‘diseases’ Tagged Posts

Curbing Household Insects

We all dislike insects getting into the house, do we not? But I do not like squashing the ones that get in either. However, I reside in northern Tha...

 

We all dislike insects getting into the house, do we not? But I do not like squashing the ones that get in either. However, I reside in northern Thailand, 100 yards from thousands of acres of wet rice fields. The farmers spray their fields to reduce the number of insects, but inevitably there are still quite a lot here, especially in the two monsoon periods.

Therefore, we have had to secure our house and ourselves against insects, mostly of the flying variety, but not all of which bite by any means. In the monsoon seasons, which are roughly May to June and August to September, the main offender is the mosquito. There is no malaria where I am, but they are still not nice. Simultaneous with the mosquitoes are the midges, but they are not nearly so many.

When it is not raining, the common house fly is a pest. You just cannot teach a housefly not to sit on you or your food, I have tried it many times. The lessons almost invariably result in the death of the pupil by corporal punishment.

On arbitrary rainy days hordes of other kinds of flies will hatch out within hours – you can see masses of them coming out of the ground like bees, but they more resemble lace wings. They are completely innocuous, but they get in your hair and everywhere else. Then there are a few types of fly that eat rice or humans if they get in the way, but they seem to prefer rice.

The first thing we did was have fly screens inserted into our windows. That helped a great deal, but everybody kept leaving the doors ajar. Then we had screens inserted into the door frames. That really was effective for everything except midges and baby mosquitoes that seem to be squirming through the mesh.

We solved that issue by spraying the mesh with permethrin once every couple of months. I am pretty certain that no insects get into our house via that route any more. However, some insects were crawling in under the doors, because there were no thresholds or draft-excluders – a draft in Thailand normally being more than welcome. So, I fitted draft-excluders to the doors.

That blocked the scorpions, spiders, millipedes, centipedes and beetles, although some spiders appear to abseil down from the attic into our living accommodation. I do not mind spiders too much as long as I cannot see them, because I know that we have a mutual enemy, namely flies.

House flies still get in sometimes, especially when visitors and their children are about. However, the kind of spiders we have most of, do not seem to build webs. They stalk their victims and then jump on them; and they are very quick.

Despite that, we spray the floors and the tops of the walls with permethrin every month or two as well. This keeps the ants from entering the house via the attic and mops up any crawling insects that have gotten in via an open door.

Another important entry point into your home for insects is your pets. You have to take care of your cats and dogs. Groom them regularly, fit a collar which has been soaked in insecticide, bathe them in insecticidal shampoo and dust them with flea powder.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.

Dental Care And Extracting Your Own Teeth

 

You would doubtless be very surprised at how many people actually try to pull their own teeth. It sounds disgusting and very painful, but it is still true and there can be many reasons why people do it. We all know how distressing toothache is and how it always seems worse at night stopping the sufferer from getting a good night’s sleep.

If the tooth is just loose, there should not be too much of a problem, but if you do not know what you are doing, you could worsen the situation. Particularly if there is an abscess.

Dentistry has become very refined over the last 100 years, but before that barbers and dentists shared the same occupation. Anaesthetics were hard to come by, so most adults just got intoxicated and pulled their own teeth or had someone else do it for them.

People used to use pliers or other carpenters’ tools. Toothache was rife and it caused a lot of suffering. Nowadays, modern anaesthetics and modern practices make pulling teeth or even repairing them almost painless.

However, there are still situations when you may want or even have to draw teeth at home. Baby or milk teeth often work loose and fall out without any complications. When I was a child in the UK in the Fifties, it was not uncommon for parents to remove children’s teeth, even though dentists were free for children.

I know of parents giving their children toffee to eat, hoping that the tooth would stick in the toffee and come out and I have had a tooth tied to an open door and the door thrown shut, pulling the tooth out rapidly.

Other situations that may make you want to pull your own teeth is if you live or are holidaying in the wild or in a country where you do not trust the dentists. In some countries, any dentistry work is very expensive, in other countries straight-forward extractions are free or at a set, small charge.

