Health and medicine blog. Pharmacy news

Pregnancy and child birth is a special part of a woman’s life. This joyous event is the creation of a new life and the start of years of joy, worry, happiness, and anxiety.

Having a healthy pregnancy is the first and most important step in your new baby’s life. It is a great responsibility on both the expectant mother and the father. Their lifestyle and the nutrition of the mother will play the most important part in the development of the unborn baby.

Many studies have shown that a lack of some vitamins and minerals in the diet could be associated with some types of birth defects and that supplements may prevent these defects occurring. The birth defects that may be prevented by taking a multivitamin supplement before and during the pregnancy include spina bifida and harelip.

Correct eating habits, a balanced diet, and supplements of a multivitamin mineral formula could help prevent many of the problems that may be associated with pregnancy and birth defects.

SUPPLEMENTS

folic acid 0.8 mg daily during pregnancy (folic acid requirement doubles during pregnancy)

calcium 1000 mg to 1500 mg daily, 2000 mg daily during lactation (calcium requirements double during pregnancy)

magnesium 500 mg daily

iron phosphate 15 mg 3 times daily

Naturetime

Multivitamin Mineral

(sustained release) 1 tablet daily

evening primrose oil 500 mg 1 capsule morning and night

(supplement may be beneficial during pregnancy induced hypertension)

For morning sickness

Travel Calm Ginger 1 tablet 3 times daily

peppermint tea 1 cup in morning before getting out of bed and then 1 cup 3 times daily

red raspberry leaf tea Drink 3 cups a day during the third trimester. Red raspberry leaf tea has been

traditionally used as a uterine tonic and to help relieve the pain of childbirth

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Did you know 26.3% of Australians died in 1988 of coronary heart disease and another 10.4% died from strokes? (National Heart Foundation 1988 Heart Facts).

When you consider that heart disease is largely preventable, we really must be doing something wrong.

The heart is not the fragile organ most of us are led to believe. It is a very strong muscle about the size of a man’s fist which sits in the middle of the chest. Without our heart the blood would not circulate around our bodies. This fantastic organ, beating at more than 100,000 beats per day, pumping about half a cup of blood per beat, pumps around 200,000,000 litres of blood in the average lifetime.

If you car worked as hard as your heart, then it probably would not last the distance, so those of us who just cannot afford to keep buying new cars do something about this problem. We keep up regular services, make sure the correct petrol and oil are used, warm our engines up slowly and do not over-rev them.

Do we give our hearts the same attention and loving care, taking into account the above figures? The average answer would be no, we do not. v

A number of my patients come in to see me with this standard question: ‘My father died from a heart attack when he was only 48 years of age and now my brother has developed angina. Does this mean that I am next and if so, if there anything I can do?

The answer is that family history only plays a small part in heart disease and a change in other risk factors can make all the difference. You are in a high risk group if you have high blood pressure, smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day, have high cholesterol, are overweight, live a stressful lifestyle or have diabetes. You must seek you practitioners advice and have a full medical check-up.

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The care of the lower bowel or colon is very important but unfortunately many of us neglect the inside. We need to drink plenty of water and eat foods high in roughage. Fresh fruits and vegetables and whole-grain foods are excellent and should be eaten every day in our diet.

We need to give our bodies a cleanout so that everything is functioning properly so we don’t have any of the morbid wastes left behind that can quite often cause side effects such as headaches, or lethargy, or just not feeling up to par. Even cancer can result from not looking after our colon properly, and eating foods high in fibre.

To do this, we need to look after our colon with a Colon Care preparation, containing gentle laxative herbs and agents providing bulk. This will allow us to eliminate the toxins from our body and we should look at doing this periodically to make sure that we are keeping our colons healthy and flushed. It is very important to get rid of these toxins as they can cause many problems.

SUPPLEMENTS

High fibre diet

Water 6-8 glasses a day

Colon Care contains once every two weeks

cassia

buckhorn bark

psyllium seed

aniseed

fennel seed

liquorice root

uva-ursi

Irish moss

agar agar

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Australia has many venomous snakes. The taipan, tiger and brown snake are all very poisonous. Others such as the carpet snake and green tree snake are non-venomous.

It is important to leave snakes alone. Many are not aggressive, unless disturbed, and will not usually bite.

If you are bitten and are not absolutely sure that the snake is non-venomous then the following steps need to be taken.

1 The victim must rest. Reassure the person. Don’t panic as there is an anti-venom available for all Australian snakes.

2 Apply an elastic bandage starting at the bitten area and around the whole limb. If a person is bitten on the foot then start the bandage around the foot and then continue until the whole leg is covered.

