Health Tips For You

Health Tips For You to Live Healthy and Stay Fit

An unhealthy lifestyle can lead to obesity, heart disease, low energy level, depression or even skin or hair problems. The words ‘healthy eating’, ‘healthy lifestyle’, ‘fitness’, etc. sound complicated and seem rather difficult to practice in the course of the daily life. However, it is not! You can sneak in healthy habits in your existent lifestyle. The following health tips will help you adopt a healthy lifestyle easily. We will see the major problems that we face in our way to adopt a healthy lifestyle in today’s world. Each problem is then followed by a health tip to tackle it.

Problem 1: Busy lifestyle – no time to eat at home.

Health Tip: Buy whole food. Avoid processed food. Try to stock up frozen salad, nutrient snacks and canned soup at home or in the office refrigerator. Grab one as you rush out!

If you make out-of-station trips, ensure that every time you eat out you give the restaurant tips on how to prepare healthy dish for you. Share your dessert. If you are full, don’t force yourself to finish the plate.

Problem 2: I don’t know anything about healthy eating.

Health Tip: Following a balanced diet is no atomic science. You need a balanced proportion of protein, fibre, vitamin, mineral and fluid in your diet. The easiest sources are meat, fish, and legumes for protein, grains for fibre and fruits and vegetables for mineral and vitamins. Eat regularly, don’t skip meals, cook in low-fat oil and avoid junk food.

Problem 3: Health foods are tasteless.

Health Tip: There are a number of readily available tasty health-food recipes on the Internet. For example: top up your salad with tasty dressings or crunchy nuts. Nuts too are good sources of protein.

Problem 4: I need a bar of candy or a soda with every meal.

Health Tip: There are various low-sugar and low-fat options. Read the label for healthier options. Try withdrawing slowly. Most soft drinks are full of sugar that results in body fat. Once you know what soda does to your body, you will change to a healthier option. Replace the soda with a fruit juice.

Problem 5: I have no time to exercise.

Health Tip: You don’t need to hit the gym always. Every time you bend to pick something, squat instead. Don’t sit at one position for a long time. Stretch your body. Run up the steps to your office or walk a couple of blocks in the lunch break.

Problem 6: I get frequent health problems. I rely heavily on medicines to get well faster.

Health Tip: The root to most of our ailments is an unhealthy lifestyle. Smoking, drinking or junk food addictions destroy our immunity to even normal cold. Medicines just suppress the symptoms and further, hamper our immunity. Take simple home-made remedies first and follow natural ways of curing yourself.

Problem 7: I have so much work pressure that I never get enough sleep.

Health Tip: At the end of your day, breathe deeply for five minutes. Hug your partner before you go to sleep. Use aromatic candles to soothe your nerves. Read a book. Get rid of your physical stress before you hit the sack. Make it a practice not to bring work home.

 

Good Health and Beauty

The Road to Good Health and Beauty

What you sow, so shall you reap. It does not get any truer than this as far as health and beauty are concerned. You must have heard the old saying, “You are what you eat.” So if you fill yourself up with oily fries and litres of carbonated drinks, you will have only yourself to blame when you land up with zits on your face and many an additional inch on your waist. Health and beauty go together. This is the reason why we are constantly being told not to pig out on fast food and to refuel ourselves with healthy food instead and burn off those calories with aerobics or a little jogging.

The road to health and beauty is the same. If you eat well, you can be quite sure that you will look good too. We are always being told that it is important to eat a balanced diet. We cannot afford to miss out on any vitamin or mineral.

If you happen to be missing out on a basic nutrient, you can be sure that this will show itself in frequent illnesses or physiological conditions. But it will also show on your face and your body. At the same time, you can repair the damage done to your face by an unhealthy diet, pollution, and harsh climatic conditions by stocking up on all the things that are considered to be healthy. Health and beauty are interlinked. Eat well and you will soon be glowing with health and everyone will be noticing the difference.

Here is a list of some of the nutrients that will make sure that you soon find your way to good health and beauty.

• Vitamin A is great if you want to repair skin damage. At the same time, if you suffer from cholesterol problems, vitamin A is the ideal solution. Eggs, milk and spinach are some food that has high vitamin A content.

• Vitamin E is yet another vitamin that carries you along the road towards good health and beauty. A diet that is rich in Vitamin E will ensure that your lungs stay protected from air pollution. At the same time, it also maintains body tissues.

