RadioVerso.org – Herbal Health

While depression is in itself a common condition – according to one estimate it affects about one in ten people in any given year -many others are affected by depressive symptoms to a degree that would not qualify them for this more serious diagnosis. According to Dr Lewis Judd, former Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, and colleagues, approximately one in five people interviewed reported suffering from one or more depressive symptom in the preceding month. Huge numbers of people are suffering from very distressing problems of mood, behaviour and bodily functions of the type that are associated with depression. Nor are these symptoms benign in terms of their impact on a person’s ability to function. Judd and his colleagues found that people with ’subsyndromal depression’ reported more difficulties in their work and social relationships than were reported by a control group, and that significantly more people with these symptoms had been on disability. Given the reluctance that people have to seek medical attention even for full-blown cases of depression, and the ill-judged care they might receive once they make such a decision, it seems unlikely that a high percentage of people with subsyndromal depression will be properly treated through conventional medical channels. Such people are therefore excellent candidates for self-treatment with St John’s Wort and there is no reason to believe that it will not prove to be helpful for many of them, given its excellent track record in more severely depressed patients.

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When children make developmental strides, it can send them into disequilibrium—and sleep is disrupted. This can affect a child in several ways. He may be so excited about learning a new skill that he has a hard time settling down—he may even be driven to practice skills in his sleep. During normal arousal, instead of going right back to sleep, the new “stander” stands in his crib. It may be easier to understand if you relate it to yourself: think about a time you were learning a new skill—when you were dreaming at tennis, going over that shot you missed, or worrying about the match next day.

Mastering one skill brings a child quickly to the next frustration. When stands in her crib, she may cry desperately because she hasn’t yet learned how to get herself down. She needs you to help until she can help herself again, needs a little extra reassurance, so separation difficulties are common.

Dealing with developmental sleep issues may be particularly frustrating because parents do not have control over a child’s development. Sometimes only “cure” is allowing the development to continue on its own with encouraging messages from you. It helps to recognize that the transition probably be short-lived. Overreacting and doing too much can only prolong problem if she becomes dependent upon your help to go to sleep.

Although each child is an individual, there are guidelines and Ü information that apply to all. Table 3 summarizes the affect of development sleep. With this foundation, you can begin to look at the specific is concerning you about your child.

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Let go of fear. There is nothing in this world worth fearing about. This is not simply my belief. I know. To fear is one of the worst things you can do to your mind. All logical reasoning, not to mention the connection to your higher mind is completely blocked. People know about it, and some of them use fear techniques to take advantage of others. Look around. The field of medicine prospers by promoting the fear of disease. If they succeed, you fear disease, even if you don’t have any, and this feeling actually replaces the feeling of well being! Instead of enjoying your perfect health and being happy, you worry! Fear blocks your thinking, and in this state you are easy to control by others, who know it and want to take advantage of it. The technique of fear is frequently used by government and religious leaders as a tool to control people. Let go of fear. It blocks your mind. Never use the technique of fear to control children. Use explanation, examples and reasoning instead.

Eliminate feelings of anger, hate and anxiety. – they also block your mind at all levels, preventing the natural state of well being and spiritual development.

Forgive everyone and everything. Hate and resentment also clog your mind. By nourishing hatred and resentment you cannot gain anything except the same things from others. On the other hand, forgiveness and tolerance could give you a key to gaining respect and love.

Do not think of harming anyone or anything. Think of others the way you would like others to think about you.

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Some congenital abnormalities (present at birth) are not inherited. For example, the abnormalities in the limbs of the children whose mothers had taken the drug thalidomide during pregnancy are congenital and will not be passed on to their children, as the thalidomide affected the developing cells in the limbs without, (although there continues to be some debate), causing any mutations in the baby’s own ovaries or testes. Other congenital abnormalities may have an inherited basis.