3 Take the casualty to hospital or ring or send for medical aid. Funnel-web Spider

The Australian funnel-web spider is very poisonous. It is a large black or reddish-brown spider and is found in rock crevices and under logs and rocks along the New South Wales coast and south-east Queensland. The bite is very painful. The treatment is the same as for snake bite.

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A LARGE GLASS OF FRESH WATER FIRST THING EACH MORNING

BREAKFAST

Glass orange or pineapple juice (unsweetened)

Poached eggs with 1 slice of kibble bread, lightly spread with butter (3 times per week only).

and/or

1 serve of natural muesli, wheat cereal. Add natural fruit to sweeten, some unprocessed bran or oat bran, skim milk or soy milk, no sugar. A little honey may be used now and then.

1 cup of herbal tea.

MORNING TEA

1 medium-sized apple

LUNCH

Salad. (If you are not able to take this type of lunch with you to work and you can buy your lunch, then order salad sandwiches)

Include in your salad: lettuce leaves, cucumber slices, stick celery, tomato, grated carrot and cottage cheese, slices beetroot, pineapple, natural yoghurt; 1 cup herbal tea;

AFTERNOON TEA

1 glass vegetable juice; or 1 glass fruit juice;

DINNER

Glass of water, nut meat or lentils with salad or vegetables. Don’t overcook vegetables, stir-fry with a little olive oil or steamed is best. Use herbs to enhance the flavour, or grilled chicken (no skin) or steamed or grilled fish with lemon or grilled veal and side salad. Add a little cold pressed oil to apple cider vinegar, garlic and some herbs to taste.

Alternate this with steamed vegetables including at least 4 to 5 different vegetables both green and yellow

DESSERT.

Use natural fruit and yoghurt.

Your water intake should be between 6 to 8 glasses per day. This may include herbal tea.

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What the majority of men don’t seem to understand is that during foreplay the progress from kissing and cuddling to caressing the breasts, nipples and clitoris is not only very exciting and pleasurable for a woman, and incidentally to most men, it is absolutely necessary for a woman’s arousal, and crucial to her pleasure and satisfaction. Without it, a woman is not sexually aroused or an uninhibited participant, and is not even physiologically ready. But, worse, after sexual intercourse she is unsatisfied and resentful and remains wide awake while her partner turns over and goes to sleep. Men and women are mismatched in this respect because a man is much more easily and quickly aroused, and reaches orgasm in a very short time in almost any situation. Is it any wonder that sex can end up being a battleground, very often of unspoken resentments and hostilities, and becomes more and more uninteresting and infrequent.

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The easiest way for a man to find out how a woman likes to be stimulated, and how much stimulation is necessary, is to study how women masturbate. Some women, however, especially those who may have guilty feelings about self-pleasuring, prefer to be masturbated by their partners. Many women do it at particular times, such as while they are menstruating, and keep it secret from their partners. Others may indulge in it routinely as a way of relieving sexual tension. Because direct and continued genital stimulation is so necessary to a woman’s orgasm, some women use self-masturbation as a way of guaranteeing that they reach a climax while having sexual intercourse.

In fact, since only about 30 percent of women achieve orgasm with intercourse but over 80 percent experience a climax with masturbation, orgasm by means of masturbation, rather than by sexual intercourse, should be regarded as the normal experience.

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1 Stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and take the time to examine your body carefully,

from head to toe as though you were seeing yourself for the first time. Use another mirror to

see yourself from the side or back.

2 Move around. Kneel, bend and sit with your legs apart, then together.

3 Concentrate on your best points; you are bound to have some. The shapeliness of your legs, the

length of your neck, high cheekbones, or dainty feet, for example.

4 Reconsider the features that you dislike and try to see them in a more positive light. For

instance, although you may think that you are fatter than the ideal, you may have a

Rubenesque physique that is attractive to men.

5 Using a hand mirror, and in the best possible light, examine your vagina. Identify your

different parts. In order to see and touch the clitoris properly, you will need to pull back the

hood of skin covering it. You can run your fingers along the inner and outer vaginal lips and

back along the area between the anus and vagina to find the more sensitive areas. Separate the

inner lips in order to explore the entrance to the vagina and inside.

6 When you have finished, take a warm bath. Soap your hands and explore your body with them,

noticing the different sensations you experience in all your body areas by changes in touch and

pressure.

