“I am like this because of what I have done.” Unlike the hostile reaction the patient does not openly express this idea unless we first gain his confidence, and then bring him to talk quietly about his inner thoughts.

I have already explained this mechanism, and we have discussed the way in which pain becomes associated with punishment and then with guilt.

Have you had feelings like this, that somehow the pain is connected with the thing that happened long ago? If you have, face it openly. Remember that we have all done things that are wrong. And remember that psychological forces within us tend to bring these things to our mind, even when we suffer from pain that is due to simple and natural causes. So accept your pain for what it is—a warning of some injury to your body—a warning that has gone wrong and become too severe and prolonged.

The Philosophical Reaction to Pain-”It can’t be helped. I shall get over it.” This is the philosophical reaction. When we are free from pain we can see that this is the only sensible and mature way to respond. But when the time comes, and the pain is upon us, it is not quite so easy.

The philosophical reaction to pain is the attitude of mind that we must aim for. When we have this we have a firm base, at is were, from which to launch our self-management of pain.

How do we get it? By all the influences, great and small, that lead us to maturity. And of these influences there is none greater than understanding. And by understanding I mean something that is not necessarily of words, or of logic or of religion. It is that quality that the distressed patient refers to when he rises and says, “Thank you. I understand better now,” when in fact I have said nothing to him about understanding. But he does understand better. It is shown in the way his distress has eased. This Is what I mean by understanding.

*121\57\2*

Q. You mentioned that people with ulcerative colitis were more prone to cancer of the large bowel. What is this condition?

A. Ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory condition of the large bowel, the colon and rectum. It is more common in women, especially in the 20-40 year age group. It is more common in western populations.

Q. What are the symptoms?

A. There are recurring bouts of diarrhoea with blood and mucus, usually associated with cramping pains in the lower abdominal region. Often attacks come on causing severe symptoms and considerable ill health.

Q. How is it diagnosed and treated?

A. As with other disorders of the large bowel the doctor resorts to x-rays (in the form of a barium enema which gives a clear picture of the outline of the bowel), the sigmoidoscope and the colonoscope. This allows direct viewing of the bowel. The colonoscope, like the endoscope, is very versatile and may penetrate as far up the intestinal system as desired. The sigmoidoscope is mainly used for the lower bowel, it being shorter and less manoeuvrable. The examining physician gains an incredibly clear view of the bowel lining. Treatment is prescribed for the patient according to the degree of the disorder and symptoms. An adequate diet is prescribed, corticosteroid drugs given usually in the form of an enema, but also orally, and a drug called sulfasalazine is often beneficial. Diarrhoea is controlled by codeine, loperamide and other well known forms of medication. Surgery is used in some severe cases. As recurrences are common, sulfasalazine therapy long-term is often used. Persons with long standing ulcerative colitis (ten years and more) appear to run a higher than average risk of developing bowel cancer.

*25\61\2*

This is one of the newest weapons in the battle against back problems. Essentially, as defined by a pre-eminent scientist, floating is ‘a method of attaining the deepest rest that humankind has ever experienced’, and this is accomplished by spending an hour or so lying quietly in the dark, suspended in a warm solution of Epsom salts, about 10″ deep, and so dense that you float without effort.

According to its proponents, floating can bring many benefits:

In the gravity-free environment the body balances and heals internally as all the senses are rested. It is claimed that one hour of floating has the restorative effects of four hours of sleep.

Old injuries and aches – and especially backache – experience relief as floating helps blood circulation.

Additionally, research has shown that floating measurably reduces both blood pressure and the heart rate while at the same time also lowering the levels of stress-related chemicals in the body.

Studies having shown that during a float, people produce slower brain-waves patterns, known as the theta waves and normally experienced only during deep meditation or just before falling asleep. This is usually accompanied by vivid imagery, very clear, creative thoughts, sudden insights and inspirations or feelings of profound peace and joy, induced by the release of endorphins, the body’s natural opiates.

Just how good a treatment for sciatica or other back problems floating is, still remains to be fully proven. As it’s a comparatively new approach, there just aren’t enough documented case histories to provide meaningful statistics. However, as it is a therapy that is unlikely to do harm and may help a lot, it may well be worth a try.

Floating, however, doesn’t suit everybody as it requires a willingness on your part to let go and see what happens, and you may need to float a few times before you are able to relax completely, both physically and mentally. Incidentally, your skin won’t wrinkle like a prune when you float because the water contains high salt levels and therefore doesn’t rob your skin of salt, which is what causes wrinkling. Instead, floating leaves your skin soft and silky.

*23\124\2*

Australian researchers at the University of Sydney have uncovered a most startling correlation between the amount of food we absorb after meals and their salt content, the British Medical Journal (292:1697) reports.

