A repeat laparoscopy, also sometimes known as a second-look laparoscopy, is performed some time after a diagnostic laparoscopy in order to monitor the progression of your endometriosis. It is most commonly performed for one of the following reasons:

• following a course of hormonal treatment

• continued infertility following surgery

• recurrence of symptoms

• persistence of symptoms following an apparently normal laparoscopy.

Following hormonal treatment

A repeat laparoscopy at the end of a course of hormonal treatment enables your gynecologist to see exactly how effectively the treatment has eradicated your endometriosis. The location and size of your implants and cysts can be charted and compared to the chart that was made during the laparoscopy performed before your hormonal treatment began.

If the repeat laparoscopy showed that the treatment had eradicated your endometriosis then nothing further needs to be done for the time being. If it showed that the treatment had only been partially effective then it might be worthwhile considering a continuation of the same treatment. If it showed that the treatment had been ineffective you will need to consider some other form of treatment.

Infertility

If you have had surgery in order to improve your chances of conceiving, a repeat laparoscopy may be recommended if you have not conceived within six to twelve months of the surgery. In this situation the laparoscopy will be performed to determine whether or not any adhesions have developed that may be reducing your chances of pregnancy.

Recurrence

A repeat laparoscopy is advisable if you have a recurrence of your symptoms following a period of remission, particularly if you are contemplating any treatment. You really need to know that the symptoms are due to endometriosis and not some other condition. In addition, it is advisable not to undertake any hormonal treatment unless you know that you definitely have endometriosis.

Normal laparoscopy

A repeat laparoscopy may be advisable if you have had persistence or worsening of symptoms that may be due to endometriosis, despite the fact that you have previously had an apparently normal diagnostic laparoscopy. It is now recognized that, in the past, a proportion of women with endometriosis were incorrectly diagnosed as not having endometriosis because their gynecologists did not recognize their atypical implants or because they had microscopic endometriosis.

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Filed under: Category Women's Health | Tags: Women’s Health by admin
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One of the most fascinating avenues of biochemical research over the past few years led to the discovery that the body manufactures its own natural painkillers. These substances became known as endorphins, from endo (meaning “arising from within”) and morphine. Evidence suggests that endorphins play a direct role in regulating appetite and affect other functions such as pain relief, memory-even blood pressure.

Like a lock that accepts only a certain key, cells of the central nervous system have receptors that accept and respond only to particular endorphins. For example, it appears that one receptor involved in stimulating appetite (called the “kappa” receptor) is designed to work only with the substance known as dynorphin. Dynorphin molecules fit into the kappa receptors. Nerve impulses then travel to the hypothalamus, which interprets and relays them as hunger cues. Appetite is thus stimulated, particularly for sweet-tasting foods.

Scientists soon found that rats given morphine (which increases endorphin activity) and allowed to choose from among the macronutrients tended to increase their fat intake while ignoring the carbohydrates. The investigators then administered drugs known to block the opiate receptors. Doing so, they found, tended to suppress eating. They found the same effect in humans. They then theorized that use of opiate blockers (also known as opiate antagonists) suppresses appetite by producing feelings of fullness or satiety.

But what triggers the release of endorphins in the first place? Further experiments found that food deprivation or stress can play a role. In other words, if you are under stress-pressure at work or school, for example-your body secretes endorphins to control the damage. Some of those endorphins ease any physical pain you might be feeling, while others work to stimulate your appetite, especially for sweet foods. You may respond to these signals from your hypothalamus by gobbling down a slice of pie, for example.

But why should eating sugar help relieve stress? Why doesn’t lettuce (to pick a food at random) have the same effect?

As it turns out, the very act of eating sugar stimulates the opiate-releasing process even further. Not only does sugar make the body release more endorphins, it also enhances the ability of the receptor to bind with the substance-like oiling a lock to make a key work better. Thus, eating sweet foods does indeed relieve stress, producing feelings of relaxation and contentment by enhancing the amount of natural painkillers floating around inside the body.

You might have spotted the flaw in this otherwise tidy little system. Here’s the problem: When a person is under stress, the body releases endorphins that stimulate the appetite for sweet foods. The person then eats a candy bar. The sugar in turn stimulates further secretion of endorphins, triggering greater appetite and leading to more consumption of sweets. Where does the cycle end?

As you might have suspected, it may not end. Theory has it that some people with bulimia might be caught up in the vicious cycle represented by the opiate-receptor feedback loop.

A bulimic will typically skip meals in the belief that doing so will keep her weight under control. But skipping meals only defers appetite; it doesn’t eliminate it. Eventually the urge to eat becomes overpowering, leading to a binge. Food deprivation itself can trigger the release of endorphins, which in turn stimulate appetite. Thus a bulimic who deprives herself of meals causes her body to produce a powerful natural appetite stimulant.