• Make sure you consume enough iron-rich foods. Iron is one of the most important minerals that ensure that you remain healthy. At the same time, good health reveals itself through the healthy glow that appears on your skin. If you are very fair, then your skin will take on a pinkish tinge. Perhaps, this is what led to the rise of the expression, “in the pink of health.”

Yes, health and beauty are inextricably linked to each other. Healthy people are always those who have glowing complexions and shiny hair. And it is not just about the diet that you follow. Good health is the result of a combination of a balanced diet and regular exercise. The same holds true for looks. If you are looking to find the secret to great health and beauty, this is the way to go — exercise on a regular basis and eat healthy food.

 

Food Groups

Healthy eating is all about balance.  There are no good or bad foods and you don’t have to give up certain foods to eat healthily or live on lettuce.  Why? Because all foods can be included in a healthy diet as long as the overall balance of foods is right. All foods provide energy and nutrients and it is achieving the right amount of those nutrients that is important for staying healthy.The Food Groups – What Counts?
Meat, Fish, Eggs, Beans, Pulses & Nuts These foods are great for providing protein to help you grow tall and strong.   But we don’t need to overload on them to be healthy.
Bread, Potatoes and Cereals Find out more about these energy-giving foods.   Why are wholegrain cereals better for you than those that have had the fibre removed?
Fruit & Vegetables So often we are told to eat up our greens but why?   Find out more about these superfoods.
Milk & Dairy These foods are a good source of calcium.  Check out what else they contain.
Foods High In Fats & Sugars These foods have an important part to play too. But the key is keeping this stuff under control.

Getting The Balance Right

We eat food to provide us with energy to live, but the balance between how much carbohydrate, fat and protein we eat must be right for us to remain healthy. Too little protein can interfere with growth and other body functions, too much fat can lead to obesity and heart disease.
As well as energy we need vitamins and minerals.  Different foods contain different vitamins and minerals, which means by choosing a variety of foods every day you can make sure you get the nutrients your body needs.  For example, milk and yoghurt are great sources of calcium, but they contain hardly any vitamin C, oranges and kiwi fruits are great for vitamin C, but they do not provide iron, and so it goes on and on and on.

The Balance of Good Health

To help understand healthy eating better, study the Balance of Good Health diagram: you may have seen it in school or in magazines.  It’s a food guide that shows the proportion and types of foods that are needed to make up a healthy balanced diet. The Balance of Good Health applies to teenagers and people of all ages, people of all ethnic origins, people who are vegetarian and people who are overweight.
The guide is divided into five food groups:

• Bread, potatoes, breakfast and other cereals
• Fruit and vegetables
• Milk and dairy foods
• Meat, fish, eggs, beans, pulses and nuts
• Foods high in fat and/or sugar

Foods from the two biggest groups should be eaten most often, foods in the next two biggest groups should be eaten in moderation and foods from the smallest group should be eaten least often.
The guide is shaped like a dinner plate to make it easy to understand and interpret. But it is not necessary to achieve this balance at every meal; balance should be achieved over a day or even a week. The amount of food you need to eat depends on how much energy you need.  This depends on how old you are, whether you are a girl or a boy and how active you are. Some foods are a bit trickier to put into a food group; they may fit into two or three. Take pizza for example, it has a dough base with toppings. The dough base counts as a starchy food. The topping may contain dairy food (cheese) and vegetables (tomoatoes, mushrooms, pepper) as well as meat or fish (pepperoni, tuna, ham).  To achieve a better balance a home-made pizza could be made with a reduced fat cheese or less cheese and more tomato sauce and other vegetables. Including a side salad with the pizza would increase the amount of vegetables eaten, and fruit could be eaten to complete the meal.

Meat, Fish, Eggs, Beans, Pulses & Nuts

You need to eat the foods in this group to get enough protein which the body needs to grow and develop. These foods also contain nutrients like iron, zinc, magnesium and B vitamins. To make sure you don’t eat too much fat, choose leaner cuts of meat and trim off any visible fat and skin. When you cook them, bake or grill instead of frying.
But don’t forget, you do need some fat in your diet and not all types of fat are unhealthy. The fats found in olive oil, nuts, seeds and oily fish are good for you. In fact when it comes to fish, it is recommended that you eat two portions a week and that at least one of these is an oily fish such as salmon, trout, mackerel or sardines.

