Santa Barbara

Archive for April, 2011

Visits to the doctor can be traumatic for children. If you’re anxious about the tantrums at the waiting room, here are tips to deal with it. Doctors are dealing with the problem by providing doctor’s waiting room toys to amuse their little patients. But there is more to just bringing the kids to the doctor – it’s time to teach them healthy life habits.

Kids and Their Doctors

The more the child becomes comfortable with the doctor, the better it is for you and your child. But it is a fact, though, that as a parent, bringing your kids to the doctor can be as challenging as scrambling for the top prize in the Survivor TV series.

Here’s the rundown: you have fit in the schedule for the doctor, pack up a lot of comfort toys, and steel your nerves for the long drive to the clinic, and spend hours for your turn at the doctor’s waiting room. Toys and snacks hurriedly brought from home are the only distraction to take the kids’ mind off from the tedious waiting game.

While there, you have to amuse, distract, and entertain your kids until it is your turn to have the doctor all to yourself. It is a good thing, though, that those pediatric clinics are stacking up on colorful and interesting doctor’s waiting room toys.

But beyond the visits to the doctor, you have to help your child trust your doctor by making those appointments rewarding and less distressing for your children. You can start by bringing your child for regular check-ups, not only for those sick visits. Those sessions with the doctor begins your child’s appreciative journey to develop good and healthy habits.

Dealing With Your Child’s Doctor

Doctors are ready to work with you to give the best medical care for your child. As a parent, follow these tips:

* Take note of the symptoms observed to provide accurate responses to the doctor’s questions.

* Avoid distractions, so you can stay focused during the appointment.

* Let the doctor spell out the things you cannot understand.

* Be ready to listen as well.

* Show your confidence in your child’s doctor.

Developing a bond with your child’s doctor will make it easier for you to discuss issues that may affect your child’s well-being. Issues like divorce, disabilities, and death of a loved one are concerns that can affect your child emotionally and physically.

Before your turn at the doctor’s consultation room, you can review the checklist of symptoms at the doctor’s waiting room. Toys, meanwhile, will amuse your child, or watching other children playing can divert your child’s attention. This gives you the needed break during the wait.

Smaller children, though, have to be supervised while playing with the doctor’s waiting room toys and with other children. This means you’ll have to make those notes before you make the appointment and take that long drive to the doctor’s office.

With little children, do not rely on grandparents or the nanny to take them to the doctor. There are things grandparents or nannies cannot do best, like answering the doctor’s questions and following the doctor’s instructions or asking the right questions.

They can only appreciate the doctor’s waiting room toys while they watch their wards at play. So better take your kids yourself. Start them on the right path towards health awareness and watch them grow confident with their doctors.

So many of the questions we receive on a daily basis center around the choices that people make in their lives. They “choose” to drink, or use an illegal drug, or abuse prescription medication. Family members want to know why they do this, or they ask for some insight into the reasons why their loved one’s personality has changed so dramatically. Sometimes the actions of the addicted person are so ridiculous that one can only conclude that the disease has completely taken over.

For example, a Wisconsin woman was convicted recently of her eighth drunken driving violation. The 58 year-old showed up at her sentencing hearing…drunk. She was given an 18-month prison sentence with five years of extended supervision.

She was then taken to jail, where she was given a breath test, producing a blood alcohol concentration of.196 percent, or about two and a half times the legal limit. Prior to the sentencing hearing she was out on a signature bond, told that she was not allowed to drink. She claimed she didn’t know that.

The trip to prison is not her first. About eight years ago she spend 13 months behind bars for the same offense. To her credit, she had not had any run-ins with the law since getting out, until she was picked up recently for her eighth offense.

This case is all about what to do with an alcoholic who chooses to drive. Do you throw them in jail, lock the door and throw away the key? As much as an eight-time loser might be shocking to some, the real number that is of interest is how many people drink and drive every day and get away with it?

While there is a punitive element to this woman’s case, the 18th months she is locked up should be used for treatment. You can lock her up for twice that length of time, but she will still come out of prison a “dry drunk” and she’ll probably go right back to drinking. If the prison time could be used for teaching and restructuring her lifestyle choices, she might have a chance to live a reasonable life.

Call it preventative care. If a person goes through eight trials, eight convictions and a couple of prison sentences, chances are better than good that the cost of all of that is far greater than the cost of one robust treatment program. The prison system in Wisconsin, as in other parts of the country, is overcrowded with non-violent offenders. DUI, drug possession or similar offenses present opportunities for the prison system to offer treatment and avoid repeat offenses.

I once overheard a conversation between two women. They were talking about their boyfriends, both of whom had multiple run-ins with the law for possession. Both had spent time in prison. Both were unemployed and had been for a long time. The women were lamenting the fact that their boyfriends were using the prison system for subsistence.

One told the other, “He wants to go to jail because they support him. That’s his job. He gets out and all he does is do drugs and get arrested again.” The other woman wasn’t at all shocked by the statement. She replied, “At least he doesn’t overdose in there, or get sick. My guy does more than he sells, so he doesn’t make any money. Jail is better for him.” Neither of the men had received any treatment. They go to prison for a short period of time, get released early and re-offend.

