Make A Choice

Life has adopted a great change in how it takes issues in their perspective. What was important has become of secondary significance. Earlier, education, health and family were the utmost part of ones life. Now career, job and making money has taken over a major chunk. A child gets sick and parents are more worried about the test the next day rather than seeing him get well soon. As early as 3 years, a toddler looks tense watching faces of both parents sitting with him at physician’s chamber, the physician himself observes the younger one with grave concern of what is to become of him/her in the coming years. Nothing can change what ideology the parents are carrying in upbringing their child. Most of the time it is fixed and locked. It doesn’t matter how much the physician tries to reason with parents to the approach with which they are handling their offspring at this early age is going to have damaging effects on his intelligence as well as confidence level.

Like a tired horse, or heated auto engine which needs rest, a human being when sick, should rest to regain strength, and time of cooling at all cost. But the hindrance in following such an advise is the level of competition prevailing. We can live and run our lives with better achievements if we draw a line. A child should be dealt like one. He/she must live free of all worries, study, play and sleep as they please. And when not well, healthwise rest in bed; no exam, no test!
In most of the cases, you don’t get a positive response from the parents to let go and ease out a bit on a child who has just started to make assessment of what is going on around him -- good, the bad and the ugly -- rather, they put him to stressful test and an exam forced upon him. As research has proved just recently that early childhood self-learning has tremendous results and that anything new that has access to the brain of a child will be everlasting. So its quite clear that teaching done under stress or coercion will not get the required results from a child. An adult can handle any stress but a young child cannot! Let them fall a few times, they will learn to stand... on much firmer grounds.
For the much older group of children, when sick there can one of several ways to give the child the physical rest he needs and maintaining his academic activities all the while. This can easily be achieved with the co-ordinated link between parents and the school management. One of two simplest ways to attain this can either be a continuous contact between classmates or the affected child and teachers. The benefits of such an action will be two-fold: it will allow the child stipulated rest advised by pediatrician, yet keep him abreast of educational activities at school hence removing all the stress.
The parents hold the key role in making the right choice.

Eat For Living

Diabetes dilemma

Diabetes is a serious condition .It is a chronic disorder of carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism, characterized by elevated fasting blood sugar levels, greatly increased risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and loss of nerve functions.

There has been so much research going on in medical field each day. All the efforts are aimed to improve quality of life, as well as prognosis of disease itself. Most of the work done on controlling infectious diseases has been rewarded with excellent results, as for controlling the infection as well as preventing it by vaccination.

The non- infectious ailments are becoming most difficult to manage. Diabetes is among the stubborn of all. There has been introduction of newer drugs every now and then, each has an improve outlook as for efficacy and lesser side effect. Insulin patch, insulin sprays are already in market in many western countries. although their efficacy is still being under close monitoring.

There are some countries like Canada and United states, where pancreatic cell implants have been done with encouraging results in animals.but as far as human application to this method, called stem cell generation is concern ,the use of immunosupressant like steroids has discouraging long term results.Total organ transplants are being done in united states and few other western countries,but there are more in need than the available organ donors. There are hectic efforts being done by research experts and clinical personnels all over the world, to keep mortality to minimum and morbidity as low as possible. Until major advancement is achieved in diabetic treatment, the basic diabetic management pattern will be unchanged. Diet control, mono or multiple drugs, insulin injections, insulin nasal spray (in some part of the world), regular physical exercise and blood sugar monitoring will remain the corner stone of good glycemic control.

The major part of responsibility to maintain a good blood sugar level and live as good a normal life lies on the person effected by diabetes, because he or she is going to have all main meals of the day at home or at the office, so what they will consume in terms of calories will not only determine success of treatment but also how much diabetic complications are avoided. Sadly in most cases this target is not achieved. The three basic reasons for such an obstacle are:-

(a) failure of drug compliance
(b) lack of will to adhere to diet regime advised clearly by physician
(c) sedentary life style or lack of regular physical exercise

The last two are the cornerstones of keeping a diabetic in good health and avoiding all the related complications. The complications can be:

(1) hypoglycemia

(2) diabetic coma

(3) diabetic nephropathy seriously damaging kidney functions, to the extent of needing renal transplantation.

(4) cataract

(5) neuropathy

(6) retinopathy

(7) skin ulcers and gangrene leading to amputation

(8) stubborn skin infections

(9) life threatening heart diseases.

Although as mentioned, a diabetic usually lacks the motivation and will to adopt restriction on his diet which becomes the very root cause of his complication later, but the physician cannot give up guiding and advising him about the best way to control blood sugar as normal as possible and lead a healthy life.

Following are basic and simple guidelines :

(a) Meals composed of complex carbohydrates are rich in fiber, which are slower to get absorbed and therefore provide a much slower and gradual increase in blood sugar level, giving time to limited availability of insulin to be effective.

(b) Small, frequent meals through out the day, rather than full regular meals.

(c) Intake of vegetables and fruits of low sugar content.

(d) Adopt a regular physical exercise pattern 2 ½hrs of total weekly duration. Exercise not only burns the calories, it also brings down blood sugar levels, increases tissue chromium thus in turn increases number of insulin receptors thereby enhancing effects of insulin to bring down raised sugar to control levels.

(e) Obesity is strongly associated with diabetes type 2,weight control is an important element in diabetic management. If you want to loose weight to control diabetes, high blood pressure and risk of heart diseases, then walk, walk and walk some more.

Oral hypoglycemic drugs and insulin injection don’t cure diabetes. The key word is HEALTHY LIFESTYLE through diet, exercise, certain herbs and supplements.

For more info, visit the following website: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter7.asp