Although hepatitis is more widespread in developing countries, cases do occur in Australia. It is also a health risk for those travelling overseas.

Cause

Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver caused by infection with various viruses. These are hepatitis A (infectious hepatitis), hepatitis B (serum hepatitis) and non-A non-B hepatitis.

Investigations

The diagnosis of hepatitis can be confirmed with blood tests.

Treatment

If your child’s symptoms are severe he may need to be admitted to hospital for nursing care. A child with hepatitis A usually improves after 2 weeks, while hepatitis B can be a prolonged illness. There is no cure for hepatitis so treatment is directed to relieving symptoms and includes rest as well as a special diet free of fatty foods.

Prevention

Good hygiene and proper sewerage are critical in the prevention of hepatitis. If you are travelling overseas with your child to areas where there is a high risk of exposure to hepatitis, an injection of human immunoglobulin can be given to help avoid infection with hepatitis A. A specific vaccine is now available against hepatitis B. This involves blood tests and three injections over several months — discuss this with your doctor.

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Depression: I mentioned earlier that there is a direct relationship between feelings of loneliness and isolation and serious depression. The sexual needs of the developing person cry out for direction and understanding, for discussion and focus. Adolescent suicide is dangerously increasing, in part because sexual feelings in our young people are not tolerated and have few safe avenues for expression.

There are many myths about teen depression and suicide. If they threaten it, they won’t do it. If they are active andjnvolved, they won’t do it. If they are doing well in school, they won’t do it. If they come from a good home, they won’t do it. These statements are false. If you are worried, there is reason to worry, so reach out now. It is éîã just depressed people who kill themselves. Agitated, afraid, worried, insecure, hyperactive people kill themselves, too. Healthy sexuality is a key part of making it through the stress of young adulthood. Wrong turns on the love maps of these young people can result in death through sexual experimentation gone wrong. Some adolescents hang themselves to cause a high related to lack of oxygen while masturbating, failing at the last moment to control the lack of oxygen. This cause of death is known to all clinicians, but is not often talked about. The sexual problem, called asphyxiophilia, is one of the so-called paraphilias, problems with relationships and loving sexuality. We might hear the comment, “He never said anything at all to me about being really that upset,” after a young person has killed himself, because what he might have said was not something we wanted to hear or were too uncomfortable to allow him to tell us.

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True False

1. Women do not ejaculate.

2. Most women have orgasm in intercourse.    

3. Women take a longer time to respond than men.    

4. Women have sexual fantasies less often than men.

5. Women are less turned on by visual stimulation than

men.

6.    The more lubrication of the vagina, the more aroused the woman is.

7.    Women can go on and on. They do not have a re-

fractory period.

8.    Women relate sex and love together while men tend

to be able to separate the two.

9.    Women prefer one partner and are not interested in

variety.    

10.    Women do not like oral love but might do it if their

partner really wants it.

All of the answers to this quiz are false because each myth is based on the premise that men and women respond completely differently, and this is not necessarily true.

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Your mind-body system remembers every damage you did to it in the days gone by. If some healing in the past has not been perfect, because of other emergencies in your body (and mind), some of the damage remains unrepaired.

When you purify your body and mind, resources within your body become available, enabling repairs which are long overdue .

The effect of this can be quite’ amazing. Many people on various detoxification programs (oxygen therapies, fasting) observe symptoms of their past diseases in quick succession and in reverse order. Basically, you can expect to re-live every serious disease you experienced in the past. Don’t be frightened. This is healing. Your body is just fixing things which are long overdue. Symptoms are usually very mild, and they last only an hour or two. Many active people do not even notice such symptoms, because they are so mild.

I would like to give you just one example drawn from my own personal experience. At the age of 7 I had a severe ear infection, which was very painful, took a long time to heal and doctors injected me with lots of antibiotics. At the age of 42, during fasting I experienced the symptoms of this disease, accurate in every minute detail. I was astonished, because the situation was restored so perfectly, that I remembered not only my feelings from childhood but also the taste and even the smell of antibiotics I took at that time. The experience lasted only for a few hours.

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The disorder usually begins in early adult life but may occur in children or in the elderly. It is often associated with other disorders, such as overactivity of the thyroid gland, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

The muscles become progressively weaker as they are used during the day and seem to recover overnight.

When we wish to use muscles, we send an impulse down the nerve to the muscle. At the nerve ending, a chemical, acetylcholine, is released and this stimulates the muscle to contract.

In myasthenia gravis, the supply of acetylcholine appears to run out with repeated use and the muscles become progressively weaker. The supply appears to build up with rest. Sometimes the muscle become permanently weak.

The drug neostigmine, or its derivatives, is used to overcome the lack of acetylcholine and, if given several times a day, can control the symptoms. The disease tends to remit and relapse but, occasionally, is rapidly progressive and may be fatal.

In some, removal of the thymus does seem to lead to remission but the operation is still controversial.

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Eating Chinese food may not only leave you still hungry after an hour or two, it may give a few individuals severe headaches and other symptoms.

What has been called the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome comes on usually within half an hour to an hour of eating out at a Chinese restaurant. The symptoms are believed to be caused by monosodium glutamate or MSG which is often added to Chinese cooking.