Treatment is much less expensive than feeding, housing and paying medical bills. The woman with her eight convictions is a drain on the state, with a disease that perpetuates bad decisions. She does have a choice at some level, but the disease has progressed to the point where it makes the choices.

The choices made are bad ones, but without any positive influence to break the cycle of addiction, her ability to choose anything but the wrong direction is cast. She has been sentenced to 18 months, she’ll get out again, but what real choices will she have? The disease will still be with her. And so it continues.

It is quite frustrating to see oneself gaining weight, but it is harsh reality that if one loses control over eating, weight gain is inevitable unless sufficient efforts are taken to lose weight.

Getting over-weight does not only affect your looks but also invites a lot of health problems, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, early aging, osteoarthritis, heart diseases, cancer, and impotency. It is, therefore important to consider weight loss as primary factor for well being if you are getting over-weight. However, you need not be disappointed if you have started gaining weight and find it difficult to control your cravings.

Weight loss can be achieved with a little bit of discipline in selecting what to eat, doing exercises, and sleeping well. You may also seek professional advice from weight loss experts. You can easily find weight loss specialists in your surroundings.

If you are living in Santa Monica CA, you have various options to locate Santa Monica weight loss clinics and can also seek advise from your Santa Monica Chiropractors whose practice emphasizes on wellness and nutrition.

If your weight gain problem is not so severe, you can even start your weight loss plan by following weight loss tips given in this article.

Aerobic exercise is one of the best tips for attaining weight loss. However, only exercise won’t help as you need to bring the body into negative energy balance to lose weight initially. Thus, if you start doing aerobic exercise but increase your food intake over your normal diet, you won’t be able to lose weight. The body weight can also be reduced without exercise only by controlling food intake, but an aerobic as well as anaerobic, i.e. weight training exercise is necessary to have a healthy and fit body and to maintain the ideal goal. Exercise along with diet control is an excellent combination for optimum weight loss. A Santa Monica chiropractor may advise you better which exercise suits you best.

Besides exercise, some medical practitioners suggest that you can use drugs and medicines that interact with body’s processes responsible for weight gain. These medicines are often combination of supplements and drugs that suppress appetite and reduce the absorption of fat, and thus reduce body mass. Such food supplements are normally fiber-based foods containing cellulose that satisfy the appetite but are not digested to absorb into the blood. One of such natural supplements is Bee Pollen. However, chiropractors or other nature-therapists won’t suggest taking medicines to reduce weight.

Another option is Crash Dieting, which refers to intentionally restricting intake of food for more than 12 hours except drinking water. When body needs energy, and there is no intake of calories for extended periods, the body burns the stored fat to generate energy. This results in significant weight loss in short time. However, this technique has a few side effects; for example, the body may start to dissolve lean muscle instead of fat as defense mechanism to retain fat for energy in emergency situation. Thus, Santa Monica weight loss experts and chiropractors may not recommend this technique.

Consuming low fat diet also results in weight loss as body gains weight from excessive energy produced by intake of both carbohydrates and the fat.

Reducing carbohydrate intake is also beneficial in attaining weight loss. However, it does not mean that you increase the intake of fat in your diet when reducing carbohydrate intake. Restricting carbohydrate intake has been proved to be the best method and having lowest side effects in attaining considerable weight loss besides other steps such as exercise. A well disciplined carbohydrate reduction plan is one that the Santa Monica Chiropractor would suggest to their patients. In first phase, it is recommended to cut short intake of carbohydrates. This is done to create a negative energy balance, which will eventually start burning excessive fat stored in the body. Then, once considerable fat is burnt and weight loss is achieved, the next phase is to maintain the weight, i.e. not letting it increase again. In this phase, intake of carbohydrate is allowed to certain extent, but with certain restrictions, such as avoiding foods that have high concentrations of carbohydrates and sugar, for example, processed milk chocolate, bakery items such as muffins, doughnuts, sweet bread etc. Other restricted foods include margarine, rice, processed meats, genetically modified foods, artificial drinks.

To maintain fitness and control weight, it is recommended that you should eat fresh fruits, vegetables, organic eggs, fish and meat of animals grown in natural environment. These eatables are easily available in entire US including Santa Monica, CA. If you live in Santa Monica there are plenty of fresh produce markets where you can get organic fruits and vegetables. There is also farmers market in Santa Monica which is held on Thursdays and carry a whole wide of fresh organic produce.

Heroin addiction treatment centers design a specific plan for each and every heroin addict based on the initial discussion with the addicts, family members and addiction level of the individual. These centers provide residential and outpatient care to the addicts. These treatment centers provide high level of facilities and medication therapy programs to the addicts. These specialized facilities help heroin addicts to experience with in a relaxed atmosphere and that lends itself to personal reflection and healing for adults and adolescent addicts.

Heroin use is directly related to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, as well as problem to heart and brain. In order to solve these considerable problems, heroin drug rehabs are the best options for complete drug recovery. These heroin rehabs design various types of specialized programs for long term and short term care.
Inpatient drug treatment facilities are one of the best options available for people trying to recover from drug addiction.

