What is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a very common painful condition where increased swilling or fluid in the wrist puts pressure on the median nerve that supplies sensation and strength to most of the thumb, several fingers, and part of the palm of the hand.

This syndrome is more common in women than men, especially during pregnancy, where it is thought that fluid retention increases pressure in the carpel tunnel. It is also more common in those with a higher BMI, and those with diabetes. Treatments for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome include a wrist splint, a local steroid injection, or in the worst cases, carpel tunnel release surgery.

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What is the difference between Alzheimer's and dementia?

Dementia is a general term for a variety of symptoms that most often afflict the elderly and includes memory loss, an inability to reason and incredible difficulty with communicating. Dementia occurs when brain cells have been damaged. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, which affects 60 to 80 percent of dementia patients, followed by vascular dementia, which is caused by poor blood flow to the brain. However, certain types of dementia can be reversible, such as dementia caused by vitamin deficiencies, excessive alcohol use, medication, or thyroid problems. 

Alzheimer's disease is a form of dementia where the patient gets progressively worse and eventually is unable to perform basic daily activities, speak, respond, or walk. Unfortunately, there is no cure or successful treatment for Alzheimer's, and patients will continue to get progressively worse. 

4 Steps To Help Children Deal With Emotions

Emotional skills are something all kids need in order to succeed in life. As a parent, you hate to see your child crying or unhappy and you try your best to fix it, but it doesn't help them in the long run. Dr. Susan David says "We step into the child's emotional space with our platitudes, advice and ideas. Many common parental strategies, like minimizing either the emotion or the underlying problem or rushing to the rescue, fail to help the child learn how to help himself."   

Dr. David offers 4 steps to help children deal with emotions. The first step is to FEEL IT. Feel where they are coming from emotionally and realize that they have their own emotional world. The second step is to SHOW IT. Expressions like "boys don't cry" or "brush it off" are only teaching kids to hide their emotions, when it is best for them to show it. The third step is to LABEL IT. Teach them how to identify and label their emotions because it will help their ability to empathize. The last step is to WATCH IT GO. Show them that these feelings are temporary and they don't last forever. Children grow and feel stronger when they realize its not how you feel, but how you respond to your feelings. 

Up to Half of All Babies Under 3 Months Have Infant Reflux

What is Infant Reflux?

Reflux happens very commonly among babies. When food is swallowed, many factors keep the food we eat in the stomach. These include gravity, since we usually eat sitting up, the density of the food, the length of the oesophagus, and the muscular band at the lower end of the oesophagus that helps stop food from coming back up. Because babies are usually lying down and only consume liquid, their muscles haven’t developed yet which makes them more likely to regurgitate their milk.

Symptoms and Treatment

The most common symptoms include small spill of milk after feeding and the mixture of mlik and stomach acid which sometimes causes pain. This distress and discomfort causes babies to cry during or after feeding and can result in more spit up. Regurgitation can also occur without any vomit or spit up. This is known as silent reflux. The only medication recommended for reflux is for babies with poor weight gain or prolonged distress. Unfortunately, they do come with side effects which include abdominal pain and vomiting which makes the treatment options less than ideal. Surgical options are usually reserved for older children who experience severe reflux. If the reflux is not severe, there are some effective treatment methods to try. Letting the baby lie tummy down on their left side while still awake can help (but the baby must be awake). Babies should not sleep in this position as there is an increased risk associated with SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Thankfully, most babies do grow out of these symptoms, with less than 5% of babies continuing to experience reflux by the time they are one year old

Helpless to Prevent Cancer? Actually, Quite a Bit Is in Your Control

Americans seem very afraid of cancer largely because it seems to come out of nowhere. There is increasing evidence that i can’t be prevented. It is the biggest cause of death among American. If people ate better, were physically active and stopped smoking, it could be prevented. This ignores the fact that people can’t change many risk factors of heart disease like age, race and family genetics. 

Of the nearly 90,000 women and more than 46,000 men, 16,531 women and 11,731 men fell into the low-risk group. For each type of cancer, researchers calculated a population-attributable risk, which is the percentage of people who develop cancer who might have avoided it had they adopted low-risk behaviors. 
About 82 percent of women and 78 percent of men who got lung cancer might have prevented it through healthy behaviors. About 29 percent of women and 20 percent of men might have prevented colon and rectal cancer. About 30 percent of both might have prevented pancreatic cancer.Breast cancer was much less preventable: 4 percent. 
Over all, though, about 25 percent of cancer in women and 33 percent in men was potentially preventable. Close to half of all cancer deaths might be prevented as well.