Cause

In small children the commonest cause of nosebleed is picking crusts from the inside of the nose, and in so doing scratching the delicate lining and damaging a small blood vessel. Blowing the nose vigorously, or any form of trauma can cause a nosebleed. Frequent nosebleeds may be a sign of a blood disorder but this is rare. The amount of blood lost due to a nosebleed will usually not harm your child.

Treatment

The most effective treatment for a nosebleed is to apply firm pressure with your fingers on the sides of the nostrils. Continue for 5 minutes, keeping the head still. If bleeding does not stop completely, continue for another 10 minutes. If after 15 minutes you still cannot control the bleeding, see your doctor, or go to a hospital casualty department. If your child suffers from recurrent nosebleeds, your doctor may recommend cautery, a simple procedure in which the vein which has been bleeding is sealed off.

When to see your doctor

• if bleeding has not stopped after 15 minutes despite the application of firm pressure on the nose;

• if your child has recurrent nosebleeds;

• if in addition to having nosebleeds, your child is generally unwell, looks pale or has unexplained bruises on his body.

Object in the ear

Cause

Young children in particular like to explore their own bodies, and may insert small objects into their ear.

Clinical features

This can cause itching, swelling and pain, or the child may complain of a blocked ear. An offensive discharge may be present sometimes if the object has been there for several or more.

Treatment

If you suspect that your child has an object lodged in his ear it is safest to let your doctor see him. Your doctor will probably syringe the ear with warm water to remove the object, or use a special ear probe. Trying to remove the object at home with a cotton bud may only push the object in further and this can cause damage to the delicate ear drum or canal. If the ear is infected your doctor may prescribe antibiotic ear drops or medicine.

*237\90\8*

A baby has the ability, through his behaviour, to elicit the care of others. Parents are soon able to distinguish the nuances between a ‘pooey nappy cry’ and a ‘feed me’ cry. Facial expressions and gurgling often make parents melt with coos or giggles of love. Your baby may be small, but he is a powerful communicator and knows how to make his needs known.

Many parents feel ambivalent about having a child. This is a normal part of all parenting. If the parents are unable to acknowledge their true feelings, they run the risk of not being able to tune into the child appropriately. We all want to produce a beautiful child as a product of love. If, for example, a couple have a deformed baby, it may be very difficult for them to verbalise that their child is not physically beautiful. Yet this is often exactly what needs to be done.

The parent-infant relationship is important in the continuing development of the child. Parents provide emotional nourishment for the child, and studies have shown that without consistent parenting children may become withdrawn and may not develop normally.

A child’s sense of self is thought to develop at around 7-9 months. He begins to recognise that there is a shared world and also begins to learn to abstract, realising that pointing leads to something beyond the finger. From early infancy, an enormous amount of learning takes place in the relationship with the parents, through the ‘mirroring’ of facial expressions and voice. This is more than just mimicking; it is a tuning-in to each other’s emotional experience. Emotion is how we all began to communicate. It can provide a special intimacy beyond the limitations of words. In many ways emotion is still the most powerful language that we have.

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HUSBAND

He has always acted funny about his genitals. He never lets me really see them or touch them. I touched his testicles one time and he pulled away like I had killed him. Why didn’t he ask the doctor?

WIFE

I did. He just laughed and said maybe I had pulled on one for too long. I never mentioned it again.

HUSBAND

Several of the husbands and wives reported similar instances of worries and misunderstandings that were never clarified, even made worse, by the lack of comfort and sexual knowledge of the medical field. As with all of the tests in this book, taking the sexual health’ exam together is the best way to learn about each other and yourself Dr. June Reinisch, director of the Institute for Research in Sex Gender, and Reproduction, reports that questions to her nationally syndicated column often contain misinformation and a refusal by physicians and other health professionals to respond openly, comfortably, and directly to sexual questions from their patients. Any doctors who don’t hear such questions in their practice can be sure that they have stopped them through their own discomfort with the topic.

*261\97\8*

Modern scientific evidence, summarised in this book to convince its readers is taken directly from books and articles published by many talented, dedicated, honest medical practitioners and scientists, who are not afraid of telling the TRUTH.

In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Hulda Regehr Clark, Arthur Baker, Deepak Chopra and Sheldon Saul Hendler for their wonderful books.

I am grateful to Dr Vagif Sultanov, for his inspiring public lecture about fasting.

I am also grateful to Ed McCabe, a reporter, for bringing to the attention of the general public (mine included) oxygen therapies, against considerable opposition of the medical establishment and the media.

It would be impossible for me to collect quickly the scientific evidence I needed without access to the Australian NEXUS magazine, which has published great articles as well as summaries and reviews of many interesting and original books. I salute all those people associated with NEXUS. You are doing a great job.

I would like to express my gratitude to Nick Haritos, who corrected the manuscript.

*51\96\8*

The most important part of treatment is to prevent these adhesions. So drops of atropine and homatropine are used to dilate the pupil, pulling the iris away from the lens.

Homatropine has the advantage of being short acting, and so the dilation can be quickly reversed once the inflammation has subsided.

But this drug works poorly in children and in some adults, and so atropine is required.

This unfortunately, has a much longer action, and it may take up to a week before the pupil returns to its normal size once the drug is stopped.

