Health related information and news from around the world.

The incubation period varies from two to 10 days, usually depending on the virus. The onset is sudden with aches and pains, a temperature and headache. Photophobia or dislike of light is a common symptom.

The diagnosis is suspected because of the presence of a stiff neck or back. The doctor finds that when he moves the patient the head cannot be bent forward for the chin to rest on the chest.

This sign may be present as a result of irritation of the meninges from some other infection without direct involvement of the brain coverings themselves.

If the diagnosis is suspected then it can be confirmed by carrying out a procedure known as a lumbar puncture. A needle is inserted into the lower back penetrating between the spines or projections of the vertebrae to enter the spinal canal.

The cerebrospinal fluid is withdrawn and examined under the microscope. This enables the doctor to tell the difference between a bacterial or viral infection.

Bacterial infections must be treated with ahtibiotics but for a viral infection there is no treatment.

Fortunately most cases subside within a week and all the patient requires is aspirin or paracetamol to relieve the temperature.

Often the headache is severe and unresponsive to strong analgesics. Occasionally some muscle weakness or paralysis may occur during the course of the illness. Fortunately most cases recover.

Occasionally the infection may spread beyond the coverings to involve the brain itself. This is an encephalitis. If this happens the person is sicker and more likely to develop a complication.

There is no vaccine available for prevention and its development is unlikely because of the generally benign nature of the disorder and the many different viruses which are likely to cause it.

*501/71/1*

The situation has changed and there is now adequate scientific information to indicate that cannabis use can be dangerous and can lead to problems the same as alcohol and tobacco.

I know of no reputable medical association which supports the legalisation of this drug or which advocates its wider use.

The community has a vested interest in the health of its members and therefore has a right to consider the benefits and abuses to society as well as to the individual when considering both drug use and abuse.

Wise men have been advocating moderation in the use of alcohol for at least 3000 years, perhaps longer. Yet the level of alcohol abuse is increasing in Australia.

Can we afford another problem?

Because, like alcohol, it releases inhibitions, cannabis is often said to enhance sexual pleasure. It may do so in the early stages but regular use leads to apathy in this field of human activity as in the other areas and sexual desire and activity decline with regular use.

*244/71/1*

The fact that you have cancer does not mean that you suddenly stop being an adult person with all the accepted and recognised rights of any adult person. It is your cancer, your body and your life. You are entitled to expect and get control over all important decisions to do with yourself. I have seen many patients give away their basic rights through ignorance, fear, awe, feelings of overwhelming helplessness and a need for protection. Unfortunately, giving away those rights completes a vicious circle—giving away rights leads to dependency on others, which leads to fear and helplessness, which leads to further giving away of rights and so on. You can break that vicious circle. Know about and insist on your rights to remain in control, that is, to function as a normal adult person, in every respect for which you remain physically and mentally able.

*1/40/1*

1. Damage to the dermis (a) Because the UVA wavelengths are longer than the UVB wavelengths, they penetrate deeper and can cause damage to the supportive layers of the skin which house the collagen and elastic fibres. Celtic skin is unable to adequately repair this damage, due it is thought to certain blood vessel changes, as well as cellular mutations. As a result, abnormal cells are formed which may lead to skin cancer. The elastic tissue also becomes abnormal and loses its elasticity, and the collagen tissue disintegrates and disappears. Consequently the skin becomes thin, ‘liver spots’ appear, dryness occurs, and wrinkles develop—all features of premature ageing— and in time skin cancer will occur.

(bj Although UVB radiation predominantly causes epidermal rather than dermal damage, resulting in burning and later tanning, it also has long-term cumulative detrimental effects on the skin. UVA radiation has been shown to aggravate the effect of UVB radiation. Consequently, sun exposure shortly before or after exposure to a solarium will result in more severe skin damage.

(c) Recent evidence indicates that exposure to less intense UVA and UVB radiation over a longer period of time is more likely to cause permanent skin damage, including cancer, than the same energy applied over a short period. This accounts for the particularly damaging effects of chronic exposure on the face and hands. With solariums, the total body area irradiated is much larger, and therefore the potential for damage and cancer is much greater.

(d) Sunburn is nature’s warning of excessive sun exposure. This warning is absent when solariums are used as a tanning source. People who frequent solariums are either sold a certain number of possible exposures, or unlimited access for a period of months. The incentive to attend frequently to keep up the short-lived tan, together with the absence of the discomfort caused by burning, results in damage far in excess of what would occur in the sun.

