• rss

Join Us on Social Networks!

Stress and Distress

Posted on: 22-09-2014
(0)

Category : Health Care, Stress

What Is Stress?

Stress is a very normal human reaction to a perceived threat from any source. A certain amount of stress in our lives is good for all of us. Stress can mean different things to different people. It can have a positive and a negative effect. Stress can be positive when it motivates us to get things done that are important to us. However, it can be negative when we constantly feel pressurised or traumatised by too many demands.

Without some stress we could not get out of bed in the morning, never mind do a day’s work. However, when we are under too much stress or when the stress we are under exceeds our ability to cope, stress can turn into ‘distress’. By distress I mean that the level of stress we are under is having a negative effect on us. This can be bad for both our short- and long-term health, with potential adverse health consequences. Canadian Viagra Online

What Happens to Our Bodies When We Are Under Stress?

Stress wakens up or arouses our system, so that we experience the ‘fight or flight’ response. At a primitive level this meant that when a caveman was walking in the woods and came across a big brown bear his body could make very quick adjustments so that he could take drastic action and save himself from the bear.

The heart starts to beat faster and pump more blood, raising the blood pressure. The pupils (the dark parts) of the eyes widen to allow in more light, the breathing gets faster and the tubes going into the lungs widen to let in more oxygen, the mind becomes more alert, blood is diverted towards the muscles, which become tense and ready for action, while blood is diverted away from the gut and the skin, which becomes cold and clammy. As well as that, hormones called adrenaline and cortisol are pumped into the blood, which causes the blood sugar to rise providing an immediate source of energy. Changes also occur in the blood, enabling it to clot more easily – a basic protective mechanism to enable quick repair of any wounds. All of these changes happen very quickly, allowing our caveman to fight or take flight. In the case of our brown bear, his best option is to leg it as fast as he can. Female Viagra Australia

So, as you can see, stress is an essential and very useful mechanism by which the body and mind can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Stress can be good for our health and welfare and is a necessary tool for survival.

You can see from the diagram (above) that a certain amount of stress increases performance; however, once the amount of stress we are under goes beyond a certain point, known as the ‘tipping point’, then performance actually starts to reduce with increasing amounts of stress. In this situation we are in a state of distress, which can be very harmful to our health. The amount of stress we can individually cope with varies from person to person. This may tend to depend at least partly on personality, but also on our own coping mechanisms for dealing with stress.

Continue Reading

Watch What You Catch! Close the Door on Sexually Transmitted Infections

Posted on: 19-09-2014
(0)

Category : Sexual Disease, Womens Issues

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are on the rise in Irish women. In the last few years, Ireland has fallen victim to a silent epidemic of sexually transmitted infections. One of the consequences of the Celtic Tiger has been the explosion in relatively cheap foreign travel opportunities. However, in some cases, women are bringing back much more than their suntan and duty-free. Despite all the information available about the importance of safe sex, more women than ever are becoming infected with STIs. Risk-taking behaviour is described as being a naturally male thing, particularly for young women. Many women continue to play Russian roulette with their sexual health.

What Are STIs?

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are diseases or infections that are transmitted by oral, anal or vaginal sexual intercourse. They are caused by bacteria, viruses and other organisms that can be present in blood, semen, bodily fluids or the pubic area of an infected person.

The Price We Pay

Sexually transmitted infections are one of the ways in which we pay for being irresponsible when we are sexually active. This price, for many women, can be a heavy one.

HIV infection is undoubtedly the most serious of all STIs, as it remains incurable. HIV can be fatal or at best lead to chronic lifelong illness requiring daily medication. Hepatitis B and C infections can cause chronic liver disease or liver cancer. Syphilis can actually lead to insanity if left untreated. Herpes, once caught, is a friend for life. Other infections like chlamydia can damage the reproductive organs in women, leading to long-term infertility, which can have devastating consequences for couples trying to conceive a baby. Other STIs may not pose the same degree of threat to personal, but that does not mean that they cannot cause both pain and embarrassment, not to mention long-term health problems.

Unprotected sex with a variety of partners will inevitably lead to a sexually transmitted infection at some stage. These encounters often occur within the context of too much alcohol or other drugs, when one’s guard is down. Alcohol or illicit drugs will lower inhibitions and cloud one’s ability to judge safe sexual activity from irresponsible sex.

STIs tend to hunt in packs, so if you get one STI then you are more likely to have another. The fact that STI rates continue to rocket in Ireland amongst Irish women indicates either a lack of knowledge about the risks or a ‘could not happen to me’ attitude of denial. The more irresponsibly one behaves sexually, the greater the chance of becoming infected. Remember, sleeping with a new partner is like sleeping with everyone they have ever slept with.

It is not possible to judge whether a person is infected with an STI by sight – it requires medical testing, which is why it is safest to take precautions when having sex. Your lover may not even know themselves if they have an infection. Sometimes it can be difficult to detect an STI infection. Whenever an obvious symptom does develop you should visit your GP or local STI clinic.

Continue Reading

Treatment for Testicular Cancer

Posted on: 18-09-2014
(0)

Category : Treatment Cancer

Testicular Cancer

How Is Testicular Cancer Diagnosed?

