Tactic for Coping with Stress

Studies show that those who are unable to express their emotions are at greatest risk of stress related disorders. The following steps promote constructive emotional expression and ways of minimizing daily stresses. They should in no way be considered a substitute for appropriate psychiatric, psychological, or family counseling to help deal with situations in which depression is a significant factor.

• Learn to bring out into the open hidden or suppressed feelings of anger. For example, a headache that almost immediately follows an event may be a sign of suppressed anger.
• Try to deal with anger as soon as possible by helping the person involved understand why and when you feel angry.
• If anger stems from situation or person who cannot be confronted, or is out of your control, to acknowledge this fact. You might try to blow off steam through physical activity. Exercise is one of the best stress reducers, whether the cause is anger, frustration, anxiety, or another emotion. In addition to sports, physical activity such as gardening, dancing, or even cleaning the house may also help diffuse negative emotions.
• Recognize other manifestation of stress, particularly those which may suggest significant depression-insomnia, irritability, nervous eating or skipping meals, withdrawal from friends, loss of interest in sex. If the source of the stress is difficult to define, or seemingly overwhelming, get help; share your concerns, feeling, and anxieties with your spouse, family, a close friend, clergy, or family or psychiatric counselor, if necessary. Sharing feelings allow for ventilation, better perspective, and reassurance. Sharing enlarges the spirit, whereas withholding feeling and internalizing serves only to isolate and thereby magnify the impact of the problems beyond reasonable bounds.
• Avoid particularly exasperating situations; if long lines produce stress, choose nonrush periods or transact business by mail or telephone.
• Some like to learn a relaxation technique such as yoga, meditation, biofeedback, relaxation, exercise or deep breathing. Taking a warm bath, reading a good, listening to music, or going for a massage can also be relaxing. Use what work best for you as a daily stress reducing strategy.
• Avoid becoming upset over events that you cannot change and, instead, focus effort on those within your control. Be honest about acknowledge he difference. As the late Reinhold Niebuhr so aptly put it.” Good grant us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other”.
• Finding the humor in event or your reaction to them (When possible) is a very effective tension releaser.
• Learn to recognize and modify, if possible, attitudes that may promote stress, for example, extreme perfectionism, preoccupation with time, sensitivity to criticism, and lack of flexibility, among others. Have faith and confidence in yourselp without relying on good looks, and status to determine your self worth.
• Remember, get professional counseling if other methods are ineffective in coping with stress.

Successful Breastfeeding from hospital to home

The following are tips to make the transition from breastfeeding in the hospital to the home smooth and successful.

• Arrange for rooming –in of the baby in advance of delivery, if its available.
• Breastfeeding as soon after delivery as possible.
• Be calm and comfortable in order to assist in the letdown reflex. Sit or lie down with the baby’s head in the bend of your arm. Hold the breast between your fingers and touch the infant’s lower lip with the nipple to simulate the rooting reflex. Once the infant is latched on, the breast no longer needs to be held.
• Follow your pediatrician’s advice about the frequency and technique for feeding.
• Don’t hesitate to call your pediatrician for support.
• Nurse the baby both breast at each feeding.
• Don’t give supplementary feeding of water or formula unless ordered by your pediatrician. Breast milk is 80 percent water and in most cases is sufficient for your baby’s fluid needs.
• Learn how to express milk by use of breast pump before being discharged from the hospital.
• Burp the baby frequently, both in the middle and the end of a feeding to help release gas in stomach.

NASSAL POLYPS

The next time you look in the mirror, admire your nose. Why? Because apart from its good looks, your nose is a sophisticated tool. Not only does it trap particles and pollutants from incoming air, it adjusts the temperature and moisture of the air as well. Your nose is also the window to two of your senses. It’s what enables you to smell a rose or to fully enjoy a tasty meal.

If you have nasal polyps, however, the entire system can break down, says Jeffrey P. Kirsch, M.D., an otolaryngologist/head and neck surgeon at Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans. Nasal polyps are small, noncancerous growths within the nose or sinuses. “Some people may have 50 to 100 polyps,” says Dr. Kirsch. “They come in clusters, like grapes.”

Still a Mystery

This doesn’t mean that things resembling the California raisins will soon be protruding from your nostrils. Nasal polyps usually grow too deep in the nose for you to see or touch them, Dr. Kirsch says. In fact, you can have polyps for years and not even know it.

