Some of the risk factors that may contribute to hearing loss in infants include: illness or drug/alcohol use during pregnancy, birth complications, birth defects, prematurity, jaundice, and infection.

A newborn baby with normal hearing will startle at sudden loud noises. In what is called the Moro Reflex, the baby will fling his arms out then pull them in close.

Your baby might not startle at every loud noise, such as your dog barking, because he might already be used to it. But if you suddenly drop all your pots and pans on the floor and baby doesn’t react at all, you should talk to your pediatrician.

In this study by Beisland and colleagues, out of Norway, the association of RCC with other malignancies is again examined.

In this retrospective analysis, 1425 patients with RCC presented over a 6 year period and were evaluated for the presence of an antecedent, synchronous, or subsequent other malignancy. There were 909 men and 516 women.Mean patient age was 59.1 and the median time of observation after the diagnosis of RCC was 12 years. Of these 1425 patients, 257 were found to have another malignancy.

In descending order, the most common other malignancies were prostate, bladder, lung, breast, and colon. In this study, 34.8% of the other malignancies were antecedent, 18.7% were synchronous, and 46.7% were subsequent to the diagnosis of RCC. The observed subsequent development of a second malignancy was significantly higher (22%) than was expected based on population incidences, especially for the development of bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and melanoma.

The 15 year cumulative risk for the development of a secondary malignancy was 26.6% for men and 15.5% for women (p=0.04). Interestingly, in this study, patients that presented with an antecedent or synchronous other malignancy demonstrated a significantly worse survival.

This study, like others in the literature, suggests that there is an epidemiologic link between RCC and other malignant tumors. In particular, the increased risk (26.6% for men at 15 years) of developing a subsequent malignancy suggests that long term follow-up and general cancer surveillance screening is appropriate in this patient population.

As such, the Dr Phil Diet is somewhat different from low or no carbohydrate plans such as the Atkins and South Beach diets.
What the Dr Phil diet does have in common with these other programs is that it’s not about counting calories, points, or fat grams.

Instead, Shape Up is about feeding your body and mind with the right kinds of foods; the foods that will help you achieve and maintain the weight that’s best for you.

This provide the best base for losing weight and improving your health without being hungry, compromising good nutrition or being unable to sustain your energy levels.

To make choosing the correct foods even easier, the Shape Up diet program is based around pre-planned menus that consist of portions that are just the right size for you. Weight loss aids such as supplements, nutrition bars and shakes are also available.

What are the long-term effects of this cortisone? Doesn’t it go to your heart and harden the arteries? Will the needle with the cortisone be put in my finger or hand, and how painful will it be?

J.M.

A.Trigger finger is a condition typically caused by nodules (growths) or swelling of the flexor tendons of the fingers that results in locking of the affected finger.

Patients often come in with pain in the palm at the base of the finger, as well as a locking sensation when the finger is bent.

Used historically since the Middle Ages to treat an astonishing variety of ailments from water retention, gonorrhea, liver, spleen and gallstone blockages, to malaria, parsley was also worn around the necks of ancient Romans at banquets to absorb alcoholic fumes and reduce intoxication!

Today, parsley is most often credited with diuretic properties, relieving flatulence and bloating and addressing both menstrual and prostate problems. Parsley’s high chlorophyll content also makes it a “socially useful” herb to freshen breath, and is frequently paired with garlic, as in the taboulleh salad, to counteract garlic’s strong taste and odor. Current studies link parsley to possible cancer treatments, and it may improve adrenal malfunction in cases of low blood sugar.

Externally, a poultice of bruised fresh parsley leaves help soothe insect bites, bruises, and itchy, cracked or chapped skin, while it has been cited as useful in removing freckles, liver spots, moles and even head lice. An old remedy uses violets, parsley, red clover and pansies in an ointment to removing skin, while another recipe pairs boiled parsley and houseleek in milk to relieve bed wetting in children.

Parsley is not recommended, however, for pregnant women, as it could cause uterine contractions.

