Herbal Health

The loss of a foetus in early pregnancy is a distressing experience. While the risk of miscarriage exists with every pregnancy, it can be reduced. All pregnant women should cease smoking and drinking alcohol. Try to avoid taking medications but, if you must, check with your doctor to ensure that they will not induce spontaneous abortion or harm the foetus in any way. This also applies for herbal remedies, many of which can induce miscarriages.

Vitamin E is thought to reduce the risk of miscarriage as is the regular drinking of raspberry leaf tea which strengthens the uterus. Avoid eating new or green potatoes. These contain the toxin solanine which can cause women to miscarry.

Throughout pregnancy, exercise should be regular and gentle. In the early months of the pregnancy, some doctors advise against having sexual intercourse during the days when the women would normally have her period. If the women has miscarried previously, particular care should be taken at the stage of the pregnancy when the last miscarriage occured.

Generally, a balanced diet, perhaps a little more rich in protein, will prepare a woman well to carry her baby full term. If spotting occurs, immediate and complete bed rest is advised until professional advice is sought.

*9\69\2*

Anxiety often shows itself in difficulty in our interpersonal relations. We feel that we are no longer at ease when meeting people, strangers, and even those whom we know quite well. Oddly enough, it is usual for us to be noticeably easier in our professional and business dealings with people than we are on social occasions, even when the social occasion is quite casual and of no consequence. The reason for this is that in our professional and business dealings both we and the others have something definite to do; we have an allotted role, as it were, and we know what has to be done; but small talk and polite conversation on a casual social basis is much more difficult. Tension makes us awkward. It seems hard to establish friendly communication. We tend to become self-conscious, and aware of what we are doing and saying, whereas in a healthy state of mind our conversation happens naturally and spontaneously without any great conscious control on our part. Things seem strained. Any pause in the conversation worries us. Silence becomes unbearable, so we feel we must keep talking at all cost. Because of our inner tension we lose our easy flow of thought, relevant subjects elude us, and we become aware that pur conversation is mere chatter. We are prattling, jabbering; and we try to pull ourselves together to keep our tension from those about us. On other occasions there is a poverty of speech, and we are embarrassed because we cannot say anything. Our silence is caused by the overactivity of the inhibitory process making an attempt to damp down our reaction to our anxiety. But it goes too far, and we find ourselves so inhibited that we cannot say anything. A tenseness comes between us and our friends. They in turn come to sense that we are not fully at ease, and as a result they tend to behave towards us less freely and in a more guarded fashion. The social occasion which we used to enjoy becomes a kind of nightmare—something to be avoided at all costs.

Recently, I saw a lad whose main symptom was his difficulty with his friends. To be more accurate, I should say his difficulty was with those around him, as he was fast losing all his friends.

He is a nice lad, quite a gifted university student, and a good athlete as well. But he is incredibly tense and extremely rigid in his way of thinking, so once he gets some idea in his head, whether it be good or bad, there is no shaking him from it.

His tension and irritability were so great that I could easily see that there would be no fun for young people in the company of a lad like this. His former friends had left him for the simple reason that his tension made them feel uncomfortable.

This difficulty in interpersonal relationships resulting from anxiety may come between husband and wife so that they almost become strangers to one another; with young lovers an invisible something comes between them, cutting off the free interchange of their emotion. In a similar way the anxious mother may become separated from her baby; and try as she will, she is unable to re-establish their harmony together because the infant, in animal fashion, senses her tension and reacts to it.

*12\57\2*

The next thing is to provide yourself with a heap of cushions or pillows, so that you can get yourself into the most comfortable position lying down. Eventually you’ll learn how to relax sitting down or even standing up, but it’s easier to learn the techniques if you’re lying down in a really comfortable position, either on a bed or sofa or on a carpeted floor.

Many people find it pleasant to lie on their backs with a mound of pillows or cushions supporting their head, neck and shoulders and a bolster under their knees. Others only need support under the nape of the neck. Some need a thin cushion in the small of the back. And if you’re skinny you may need cushions under your elbows. Others find that lying flat on their backs like this puts too much strain on their spines, especially if they are lying on the floor or on a firm mattress. They prefer to lie in a half-front, half-sideways position, with their head turned sideways on the pillow and their upper leg tucked up and possibly supported by a cushion. Take your time over this. Experiment until you find the position that’s just right. But don’t be surprised if you have to alter it as you go along, as you learn to relax various parts of your body. A relaxed body lies in a different position to a tense one.