There are number of drug addicts that are guided by experience drug treatment specialists which results a successful heroin recovery cases. These drug rehabs centers have specialized team of professionals for each and every result oriented drug recovery program, and all these programs are offered by specialists of the industry. The staff of these drug rehabs is highly skilled with years of experience in working with number of drug addicts.

Treatments for Heroin Addiction

The treatments are depending upon the individual addiction level. The following treatments are best drug recovery treatments that help heroin addicts to recover from addictions

Detoxification – It withdraws the symptoms of heroin and provides the drug free life to the addicts. It is a long term treatment that use residential and outpatient treatment programs. The duration of this treatment is at least 3 to 6 months. During the treatment drug rehabs may use medications as part of the treatment.

Methadone programs – It is an effective and safe program to treat the addicted peoples before last 30 years. The medication therapy is used in this program for 24 to 36 hours. Patients are able to come out of their inner pains and emotional reactions. Methadone removes the craving that affect on our relapse. Methadone dosages must be carefully monitored in patients who are receiving antiviral therapy for HIV infection.

LAAM and other medications – LAAM is also like a methadone used to treat the heroin addiction. It blocks the effects of heroin up to seventy two hours with minimum side effects. Its long duration of action permits dosing just three times in per week. Another medication to treat heroin addiction is Buprenorphine. It produces a lower level of physical dependence.

Behavioral therapies – These can include residential and outpatient approaches. An important task is to match the best treatment approach to meet the particular needs of the patient. Cognitive-behavioral interventions are designed to modify the patient’s thinking and expectations.

You won’t believe it but it is true. Prostate cancer is one of the top leading causes of death among men and many of the industrialized countries of the world. This information is based on continued monitoring of data that suggests men and ignore prostate health until cancer situations become critical.

Here’s some more information:

The statistics now have it that one in every ten men will eventually develop significant prostate cancer at one stage in their lifetime! The reason for this has more to do with our living longer than the rate of cancer growing out of control.

The fact is that the risk of contracting prostate cancer increases as we age, and the baby boomer bubble is reaching the age where prostate cancer becomes a significant risk factor.

So, do we keep running away from this reality? Or brave up and do something about it! We could change our diet, exercise more and try to prevent it from happening to us. The biggest thing we can do to take control of our lives is to get a regular yearly prostate exam.

Prostate cancer is a slow growing carcinoma that when diagnosed early can be treated and even cured. The key to prostate cancer survival, his early detection and treatment.

The good news is that the sooner a prostate cancer is detected, the better and easier it would be to treat. So, with prostate cancer, the sooner you discover and treat it the better your chances of survival.

So, instead of hiding your head and ignoring the fact that your aging, learn all you can about good prostate health and the symptoms of prostate cancer. while the rest of your body is exposed it is wise to learn all you can about prostate cancer so that you can be better protected about it.

This knowledge will allow you to quickly identify the symptoms and go for full treatment. Better still, the knowledge you will get will help you to always go for check ups once or twice every year, to know immediately prostate cancer develops, so that you can fight it before it spreads.

With prostate cancer, early detection is the best way of surviving it.

The aim of treatment in patients with cancer is either kill cancer cells or modify their growth. The selectivity of antitumour drugs is marginal at best. Many cancers are characterized by localized tumour masses but surgery or radiotherapy often fail to eradicate it which can become widespread.

Treatment for malignant diseases with drugs started after 1940 when nitrogen mustard was used. From then very rapid progress has been made in new drug discovery for cancer, new effective combination of drugs and pathobiology of the disease.

Drugs used to treat cancer inhibit cell proliferation by inhibiting certain mechanisms of cell proliferation. Therefore they are toxic to both tumour and other normal proliferating cells present in bone marrow, gastrointestinal epithelium and hair follicles. The malignant tumours have a higher proportion of cells undergoing division than in normal proliferating cells in the body. So, the selectivity of cytotoxic drugs occurs.

In addition to leukemias and lymphomas, drugs, are also used in conjunction with surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy in a combined approach for many solid tumours, like metastatic. The anticancer drugs are used with the aim of:

1. Cure or prologed remission: This is now possible in cancers like

Acute leukemias

Choriocarcinoma

Wilmis tumour

Hodgkin’s disease

Ewing’s sarcoma

and Mycosis fungoides

2. Palliation: In this gratifying results are obtained and life is prolonged. This is used in the following cases,

Breast cancer

Chronic lymphatic leukemia

Ovarian carcinoma

Chronic myeloid Leukemia

Prostatic carcinoma

Non Hodgkin lymphomas

Lung (small cell) cancer

Head and neck cancers

Many other malignant tumours are less sensitive to drugs – life may or not be prolonged by chemotherapy. Tumours that are largely refractory to presently available drugs are:

Colorectal carcinoma

Malignant melanomas

Carcinoma pancreas

Bronchogenic carcinoma (non small cell)

3. Adjuvant chemotherapy: Not all radiotherapy and surgery eradicate the cancer cells completely. So adjuvant chemotherapy is used to mop up any residual cancer cells. This is routinely employed now.