Once you’ve made an appointment to see your doctor, it’s a good idea to spend a few minutes beforehand jotting some down quick notes about how your symptoms developed, so as to have the answer to any questions you may asked readily at hand. For example, try to recall when you first noticed any symptoms. Was the onset sudden or gradual? Did the pain go after a while, then keep coming back? Can you remember any particular incident that may have triggered its start? Are there some activities that you know will bring on the pain? What about things that make it worse or better? Also try to be clear in your mind about the exact site or sites of the pain, the path it may follow, and whether what you experience is best described as an aching, burning, searing, or tingling sensation. Naturally, if you also have back pain of any kind, then make similar notes about that as well.

During your consultation, your doctor – after having heard your account of your symptoms – will examine you. Just how thorough that first examination will be depends greatly upon whether the diagnosis in your case is a fairly obvious one. In most instances of simple sciatica, the doctor will quickly form a pretty accurate impression of what the cause of the trouble is, and, unless the symptoms are very severe, probably recommend that the first approach to be tried is a few days of rest, together with analgesics to control the pain. It is a standard principle of medicine that when several different treatments are possible, the first thing to try is the least invasive one. There are several good reasons for this:

If the simple approach does the trick, all’s well and good, and the patient will have been spared the risk of possible side-effects that more energetic approaches frequently entail; and

As explained in greater detail farther below, many instances of sciatica and back pain are essentially self-limiting; and

Even tests and investigations can carry their own risks of side-effects.

*9\124\2*

Softening of children’s bones with permanent bowing of the legs, (“bandy legs”), medically known as rickets, was fairly common before World War II. With the discovery that rickets is caused by vitamin D deficiency, bandy legs have become rare.

Now, with rickets a thing of the past, physicians are beginning to see an illness due to vitamin D excess called hypercalcemia, a high concentration of calcium in the blood. Symptoms of hypercalcemia include weakness, nausea, vomiting, thirst, frequent urination, and distaste for food. Left untreated, hypercalcemia can produce kidney stones and kidney damage with high blood pressure.

According to the Lancet (1: 229), people vary in the amount of vitamin D excess they can tolerate without getting hypercalcemia, and it may not be safe for everyone to take a tablet containing vitamin D every day. The elderly who are not eating well and all growing children probably can benefit from taking a multi-vitamin tablet (containing vitamin D) every day, but well-nourished adults usually get enough vitamin D from their food, unless they are on a diet.

*217\143\2*

Signs and symptoms

The onset of strep throat is sudden. It begins with a headache, fever up to 40°C, sore and red throat, vomiting, abdominal pain, and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. If the infecting organism is rash-producing and the child is not immune, he or she will develop a rash within 24 to 72 hours. The rash is typical of scarlet fever, with fine, slightly raised red spots resembling coarse red sandpaper. It appears on the base of the neck, in the armpits and groin, and then on the trunk and extremities. The child’s face is flushed, but the lips are pale. When the rash subsides in three to 20 days, the skin flakes and peels.

The diagnosis of a strep throat cannot be confirmed without a throat culture that isolates streptococcus organisms. However, cultures are only 90 to 95 percent reliable. The diagnosis of scarlet fever is based on the appearance of the rash.

Home care

The only home treatment recommended is to give aspirin or paracetamol to relieve fever and pain. A streptococcal infection should be treated by your doctor.

Precautions

• Infants are immune to the scarlet fever toxin for four to six months if their mothers are immune. The infants are not immune to a streptococcal infection, which may be very serious but may not produce typical symptoms. Consequently, keep infants away from groups of children, some of whom may be carriers of the streptococci bacteria.

• If one child in your family has a streptococcal infection, your other children should receive a throat culture whether they are sick or not.

• Follow the full course of antibiotic treatment prescribed by a doctor, giving your child all the medication prescribed even if the child seems to be well before all the medicine is finished.

Medical treatment

Strep throat is diagnosed by means of a physical examination and the results of a throat culture. Penicillin (or another antibiotic for those who are allergic to penicillin) is usually prescribed for ten days to cure the streptococcal infection. Antibiotics prevent rheumatic fever and may prevent inflammation of the kidneys. A child who develops complications may have to be hospitalized.