2. Photosensitivity Because solarium operators have a strong financial incentive to process as many people as possible, have no medical training, and are not governed by any health regulations, a number of medical problems may arise.

It is not widely recognized that various internal and external preparations may make a person’s skin allergic to ultraviolet light and UVA radiation in particular. External agents include various soaps, perfumes, cosmetics, creams, and plants. Internal agents include many antibiotics, some diuretics, birth control pills, tranquillizers, and oral anti-diabetic drugs.

Also, there are also a number of diseases which are aggravated by UVA radiation; some of these may be latent, and only brought on by exposure to radiation from a solarium.

3. Bye damage Perhaps the greatest hazard concerns the eyes, which in most cases are given no protection during therapy. In fact, the implication that solariums are so safe that not even eyes need to be protected is emphasized in advertising. There is, however, conclusive evidence both from animal studies and experiments performed on animal and human eyes, that UVA exposure results in permanent damage to the lens, and sometimes mho to the retina. Initially, the lens of the eye becomes discoloured, and then opaque, and finally a cataract forms. This may eventually lead to blindness. Cataracts are the second most common cause of blindness in Australia and the United States. This high and increasing incidence of cataracts is thought to be largely due to the increasing exposure of the population to sunlight.

4. Advertising hazards Various advertising brochures present different inaccuracies. There are, however, three fundamental inaccuracies which most of them contain.

The first is the claim made for the enormous benefits of UVA radiation for the body! They reject the ‘blazing and potentially dangerous sun’, only to promote ‘the rich golden tan, which gives you that healthy, confident, affluent look*. Who could resist, especially as they say that the radiation which produces a tan is also the major source of vitamin D. In fact the major source of vitamin D is dairy products and fish oils, not sunlight. Moreover such supplementation of vitamin D is hardly necessary in our society: vitamin D deficiency results in rickets, a virtually non-existent condition in developed countries.

*98\44\4*

It is normal and natural to lose oestrogen at the time of the menopause. If, like our forebears, we didn’t live much beyond the age of 50-ish, this wouldn’t cause many problems. Just as women in past ages were starting to get hot flushes and night sweats, along would come the Grim Reaper and their troubles in this world would be over. Few would live to experience the long-term effects of low oestrogen, such as osteoporosis, heart attacks and strokes.

We have looked at how and why oestrogen and progesterone levels fall. Now we will look at what effect this has, and why replacing these hormones — in the form of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) – can help.

Most women probably know about hot flushes, unpredictable moods and loss of sex drive, but what else might there be?

‘You won’t believe this, but I just didn’t realise my problems were due to the menopause. Of course I recognised the hot flushes, but not anything else. Over the course of 18 months I lost count of the number of times I went to my doctor – we got sick of the sight of each other. I went to him about pains in my joints (he gave me paracetamol), about insomnia and night sweats (he suggested a milky bedtime drink and sleeping tablets), depression (‘Why not do some charity work?’).

Other things I decided not to see him about, such as sexual difficulties and general mood changes. I couldn’t understand what was happening to me as I’d been such a normal, healthy person. Luckily one day I saw another doctor in the practice. She explained that all these things were probably due to the menopause, and she talked to me about HRT, gave me a check-up (which proved I was quite normal!), and I’ve been on HRT ever since.’

The consequences of low or falling oestrogen are grouped in three categories: (a) early symptoms that, for most women, last between about six months and two years, (b) rather later symptoms that tend to become more noticeable as the years go by, and (c) conditions that may not start for many years and then get steadily worse.

*8\42\4*

Psychological factors. For reasons that are unclear, women who are scheduled for hysterectomy are more than twice as likely as average to be distressed as indicated by psychological tests. It may be that symptoms such as chronic pain and heavy bleeding, and uncertainty about the future, have produced this psychological distress. Or else, an underlying psychological condition may have reduced tolerance of minor symptoms. Whatever the truth of the matter, improvement in gynaecological complaints, however this is achieved, tends to result in a marked reduction in psychological symptoms. On rare occasions such women may ask about, or be advised to have, a hysterectomy.

