Medical Blog, News and Information

Bank your genes. To get the benefits of having a Junior to carry on your genes, without all the 5:00 A.M. feedings and Saturday soccer practices, you might consider making a donation at a sperm bank, where they freeze your sperm for women and couples seeking artificial insemination. You’ll get immortalized DNA, no added responsibilities, plus between 35 and 50 dollars in, uh, hard cash for each effort.

Be forewarned, however, that sperm banks can be more discerning than a potential mate. “There’s a meticulously involved screening process,” says Charles Sims, M.D., co-founder and medical director of the Los Angeles-based California Cryobank, one of the country’s largest sperm banks. “Before you can even think about donating sperm at California Cryobank, you must be between the ages of 19 and 39, enrolled in or have graduated from a four-year university, be at least five feet nine inches tall, be of appropriate weight for your height, and know your medical history for three generations back,” he says. Only about 8 percent of prospective donors squeak through the sperm bank’s gates.

Pass it along. It’s a waste to have your prized polka banjo get snapped up by some stranger for 5 dollars at a Grandpa’s-no-longer-with-us yard sale. That’s what family heirlooms are all about-immortality through sentimentality. By passing a treasured item down the family line, you can be remembered fondly for generations to come.

An heirloom can be anything from your District IX track-and-field trophy to your Gibson Flying V guitar. Just be sure to put in writing what the item is and what it means to you, and then pass that along with your heirloom so that your great-great-grandson Shmecky doesn’t inadvertently toss your family treasure in the circular file. Chances are that your relatives will also appreciate the heirloom that much more if they have a clear understanding of its history and significance.

Make a time capsule. One inexpensive, easy, pretty cool way to immortalize yourself is by making a time capsule, says Paul Hudson, co-founder of the International Time Capsule Society (ITCS) in Atlanta.

Consider including items like copies of birth and marriage certificates, job reviews, pictures, golf score-cards, passports, a copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, your favorite bowling shirt, compact discs, and anything else you think best represents your place in time.

“The best time capsule container is a safe. But you can use any container with a cool, dry, dark interior,” says Hudson. “Then mark a time for it to be opened in, say, 50 or 100 years, and place it in a secure place indoors. Don’t bury it outside, though. Thousands of time capsules are lost that “way.”

Plant a sapling. The planet will always need trees to clean the air, give birds a home, and provide shelter from the cruel sun. So why not give the earth one in your (or someone else’s) honor and have folks remember you for it? Sure, you could just stick a tree in your backyard and mount a plaque by it. They will send you a tree variety of your choice along with a personalized certificate of authenticity, which includes a space to record who planted the tree, where it was planted, and in whose memory it is dedicated. You also get a lifetime guarantee, so if the tree dies, they’ll send you a replacement for only the cost of shipping and handling.

Hitch your wagon to a star. If you’re famous enough to be immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, disregard this entry. If you’re not, you can get a star all your own without ever having to get your hands glopped up with cement. And it’ll be a real one-guaranteed to last a couple of billion years, or at least longer than you likely will.

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What people do about their health depends more on what needs they feel they have than upon what they know. So the best doctor-patient relationship stems from a real understanding of the patient’s needs and perceptions of the situation rather than from a doling out of knowledge from one who ‘knows’ to one who ‘doesn’t’. So it is that in the medical profession as currently organized health-directed needs can be coped with but health-related needs can’t. As we move away from the essential interventions of crisis medicine towards prevention, the importance of attaining health diminishes for the individual and other more pressing everyday needs take over; doctors, because they are health-directed, appear to be of less value because what is needed is someone who is health-related. Both epidemiological and clinical studies show that there are almost no areas of human behaviour that are not related to health, so in this sense preventive medicine takes in all of a person’s life; yet doctors are trained to see the person through a narrow slit-that afforded us by his or her symptoms. A lot of health education has tended, often with moralistic overtones, to convert health-related to health-directed behaviour. The answer to the prevention of diseases is not to medicalise life but to be more aware of the un-healthful aspects of it and to modify them.