There are other situations when you should never try to extract your own teeth. One of these is if you have gum disease or an abscess. These circumstances can have very serious results for your gums and jaw bones, so you ought to seek proper medical or dental assistance right away.

There are other dangers to drawing your own teeth too. If you snap off a tooth, you will be in more pain than before and you will still have to go to a dentist to have the bottom half dug out of your gum. If you do not sterilize your pliers or and other instruments you run the serious risk of infection too.

The bottom line is that it best not to attempt to pull your own teeth if you can possibly avoid it for the reasons given above. Another problem for many though is expense, particularly in the United States where dental costs seem to be out of control. With the deepening recession and rising unemployment, there is a danger that some people will revert to pulling their own teeth again, setting dental care standards back a hundred years.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with investigating teeth whitening costs. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Opalescence Tooth Whitening Systems

How To Treat Your Clothing With Insect Repellent

 

Have you ever heard about clothing that repels mosquitoes and other flying insects? If not, I am prepared to venture that there have been times when you have wished you could get some. Mosquitoes and midges can ruin a holiday or even make you have to get out of your own garden when it starts getting dark.

There are various ways that you can combat mosquitoes and the other terrors of the twilight, but they always seem to find a spot where I am not totally protected. Often that spot is on the shoulder blade, where they will stick their proboscis through the material of your shirt to suck your blood.

I enjoy my garden, but so do the mosquitoes as there is a lot of open water in the surrounding area. My first technique of defense against mosquitoes is to plant flowers and trees that they are known to hate the smell of. I think that the odour that they hate the most is that of lemons.

Therefore, we have a few small lemon trees, which will soon be playing a vital part in our defense, a patch of lemon grass for my wife’s favourite Thai curries and some as yet poorly-looking citronella plants. (I think that Thailand may be too hot for them, but I am hoping that they will become accustomed).

Then I have two mosquito lamps. The kind that entice the insects to an ultraviolet light and then zaps them with 25,000 volts. They are very effective, but more so in the dark than at sunset, when they must be less discernible to the insects. I am aware that there are insect lights that use smells or pheromones to attract mosquitoes, but I have not seen any for sale over here yet. I did once try a unit that emits a sound on a high frequency that was alleged to drive them away, but it did not work on our mosquitoes.

Finally, if it was a bad night I used to put on some insect repellent cream, often something that had DEET in it. This is pretty effective for a few hours, but it can damage some fabrics and some plastics, which is why the makers suggest that you only put it on your exposed skin. If you do that, your shoulders and your legs become targets, even if you are wearing trousers and a top.

This is where it becomes a good idea to treat your clothing with insect repellent. It seems that the military has been using them for years. The active ingredient used is called permethrin and it should be used at a concentration of 0.5%. There are two ways of applying it: by drenching clothing in it, as the army does or by spraying it on. I assume that you will be spraying it on.

Do the spraying in the garden far away from any fish pond as permethrin kills fish as well. Spray the clothing and wait for the chemical to soak in and dry out. Clothing treated with insect repellent in this fashion will protect you for about six weeks and will still be active after six washes. However, sunlight breaks permethrin down, so dry the items indoors and store in black plastic bags for longer efficacy.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.

Angular Cheilitis: What Is It And How Is It Treated?

 

Angular Cheilitis is probably not a phrase that you are very likely to have run into frequently. However, if you hear the phrase and wonder what it really is, or if someone you know says they have it then this piece should help make it clear.

Angular Cheilitis is a medical condition that has an effect on the corners of the mouth. It may be quite painful as lesions develop, which due to the site and motion of the mouth quickly deteriorate and split open. They can split longways in line with the mouth opening, but can also split vertically which clearly is going to trigger plenty of pain as it will put stress on the corner of the mouth.

As you might imagine these cracks can bleed, be quite sore and can get nasty crust-like scabs that are also not very nice. One of the major causes of Angular Cheilitis is considered to be the health-related ailment called anemia, which is when the body is unable to store and metabolize iron properly resulting in a deficiency.

