About Health & Medicine

This is the most basic form of stress relief practised by both professional and non-professional alike. Here, the patient is encouraged to talk about his problems and anxieties to an individual who will be sympathetic and supportive. One does not have to be a psychiatrist to qualify as an audience of course. A tolerant friend may suffice, and for centuries the clergy filled this role, and many of them still do. However, the impersonality of the professional, his skilled prompting and therapeutic intent, give him a great advantage. A disadvantage is his costliness, but that reinforces the impersonality and also makes the process more purposeful for the patient. It gives the patient, to put it bluntly, a financial motive for recovery.

Sensitive physicians practise this form of supportive psychotherapy intuitively. The patient is made to fed that he it worthwhile, and that the doctor wants more than anything in the world to help him. As a result of his warm, friendly, positive attitude, the physician enables the patient to feel secure, accepted, protected, less anxious, and encouraged towards health. The aim is not to remake the personality but to help an individual over a rough spot in his life. Advice may be given about rest, exercise, diet, use of drugs, hobbies etc. Sympathetic counselling about dealing with practical issues is given. With reassurance and support, the doctor reinforces the patient’s defences against anxiety, emphasizes his capacity to get well, encourages self-esteem, and permits the patient to have a corrective emotional experience with someone who treats him differently from all other persons in his life.

This type of therapy is, of course, quite different from the analytic type practised by psychiatrists. The latter is aimed at uncovering unconscious material and allowing it to be aired, in the hope that a permanent change in personality can be effected. Analysis, which is in the realm of psychiatric treatment may, in severe cases, be required. It is interesting, however, to note that rashes of the type seen in neurodermatitis are a result of unresolved conflict. Whereas people with psychiatric diseases have virtually given up the struggle to resolve their conflicts, and therefore the incidence of stress-related skin diseases amongst such individuals is very small.

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Low G.I. eating means making a move back to the high carbohydrate foods which are staples in many parts of the world. The emphasis is on whole foods like whole grains—barley, oats, dried peas and beans, in combination with certain types of rice, breads, pasta, vegetables and fruits. You’ll find the recipes listed under each of our three main eating occasions—breakfasts, light meals (like soups, salads and pastas), and main meals with additional sections on desserts and snacks. While some of the recipes are specifically modified to lower the G.I. others are included to present new ways of preparing low G.I. foods.

The recipes have been developed to help you reduce the overall G.L factor of your diet improving its nutritional quality while you do it. They are designed to be incorporated into your usual diet, helping you to get your carbohydrate intake up to 50 to 60 per cent of your kilojoule intake and keeping your fat intake down to the recommended level of 30 per cent of kilojoules per day. Protein should stay constant at 10 to 15 per cent of energy. Most of the recipes are high in fibre, both soluble and insoluble.

Each recipe has been analysed for its nutritional value which is given per serve where the recipe is divided into a specified number of serves. The following information will help put this nutritional profile into context for you.

Kilojoules. The metric equivalent of Calories. This is the measure of how much energy the food provides. Those who bum lots of energy through exercise need a higher kilojoule intake than those who live more sedentary lives. A moderately active woman aged 18 to 54 years would consume about 8000 kilojoules a day; a man about 10 000 kilo-joules.

Fat. Our fat requirement is probably as small as 10 grams a day to provide essential fatty acids needed for health. The range of acceptable fat intake depends on your total kilojoule intake. People trying to lose weight could aim for around 30 to 40 grams of fat a day. Most others could do with 50 to 60 grams. Children and adolescents need more than adults because they are growing and should not have their fat intake overt/ restricted.

Carbohydrate. The total amount of carbohydrate (which includes starches and sugars) is listed with each recipe. Our aim is to help you increase your carbohydrate intake as your fat intake drops. It is not necessary to calculate how many grams of carbohydrate you eat on a daily basis, however the athlete or person with diabetes may find this information useful. This is so they can eat enough! On average, women should take in 250 grams of carbohydrate each day while men need about 350 grams. Athletes can consume anywhere from 350 to 700 grams of carbohydrate a day.