Unfortunately, the sickness-centered health-care system of the western world has produced a love-hate relationship between professionals and the end users. Few people choose to go to their doctor unless they have what they perceive to be a problem. This makes the medical profession moppers-up of ailments and dealers in ‘problems’. Doctors and the allied health professions are thus seen as an unfortunate necessity that one keeps away from until absolutely necessary.

This kind of thinking does nothing to generate positive preventive health behaviour. It is an ironic but predictable conclusion to say that doctors are almost the worst people to be saddled with the responsibility for preventive services. What is needed is a new profession which would be much less illness-centered and much more alive to the realities of the needs of the community in which they work. Individuals know what is important to them and their community, yet so much of the time preventive efforts have tried to superimpose some quite alien behaviour or perception on them.

What appear to work better are programmes aimed at groups, such as teenagers, pregnant mothers, the elderly or whatever. Within these cohesive groups, peer-group pressure can be used creatively to implement changes, and change is more likely to occur as one piece of preventive behaviour interacts with others to produce a lifestyle that tends to prevent disease rather than produce it.

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Helen Stein loves to eat. These days, the 73-year-old Larchmont, New York, resident eats more than ever—and she hasn’t gained back an ounce of the 38 pounds that she lost 15 years ago.

How? By choosing foods that fill her up, not out.

Helen’s battle of the bulge began 65 years ago, when she was just 8 years old. At the time, she turned to food to help ease the pain of her mother’s death. That led to an unhealthy pattern of using food for comfort—and putting on pounds. She reached 180 pounds while a freshman in college and remained at that weight for years.

Even though she was heavier than she should have been, Helen didn’t worry about it. She never liked the idea of dieting. The prospect of giving up her favorite foods and eating less repeatedly dissuaded her from slimming down.

Then, one morning, everything changed. “When I woke up, I said to myself, ‘I’m tired of this/” Helen recalls. “I didn’t want to be heavy anymore. I wanted to be thin.”

Looking back? Helen realizes that her decision to lose weight had been brewing for some time. “I had grown unhappy with my appearance, and deep down, I wanted to be thin,” she says. “The time had come to do something about it, and I knew it.”

As she planned her weight-loss strategy, Helen admitted to herself that she would have a hard time changing her diet. So instead of trying to eat less, she ate differently. She sought out foods that would leave her feeling full without supplying a lot of fat or calories. Most of Helen’s lunches and dinners started out with a great big salad flavored with balsamic vinegar. She thought nothing of snacking on a big pink grapefruit, a whole cantaloupe, or a chunk of watermelon. She cooked with plenty of onions, oregano, and other herbs to increase the satiety of her meals. “I discovered that the right seasonings could make low-fat foods quite satisfying,” she says.

These simple changes allowed Helen to lose what she called her extra baggage in about 6 months. These days, she eats whenever she wants to, without worrying about her weight. She just makes sure to choose “skinny” foods that satisfy.

WINNING ACTION

Fill up on fiber-rich foods. Helen’s strategy of eating filling low-fat, low-calorie, high-fiber foods is smart for two reasons. First, fiber helps absorb fat calories and eliminate them from your body before they end up on

your belly or thighs. In fact, gram of fiber can absorb calories of fat. Second, fiber fills you up. Avoiding feelings of deprivation is critical to adopting permanent dietary changes.

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There are two main methods of removing contaminants from water: activated carbon filters and reverse osmosis.

Activated carbon filters

Activated carbon is a highly reactive surface which attracts substances such as chlorine, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethyiene, phenols, DDT, other pesticides, PCBs and dioxins. These and other organic molecules found in tap water stick to the carbon leaving the water much less contaminated.

There are various forms of activated carbon, granular activated carbon or GAC being one of the most effective. The amount and quality of activated carbon in a filter determines how efficient it is at removing pollutants. Plumbed-in filters contain far more activated carbon than jug filters.

A major problem with these filters is that they are en ideal breeding ground for bacteria, including harmful forms. To combat bacterial growth, most such filters are now impregnated with silver. There have been alarming reports of silver leaching out into the water, and this can happen with some filters. But new production methods, such as bonding the silver to the carbon at high temperatues, can overcome this problem.