*204/84/5*

What is stress? Sky-rocketing interest rates. An unfaithful husband. Problems with the tax-man. Children on drugs. An impossible boss. An unwanted pregnancy. If you believe that such matters are stress, we are not on the same wavelength in understanding what stress is all about.

‘I know what stress is. I can feel it.’ No. You don’t feel stress. What you feel is some malfunction of your body due to the anxiety which has been caused by stress.

Well, what is stress?

As I see it, stress is the disharmony of brain function that arises when our brain is unable to integrate all the information it receives.

Looked at in a more homely way, stress is the disparity between the adverse circumstances of our life and our ability to cope with them.

There are always two sides to stress. On the one hand there are the problems, and on the other hand there is the coping.

If we have some practical problem and if it is of considerable magnitude, our coping will be so much the more difficult. If the impulses arriving at our brain reach such a level of intensity that our brain cannot sort them out and integrate them, our brain function becomes disorganized.

This produces the various bodily and mental malfunctions which we recognize as the symptoms of stress.

Often there is some major problem which initiates the bulk of the disturbing impulses to our brain. But the main problem always operates on a background of lesser problems which contribute their share of disturbing impulses, and so add to the effect of the major problem.

Of course, the magnitude and severity of the major problem will play an important part in determining whether it will generate sufficient nervous impulses to disturb the harmony of our brain function. But the magnitude of the problem by itself does not produce stress. There is always this other factor. Our coping.

Coping with the nervous impulses arising from a major problem occurs at two levels. There is the practical level. What can we do in terms of practical reality towards putting things right? Then there is the other level of coping. What can we do to make it easier for our brain to integrate the flood of messages it is receiving?

In many life situations, the major problem is an event which is quite outside our control. So for practical purposes, our main way of avoiding stress is learning ways of helping our brain integrate the flood of impulses coming to it.

We are living beings. Over countless generations we have evolved a whole host of compensatory mechanisms to help us if we come under strain from one source or another. In strenuous exercise our heart rate is increased and so is the rate and depth of our breathing. We have similar restorative mechanisms to help us if our brain is over-taxed by a flood of nervous impulses from our problems. Those few fortunate people among us who have unconsciously learned to call upon these inner resources enhance the coping power of their brain, and suffer little stress. In this way they come to experience a dimension of life that eludes most of us.

*1/98/5*

A positive skin test may mean that the allergy is caused by the allergen used in testing; by an allergen that may cause allergy at a future date; by an allergen which has caused allergy in the past; or by an allergen which is similar to the one causing the positive test. Or it may mean that the positive skin finding is a casual one which is not related to the allergy in question. Therefore, extreme care must be exercised in diagnosing an allergy on the basis of skin test interpretations.

If the allergic history and skin tests are not conclusive, the Rast test may be used. This test works on the principle of an allergen reacting with its specific antibody in the blood serum of an allergic patient. It is safe, convenient, accurate, time-saving, and less traumatic than skin testing, but it is costly and not always available.

After the allergic history and the skin or Rast tests have been done, all the positive findings should be recorded in the following summary which must be kept in the physician’s records and should also be kept by the school nurse, the camp doctor, and the child’s parents.

*32/99/5*

Eating a Healthy Diet

This is the most important step because good nutrition is the foundation on which your health is built and the key to increasing your chances of conceiving. Look at what you are eating and drinking, buy organic food where possible, eat a good variety of food (including fish, nuts, seeds, fresh fruit and vegetables), and read labels to reduce or eliminate the amount of chemicals, additives and preservatives going into your body. It’s also important to get your weight back into the normal range, if you are underweight or overweight.

Carry on eating well over the four months and until you become pregnant, and through the pregnancy itself.

Checking and Correcting Your Nutritional Status

Where possible, at the very beginning of the Four-Month Plan, you should go to a nutritional therapist. Preferably choose one with experience in fertility and have a full assessment of your vitamin and mineral deficiencies. You will also be checked to see whether you have high levels of heavy toxic metals, such as lead, mercury and cadmium. You will then be given a programme of food supplements for four months to correct any deficiencies and to lower any toxic metals. At the end of the four months the assessment should be repeated, to make sure that the nutrients have been absorbed and the levels are back to normal. Once back to normal, you will be given a maintenance programme to stay on until you conceive.

