Health News Blog provides coverage of current health news.

Some girls are first noticed to have scoliosis because their dress does not hang properly on their shoulders.

In most cases where scoliosis is developed well before puberty a rapid deterioration may take place in the two to three years before the onset of puberty. But, if a child is first seen at puberty with only a mild scoliosis, then it is unlikely that her condition will ever become severe. However, she still requires regular and frequent assessment.

Conservative measures are the first line of treatment and this usually involves exercise under the experienced care of a physiotherapist, but, if the condition is rapidly deteriorating, more energetic treatment is indicated.

A plaster cast can be applied which involves the whole trunk. By means of metal clamps, and then cuts and wedges in the plaster, the spine can be made to grow straight.

There are special external braces which the child can wear to correct the deformity, or maintain the proper position after operation.

Modern operative techniques have given excellent results. These usually involve some form of internal splinting applied to the spine and metal rods and wire are used.

This may be the sole treatment, or it may be combined with fusion, or joining of the bones together.

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There is a lot we have to learn about diabetes.

It is a disease where the sufferer needs to know as much as the doctor so he can manage on his own and lead a normal life.

To help him in this, he needs an interested and well-informed doctor, and he may obtain help, advice and encouragement from the Diabetic Association or Foundation, branches of which are in every State.

Diabetes mellitus is not really one disease but a variety of related disorders of metabolism which have in common an increased level of sugar in the blood and the presence of sugar in the urine.

The fuel of the body is glucose, a sugar all the cells need for nutrition. It is transported through the body via the bloodstream.

It is stored in the liver and released into the blood when the level there drops. A variety of hormones and other chemicals stimulate the liver to release the glucose. If a real shortage develops, the liver can even be stimulated to break down protein and fat and make glucose from them.

Insulin is concerned with moving the glucose out of the blood into the cells. It therefore has the effect of lowering the level of glucose in the blood.

Diabetes may be regarded as a condition of relative lack of insulin.

Both the production of insulin and of a chemical which stimulates the liver to release glucose occurs in special cells of the pancreas, an organ which lies high up on the back wall of the abdomen behind the stomach. It produces enzymes which pass along a duct to the duodenum, or first part of the small bowel and help to digest food.

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If you receive a note from the kindergarten teacher telling you some of the children have head lice, don’t shudder and think you have chosen a kindergarten in the wrong neighborhood.

I suppose we have grown up with the idea that anyone who has become a home for little bugs must be unclean.

Unfortunately, this is not so. The parasitic mites are no respecters of rank, socio-economic status or standards of personal hygiene.

Scabies and lice have been rare for about 25 years but are now enjoying a resurgence. In fact, we have an epidemic of these parasites.

It’s not clear why. It may be related more to the life cycle of these minute insects than to changing social mores or levels of cleanliness in the community.

There are three forms of lice — the head louse, the body louse and the pubic louse.

Body lice are uncommon and usually seen only on derelicts, but the other two are now very common in our community.

The body louse is important in that it can carry serious diseases such as typhus fever, trench fever and relapsing fever which are not seen in Australia.

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If cancer involves the brain, the first signs may just be symptoms of raised pressure within the skull—headache, vomiting and maybe blurred vision. Of course, there are many other possible reasons for these symptoms. Contrary to what many people imagine, cancer in the brain very rarely causes the complete alteration in personality which some people call ‘madness’. Its effects depend on which part of the brain is involved. For example, if a cancer growth is in the part of the brain that controls the left side of the body, the patient can lose the ability to use the left arm and leg normally. This usually develops gradually and may be accompanied by numbness and/or twitchy movements of those limbs. Some patients have convulsions (‘take fits’) just like those that epileptics have. These can usually be prevented with the same drugs as we use for epileptics. There is treatment which can reduce the pressure on the brain, and in some types of cancer treatment can temporarily shrink the growths. Once cancer has spread to the brain however, it can never be permanently cured. Eventually the growths produce such a high pressure on the brain that the patient gradually loses consciousness and dies.

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Skin blooms in the presence of oestrogen. Once you are producing little or no oestrogen, your skin gradually becomes drier and more wrinkled. To counteract this, many of the so-called moisturisers work by introducing moisture into the very top, thin layer of skin (the epidermis), so mat it looks fuller and small wrinkles are eased out. But in the process of doing this, the epidermis stretches slightly to accommodate the moisturiser, so that when you stop using it, your skin starts to sag more than ever. The beautiful skin of a young woman (especially a pregnant young woman) is due to oestrogen acting on the thick underlying layer of skin (the dermis) and its collagen, which increases the moisture content of die skin. No amount of artificial moisturising in die thin top layer can produce this effect.