If the pupil is dilated, this interferes with clear vision and makes the eye over-sensitive to light.

The other drug of importance is cortisone in the form of drops, instilled into the eye to reduce inflammation.

Iritis may be mild or severe, it may persist for weeks or months, or may rapidly subside within a few days.

Unfortunately, it is prone to recur.

Assessment of any underlying condition is necessary so that this condition can also be treated.

*466/71/1*

It doesn’t really matter what the condition is called, as long as the child gets proper treatment and the parents are not frightened by having their children labelled as asthmatic.

Usually the diagnosis of asthma can be made on clinical grounds, but some tests may be necessary to confirm it, assess its severity or check for associated factors.

Testing lung function by having the patient blow into a special machine is accurate and gives a lot of information. It may be necessary to provoke an attack, do the test and then reverse the breathing difficulty by giving drugs that dilate the bronchial tubes.

In allergic individuals, skin tests to find to what substances the person is allergic are also of use.

*211/71/1*

The best way to deal with this common problem, the U.S. Pharmacist (13#12:24) advises, is to first soak the skin in warm (not hot) water for about 10 minutes. After this, the skin must be thoroughly dried with a towel and then, and only then, it should be immediately covered with a film of ointment or cream. The soaking gives time for the water to penetrate into the deepest layers of dry skin and the thin layer of ointment or cream then acts as a barrier to prevent the water from evaporating away. However, since water and oil don’t mix, the surface must be completely dried before ointment or cream can be properly applied. Without the soaking, a cream or ointment cannot do much good.

Since ointments are more oily than creams, they form a more lasting water-retaining barrier. However, because ointments are stickier and less easily washed off, creams are more popular, especially during the day. With creams, though, one must be prepared to soak the skin more often.

Containing still less oil, or even none at all, lotions, although soothing, are almost useless for treating skin that is already excessively dry. They may provide some help, of course, in preventing normal skin from becoming dried out. Gels, which usually contain some alcohol, may actually dry the skin.

Cutis (37:384) recommends that we add Alpha Keri oil to our bath water. Those who preferred showering to sitting in the tub got the same benefit from Alpha Keri oil by rubbing it on the skin immediately after drying. Other bath oils probably have the same effect.

*196\143\2*

High blood pressure has been called the “silent disease,” because it often has no symptoms. Symptoms, if they occur, can include headaches, pounding heartbeat, shortness of breath during exercise, and flushing of the face. Accurate diagnosis can be made only by taking careful blood pressure measurements with instruments that are the correct size for your child’s size. If the blood pressure is high on the first reading, the doctor will check it several times at return visits to make sure that the first reading was accurate.

Home care

There is no home treatment for high blood pressure. The condition must be diagnosed and treated by a doctor. All children should have an annual physical examination. High blood pressure in child-hood is curable, but it can be dangerous if it is not treated.

Precaution

• Be sure the doctor checks your child’s blood pressure during each annual checkup.

Medical treatment

Your doctor will give the child a complete physical examination, including measuring the blood pressure, palpating the arteries in the groin, and examining the eye for changes in the blood vessels in the back of the eyes (where effects of high blood pressure may be recognized early). The doctor will also examine the child’s heart, abdomen, and genitals.

It takes complicated laboratory investigation to check for all of the many possible causes of high blood pressure. Except for rare cases, all the causes of high, blood pressure can be successfully treated or cured by medications, changes in diet, or surgery. However, the condition frequently requires the child to be hospitalized for tests and determination of treatment.

*113/84/5*

“War is such an incredibly disruptive event,” says study author Glen H. Elder Jr., Ph.D., of the Carolina Population Center, “especially when you’re mobilized during your late twenties and early thirties like many soldiers were during World War II. This disruption, combined with returning and never really talking about the experience, seems to have had adverse consequences for their physical health, perhaps through an impaired immune function. In our studies, late mobilization and exposure to combat are predictive of declining physical health. There is more cancer and heart disease in the lives of these men.”

Echoing those findings, a 50-year study of 152 World War II veterans found that 30 out of 54 veterans who saw intense fighting contracted chronic illnesses and died by the time they were 65. Sixteen of those veterans had complained of symptoms of PTSD. And the rates of disease and death were significantly lower among veterans who had not seen much combat.

Because Vietnam occurred earlier in the soldiers’ lives, Dr. Elder isn’t able to draw parallels between World War II veterans and those who served in Vietnam. “The disruption occurred when they were younger, but the war had psychological consequences all of its own,” he says.

*124/36/5*

I’m going to ask you to do some interesting work in this chapter. You’ll find three quizzes that contain the same kinds of questions I ask my patients. Taking the quizzes will teach you a lot about outlook on life, exercise and nutrition, as I see it. Your scores will be used to determine which of the four Nutri-Prevention supplement programs may be right for you. And at the end of the chapter you’ll find a list of immune-system laboratory tests that you should consider having performed by your physician to measure certain indicators of the immune system.

Answer all the questions honestly. No one but you needs to see what you write. Sure, you can fix it so you have better scores. But that won’t change what’s happening inside your body. The point is to learn about yourself. You can only do that if you answer the questions honestly.

After you’ve been on the Immune For Life program for about two months, take the three quizzes again. You’ll be surprised at how much higher you score, and how much better you feel.

*155\80\8*