Herbal Health

Growth occurs in predetermined phases, although there is a great deal of individual variation. For example, a baby on average will double his birthweight at about 5 months, and treble it at about 12 months of age.

The rate of growth in children (weight, length or height, and head circumference) is measured in percentiles. When you visit your doctor or nurse, your child may be measured and these measurements plotted on percentile charts. This is to check that growth is proceeding appropriately.

Percentile charts are comparative graphs of children’s growth rates. If your child’s weight is on the 50th percentile, he is the same weignt as 50% of children of his age. If he is on the 97th percentile he is heavier than 97% of children of his age; being on the 3rd percentile means he is in the bottom 3% for his age. There are different percentile charts for boys and girls.

Checking percentile charts may give the first indication that a child is ‘failing to thrive’, is overweight, too tall, or too short. Growth is most rapid in the first couple of years of life, and then again in adolescence. The latter is known as the adolescent growth spurt.

A child’s head grows in a similarly predictable manner. At birth, the baby’s skull is very soft, with two open spaces or holes at the top of the head. These are called fontanelles, and allow the bones of the skull to grow as the child grows. The one at the front, called the anterior fontanelle is the larger of the two, measuring 3-5 centimetres at birth, although again this varies considerably. Both fontanelles are closed by about one year of age.

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Surgery is a good way of tackling a few particular types of pain due to cancer. For example, pain due to a blockage of the bowel or kidney can sometimes be relieved by removing the responsible growth or bypassing the blockage. Pain due to a fracture through cancer in a bone, can often be most quickly relieved by putting a metal pin or plate in the bone. The bone is most likely to remain pain free if this surgery is followed up by radiation treatment.

Even chemotherapy is sometimes recommended for people who have painful cancer growths. The pain will be relieved only if the growth is shrunk, so consider this method of pain relief only if you have a type of cancer which is very likely to be sensitive to the chemotherapy.

If you do decide to seek pain relief by tackling the responsible cancer itself, you will still need painkillers in the meantime. The fact that your pain may be relieved by radiotherapy or surgery later doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be getting relief with painkillers right now. The following section is important for all of you with cancer pain — those who are having anti-cancer treatment as well as those who are not.

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Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, has occupied a lot of interest recently, not only for its effect in preventing the common cold but because of its actions generally in human nutrition.

Vitamin Ñ is widely distributed through many foodstuffs. The green vegetables, citrus fruits and potatoes contain considerable quantities.

This vitamin is necessary for the proper development of connective tissue in the body, especially the coverings of blood vessels.

Lack of ascorbic acid produces scurvy, with bleeding in the gums and other soft tissues, failure of wound-healing, and poor resistance to infection.

Infantile scurvy is seen in children artificially fed without a Vitamin Ñ supplement.

There are groups who believe that large doses of Vitamin Ñ are beneficial to health and indeed can treat or prevent a large number of illnesses.

Orthodox medical and nutritional experts do not accept this.

If you eat a proper diet, it is not likely that you’ll suffer from a Vitamin Ñ deficiency.

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For proper physical fitness, a balanced diet is essential. The body should be at the correct weight for height and age. All the essential food factors should be included in the diet.

Protein is necessary to build up body tissue and to replace wear and tear. Fat is necessary to provide essential factors. Carbohydrate provides a ready energy source but excess tends to accumulate as stored fat.

Minerals and vitamins are necessary in small doses. Bulk in the form of vegetable fibre is necessary for the proper functioning of the bowel.

Exercising three times a week is the bare minimum. Four or five times a week is better. People who are fit look better, feel better, work better, are sick less often and have less chance of developing a heart attack.

Don’t smoke, drink in moderation, eat a balanced diet and take proper exercise. Learn to relax and you may not only live longer but enjoy it more.

The message Life: Be In It applies to you. You should exercise as if your life depended on it.

It does.

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Chemotherapy, or the use of cytotoxic drugs to kill the cancer cells, is now part of the initial treatment.