But you needn’t start to look like an old hag the minute your periods stop! You just need to be aware of what makes your skin look older as time goes on, and time starts going on from about the age of 35!

Most damage to die skin is done by smoking and by excessive exposure to sunlight. Smoking reduces the blood supply to the skin cells by narrowing the tiny blood vessels; also the blood of a smoker carries less oxygen and more carbon monoxide than the blood of a non-smoker, so die cells of both the upper epidermis and the underlying dermis don’t receive enough nourishment, and lose moisture. Yet another reason to stop smoking! In fact, if you look around you, you will notice mat, on die whole, the natural ‘unmoisturised’ skin of older women tends to be less attractive in smokers than in non-smokers.

Too much sun on the skin can also damage the underlying layers, and make diem less elastic. In excessive amounts it can also cause skin cancer. (As with smokers, you have probably noticed mat the skin of a woman who has spent much time in a hot climate tends to be dryer and more

wrinkled than the skin of a woman who has spent her summers in Britain.) But in small quantities, sunlight on the skin is the best possible way of taking in vitamin D, which plays a vital part in helping the body use calcium effectively to build good bones. So do get out into the sunshine for your bones, but don’t overdo it.

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The decision whether to have a hysterectomy, try some other treatment, or postpone any intervention and let nature take its course, is of great importance to many women. Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus, sometimes accompanied by oophorectomy, the removal of the ovaries. Most hysterectomies and oophorectomies performed these days are elective — meaning they are carried out by choice rather than as emergency or lifesaving procedures.

Hysterectomy is one of the most common major surgical procedures performed on women worldwide. In the United States alone, around 600 000 women have the operation each year. Yet many questions remain unanswered about the appropriateness of hysterectomy for those women having it, and its effects on health, sexuality and life expectancy.

Trends in types of hysterectomy. In Australia in the late 1980s, the vast majority of hysterectomy procedures were abdominal. By the early 1990s, however, vaginal procedures (including laparoscopically assisted hysterectomy) appeared to be gaining ground, increasing from 25 to 29% of all hysterectomies performed. This is significant because the type of hysterectomy carried out influences the duration of and pain experienced after surgery, the time a woman spends in hospital and at home convalescing, and any postoperative complications she may experience.

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Unfortunately the art of hypnosis was used a great deal by the stage hypnotists and magicians to entertain audiences. Hypnosis became a magical act and the magicians liked to let the audience believe that they possessed supernatural powers. Because of this the medical profession distanced itself from it, and hypnosis was not used for medical purposes for many years. At the time of Freud and Charcot in Vienna, at the end of the nineteenth century, however, intense interest in the subject was developed. Hypnosis was used on patients, and with good results.

Nowadays hypnosis is used more and more by doctors and psychologists. In 1958, hypnosis was formally accepted as a form of medical treatment by the American Medical Association, and three years later by the British Medical Association. Hypnosis is now no longer a magical act, but a well-respected science. Much research is conducted on hypnosis, and some medical journals are devoted entirely to hypnosis. The International Society of Hypnosis has thousands of members from all over the world, all of whom are doctors, dentists, and psychologists. Its headquarters is situated in the Austin Hospital, Melbourne.

Now back to the top hat magician and the lady. The lady went into a hypnotic state, commonly known as a trance. She was not sleeping; if we carried out an EEG recording on her, the brain waves would not be characteristic of sleep. She was aware of what was happening, but the scope of awareness would have been abnormally small. She was only aware of what the magician (hypnotist) was suggesting to her and was not aware of the presence of the audience. She was still thinking for herself and normally would not accept any suggestion from the hypnotist if it contradicted with her conscience or belief. When she was woken up from the trance, she remembered what happened, and this is generally the case with hypnotized subjects.

Hypnosis is not a magical act, but a special state of awareness, and everyone has the ability to go into this state. We are familiar with the other states of awareness, the conscious state and the unconscious state.