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The “G” spot appears to be a small cluster of nerve endings, glands, ducts and blood vessels sited around a woman’s urethra, or urinary tract. This area cannot normally be felt when the woman is unaroused, only becoming distinguishable as a specific area during deep vaginal stimulation. When this happens it swells, sometimes very rapidly, and a small mass with distinct edges stands out from the vaginal wall. As it seems to have no organic function other than helping a woman achieve a high degree of sexual fulfilment and, at orgasm, can appear to “ejaculate” a clear liquid similar in composition to that created by the prostate, some experts think that the “G” spot is a rudimentary form of the male prostate gland.

The easiest way for a woman to find her “G” spot is to sit or squat, because lying down positions the relevant spot further away. First stimulating your “G” spot can feel like wanting to urinate, so it is a good idea to start your explorations while sitting on the toilet. Once your bladder is empty, you will know that the sensation is caused by the “G” spot, and not by having a full bladder.

Using your fingers, apply firm upward pressure on the front of the internal vaginal wall, perhaps pressing down simultaneously with the other hand on the outside of the abdomen. As it becomes stimulated, the spot should start to swell and will feel like a lump between the fingers inside and outside your vagina. Extremely pleasurable contractions may sweep through the uterus and you may experience a deep, satisfying orgasm, which will feel totally different from a clitoral orgasm.

At this point you may also find that you ejaculate a small amount of clear fluid from the urethra. This is not urine, despite its appearance.

Since your partner can reach the spot more easily, it may be more effective if he stimulates you. Lie down on a bed with two firm pillows underneath your hips, with your legs slightly apart and your bottom a little in the air. Your partner can lie down, lean close against you, gently insert two fingers (palm down) and stroke the front vaginal wall.

Sexual positions that produce “G” spot stimulation are the woman-on-top and the rear-entry positions. When a woman is on top of a man, she can control the depth and direction of her partner’s penis, and can move forward or from side-to-side to guide it to the place that feels best for her. In rear-entry positions, the penis is rubbing directly on the front wall of the vagina in which the “G” spot is located.

A man can help by moving his own body and pressing the base of his penis to make sure that its head makes full contact with the “G” spot. The result of these movements can be a series of intense orgasms for both partners.

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Skeleton Beginning at about age two, boys grow approximately 5 centimetres (2 inches) per year until the age of 13 or 14, when the sex organs begin to develop. Adolescence brings with it a rapid gain in both height and strength. The growth spurt that accompanies puberty may last for a few years, and during that time most boys gain approximately 9 centimetres (3 ½ inches) yearly. At the end of this period of growth, the bones have grown harder, more brittle, and have changed in proportion. Once the shoulders broaden, the hips look narrower by comparison – a characteristic of the adult male.

Body hair Early in puberty, pubic hair appears at the base of the penis, and after a while, it starts growing on the scrotum as well. It may also grow around the anal area. Pubic hair normally grows in an upside-down triangle on the lower part of the belly, though it may reach the navel, and may grow outwards towards the thighs. About one or two years later, hair will appear in the armpits and on the upper lip. Pubic hair is longer, coarser and curlier than hair that has been on the body since birth. It may be a lighter or darker colour than that on the head. With age, it may turn grey.

In addition to curly pubic hair, hair appears on the arms, thighs and lower legs. Hair may appear also on the chest, shoulders and back, and back of the hands. Facial hair becomes thicker and darker as a man matures. The beard and moustache may be the same colour as the hair on the head, or different.

The amount of body hair depends on racial or ethnic background and family history. Caucasian men generally have more body hair than oriental or black men; and “hairiness” runs in families.

Muscles The thighs, calves, shoulders and upper arms begin to grow broader during adolescence, and strength increases, too. A grown man’s muscles are 40 times those at birth. The main determinant of body strength is body size, and muscle itself accounts for 40 percent of total body weight.

The genitals The testes grow very slowly until about the age of 10 or 11, following which there is a considerable acceleration in growth rate and growth of the external genital organs. In the fully grown male, the testicles are usually about 3.8 centimetres (1 ½ inches) long, between 16 and 27 millilitres (½ – 1 fluid ounce) in volume, and are duskily coloured. One testicle, usually the left one, hangs lower than the other. This is to keep the testicles from crushing each other when you walk. In most men, testicles are the same size, but in a few, one may be larger than the other.

Changes to the penis begin at a later stage than for the testicles. During a growth spurt, the penis gets larger (both longer and wider) and the glans, or head, of the penis becomes more developed. A grown man’s penis is usually between 7.5 and 10 centimetres (3-4 inches) long when flaccid.

Under certain conditions, for instance coming into contact with cold water or being out during cold weather, or if the man is feeling afraid or tired, the penis can temporarily shrivel somewhat. Old age, however, can cause it to become permanently a bit smaller in size.

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