As in other forms of cancer what is developing is a team approach to treatment, the surgeon, radiotherapist, and chemotherapist making joint decisions about the management of each patient.

The implantation of a silicone prosthesis to give the woman a new “breast” is now a regular procedure for many women unfortunate enough to lose their breast because of cancer. The construction of the new breast may be done at the same time as the initial operation of removal of the breast or may be delayed for some months.

If you find a lump go straight to the doctor. If it isn’t cancer you save months of worry. If it is, the earlier it is found and treated the better the result.

The breast is the commonest site of cancer in women, but the uterus or womb is the second.

Cancer may involve the cervix, or neck of the womb, or the body of the womb; and the age at which the cancers occur, the possible causes and their subsequent behaviors differ.

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Of course, not all doctors and ofher practitioners who treat cancer are as black as I have painted. I hope that your practitioners combine the best of modern scientific medicine with the art of healing. I hope they take as much care in finding out how you are feeling and what life is like for you as they do in arranging and assessing tests. I hope your practitioners place as much, or more, importance on the quality of your life as they do on its length. I hope they treat you as a whole person who happens to have cancer and not just as a cancer with a body wrapped around it!

If you don’t have this kind of practitioner, life is going to be difficult for you. Those practitioners who are least likely to make the best decisions for you are also the most difficult to get enough information from to make your own decisions. Switch to another practitioner, if possible. If not, you may have to seek information from other sources such as other practitioners, nurses, other hospital staff, books, other patients, and friends. If you make a decision that does not follow such a practitioner’s recommendation, be prepared to be told by them that you are foolish, ignorant and incapable of properly assessing the situation. Trust your own judgement and commonsense. Don’t be intimidated or cajoled into giving away control of what happens to your own body. Remember, you are the world’s greatest expert on yourself. Nobody else knows how you feel inside and what is important for you. This personal knowledge is of vital importance when it comes to deciding on treatment that could totally alter your life.

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Table sugar or refined sugar (sucrose) has a G.I. factor of only 60-65. This is because it is a disaccharide (double sugar) composed of one glucose molecule coupled to one fructose molecule. Fructose is absorbed and taken directly to the liver where much of it is slowly converted to glucose. So, the blood sugar response to pure fructose is very small (G.I. factor of 20). Thus when we consume sucrose, in effect we have consumed only half as much glucose. This explains why the blood sugar response to 50 grams of sucrose is approximately half that of 50 grams of pure maltose (where the molecules are all glucose).

Many foods containing large amounts of refined sugar have G.I. factors close to 60. This is the average of glucose (G.I. = 100) and fructose ( G.I. = 20). This is lower than that of ordinary soft bread with a G.I. factor averaging around 70. Kellogg’s Cocopops™ which contains 39 per cent sugar has a G.I. factor of 77, lower than that of Rice Bubbles™ (83) which contains little sugar.

So, contrary to popular opinion, most foods containing simple sugars do not raise blood sugar values any more than that of most complex starchy foods like bread. The same is true of honey (G.I. factor of 58). Some types of honey have a much higher G.I. factor (87) than refined sugar (65), possibly because they are a mixture of honey and glucose syrup.

Sugars that naturally occur in food include lactose, sucrose, glucose and fructose in variable proportions, depending on the food. The overall blood sugar response to a food is very hard to predict on theoretical grounds because gastric emptying is slowed by increasing concentration of the sugars, whatever their structure.

Some fruits for example have a low G.L factor (cherries have a G.I. factor of only 22) while others are relatively high (watermelon has a factor of 72). It seems the higher the acidity and osmotic strength (number of molecules per ml) of the fruit, the lower the G.I. factor. Thus it is not possible to lump all fruits together and say that they will have a low G.I. factor because they are high in fibre. They are not all equal. See the tables in Part HI to compare fruits.