This is usually linked with other medical problems or can just be the single issue, but is absolutely worth pursuing from a healthcare point of view as it could be symptomatic of something a lot more critical but treatable. Other causes are possible. The fungal infection of thrush, for instance, can result in these lesions, and once again this needs treatment to eliminate the fungus.

It’s not always the case that Angular Cheilitis is symptomatic of another ailment. It can easily happen on its own. One particular example of this is in elderly individuals who experience a change in mouth shape if they lose teeth. This can sometimes trigger the cracks to emerge. The same thing can happen to younger children who lick their lips in cold weather. Yet again, this can exacerbate the lesions.

Treatment for the lesions does depend on what the cause is. For minor cases, such as occur with the elderly and kids, a local cream applied on the area will probably sort the problem. If the cause is determined to be the thrush virus then plainly the cream used must be designed to kill off that fungus in order to be successful. Otherwise the lesions will heal but the thrush will just take hold once again and create new ones.

When the cause is determined to be a symptom of the much more serious condition then clearly that ailment needs to be treated too. Anemia is typically treated by administering iron pills, or in much more serious cases by injections of B vitamins to help the body restore balance. Once more, if it makes the patient more comfortable the cream could be given locally to help the healing process.

Whatever happens, healthcare advice ought to be sought if you encounter these symptoms so that you can rule out one of the far more serious medical problems or to confirm the presence of the condition and allow for the appropriate treatment. When the lesions are minor and simply appear for a day or so in winter it could be safe to presume that the season is to blame; nonetheless, keep an eye on it and seek medical advice if it comes back.

Are you looking for an angular cheilitis cure? Visit my site to find out more about angular cheilitis, its treatment, and a natural cure for it: http://www.naturalcheilitiscure.com

Domestic Remedies For Wart Removal

 

Every year, millions of Americans develop a skin disorder. Usually that skin condition is only minor. One of the the majority of common trivial skin conditions in America is known as warts. Warts are benign excrescences that appear on the skin. In deed, warts can come out almost everywhere on the body. If you are similar to most of the Americans who do have warts on their skin, you may want to do something about it. To get rid of your warts, you will have to select a wart removal preference.

Perhaps, the best wart elimination choice is looking for help from a professional. When visiting a specialist, often a primary care physician or a dermatologist, you will have your warts professionally removed. In spite of being eliminated by a professional, you will discover that many of the elimination methods are the same, when compared to at home wart removal methods or procedures. Therefore, a large number of individuals, especially those without health insurance, take the decision to save money and eradicate their own warts.

When examining domestic remedies for wart removal, you will want to use the internet to your benefit. Online, you should be able to uncover a number of different web sites or resource guides that are dedicated only to domestic cures; domestic remedies which may well be used to eradicate warts. What is nice about home cures is that most people have everything that they need already in their cabinets.

This means that you might not even need to spend a penny. In addition to researching wart removal home remedies online, you may also want to think about purchasing a domestic medicine book. While this book will cost money, it might be helpful for years to come.

Although a large amount of domestic treatments are effectual at eliminating warts, there are some individuals who are just uncomfortable about testing them. If you are one of those individuals, you can rest assured that you are not out of luck. In addition to trying domestic treatments, you ought to also be able to locate and easily buy a number of over-the-counter wart elimination items.

Over-the-counter wart elimination items are often to be had for less than thirty dollars. These products can be found on the Internet, in most department stores, grocery stores or drug stores.

In a way, over-the-counter wart removal items are considered safer than most domestic remedies. This is because items being sold in retail stores are required to meet various standards; therefore, you are almost certain to be purchasing a safe item. Despite the fact that the majority of over-the-counter wart elimination products are considered safe, you will still want to display caution when using them.

Before starting an over-the-counter wart removal treatment, you are recommended to thoroughly read all of the directions. In addition to reading the directions, you have to make sure that you follow them. Reading and following the instructions ought to only take a couple of minutes of your time; ergo, there is no reason why you ought to skip ahead without first understanding what you should or shouldn’t do.