The two most familiar types of parsley are the curly, petroselinum crispum, and the Italian flat-leafed variety, petroselinum sativum, also known as “Hamburg.” Also called “smallage,” parsley has seen a colorful past marked with the rise and fall of favor through the centuries. In 1682, a publication called The English Midwife associated it with increasing the flow of breast milk and, quite interestingly, also increasing lust; however, another source said that parsley could be used to dry up breast milk by putting bruised parsley under the armpits!

There are many legends connected with parsley, one stating that if parsley grows well, then the lady of the house is the dominant resident. Another says that it only grows in a witch’s garden. The Greeks fed it to their chariot horses that, according to Homer, made them run faster. Parsley is dedicated to Persephone, the Queen of Hades, and is associated with ancient Greek funeral rites.

For culinary uses, parsley is best at bringing out the flavors of other herbs, especially in salads or with vegetables. Try mixing it with basil for a delicious pesto variation, or mix with fresh basil and summer savory and sprinkle on tomato slices for a peppery flavor.

Parsley is an important ingredient in bouquet garni and excellent in sauces, soups, fish and cheese dishes.

Herb butters are also great ways to enjoy parsley. To make parsley butter, blend 2 tablespoons chopped parsley to one-quarter stick softened butter. Add a touch of lemon juice or white wine to enhance the flavor, mix well and refrigerate. Or, make a parsley sauce for cold lamb or beans by finely chopping 1 hard-boiled egg and mixing well with 3 tablespoons of French dressing and 6 tablespoons of fresh or dried parsley. Let this stand for a half hour before serving.

Sow parsley seeds densely in spring and throughout the summer, as it is notoriously slow and erratic to germinate. Myth says this is because the “seed has to go back 7 times to the Devil” before it grows, and several sources recommended soaking the seeds overnight or steeping in boiling water to aid germination. Parsley likes alkaline or neutral soil, keeping it moist but well drained. It prefers full sun or light shade, and is successfully grown in containers, flowering with green-yellow flowers in June and July. Hardy to 0 degrees, some varieties can reach 2 feet. The flat-leafed Italian parsley is considered more vigorous than the curly variety and it’s recommended to collect the leaves in the second year of growth for the best flavor.

You may purchase most reliable and safe herbal essences to help you stay beautiful, reduce fat, build muscle and also boost your sex drive.

We have to match these with the most similar hand from a materia medica, which might contain a number of picture cards and several hundred number cards over and above the ones we are interested in. We would want to find the Queen and the Ace in the materia medica hand — it would be suspicious if they were not present. However a particular candidate would not be ruled out if the materia medica hand contained symptoms which were not in the patient hand, even if they were quite significant.

This is because the pool of symptoms in the materia medica hand contains all possible symptoms known to be produced in a range of individuals by the medicine concerned. Not all of these symptoms are found in every patient, or in a patient at every stage of the illness. At the time when a patient first develops symptoms they may be few in number, and confined to one sub-system of the body. As the illness develops, the number of symptoms will grow, and spread to other sub-systems.

Match-making

So our analysis and consideration of the case is essentially a matter of making and matching — making a selection of the most significant symptoms present in the patient, and matching these with a selection of symptoms in a materia medica entry for a medicine. In order to ensure that there is some focus in the process we look at the incidence or non-incidence of particular symptoms, but the process is imperfect for two reasons. First, certain medicines (the so-called “polychrests”) have been studied far more than others.

This is partly because they produced a wider spectrum of symptoms than other medicines, but also may be a result of accidents of history. Therefore these medicines will always be statistically over-represented in analysis by individual symptoms. Second, the symptoms themselves are not the primary layer of the illness. They are the manifestations of illness. Because the primary equilibrium is disturbed, at a level we cannot measure or see, the body eventually, in its imbalance, brings forth symptoms. But these are not the primary phenomenon.

We can get around this problem by thinking in terms of the state or condition of the patient as well as looking at individual symptoms. Many of the symptoms of Coffea are found in other medicines. But as soon as we start thinking in terms of medicines which produce over-stimulation, then we are drawn towards medicines such as Belladonna, Chamomilla, Coffea, and a few others. We can often benefit by matching our patient symptoms against such a sub-group of candidate medicines which match the overall condition of the patient.