Nutrients Provided

The main nutrients provided by this group of foods are:

• Protein
• Iron
• B vitamins (especially vitamin B₁₂ from meat and fish)
• Zinc
• Magnesium

Practical Advice

• Eat moderate amounts of foods from this group and choose lower fat versions where possible.
• These foods should cover about  a third of your plate.
• Choose lean meats and remove visible fat.
• Take the skin off chicken or turkey.
• Limit chicken and fish cooked in batter or breadcrumb coatings.
• Cook these foods without adding fat e.g. by grilling, roasting, baking or in a casserole.
• Aim to eat at least two portions of fish per week, one of which should be oil-rich (oily fish include mackerel, salmon, trout, kippers, pilchards, sardine and fresh tuna -  but canned tuna doesn’t count because the processing removes most of the beneficial oils).

If you are a Vegetarian

It is especially important if you are vegetarian to get your protein, iron, zinc and vitamin B₁₂ from sources other than meat.  Choose from the foods listed below:

• Soya based foods including tofu
• Beans, lentils and chick peas
• Seeds, nuts and nut butters (like peanut butter)

If you eat these foods in combination with cereal foods (such as wholemeal bread, rice, pasta) these will provide you with proteins that are equivalent to those found in meat.
Some vegetarians still eat eggs, milk and fish. These provide a more complete form of protein equivalent to that in meat.
B vitamins can be obtained by eating fortified breakfast cereals, soya foods and yeast extracts (such as marmite or vegemite).

Bread, Potatoes and Cereals

Bread, Potatoes, Breakfast Cereals and other Cereal Foods

Foods from this group should account for about a third of what you eat.  Include them at every meal. Regularly eating starchy foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, breakfast cereals and pasta can help keep the amount of fat in your diet in check. Choose wholemeal and wholegrain versions most of the time to boost your fibre intake and keep your bowels healthy.
It’s easy to add fat to the foods in this group; butter on bread, frying potatoes to make chips, adding creamy sauces to pasta.  Too much fat in the diet is unhealthy so keep this in mind when choosing what to eat.

Dangories Injuries

This unfortunate young was going to marry in two weeks time. The wedding had been planned and prepared since long. Now she came to the hospital with severe soft tissue injuries of the face after an awful event that could spoil her bright future.

She is a victim of attempted “forced marriage” as people call it here. A rejected man whom she knows well decided to abduct her with the help of three other men. If he manages to keep her in his house for the night, she will have no other choice than to marry him according to the local culture and tradition.

This lady was however not easy to subdue. In the end the four perpetrators had to bring her to the nearby health center with severe soft tissue injuries of the face, claiming that she fell from a horse. That could be true, but they forgot to tell that it happened while they were trying to abduct her.

After her version of the event became known the police was called, and the men were imprisoned.

I sincerely hope that her fiancé will have the courage not to abandon her. She only reached grade four at school, but she is very bright and determined. A wonderful girl – the best wife you could get.

Abduction is an old tradition which is forbidden by law since long. A lot of posters informing about this issue are spread all over in the countryside. It is however still practiced, but more often as a way for two young people in love to get each other in spite of the families’ resistance. If the families for some reason do not approve a marriage between two young people, the couple can get around by arranging an abduction with the help of some friends. After that the families are facing a “fait a complit” and have no other options than to accept the “forced marriage”.

A nine years old girl from Mendi was operated yesterday for a cleft lip.

In the first place her father and uncle had taken her to the regional hospital in the provincial capital, Nekamte. From there she was referred to Addis Abeba. As simple farmers they couldn’t afford to stay in the capital city waiting for her chance to be operated – usually a matter of several months or sometimes even a year.

Finally they took her to our hospital in Aira where she was operated the day after arrival at a cost of 300 birr (25 €).

The uncle is 30 years older than his brother. Their father, the girl’s grandfather, had 14 children. The uncle has 9 children and the father two. An interesting picture of family planning being gradually accepted.

The father has promised to send the girl to school after returning back home from their long Odyssey.

The last picture is of a lady from Asosa who suffered from a fistula (se FISTULA) since 8 years.

The fistula was easily repaired and she is dry and clean as she has not been for all these years.

In Begi, which is situated at the same distance from Aira as Asosa, the Norwegian mission has an ongoing “woman’s project”. One of the activities of that project is to collect and shuffle fistula patients all the way to Addis Abeba, where the famous Fistula Hospital is situated.

NO MOTHER - NO MILK

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Patients usually present late to the hospital, sometimes even too late. That a newborn baby was brought to the hospital with congenital anal atresia (absence of the anal opening) in the middle of the night - only two days after delivery - was an unusual and encouraging event.

Otherwise babies with this abnormality are brought only when the abdomen is extremely distended with undelivered stool and gas causing respiratory depression.

