 cervical cancer patients and 480 healthy women. The results showed that women who douched more than once a week were almost five times as likely to develop cervical cancer as were women who douched less often. The type of douche made no difference.

The researchers speculate that vaginal secretions and normal vaginal bacteria may protect the pelvic area and that frequently disrupting those secretions by douching may lead to the appearance of microbes which can trigger cancer.

Earlier research had shown that a douche carrys with it the risk of introducing infection into the vagina as well as spread an existing infection into the uterus or Fallopian tubes. Moreover, according to experts, douche is completely ineffective as a contraceptive.

Gynecologists rarely, if ever, recommend douches for any reason anymore, however, for women who feel they need to douche—even though the vagina is normally slightly acidic and cleans itself—a mild solution of vinegar or baking soda may be best.

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1) Ginger

An article in Medical Tribune (30,18,16) reports that ginger provides some relief from arthritis pain. Patients took 5 grams per day of fresh ginger root or 1 gram/day of ginger powder. They reported less swelling and less stiffness.

2) Fish Oil

Stanford Univerisity’s Dr. Harris reports that some people gain benefits from using fish oil. Doctors recommend that you get the fish oil by eating cold water fish. A report in Arthritis and Rheumatism states that a daily dose of Omega-3 fatty acids (from fish oil) helped arthritis sufferers.

3) Exciting News For People With Arthritis

Biological response modifiers can ease a type of arthritis that is caused when a person’s immune system goes out of whack. Dr. A. Gragzel states that these new drugs could soon be very important for fighting inflammatory arthritis. These drugs include: lnterlukin-1, CD4, CD5, and IL-2. They are nearing FDA approval. Other new drugs include modified forms of old drugs: Azalfidine and Sandimmuade.

4) Lose Weight

One simple way to help ease arthritis suffering is to lose weight if you are overweight. Excess weight puts added pressure on your joints. This increases stress on your cartilage and bone, and can lead to more inflammation and swelling.

5) Floating    

Some studies have shown that floating in a specially designed tank filled with warm water, can relieve arthritic pain. The water is heated to 93.5 degrees F and floating time is about 1 hour. There are over 200 tank centers in the USA. Here is a contact that can tell you the nearest flotation center to your home: Flotation Tank Association, Box 1396, Grass Valley CA 95945.

6) Exercise

Dr. Mollen recommends that people who suffer from arthritis should undertake aerobic exercise. He recommends walking, bicycling, or swimming. Dr. Mollen states that exercising in water is also excellent. The water reduces the pain that you may normally experience while exercising.

7) Vitamins

There is some evidence that increasing your vitamin C intake can help rheumatoid arthritis. One of the best sources for vitamin C is citrus fruit.

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While scientists continue to debate the benefits of cranberry juice as a natural remedy for mild urinary-tract infection, the evidence continues to mount in favor of th« berry juice. Several recent clinical studies show that cranberry juice and it’s botanical cousin, blueberry juice, contain a compound that—at least in the test tube— prevents Escherichia coli bacteria from clinging to bladder cells and causing infection in the urinary tract. No other juices which were tested displayed the ability to combat the Escherichia coli bacteria.

In one clinical study, over 50 people with urinary-tract infections drank a pint of cranberry juice every day for three weeks. None of the subjects took any special medication. More than half of the individuals showed marked improvement. Twenty percent showed slight improvement and about 30 percent showed no improvement at all. An interesting footnote to this study is that about six weeks after all the subjects stopped drinking cranberry juice, more than half of those who had showed some improvement came down with another urinary-tract infection.

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According to recent studies many cases of dizziness may be caused by what we eat. Furthermore, the studies suggest that many people who suffer from dizziness don properly absorb food, and that they can be helped by a simple change in their diets.

The diet to combat dizziness consists of large amounts of complex carbohydrates, such as spaghetti and rice, small amounts of lean meat, and only polyunsaturated fats. The exact amount of food and calories consumed should be based on your age, weight, height, and body frame. The main thing, however, is the breakdown of the calories.

It should be noted that some people, including most diabetics and hypoglycemics will not benefit from this diet because their dizziness is caused by other factors.    

6 Foods That Actually Help You Think Better

Recent research by the USDA suggests that foods which contain the mineral boron—pears, grapes, apples, carrots, broccoli—may help your brain maintain its normal activity level. The research indicates that people may feel less alert when their diets are low in boron than when their boron level is adequate.

Researchers at MIT have also discovered that a diet which includes fish can result in a boost in mental-energy. Researchers are quick to point out that no food can actually make you smarter, but the protein found in fish can help raise your mental capacities to their fullest potential.

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A new video program called “The Sleep Tape” has been billed as “an effective treatment for insomnia”. That’s good news for the almost 80 million Americans who suffer from difficulty sleeping. The video treatment, created by New York psychologist Dr. Robert Schachter, teaches problem sleepers how to settle down and get some sleep instead of tossing and turning for most of the night. It provides helpful hints to induce drowsiness, relaxation exercises, and peaceful scenes with soft, soothing music to set the mood for sleep.

According to Dr. Schachter, the video offers the same sort of help you would get at a treatment center for sleeping disorders. Perhaps the best thing about the video treatment is that it is drug-free. There are none of the problems that often develop with the use of sleeping pills.

The video treatment is designed for people who suffer from general, non- specific insomnia or sleeplessness which isn’t caused by physical or psychological problems. People with such general sleeping disorders can often be cured by learning to relax at will and that’s just what “The Sleep Tape” tries to teach insomniacs.

“The Sleep Tape” includes some helpful hints from Dr. Schachter on how insomniacs can reset their body’s sleep clocks, resulting in new, healthier sleep habits. Here are a few of the tips contained on the video:

1) Stay away from heavy meals, alcohol, chocolate and caffeine late in the day.

2) Exercise can help you relax but not if it occurs too close to bedtime. Try to workout at least several hours before you plan to retire for the evening.

3) For the best sleeping environment, set the temperature in your bedroom to cool.

4) Go to bed and get up every day at the same time. Never sleep late— not even on weekends.

5) Before you go to bed, try relaxing with a warm bath and soft music.

Almost 40 percent of insomniacs say that the inability to get a good night’s sleep interferes with their work. Many automobile accidents and on-the-job accidents are caused by sleepiness. The Sleep Tape can cure sleep problems in about two weeks, if the “patient” is responsive.

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