Those who are sensitive to this substance react by developing feelings of pressure, tightness and burning over the face, neck, shoulders and chest. It is usually associated with a severe throbbing headache.

The symptoms are frightening and many sufferers experiencing their first attack believe they have had a stroke.

They seem to develop only when a sufficient quantity of MSG is taken on an empty stomach. Hence, it is often the soup eaten at the beginning of the meal which causes the problem.

So, if you are unlucky enough to be sensitive to MSG and still be partial to Chinese food, miss out on the soup or have a small snack before you go to the restaurant — or change and learn to like Italian cooking.

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Symptoms: nausea, paleness or “green” tinge to skin, excessive perspiration, vomiting, and anxiety.

Home care

Give the child an anti-nausea remedy recommended by the doctor. Give this medication an hour before a trip and then every four hours during the journey.

Keep the child cool.

Restrict the diet.

Have the child look out the window while traveling. Distract the child with a game during the trip.

Precautions

Some children are more susceptible than others to motion sickness.

Motion sickness is not brought on by the child, and the child can’t control it.

Prolonged motion sickness can lead to severe vomiting and finally to dehydration, which is an emergency situation and requires hospital care.

A child who is susceptible to motion sickness will have repeated attacks every time he or she travels.

Car, air, and sea sickness are all forms of motion sickness. Prolonged rhythmic motion up and down or from side to side will make most children nauseated, presumably because the movement affects the balance mechanism of the inner ears. Some children are more susceptible to motion sickness than others; young infants are apparently immune. Motion sickness is not deliberately brought on by the child, nor can the child control it. Susceptible children will have attacks over and over.

Signs and symptoms

Motion sickness is fairly easy to recognize. A motion-sick child becomes nauseated, pale or “green,” and anxious; the child may perspire and vomit.

Home care

If your child suffers from motion sickness, ask your doctor to recommend an anti-nausea medication. Give your child an anti-nauseate by mouth one hour before the start of each trip, and then every four hours during the trip. Dimenhydrinate anti-nauseate tablets or liquid are highly effective and safe. It also helps to keep the child cool and on a light diet before and during the trip. Having the child look out the car window will often eliminate motion sickness. Distracting the child with a game can also be useful.

Precaution

Prolonged motion sickness (over hours) can eventually result in excessive vomiting and dehydration.

Medical treatment

Your doctor’s treatment will be the same as your home treatment unless the child has become dehydrated. Dehydration requires hospital care during which the child is given fluids intravenously.

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• Too much sugar has not been proved harmful to the blood pressure in humans but it has in animals. One experiment in monkeys found that adding sugar to a high-salt diet made the blood pressure jump even higher. (Refined sugar definitely has an adverse effect on cholesterol metabolism-putting up the levels of harmful blood fats which also predispose to heart disease. Unrefined, complex sugars do the opposite.)

• Stress undoubtedly plays a part in producing at least some cases of high blood pressure, and almost certainly keeps it high in others. Many studies have now proved that biofeedback, autogenic training and self-hypnosis can all be used to reduce blood pressure in hypertensives. Simple meditation can reduce blood pressure both at the time and long-term. In a study reported in 1981 one group of hypertensives was taught how to relax, while a parallel group was left alone. The relaxation group had a three times greater drop in blood pressure than the others. On checking six months later the difference in blood pressures was still the same.

It appears that if you expect relaxation techniques to be successful they are more likely to be so. A study of thirty patients under medical treatment for high blood pressure divided the patients into two groups. The first group was told that the muscle-relaxation exercises they were to do could produce immediate results which would persist with increased practice and the second group were told that the value of the relaxation could be delayed and that they might even expect a small rise in blood pressure. The ‘expectant’ group achieved a 17 point fall in systolic blood pressure but the ‘delayed’ group had only a 2-4 point fall.

We see how dangerous caffeine can be. A study in Nashville found a 14 per cent rise in blood pressure in volunteers who consumed the equivalent of about two cups of coffee. This made the researchers conclude that habitual coffee drinkers keep their blood pressures artificially high and that some will push marginal blood pressures into the seriously hypertensive range that needs treatment.

• Exercise can provably reduce blood pressure. A study in Florida looked at 370 hypertensive patients and measured their blood pressure before and after several twenty-minute rides on a stationary bicycle. About 96 per cent of the volunteers had a fall of blood pressure (of between 10 and 50 points) after three months’ exercise.

• Noise can produce blood pressure and removing it prevents it. Monkey experiments found that after nine months of exposure to a noise level typically experienced by industrial workers the animals’ blood pressures went up by an average of 27 per cent. After the end of the experiment the monkeys’ blood pressure remained high for over a month even in the absence of noise. Investigations at the Volvo car factory in Sweden checked the effect of industrial noise on the blood pressure of their workers. Because some people are thought to be more sensitive to noise the researchers selected out all those with noise-induced hearing loss. All 414 men with hearing loss turned out to have significantly higher blood pressures than the 74 men with normal hearing.

Further evidence of the strain of noise comes from studies done on people who live near airports. A study of those living around Los Angeles International Airport found that people living within 3 miles of the airport had 29 per cent more admissions to mental hospital than those living 6 miles away. A similar study of London’s Heathrow Airport found the figure to be 31 per cent.

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