Are you worried about the removal of warts? If you are and need to find outmore, please visit our website at http://cures-for-warts.the-real-way.com

Natural Cures For Head Lice

 

It is a plain and simple fact, that primary and junior school children get head lice and pass them around among themselves. Therefore, do not be upset, horrified or astonished when your child comes home from school with head lice. It does not mean that you or your child is dirty or that you are doing a bad job as a parent. It happens because young children come into very close bodily contact with each other.

Here are a number of interesting facts about head lice. Head lice are not known to pass on any human diseases. They cannot jump or fly. Itching starts about three weeks after infestation. The age group that is most at risk of head lice is 4-13 years of age. It is commonly thought that head lice prefer clean hair to greasy hair, because it is simpler to fix their eggs to clean hair. Girls are more than two times as liable as boys to carry lice. Black children are less likely to have head lice than white children because of their type of hair, although they can still pass them on.

There are lots of ways of getting rid of head lice, but most parents will go to the pharmacy to buy a medicated shampoo and a lice comb. This will do the job successfully, but many people are trying to use fewer chemicals in their lives and on their bodies and this is one area where you can avoid chemicals too.

One of the simplest home remedies to try is vinegar. Soak the hair in undiluted vinegar and comb it well in. Wrap a towel around the head or better still use a shower cap and keep the hair wet for an hour. Vinegar can totally eliminate an infestation within three days

Tea tree oil has long been known to combat head lice. You can try massaging a few drops into the hair undiluted, but it is easier to add fifteen drops of tea tree oil to a three-quarter full bottle of everyday shampoo and mix it up. Use it every day for five days to clear up an infestation or just use it every day for life to be rid of lice evermore.

Mayonnaise will kill head lice as well, although it is a more costly and a messier way of doing it than others. Massage the mayonnaise into the hair and leave it for an hour as with vinegar. Mayonnaise will poison the eggs too.

Rosemary oil will also poison head lice. Put a few drops of rosemary oil into a bowl of water and use it to rinse your child’s hair. Rosemary oil will not only kill the head lice, but it will also add a beautiful sheen to brown hair..

Seeing a child with head lice does not mean anything awful, unless it has them all the time, because then it is a sign of neglect. Children in the age group most at risk, should be inspected for head lice at least once per week and if you have several children, you should inspect them more often. The more children in a family, the more chance of one of them catching nits, bringing them home and passing them around.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with natural tick repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at tick Repellent For Dogs.

Baby Monitors For Deaf People

 

Having to listen to the baby crying all the time, say when it is teething, can be a pretty harrowing experience and most parents have wished that their child would just stop crying for an hour or two and give them a bit of peace. That is quite natural, parents need some respite as well.

But crying can have another purpose too – to alert the parents that something is not right. So what would you feel like if you were deaf and you were never sure whether your baby was crying or not? That would be a worrying situation, would it not? Luckily, there are such things as baby monitors for the deaf.

Baby monitors for the deaf are not the same as baby monitors for the hearing. Baby monitors for the hearing pick up the sound in one room and replay it somewhere else so that a hearing person is always aware of any noise made in the baby’s room – breathing, crying, gurgling, falling, intruders, dogs etc.

More pricey devices will relay video footage as well so that you can train the camera on the baby’s cot and see what is going on there as well. This is useful if you are anxious about your baby smothering itself or a cat getting into bed with it. This footage can be replayed over your television or a special monitor.

Obviously, baby monitors for the deaf will have to work on a different principle, because the sounds coming from the baby’s room will not alert its parents if they are deaf. This makes caring for a baby twice as stressful for a deaf person.

There are various kinds of baby monitors for the deaf, some work with a flashing light and others vibrate and some do both. These monitors can be large free-standing objects which are easily visible or they can be smaller like a mobile phone so that they can fit in your pocket in order that you may feel the vibration whenever a noise comes from the baby’s room.

Some of these baby monitors for the deaf are even more sophisticated. The receiver may have a built in clock that you can set for feeding times and a large vibrating rod so that you can place the receiver under your pillow at night. It will then alert you not only at feeding time but also if the baby makes a noise.

