March 20th, 2010 by
Ginger is one of the natural herbs. You can use ginger in numbers of forms i.e. in solid form and liquid form. You can use ginger in your tea. It protects from general cough and cold. You can also add ginger in your food. It will give real taste of food. So next time, if you visit to market, don’t forget to buy ginger.
January 29th, 2010 by
Aladdin is one of my all-time favorite Disney classics, and therefore, I would certainly be excited to attend an Aladdin-Themed party. This type of party could really be for anybody under the age of 16. Any older and the kids might feel a little bit too mature, and likewise, too young and the kids might not fully understand the party theme. An Aladdin-themed party should be decorated as such, with a replica of the city being the centerpiece of the party. It would be fun to hire people to dress up as the palace guard and to chase the fake Aladdin around the room for his thievery. It would also be very very exciting to hire a singing Aladdin and a mechanical flying carpet, on which Aladdin and Jasmine could sing their theme song, I Can Show You The World. The cake for this type of party could be very extravagant. Budget permitting, you might want to hire professional cake makers to bake a replica of one of the scenes in the movie, such as the desert scene, the treasure scene, the dungeon scene, or any of the other great and memorable scenes from the movie. Invitations for a party such as this could be very interesting. If Aladdin and Jasmine are already hired as singers you could have them distribute the party invitations in costume. The party invitations should, of course, be Aladdin themed. If you are feeling extra-creative, you might ask Aladdin and Jasmine to give song invitations to each of the invitees. So get those invites out and get ready to have a great time!
January 23rd, 2010 by
Ayurveda is the beautiful part of life that gives the individual the knowledge and strength to live a better life. It is therefore said to be a science of life that helps us in leading a complete way of life, free of all diseases. So, in order to help us achieve good health both physically as well as mentally; many Indian acharya or physician has set up Ayurvedic diet.
like all the qualities of ayurveda, ayurvedic diet too is an important and useful part of ayurveda. Ayurvedic diet is actually the nutritional phase of ayurveda. It involves eating according to one’s body type and seasons. This ayurvedic philosophy goes on Dosha where the five elements combine in pairs to form three dynamic forces. The alleged activity of dosha actually helps us determine one’s body type.
Since ayurveda is a science that uses natural herbs and so it suggests us to be natural in our intake of diet. According to ayurvedic acharya, the intake of nutrition should always be less and not excessive. The reason for this is that the intake of less food keeps us more energetic and fit. Also, over eating makes us drossy and we fail to work energetically. So what message we get from ayurvedic diet is that we all should eat to live and not live to eat. If this is remember by us as the ayurvedic diet we all will live a live free of all diseases and above all a more healthier and happier life as when a person is free of all diseases he is healthy and remember that for all health is wealth so just think about it!!!
Ayurvedic diet thus is a golden part of ayurveda and for all those who believe on ayurveda. So just follow the ayurvedic diet as suggested by the ayurvedic acharya and take a proper diet according to your body type and season. Have a healthy life with ayurvedic diet.
November 7th, 2009 by
This article lists the best sunblocks and sunscreens. Read to know more about which sunblock is best for your skin. It is good to apply steady brand of sunscreen cream. Panama Jack is one of the leading companies providing sunblocks solutions to numbers of people including Hollywood celebrities and models. Panama Jack sunscreen cream is recommended by numbers of people.
Coppertone NutraShield Sunblock is another most popular skin cream. Coppertone is very much popular and there is no need to introduce this brand name. Check out the key statistics of this cream. The cream has moisturizing, non-greasy formula that features highest Coppertone SPF ever. This cream is very helpful to prevent premature skin aging caused by the sun. Anyone can apply this cream very easily as it is suitable for everyday use.
The best sunscreens cream list is very huge and Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Spf 4 is the another brand name in this field. Hawaiian Tropic Sunblock is very much popular among Hawaiian Tropic Models and they are the best buyer of this skin cream. This cream is available in the 240 ML container hence you can easily store this cream.
For more information, you can read sunscreen reviews using that you will be able to know about benefits of using sunblocks.
October 23rd, 2009 by
Suffering from ill health can be a bit of a pain. Especially during these busy times where people refuse to visit the doctors or hospitals.
Despite this, the number of patients at public clinics has soared, thus resulting in an increase in the number of medical negligence claims made.
This is because more people are losing their health insurance cover as a result of being made redundant. The number of hospital patients are increasing while the number of professional hospital staff are remaining the same. This together with a rise in the number of junior doctors and medics being left unsupervised as a bid to deal with the soaring number of patients.
Hospital staff are left suffering from stress causing a rise in medical negligence.
In one recent case, an elderly woman who called a clinic help line on a number of occasions filed a compensation claim for medical negligence following the death of her husband.