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For descriptive purposes it is often convenient to consider pain as either organic or functional. But like many things in nature this pigeonholing of ideas is not completely valid. It is not quite as simple as that. Thus pain that is caused in the first place by some disease or injury soon produces a psychological reaction. It causes the patient to worry. He may worry a lot, or he may worry a little. The degree to which he worries will depend upon a great number of factors—the nature of Ills personality, and whether he somehow feels bad about his condition, or whether he blames himself for having caused it, or whether he feels that in being sick he has let down his family or others for whom he feels responsible. Psychological factors such as these influence the severity and duration of the pain. This is the psychological overlay that may accompany a pain which is classified as organic in origin in that it was primarily caused by stimulation of nerves by disease or injury. In fact, the psychological overlay may be the major factor in producing the pain in these cases, and it is not uncommon for the psychological overlay to maintain the pain long after any physical cause for the pain has ceased to operate.

This mechanism is often seen very clearly in cases of injury involving compensation. A man is injured at work. He knows that he is entitled to monetary compensation, but he does not know the exact figure until his claim is settled. The injury heals, but the pain persists. Sometimes the pain even gets worse. In spite of this he looks fit and well, but people near to him come to notice that his thoughts keep returning to this question of his claim for compensation. Doctors who examine him can find no cause for his pain, and they are inclined to regard him as malingering. Of course, everyone knows that cases of malingering do occur, but these represent only a small minority. The pain is determined unconsciously by the functional overlay without the patient having any real awareness as to what is happening. When no compensation is concerned patients recover from similar injuries without the same prolongation of the pain. Sceptics point to the fact that the pain clears up miraculously when the claim is settled, but this does not disprove the unconscious cause of the condition.

A man about forty-five years old was referred to me by his local doctor. The patient suffered from definite but mild rheumatoid arthritis. The local doctor was puzzled by the recent increase in the degree of pain suffered by the patient. It was little influenced by pain-killing drugs, and was on the point of ruining the patient’s life.

The patient’s wife was childless. Twenty years ago they had taken a baby girl to live with them. They had brought her up as their own, but the child’s parents had never allowed them to adopt her. The girl was now to be married and the real father had come to take his place at the ceremony. The patient was tense, bitter, resentful, and full of unexpressed hostility. His tension had provided the functional overlay to the organic pain.

A childless woman of fifty had had minor surgery three years previously. She complained of pain in the scar. She had sought help from overseas specialists to no avail. She used the following words to describe her condition: “Feels like a knife or something sharp. Like a metal plate. Conscious of it all the time. It is an inhuman sort of pain. It aches at the base of the incision. Stiff and sore as if bruised.”

She was a shallow society woman without any real sense of values, who for years had tried to escape life in an endless round of parties. Now she was older and no longer beautiful. She saw her friends with their children. The hurt of it all came to her, and she felt it in the scar of the operation.

I did not put these ideas to her. To do so would have been cruel, and would have made her worse by mobilizing her anxiety. It is usually unwise to tell people the cause of their trouble in so many words, much better to let it come indirectly; then they understand and know it to be true. This happened with this woman. She changed during the weeks she was doing the exercises, and it was clear that she achieved some inner acceptance of things in a way that is not uncommon when people come to do the exercises in meditative fashion. At the same time the pain subsided and she was able to resume a more active life.

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Q. So many people we know complain about their ulcers. How common are they in the community?

A. All kinds of statistics have been quoted over the years. Several studies carried out in Britain show that by the age of 55 years, between 6 and 20% of people have suffered from one. At any given time, in Australia, it is believed that between 2 and 4% of the population suffer from them. Many have an ulcer and are unaware of it, or have minimum symptoms. This covers about 25%. About 50% have fairly severe symptoms, but with treatment manage reasonably well, and live a fairly normal life.

The remaining 25% endure severe symptoms often with complications which make life difficult.

Q. Does it affect men more than women?

A. Peptic ulcer seems to trouble men more commonly. In the general world scene, stomach ulcer is 2-3 times more common in men, and duodenal ulcer 3-5 times more common in males, although in Australia, according to some doctors, gastric ulcer is more common in women.

Q. When is the most likely age for these to develop?

A. Peptic ulcers may occur at any time from youth to old age. However, the most common age for duodenal ulcers is around 30 years, and gastric ulcers about 40 years of age.

Q. Are they inherited?

A. Like many disorders, the tendency is believed to be inherited. Just as with heart disease and diabetes, there is an increased risk if the parents suffered with the disorder. One of these days, it may be possible to predetermine if a person will develop ulcers.

At present the researchers are carrying out an intriguing activity called ‘gene mapping’. Here, they are able to locate on the chromosome the extact spot or locus in which a certain disease is inherited. So, by mapping baby’s genes before birth, it may be possible to tell if he is predestined to develop heart disease, cancer, diabetes, peptic ulcers … and some claim that his potential for developing into a criminal may also be told. Others dispute this, but it is definitely in the pipe line.

