www.westernweekender.com.au
STAYING HEALTHY
by Martin Cominotto
Cold, flu or hay fever?
by Elisha Stein
Get your kids active
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ith the cold weather coming this week, it really feels like winter is just around the corner. As soon as it cools down suddenly, I know this will mean more cases of colds and flu. However, it’s easy to confuse whether you have a cold or flu or if it’s hay fever. Allergic rhinitis, or hay fever, is normally only considered during spring and summer, known as the ‘allergy season’. However, research is now showing that hay fever is now almost as common ‘out of season’, during autumn and winter. The symptoms of hay fever include sneezing, itchy nose and eyes, watery and red eyes, blocked nose or an itchy and sore throat. All of these are very similar to a cold. It’s important to know the difference as you need to treat each quite differently. With children it’s more difficult to determine if their symptoms are that of a cold or hay fever. Th is makes it hard to decide if the child is contagious and whether they should go to school. As hay fever symptoms can also be very disruptive to a good night’s sleep, a child’s performance at school can also be compromised if the hay fever is not treated. Allergies are not contagious, and while they may make your child feel unwell, they can be treated simply with a non-drowsy antihistamine. There are children-specific products for allergic rhinitis such as Children’s Telfast and Zyrtec that can be taken from as young as two-years-old. Aerius and Claratyne can be taken from 12-months-old for allergic rhinitis. A cold or flu will have similar symptoms to hay fever, but often the symptoms are much more severe. For example, the throat will be itchy with allergies, where as it will be sore and inflamed with a cold. Also, a cold or flu may have fevers and general body aches.
Martin Cominotto, Pharmacist for Martin’s Chemist. Ph: 9673 1010, www.martinschemist.com.au
KEEPING FIT by David Stein
Take the brakes off
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e all now being healthy involves movement and many people enjoy moving so much they even motivate others to get moving too. If you have ever thought of doing your bit to get kids up and moving there is a great government website you should check out. It’s www.ausport.gov.au and it outlines the Active After-School Communities program (AASC). From the site: Be part of a national project that gets kids moving! Around Australia, 150,000 kids have been jumping, throwing, catching, running, dancing, swimming, cycling, climbing, kicking, rowing, skiing, somersaulting... thanks to the Active After-school Communities program. You can be part of this program by becoming a community coach at your local school or out of school hours care service. The Australian Sports Commission’s Active After-School Communities (AASC) program aims to engage traditionally non-active primary school-aged children by providing free sport and other structured physical activity programs in the after-school timeslot at over 3,200 schools and out of school hours care services across Australia. The AASC program has already trained over 30,000 community coaches who run a huge variety of activity programs across the country. These coaches are students, club coaches, teachers, parents, brothers, sisters, retirees, community members, professional athletes and volunteers. If that’s got you thinking you might be interested in, check it out, you’ll be setting an example for kids right now and in the future.
H
ere is a quick experiment I got from Alwyn Cosgrove. Stand up and hold a single dumbbell out to your right side, as you would in the fi nishing position of a lateral raise. What muscles are working? Obviously, it’s your right deltoid among a few other shoulder muscles. But think about how your torso stays upright with that dumbbell hanging out in space. Your centre of gravity is off, so something besides your right deltoid must be working pretty hard to keep you from leaning over. In this case, it’s your left oblique. It’s working to stabilise your spine, allowing your right deltoid to lift that weight and hold it out there away from your body. Now imagine that the oblique on your left side is weak, or recently injured. You wouldn’t be able to lift that dumbbell, since the muscles charged with protecting your spine aren’t prepared to do their job. Your body cares more about the health and safety of your spine than it does about the size of your shoulders. Your best strategy, then, is to rehabilitate and strengthen your obliques, thus releasing the brake on your muscle development. Stomping on the accelerator by increasing the volume of your shoulder training wouldn’t do any good, and might make things considerably worse. Let’s assign some hypothetical numbers, and say your right deltoid can lift 30 pounds for 10 reps. To achieve overload and force growth, we have to train the deltoid to do one of two things: lift 31 pounds for 10 reps, or 30 pounds for 11 or more reps. But let’s say your core muscles can only handle 29 pounds for 10 reps. A bodybuilder might say the solution is to fi nd a way to overload the delts while bypassing the core. Ultimately, the strategy is counterproductive; it only exacerbates the imbalance. I’d take the opposite approach, and do everything I could to release the brakes.
Elisha is a registered nurse and midwife who has years of experience working in emergency departments
Life & Style
THE PHARMACIST SAYS
David Stein, Owner & Manager of Fitec, Penrith www.fitec.com.au e:david@fitec.com.au
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