Thus the gifted clinicians, such as Kent, who have been writing materia medicas since the time of Hahnemann, have been able to draw out the themes in a medicine. These themes derive from the condition or state of the patient, which is at the origin of all the individual symptoms. We are really trying to find a medicine which is a perfect match for the condition of the patient, rather than a perfect match for the patient’s individual symptoms, although the individual symptoms are an invaluable guide to that match.

Whenever one first encounters a homeopathic materia medica, it can be difficult to read. This is because the indications are the mirror image of the indications in the materia medicas of other schools of medicine. All the indications in the homeopathic materia medica represent the primary symptoms of the medicines — the “negative” symptoms they can produce. However we can work from these collections of primary symptoms to find a medicine which can produce similar symptoms , and thereby initiate a secondary reaction in the patient which will restore the sick to health which, as Hahnemann reminds us, is the physician’s “high and only mission.”

One of Hahnemann’s greatest insights was the realization that this reaction of the mind/body system could be mobilized through the law of similars. Returning to our example of cinchona bark, he realized that the primary action of cinchona bark was to produce malaria-like symptoms such as periodic fevers with chills. These are the toxic effects produced in certain cases by exposure to Cinchona. In the case of a patient who already had these “morbid” symptoms as a result of malaria itself, exposure to Cinchona would produce first an intensification of the patient’s existing symptoms (the homeopathic aggravation), and then a reaction of the system which would draw the patient towards health.

To take another example which will be familiar to readers who are not themselves expert homeopaths: most of us are familiar with the “side-effects” of taking too much coffee. Excessive intake of coffee will bring about symptoms such as trembling, rapid pulse, agitation of the mind, disturbed sleep and restlessness. We are all familiar with these symptoms, which are brought about by the stimulating effects of caffeine, but many other symptoms are produced by coffee which are less familiar, such as increased production of urine. The caffeine in the coffee is a drug, whose primary action on the body is to produce all these effects, and many others besides. It is only too common to use coffee as an allopathic non-prescription drug – students artificially counteract the mind/body system’s natural desire for sleep, for example, when they are studying through the night for exams. It is impossible, however, to escape the secondary effect. Excessive fatigue eventually catches up with us — perhaps during the exam itself!

The homeopathic use of coffee is much more creative. Coffea cruda and Coffea tosta (derived from unroasted and roasted coffee, respectively) have very similar, but subtly different profiles of symptoms, including the ones outlined above. Let us consider the case of a young baby with sleeping problems. The baby has great difficulty going to sleep in the evening. He cannot get off to sleep easily by himself, and will lie in bed tossing and turning, and making moaning and crying noises if put straight to bed while he is awake.

Eventually he becomes extremely frustrated and the crying builds up in intensity until he is quite distressed. The same problem recurs during the night, causing his unfortunate parents to suffer from their own set of symptoms related to lack of sleep. He wakes up at 12 p.m. or 2 a.m. and becomes extremely alert, looking around him on all sides, eyes opened wide, starting at sudden noises. During the day he sleeps for perhaps 40 minutes at a time, and only a few times. His cheeks are flushed and red-looking.

The Portrait of a Patient

Most of these symptoms are similar to those listed in T. F. Allen’s Primer of Materia Medica and other materia medicas as being produced by coffee. The important thing to home in on is that they are not a motley collection of unrelated symptoms. They are in fact all aspects of a state or condition — the state of over-stimulation of the nervous system brought about by coffee. In the case described we can identify that state fairly easily, but in other cases it is not so easy to characterize the state of the patient overall. But it is crucial.

In analyzing a case we learn to make a selection of symptoms in the patient which are marked and which are truly distinctive. We then try and match these selected symptoms as best we can to entries in our materia medica, using various tools (which nowadays include computer searches). This can be moderately easy, in some cases, or fiendishly difficult in others. It can be difficult because of the difficulty of the number of symptoms involved in the comparison.