Fibre. It is recommended that we consume at least 30 grams of dietary fibre every day. A slice of wholemeal bread provides 2 grams of fibre, an average apple 4 grams. The average Australian consumes only 18 grams of fibre a day.

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Physiological adjustment. It has been recognised since the 1980s that overfeeding does not always result in the weight gain predicted by the physics energy balance equation. This is because in humans, the body defends itself against an imbalance between EI and EE by adjusting, within limits, the one to the other. Adjustment refers to the metabolic, physiological and behavioural changes that occur when the equilibrium, or ’settling point’ is altered by a positive or negative energy imbalance. The adjustments tend to oppose the energy imbalance to minimise the effect on body weight changes. This helps to explain why, with such huge variations in energy intake and energy expenditure over a year, there are normally only minor fluctuations in body weight in most people. It also helps to explain the plateaus and rebounds during a fat loss program.

The popular belief (based on the physics model presented above) is that fat or weight loss can be calculated in a linear fashion from the calorie deficit. However, reducing the amount of food eaten over a set period by a total of 3500kcals, will not result in an automatic loss of 0.45kg of fat, which would be predicted as the storage equivalent of 3500kcal. Adjustment in energy expenditure through a decrease in metabolic rate in particular, would mean that the reduction in body stores is much less than expected. The opposite also holds true for a positive energy balance. When more is eaten than is used up as energy, metabolic rate increases as body mass increases and again, the fat gain will be less than predicted.

It is this physiological adjustment which has been typically under-estimated in discussions of weight control, although a range of research has now identified it as a key factor in the long term failure of many programs. Adjustment is a biological protective mechanism which prevents excessive long term gains and losses in body energy stores. It is more effective in some people than others (perhaps partly genetically determined). It may also be more strenuously invoked if the energy deficit and weight loss are large.

The short term adjustments are mainly through appetite control, although changes in the thermic effects of food (TEF) are directly related to meal size. Lethargy can be a marked feature of low energy intakes. In the longer term as fat mass and FFM decrease so do RMR and fat burning (higher RQ). Often the changes are greater than expected and this is called adaptation. For example, the fall in RMR may be much greater than expected for the loss of FFM. The adaptive changes are a sign of active mechanisms in the body opposing major shifts in body weight.

Myth-information. Arguments about the benefits of butter or margarine are largely irrelevant when considering their use in fat loss. Both have equivalent fat energy value (i.e. 9 kcal/g).

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Pain is a message which tells us that a part of the body has been damaged or injured in some way. The message is transmitted by a network of nerves from the site of the damage or injury to the brain — where it is perceived as pain.

Pain is the dominant symptom for many women with endometriosis. Until recently the management of pain was largely ignored by the medical profession, and even now there is little written about which pain management techniques are the most beneficial for the relief of the pain associated with endometriosis.

It is thought that much of the pain of endometriosis, especially that experienced during menstruation, occurs when the implants bleed on to the tissues surrounding them, causing inflammation and the release of chemicals known as prostaglandins which in turn causes pain.

The endometrial implants and cysts may also cause pain as they grow and swell during the second half of the menstrual cycle, particularly if they are embedded in the ovary.

Adhesions can cause pain because they pull and stretch the organs in the pelvic cavity into abnormal positions.

The rupture of an endometrioma may also cause pain because the spillage of its contents severely irritates the surrounding tissues, causing inflammation and the release of prostaglandins.

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Sampson’s theory of retrograde menstruation is by far the most popular theory of the development of endometriosis and it probably explains the vast majority of cases. According to this theory endometriosis develops when menstrual fluid from the uterus flows backwards through the fallopian tubes and out into die pelvic cavity during the menstrual period. This process of backward flow is known as retrograde menstruation which is a normal process that occurs in the majority of women. When the menstrual fluid flows out of the ends of the fallopian tubes it is deposited onto the surrounding organs and tissues. The menstrual fluid contains blood and fragments of endometrium. Some of these fragments of endometrium are still living and they implant themselves on the surface of the tissue and begin to grow and function. These patches of implanted endometrium are known as endometrial implants, deposits or cysts. Although it is known that most women have retrograde menstruation, it is not known why only a small percentage actually develop endometriosis.

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