The most sophisticated baby monitors for the deaf are not cheap, but at the end of the day you have to consider your amount of disability, your peace of mind, the baby’s safety, your lifestyle and your finances.

For example, If you are completely deaf and a housewife, who has to move around the house for much of the day cleaning, cooking and gardening, a baby monitor for the deaf with a light on it sitting on top of the TV is not really of much use to you, whereas a portable vibrating device would be.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a lot of topics, but is currently involved with hearing aids supplies. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Digital Hearing Aids Prices.

An Investment We Can All Agree Upon

 

After spending the weekend reading through the exciting novel we call healthcare reform, I was positive that I would at long last stumble upon a topic that so desperately required attention. With nineteen million new cases of STD infections each year in the U.S., I was certain that there would be an entire section, or at least a paragraph, devoted to this critical topic. After finally coming across it, I almost wish that I hadn’t. Apparently, a pandemic of this type is only worth about one hundred and fifty million dollars. That may sound like a lot, but it’s less than half a buck per person.

If you think that you couldn’t possibly be affected by this, you are wrong. Over half of these infections hit people between the ages of 15 and 24. That means that they are your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, or perhaps even your sibling. Even if it’s only someone you don’t even know who is infected with an STD, more times than not it’s your tax dollars that will be footing the bill for treatment of any complications that might arise.

STDs cost our healthcare system billions of dollars each year, so a few hundred million isn’t really such a large sum relatively speaking. With nearly $16 billion spent to fight the effects of these diseases, it would only make sense to spend a much larger proportion in order to fight them off before they even happen. Due to the silent and often deadly nature of these diseases, a proactive approach is an absolute requisite.

One simple way to combat this epidemic is regular STD testing, and a willingness to have open and honest discussions regarding STDs and other sexual health issues. While sex education in schools is understandably a hot topic, our society needs to find a better way of communicating the dire consequences of spur of the moment decisions. If you talk with most teenagers who are considering becoming sexually active, the majority of them will tell you that their major concern is an unwanted pregnancy. What they also need to be concerned with are the many different life threatening conditions that STDs bring to play.

Whether we like it or not, sex is here to stay and we might as well accept it. The birth control pill has ushered in a new era of sexual freedom for many people, and many people now feel like they are doing all that they need to do to be sexually responsible . The truth, however, is that it’s also opened up a Pandora’s box of other issues that are still seldom ever talked about. If we look at the continent of Europe, we can get a better picture of what changes we might benefit from. They are much more sexually active, and much more sexually open too. However, they have also seen their STD rates decrease at a much faster rate than the US.

Just last year $400 million was placed into the stimulus bill to provide for STD testing and HIV testing. However, both Democrats and Republicans somehow lost their nerve and quickly took it out. We should be united in this effort, as this investment can help trim our nations skyrocketing healthcare costs for us and future generations . Until then, however, we will continue to pay the price for this and other similar past decisions.

Want to read more from Andrew M. Gibson? You can find him on facebook, or check out his blog at www.stdtestingservices.com. There you can also learn more about std testing and how to find std testing centers.

Dental Complications For Diabetics

 

Diabetes can have different adverse effects on sufferers’ health and one of those ill-effects is dental quality. Diabetics have a problem dealing with sugars, which often leads to a condition called hyperglycemia, which means that there is too much sugar in the blood. The converse of having too much sugar in your blood is having too little and that is known as hypoglycemia.

Both conditions are regulated in healthy people by insulin and herein lies the diabetic’s problem – the body’s automatic production of insulin to control blood sugar levels. Both circumstances can have serious consequences. Too much sugar in the blood can lead to issues with the kidneys, the heart, the eyes and others, while too little sugar in the blood can cause fits and black-outs.

Tooth and gum disease is normal as are any other health problems. Factors that play a role in tooth and gum disease are age, heredity, smoking and oral hygiene, but the diabetic who is often hyperglycemic has a higher probability of developing dental sickness.