A link between miscarriage and the vitamin had been suspected, especially when previous studies suggested that women who took folic acid might have up to a 16 percent greater risk of miscarrying. But no real proof existed because scientists could not find a large group of women of childbearing age whose vitamin intake habits were known.

Enter the Chinese Ministry of Health.

“This new finding grew out of a larger and earlier cooperative study done with the Chinese government that helped to establish that 400 micrograms of folic acid without any other vitamins could help prevent neural tube defects,” says Dr. R. J. Berry, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “That’s the only time folic acid alone, at that dose, had been looked at.” The results of that study were published in 1999.

Taking this amount of folic acid daily can slash the risk of neural tube birth defects by up to 70 percent, research has shown. The neural tube is the part of the fetus that develops into the brain and spinal cord, and defects here usually happen within four weeks of conception, according to the March of Dimes.

“Two studies in the early ’90s done to show that folic acid could prevent [neural tube defects] contained some other outcomes,” Berry explains. “And so there was some interpretation from that data that showed that women who took vitamin drugs online that contained folic acid had a higher rate of miscarriage — as high as 16 percent. But we could neither prove nor disprove the findings.”

In 1993, China started a program to get women to take folic acid. Women who were registered for marriage or who reported pregnancy in 21 counties were given a bottle of 31 folic acid pills each month, and their usage of the supplement was documented for the first three months of pregnancy. The outcomes of their pregnancies then were compared with women who had not taken folic acid.

“Again, this is the first study that could separate out folic acid alone,” Berry explains. “And the results showed that there was practically no difference in miscarriage rates between those who had taken folic acid before and during the first three months of pregnancy, and those who did not.”

The rate of miscarriage for women who took folic acid was 9.1 percent compared with 9.3 percent for women who did not take the supplement, the study shows. The findings appear in the Sept. 8 issue of The Lancet.

In 1992, the U.S. Public Health Agency recommended that all women should take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily. In 1998, the Institute of Medicine joined in that recommendation.

You can get the vitamin in two ways. Folic acid, a synthetic form of the nutrient, is found in vitamins and fortified foods. Folate is the natural form of the B vitamin, and it’s in orange and other citrus juices, green leafy vegetables and broccoli, beans and the like.

The March of Dimes says many pregnancies involving neural tube defects end in miscarriage or stillbirth, but about 2,500 babies are born each year with the defects. The most common disorder is spina bifida, a leading cause of childhood paralysis. Another common neural tube defect is anencephaly, a fatal condition in which a baby is born with an underdeveloped brain and skull.

Dr. Donald Mattison, medical director for the March of Dimes, headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., calls the study welcome news.

“It’s almost impossible to do any health intervention of any kind without being concerned about some potential adverse effect,” he says. “And one of the issues that was raised in the context of folic acid was the risk of miscarriage.”

“This study clearly demonstrates the safety of folic acid in the context of miscarriage,” Mattison says.

“Given the known benefits of folic acid, this study should provide additional reassurance and encourage women of reproductive age to take the recommended 400 micrograms of folic acid each day,” he adds.

Gastrointestinal symptoms may include loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea or constipation. Occasionally, an unexpected hypersensitivity to the drug may occur, and this is characterized by skin rashes, fever, photosensitivity, and deleterious effects on the blood. Other side effects include fatigue, tingling in various parts of the body, and, occasionally, jaundice.

This is quite an impressive list of possible side effects. Rather than making arbitrary distinctions between those effects we like and those we dislike, it would be more rational to characterize chlorothiazide as a drug which produces greater than normal elimination of salt and water from the body, heart problems, salt and potassium imbalances, gastrointestinal symptoms, fatigue and other symptoms. A practitioner who uses such a drug is counting on being able to make a favorable trade-off between the effects which are wanted and those which are not wanted. It is hoped that the former will be significantly more “marked” than the latter. But since little attempt is usually made to measure all the effects of a drug on a particular patient, particularly the long-term effects in the case of chronic treatment, belief in the favorable nature of the trade-off is often little more than an act of faith.

