Health Wikipedia

Dental caries is the destruction of teeth by bacteria. It causes decay and cavities, and affect all ages especially children and young adults.

Dental caries/tooth decay requires the simultaneous presence of three factors to develop: Plaque bacteria, sugar or carbohydrate food and a vulnerable tooth surface.

Early caries may not have any symptoms. Later, when the decay has eaten through the enamel, the teeth may be sensitive to sweet foods or to hot and cold foods and drinks. There may be other complications like discomfort or pain, fractured tooth, inability to bite down on tooth.

Treatment can help prevent tooth damage from leading to cavities. Treatment may involve: Fillings, Crowns, Root canals.

Preventing dental caries can be relatively easy by eliminating the causes of tooth decay by reducing the amount of plaque and bacteria in the mouth, and strengthening the teeth’s defenses. The following tips might help your teeth from decaying.

* Reduce the number of times each day that you eat carbohydrates or drink sugary drinks. Eat a well-balanced diet that limits sugary foods.

* Fluoride is the best resource available for strengthening and protecting teeth from decay and healing early acid damage by replacing the lost minerals. Brushing with a fluoride toothpaste is the most easy way of delivering fluoride to the teeth.

* Brush regularly at least twice a day after meal and floss daily to remove plaque from between teeth and below the gum-line.

* Prescription mouthwashes can help prevent decay by reducing the number of bacteria in the mouth. Chewing sugarless gums can also help preventing cavities.

* In children, new molars can be protected from dental caries by dental sealants as soon as they emerge. Sealants can help adults too, but they are only effective against tooth decay on the biting surfaces of molars and premolars.

* Have dental checkups and professional teeth cleaning at regular interval. A dentist will detect minor problems before becoming major ones.

Once you have completed drug rehab programme, there must be changes in your lifestyle. Below are some tips about what to expect and what those change should be:

Aftercare support
You will spend a lot of time applying the newly acquired life skills and coping skills that you learned in your treatment programme and this will keep you happy, clean and sober. This alone can keep you so busy that some family members may even feel neglected. These are an essential part of the recovery process. Keep in mind, many families find it difficult to understand why re-entry to society after an addiction treatment programme takes up so much of your time in a successful recovery. Have patience and explain all the hard work you are doing on your sobriety to them it will pay off in the long-run.

New rules
Rules are the cornerstone of the treatment process. While in treatment, you may have grown accustomed to following rules, and come to appreciate this level of structure. After returning home, you may even suggest new family rules, the most obvious being a ban on alcohol or drugs in your home.

Roles and responsibilities
Before you went into treatment, you may have neglected certain roles and responsibilities. Other family members may have pitched in to compensate. Now that you have completed treatment, you will probably be eager to participate in family life, and resume your family roles and responsibilities. Often this change in the family dynamic can be difficult at first. Don’t worry it will get easier.

Communication
As part of the treatment process, you have learned to talk about personal issues, like relationships and feelings. Most treatment programmes stress the importance of open and honest communication. You will bring these lessons home, and encourage the rest of the family to talk and listen to one another. These conversations may be unsettling and unfamiliar at first. But open communication can help to solve problems and conflicts and, in the long-run, create a healthy home environment.

New people, places and things
While in treatment you will have learned to avoid people, places and things associated with your past drug abuse activities. This may affect your social life as a family, and may cause some conflicts in the home. Keep in mind that these challenges will be worth it in the long run.

Your feelings
Alcohol and drug abuse affects the whole family, and your feelings are important too. Make time for yourself, and talk to trusted family members and friends about your experiences.

‘Relapse’ is when a person in recovery uses alcohol or drugs. It can be a one-time occurrence or it can last for an extended period of time. Family members can help a person in recovery by looking out for warning signs a return to old behaviors, hanging out with friends who are using, unexplained absences. If you feel as though you are going to relapse or already have, contact the counselor or the doctor and ask for help.

Dr Sat Parkash

Sinusitis, an inflammation of sinus and nasal passage is increasing among the population by and by due to environmental pollution. Until recently, along with medication, various ablative surgeries were being performed to eradicate sinus pathology. But these surgeries have several complications that distort the nasal physiology and drainage of the sinuses. Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (FESS) is the most advanced method in the treatment of sinusitis that overcomes the obstacles and has good patient compliance.