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Avocado pears have a laxative effect on some people. If you have bowel symptoms then you should not include these. If you have never eaten them before, try eating a couple at one sitting before you start Stage 3, to see what effect they have.

Spinach and chickpeas should not be included if you have bowel symptoms. Parsnips should be eaten in limited quantities only, and not too often, as they contain small amounts of a carcinogen.

Plantains are closely related to bananas and should not be included if you regularly eat bananas.

You should only eat sunflower oil if you have not previously eaten much margarine, nor used much sunflower oil (or ‘vegetable oil’) in cooking. There is some evidence, that polyunsaturated oils, such as sunflower oil and safflower oil, are harmful if eaten in large quantities. Since the diet is rather low in calories, it is tempting to make up for this by using a lot of oil in cooking, but this is inadvisable. Olive oil is a monounsaturated rather than a polyunsaturate and is thought to be safer in large quantities – it is probably better for you than other plant oils. Unfortunately, it has a mild laxative effect on some people, so use it in moderation if you have bowel symptoms. If you have not eaten it before, it is worth testing it out before you start Stage 3 to see if it has any effect.

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Although the baby in the womb is nourished by the mother’s blood, the blood of mother and baby do not mix. Instead, they both pass through tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the structure known as the placenta. The capillaries carrying the mother’s blood lie directly alongside those carrying the baby’s blood, and vital substances such as glucose and oxygen can pass from one to the other through the capillary walls. It used to be thought that larger molecules, such as undigested food proteins, would not be able to get through, but it is now known that they do. Such food molecules could sensitize a high-risk baby even before it is born.

In the light of this discovery, some doctors believe that women whose children are likely to be atopic should restrict their diet during pregnancy. However, the few studies that have attempted to test this idea have produced largely negative results. Given the difficulty of eating a restricted diet during pregnancy it is probably not worth doing so for such uncertain gains. But anyone who is concerned about allergies in their children – having had one severely allergic child already, perhaps – could omit certain foods that are highly allergenic. The list should include cow’s milk, eggs, peanuts, fish and wheat, plus any foods to which the earlier child is allergic. It is, of course, essential that you consult your doctor to ensure that you are getting enough nutrients. A calcium supplement will probably be required.

The more of a food that is eaten, the more passes into the bloodstream. So eating huge quantities of one type of food during pregnancy is probably bad for the unborn child who may be predisposed to allergy. There have been no scientific tests to prove this, but not ‘bingeing’ during pregnancy, or while breast-feeding, would seem to be a sensible preventive measure.

Smoking during pregnancy has been shown to increase the risk of allergy, quite apart from its other damaging effects on the foetus. It is advisable to give up well before conception, and to maintain a smoke-free house once the baby is born – see next section. Putting on excess weight during pregnancy is also a risk factor for allergy in the child.

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Acute attacks of diarrhoea should be taken very seriously indeed, especially in small babies. They can lose so much water from the body that they become seriously ill. In extreme cases they can suffer brain damage or die. The signs of moderate to severe dehydration are little urine, which is very dark and smells strongly (or no urine at all), sleepiness, dry sunken eyes, fast breathing and dry mouth. If you see these signs you should get medical help without delay, as the baby needs special treatment to replace the lost water and salts. This treatment may be given by mouth (when it is known as oral rehydration therapy or ORT) or directly into the bloodstream in more serious cases. In mild cases of dehydration, there are mixtures of salts that can be used for ORT at home. These are marketed under various names, including Rehidrat, Dioralyte and Gluco-lyte, and are available on prescription. Older children and adults can also become dehydrated during severe attacks of diarrhoea, and ORT can be useful for them as well

Given that the doctor has ruled out infection and other likely causes for the diarrhoea, then food sensitivity should be considered.