Post-pregnancy complications. Emergency hysterectomy may be the only option when uterine bleeding is uncontrollable. This is a rare occurrence after childbirth and may be caused by rupture of the uterus or damage to major blood vessels. Other situations that may give rise to hysterectomy include life-threatening infection of the endometrium (a very occasional complication of abortion), or the removal of an ectopic pregnancy in a woman who has finished her family.

*23\198\4*

As a person becomes older his sleep pattern changes. He has many more awakenings throughout the night. His sleep is much lighter, and he rarely enters stages 3 and 4; instead these are replaced by a lot of awakenings and there is a kind of natural insomnia. However, most older people do not understand that they no longer need so much sleep. They feel distressed lying in bed alone at night, and some still want to recapture the feeling of ‘sleeping like a baby’.

My advice to the elderly is that we are becoming wiser and more respected as we grow older. We should be proud of our grey hair and hard-earned senior status in society. We should feel lucky that we have outlived our unfortunate associates. We are no longer babies, and do not need all that sleep anymore. We can relax and rest at night, and should keep ourselves more active both physically and mentally in the daytime. During the day, if we are inactive, we may have a lot of microsleeps. Microsleeps are brief periods of sleep activity which can be recorded on the EEG. These microsleeps last only a few seconds, but, if all these microsleeps during the day are added together, they will replace most of the need to sleep at night.

Many of my older patients regularly sleep three hours a night and have one hour of afternoon nap. They are all healthy and they function perfectly well in the day. They understand that they do not need all that sleep. It is sad to see older people, who biologically need only a few hours of sleep each night, extending their sleep time artificially with sleeping pills.

To summarise, the two different kinds of sleep, REM and NREM, alternate with each other, and we have a few sleep cycles each night. We used to think that sleep is passive and peaceful and mat if we dream a lot we have had a poor sleep. Now, with the help of the sleep laboratories, we know that we have at least four or five dream periods at night and at least one-quarter of our sleep is spent in dreams, although we cannot remember most of them. The other surprise is that it is normal to wake up in the middle of the night. These findings have dispelled the myth that good sleep means no dreams and no awakenings in the night.

*23\174\4*

I have found that one of the greatest difficulties in helping people by this approach has been getting them to accept its simplicity. People always want the newest form of medical treatment. The modern trend in medicine is continually toward greater and greater complexity—more complicated instruments, more complicated tests, more potent drugs. We have come to associate complexity of therapy as an advance over more simple treatment. You can see my difficulty.

I am advocating a form of treatment that is simple in the extreme. But I will remind you that it is natural as well as simple, and that is why it is so successful.

A very aggressive young woman, a graduate in psychology, was openly contemptuous when I explained the way in which I proposed to help her. She gave me a superior smile, and said, “It will take more than that.”

I had great difficulty in persuading her to lie down on the couch so that I could show her what I meant. With a shrug of the shoulders, she said, “Oh well, just to please you!” I then spent sufficient time with her to be sure that she would capture a real feeling of relaxation. She did. This was the turning point. She learned to practise the exercises herself and did very well.

A writer of international fame consulted me because he was tense, disgruntled with himself, and had lost his creative ability. After considerable discussion of his difficulties, it seemed clear that the real problem was his inability to work caused by slowly mounting tension over the years. I explained how I could help him to be less tense and more at ease. However, he prided himself on his worldliness and his sophistication and from the outset was sceptical of my approach because of its inherent simplicity. He did the exercises, but he did them reluctantly, with a smirk on his face, as it were. He benefited to some extent, but I am sure his improvement would have been much more complete had he accepted the truth that we can often be helped most by basic methods which are themselves simple.

*48\57\2*

Life had been good to Mrs. Kajsa Andersson, from Smalandstenar, Sweden. Five healthy and handsome children-happy family life—thriving small family business. All would have been rosy and sunny, but for one thing. After the last baby was born, Mrs. Andersson didn’t seem to be able to recover her strength. She was always tired and listless. She could hardly lift up her arms. She lost her interest in everything, and just wanted to stay in bed and rest. Then came the pain in her arms and hands. A visit to a doctor and a dreadful diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis!

The doctor prescribed a drug and ordered her to stay in bed with warm packs around the affected joints. Warm packs seemed to help relieve the pain, or rather to chase it to another joint As soon as the hands felt better, the pain moved to the elbows. From the elbows it moved to the shoulders. Then her legs and feet started to ache, too. The drug relieved her pains somewhat, but only for a short time. As soon as she was without the pills, the pains returned with increased strength.

