Archive for August, 2011

The worst anti-acne measures

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

When it comes to dealing with acne there are many things you can actually do to get rid of the problem. There are many different solutions, cremes and methods you can employ to get rid of this unpleasant skin condition. And every solution can be quite effective in different cases. Still, there are some things you should never do to your acne no matter what type of it you seem to have if you don’t want to make the problem even worse. Some of these things may be commonly suggested as an effective solution to acne by people who aren’t very competent on the matter. So if you don’t want to make your acne worse, here are some things you should definitely avoid doing about acne:

Excessive hygiene

While keeping your skin healthy and clean all the time is important becoming fanatic about it may have negative consequences. It is important to remove oil excess and dirt from the skin daily in order to prevent inflammation and bacterial infection. However, if you are washing your skin several times a day and use a strong antibacterial soap or solution for it you risk making your skin too dry and irritating it. This in turn can make your skin more vulnerable to external factors and lead to excessive damage. So don’t become a hygiene maniac if you have acne.

Excessive use of anti-acne solutions

Moderation is one of the most important aspects for any type of treatment including anti-acne solution use. While used in small or moderate amounts, most acne treatments can be very effective and eliminate acne breakouts effectively. However, if you feel that the solution isn’t working as desired or just want to get results faster using excessive amounts of it or more often than needed can actually damage your skin and make the acne problem even worse.

Mixing different solutions

It may seem like a rational move to mix different effective solutions for acne in order to maximize the benefit and get results faster. However, this is definitely not the brightest thing to do if you want to keep your skin healthy. Different solutions use different ingredients that may interact with each other and cause side effects. Moreover, by combining several topical solutions you can irritate your skin and cause additional problems that will ultimately lead to acne breakouts. (more…)

How should we treat pain?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

The role of doctors in our culture is very important. Because they can be useful in treating injuries and illnesses, they have become a profession. To ensure only the best people enter the profession, there are high educational standards to meet. The training is long and difficult. But, once doctors have qualified, they command respect. This is not just for the knowledge and experience they have collected. The power of the placebo effect also relies on believing the doctors actually know what they are doing. Remember, in all clinical trials, placebos are rated as highly effective by an average one-third of participants. If someone in a white coat gives you a pill in the right circumstances, you are likely to feel better even though the pill is made out of chalk. It’s all part of the magic of being a doctor.

The profession has also made big strides in shaping public opinion. The general practitioners used to be the gods. Now, thanks to television shows like House, it’s the surgeons in the top hospitals. Not that any of them are like House, you understand. But many do feel they can do what they want. So they develop reputations for their skills and build empires inside their hospitals. This grows their income and protects them. Why? Because once a patient is allocated to a particular empire, it holds on to that patient. That means the empire gets the credit for all the fee income earned and, if anything goes wrong, no one outside the empire gets to hear about it.

In other countries where they practise socialized medicine, there’s a team approach to treatment. Instead of one doctor having a monopoly on controlling treatment, the patient becomes the focus of interest for a group of healthcare professionals representing a range of relevant knowledge and skills. There are regular meetings where groups of people discuss how best to treat the individual. Collective decisions are taken. Why is this better? Well, suppose a patient comes in and reports pain. The first doctor diagnoses the problem and begins treatment. Some time later, the patient is still complaining of pain. In our system, the first doctor might fear loss of reputation if he or she calls for a second opinion, so simply prescribes more painkillers. If the pain persists, the dosage of the painkillers is increased or stronger drugs are used. The result is our country has the highest consumption of prescribed medications in the world. We’ve been persuaded the best treatment always comes in a pill bottle. In other countries, doctors and other healthcare professional work hard to avoid prescribing drugs. This not only cuts down the long-term cost of treatment, but also tends to produce better results. (more…)

Can yoga help with back pain?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Back pain is certainly one of those health problems that can seriously mess with one’s life. Feeling pain in the back can restrict many of your activities and make even the simplest everyday tasks seem like the toughest physical challenge. We all know that the back is a part of our body that is linked to many activities like walking, climbing stairs, lifting weights and even laying in bed. So when this area is affected by pain people immediately look for different pain relief options to normalize their activities. The most common choice is of course taking oral painkillers or using painkiller cremes and gels to get instant pain relief. (more…)

What is pain?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

When we’re born, we pause helpless for a month or so and then begin the process of exploring the world. In this, pain is a vital part of the learning process. We knock into hard objects and fall. Only when we understand cause and effect can we move around safely. If parents and authority figures are responsible, they teach us some degree of acceptance. Life cannot stop just because of a little pain. You have to pick yourself up and go on with what you were doing. This also builds self-confidence, a sense we can work through discomfort and pain to produce the results we want. Although parents are right to have a general protectiveness, all children should be allowed to develop a tolerance for pain. Should the day come when they are involved in accidents or fall more seriously ill, they should be psychologically prepared. It does no one any good if they collapse in a heap, weeping and wailing we should make the pain go away. For better or worse, we need pain to survive.

Put simply, pain is a warning system when something goes wrong with the body. Where and how we live is also full of potential dangers. Without pain, we might not immediately notice if we pick up something that’s too hot. Either way, we must know to get medical attention, or quickly drop the hot object and then get medical attention. The problem with this wonderful system then becomes all too obvious. When we’ve done the right thing and got medical attention, we cannot turn off the pain. It’s like when one of those burglar alarms starts ringing in the property next to ours and no one comes to switch it off. The noise can drive you nuts. But we don’t want to completely disable the system. Really we want to reset it so that it will sound the alarm again if there’s a new problem or the old problem gets worse.

Let’s say you have a broken leg. If medical science was able to target one set of pain receptors and switch them off, would that be a good thing? You might go from pain when moving to no pain. Except the pain is there to warn you if the way you are moving may cause more problems. If you suddenly have no pain, you might try walking as if there was nothing wrong and make the injury worse. In the general situation, having some pain is more useful than having no pain. The only time making all the pain go away is useful is when your condition is terminal. In such sad cases, there’s no point in retaining any of the pain warning system. Shutting it all down is the merciful thing to do. (more…)