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Last month’s issue was a bit controversial – Urinary Incontinence! I feel that Medicine has taken this very simple, and in most cases, a very easy condition to deal with, and elevated it to the status of a disease – “Overactive Bladder Disease!” There’s a concept! I call this the business of health care! Let’s not stop here though. Let’s explore an issue which is making billions of pharmaceutical dollars in OTC meds from unsuspecting parents:
Fever Frenzy Your child is hot, flushed, glassy-eyed and obviously not well. As a mom (I am directing this specifically towards moms as they generally make most of the health care decisions in the family), your diagnosis is Fever! OMG! You are very worried and concerned and can feel a little bit of panic setting in as well. After all, you have been carefully trained to think that fever is actually something that should be treated and something that is BAAAAD! You are probably thinking: “No, I haven’t!” Think again. If you tune to any TV station at any time, or look at any popular magazine – even National Geographic (yes, they have just succumbed to the almighty pharmaceutical dollar), you will most likely see a few dozen ads for antipyretic (anti-fever) medication. Aspirin – popular a few years ago and beginning to make a comeback - Tylenol, Children’s Tylenol (what is that about?), as well as a host of others – all teaching you that fever is a bad thing. That if you want to be a good mom, you need to give these drugs to your family to combat this scourge of fever! So, let’s look at this fever thing for just a moment: We have been carefully taught that normal body temperature hovers around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees C). All medical books say this, so it must be true!
Right? Wrong! 98.6° Fahrenheit represents an average. Your child’s body temperature can hover anywhere between 97° F and 100°F and be considered perfectly “normal.” Think of it: That’s a lot of heat! Let’s take our thinking a step further: At what point does 98.6 degrees F become fever? Is it 99.0 degrees? Or 99.5? How about 99.8? When does it officially become fever? You see, there is no medical standard for this figure. So if 98.6° doesn’t worry a parent, why would 100°? There is not much difference between these two figures – only 1.4 degrees! It is inconsequential! Why is there such a panic throughout North America regarding a child who has a fever? I will get to the answer in a few moments. Stay with me: We must realize that fever is just HEAT. Normal body temperature is the result of your child’s body working as it was meant to, under the perfect control of the computer which runs each particular program—the nervous system; the heart pumping blood, normal respiration, normal breathing, normal digestive cycles, movement of different body muscles, etc. All these daily life activities produce WORK and work produces HEAT. Although this is fairly simplified, in reality that is exactly what takes place - it is the result of your body doing exactly what it was programmed and designed to do! If that is the case, what is fever then? To help your child recover when he or she is fighting a flu bug for example, the nervous systems demands an increase in heat production in order to literally “burn” the invading germs (bacteria, virus), which can only survive at our “normal” body temperature. Any increase in heat, therefore, kills such invading organisms. This is a good thing. As a result of orders from the nervous system, many body activities speed up. Respiration increases, the heart rate speeds up in order to pump blood faster, breathing increases, the skin is moist and clammy and the child begins to shiver, etc. Now, just as an aside, most people do not understand what shivering really is. Let me explain: Shivering is very rapid contraction of most of the body muscles in order to produce more work. And, more work produces . . . you guessed it, more heat. When a child is shivering, it is not necessarily because he/she is cold. It is because the nervous system makes demands that the muscles contract, thereby increasing the work produced by the body. All of these, as well as many other bodily functions, are speeded up. This extra work produces extra heat. We call this fever. Simple! I will continue our discussion on Fever in the next issue. Please stay tuned! And if you have any questions, please ask any of us – we are here to help you!
