Health News. Lots of resources and information

1. The tendency toward allergy is lessened in a child with one non-allergic parent.

2. Allergy to a particular food item can be prevented. The following are some examples.

a.    Cow’s milk: A baby must be breast fed (and not fed a formula based on cow’s milk).

b.     Cereal grains: Cereals should be introduced into baby’s diet one at a time (and not in a mixed form) to see which ones the baby tolerates well.

ñ     Fresh juices (orange, etc.): These should be started at four months of age and one at a time.

d.     Egg: A tiny piece of hard-boiled yolk should be tried at the age of seven months, and, if this is tolerated well, it is to be followed by egg white.

e.     Shellfish, nuts, chocolate, and strawberries: These foods are not to be given to the allergic baby at all.

f.     Additives: Snacks in cellophane bags should not be used as part of a baby’s diet.

The food of an atopic baby who has diarrhea should be made very simple because sensitivity to food is more likely to develop if the bowels are inflamed.

Although a baby may outgrow his food allergies, it is not wise to wait for him to do so. Food allergy in a baby should be considered seriously and steps should be taken to avoid it. Otherwise, the allergy persists and opens the door to further food allergies in childhood.

3. At the age of three or four years, foods lose their importance as allergens, and inhalants (light substances which float in the air) become the chief cause of allergies. The following preventive measures against these have to be carried out in the bedroom of the allergic child:

a.     Filtering devices, air conditioners, and electronic precipitators have to be installed (for brand names see the Appendix).

b.     The bedding should be made of allergy-free material. The pillows should be made of sponge rubber and should not contain feathers.

    c.     The house must not have a damp or moldy basement.

d.     The temperature of the house and that of the bedroom should always be kept at about 70°F.

e.     Strong odors in general are to be avoided (in the whole house and especially in the bedroom). The odors of fresh paint, perfumes, scented flowers, mothballs, cleaning fluids, or cigarette smoke are especially dangerous.

f.     Pets should not be introduced into the bedroom and preferably the house (sensitivity to feathers and to animal hair is easily acquired).

4. Besides eliminating inhalants inside the bedroom, an allergic child should avoid them outdoors.

Although it would be impossible to entirely avoid outdoor allergens short of staying at home all the time, some suggestions help to considerably reduce the chances of exposure:

a.     Vacations should be planned around the child’s allergies, making sure not to leave certain allergens at home while running into others in the vacation area.

b.     While outdoors, the child should avoid bees and other stinging insects, grass being mowed (as this can churn up mold spores and grass pollen), ragweed shrubs (because pollen concentration rises sharply the nearer one gets to its source), the poison ivy plant, and outdoor pets (as these can be multiple allergy carriers).

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Up to 40 per cent of infertility problems can be on the man’s side and yet the focus, particularly in the early stages of investigation, is usually on the woman. Until recently, the only investigation available for a partner was a basic analysis of a semen sample.

Infertility consultations should include both partners. But most infertility clinics are run by gynecologists who are specialists in the female reproductive system and regard the man as a bit of an afterthought. I find women often come to me on their own because their partners say ‘it’s not my problem’. Men emotionally connect virility with fertility and feel somehow ‘less of a man’ if they are not able to give their partner a child. Women seem to be able to distance their emotions a little better from problems with their reproductive system. But ‘it takes two to tango’, as the saying goes, and your partner needs to remember that he is contributing 50 per cent not only to the health of the baby but also to you getting pregnant in the first place.

Your partner should therefore be involved in investigations from the beginning. You may, for example, have a situation where you are both sub-fertile and it is this combination that is causing the problem. If you both had different partners, whose fertility was optimum, you could probably conceive fairly easily. By boosting both your levels of fertility you will have a much better chance of conceiving.

The traditional approach – concentrating on investigating your fertility and ignoring your partner – has some unfortunate consequences. If your partner’s semen analysis is poor, for instance, you may be advised to go straight for fertility treatments without any further investigations, even if you yourself may not actually have trouble conceiving. Both IVF and ICSI treatments require you to take large quantities of drugs, while your partner just provides the sperm sample. So, in effect, you would end up being treated when you do not need to be, because there is a problem on your partner’s side. This is obviously not very desirable and your partner should have more investigations before you decide to embark on what can be long and stressful fertility treatments.

Some enlightened doctors will refer the man to an urologist who specializes in diseases of the urinary system, including the bladder and kidneys. Urologists treat both men and women. And there are a few andrologists who specialize in problems with the male reproductive system.

Even if the problem initially seems to be on your side it could just mask the real cause. Many women who suffer miscarriages, for instance, assume there is a problem with their own reproductive system. But it is logical that, if there is something wrong with the sperm that fertilises the egg, nature will cause a miscarriage. Studies have shown that there is an increased risk of miscarriage when there are sperm abnormalities. This is why it is so important for both of you to get yourselves into optimum health before conception.

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•     There is little doubt that most westerners are fat because they eat the wrong foods rather than simply because they eat too much. By consuming too large a proportion of one’s calories as fat, sugar and refined carbohydrates, we absorb too much of the food we eat and end up fat. The answer is to eat much less fat, little or no sugar, and much more unrefined carbohydrate in the form of cereals, whole meal-flour products, fruit and vegetables. Such foods are naturally slimming because they are so bulky that it is difficult to over-eat them.

Eating such bulky foods may mean eating six smaller meals a day rather than two or three big ones, especially in the early days as you get used to large, bulky meals instead of fatty, sugary, condensed ones.

•     Trouble with obesity often starts in the cradle when mothers give their babies cows’ milk formula instead of breast milk. Studies of the arteries of young children killed accidentally have found that breast-fed children have much less atheroma (the sticky material that blocks up arteries and causes heart attacks in later life) than do bottle-feds. Also, many mothers add sugar to the formula and so accustom a baby to expect sweetness from early on. Bottle-fed babies on average grow up to be fatter than do breast-feds but the reasons for this are obscure. Perhaps it has to do with the lack of oral satisfaction compared with the ‘comfort sucking’ a breast-fed baby enjoys-which makes the baby bottle-fed to a schedule more likely to turn to food for solace later in life. Breastfeeding exclusively for at least 4-6 months is undoubtedly the best start in life when it comes to obesity. And don’t be put off by the podgy breast-fed babies you see. They lose their baby fat as they are weaned but the bottle-fed baby often does not.

Exercise is thought to play a part in controlling the body’s metabolism though no one is quite sure how. Fairly vigorous exercise is known to stimulate the metabolism (so that you consume more calories doing the same things) and evidence suggests that this raised metabolic rate continues for a day or two after the exercise stops. Many slimmers find that exercising fairly vigorously two or three times a week helps keep their appetite down.

Several studies have shown that fat people tend to eat less than do thin ones. Obese people, and men in particular, are likely to consume a lot of alcohol, though, and this is very fattening. The real problem for most fat people is inactivity. One Dutch study found that fat people ate less because they were physically less active and therefore used less fuel. Yet they still continued to eat more than they burned off: result-obesity. This research group concluded that the main preventive against obesity is to take regular exercise.

•     However you decide to lose weight make your principle ‘slow but sure’. Short-term, rapid weight loss on fancy diets usually depends on losing water rather than body fat. It has taken you years to get fat and it will take many months to get slim. Aim at a 21b loss every week after the rapid loss of the first week or two. Remember that the idea is not to eat less of the same foods but to eat more of bulkier foods, and to take more exercise.

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