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- Incontinence.
- Infant physical Development.
- Insects bites and stings.
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Incontinence
Urinary incontinence is a leakage of urine that is frequent enough or severe enough to become a social
or hygiene problem. Urinary incontinence can happen during pregnancy, during coughing or sneezing or
during certain body movements that "stress" the body's bladder control. It can also be related to a
urinary tract infection, to the effects of a pelvic injury, to radiation therapy or to certain medical
and neurologic diseases.
Alcohol, caffeinated beverages and a variety of medications can also cause or contribute to urinary
incontinence. In some cases, incontinence can even be triggered when a patient simply places their hands
in water or hears the sound of water running.
In women, the most common cause of urinary incontinence is a lack of muscle support at the bladder neck
(the place where the bladder joins the urethra).
Symptoms:
The main symptom of urinary incontinence is leakage of urine. This leakage may be frequent and heavy,
or it may be small and rather rare. For an active woman or for a woman who loses a large amount of urine
each time, even one episode per week may be too much.
Some other common symptoms of urinary incontinence include:
Urgency: strong desire to urinate, whether or not the bladder is full, often occurring together with
pelvic discomfort or pressure.
Frequency: urinating more than once in a two-hour period or more than seven times a day.
Nocturia: the need to get up and urinate at least twice during hours of sleep.
Dysuria: painful urination.
Enuresis: bed-wetting or urinating while sleeping.
Treatment:
Many people with chronic urinary incontinence, especially the elderly, believe their only option is wearing
absorbent pads or undergarments. Over time, however, use of these products may lead to rashes, sores, or
infections.
Although some women cope with stress incontinence by wearing pads only during exercise, most doctors recommend
daily use of these products only as a last resort or until continence is restored through other means.
These includes:
Timed Voiding: Timed voiding (urinating) involves charting your urination and leakage patterns for several days.
This helps you discover which times of day you normally need to empty your bladder before you would otherwise leak.
Kegel Exercises: These exercises are designed to help women with stress incontinence strengthen weak pelvic
muscles around the bladder. One Kegel exercise involves lying down and squeezing your lower pelvic muscles for
3 seconds, as though you were trying to halt the flow of urine.
Changing Fluid Intake: Some people need to increase or reduce their fluid intake, or change the timing of
their fluid intake, to gain more control over their bladder.
Electrical Stimulation: This technique uses a series of brief doses of electricity to stimulate
contraction of the muscles in the lower pelvis.
Biofeedback: Biofeedback uses electronic devices or diaries to help you track and ultimately control
when your bladder and urethral muscles contract.
Medication: Your doctor may prescribe drugs to inhibit contractions of an overactive bladder or to relax
bladder muscles, leading to more complete bladder emptying during urination. There are also drugs to tighten muscles
at the bladder neck and urethra to prevent leakage.
Restricting Intake of Certain Beverages: Restricting your intake of alcohol and coffee, cola, and other
caffeinated beverages can help reduce the amount of urine your body puts out.
Catheterization: Your doctor may recommend that you use a catheter if your bladder never empties completely
(overflow incontinence) or if your bladder cannot empty because of poor muscle tone, past surgery, or spinal-cord
injury. By inserting a tube through the urethra into the bladder, you can drain your own urine into the toilet or
into a bag strapped to your leg.
Surgery: If all else fails, your doctor may recommend surgery to alleviate incontinence. Perhaps the most common
surgery for stress incontinence in women is the procedure of lifting up a bladder that has dropped down toward the vagina.
This procedure can often be performed transvaginally and has a high success rate.
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Infant physical Development
Knowing the stages of development of your baby will help you react and respond in the right way, so as to help hone your
child's development and skills. An environment that encourages exploration and physical development is important for
children of all ages. Be sure to allow your baby plenty of space for rolling and, eventually, crawling.
Babies love to look at moving objects and try to reach for them, so be sure to hang mobiles and streamers safely in their
space. Babies also like to experiment with objects, so make sure you have rattles and small toys that are easy to reach for
and pick up. Make it a habit to disinfect the toys your baby puts in his mouth on a daily basis.
It's important that you encourage your baby to develop all his senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste.
Encourage your child to make comparisons by feeling and looking at them.
What is happening to Expect...
These development stages are just a guide. Do not worry if your baby differs by a few months. What is important is that
these milestones occur in a particular order. If you are concerned about the development of your child, talk about it with
your child's doctor.
- Most movements, which your newborn makes, are controlled by his reflexes. These include sucking, swallowing and grasping reflexes.
Voluntary movements will start to appear when your baby is a few weeks old
- Your newborn's body structure is much different from an older child's or an adult's. His head equals about one-quarter
of his total body size. His body trunk is long and his legs are short
0 to 3 months:
- Within a few weeks of birth, your newborn should be able to lift his head off the floor when laid flat on his tummy.
- At around 2 months of age he should be able to hold a rattle for a short time and glance from one object to another.
- Your baby should double his birth weight by 4 to 5 months of age.
- Around 3 months, he will roll over from tummy to back and shortly after that from back to tummy.
- Also around 3 months he will push his chest off of the floor when laid on his tummy.
3 to 6 months:
- He will reach for objects and shake a toy or rattle, hold two toys at once and put them in his mouth.
- By the end of 6 months he may even start to sit without support.
- Solid food should be introduced sometime between 4 and 6 months.
- Your baby will begin to push himself up onto his hands and knees.
- Soon after pushing up he will begin to crawl.
- He will stand with support holding onto furniture. He will also begin to walk along furniture, which
is called cruising.
