Men's health blog

January 30, 2011

JOINTS IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS (RA): INFLAMMATION

Filed under: Arthritis — admin @ 11:17 am

When considering how RA affects the joints and why it produces some of the symptoms it does, it is important to recognize that no two people with RA are exactly alike. The severity of RA varies from person to person and joint to joint. Because of these differences it is often difficult to assess precisely how much joint damage is present.

What Is Inflammation?
Inflammation is a common but complicated process that our bodies experience as a response to injury or infection. Inflammation is actually part of the body’s immune system response to the injury or infection. Whenever we cut or burn ourselves, for example, inflammation occurs. Inflammation also occurs at the site of an infection (a person with bronchitis, for example, has inflamed bronchi, or airways). The symptoms and signs of inflammation are warmth, pain, redness, and swelling. The amount of inflammation involved is usually proportional to the severity of the injury or infection.
Under normal circumstances, unique white blood cells called lymphocytes, neutrophils, and macrophages strategically interact with one another to accomplish controlled inflammation. When the goal is fighting an infection, this team of cells works together to defend the body from the foreign invader causing the infection. They communicate with each other by messenger substances or signals called cytokines. In the process of fighting infection, cells produce noxious substances which cause the symptoms of inflammation. Again, under normal circumstances, after the infection is cleared, the cells retreat, and inflammation subsides. In these situations inflammatory cells are extremely useful in protecting the body. After an injury, the goal of these white blood cells is healing, and they work together to accomplish this goal.
Inflammation is usually self-limiting in that it goes away by itself after the infection is cleared from the body. As the infection goes away or the wound is healed and repaired, the signs of inflammation resolve as well.
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January 23, 2011

DECIDING TO COME OFF DRUGS: GETTING A DOCTOR TO HELP

Filed under: Anti-Smoking — admin @ 11:17 am

It’s not always easy for an addict to find a doctor who will be helpful. Many doctors refuse to treat addicts who are using illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine and speed.
Luckily, many of these drugs don’t necessarily need medical help for withdrawals. As you will see in the next chapter, coming off heroin, methadone and many of the illegal drugs is surprisingly safe.
Barbiturates are quite another thing. These drugs can give dangerous withdrawal symptoms, and therefore coming off them should always be done with medical help.
Those who are taking tranquillisers and alcohol should have medical help on coming off – if it’s the right kind of help. The trouble is that the average family doctor doesn’t necessarily know very much about chemical dependence.
Besides, if you already have a doctor, he may be the one who is giving you the tranquillisers on which you are dependent. Good doctors are usually happy when their patients ask for help in coming off their prescribed pills, but occasionally an out-of-date doctor is reluctant to help.      Some do not want to admit that the pills are doing harm, or they do not know how to manage a withdrawal schedule for their patient.
If you think your doctor comes into this category, a chat with long-standing NA or AA members may help you find a new doctor who understands drug dependence better. Treating addicts and alcoholics is still something of a speciality in medicine, rather than general knowledge.
Some addicts need treatment in hospitals and clinics. They just can’t seem to stop and stay stopped without this extra help.

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January 16, 2011

THE PROCESS PARADIGM IN PSYCHIATRY: THE COUPLED EFFECT WITH PSYCHOPHARMICA

Filed under: Anti-Psychotics — admin @ 11:16 am

Hence, if you give someone medication to change his mood from depression to elation, the depressed process may or may not disappear. If it is time for the person to change his mood and to combat these moods, then the medication will also correspond to a change in behavior. If, however, the person’s dreams and process of individuation want that depression for some particular reason, then medication will not work in a causal fashion because of the somatic-psychic coupling.
If you give medication to quiet down a highly aggressive patient, the medication will work only if the patient himself needs a pause from this aggression. But if the patient needs to learn how to use this aggression more consciously, he may not even take the medication in the first place.
Thus, the concept of channels and their couplings helps Us to understand why it is that medication sometimes works and sometimes does not. Working only in one channel, changing proprioception through pills, body work or jogging without considering the situation in other channels, like vision or relationship, could even be dangerous. I remember the case of one patient who had fits of negativity towards everyone. His medication helped him to get along better with others, but then, in a fit of anger, he threw himself through one of the windows of his mental hospital. That negativity needed expression and should have been worked with in relationships.
The existence of coupled effects has long been recognized in the physical sciences. We need only imagine a thermoelectric effect, for example. In physics, heat is one macroscopic process, while the flow of electricity is another. Heat up a certain material, and instead of it getting warmer, it may emit electricity and light up a bulb. Or think of another process in which you press a material and it gets warmer! Heating up a piece of material does not necessarily mean that it is going to get warmer! By the same token, giving someone psychopharmica does not necessarily mean that his mood is going to change, especially if there are coupled processes involved.
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