*7\177\2*

The same sort of problems which are caused by hidden food allergies can also be caused by exposure to common environmental chemicals. Many people now know that such chemicals may have long-term, harmful effects on the body and may cause cancer and other diseases. The damage done actually goes far beyond this, however. Common environmental chemicals have become a major source of chronic illnesses of many types in the United States and other industrialized countries.

Knowledge of this problem emerged slowly from the study of food allergy. Dr. Albert Rowe, one of the fathers of this field, reported in the 1930s on a peculiar reaction which he called “multiple fruit sensitivity.” A characteristic of this problem was that certain patients tended to become ill when they ingested a wide variety of fruits.

Susceptibility to fruit is fairly common, but usually such allergies center on one or more of the botanically distinct fruit families (see Appendix A). These patients, however, had allergies to most, or all, domestically grown fruit, including examples of up to ten different food families. It would be understandable for a person who was allergic to peaches also to be allergic to apricots, for they both form part of the same botanical group—the rose family. But why should a person react to peaches and also to, say, pineapples, bananas, and dates, which are members of two other distinctly different biological families?

I confirmed Rowe’s observations in my own practice, but neither he nor I could offer any logical explanation of the problem, and our reports caused a good deal of scepticism among some of our colleagues.

*8\110\2*

Circumcision is the removal of the foreskin of the penis. Most boy babies have a cuff of skin (foreskin) that covers the end of the penis (the glans). The natural opening in the foreskin is usually large enough to allow urine through (rarely is there no opening at all). But in a condition called phimosis, the opening is not large enough to allow the foreskin to be pulled back to uncover the glans. It is important to be able to pull back the foreskin so that the normal, waxy material that forms under the foreskin (smegma) can be removed during bathing. When the opening in the foreskin is too small to allow the foreskin to be pulled back, the foreskin can be stretched by a doctor. However, if the penis is uncircumcised, there is some possibility that the pulled back foreskin cannot be drawn forward again and may act as a tourniquet, cutting off the blood supply to the glans (paraphimosis).

Circumcision has been practiced on all continents for centuries, both for religious reasons and as a ritual to reaching manhood. Its advantages are easier cleansing and lessened possibility of paraphimosis. However, contrary to what many people believe, circumcision does not protect the male against cancer of the penis. The disadvantages of circumcision are a slight chance of infection or bleeding after the operation (less than 1 percent); the brief pain of the operation; and rare, accidental injury to the glans during the operation.

In recent years many doctors have declared that circumcision is unnecessary surgery. On the other hand, many other doctors feel that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The decision whether or not to circumcise male infants remains with the parents. Parents should ask questions and gather as much information as possible to help them make the decision.

Signs and symptoms

Circumcision is required only when boys are born with no opening in the foreskin, when the opening is too small to allow passage of urine, or when paraphimosis has developed and must be immediately corrected.

Home care

A circumcision should be covered, until healed (two to five days), with a nonstick bandage and gauze coated with petroleum jelly. The area should not be submerged in bath water until the wound has healed.

Precautions

• Any bleeding of the circumcised penis beyond a few drops should be reported to your doctor.

• If there are any signs of infection (pus, spreading redness, swelling of the shaft of the penis), see your doctor.

• Any part of the foreskin left after circumcision should be pulled back to expose the base of the glans, and this area should be cleansed during bathing.

• Boy babies born with malformations of the penis should not be circumcised because the foreskin may be used later during surgery to correct the malformation.

Medical treatment

Your doctor or religious leader will perform the circumcision, using one of a variety of approved techniques. Ask for specific directions for care of the circumcision. In a rare instance of postoperative infection, the doctor will culture the circumcision and blood, and start antibiotics.

*34/84/5*

Clearly, few of these causes can be readily prevented by any one man or his partner because they go back to his upbringing-or indeed hers. Often a professional can help cure such background misunderstandings or inhibitions and so help the man regain his control. For many such men their premature ejaculation is an unconscious way of avoiding sex yet neither they nor their partners realize this is so. The prevention of further trouble involves sorting out the root cause and this can be time-consuming and difficult.

However, many couples don’t want to go down this path and would like to try something themselves. This is certainly worth doing, as it can produce good results and prevent premature ejaculation becoming a way of life. Here then are some basic preventive tips:

• If the man thinks the woman in any way contributes to the problem he should say so and the couple should talk it through. If he feels that he is trying to get back at her for some other dissatisfaction in life then they should talk it out and resolve the other problem in another way so that they don’t carry it over into sex.

• If the couple are having sex too infrequently so that he becomes ‘trigger-happy’ the answer is usually obvious. If more regular intercourse is not possible the man should masturbate every few days or his partner could masturbate him.