Many foods containing sugars are a mixture of refined and naturally occurring sugars. The overall effect on the blood sugar response is too hard to predict. This is why we need to test the G.I. value of sugary foods in real people before we make generalisations about their G.I. factor.

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One of the problems in designing physical activity for the overfat is the negative connotations of the term ‘exercise’. This is probably to do with the association of exercise with high intensity activity. A greater emphasis on low-moderate level activity, and a shift from the notion of exercise as ‘extra-curricular’ to lifestyle changes in activity patterns suggests that a term such as physical activity might be more appropriate. There are two forms of this that are relevant:

• ‘Planned’ physical activity, such as walking, swimming or some other form of aerobic activity carried out regularly, often as a part of recreation.

• ‘Incidental’ physical activity, such as walking up stairs instead of using an elevator, walking instead of driving, or even not using effort-saving devices such as cordless telephones or remote controls for television sets.

Planned physical activity is necessary to compensate for the decrease in daily energy use resulting from changes in work and daily living conditions in most modem societies. Weight-bearing activities such as walking are likely to be the most effective because of the greater energy use. However, in the first instance non-weight-bearing activities such as swimming, which are thought to be generally less effective in fat loss, may be more able to be carried out and therefore less de-motivational.

Incidental activity is designed to counter reductions in spontaneous physical activity that occur in technically advanced societies. It is this which may be of most importance, and may initially even be the only exercise prescription for obese, in contrast to overfat individuals, because of the discomforting and de-motivational aspects of more vigorous forms of activity. As body mass decreases and planned physical activity becomes more comfortable, different forms of planned activities can be introduced.

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Exact reasons for the increases in fatness in the community are not as clear as they might seem to the layperson. Research has Hailed to provide conclusive evidence on any single factor and the evidence on a range of different factors , is often equivocal. For example, there is little to suggest that total energy consumption is the main culprit. Although obese people generally do consume more calories than lean people, there is still a wide variation between people. Also, active people are known to be big eaters but aren’t necessarily fat. Athletes are the extreme example of this, but of course they are also highly active. As far as we can tell, people in most industrialised countries now consume around the same or less total energy intake as their grandparents, yet their grandparents didn’t seem to have the same battle with the bulge. While there are significant problems assessing total energy intake, all indications are that this has not increased sufficiently to account for the increases in obesity now being seen.

Change in the type of food that’s being eaten would seem to be the next obvious factor—fatty foods and fast foods in particular. Indeed, a correlation between fat consumption and obesity in some countries, like France, where the records have been available for years, would tend to support this. Since the turn of the century the percentage of fat in the diet has undoubtedly increased, but most of the increase has been in the last few decades. In countries like Australia, the UK and the US, the overall consumption of fat may have stabilised or even decreased. Sugar consumption doesn’t seem to be related, as countries with high sugar consumption (e.g. Cuba) have low average body fat levels. Those with a high sugar consumption within countries are also amongst the leanest in a community, possibly because sugar and fat are generally inversely correlated. Large increases in soft drink and fruit juice consumption have occurred in recent years, however the connection between this and the increase in obesity is speculative only. Increases in alcohol are a further possibility, but consumption of this has generally been going down in those countries where obesity is increasing and consumption levels in populations often correlates inversely with obesity levels. In fact there’s now little evidence to support the notion that alcohol per se is fattening.

Smoking rates are declining in most advanced countries, and it is known that the average smoker gains around 3kg over a 12-month period after quitting. Might this be a reason for increases in fatness at a community level? Several studies have shown that it may be a small contributor, but the increases in weight have been amongst smokers, ex-smokers and non-smokers, suggesting that it’s not just quitters who have been the gainers.

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There is another miracle food from the bees that has stirred the imagination of nutritionists and doctors alike—the royal jelly.

Royal jelly is the food produced by the worker bees to feed the queen bee. As you probably know, bees have a highly organized community life, with their own systems of mathematics, geography and communications. This community is so well organized and so effectively governed that it is able to collect incredible amounts of food—pollen and honey—during one short summer season. The queen bee is the mother and the sole ruler of the entire hive.