Sinuses are air containing cavity in the bone of face and head that lighten the skull weight, helps in resonance in sound production; also have some protective action against body defense by secretion. When these sinuses are infected due to bacteria, virus, fungus, people experience headache, lethargy, loss of interest, running nose, pain in the face beside nose, nasal obstruction, occasional bleeding from nose etc.

90 percent sinusitis is due to bacterial infections and 10 percent may be due to infections spreading from upper gum or dental origin by anaerobic organisms.

Sinusitis may be of acute or chronic. In acute sinusitis there will be severe pain, fever and other constitutional symptoms. Treatments with medicine like appropriate antibiotics, analgesic, nasal decongestant, steam inhalation usually cure it. But when sinusitis becomes chronic and medicine fails to improve the condition, surgical manipulation will be needed.

Sinus washout is the commonly practiced treatment for chronic sinusitis. In addition to this, radical and ablative surgery of the nose and paranasal sinuses are also used to treat sinus pathology. Due to wider complication of these procedures, Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (FESS) has become as the most recent advancement in the management of the nose and paranasal sinus diseases.

FESS helps to maintain function or physiology of the sinuses, ciliary activity (that wipes out foreign substance from nose) and drainage of the sinuses. Thereby it helps clear the sinus infection. It is less manipulative, safe and complication is almost nil in expert hand.

Blood pressure is no longer an adult entity. One may suffer from high blood pressure or hypertension at any age. One may account such illness due to the complications of certain diseases, whereas another group may acquire hypertension just for their changing lifestyle. The consequence of such flunky habit is obesity. Sedentary lifestyle including remote control electronics, escalator, sports car, junk foods — all may be the blessings of modern era but at the same time denounced the young frantic generation with unhealthy state. Obesity and heart disease just go side by side.

In western world, obese children are no longer considered to be normal. But in our country over-weight or obesity is still out of sense of morbidity. Though we got the burden of malnourished children in our country, still many kids there with hi-fi lifestyle exhibiting obesity or over-weight. On the other hand, the conscious people of the west despite of all efforts could not cut down the figures of obesity. Globally one in six children is over-weight. So the consequence of obesity — hypertension in adolescent age is now pronounced more and more.

In our context, beside obesity, systemic and immune diseases play significant role behind childhood hypertension. Juvenile diabetes, familial hypercholesterolemia, chronic kidney disease due to glomerulo-nephritis, Henoch-Schönlein purpura (a bleeding disorder), drug induced nephropathy (kidney damage by drug) and severe dehydration — all may induce hypertension. But still we have many things to gather as researches are ongoing.

Unsurprisingly, teenagers are now experiencing the same ill effects from sleep deprivation that hypertensive adults do. Recently the study of 238 teenagers (13 to 16 years old) in the USA found that 11 percent slept less than 6.5 hours per night and 26 percent endured frequent awakenings. One in seven teens studied had either borderline high blood pressure or hypertension, which is defined as readings of greater than 140 mm/Hg over 90 mm/Hg. Those with less than 85 percent “sleep efficiently” had nearly three times the risk of high blood pressure. The results mimic established data on adults studied over the past several years, and because higher blood pressure in childhood is linked to the same condition in adulthood, a lack of restorative sleep can set up youngsters for lifelong cardiac problems.

Scientists believe that higher blood pressure results from less sleep because the normal blood pressure dip experienced during restorative sleep does not have as great an opportunity to take hold.

Sleep deprivation’s effects are also system-wide, causing the kidneys to retain more sodium and effecting structural changes in organs that participate in blood pressure regulation, including the kidneys, heart and blood vessels.

So the concern of hypertension in younger group can not be ignored. Health awareness must grow up in both parents and children and to all to restore healthy lifestyle. One must be aware about those diseases and at the same time of healthy food habits. Here are some key points present before you to keep your pressure within limit.

- Eat a rainbow of colours (colourful food). Increase your fruit and vegetable intake.

- Eat fruit and nuts in their natural form as a snack.

- Be physically active. Try walking, biking, or swimming for 30 to 60 minutes on most days.

- Cut down on foods such as cheese, chips, bacon, table sauces, coated chicken, salted nuts and canned meats.

- Eat fewer processed and fast foods like cookies, breakfast cereals, bread, burgers, cakes, pies and pizza.

-Be food label conscious – get to know what you are eating.