Until now, it was believed that the only way in which salt could increase our weight was by causing more water to be held in the tissues. The Australian discovery, however, suggests that salt’s role in increasing body weight could be much more enduring.

After a starchy meal (i.e., lentils or bread), one can show that the blood sugar level rises to a certain height for a certain time, and that both of these things depend upon the size of the meal. Thus, the larger the meal, the higher the blood sugar level rises and the longer it takes for it to fall back down to normal again.

Such blood sugar “curves” following a standard-sized starchy meal are ordinarily very reproducible. The Australians, however, have shown that even without increasing the amount of starch in the meal, one can nevertheless increase both the height and duration of the blood sugar curve resulting from it, if one takes salt with the food.

Salt, therefore, either boosts digestion of food in the intestine so that more sugar is released from it, or it stimulates the intestine to absorb sugar more efficiently. Either way, salt makes more calories become available to the body from the same amount of food.

These findings strongly suggest that if we wish to be slim, we need to carefully limit the amount of salt that we take in our food. While this could be important for any of us, it is more so for diabetics, especially if they have been experiencing inexplicably high levels of blood sugar despite a carefully controlled diet. This research, of course, needs to be confirmed, but that should not be a difficult task.

*230\143\2*

Signs and symptoms

Teething commonly is accompanied by drooling, fretfulness, wakefulness at night, unwillingness to eat, discomfort, or chewing on fingers or objects. The drooling and chewing are quite normal; fretfulness, wakefulness, and unwillingness to eat can have many causes.

A few days before teeth erupt, they push at the gum ahead of them and can be seen or felt. Before molars erupt, they frequently cause a blue blood blister at the site of the tooth.

Home care

Teething pain can be eased by rubbing the baby’s gums with a cold object. Biting on dry toast, teething biscuits, and teething rings help the teeth erupt, and biting on cold objects (ice wrapped in cloth, frozen teething rings) numbs the gums and eases the pain of teething. Aspirin or paracetamol also may help relieve pain. In the daytime, keeping the child amused and occupied may make him or her forget the pain.

Precautions

• Young children cut teeth on and off for three years. During this period, do not assume that every symptom the child has is due to teething; look for other possible causes.

• Diarrhea and constipation are related to teething only if there is an extreme change in the child’s diet.

• If the child’s eating and drinking habits change during teething, do not try to force-feed.

• Fever, cough, and nasal discharge are not symptoms of teething.

• Drooling because of teething may produce chapping on the face; other rashes are not related to teething.

• Overuse of commercial teething ointments and solutions that contain local anesthetics can cause anaemia (deficiency of red blood cells).

Medical treatment

Before assuming symptoms are caused by teething, your doctor will check for other causes.

*217/84/5*

The nervous symptoms of stress in themselves are often unpleasant and sometimes disabling. But there is an effect beyond the symptom itself. If we come to suffer some disorder of our nervous system, we examine the situation, and it invariably comes to our mind, ‘Is this the start of a nervous breakdown? Am I going crazy?’ Then there are deeper thoughts: It may be I have a tumour of the brain. A brain tumour! What will happen to me? To all of us? And the children?’

In this way the effects of a nervous symptom are much greater than the disability caused by the symptom itself. It is therefore very important, in our self-management of stress, to understand as far as possible the physiological and psychological mechanisms which operate in producing the symptom. We are then in a much better position to cope with the simple, unadorned reality of the situation.

Nervous tension

«I’m tense. Just can’t relax. Tense. Taut like a violin string. Feel if something touches me, I’ll snap. Come apart. Body is tense. Feel it in my muscles. Shoulders, neck, everywhere. But more than that. Tense inside, stomach in a knot. And I can’t describe it. Tense in my mind. Just can’t relax. Give anything to be relaxed. It is not any part of me. It is all through. Everywhere. It is me.»

People suffer nervous tension from stress in varying degrees of severity. Sometimes it is so severe as to be incapacitating. The individual can no longer do his job, or look after the home. With others it is less severe. Just takes the pleasure out of life, so that living becomes a burden.

The most acute danger, of course, is not that the tension will precipitate some terrible illness, but that the individual will turn to alcohol or tranquillizing drugs in an attempt to relieve his distress.

*49/98/5*

I’m not pretty

“You can see for yourself. I’m not pretty. Girls are meant to be pretty. I’m not. I’m less of a girl than I might be. I stand by the mirror, and poke my face. Poke it this way and that. They say it’s only skin deep. It does not matter how deep or otherwise. If you have not got it, you have not got it.

‘Sometimes I go out on a blind date. It’s not often I am asked a second time.