All bees are hatched from eggs, including the queen bee. For the first two or three days after hatching all eggs are fed royal jelly. Then one egg is selected to become queen and she continues to receive royal jelly throughout the rest of her life. The other bees feed themselves on honey.

Now, listen to this: although hatched from similar eggs, the bees fed on honey mature in 21 to 24 days, but the queen bee fed royal jelly is fullgrown in 16 days. The worker bees live an average of two to six months, while the queen bee may live as long as eight years! During this time she works hard at producing eggs. The queen bee lays as many as a quarter of a million eggs in a season, often more than 2,000 eggs in a single day—which is greater than her own weight! Since the queen bee and the worker bees are hatched from identical eggs, it is obvious that the only reason for the great difference in longevity and the marvelous fertility is the difference in the food they eat. Royal jelly must contain a powerful substance or substances able to give the queen bee this enormous energy, fertility and longevity!

Scientists have been trying to find and identify these substances for hundreds of years. So far their efforts have been unsuccessful. Royal jelly does contain all the usual vital factors, which can be isolated: proteins, vitamins, enzymes, etc. It has, however, less of some vitamins than pollen has; and some vitamins, like A for example, are totally missing. Also, little or no vitamin E was found in royal jelly; and the same was true of vitamin C.

However, royal jelly contains more pantothenic acid, one of the B vitamins, than any other known natural substance—up to six times more than brewer’s yeast and liver.” In experiments reported in the Journal of Gerontology, fruit flies were fed royal jelly and their life span was markedly increased. Researchers felt that it was because of the pantothenic acid in royal jelly.

Everyone agrees that royal jelly has marvelous healing and rejuvenating powers, but no one knows why. Feeding control animals all the known factors of royal jelly did not bring at all the effects of royal jelly. So, royal jelly obviously contains some other factors which science has not yet been able to detect. Researchers report that all attempts to analyze royal jelly have failed. About 97 to 98 percent of the total has been analyzed and isolated, but the real source of power may be in the remaining elusive two or three percent.

Prophylactic and therapeutic value of royal jelly

An extensive research on royal jelly was made in Czechoslovakia by Dr. Josef Vittek, biologist, and Dr. Jaroslav Kresanek, pharmacologist, at the Medical School in Bratislava. They conducted a five-year investigation and their results are quite remarkable.

They fed royal jelly in various amounts to test animals and found that it speeded up their growth and increased their resistance to disease.1

Royal jelly had an anti-bacterial and anti-virus action, particularly against streptococcus, B. Coli and staphylococcus.

Hens, fed royal jelly, increased their egg-laying capacity 20 to 100 percent!

Royal jelly accelerated the formation of bone tissue.

Topical application of royal jelly helped to heal wounds in half the time.8

Other researchers have reported on royal jelly’s preventive effect on cancer. A group of mice were inoculated with four different types of cancerous cells. Half of them were given royal jelly; the other half was used as the control group. While all the mice in the control group died of cancer, the animals fed royal jelly did not show any disorder at all!0

In the experiments on human beings, Drs. Vittek and Kresanek showed that royal jelly has a favorable influence on body functioning and healing processes in many conditions. Serum cholesterol levels were lowered by the administration of royal jelly for ten days. Royal jelly has shown good results in the treatment of diseases of aging, such as hardening of the arteries, vascular disorders and Buerger’s Disease. German doctors reported that royal jelly preparations showed “satisfactory results” in post-operative conditions. Researchers agreed that royal jelly has a stimulative action upon the functioning of various organs and improves “their associative and coordinative faculties.”

However, in spite of some enthusiastic researchers, mostly in Europe, medical science at large has remained skeptical of royal jelly, and virtually no research is being done now to determine its prophylactic and therapeutic possibilities. In the meantime, there are thousands of people, both here and in Europe, who use royal jelly regularly and are satisfied that they benefit from it.

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