While some data may be available from clinical trials on the incidence of “side-effects” in a conventional drug, there is rarely any attempt made to draw up an overall balance sheet, so to speak, to try and evaluate whether the overall net effect on the patient is favorable, unfavorable, or whether the positive effects and negative effects cancel each other out. The evidence available to the practitioner about the long-term net effects is usually particularly scanty. And we must always remember that evidence from clinical trials refers to a mythical patient or patients who are representative of the wider population — and such patients do not exist. Only individual patients come through the door of the consulting room whose sensitivity to a particular medicine is unknown.

All of the effects of drugs such as those listed above for chlorothiazide are really toxic effects, including the diuretic action. They are all designed to change the mechanisms of the body away from the state of equilibrium it is currently in. Where that equilibrium is disturbed from its natural state, they act to produce a different state of disturbance which has some desired features. But this approach cannot restore the natural state.

Actions of Medicines

The homeopathic approach is much more rational. One of the most important core principles introduced by Hahnemann is the distinction between the primary action and the secondary action of all medicines. The primary action is the toxic action, in which the medicine changes the body’s state of equilibrium away from its natural state of balance. The secondary action is in effect the body’s reaction. Hahnemann postulates, extending Newton’s laws of motion into a new field, that for every action on the body there is a reaction. This reaction is the body’s attempt to resist the action, and to return to its natural state of balance.

In order to understand fully what Hahnemann is saying here, we have to transform our concept of what a medicine is from the conventional to the homeopathic view. For hundreds of years, physicians have characterized medicines in terms of the desirable actions they have upon the body, of their capacity to oppose the undesirable malfunctions of the body found in a particular illness, and to directly counteract or reduce illness symptoms.

The great weakness of this approach is that the actions of medicines on the total mind-body system are many and various, and go far beyond the malfunctioning mechanisms which are being targeted. Any medicine which is ingested is drawn into the bloodstream and carried to all parts of the body, including the brain, where it may produce unintended effects — the so-called “side-effects’ of modern pharmacology.

The physician is then drawn into a labyrinth trying vainly to understand to what extent the intended effects of the drug outweigh the unintended effects in a particular case. Since it is impracticable to measure all the effects of a given drug on a particular patient, he or she must work in partial or complete darkness in this regard.

In any event, it is not easy to justify the conceptual basis of the distinction between effects and side-effects. It rests merely on a value-judgment — effects are desired and side-effects are not. It cannot be founded on the basis that effects are curative and side-effects not curative, as allopathic medicines are generally not curative by their nature.

One of Hahnemann’s central insights was to cut through this conceptual confusion and say that any medicine, instead of producing effects and side-effects, is characterized by the symptoms it produces, rather than the symptoms it counteracts. In the case of a diuretic, for example, the main desired effect of a conventional medicine is to encourage the kidneys to drain excess fluid from the body.

This, however, is not a curative effect, since it takes place only so long as the medicine is present in the body. It is, in fact, a medically-induced symptom which is opposite in character to the symptom being treated. Such a medicine, if given to a healthy person, would drain the body of fluid excessively, and the intention is that it will bring the patient with edema towards normal functioning.

However, any substance which produces one medicinal effect, however apparently desirable, is likely to produce others which are not so desirable. Take, for example, the diuretic chlorothiazide, which comes under various brand names. In the guide to allopathic medicines produced by the Australian Consumers Association [3], the uses of chlorothiazide are given as “to remove water from the body, for example in hypertension and in many cases of edema.”

The drug works by inhibiting the re-absorption of sodium from the urine by the kidneys so that more urine is produced. This sounds reasonable, and we go on to read that side effects are normally “not marked.” However, the authors point out that the drug can cause levels of potassium in the body to fall below normal, “and this can cause heart problems, especially in the elderly, those taking digitalis-like drugs and those with coronary heart disease.” Since the very patients likely to need a drug for edema and high blood pressure are also likely to have heart conditions and to be elderly, this starts to sound a little worrying.