• Open display of the woman’s sexuality, including the sharing of her fantasies, helps many such men to start to see women as earthy sex-loving human beings instead of a sexless Madonna who should not be defiled. This sort of revelation alone can make a lot of difference.

• A very good and well-proven preventive is for the man to masturbate or get the woman to masturbate him (to orgasm) before intercourse. This defuses the situation and the man can later have a controllable orgasm to the pleasure of them both.

• Using a sheath can so reduce the level of sensation that the man receives from his penis that he can sometimes be totally cured of his problem.

• Weak anaesthetic creams or ointments work in the same way.

• Contracting the anus tightly at the end of each thrust helps some men gain control, as does penetrating deeply with the penis.

• Stop-start intercourse can also produce good results. In this the man makes love, but as soon as things begin to get too excited he stops thrusting and concentrates on the pattern of the wallpaper or counts the rings on the curtain rail, for example. Many women enjoy this teasing intercourse and it can help the man learn how to control his progress to ejaculation.

• A little alcohol can be a good preventive. It reduces the man’s anxiety about the act of intercourse (and he also has an excuse should things go badly).

• Here is an exercise for a woman to do with her partner, to help him learn to recognize the ‘almost there’ signs that his body produces and to be able to control them. This can be done by any caring couple who really want to succeed.

Set some time aside one evening and take the phone off the hook. Read something sexy or get in the mood in whatever way you choose. The woman should stimulate the man’s penis until it is fully erect. He then tells her when he feels he is about to climax, so that she can squeeze his penis very firmly (putting her finger and thumb on opposite sides of the rim at the base of the head), which will stop his erection in seconds.

Once he is limp she can start to re-stimulate him until he is erect again, whereupon she can squeeze him again. Continue this cycle until the woman can erect the man and collapse him at will for up to half an hour. At the end of this session she should masturbate him, or he should do so himself, so that he is not left ‘high and dry’.

Once you have practiced this for a few sessions you will be confident that he can control his ejaculations. In the next few sessions the woman can stimulate the man as before, but instead of squeezing his penis to stop the erection, she should leave his penis alone when he says he is about to climax, perhaps even getting him to do something else around the house. Repeat this procedure several times at one session. End with masturbating him as before.

The next stage involves the woman giving the man a really hard erection and then getting on top of him and gently putting his penis inside her. She should just sit on it without moving, getting him used to the feeling of being erect inside her and not ‘coming off. She should then move gently, and when he feels he is about to come off she either squeezes him with her fingers as before or lets him go down of his own accord.

Slowly, over several weeks the woman will be able to exert such control over the man’s penis that he will never come unless they both want him to. After such training most men can take over their own ejaculatory control and remain erect for half an hour or more inside their partner’s vagina, only coming when she is also ready.

*5/72/5*

Unless you’ve had lessons, chances are that you don’t know how to breathe. And that’s trouble, says breath researcher and psychologist Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., who has taught Olympic athletes and thousands of other people how to breathe at his Hendricks Institute in Santa Barbara, California.

Dr. Hendricks conducted experiments and reviewed more than 300 scientific studies of “breathwork” while researching his popular book Conscious Breathing. He is convinced that most of us could use a few breathing lessons. Here’s why.

Breathing is how we rid most toxins, like carbon dioxide, from our bodies and how we cleanse and oxygenate our blood and every cell, says Dr. Hendricks. The remaining wastes are discharged through urine, sweat, and defecation. If we aren’t breathing right, other purification systems-such as our kidneys-get overworked.

But, Dr. Hendricks says, “there is one universal breathing problem: the tendency to hold your belly muscles too tense so that you can’t get a deep breath down into the center of your body.” Instead most of us breathe from the top of our lungs. Here’s the problem with that. “Less than Mo liter of blood per minute flows through the top of the lungs; 2/3 liter per minute flows through the middle of the lungs, and more than a liter flows through the bottom,” says Dr. Hendricks.

The chest breather constantly discharges too much carbon dioxide and takes in too little oxygen through short, shallow breaths. The imbalance forces the heart to work unauthorized overtime, and that raises the blood pressure.

*40/36/5*

The role of female hormones

The fact that breast cancer is about 100 times more common in women than in men suggests a role for the female sex hormones.

Women whose first period occurred at a young age seem to be more at risk of developing breast cancer, as are those who have had their first child late (at 30 to 34 years old), and those who have had a late menopause. It seems that the longer a woman is exposed to her own female hormones – particularly oestrogen -the more at risk she is. Some diets which can lead to obesity, particularly those high in fats, can also lead to an earlier onset of menstruation. Thus girls in the well-nourished and high socioeconomic groups of the industrialized West, where the incidence of breast cancer is high, tend to have their first periods younger than those in areas of malnutrition where the disease is less common.

