Infant Walkers: Useful or Harmful?

Infant walkers - seats on wheels - provide no proven benefit and can be dangerous.

• A survey of parents of 150 children aged 5 to 15 months, all users of walkers, found that 47 youngsters had suffered mishaps. Most had bruisers and abrasions, but some had serious injuries when the walkers either tipped over or fell down stairs.

• Report Drs. Carol A. Kavanagh of the Joseph C. Wilson Health Center, Rochester, New Your, and Leonard Banco of Hartford (Connecticut) Hospital, the two pediatricians who made the survey: Infants certainly learn to walk without the practice they get in infant walkers and some research even indicates that infants not using walkers may walk slightly earlier than users.
  

Prostate: A Tip for Coping with A Nightly Nuisance

Common in older men, nonmalignant prostate enlargement can be special nuisance at night when it leads to frequent wakings and trips to the bathroom to urinate.

Faced with the problem himself, waking every hour or two, and concerned he might have to have surgery, a retired physician decided to try a simple tactic: He deliberately spent at least a minute and even more voiding each time he felt the urge, carefully not straining, until no more spurts could be obtained.

"Results were immediate and dramatic," he reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. "I now sleep three or four hours at a time and occasionally get up only once in eight hours. If I am lazy and fail to take plenty of time to void, there is a prompt return of frequency. Months of this exercise may restore bladder tone so extra effort will not be called for, but even if that does not occur, taking extra time at each voiding is worthwhile since it improves the night's rest so much."

Be Careful Where You Park Your Car

Temperatures can go surprisingly high in a car parked in the sun. A study by Dr. J. S. Surpure of Oklahoma Children's Memorial Hospital, Oklahoma City, found the interior temperature reaching 111.2 F in the shade, 172.4 F in the sun! Such temperatures can mean potentially hazardous stress for pets, children, and older people left sitting in a car under such conditions. If possible, park in the shade. Leave both doors open for ventilation; open windows may not be enough.

Fluids to fight lethargy, fatigue, and jet-lag

You can lose as much as two pounds of body water by evaporation through the skin during even a three-and-a-half-hour flight on a jetliner because of the rapid circulation of very dry air. Dehydration - fluid loss without adequate replenishmet - can sometimes become severe enough to cause dry skin and mucous membranes, cracked lips, lethargy, fatique, and muscle cramps. Short of that, it can contribute to jet lag and underpar feelings. Replenish fluids! Airplane water may be insipid, but drink it. Don't depend on alcohol - or on coffee, tea, or other beverages containing caffeine; all can increase fluid excretion, adding to the loss.

Five Ways to Deal With a Middle-of-the-Night Toothache Episode

• First, try flossing between the aching tooth and its neighbors; sometimes impacted food can set up the pain.
• If impaction is not the problem and you can see no obvious cavity, apply an ice bag or cold compress against the jaw on the affected side.
• If cold doesn't help. try heat, which sometimes does. Apply a hot-water bottle or warm compress.
• If you have a cavity, clean it out gently, using sterile cotton on the end of a toothpick; then saturate another bit of cotton with oil of cloves and pack it gently into the cavity with a toothpick.
• Still another alternative: Apply ice to the web of skin between the thumb and index finger on the same side of the body as the toothache. How this works is unknown, but it often does, respected Canadian investigators at McGill University, Montreal, report. Interestingly, the web site is where the Chinese insert Acupuncture needles to relieve tooth pain.
  

Two Ways to Swallow Medicine

If you have difficulty getting capsules down but do well with tablets, or vice versa, it may be because you're using the same swallowing technique for both.

• For a tablet, place it in the mouth with a small amount of water, tilt the head backward, and you can swallow readily. Follow with more water.
• But that method doesn't work well for a capsule which, being lighter than water, will float frontward and be difficult to swallow. Instead, tilt the head or upper part of the body forward; then the capsule will float backward to be swallowed easily.
  

Chest Pain

When a heart condition causes chest pain attacks during the night, a small tilt of the bed may help. Israeli physicians, working with ten patients experiencing as many as seven attacks per night, prescribed elevating the head of the bed by about ten degrees (blocks can be used) so that their feet were in a down position while they rested in a relatively flat position, head comfortably on a pillow. Eight of the patients experienced no further episodes; the other two had only one attack per night each.

How to avoid/treat ankle swelling during Air Travel

Ankle swelling can occur on long flights because of extended, uninterrupted sitting. Both the seat's continuous upward pressure against the thighs and relieved bent knees impair blood circulation and allow fluid to accumulate in the ankles. to avoid or relieve it, get up and walk about the plane at intervals if possible. Or exercise your toes and ankles in your seat, moving them about briefly every half-hour or so. A useful technique: Make bicycle-riding motions, one side at a time, using thigh, knee, leg ankle, and foot.

Air Swallowing

Some air is unavoidably swallowed with food and drink. But large amounts may be gulped during emotional upsets, rapid eating, gum chewing, smoking, and while drinking carbonated beverages. The excessive air intake - called aerophagia - can lead to one or more of the following: excessive belching, abdominal distention, breathing difficulty, smothering sensations, heart palpitations, and chest pain resembling that of a heart attack.

Air is swallowed when the closing mechanism at the upper end of the oesophagus (the tube leading from the throat to the stomach) opens, allowing air to be sucked in. One effective measure: Hold your chin to your chest. that position makes it difficult for the mechanism to open.

Five Ways to avoid it

· Each sigh means a swallow of air. Try to become aware of any sighing so you can stop it.

· Don't bolt food. And exhale just before swallowing.

· Rather than sip or gulp liquids, drink slowly - and keep your upper lip submerged by tilting the glass.

· Let very hot beverages cool before drinking. otherwise, knowingly or not, you'll draw in air to cool them.

· Moderate intake not only of soda pop and other carbonated beverages but also of foods and drinks with air whipped in (for example, milk shakes and whipped butter).

How to inhale Aerosol Medications

Aerosol medications are often used for breathing difficulties, and the usual reccommendation is to close the lips around the aerosol mouthpiece and inhale. But here's a more effective method, according to a British study: Hold the aerosol very close to and aimed at the mouth. In the study, the open-mouth method produced greater symptom improvement, apparently because less of the medication is swallowed, leaving more of it to act on breathing passages.

Reducing Eye Puff

Puffiness under the eyes may occur at menstruation, apparently related to water retention. Bananas and grapefruit, which act as natural diuretics, often reduce the retention and the puffiness. Water retention sometimes may be relieved, too, by sleeping on two pillows. If these measures fail, you may want to have a medical check for a possible underfunctioning thyroid gland.

Relief for Bloating

Next time you feel overstuffed and bloated after a meal, try placing a cold cloth over an ear for relief. It works because a branch of the same nerve, the vagus, which supplies the gastrointestinal tract, also serves the ear - and stimulating it in the ear has helpful effects in the gut, providing some relief for the bloating feeling.