What You Will Need

• A comfortable chair


• A watch or clock with a sweep second hand

What This Test Measures

This test measures the ability of your heart to pump oxygen-rich blood into your system, allowing you the health and vigour to exercise and lead an active life. In dozens of studies researchers found that our ability to transport oxygen declines as our body age increases. This decrease begins in our thirties (for men it starts earlier, in their twenties) and continues through our adult years until by age sixty-five we have 30 to 40 per cent less invigorating oxygen in our muscles than we had as teenagers. The famous Framingham Study, which followed 2,400 women since 1949, found that women have a ten-year edge on their male counterparts terms of heart disease. But, the shocking news was that even thou women can buy themselves an extra ten years before the onset of ageing heart disease, they don’t benefit as much as men if they wait to take so-preventive measures after they have been diagnosed with heart problems, This test can measure the age of your heart and can help you take steps to make it younger and healthier before it is too late.

Ready, Set, Go

Sit down in your comfortable chair. Put your watch with the sweep second hand in front of you where you can see it clearly. Don’t hold your breath. Relax. Now find your pulse by putting your middle finger on the large artery in your throat, just under your chin. Put your fingers on that artery gently. Too much pressure can cut off some of the blood flow. If you have trouble finding the pulse under your chin you can use the pulse o the inside of your wrist. If you are going to use your wrist pulse, pull your chair up to a table or desk and place your arm comfortably on the surface. Then locate your pulse. Wait until you’re sure you have it. Now start counting and watching the sweep second hand. Count the number pulses in twenty seconds. Repeat the count a couple of times more so that you’re sure it’s accurate. Now multiply the number of pulses you count by three. This gives you your resting heart rate for one minute.

WARNING: DO not use your thumb to count out your pulses. Your thumb has a pulse of its own, which will skew your result.

Some children do have recurrent ear infections, for reasons that are not clear, and these may lead to ‘glue ear’ and hearing loss. ‘Glue ear’ is the term often used to describe the presence of thick, glue like secretions in the middle ear, which are sometimes the consequence of repeated ear infections. It very often affects the child’s hearing, which in turn may affect the child’s language and general development. Ear infections in young children must be treated promptly and followed up to make sure that a chronic or recurrent situation does not develop.

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The cause of hypertensive disease of pregnancy is not well understood although it affects 5% of pregnant women.

Clinical features

It is usually diagnosed during the latter stages of pregnancy, and is characterised by the presence of high blood pressure together with fluid retention. If the condition is left untreated protein will appear in the urine. The danger of hypertensive disease of pregnancy is that it can lead to rapid degeneration of the placenta. As the placenta supplies all nutrients to the baby, this leads to a risk of the baby being born prematurely. If the baby is still immature it may not be able to survive outside the womb. The other risk is the progression of the condition to eclampsia, which affects the mother. Eclampsia is characterised by convulsions and in the worst case may lead to coma.

Treatment

The treatment of hypertensive disease of pregnancy is primarily bed rest. If you have markedly high blood pressure, your doctor may advise a short stay in hospital where close monitoring can continue until the condition is brought under control. Where mothers have hypertensive disease of pregnancy, labour is often induced. Those mothers who have full-blown eclampsia usually have a Caesarian section to end the pregnancy for their own and their baby’s safety.

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ANSWER: Concepts such as “hold back,” “finish,” and “coming” are leftovers from old ideas about sex that emphasized the mechanical, reflex parts of sexual response. If you mean by “coming” ejaculating, then there is much you can do to ejaculate when you want to. Making sure your bladder is empty before sexual activity will help, and learning to thrust with your whole pelvis instead of squeezing the muscles of the buttocks together and tensing the area between your legs is another idea. Most important, however, are two rules of super marital sex. First, since ejaculation is the body’s reflex to arousal, your whole life-style affects that body response. If you live fast and pressured, you are setting the stage for all body processes to accelerate. Slowing down in living is as important as slowing down in loving. Second, a posture in which your most sensitive area of the penis, the F area, is contacting your partner’s most sensitive area, the Ñ area, is less likely to throw off the timing of this reflex. The posture of the future will help in this regard. And don’t forget, orgasm and psychasm are different. Focusing on coming or not coming only leads to more focus and less c. since psychasm is emotional and mental, it is impossible to think or feel too soon.