‘No God. There can’t be a God. This came to me before I was born. Often wonder what mother was like as a girl. But dad loves her. You can see it in all that he does. Oh God! Why should I say “Oh God”, when there is no God?”

Look around. Who are the girls that are sought after? Pretty ones? Not really. Who then? It is those who have naturalness about them. Naturalness, then he feels at ease. A good feeling. It’s good being with her. He wants to see her again.

This naturalness. How does a girl acquire it? It’s the same thing again, let our mind learn to run quietly. And the whole pattern of life can change.

I’m small

“I’m big enough and strong. But small. Small down there. At school a boy, no bigger than me, but twice the size, boasted. I just felt awful.

‘That was a long time ago. But the thought of it is still with me. Recurring again and again. Makes me too timid to go out with a girl. Could I marry, ever? Went to a girl.

Prostitute. Told her my trouble. Gave her a look. She laughed. But it seemed she was laughing at me, not at my trouble.

‘Get fussed at work thinking of it. One of the girls talks to me. She is kind. Do you think she knows? Do women know these things?”

Life is insecure. We are insecure. Our manhood is insecure. This is a part of human existence. Some incident may trigger our insecurity. Doubt grows on doubt. Doubting messages confuse the brain. And the ground is prepared to grow the seeds of stress.

A philosophical understanding as to what it is all about does something to ease our mind, and allows better integration in our brain. But what counts is the simple experience of man and woman together. Simple and good.

*15/98/5*

The Nose Drip of the Allergic Child

Mucus originating in the nose or sinuses is eliminated by filaments (cilia) which are attached to their mucosa. These filaments push the mucus toward the esophagus with a beating movement. However, when the mucus becomes thick and abundant, it is too heavy for the filaments to push back. It remains in place and forms beads that drop on the lungs causing an irritative cough.

The conditions that cause the mucus to be thick and abundant are allergies, low-grade infections, irritants such as tobacco smoke, excessive dryness in the air of the house, overuse of nose drops, emotional disturbances (which affect the sympathetic nervous system and cause an increase in nasal secretions), mechanical obstructions to the drainage of the sinuses (because of a deviated septum or enlarged adenoids), and endocrine deficiencies (such as hypothyroidism, which causes dry, thick mucus formation).

A nose drip is to be “managed” by treating the underlying allergies and by softening the mucus through the use of drops of a saturated solution of potassium iodide (so-called KI) given by mouth. The child should also sleep on high pillows to drain the mucus of the sinus mechanically. A cold air vaporizer should be installed in the bedroom during winter.

The Eye and the Ear in Nose Allergy

The eye becomes involved in allergy of the respiratory tract because the tear ducts drain into the nose. It follows that an inflammation of the nose spreads easily to the eye.

Vernal conjunctivitis is one form of eye allergy frequently seen in summer among male children in warm climates. Its symptoms are a fear of light, tearing, and a burning sensation in the eye. Its diagnosis is possible because of its seasonal occurrence and because of the cobblestone aspect of the conjunctiva. Treatment consists of corticosteroid drops in the eye (one drop of one percent hydrocortisone solution three to four times daily for one or two weeks). If this is not sufficient, corticosteroids have to be given by mouth.

A tube that connects the middle ear to the pharynx may become clogged by an allergic inflammation. This could cause a hearing loss by preventing the drainage of mucus from the middle ear to the pharynx. The treatment consists of ventilation of the middle ear with decongestants and antihistamines; eradication of the infection with antibiotics; suction of the fluid from the middle ear; removal of enlarged tonsils or adenoids; control of the allergies through diet, environmental control, desensitization, and corticosteroids; and respiratory vaccines to prevent recurrent infections.

*45/99/5*

Tooth decay is caused by the acids produced by bacteria in plaque, as we saw above. Plaque builds up on teeth for several reasons:

•     Too much sugar and refined foods in the diet. All sugars are potentially harmful to teeth but sucrose (table sugar) appears to be the worst offender. Unfortunately, it is not just added sugar that is the problem-there is also the sugar that is put into drinks and foods during their manufacture and processing. Sugar from food passes into the plaque very quickly and then the trouble starts.

•     Too little dietary fibre. A refined diet consisting of white flour and its products, sweets and refined-carbohydrate foods is very pappy and sticks to the teeth. A diet rich in fibre is more chewy, promotes the production of more saliva to bathe the teeth and to dilute the acids produced by plaque, and also physically scrapes off some plaque during the prolonged chewing needed to eat these foods. Studies have shown that populations that eat unrefined foods have very little dental decay and that as soon as they start to eat sugar and white flour their levels of dental decay shoot up. In more than 200 years there have only been two periods during which caries (decay) has fallen in the UK-during the two World Wars, when sugar and refined white flour were scarce or unavailable. Gum disease too is more common among people who eat soft, pappy foods rather than chewy, fibre-rich foods. But fibre-rich foods cannot clean teeth completely and tooth-brushing is still vital.