The woman’s husband had been suffering from dizziness and other personal injuries including severe vomiting. The woman called the help-line who prescribed paracetamol. However, this did not work so the woman then called again hours later and was told to take him to hospital. The woman stated that she was unable to carry the man herself as she was under 5ft while he was over 6ft.
She then called an ambulance service who stated that there was no vehicles available.
Nearly 24 hours later the mans condition continued to deteriorate and the woman once again called the ambulance who came after 3 hours.
The paramedics came to the house to have a look at the man who was told that he was suffering from vertigo and that he should rest.
He was told to take paracetamol.
The next day the man died. It was later revealed that he suffered a stroke.
The failure to diagnose the man on a number of attempts left the woman to file a medical negligence claim against both the hospital and the help-line.
September 14th, 2009 by
Nurses watches are the ultimate accessory that every nurse seems to be seen carrying and checking every 2 minutes in surgeries, waiting rooms, Accident & Emmergency (A&E), or if you are being pedantic from a different part of the world – Emmergency Rooms (ER).Nurses watches are actually an essential tool for the nurses daily responsibilities. Nurses watches are hung upside down, attached from the chest of a nurses uniform for instant accessibility and also for hygiene reasons.
Nurses watches assist in the routine organisation of the nurse’s schedule and is an indispensable item to keep handy when on any demanding shift or tight rota.Not only this, nurses watches are also a very practical life saving tool and can be used to time someone’s pulse, regulate fitness measuring and monitoring or more seriously time how long it has been absent and determine the exact time that the patient first flat lined. When in an emergency situation nurses watches can be a small but life saving backup when medical machinery or monitors are not present in the near vicinity, either on site or in the hospital corridors through night shifts when staff response is slow due to staffing cuts. The nurse can then relay critial information to the medical experts regarding the patient’s vital signs, and upon conferring appropriate medical attention can be carried out.
Related links: Dentists UK
September 1st, 2009 by
It is not the allergen per se which causes damage, but the body’s abnormal response to it is catastrophic. This is true of all allergic disorders, but never more so than in the case of anaphylaxis. There seems to be another factor at play here, an ‘accelerator’ of some sort, which drives the allergy to frightening extremes. We don’t know what this accelerator is, but we know that it’s there, and we know that it’s lethal.
To understand this more fully, we will need to know something about the underlying mechanisms involved. To this end, let us start with the ‘final common pathway’, and work back-wards. The final common pathway, in this context, refers to a series of events which take place in the body during an anaphylactic reaction — whatever the cause of the reaction. We come yet again to our old friend (or enemy, as the case may be), the mast cell. And we meet, for the first time, its cousin the basophil. Simply put, the basophil is a mast cell which floats freely in the bloodstream. Both of these cells contain numerous potent chemicals. When they burst (degranulate) they release their potent load into the surrounding tissues and bloodstream. Once emptied, they can produce new chemicals at a ferocious pace, thus ensuring a continuous reaction.
‘But hold it right there!’ you may say, ‘Isn’t that what happens in allergic asthma, rhinitis, urticaria, angioedema, and so on?’ And, of course, you would be right. That’s exactly what happens in all type 1 forms of allergy. The difference in anaphylaxis is the ‘accelerating factor’ alluded to above. Let me illustrate this. Kevin is a ten-year-old boy with a history of asthma. His symptoms are well controlled because he takes his medication regularly and he has, with a little help, figured out his allergic and non-allergic triggers. His only other problem is that he is allergic to eggs. If he eats egg two days in a row he gets hives (urticaria). If he eats egg one day, avoids it the next, and eats it again on the third day, he gets no hives. The skin and blood tests confirm that he is sensitive to eggs, but he has never had a major reaction to them.
Okay, so Kevin has an allergy. Now compare that with another ten-year-old boy, Damien. He has no history of asthma, nor of any other allergic disease for that matter. He came to the Allergy Clinic because he broke out in hives and vomited violently after eating an egg. His mother assumed he was allergic to eggs and kept him away from them. Damien needed no encouragement to comply with this restriction, for he noticed a tingling rash on his face whenever eggs were being fried in the vicinity! However, some tine later he again broke out in hives, vomited, and this time started to wheeze. He was puzzled because he hadn’t eaten, or even been near, eggs — but he had just eaten fish fingers, and, although he didn’t know it, fish fingers contain egg.
Damien has anaphylaxis. He has something other than what we might call ‘a simple allergy’. He has an accelerating mechanism at work in his system which drives a fulminant reaction throughout his entire system (that’s why we call them systemic reactions’). This happens whenever he comes across even minute amounts of allergen Think about it. He comes across the smell of eggs in the frying pan and he gets symptoms. We are talking molecules of allergen here, not milligrams or ounces. Yet these few molecules an start a devastating cascade of allergic events throughout his system. You think I’m exaggerating? At the time of writing, an unfortunate visitor to a London restaurant collapsed with fatal anaphylaxis as a waiter walked past with a sizzling fish dish. He was known to be allergic to fish. That’s what I mean by an accelerator, and that’s what makes anaphylaxis so deadly.