Trouble begins when they grow large enough to block one of both of your nasal cavities. When that happens, your sense of smell can go haywire. Nose breathing becomes difficult, and you may notice a distressing post-nasal drip––a consequence of having a surplus of mucus–producing nasal tissue. In addition, polyps can contribute to a breathing disorder called obstructive sleep apnea, which not only can disturb your sleep but also may even contribute to your risk for high blood pressure or an enlarged heart.

Although nasal polyps were first described some 3,000 years ago, doctors still aren’t sure what causes them. They do know that one in three people with polyps also have allergies or allergic-type symptoms. People with asthma, aspirin sensitivities and cystic fibrosis often get polyps, and men get them twice as often as women.

When you take your stuffed-up nose to your doctor, he may recommend a procedure called nasal endoscopy––an examination with a pencil-size instrument called a fiber-optic endoscope––to see what’s wrong. Since nasal polyps can resemble some types of cancer, he may take a tissue sample as well. When polyps are small and your symptoms slight, your doctor may counsel patience. If the polyps are more advanced, however, you have several options: drugs, surgery or a combination of the two.

Easy to Treat, Hard to Beat

“The initial treatment of choice usually is nasal steroids,” Dr. Kirsch says. Prescription drugs such as betamethasone, sprayed in the nose, sometimes will quickly shrink nasal polyps, allowing normal or near-normal airflow through the nasal passages. “We may give oral steroids to get the ball rolling and then switch to nasal sprays,” he adds.

However, nasal polyps will often resume their growth once the drugs are discontinued. Consequently, many people will use nasal steroids several times a day, often for years. Unlike oral steroids, research has shown that long-term use of steroid nasal spays is quite safe in most patients, says Dr. Kirsch.

When steroids don’t do the trick, surgery may be recommended, he adds. Most of the time, the procedure is quite simple. Under either local or general anesthesia, the surgeon snags the polyps with tiny snares and forceps. Once the polyps are removed and the nasal lining tissue has healed, a marked improvement in symptoms may be seen. The procedure usually takes between 1 and 3 hours and is generally very safe.

There is a catch, however, while polyps are easily removed, they frequently grow back, Dr. Kirsch says. Researchers at Brown University/Rhode Island Hospital in Providence studied 167 people with nasal polyps, 143of whom had polypectomies. Of these, 57 required a second operation, and 11 eventually required six or more operations! “The recurrence rate is very high, and some people require surgery every few years,” Dr. Kirsch says. “In general, we usually start with a trial of medication. If that doesn’t work, then surgery can be considered.”

Common Myths and Facts About Hypertension

Myth: Nervous tension is another name for hypertension
Fact: No, it isn’t Hypertension refers to elevated (hyper) pressure (tension) against the artery walls, and not to a person’s emotional state. Actually, many people who are very quit and serene have severe hypertension. However, nervous tension may temporarily elevate blood pressure.

Myth: High blood pressure can be cured.
Fact: High blood pressure can be controlled and brought down to normal levels if prescribed treatment is followed. It can be cured only in rare instances(usually when it is secondary to another condition, such as a narrowed artery supplying blood to the kidney or a tumor that produces excessive adrenal hormones).

Myth: Once hypertension is under control, it is possible to stop treatments, both drug and non drug.
Fact: sometimes an individual may be able to stop anti hypertensive drugs after blood pressure has been normalized for several years, but this tends to be temporary and does not occur in all patients. In such cases, the person should be pressure remains normal. As a general rule, hypertension is a lifelong disease that requires lifelong treatment.

Myth: High blood pressure has many symptoms.
Fact: Hypertension is a “silent” disease: Those who have it often do not know it until it is too late. Even those with dangerously elevated blood pressure can feel perfectly normal. Headaches, dizziness, and weakness sometimes may occur with high blood pressure, but more often, these symptoms are associated with other conditions or states.

Myth: A person with high blood pressure needs to rest more, avoid tense situations, cut back on activities.
Fact: If proper treatment is followed, a person can lead a normal, active life.

Myth: If you take hypertension drugs, you can use all the salt you want.
Fact: No such luck. Reducing sodium often means that the drugs will be more effective in lowering blood pressure and that smaller drugs doses may be prescribed, thereby reduction the potential for adverse side effects.

Myth: Eating garlic will lower blood pressure.
Fact: In a limited number of studies, consuming large amount of garlic has been found to inhibit blood clotting, as well as to lower blood cholesterol. However, there is as yet no objective study showing garlic is useful in treating high blood pressure.