As new foods are introduced into a child’s diet, there may be temporary’ bouts of diarrhoea in response to them, although these do not necessarily develop as soon as the new food is eaten. Such transient diarrhoea is sometimes given the name toddler diarrhoea and is characterized by loose stools that contain some undigested food. Toddler diarrhoea usually clears up by about two years of age, and the usual medical advice is to leave it untreated. Given what we now know about food sensitivity, this is not necessarily the best advice. There seems to be a general pattern in some children, particularly with illnesses such as colic and eczema, of symptoms disappearing but other symptoms appearing later in their wake. If this is also true of toddler diarrhoea then it might be better, in the long run, to identify the offending foods and avoid them for a while. In one study, six out of 21 children with toddler diarrhoea proved to be food-sensitive.

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A possible suspect in this regard is wheat, which contains defensive proteins called lectins that bind to cells in our bodies. Certain people, known as coeliacs, are made seriously ill by wheat, and the way in which lectins might cause their disease is dealt with on pl36. Coeliac disease is inherited, which suggests that there are genetic differences making some people better able to cope with a wheat-based diet than others. This was confirmed by experiments in which very large amounts of wheat protein were given to healthy volunteers. The relatives of coeliacs were made ill by these large amounts of wheat protein – so were ‘normal’ people, but the relatives of coeliacs suffered more.

It looks very much as if coeliacs are unfortunate casualties of the slow adaptation process between the human race and wheat. Wheat, after all, is a relatively new food – we have only had 10,000 years to get used to it, which is the blinking of an eye in evolutionary terms. Although natural selection should gradually eliminate any genes that make human beings susceptible to wheat (at least among wheat-eating populations) it seems to be a process that has not had time to run to completion.

If this theory is correct, then it is possible that some non-coeliacs are adversely affected (though not as seriously) by lectins orother defensive chemicals found in wheat. Not just affected by very large amounts, as in the experiment described above, but affected by a normal, everyday intake of wheat. Natural selection works more slowly on a gene that has mild ill-effects than on one with serious ill-effects, such as coeliac disease. So it is even more likely that minor problems with a new food would persist for thousands of years.

This could explain why wheat sensitivity is so common, although there are other equally plausible explanations. Wheat, along with milk, is the most commonly eaten food in Western countries, and may appear in every meal and snack of the day. There is little doubt that a food which is consumed frequently is far more likely to cause food intolerance (although no-one knows precisely why) and this alone could account for wheat’s bad record.

Other foods, besides cereals, are a possible source of toxic or damaging chemicals. Some are known to cause false food allergy in susceptible individuals and a few can cause cancer. Others, such as coffee, have a drug-like (pharmacological) action on the body, which means that they produce marked physiological effects even though they are eaten in very small amounts.

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So if an alpine herb proves to be more effective than others, having a higher content of active substances, it cannot always be attributed to altitude alone. Rather, it depends upon the kind of plant, its hours of exposure to sunshine, the temperature of the atmosphere and the degree of protection from severe winds. It is therefore not at all surprising that plants growing in mountain valleys protected from the winds tend to contain more active ingredients than those growing at lower altitudes.

However, Professor Flueck’s experiments led to the astonishing observation that plants grown in the middle altitudes had a higher content of nutrients than those grown at high elevations. In view of my own experience, having been successful in growing mountain plants, his findings made me wonder. However, further investigation gave me the solution to the mystery: it was the species, or variety, of plant rather than the elevation at which it grew that really mattered.

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The skin cannot breathe naturally if the pores are blocked with cosmetics. In consequence it degenerates; the pores become larger. It is just as unsightly when the skin begins to slacken early, developing more wrinkles than would be expected as a result of the normal ageing process.

For a reliable skin care programme rub in Symphosan, a tried and tested comfrey preparation, every morning after washing. Afterwards, as a protection against strong sunlight or biting wind, apply Bioforce Cream, which contains lanolin, but it is not necessary to do this daily. Then, before going to bed, soak a cotton pad with Violaforce and dab over the whole face. In order to help the sebaceous glands, use a natural skin oil, or the lanolin cream already mentioned, two or three times a week. This treatment may be sufficient for everyday use, provided you are not too exposed to cold and sunshine. It is quite a simple treatment and you will derive great benefit if you take care of your skin like this for a few months. It will look much younger and the pores may even return to normal.

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