Come back for a moment to the mast cell and basophil. The release of their potent load gives rise to the symptoms of allergy. As we have seen, if they degranulate in the nose we get rhinitis, in the chest we get asthma, in the skin we get urticaria, and so forth. However, if an accelerator is present, the cells degranulate throughout the entire system, and not just where allergen has reached. This is how it happens:
1. Something triggers the mast cells and basophils.
2. They degranulate, pouring their potent chemicals into the tissues and bloodstream
3. These chemicals have a direct effect on blood vessels, making them dilate.
4. Dilated blood vessels are leaky’, and allow fluid to escape from the bloodstream into the soft tissues and other organs, including the liver, intestine, lungs and brain.
5. These chemicals also exert a direct effect on smooth muscle making it contract.
6. Smooth muscles in the bronchial tubes, intestine and womb go into spasm.
The symptoms and signs of anaphylaxis arise directly from the above:
• hives and swellings in the skin (urticaria and angioedema) and/or
• sneezing (and other symptoms of rhinitis) and/or
• watery eyes (and other symptoms of conjunctivitis) and/or
• wheezing (and other symptoms of acute asthma) and/or
• difficulty taking a breath and/or
• hoarseness of voice and/or
• abdominal pain and/or
• vomiting and diarrhoea (which may be bloody) and/or
• anxiety, fainting and convulsions and/or
• irregular heartbeats, heart attack and, ultimately, cardiac arrest
Anaphylaxis is so deadly because of its effects on the airways, the heart and the brain. Let’s take a closer look at these.
The airway in anaphylaxis
The airway may be threatened at several levels: (i) the throat and voice box, (ii) the bronchial tubes and (Hi) the lungs themselves.
(i) Space is limited in the throat and voice box. When the swellings of angioedema occur in these places they can easily obstruct the airway. Indeed, sometimes the airway is completely obstructed. The symptoms of obstruction include a sensation of swelling in the throat, difficulty taking a breath, difficulty swallowing, drooling from the mouth, hoarseness of speech, noisy breathing and, when obstruction is complete, absolute inability to breathe.
(ii) Anaphylaxis affects the bronchial tubes in an asthmatic sort of way. They swell, go into spasm and produce thick mucus — all of which narrows the airway. The symptoms include cough, wheeze and shortness of breath. The progression of the asthmatic attack in anaphylaxis may be extremely rapid.
(iii) Finally, the lungs themselves are affected, as indeed all internal organs. The leaky blood vessels allow fluid to pour out of the bloodstream and into the alveoli. Thus, the lungs drown in their own fluids.
The heart in anaphylaxis
The heart may also be affected in several ways;
(i) Mast cells in the heart muscle burst, causing swelling and disruption of the heart’s normal rhythm.
(ii) The blood flow to the heart may be jeopardised, resulting in a heart attack.
(iii) The heart comes under further strain as the blood pressure falls. It may now beat erratically, sometimes stopping altogether — cardiac arrest!
The brain in anaphylaxis
One of the first ‘brain’ symptoms of anaphylaxis is a feeling of impending doom. The patient becomes anxious — even before the other symptoms of ‘allergy’ are manifest. Falling blood pressure may then cause a feeling of faintness, and more profound drops in pressure lead to loss of consciousness. Swelling in the brain may cause convulsions and coma.
The end result of unhalted anaphylaxis is a complete (metabolic) collapse of the system and death.
July 28th, 2009 by
Drugs of the future seem to have fantastic possibilities. For example, researchers in California have found that the venom of one of the world’s biggest spiders, the Cameroon Red Baboon, protects mice against seizures. The extract, code-named SNZ-482, is the first substance known to block a molecule implicated in epilepsy and may help detect causes of epilepsy and test new drugs! This is just one of many compounds. Hard-to-control epilepsy especially is an area where, as might be expected, there is a great deal of scientific interest, given that 20-30 per cent of people will have trouble controlling seizures with drugs.
Stopping drug treatment
Once seizures have been controlled for a while, you may wonder whether it is possible to stop taking medication. According to Epilepsy and the Family: A New Guide by Richard Lechtenberg, M.D., there is around a 40 per cent chance of seizures returning if drug treatment is stopped, but unfortunately there is no way of knowing for sure which particular individuals will be affected, though doctors may be able to make an informed guess depending on your type of epilepsy.