One congenital abnormality relevant to epilepsy is a maldevelopment of blood vessels known as an angioma. The abnormal vessels may be either arterial, venous, or capillary. Sometimes a clot or thrombus forms in one or more of the abnormal vessels, exacerbating the situation. One type of capillary angioma of the brain is associated with a similar malformation of blood vessels in the skin of the upper part of the face—the Sturge-Weber syndrome. Children with this particular combination of angiomatous abnormalities have a high probability of developing seizures.

More common than angiomas as a cause of epilepsy are disorders oi migration of nerve cells during fetal development, so some end up in the wrong place, the wrong layer of the brain, or with the wrong connections. They are congenital abnormalities, but unlike a harelip, for example, externally invisible. The causes of such disorders are not known, but some probably have a genetic basis. This sort of abnormal brain development may cause seizures and fits in the first few weeks or months of life, including infantile spasms (West’s syndrome).

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If your doctor or hospital consultant refers you to a chartered physiotherapist – or you choose to see one independently – for back pain, the first step towards treatment will almost certainly be an in-depth assessment of your condition and what led to it. As well as an examination of your posture, this assessment will include a discussion that will cover your work and leisure activities, your history of back pain, the incident leading to the pain, and the nature and site of the pain.

Physiotherapy still remains largely a hands-on profession, and the most likely treatment for back pain will involve the physiotherapist using his – or her – hands gently or more vigorously to achieve one or more of the following aims:

Mobilisation – this means freeing one or more joints in the spine, and this is accomplished by the therapist moving them, often very gently, to relieve pain or spasm.

Manipulation – or realigning a joint that is or has become misplaced. Although a vigorous manoeuvre, the least force necessary is used, and this often involves a very small movement indeed.

Massage – this can help relieve muscle spasm, increase circulation to the injured area and so speed up and promote the natural healing process.

Other treatment methods commonly used by physiotherapists include ice, hydrotherapy, and acupuncture. For an acute back problem, ice can reduce pain and increase circulation while hydrotherapy can help a patient move their back and limbs more freely in water than they may otherwise be able to do. The use of acupuncture for pain relief is also increasing.

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“Sleeping through the night” is a phrase that is probably best banned from our vocabulary. Let’s face it, no one really sleeps through the night. If you poll a group of adult friends and ask them how they slept last night, you will undoubtedly hear such things as: The wind woke me up.

At 3:00 am I looked at the clock and was relieved to see I had two more hours before the alarm would ring.

If you poll a group of parents, and get past the “She has always slept through the night,” you will hear a variety of comments:

When he is teething, he has a little trouble sleeping.

She seems so hungry at around 2:00 am—must be a growth spurt.

He has been waking with bad dreams.

If sleeping all night long, every night, is your expectation for your child,

you may be setting yourself up for frustration. Sleep needs and patterns

change with age, illness, and emotional or even environmental factors. Just as

with other parenting issues, our goals, expectations, and approaches must be

constantly re-evaluated.    

It is misleading to think of sleep as a state we simply fall into at night and wake from in the morning. Sleep research has shown that there are definite patterns and fluctuations during the night. They play important roles to help refresh us and can reveal some causes behind sleep disturbances.

The descriptions of these cycles can be quite technical. Because a basic understanding is crucial, an effort has been made to give a very simple explanation of what occurs and how your child might be affected.

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Area indicates a number of nerve cells in the cortex (the name given to the layers of nerve cells on the surface of the brain) which are in some way abnormal, tending to discharge paroxysmally. They may drive other nerve cells to follow their abnormal patterns of discharge. The paths of influence of the discharging nerve cells are indicated by the arrows. As long as the discharge remains in one part of the brain, the seizure is said to be a partial seizure and its cause

location-related. What happens during a partial seizure depends upon the exact site and pattern of discharge of abnormal nerve cells. Temporal lobe seizures are of this type.

The abnormal discharge may spread through the connections linking the two halves of the brain, or, by affecting poorly identified central collections of cells, initiate a generalized seizure discharge, in which case the seizure is said to be a partial seizure with secondary generalization (to a convulsive seizure—grand mal). These are also known as tonic-clonic seizures).