Q. We often hear the claim that successful businessmen are more prone to develop ulcers. Is this fact or fantasy?

A. The current view is that it is fallacy. Duodenal ulcers seem just as common in any social group. Some British claims say that stomach ulcers are more likely in those of lower social standards.

Q. What is your view?

A. I live and work in an area where there is a lot of industry. I see many of the workers, plus many of the executives of these companies. It often seems that the greater the pressure on a person, mentally speaking, the greater chance he has of developing an ulcer. It may be a figment of my imagination. But I figure that the more mental anxiety and stress the person is subjected to, the greater the number of impulses racing to the acid producing glands of the stomach. And the greater amount of acid pumped out. So, an increased ulcer risk.

Q. Don’t you relate this to your treatment of some people with medical hypnotherapy?

A. As you know, I have also been practising medical hypnotherapy — or relaxation therapy as I prefer to call it — for fifteen years or so. This aims at completely relaxing the system, specially the nervous system and the areas to which the nerves travel.

For many years I have noticed that folk who are tense, anxious and pent up, the very ones with a knot in the stomach, too much acid, tummy upsets, ulcers, are the very ones who seem to respond well to relaxation treatment. I figure out that less tension, less impulses travelling to the acid glands, less acid produced, leads to a reduced risk of stomach upsets and probably a reduced risk of ulcers. Certainly I am not claiming a cure for ulcers, but it appears to help in conjunction with other treatment.

However, this is purely a personal note injected for good measure, for I feel it is relevant. Anxious, stress ridden individuals can often help themselves, of that there is little doubt in my mind.

But, generally speaking, the experts today do not relate ulcers to specific social or economic situations apart from those mentioned.

Q. What about the relationship of ulcers to other conditions. Is this likely?

A. Some time ago it was found that peptic ulcers seemed more common in people with blood group O, and also those with the liver disease called cirrhosis. I might add that cirrhosis, or destruction of the normal liver tissue and its replacement with useless fibrous tissue, is more common in heavy, chronic drinkers.

Ulcers also seem related to some other medical conditions, such as the Zollinger-Ellison syndrome in which a diseased pancreatic gland causes an enormous over-secretion of acid in the stomach. Sometimes a rare disease of the parathyroid glands (which are located in the thyroid gland in the neck) may play a part; Cushing’s syndrome, a disease of the supra-renal glands which sit on top of the kidneys may be associated with a reduced ulcer risk, although if there is too much cortisone-like hormones in the blood stream, this may delay ulcer healing.

Q. What about drugs. Can these upset the lining and cause ulcers to form?

A. The picture is a bit confused, although many doctors believe they play an important part. It has been found that people with ulcers tend to take excessive analgesics such as aspirin products, and smoke more heavily than those with no ulcer. Therefore, the two are often linked, but others claim this does not necessarily say one causes the other. In short, ‘they probably have little effect,’ says one prominent Sydney-based ulcer expert. He also says that ‘there is no convincing evidence that stress or anxiety play any role in the causation and natural history of chronic peptic ulcer, or that any personality type predisposes to peptic ulcer.’

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The human spine – also at times called the spinal column, vertebral column, or just the backbone – is a flexible bony column that extends from the base of the skull to the small of the back. It serves two main purposes:

Working together with various muscles and ‘girdles’ – the latter being encircling or arching arrangements of bones, such as the pelvic and shoulder girdles – the spine provides the support that enables us to stand upright.

It also encloses – and so protects to a large extent – the spinal cord, that portion of the central nervous system whose nerve cells and bundles connect all parts of the body with the brain. Structurally, the spine consists of a number of vertebrae (or

individual bones) that are stacked on top of each other and separated as well as connected by discs of fibrocartilage (the intervertebral discs, which are discussed later in this chapter).

Although adults have 26 vertebrae, new-born babies have 33, nine of those extra ones becoming eventually fused into two separate single bones. An adult spine has five regions, consisting of the following, and starting from the bottom up:

Four fused coccygeal – or tail – vertebrae, which together make up the coccyx.

Five fused sacral vertebrae, which form the sacrum.

Five lumbar – or lower back – vertebrae.

Twelve thoracic (also at times called thoriac) – or chest -vertebrae.Seven cervical – or neck – vertebrae.

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