The most likely forms of epilepsy to respond well to treatment are juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) and the related syndrome of tonic-clonic seizures on awakening. JME consists of someone having tonic-clonic seizures within two hours of awakening, plus, if leading questions are asked, a history of sudden jerks.
Seizure return is more likely with certain types of seizure, including myoclonic, atonic, tonic and partial seizures, as well as West Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. Total control is incredibly rare. Research has also shown that other factors increase the risk of recurrence, including a known cause for the epilepsy, seizures which began after age 12, a family history of epilepsy, and a history of atypical febrile seizure, and an abnormal EEG. Other research has found that the longer the seizure-free interval before withdrawal, and the fewer drugs needed for initial seizure control, the greater the likelihood of successful remission.
Your doctor may agree that you could try drug withdrawal after five years of being seizure-free (one to two years if a child). This has to be a calculated risk, bearing in mind the implications for matters such as career and driving. Drugs will be tapered off gradually, with the dosage reduced over a three-to-six-month period. It is important that you adhere faithfully to this doctor-monitored reduction, and that you don’t try and ‘come off the drugs yourself. Suddenly stopping medication can be dangerous as it may lead to status epilepticus. You should not drive while treatment is being reduced and for six months (DVLA regulations). If a seizure occurs, then in the UK it is one year before driving can restart.
If seizures do return, they normally do so relatively soon, within a few weeks or months, and are usually the same kind as before. According to Epilepsy and the Family: A New Guide by Richard Lechtenberg, M.D., 50 per cent of seizures which return do so within six months of stopping medication, 60-80 per cent within a year, and virtually all within two years. If seizures do recur, total control on restarting anti-epileptic drugs therapy is likely.
July 22nd, 2009 by
How much people with epilepsy need support? It is easy to see how hard it can sometimes be to lead an independent life, and how easy to slide into dependence. This can sometimes be a fine balance. Sensible protection and support at the time of a seizure are one thing; putting a blanket restriction on all activities ‘just in case’, quite another – though common. Overprotection is a major issue for people with epilepsy, both by others and sometimes by themselves. It is all too natural for your nearest and dearest to want to shield you from injury of any kind, whether that’s during seizures, or stupid or ignorant reactions from others. Yet, people with epilepsy, like people anywhere, need emotional freedom and independence in order to live life to the full.
Overprotection in others can be made worse by their own feelings of guilt and anxiety and may have more to do with them than you. It may not even be related to the severity of the epilepsy – often, other people’s attitudes are much more of a disability than the epilepsy itself.
According to Seizures and Epilepsy in Childhood: A Guide? by John Mark Freeman, Eileen P. G. Vining, Diana J. Pillas, epilepsy can sometimes be a hook on which to hang other anxieties and jealousies in a relationship, or may be used as a weapon with which to control those who have it. (Some people with epilepsy may also use their epilepsy as a weapon themselves, using the epilepsy to manipulate others in order to get their own way, or as a protective shield between themselves and the outside world.)
Dealing with other people’s anxiety is certainly not easy. But, overprotection does need to be staved off if you are not to find yourself in relationships where you collude with people who may be only too keen to give you a dependent role. Only you can decide how much personal freedom you require, and take steps to get it.
There are various ways you can stave off overprotection. It helps to be well informed about epilepsy in general, and about your condition in particular. This includes a realistic assessment of your individual risks. How much does your epilepsy really increase the risks we all face? This information can be passed on to those close to you so that they gain an accurate estimate of the realities and risks of your particular position.
If others don’t seem to take in or accept what you are saying, you may need to work harder to change the dynamic of relationships in which you are the overprotected person. You may need to learn how to say no, and how to communicate what you want without being defensive, whether you’re addressing a partner, parents or other family or friends. It may also involve planning, perhaps along the following lines.
1) Stating what you want clearly. You may have realized that there is a problem, but others may not. It is worth taking some time to plan what you are going to say. This could break down into three parts -how things are, how they affect you, and what you want to change. For example: T find I am staying in all the time because you’re afraid of what might happen if I go out alone, and it’s making me really depressed. I would like to go out to the cinema once a week.’
This brings up another point – being specific about what you want. ‘More freedom’, though it is what you want, is vague. A night out a week is much more graspable. (You can always demand seven nights out a week at a later stage!)
2) Standing your ground. Other people may agree to what you want if only out of surprise, and then come up with objections a few weeks later. For example: ‘You can’t go out tomorrow because I will worry too much.’ This time the aim is for you to stick to what you want on the grounds that this is a reasonable request. Straight talking is often more effective here. For example: ‘I want to go out on my own tomorrow.’
3) Taking action. This is when you stop trying to communicate with words and do it with actions, such as walking out through the front door and down the road to the cinema alone.
It may take time to get your point across. Sometimes, though, it is surprising how quickly others back down and give you your space once you make up your mind what you want.