Many a patient reports that her binges occur in times of stress. Research has shown that stress also cranks up the endorphin system. Finally, when a binge leads to consumption of high-sugar items-ice cream, cookies, candy-even more opiates are released, stimulating appetite even further, and the vicious cycle kicks into high gear. For many, the only thing that disrupts this process is a drastic measure: self-induced vomiting.

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Filed under: Category Weight Loss | Tags: Weight Loss by admin
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Having discovered the secret of calorie-burning chores, Kay Black has never had a trimmer figure—or a cleaner, more organized house.

When Kay, age 55, recalls how she started losing weight, she laughs, “It was an accident.” Not that she didn’t wantto lose weight. Sure, she was carrying an unwanted 60 pounds on her frame; and of course she was tired of being mistaken for her daughter’s grandmother. But she simply couldn’t find the motivation to exercise.

Then Kay decided to organize her family’s books—all 5,400 of them—by cataloging them on her new computer. “I teach college geography, so I do a lot of reading,” she explains. “Besides, my family just loves books.” Each night, she’d carry several armloads upstairs, type up the data, and tote the books back downstairs. She’d stretch for 15 to 20 minutes to prevent next-day stiffness, then take a hot bath. By the time the project was complete, she had lost 5 pounds!

Kay decided that this was too easy not to continue. “Nothing breeds success like success,” she says. She stripped and repainted her daughter’s room and rearranged the attic. She shoveled snow in the winter and turned her garden into a “gym” in the summer. She took up walking, too, usually getting a 40- to 50-minute workout 5 days a week.

These days, Kay is a svelte 112 pounds, down from her heaviest of 172 pounds. Her family’s book collection is as organized as ever. And her house is so tidy that she’s even prepared for unexpected guests.

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The stress phobic must snap out of his or her depression before progress can be made in dealing with fears of confrontation, rejection and failure. All the affirmations, especially those for happiness, success and self-respect, should be repeated over and over again every day. This affirmation, too, should be a part of the stress phobic’s daily regimen:

All things are now working together for health, happiness, success and love in my life. Each morning is the start of an exciting new day, a fresh new look at the world. Every day brings more opportunities for me to assert myself and make my world a wonderful place to be.

To help build confidence in their ability to deal with the stresses of everyday life, I often give this affirmation to my stress-phobic patients:

I am a confident and extremely capable person. People really respect and like me. I have interesting, worthwhile and challenging goals. I am a success!

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Filed under: Category General health | Tags: General health by admin
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The Walking President

President Harry Truman had a regimen of brisk walking. He walked at the Army pace: 110 steps per minute. Reporters would often follow, throwing questions at him as they huffed and puffed along. They used to complain that he was walking too fast for them, even though they were younger than he was. When he came back to Washington for a visit he was in his 70′s: the reporters who were following him on his walk still had difficulty keeping up with him.

The Formula for Success

Twenty five minutes of nonstop, brisk walking, four days a week, will boost your immune system, strengthen your heart and lungs, lower cholesterol levels, raise your HDL (good) cholesterol, tone your leg muscles, help control your weight and fight high blood pressure.

But 25 minutes a day, four days a week, isn’t enough brisk walking to burn 2,000 calories a week. That’s why it’s very important to combine your regular brisk-walking sessions with lots of spontaneous brisk walks to the store, around the neighborhood, up and down stairs, visiting your nearby friends and so on. Look for ways to add steps each day.

Walking Relieves Back Pain

Walking is actually good for your lower back. Standing up or walking is easier on your back than sitting down; the mechanical load is less. Most of my patients with lower-back pain report that regular walking helps relieve the pain. Furthermore, it helps reduce the distress and frustration that is caused by the pain.

Sometimes I have my lower-back-problem patients begin by walking slowly and gently, or walking only on soft, grassy surfaces. But soon, most of them are able and eager to walk briskly and get all the other benefits of this simple but very effective aerobic exercise.

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Is the deficit of a vitamin or two all that harmful? After all, you never hear of anyone in this country dying from a lack of vitamin C or iron. Death certificates rarely state that the cause of death was nutrient deficiency. But as a physician I can tell you that many illnesses and deaths are caused by, or related to, nutrient imbalances. It may be lack of certain vitamins and minerals, or it may be excess fat, cholesterol or sugar that’s the culprit. A shortage or excess of even one nutrient can knock your immune system off balance. While your immune system totters, you’re more susceptible to disease. I’ve treated thousands of patients whose problems were related to a nutrient-starved immune system.