In pre-menopausal women, it is the ovarian oestrogen which is relevant, and this is produced for as long as menstruation continues. Breast cancer is less common in women who have had an operation to remove their ovaries in their 30s or 40s, before their menopause.

In the past, the doses of oestrogen used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may have been linked to a slightly increased risk if taken for longer than 10 years. HRT is now normally given as a combination of oestrogen and progestogen, and the drug doses are much lower. There is no evidence that modern HRT is linked with the development of cancer; in fact, some doctors continue to give it to women who have breast cancer.

Modern contraceptive pills – which also contain a very low hormone dose – have little apparent risk. They do, however, reduce the risk for endometrial and ovarian cancers. Fibroadenomas in the breast are also less common in women taking the low-dose contraceptive pill.

Smoking

Cancer cells may spontaneously develop at any time and are usually destroyed by the body’s immune system. As smoking suppresses the immune system, it is not surprising that all cancers are more common in those who smoke.

Other risk factors

Other risk factors have been suggested, but with less supporting evidence. For example, there may be a small, but real, link between high alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Stress, either the experience of it or the way it is dealt with, has also been implicated.

*19/39/5*

Testing blood fat levels

High blood cholesterols are clearly associated with a risk of heart attack but blood triglycerides (another sort of fat) are not. Screening for cholesterols is recommended every five years from the late teens. They are not worth screening for past 65.

Syphilis tests

Three-quarters of all cases of undetected syphilis will eventually develop incurable ‘tertiary’ complications which are very severe indeed. The ‘at-risk’ group is the 20-50 range. Recommendations for screening vary greatly but it is probably sensible to do one test when the person becomes sexually active and every five years after that to age 50. Pregnant women should be screened for syphilis as a routine

Gonorrhea tests

This is a disease without symptoms in 75 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men. Some people feel that screening is not warranted because the disease is relatively easy to treat, and because however well we screen we shall never be able to eliminate the disease from the population most at risk. Others recommend that yearly screening be done from the time a person becomes sexually active. Perhaps a good compromise is a test at the time of the first pelvic examination and then every five years to 44.

Screening for phenylketonuria

This disease, which can cause mental handicap if not detected and treated very early in life, is already routinely screened for at birth.

Chest X-rays

Because of the low cure rates of lung cancer (8 per cent survive 5 years, regardless of the stage of the tumour at detection), it is now no longer thought reasonable to do chest X-rays as a screening procedure. ‘At-risk’ populations should still be screened for tuberculosis though. Perhaps a baseline chest X-ray at 35 or 40 is sensible with a repeat at five- or ten-year intervals.

Electrocardiograms

It is useful to have a baseline ECG done at about age 35-40 with repeats every five to ten years.

*34/72/5*

For years, Susan Carlson couldn’t stomach the thought of eating in the morning. But only after becoming a breakfast loyalist did she lose 36 pounds.

Faced with choosing between a bowl of cereal and another 15 minutes of sleep, Susan would always go for the extra snooze time. “Food first thing in the morning never appealed to me,” says the 42-year-old sales manager from Newport, Rhode Island.

Because she would eat dinner at around 6:00 P.M. and then skip breakfast, Susan was going foodless for up to 18 hours at a stretch. By noon, she’d be famished. So she’d plunge into a huge lunch, then spend the rest of the day snacking on cookies and potato chips.

By the time Susan reached her early thirties, she weighed 181 pounds. She was so embarrassed about her appearance that she stopped shopping in clothing stores. “I only ordered out of catalogs—always clothing with elastic waists,” she recalls.

After several unsuccessful weight-loss attempts, Susan asked some of her slender friends how they stay slim. Their answer: breakfast.

Susan started slowly, with one slice of toast and a cup of coffee. She eventually added a bowl of cereal or oatmeal to her morning meal. To her surprise, she was less hungry at lunch and her midday munching stopped.

Now, her favorite breakfast foods include oatmeal, Kashi cereal with strawberries, and whole-wheat toast with a slice of cheese. Susan lost 36 pounds in less than a year. Her slimmer figure has made her a breakfast believer.

WINNING ACTION

Eat a real breakfast. Many women, like Susan, skip breakfast—and overeat all day as a result. Research shows that people who eat a healthy and hearty breakfast are thinner than those who eat no breakfast at all. That’s because breakfast helps boost your metabolism,so you burn calories more efficiently all day. For years, I skipped breakfast, too. Now, I make sure to grab something in the morning: a banana, a CI if Bar, or some yogurt. It’s amazing how much more energy I have until lunchtime.

*28\89\8*