-Make at least one vegetarian meal a week.

-Do not skip meals. Eat three adequate meals a day.

-Reducing your portion size and avoiding unnecessary carbohydrates is an easy way to cut back without feeling deprived.

Although many people, especially children do not like Karella’s taste, but it is a very nutritious vegetable. It is a good source of vitamin C, containing most of the vitamin B complex and vitamin A in the form of carotene. It is also rich in calcium, potassium, phosphorus and iron.

Usually it is often prepared as vegetables dish with potatoes and other vegetables to balance the bitterness. But its health benefits are amazing. It is popular throughout the Indian subcontinent for its medicinal value. This is a popular medicinal food for diabetes. Many people make a mixture of equal amount of amla and karella juice with the belief that it helps reducing blood glucose level. It is also helpful in liver and spleen disorders.

Karella is also known as bitter gourd in English. From Colombia to China, there are different types of Karella throughout the world. But the medicinal value and taste are not the same. So, all types of available Karella do not bear the same medicinal quality. Concerned researchers can identify the real Karella that are really good for diseases like diabetes. For example, in Panama only the leaves of the plant (when ripe) are brewed in hot water to create a tea to treat malaria and diabetes. The leaves are allowed to steep in hot water before being strained thoroughly so that only the remaining liquid is used for the tea. This has been used in various Asian traditional medicine systems for a long time. Like most bitter-tasting foods, it stimulates digestion.

Everyone knows that moderation is the key to prevention of hangovers. But sometimes one drink becomes two, two drinks become more and a hangover follows. Since moderation did not work the night before, the fate of your day now rests squarely on the shoulders of prevention of the pounding head, nausea, and all of the other delightful symptoms associated with a lesson learned.

Below are ten easy tips for prevention of a hangover, so an evening of fun will not ruin the next day, next time:

1. Drink alcohol in moderation. Obviously the most key component of prevention of hangovers is that of not drinking too much in the first place. Know your limits
and remain aware of how much alcohol you take in.

2. Drink plenty of clear liquids. In between alcoholic beverages and before going to bed after your night out, ensure you drink plenty of water or other clear
fluids. Electrolyte and sports drinks are also very good for fighting the dehydration caused by the alcohol in your cocktails, wine, or beer.

3. Eat simple sugars and carbohydrates before going to sleep. When you arrive home after your night out, nourish your body with food that will help it metabolize the alcohol and neutralize an acidic stomach. A great suggestion for this is simply honey on toast. The honey contains the fructose for quicker processing of the alcohol and the toast is high in carbohydrates to soothe the acidity in your stomach. Beyond the carbs and sugars, eggs contain cysteine which may also help prevent a hangover and milk’s calcium can also be beneficial.

4. Take aspirin, but at the right time. Aspirin slows down the body’s ability to process alcohol, if taken before the alcohol is consumed. So contrary to popular belief, taking aspirin before drinking can aid in development of a hangover, not prevention of one. However, it is beneficial to take two aspirins before going to sleep after indulgence. Whatever you do, do not take acetaminophen which can cause liver damage if mixed with alcohol.

5. Avoid greasy foods. Eating heavy, greasy, or acidic foods after drinking is like adding fuel to a fire. You know which foods are considered “sketchy” for your own stomach on a good day, so really avoid those after alcoholic beverages when your stomach is even less resilient.

6. Take Vitamin B1 or Thiamine. In taking B vitamin complex you are replenishing some of what alcohol depletes and this may prevent the headache associated with a
hangover.

7. Exercise. It may sound slightly off balance to exercise after drinking, but if you are physically able to safely do so, consider getting some exercise to oxygenate your body’s cells and speed up metabolizing of the alcohol.

8. Take a spoonful of baking soda. In a glass of water this helps balance acidity of the stomach and prevents queasiness. Do this before bed or first thing in the
morning after your night out.

9. Drink bouillon or soup. Bouillon is high in both salt and potassium, both of which are depleted during consumption of alcohol.

10. Get plenty of rest. Sleep will provide the time your body needs to recover from the damage caused by alcohol.

Clearly the best prevention of a hangover is abstinence from alcohol altogether. But if a few drinks are in order, simply ensuring you replenish the right nutrients, rest, and otherwise help your body rebalance itself after the drinks will aid in ensuring the next day is misery free.

By Matthew Sawyer