If you are confirmed to have testicular cancer then further tests, including scans, are carried out to see if it has spread elsewhere in the body. This helps to determine the best treatment Ed with Canadian Pharmacy Viagra plan.

Treatment for Testicular Cancer

There are several kinds of treatment for testicular cancer. The treatment advised for each case depends on various factors, such as the type of cancer (seminoma or non-seminoma), how far it has spread and your general health.

Surgical removal of the affected testicle is advised in almost all cases. This alone may be curative if the cancer is at an early stage and has not spread. Radiotherapy, to destroy cancer cells or slow the rate of growth, may be done after surgery for men with seminoma tumours to prevent recurrence. Chemotherapy using anti-cancer drugs to destroy cancer cells throughout the body has greatly improved the cure rates of both seminomas and non-seminoma testicular tumours.

www.canadianhealthcaremalll.com – Qualitative pharmacy with a large assortment of drugs.

What Is the Prognosis?

The prognosis is usually good. Most testicular cancers are diagnosed at an early stage, and after treatment over 90 per cent of men are completely cured. Even if the testicular cancer has spread to other parts of the body there is still a good chance of being cured. After treatment you will be monitored regularly for a number of years to make sure the cancer hasn’t come back. This will involve blood tests to measure the tumour markers and sometimes scans as well.

If you have one testis removed, it should not affect your sex life. You should still have normal erections and produce sperm and hormones from the other testis, and so can still father children. However, if you have chemotherapy or radiotherapy, this may affect fertility. You should discuss this with your specialist.

Bladder Cancer

The bladder is a triangular-shaped, hollow organ located in the lower abdomen. The role of the bladder is to store urine; its walls relax and expand to store urine, and contract and flatten to empty urine through the urethra. Bladder cancer occurs when there are abnormal, cancerous cells growing in the bladder. Bladder cancer affects men two to three times more frequently than women.

What Are the Risk Factors for Bladder Cancer?

While the exact causes of bladder cancer are not known, there are well- estabestablished risk factors, which include the following:

Cigarette Smoking

By far and away the most important cause of bladder cancer is cigarette smoke. Smoking causes about half of the deaths from bladder cancer among men. There are over fifty different carcinogens in tobacco smoke. When these are inhaled through the lungs into the bloodstream these carcinogens eventually end up in the bladder before being excreted through the urine. The disease occurs in smokers twice as often as non-smokers.

Continue Reading

Male infertility and Canadian pharmacy viagra

Posted on: 10-09-2014
(0)

Category : Sexual Disease

Male infertility

Investigation of male fertility status using semen analysis is important, as a minority of men with CF (some few per cent only) will be fertile. This is more common with specific gene mutations. However, while the majority of men report they would like semen analysis to be undertaken in order to confirm their fertility status, not all men with CF are either tested or offered semen analysis. Studies suggest that between one in two and one in three men with CF have had semen analysis. Sawyer et al. also showed that the timing of semen analysis is still significantly later than desired: while more than 95 per cent of men said they believed that semen analysis should be offered to men before the age of 20 years, the youngest age of testing in this recent Australian study was 24 years.

The first studies to explore any aspect of the sexual and reproductive health needs of men with CF date from the late 1980s. These early studies showed that adolescent and adult men with CF had very poor knowledge of the sexual and reproductive complications of CF. Of note, Hames et al. found that the majority of both males and their parents were unaware that men with CF were infertile. More recent studies from the last decade in Boston, USA, Birmingham, England, Scotland and Australian have shown increasing awareness of infertility in men with CF: the majority of contemporary men with CF know that their fertility is likely to be affected by the disorder Buy Nolvadex in Canada, and know why this is so.

These studies also identify that between 68 and 84 per cent of men with CF want children in the future. The desire for more information on sexual and reproductive health is a consistent theme across studies. However, despite the improved survival of CF over the past few decades, few studies have directly assessed the impact of future infertility on teenagers with CF. Apart from a qualitative US study that included ten adolescent males (of whom five were not aware of male infertility), our knowledge of the impact of infertility in adolescence has been obtained from the (retrospective) reflections of adult men with CF. This qualitative study informed the development of a quantitative survey of adult men with CF in Australia. Both studies suggest that knowledge of infertility in adolescence is less overwhelming than might be thought. For example, 90 per cent of men reported not being distressed when they first heard about infertility during adolescence. Typical comments were:

  • There was no real effect at the time. I just took it as part of CF. (29-year-old who first heard about likely infertility when aged 12)

And:

  • I didn’t really think about it much. At the time I wasn’t upset. (27-year-old who first heard when 15)

However, 10 per cent described a significant impact upon hearing of male infertility in adolescence. For example, one said:

  • It took me by surprise, I was shocked. (25-year-old who was first told when he was 12)

The impact of infertility appears to become more significant as adolescents and young adults mature and form more intimate and committed relation-ships where there is an expectation of fertility. Typical comments were:

  • At first it went in one ear and out the other, but then I thought about it. (20-year-old)

And:

  • At the moment it’s not a concern. It’s like it hasn’t really hit me yet. Later, it could be devastating. (19-year-old)

Infertility was reported as an insignificant aspect of CF by only 10 per cent of adult men. For example, one commented:

  • I’ve been busy with living, which is more important than having kids. (38-year-old)

Continue Reading