Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

Shingles is a viral infection which appears as a rash. It can occur at all ages, but is more common in the elderly or debilitated person. Shingles in children is a milder illness, and usually does not cause any serious problems.

Shingles is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox, the varicella virus. It occurs in children and adults who have previously had chickenpox. It is not caught from other people with either chickenpox or shingles. Rather, the varicella virus lies dormant in the nerve cells after the child has had a bout of chickenpox, and is reactivated by unknown causes. Shingles often appears when someone is ‘rundown’ after illness, and occasionally following sunburn or exposure to strong winds. Children under the age of 3 years are very rarely affected by shingles.

Clinical features

The rash of shingles occurs only on one side of the body, as the virus travels down one particular nerve. Initially, you will notice groups of little red lumps, which form fluid-filled blisters. New crops form in the first 2-3 days. Over the next few days all these blisters gradually crust over. The rash appears more often on the torso than on the face or limbs. The child is generally not ill, and does not have a fever. The rash does not seem to worry him at all, and is not sore or itchy, in contrast to shingles in adults, which can be quite severe.

A child with shingles can easily spread chickenpox to others who have never been infected. Shingles itself cannot be spread to others, just the chickenpox virus. You should keep your child at home for a week or so, until the rash dries up. Make sure that people who visit your child while he has shingles have all previously had chickenpox.

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The let-down reflex

The hormone oxytocin stimulates the release of milk from the breast. Often even just the thought of breastfeeding is enough to stimulate this let-down reflex and get the milk flowing. Occasionally you may be feeding your baby on one breast and suddenly the other breast starts to drip milk. Firm pressure against the nipple with the flat of your hand can often stop this leakage. Using breastpads can help mop up any spills and may also prevent embarrassment in public, although some women complain that disposable pads stick to their nipples.

When to finish a feed

Your baby is the best judge of the right time to finish a feed; he will usually fall asleep at the breast or come off the nipple when he has had enough. It is not necessary to offer both breasts to your baby during one feed. If your baby is content after feeding on one breast only, just make sure that you commence the next feed from the other breast. In this way you will ensure that both breasts receive equal stimulation, which is important in order to maintain your milk supply.

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No one program changes anything permanently. I told the couples that their treatment began when their visits to the clinic ended. I saw them all several times at intervals until the five-year follow-up, but more important I asked them to conduct their own follow-up. All marriages have severe conflict, disappointment, life-cycle changes, and daily pressures. To cope more effectively with such pressure, mark on a calendar a time for one brief trip every three or four months. This R&R trip does not have to be expensive, but getting away together not for vacation but for marital recommitment is important to continuing the gains you have made in owning and operating your own sex clinic for super marital sex.

Every New Year’s Eve, your first and foremost task is to select those dates for follow-up trips to deal with and prevent foul-ups of your super marital progress. Give priority to these dates and schedule work and other obligations around them as much as realistically possible. As I stated in Chapter One, so long as we continue to put marriage last, to allow all other events priority in our life schedule, marriage will continue to reflect this place on our commitment list. Once you have the dates, they should be considered as fixed and as important as any other events that may come up. For super marital sex, these dates should be considered even more important than most other events, a form of marital rebirth-days.

“People seem to get almost angry that we have those dates,” reported one husband. “They ask if this is our vacation, I tell them no, and they cannot understand just going away to recommit. Maybe it’s a form of marital jealousy, because they tell me later that they wish they could do it. We stopped wishing and did it. One guy at work even said I was more dedicated to my marriage than to work. I agreed, and he almost had a seizure.”

His wife added, “Of all things, a woman at work asked if I was trying to make a super marriage. A super marriage. Can you believe that? I am sure she meant it sarcastically, but she actually used the word.”

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Right from the start, let partners know you are looking for love in all the right places. Do not hold back, for holding back does not stop you from getting hurt. It only stops you from falling in love. Vulnerability is another reason to save intercourse for marriage. We cannot let go if we are going to be hurt through disease, pregnancy, desertion, and loneliness. Every act of intercourse is a decision, not just an impulse. Letting go does not mean losing control. It means letting your partner know that the basic reason you are courting anyone at any time is to look for love, to find someone to bond with. We have sex within a system and with a system, not with a person. When we have sex with someone, we are being intimate with all they are or have ever been.