Then a life saving emergency colostomy is made, an the reconstructive surgery will be performed done

This baby was admitted as “24 hours emergency” without the obligatory deposit of 500 birr (35 €). This routine is used for all life threatening emergencies when money is not available on the spot. After life saving treatment the relatives are supposed to bring money - unless they are obviously very poor.

The baby was operated successfully in the morning after arrival. Everything went according to the book with professional intubation anesthesia, atraumatic reconstruction of the anal opening and postoperative surveillance.

The staff was instructed to let the child breast feed as soon as it was awake to minimize the use of i.v. infusion which can be a risk for a newborn if not followed very strict and carefully - not exactly the most outstanding of our existing nursing care.

To my great surprise the baby was still on i.v. infusion at the round the morning after surgery. It turned out that the woman who was with the baby was not his mother although that was what she claimed to be on admission.

I never manage to figure out exactly what relation she had to the baby – grandmother? She claimed that the mother was at home in the countryside, a bit far from Aira. To bring her seemed not possible for obscure reasons. The best option was to discharge her with the baby so that he could get breastfed as soon as possible. She disappeared with lightening speed, without settling the bill.

I still wonder who she was and why the baby was left without his mother. I only hope that he will be given proper attention and breast milk.

DANGEROUS NEEDLES!

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Injection needles are dangerous weapons. That’s why used needles are disposed of in containers dispersed all over the hospital, in the wards and the operating theater.

Unfortunately not all medical staff is pedantic enough in this issue. After a vaccination campaign in a neighboring province needles were thrown and left on the ground. A small boy found the used needles and started to play with them. Accidentally he injured his left eye with a terrible infection as a result. He came one week after the injury to our hospital with a furious infection in a blind eye. The only option was to do an evisceration of the eye (see page EVISCERATION OF THE EYE).

In this case the eye was filled with pus under pressure, and after evacuating the eye it was packed with gauze for 24 hours. He lost an eye but saved his life.

Monday, January 26th, 2009

The vast majority of the Ethiopians, Christians as well as Moslems, do not eat pig meat. However some tribes around the border to Sudan hunt wild pig for the meat. Unfortunately the meat is often consumed not well cocked or even raw, and occasionally we see patients with severe trichinosis. The condition is serious since there is now efficient treatment, and some cases are fatal.

Now and then a hunter visits our house and offers us to buy a piece of fresh pig meat.

If only the meat is prepared carefully and cocked long there is no danger, and the meat is soft and delicious.

Yesterday we received a farmer who was attacked by a wild pig as he was trying to protect his harvest. Maybe as revenge from being hunted previously? Anyhow the animal attacked the buttocks of the unfortunate patient. Luckily enough the wounds didn’t penetrate to the rectum and the sphincter was intact. So it was only to clean and leave the wounds open to heal under antibiotic cover (never close a wound caused by animal or human bite!)

Everything brakes down these days. Now it is our electrical suction machine, which we bought when I came to Aira 5 years ago. It has already undergone a couple of repairs. I think we can manage to fix it again. Otherwise we will have to use the mop and wring technique as before – that always works!

Tags: animal bite, rectal injury, wild pig
Posted in General surgery | Comments Off

MARASMUS CURED BY SURGERY!

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Now when I have retrieved my collection of pictures from the crashed hard disc I can build on the pages of this site again. Take a look of the new pages – and some refurbished older ones.

I can also show some more interesting and rewarding surgical cases.

For some mysterious reasons curative health care - in particular surgery - has been declared pariah by the crowd of aid organizations. What is generally not understood is that surgery is an extremely cost efficient treatment with a very low cost-benefit rate (low cost/great benefit).

A lot of surgery is even done as a preventive measure – as true preventive medicine. Just as we vaccinate to prevent whooping cough, we operate hernias to prevent incarceration, morbidity and death.

The prerequisite for successful surgery is a correct diagnosis. Look at this 6 weeks old baby who was admitted in the pediatric ward as a case of severe Marasmus (malnutrition).

One clever staff member noticed that he was one of a twin couple and his twin brother looked very well fed.

When questioned, the mother disclosed that the small patient had a vigorous appetite, but vomited explosively after each breast feeding. So the diagnosis became clear - PYLORIC STENOSIS (see that page)

He was operated successfully. Three months after surgery the parents returned with the twins and now you could not tell the difference except from the inconspicuous scar

As a “reward” for taking the effort and expenses for showing up the babies got some nice cloths and blankets. The hand knitted blankets are a gift from the women’s sewing circle at the Löten Church in Uppsala, Sweden.