The second main class of seizure. In this class of seizure, central collections of nerve cells are in some way abnormal in their behaviour—even though they may appear to be perfectly normal under the microscope. Because of their central position, and the direction and power of their transmissions, a seizure discharge generated within them spreads more or less simultaneously to all parts of the brain. Such a seizure is generalized at onset. Typical absences (often known as petit mal), and some grand mal seizures, are of this type.

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The bags under your eyes, the weight you have been losing or gaining, the grumpiness and sheer exhaustion—these are the obvious reasons to make some changes. Your child’s physical and emotional well-being are also reasons.

Dr. Burton White, author of The First Three Years of Life, feels that sleep problems understandably occur in families where children are loved and whose needs have been met. So, in some ways, the emergence of sleep problems is not necessarily a bad sign. He notes that it is the continuance of sleep disturbances that can cause deeper problems.

Dr. Marc Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, states that the development of healthy sleep habits is not automatic. If your child has not learned them, then his functioning during wakefulness is not “optimal.”2 Put simply, a sleep-deprived child (waking several times a night or missing out on even an hour) is not at his best. His cognitive processes will be fuzzy and his social functioning will be marked by grumpy unpredictability.

A child can “adjust” to whatever sleep patterns he has fallen into. (Look at how you have “adjusted.” Do you say “I didn’t know it was possible to exist with so little sleep”?) However, there are signs—some subtle, some blatant—that he is not at his best.

It is the parents’ job to insist on healthy sleep, just as they insist on healthy nutrition, to give the child the strongest base from which to grow. Good sleep habits do not necessarily happen spontaneously. This is a skill that can be learned by children and facilitated by parents.

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Students of medicine, our future doctors, are forced to memorise an enormous quantity of bits and pieces of information, the most important being the names of chemicals and hormones and their relationship to various organs and functions of the body.

I highlighted the “bits and pieces”, because they do not form a complete picture of the way our body functions. To a serious scientist their collection poses more questions than it provides answers.

After young doctors complete their University studies and their initial supervised practice, they practice on their own, continuing their “education” during their working life.

Let us analyse, how they update their knowledge. Critical study of Medical Journals and complex results of clinical research requires time and significant effort from doctors, for which they are not being paid. Another source of new information is that concerning new drugs manufactured by chemical companies. This information is simple and quick to absorb: it comes with short and complete instructions on how to prescribe drugs to patients, details of dosages etc. It also comes with “free samples” of drugs to make the doctor familiar with the name of the drug, by being always at hand. Well-informed drug sales representative would offer a doctor personal assistance in acquiring familiarity with any new drug. Each year a multitude of new drugs is introduced to medical practice in this way. After several years of medical practice, most of the doctor’s new knowledge comes from such sales representatives, who usually do not have any medical education at all.

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There are all sorts of problems about epilepsy. Epilepsy is the name given to recurrent ’seizures’ (also known as ‘fits’, or ‘attacks’), of which the fairly well-known grand mal convulsions are only one type. A whole variety of brain disorders can cause epilepsy, which should perhaps be considered no more than a stereotyped reaction of the brain to a variety of stresses. It is not generally known that, in spite of the most modern methods of investigation, an underlying cause can only be identified with certainty in about one third of people with epilepsy. The good news that has emerged from research studies over the last twenty years is that the long-term outlook for the cessation of seizures is very much better than was previously considered to be the case, as earlier research referred only to people with epilepsy whose seizures were the most difficult to control.

People with epilepsy have many worries. Children with epilepsy may be upset or worried about telling their friends and what will happen to them in the future. Women with epilepsy are understandably concerned about the possible effects of anti-epileptic medication when pregnant. Not everyone understands the impact of epilepsy upon the eligibility to hold a driving licence. Many employers understand little about epilepsy, and people with epilepsy may not have the same possibilities of employment, or of career advancement.

Epilepsy can begin at any age in life, but is particularly likely to begin in early childhood. One of us is a paediatric neurologist with a particular interest in epilepsy, and the other works with adults with epilepsy.

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