“I used to say, ‘Look, I’m not open to getting emotionally involved right now.’ How dumb. As if I had control over that anyway,” reported one wife. What did she mean in the first place? Was she looking to get unemotionally involved? Or was she looking to get emotionally uninvolved? Declare yourself on the side of emotions and love, in marriage and courtship.

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Snoring used to be regarded as a funny subject and a worry only to the person who had to sleep in the same room.

However it may be due to nasal obstruction forcing the sleeper to breath through his mouth. The noise is produced by the soft palate vibrating with each breath. This mechanical cause is more likely when the sleeper lies on his back.

One way of making the snorer sleep on his side rather than the back is for his spouse to nudge him firmly in the ribs.

Another way is to sew a pocket into the back of the pyjama coat and place a ball or stone in the pocket.

Each time he rolls on to his back the discomfort makes him turn back onto his side. Another suggested method is to wear a thick supporting collar around the neck, like those used to immobilise the neck following injury. Such a collar prevents the chin falling down on to the chest and keeps the head tilted back and, so the theory goes, keeps the windpipe open.

But snoring may have its more sinister side. It may be evidence of what is now called sleep apnoea. In this condition the sleepers, usually overweight middle-aged males, have frequent periods during sleep when they stop breathing.

The snoring occurs when they start again. These lapses of breathing may occur hundreds of times a night and greatly interfere with sleep. The sufferers may complain of insomnia and usually wake unrefreshed. They are also subject to severe daytime sleepiness.

These episodes of apnoea or cessation of breathing leading to inadequate oxygen intake are thought in some cases to be dangerous to the heart. So far there is no effective treatment beyond a tracheotomy, or a permanent hole pierced in the windpipe.

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Newer methods of fat removal include the technique of suction. A small incision is made and the fat from the abdomen or thighs is removed.

Gastric stapling involves an operation to reduce the size of the stomach so that only small meals can be taken.

Before this is considered the person usually has to be grossly overweight and to have failed to lose weight by conventional means. The older bypass operation where the upper small bowel was joined to the lower bowel led to malabsorption and so weight loss but was subject to a great deal of complications, with deficiencies of vitamins and minerals.

To lose weight you need to eat less than required and so burn up some of your reserve. When you have reached your ideal weight, you can increase intake to match output and your weight will stay the same.

You can also lose weight by doing more exercise. Many people have been discouraged because they read that it takes a lot of effort to rid the body of fat in this way. This is true. You need to walk 48 kilometres to burn up a half kilo of fat.

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In treatment, loose fitting clothes rather than tight ones seem better but whether wool or synthetics should be used is arguable.

Drying of the skin is common and needs to be avoided. Washing, particularly with strong soap, only dries the skin further. Perfumes in soap or powder ought to be avoided.

The frequent application of soft, simple cream or ointments to the skin may be of great value.

Cortisone derivatives applied locally are of great value in treating the condition. They must be used sparingly and in dilute forms. It is rarely necessary to use cortisone by mouth in children.

Sometimes anti-allergy drugs or sedatives are necessary to reduce the itch.

While we can’t promise cure for any of the atopic disorders, control is usually possible in almost all cases and fortunately most children seem to grow out of their eczema.

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The internal structure of many organs can be made to show up on X-rays by using contrast materials. These are usually substances which are much denser than the normal tissue (that is, let far fewer X-rays through). Barium is such a substance. If you swallow a liquid barium mixture, it coats and fills the gullet and stomach. Later on, the small intestine will be lined by the barium as it passes through. Any ulcers or growths then show up as dark irregularities against the white of the barium lining these organs. If something is pushing on, say, the stomach from the outside, this will also be seen — the white barium inside the stomach shows whether its shape and position are normal. Fizzy substances can also be swallowed to produce contrast. In this case the contrast is provided by a less dense substance—air. The air looks black and when used in combination with barium provides a ‘double contrast’. A similar mixture can be put into the rectum by enema to outline the large intestine (colon).

Other contrast methods involve the injection of very dense liquids (often iodine-based) into the bloodstream. X-rays taken immediately after injection show up the blood vessels themselves as white lines (this is called angiography). We can see whether the blood vessels are partly or completely blocked or displaced from their normal position. Sometimes we can show up extra blood vessels which could be feeding a cancer growth.

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