If you are worried about the cost, bear in mind that IVF treatment is expensive. The investment in seeing a nutritional therapist, together with taking a programme of food supplements, therefore is minimal in comparison and may mean you avoid the IVF altogether. If you still need IVF treatment, the investment is still worthwhile because it increases the chance of it working.

For those who can’t get to see a nutritional therapist, I have devised a proposed supplement programme. Normally the programme would be personalized for you and your partner and would depend on what deficiencies you each had, but here you are both taking almost the same supplements.

Supplement Programme

Take:

• a multivitamin and mineral designed for pregnancy

• zinc citrate or amino acid chelate (total of 30mg of zinc a day, including what is in the multivitamin and mineral)

• l000 mg linseed (or flax oil) a day

• l000 mg vitamin Ñ a day

If your partner has a low sperm count or motility he needs to add 1,000mg of L-arginine a day to this programme for sperm health and 300-400ius a day of vitamin E to help fertilisation.

There are two supplements called Fertility Plus for Women and Fertility Plus for Men.

Fertility Plus for Women contains those nutrients known to help with fertility and you would only need to add the linseed oil and vitamin C. It is designed to provide the nutrients needed leading up to and during pregnancy. It contains the required amount of folic acid (400mcg a day) so you don’t need to take a separate folic acid supplement. It also includes a safe amount of vitamin A that you can take during pregnancy.

Fertility Plus for Men contains those nutrients which are helpful for men trying to conceive, including L-arginine, L-carnitine and also vitamin E.

If you are following this Four-Month Plan without being nutritionally tested then stay on the above supplement programme not just for the four months but until you conceive.

*106/73/5*

Let’s look here at some everyday things that anyone can do to de-stress themselves. Some are preventive, in that they mean that the stress will not continue to plague the individual, and others are more curative.

•     Have a good cry. According to one research biochemist crying at times of stress helps remove from the body potentially harmful chemicals produced during such times. To try to get evidence for this theory the researcher compared emotionally induced tears with tears that were the result of eye irritation (such as when peeling onions). He found that most people feel better after a cry. In one survey 85 per cent of women and 73 per cent of men said that they felt better after crying if the cause for their crying was emotional. On the opposite side of the coin, those who hold back their tears are more prone to stress-related diseases such as high blood pressure, colitis, and ulcers. A study of 100 men and women with stress-related disorders found that they were more likely than others to see crying as a sign of weakness or as a loss of control.

•     Talk about it – don’t bottle up ó our problems until you burst with stress. When faced with stress people either bottle it up, explode or resolve the conflict. One study found that people who refused to get angry when faced with conflict had lower blood pressures. One subject, for example, when attacked by his boss would say, ‘Let’s be cool, let’s deal with the problem.’ So explaining the problem in a detached manner is a good way of coping with stress. You acknowledge your anger but are not openly hostile or aggressive.

•     Have more fun in life. Many people run their lives in ways that give them little or no fun. This means that they are always so close to their problems that everything seems overwhelming. Holidays can be of real value because the new events and the very fact of being ‘away from it all’ for a while enable or even compel you to forget your normal stresses. Hobbies can do this on a day-to-day basis but it is vital to have a hobby that does not stress you in the same way that your normal life does. Most people working in this field suggest that you take exercise or indulge in a hobby immediately after or around the time of a stressful event. Recreation can be as effective as drugs in treating stress-related illnesses.

•     Take exercise. This doesn’t need to be organized, structured or even especially strenuous. One study of ten elderly people suffering from stress-induced neuromuscular tension measured electrical activity in the muscles to find out the tranquilizing effect of exercise when: their heartbeats were at 100 beats a minute; their heartbeats were at 120 beats a minute; they were on a tranquillizer; they were taking a placebo. The best of all of these methods, as regards decreasing electrical activity in the muscles, was the mild exercise (taking their heartbeats to 100 a minute). Exercise at the higher pulse-rate level had an insignificant tranquil-Using effect, and the tranquillizer drug and the placebo had no effect on the electrical measurements at all. The researchers concluded that ‘twenty minutes of walking would do the job nicely to reduce stress! With more rigorous exercise you start to release adrenaline and this fires you up more than it relaxes you.’