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Our “doctor within” is also forced to deal with the multitude of environmental pollutants that abound in our chemical world. When I taught a class in Physical Diagnosis to a group of medical students, I used to paraphrase Hippocrates: “When you go to patients’ houses, you should ask them what sort of pains they have, what brought them on, how many days they have been ill, are their bowels working and what sort of food do they eat?” Today we have to ask an additional question: What toxins (poisons) are you exposed to in your home and workplace? We live in an environment saturated with man-made chemicals, many of them very dangerous to our health. They’re in our food, our air, our water, our homes, our clothes, our cars, our offices.

I see more and more people who are complaining of vague symptoms and recurrent illnesses that can be traced to the chemical poisoning of our immune system. Laboratory test results often show high levels of pesticides, solvents and other toxic chemicals in patients. Lead, mercury, chloroform, DDT, DDE and many other substances have a depressing effect upon the “doctor within.” Quite often the symptoms—fatigue, loss of energy, forgetfulness, personality changes, depression—give us only general clues as to the identity of the culprit.

How much is too much? When it comes to chemical poisoning of the body, we just don’t know. New chemical compounds are being introduced at a fast and furious pace. If scientists were to start conducting the rigorous tests they should have been doing all along, they would probably never catch up with all the new chemicals.

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Medical science is never exact, for a variety of reasons. For a start everyone is different, both in the genes that make them what they are, and in the environmental conditions that shape them from birth. Those environmental conditions include childhood and adult illnesses, standard of nutrition, type of work, nature of relationships with other people, past medical treatments and present living conditions. A collection of patients also differ in their age and sex, two very important factors in health and illness. Their response to treatment is bound to differ for these reasons alone.

A second major factor is the imprecise nature of diagnosis. Names may be given to diseases – ‘rheumatoid arthritis’, for example, or ‘migraine’ – but this does not mean that they are single, .clearly defined conditions, in the way that infectious diseases such as measles or cholera are. Doctors suspect that, although the symptoms look similar, there are a multitude of different disorders sheltering under such umbrella terms. One of the ways in which medicine advances is by-recognizing different subgroups within such diseases, and giving new names to the symptoms shown by those subgroups – ‘classical migraine’ and ‘common migraine’, for example. But in many diseases, there are no obvious subgroups, even though it is clear that the patients are not all the same. This is particularly true in food intolerance.

To overcome these problems in medical trials, it is important to study as large a group of patients as possible. Because the patients suffering from a disease can be so diverse, a new treatment may only be effective for, say, 10 percent of them. A study that only includes 20 patients should, in a perfect world, include two patients who will respond. But when numbers are this small, die laws of chance dictate that there could easily be no patients of this type in the group. So a group of 100 patients may be needed to give a convincing result -but such large-scale trials are costly and difficult to organize.

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Filed under: Category Allergies | Tags: Allergies by admin
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This experience provides a strong argument in favour of changing over to whole cereals, including whole wheat and whole rye. It is incomprehensible how students who have seen films or experiments showing what happens to pigeons when they are fed on refined rice can continue to eat the very food that is responsible for such devastating results. They seem blind and thoughtless in the face of the evidence. Why spend time and effort in tireless research if the findings continue to be ignored by the consumer? Is it not strange that the consumer often prefers to take the consequences and become sick, rather than make a change in his diet?

Remember that natural rice, also known as unpolished, whole or brown rice, contains nine and a half times more minerals than the polished, refined kind. It is these minerals that are of vital importance to us. Observations have shown that whole rice contains substances that keep the blood vessels elastic for much longer and it is for this reason that Asians seldom suffer from hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure.

Whole or brown rice should be prepared in the same way as refined rice, only do not pour away the rice water. The rice should be soaked in as much water as it is able to absorb and cooked in as little water as it requires to soften without the grains sticking together. Then the nutritional elements will not be wasted or lost. Brown rice can be served in a number of ways, and many Chinese and Middle Eastern recipes are excellent for this purpose.

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In my discussion on wheat and wholegrain bread I highlight the merits of wholegrain products and how the various cereals grown in different parts of the earth are a useful source of food that does not perish easily. It was only a few decades ago when researchers discovered that wheat germ is, in fact, an excellent remedy; this equally applies, of course, to wheat germ oil. Since more and more people are rejecting the use of chemical medicines, physicians, naturopaths and physiotherapists are ever more compelled to turn their attention to remedies that are made from basic materials as nature provides them. Many competent and skilled researchers have been studying the oils contained in cereal germs, and have found that the remedial effects of wheat germ oil are remarkable.

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