After four weeks in bed with increasing disability and pain, which became more and more agonizing, she finally was remitted by her doctor to Spenshults Rheumatic Hospital, one of the most modern medical rheumatic clinics in Sweden. She stayed there six weeks. She didn’t receive many treatments, except drugs and rest in bed, plus a typical hospital diet of plenty of meat, desserts, and coffee.

She felt a little better when she returned to her home. But as soon as she started to work around the house the stiffness and pain in the joints reappeared. She felt discouraged and hopeless, being unable to take care of her home and her children. All she had to look forward to was a dreadful future as a helpless invalid.

One day her nurse brought her a magazine with an article on the Brandals Clinic and biological medicine. After she had finished reading, she immediately went to the telephone and made a reservation.

She went to Brandal on October 20, 1957. That day she will never forget. She arrived there very sick and with agonizing pains. She could not get out of the taxi without help. She could not go up the stairs to her room. She could not dress nor undress herself. She was helpless and felt terrible pain with the slightest movement.

The program of treatments at Brandal started with the traditional fasting on vegetable broth and carrot juice. Among the other treatments were an alternating hot and cold shower, a dry brush massage, an enema in the morning and evening, and sleeping with the windows open while the scent of pine-wood aroma filled her bedroom.

“After one week of fasting I felt so much better that I wanted to continue,” she said. “And I continued as long as I felt that fasting was doing me good—for 20 days.”

“After the first week I could go up and down the stairs and take snort walks outside. And every day my outdoor walks became longer and longer. I felt as if life was returning to me-a most wonderful feeling!”

After 20 days of fasting, one more week on the lactovegetarian diet, and other biological therapies at Brandal, Mrs. Andersson returned to her home-completely free from her arthritis, happy and full of hope for her and her family’s healthy future.

This was in 1957. In 1962, five years after her phenomenal arthritis cure, she was interviewed by a correspondent from Tidskrift for Halsa to determine the permanency of her cure.

“During these last five years I have not been sick a single day,” said Mrs. Andersson. “I did not even have a cold or a running nose! The only reminder of arthritis I have is that if I work unusually long days using extremely hard labor, like washing clothes by hand or such, I feel a slight stiffness in my hands. Otherwise I am as healthy as anyone could wish to be. I don’t remember feeling so healthy and so limber and flexible since I was a young girl.”

Now in her fifties she skis regularly in winter, enjoys ocean swimming in summer, and takes long walks in the woods early in the morning before her family gets up. She also follows religiously the routines she learned at Brandal: hot and cold showers, dry brush massage, and exercises. And, naturally, she adheres faithfully to a healthful diet program which she adopted at the clinic: homemade yogurt with figs, prunes and/or raisins, plus nuts and seeds for breakfast; raw vegetable salad of all available vegetables, preferably from her own garden, for lunch; potato porridge with applesauce for dinner. In between meals, fresh unsprayed fruits plus herb teas (peppermint, camomile, or rose hips). Instead of coffee, potato and vegetable broth has become her favorite morning beverage!

*4\176\2*

The changes in blood flow that we have considered so far affect all parts of the brain equally. In older people, arteriosclerotic changes take place in the arteries in the neck and head. There may be a temporary blockage of an artery to one part of the brain by a fragment of chalky deposit or thrombus swept downstream from a larger artery by the flow of blood. Neurologists call these blockages ‘transient ischaemic attacks’. In some of these short episodes, muscle weakness or tingling in one or other limb may slightly resemble partial motor or sensory seizures. However, although focal motor seizures may arise in the scarred brain in the territory of a permanently blocked artery after a stroke, transient ischaemic attacks are associated with transient paralysis rather than convulsions.

In younger people, localized (focal) neurological phenomena occur in migraine. In the first stage of a classical migraine attack, arterial spasm occurs, reducing cerebral blood flow focally. It is unclear whether this is primary or secondary to some depression of nerve cell activity. The occipital area is the region most often affected. This results in a hallucination of distorted vision or flashing lights, rather than the formed visual hallucination which may be part of a partial seizure arising in a temporal lob. Occassionally spasm affects the motor or sensory areas of the brain, producing short-lived paralysis or disturbance of sensation, without convulsions, on the opposite side of the body.

*39\188\2*