If you are a teenager and your mood is down or if you know of a teenager who may be suffering from depression, you need to read on. With double the incidence of depression in teens compared to adults, research further shows that anxiety disorders and depression are particularly high in South African teens
A bout of flu or a cold every year helps to detox the system – believe it or not, it’s actually a good thing! If your health isn’t compromised, and you help your body fight the infection by giving it the rest it needs, you should sail through. But what are the possible complications of colds and flu, and what can you do about them?
Diabetes and Glucosamine: I have diabetes and have been told I shouldn’t take glucosamine for joint pain – something to do with the fact that glucosamine is made in the body from a sugar. Will it be safe to take it and monitor my glucose levels?
Pain is a symptom, often a very strong symptom. It is a personal experience, and is influenced by all that we have learned and experienced, culturally and in our upbringing. While pharmaceutical drugs are powerful and can provide rapid pain relief, they often have side-effects when used in the long term. Dr David Nye describes some alternative therapies.
Are you tired, overweight, anxious and despondent? Do you believe that no one can help you get better? Are you depressed because no one understands your condition? Do you feel as if your thyroid gland is under-active, yet all the tests are normal? Are you always cold? If you answered ‘yes’ to all of these, you may be suffering from Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome.
High cholesterol does not cause heart attacks. The main causes of a heart attack are stress combined with inflammation. Inflammation of the arteries causes rough patches, which then allows the cholesterol to stick to these, resulting in atheroma plaques. When severe stress is experienced, the compromised artery may narrow due to spasm, which blocks the blood flow, which leads to a heart attack.
Every day we run the risk of becoming infected by a bacteria, virus or a fungus. Many people do not know of any options other than a visit to the local GP, who may over prescribe antibiotics, for example. Often illnesses encountered are not caused by bacteria; if they are viral, the antibiotic would be ineffective and unnecessary.
You stare in awe at the blood cells floating lazily across the screen in front of you. The background looks like the Milky Way, occasionally studded with sparkling ‘moon rocks’. The eeriness of the scene belies the truths to be revealed about your health. This is live blood analysis.
Men often think that their bodies should work like a well-oiled machine, and thus find it difficult to cope when they malfunction - even more so when they discover they are suffering from a ‘women’s disease’.
I believe that the source of inflammation in chronic diseases lies in the gut. The now famous quote ‘Death begins in the colon’ originated with the Russian Nobel Prize- winning biologist Elie Metchnikoff (1845 - 1916), who postulated that the toxic by-products of the bowel bacteria are responsible for many diseases.