6 to 9 months:
- Your baby will start to follow your movements around the room.
- He will begin to use a pincer grasp which is using his forefinger and thumb to pick up small objects.
- months At about 10 months, your baby will start to stand on his own.
- At around 12 months, he will take his first steps.
9 to 12 months:
- By this time he will display a hand preference, so you may be able to tell if he will be
right or left handed.
- He can push a car along on the floor and put objects into a large container.
- By the end of 14 months of age your child should be walking on his own. He has now moved from the
stage of infancy to toddlerhood.
12 to 18 months:
- Your toddler can also stack a tower with toy blocks.
- He should be able to turn the pages in a book.
- He can now draw an arc with a pencil on a piece of paper after being shown how.
18 to 24 months:
- He can turn a doorknob using both hands.
- Your toddler can zip and unzip a large zipper.
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Insects bites and stings
Insect bites from wasps, hornets and bees result in differing reactions. Some stings are
relatively minor, producing a needle prick sensation and slight swelling for a couple of days,
whereas other stings may cause an immediate allergic reaction within 2-10 minutes such as coughing,
facial swelling, wheezing, nausea and vomiting and hives. In other cases, some local swelling may
occur 12 -24 hours after a sting.
Safety Advice:
- Do not grow certain plants known to attract wasps, hornets or bees near children's play areas.
- Have nests or hives removed as soon as you notice them.
- Do not move rapidly near bees and stand still if one lands on you.
- Open cans of fizzy drink tend to attract bees and wasps that may venture into the can,
and can sting the lips and mouth.
- Keep garbage area clean and neat.
Treatment:
Bee Sting: The bee's sting is barbed and cannot be removed by the bee when it has penetrated the skin.
The venom is attached to the sting. Use a fingernail to scoop off the sting. Do not squeeze the sting as
this may cause more venom to be injected into the skin. Apply soluble aspirin or disprin onto the swollen
area to reduce the pain. Bathing the affected area and applying an ice pack to it helps. If a severe
allergic reaction occurs, seek medical attention immediately.
Wasp/Hornet Sting: Apply an icepack to the affected area for pain relief. Swelling and itchiness may
take over a week to subside. If you see signs of an allergic reaction or the victim is known to be allergic,
apply firm pressure over the sting site with your hand, and wrap the site with a crepe bandage (available
from any pharmacy) to maintain pressure over the site.
If the bite is on the arm or leg, wrap the entire limb (apply the bandage as tightly as you would for a sprained
ankle but not so tight as to stop circulation). Seek medical attention immediately and do not remove the bandage
until instructed to by the medical personnel.
Other Bites/Stings: For any other bites and stings, apply ice for pain relief and seek medical attention for
serious allergic reactions.
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional disorder of the gastrointestinal system. It is characterised
by abdominal pain/cramps, bloating or gas, diarrhoea and/or constipation. It is also known as spastic colon or
nervous stomach.
It affects as many as one in five persons and usually occurs between the ages of 20-50. Women outnumber men by
two or three to one. It can become a chronic condition causing much discomfort and inconvenience to the patient.
However, it does not progress to cancer.
Causes:
The exact cause of IBS is not known. In the walls of the intestines are muscles which in the normal person
contract and relax in a co-ordinated rhythm known as peristalsis. This action helps to propel food along the
intestines during which time absorption takes place. In IBS, the intestines are over sensitive.
The contractions are stronger and last longer. Food is pushed along the intestines at a faster rate,
giving rise to abdominal pain, gas and diarrhoea. Sometimes, the opposite occurs. The contractions are
weaker causing the passage of food to slow down and constipation results. Other factors that have been
shown to play a part are stress, diet and hormones. We call them triggers.
Symptoms:
The common symptoms are:
- Abdominal pain or cramps-usually over the left side or over the lower abdomen.
- Bloating and/or gas.
- Diarrhoea, constipation or alternating diarrhoea and constipation.
The symptoms can range from mild to severe. In many cases the symptoms are bearable and go off after a bowel movement.
The following triggers have been known to cause the symptoms to appear or to aggravate them:
Stress:
- which may be psychological or physical.
- Psychological stresses such as family misunderstanding; bereavement; anxiety; meeting datelines etc.
- Physical stresses such as illnesses, infections, exhaustion etc.
Diet:
- certain foods have been known to cause the onset of symptoms. They include fried or oily food; gas-forming foods
e.g.broccoli, beans, cabbage; chocolates; coffee.
Hormonal changes:
- some women experience attacks during or around their menstrual periods.
Diagnosis:
As the cause is unknown and there is a lack of specific physical signs, diagnosis is arrived at
through a process of elimination (i.e. by ruling out other serious conditions).
Treatment:
Treatment is essentially symptomatic i.e. it is directed towards the relief of symptoms. Mild symptoms usually go off on their own.
You need to see a doctor if symptoms are severe. Who may prescribe the following:
- Anti-spasmodics for the abdominal pain and cramps.
- Anti-flatulents to get rid of gas and relief the bloating.
- Anti-diarrhoeals to stop diarrhoea.
- Laxatives to relief constipation.
Prevention:
Prevention plays a important part in the total management of this condition. They are quite easily achievable.
They consist of stress management and life-style changes.
Stress management:
- Avoid unnecessary stress.
- Learn to relax.
- Exercise regularly.
- Exercise regularly.
Dietary changes:
- Avoid oily, spicy food.
- Avoid gas-forming foods e.g. cabbage, broccoli, beans.
- Avoid coffee, chocolates, and alcohol.
- Avoid large meals.
- Take more fibre.
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