•     Poor tooth-brushing. There is little doubt that tooth-brushing plays a vital role in the prevention of both tooth decay and gum disease. Effective removal of plaque from the surface of the teeth is enough to prevent most of the problems. Evidence suggests that the removal of plaque once a day is sufficient-provided it is properly done.

•     Forgetting to clear between the teeth. Brushing easily cleans off the flat surfaces of the teeth if it is properly done, yet danger areas remain between the teeth because a brush can’t get there.

These places need to be tackled with dental floss (a kind of waxed cotton). Flossing should be carried out daily too, especially in people who have ‘food traps’ where food collects between two teeth.

•    Too little fluoride on the surface of the teeth. Tooth-brushing of itself is only partially valuable in the fight against tooth decay. A vital aspect of brushing is that it is a way of applying fluoride to the teeth. The debate over fluoride and teeth is long and confused but the current wisdom is that the best way to use fluoride is to apply it to the teeth at least once a day. This seems to have the best caries-preventing effect of all. And it is not just children who benefit from this application but adults as well. Fluoride acts by encouraging new calcium to form on the tooth surface-to replace the calcium removed by the acids produced by the bacteria in plaque. Results of numerous trials around the world consistently show that decay can be reduced by up to 30 per cent by using fluoride toothpaste. This is non-controversial and provable. Provided that young children don’t swallow the toothpaste regularly there is no proven hazard to using fluoride toothpaste in this way.

*238/72/5*

• Osteoarthritis often thought to be caused by too much exercise, in fact benefits from the right kind of exercise, according to a study done at Albert Einstein’s Medical Center in Philadelphia. The authors conclude that ‘by strengthening the muscles around the joints exercise makes the joint work better’. Stronger muscles mean less wear and tear on the cartilage and bone and less chance of a deterioration of the osteoarthritis. Other researchers argue that exercise helps because it increases the blood supply to the cartilage and keeps it healthier. When Finnish researchers examined the hip joints of seventy-four former championship runners they found less osteoarthritis than in a control group, not more as one might have expected.

If you exercise wrongly it can hasten the advance of the disease. Avoid exercising unless you have warmed up thoroughly-when your muscles are tight the joints move unnaturally. Learn how to swim, play golf, tennis or whatever properly so that you don’t make odd movements and put unnatural strains on your joints. If running is your sport, be sure to wear good quality shock-absorbing shoes and warm up well first. You should not exercise while using pain-killers or you could do damage to your joints without realizing it.

The worst thing for those with arthritis is to sit still. Swimming is the best exercise because it involves the use of so many joints. Walking through the water is also very good exercise if you can’t swim. When you immerse your body in water it becomes lighter. Your limbs float and so do not have to work against muscle and bone. You can use your own bath to do simple hydrotherapy for 20 minutes a day. Slowly the exercises you do in the bath will be easier to perform outside the bath too. After a few weeks you will be able to do things that you would previously have found impossible.

• Hot-and-cold therapy is also very effective. In a study at German-town Medical Center in Philadelphia twenty-four patients with rheumatoid arthritis applied an ice pack in a plastic bag to their sore knees three times a day for four weeks. At the end of the trial all of them reported more pain-free movements and increased muscle strength. They could stand up faster and sleep better and on average cut their medication dose by half.

The best way to carry out cold therapy is as follows. Take two packs of frozen peas (unopened) and wrap one round above the painful joint and one below. Cover them with a towel wrapped firmly round and leave everything in position for 20 minutes. At first you will feel coldness and burning, then numbness. This should last for 5 minutes or so. Carry on for another 15 minutes.

Arthritis of the hands and feet often responds to alternate baths of hot and cold. Carry out the frozen-peas treatment as above for 15-20 minutes and then plunge your painful hand or foot into a bowl of water at 110°F. Switch from hot to cold up to six times, putting the hand or foot into the hot water for 4 minutes and into the ice pack for 1 minute.

• Low-fat diets have been found to reduce the suffering of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. This was first discovered by chance in a group of obese people in a diet trial. All the rheumatoid arthritics noticed that the pain got better as long as they were on the diet. The Pritikin Diet claims to work on 90 per cent of those who have arthritis in their hands, wrists and fingers and on 50 per cent of those who have the disease in their knees and hips. The diet mainly consists of complex carbohydrates (vegetables and whole grains) with very little fat indeed.

*99/72/5*