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A delay before radiation damage becomes obvious also occurs with normal cells. For example, the cells lining the mouth divide every day or so, cells on the skin surface every week or so. When radiation is stopped, a reaction in the mouth will quickly start getting better but a skin reaction can keep getting worse for a week or more. The longest delay is seen in the case of tissues whose cells very rarely divide other than when the tissue is injured. These tissues may look fairly normal and function fairly normally for years, but heal very slowly or not at all if they are injured or infected. This poor healing is only partly due to the fact that some of the cells die when they try to divide. Another reason is that blood and lymph vessels are also damaged by radiation leaving tissues with a poor blood supply and sluggish drainage.

Radiation damage to the reproductive ability of cells has one other possible serious consequence. This one is only of concern to those of you who are lucky enough to be cured, or at least to live many years after your treatment. People who have had radiation treatment have a higher than normal, but still small, risk of developing a completely new cancer within the irradiated areas. I am not referring here to a recurrence of the original cancer but to a completely new cancer caused by the radiation. Radiation-caused leukaemia typically develops about five years after radiation. Other types of cancer take twenty or more years. The risk is small but definite. When weighing up your cost/benefit balance, do try to keep this one in perspective. I stress that it will only concern you if your treatment is successful in controlling your original cancer.

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It is usually thought to be only an outburst of crying or laughing, the result of sudden severe emotional shock and to be controlled by firm, forceful handling.

But hysteria is a complex emotional disorder where symptoms of illness appear and represent to the patient some advantage, even if he may not be aware of his own motives. It is more common in women.

The term “conversion hysteria” is often used. This means that painful and unacceptable happenings or ideas are repressed from conscious thought and translated or converted into physical terms which are tolerable or even prized.

It is different from malingering, where the person puts on symptoms to gain advantage but is aware all the time of his own deceit.

A malingerer may claim that part of his body has no feeling, yet, if a pin is stuck into this area, he will feel pain, although he may try not to show it.

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Studies reveal that the builders of the pyramid had advanced mathematical skills. Reproduction of the exact scale of measurements of the pyramid are believed to harness some electro-magnetic forces which may be beneficial for health.

Other claims that it makes your hair grow, improves the taste of food and enhances plant growth, have met with more scepticism.

No one knows how this pyramid power is supposed to work but it is said that certain electromagnetic waves are concentrated and condensed by the particular configuration of the building.

Whether you accept this as fact or just so much hocus pocus, pyramid healing, along with other forms of alternative medicine, is attracting attention.

Alternative medicine is a system of primary health care involved in diagnosis as well as treatment and in opposition to, or parallel with, orthodox Western medicine.

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Why is pain such a mystery? An individual’s response to bodily pain is always unique because pain is supremely subjective. Two people may be able to agree with each other about what a headache feels like and that childbirth usually causes more physical distress than a routine internal examination. They may not, however, agree about exactly which sensations and what degree of intensity constitute acute pain or an odd and persistent ache.

Each of us has a different pain threshold, which is a combination of psychological and neurological factors. At one extreme, stoics and mind-control practitioners may choose to feel no pain—some can even staunch the flow of blood from a wound by use of willpower alone. At the other extreme, hypochondriacs fervently believe in their suffering, and encourage it or create new illness. Most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. Whatever the pain—acute, throbbing, stabbing, burning, dull, aching—they can describe it accurately enough in all us varying degrees and severity so that others can understand.

This ability to communicate a private sense of pain to another gives us a chance to obtain medical help in a manner that is most effective. But what happens when communication is thwarted by a physician who invalidates a patient’s report of pain, thereby invalidating the cause?

For women who have been told by doctors again and again that the pain they feel does not exist, emotional turmoil may become as much a symptom of endometriosis as the actual physical disability. As a palliative, unsympathetic doctors may prescribe Valium or other tranquilizers. Generally, when the pain persists, another doctor is consulted. Should he concur with the first, he may simply prescribe stronger tranquilizers, and a woman’s illness becomes doubly wearing. Her self-doubt begins to grow as her pain increases in severity. The questions such a victim asks herself, however, remain unanswered: “How can I be creating such horrible pain? Since doctors tell me that I am to blame, bow can I stop doing this to myself?’ Clearly, this situation is emotionally wrenching. Rather than follow their own inner voices, which know chat this pain means something, these women are made to feel defeated, somehow responsible—and guilty—until the disease becomes so advanced and so serious that even a minimally experienced physician is finally able to diagnose it.

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