*224/72/5*

What is it?

Many individuals are familiar with this phenomenon but it is one that the medical profession discusses very little. It takes the form of restlessness, lethargy, depression or dullness, or a mixture of them all, after lunch. About an hour after having had lunch is the most common time but it hits some people as late as 4 p.m.

To most sufferers afternoon slump is simply a time each day when they feel at a low ebb-they can’t concentrate, drive poorly, shout at the kids or whatever. Doctors call it the postprandial dip and it is characterized by low body temperature, low blood sugar, fluid retention, a reduced work efficiency and a depression of mood. For some people it is a blight on the whole afternoon.

What causes it?

•     Too much stodgy, refined carbohydrate for lunch. One study found that people who had eaten a heavy lunch were less able to detect signals and couldn’t differentiate as well between varying sizes and intensities of light.

•     We all operate on a 12-hour cycle superimposed on a 24-hour day. Many scientists think that our bodies are crying out for a rest at about this time of the day. In Mediterranean and Latin countries the siesta is the rule rather than the exception-people go home at lunchtime to sleep and then return to work later in the afternoon and work into the evening. People who enjoy a siesta need less sleep at night, so it is not a waste of time sleeping during the day as is often thought.

•     Skimping on breakfast. A research study found that 79 per cent of the subjects studied who complained of fatigue, fluid retention, or both, had skimped on breakfast. After being placed on a high-protein breakfast, forty-nine out of fifty-eight patients reported obvious, in some instances dramatic, reductions in fatigue and fluid retention.

Prevention

•     Eat a 100 per cent raw lunch. Avoid all refined stodge.

•     If you can’t eat 100 per cent raw then remove sugar, honey, refined carbohydrate foods and very sweet fruits such as dates, figs and bananas.

•     Have a glass of orange juice with brewer’s yeast stirred in.

•     Take some light exercise straight after lunch.

•     Eat a sensible breakfast.

*85/72/5*

As the meditation process unfolds, some people become anxious when they notice their breathing slowing down. Sometimes it feels as if you are hardly breathing at all. This can be disconcerting at first, especially for people who have this fear. There is nothing to worry about. The slowing down of our breathing indicates we are beginning to relax deeply. It is a positive sign that the meditation session is going well. If you are using a word or mantra technique to meditate don’t worry when the technique becomes distorted or disappears altogether in the course of your meditation. This is another indication of successful meditation.

Some people find they go to sleep during meditation. Although most meditation teachers advise their students to remain alert and not go to sleep, I feel somewhat differently about it in the case of anxiety disorders. Firstly, it is a good sign that the practice is going well. If we can let go and relax enough to sleep, then in the beginning this is all that matters. In this instance, meditation is being used as a relaxation technique. Many people with the disorder have difficulty in sleeping. If meditation means people are able to catch up on sleep, then the practice is successful. Most people who do go to sleep during meditation find they do so for about forty-five minutes, and on awakening they feel the benefits. Take it as it comes. In time we all reach the stage when we actually meditate instead of going to sleep.

*68\94\8*

Heart symptoms

The most common fear we have is that we will die from a heart attack. Besides having a rapid heartbeat, some people experience palpitations or ‘missed’ heartbeats. They are not dangerous, and will not hurt us in any way. The more we fear them, the more adrenalin is released, so the cycle continues.

Muscle tension

The fear of having a heart attack is compounded by the tightness or pain which may be experienced in the chest, arms and jaw. It can also be felt in our neck and throat. It doesn’t mean there is anything seriously wrong. Stress and tension cause our muscles to tighten. The tension will disappear once we have begun to let go of the fear and anxiety.

Throat constriction

Another symptom which causes a great deal of fear is the feeling of tightness or constriction in the throat, as it feels as if the air supply will be cut off. It won’t. The tightness is a sign of just how tense we are. When we reduce the tension this symptom will disappear.

*52\94\8*