Going to the Dogs What your dog is really trying to say when it wags its tail; The way Fido wags his tail might reveal more about him than you know. Just ask another dog. A few years ago, researchers discovered a subtle difference in how dogs wag their tails. When a dog sees something positive, such as its owner, it tends to wag its tail more to its right. The wagging tends to go left when it sees something negative, like an unfamiliar dominant dog. Now, the same Italian researchers report that other dogs pick up on that difference, and it’s reflected in their behavior and even their heart rates. Experts say the tail-wagging difference appears to be one way that dogs gauge how other dogs will respond to them. “It’s just fascinating that dogs pick up on it,” said Evan MacLean, co-director of Duke University’s Canine Cognition Center. For humans, he said, “it’s a difficult thing to see.” MacLean was not involved with the study, reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology. Giorgio Vallortigara of the University of Trento in Italy, an author of the study, said Fido is not deliberately sending a message. Instead, the tail-wagging behaviour stems from how different emotional cues activate different parts of the brain, he said in an email. For the experiment, Vallortigara and co-authors used videos of a dog or it silhouette, wagging its tail mostly to one side or the other, or no wagging at all. They showed the videos to 43 dogs, including such breeds as Rottweilers, beagles, boxers, border collies and German shepherds as well as mongrels. When the dog in the video wagged mostly to its left, the sign of a negative response, observer dogs tended to have faster heartbeats than when it wagged the other way or not at all. Their behaviour also indicated a higher degree of stress. Alexandra Horowitz, who studies mental abilities of dogs at Barnard College in New York, said that the wagging differenced is probably not a primary signal between Fido and Rover in daily life, but it may play a minor role.
100 Ways to live to 100: 36. Choose safer cosmetics Perfumes and cosmetics contain a witch’s brew of carcinogens, mutagens, preservatives and toxic heavy metals. New evidence shows that makeup and cosmetics with cadmium play a key role in the development of aggressive and often fatal breast cancer. Encourage all the women and preteen and teenage girls in your family to use non-toxic makeup and nail polish. 37. Choose cars that run on gasoline or electricity Diesel cars may release less carbon dioxide, but they emit higher levels of particulate matter, VOCs and nitrous oxide-all harmful to human health and responsible for nearly three-quarters of toxic air pollution. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now labeled diesel exhaust a ‘likely’ carcinogen. 38. Use natural pesticides The weed killers and insecticides we spray all around out gardens can cause cancer – especially leukaemia in children, brain tumors and prostate cancer – as well as birth defects, arterial damage and other disorders. Use eco-pesticides and natural pest prevention methods. 39. Choose safer personal-care products Avoid shampoos and other toiletries using TEA (triethanolamine), DEA (diethanolamine) and SLS; products with excessive perfumes; nanotechnology cosmetics; and hair dye (which contains resorcinol and p-phenylenediamine, or PPD, both linked to allergies, cancer and sudden death). 40. Limit your mobile phone use Some 200 studies point to health hazards like brain tumors and infertility that may be due to long-term mobile-phone use, especially among children. An Italian court recently found a direct causal link between extensive mobile-phone use and brain tumors. Keep your mobile an arm length’s away when not in use, says electrosmog expert Guy Hudson, and text rather than talk whenever you can. 41. Get fit before you conceive Work with a Chiropractor experienced in preconception and pediatrics as well as nutrition who will check your spine and nervous system regularly to ensure an amazing mom and a healthy pregnancy. He/she will also be able to check your nutritional status and help you correct any deficiencies, hidden infections, heavy-metal toxic overload and the like, all of which can contribute to infertility and pregnancy loss. 42. If you are pregnant minimize your exposure to prenatal tests like ultrasound scans Scans have been linked to low birth weights, delayed speech and dyslexia and brain damage. Unless a problem is suspected, wait till after your baby is born to take its picture. Makes most sense! 43. Breastfeed Give your child this lifelong gift and breastfeed for as long as possible – at least 6 months. A year is best, according to the WHO. In addition to providing the perfect food and the full complement of essential fatty acids for your child, it also protects against allergies and helps improve vision and IQ. Resist the suggestions of expert to add supplement feeds unless something is clearly wrong. The baby is usually getting enough if allowed to feed on demand.
I will continue this topic over the next issues until we reach 100 points. Please enjoy!