The diabetic is more susceptible to infection of any kind and one of the most common is periodontitis, which affects the teeth, the jaw bones and the gums. One of the observable symptoms of periodontitis is receding gums, which makes the teeth look curiously large, but also exposes the roots of the teeth to the air and food, resulting in sensitive teeth. Therefore, diabetics must ensure that they make a particular effort to visit their dentist at least twice a year. Periodontitis can result in the complete loss of one’s teeth.

The superfluous sugar in the blood supplies extra food for germs, so they reproduce much more quickly than normal. This rapid build up of bacteria produces red, swollen gums. One of the first signs of gum disease is frequently bleeding. If your gums begin to bleed when you brush your teeth, make an early appointment with your dentist.

Diabetics, along with those who have an impaired immune system, run a much greater risk of contracting periodontitis and so losing all their teeth, if it is left untreated.

Diabetics with periodontitis are not guaranteed to lose all their teeth, but it does have to be noticed and treated early because there are various ways that a dentist can treat the disease.

One of the best means is to manage your blood sugar levels in the first instance. This has to be achieved in conjuction with your doctor, but it will usually include correct dieting, exercise and taking insulin or a surrogate. Not smoking and maintaining your correct weight are also important.

Not all diabetics have to take insulin. There is much more understood about diabetes, diet, exercise and their inter-relationship these days. Some diabetics can avoid taking insulin and all the side effects that that would usually entail by not eating sugary or starchy food, by eating low-calorie meals often during the day instead of at two or three large meals and by checking blood-sugar levels.

This is the best way of avoiding the dental complications that diabetics can suffer.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is currently concerned with investigating teeth whitening costs. If you would like to know more or check out great offers, please go to our website at Opalescence Tooth Whitening Systems

Tips For Eating Insects

 

It sounds pretty revolting to most Westerners that many people around the world eat insects on a frequent, even daily, basis. This is not always only because edible insects are so abundant and money is so scarce. In many countries, some insects are considered a delicacy.

I am not an expert on edible insects in every country, but there are so many varieties of edible insects where I have been, that there must be similar edible insects in every country except the North and South Poles.

Eating insects may sound repulsive to us, but I have met people who think that it is just as revolting to eat prawns, shrimps and lobsters. After all, they are just insects of the sea of a kind. And just like eating shrimps or lobster, insects are either the major or only part of the dish. In other words, they are thought of as just as much a luxury as shrimps, prawns or lobster is in the West.

Insects are not eaten with rice, chips, in a sandwich or with a sauce. Rather insects are deep-fried in a wok and eaten from a paper bag like chips. Insects are not mixed when cooked either. You buy fifty grammes of one and fifty grammes of another and they are eaten separately.

Insects are plentiful and they do not have to be bred, unlike cattle. An interesting fact is that beef is about 20% protein whereas insects are between 65% and 80% protein. Surprising, eh? Fifty grammes of insects provides more protein that a half-pound beef steak and they contain hardly any cholesterol.

If you want to include insects in your diet, then you will need to study the subject with regard to your own country, but I will give some suggestions. In the insect world, yellow means ’stay away from me, I am poisonous or do not taste nice’, so it is best not to eat those ones. Most insectivores stay away from hairy insects too, so spiders and house flies are out as well. Mosquitoes are too small so are ticks and many other insects.

Although some caterpillars can be eaten, some cannot, so leave them to the experts. The best insects to go for are beetles, termites, larvae, grubs, grasshoppers, crickets and some night-flying insects.

In Thailand, for example, most people will eat insects for a treat, although some people eat them every day. In the north-east and in the north-west, people may eat insects once a month. In the centre, like Bangkok and Pattaya, fried insects are sold on the streets, so they are easily available. They are eaten frequently in the south and in the east, which is called Isaan.

However, all over Thailand, you can see ultraviolet lights over insect traps. These families will either consume the insects themselves or sell them on to a merchant. I have also seen individuals collecting a fly which only comes out at night after rainfall. You can gather thousands in an hour by putting a bowl of water under a street light. The insects get stunned by the light and spiral down into the water where they drown.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is currently involved with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.