Health News

Pneumonia’s a bully. It picks on the very young, the old, and the weak. But like most bullies, it’ll back off if you stand up to it.

Taking it seriously is a good first step. If you’ve written off pneumonia as a has-been of a disease, write it back on. Granted, the advent of antibiotics dethroned it from its pre-1936 status as the nation’s top cause of death. But there’s a lot of fight left in this old killer. Teaming up with influenza, it’s still the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. And the number of pneumonia-caused deaths has actually been on the rise, from less than 55,000 in 1980 to more than 80,000 in 1995.

Pneumonia usually swoops in for the kill after some other disease-say, diabetes, chemotherapy-treated cancer, or heart disease-has weakened you. “Even many who die from ‘old age’ really die of pneumonia,” says Ronald Greeno, M.D., co-director of respiratory therapy and pulmonary function at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.

Pneumonia is what they call an infectious pulmonary disease, caused usually either by viruses or (much more seriously) bacteria that overpower your lung’s defenses and take over. Pretty soon, oxygen isn’t getting to your blood the way it should and your cells aren’t working right. That can be fatal.

And while the majority of deaths from flu-derived pneumonia in our antibiotic era are in people over 65, that’s by no means all of them. “The most common bacterial pneumonia- pneumococcal pneumonia, also known as Streptococcus pneumoniae – very often follows a bout of influenza at any age,” says Alfred Munzer, M.D., a pulmonologist at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, Maryland, and past president of the American Lung Association. “It is much more likely to be fatal in people who are debilitated or elderly, but it certainly can also be fatal in younger people.”

What hits younger and middle-age men a lot more often than bacterial pneumonia is either viral pneumonia or pneumonia caused by mycoplasmas, which are bugs falling somewhere in between a virus and bacterium. Since these types are rarely lethal and usually won’t land you in the hospital, you hear them referred to as walking pneumonia. Walking is about as much as you’ll feel like doing if you have it.

“You can recognize somebody with viral pneumonia because they usually have a dry, hacking, nonproductive cough combined with a fever,” says Dr. Munzer.

So if you don’t want to be the guy doing the coughing, do your best to follow these tips.

Know the symptoms. Doctors can usually knock out bacterial pneumonia with antibiotics, but hot if you don’t seek treatment. The problem is that the symptoms are often a lot like flu symptoms-fever, cough, chest pains, phlegm.

Another red flag is a cough that comes in violent attacks, which can signal mycoplasma pneumonia. And, says Dr. Munzer, “if you’re bringing up a lot of phlegm and you have a fever, with chest pains that are aggravated by breathing, then you have to start thinking seriously about pneumonia.”

Seek treatment pronto. As with most diseases, early diagnosis and treatment speed your recovery of pneumonia. Getting doctor-shy because you simply assume that you have a bad flu-or the more common and less dangerous viral pneumonia-is a dubious piece of self-diagnosis, according to Dr. Greeno.

Besides, adds Steven Mostow, M.D., professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver and chairman of the American Thoracic Society’s Committee on the Prevention of Pneumonia and Influenza, in New York City, “there are therapies with any number of compounds that will shorten mycoplasma disease dramatically. And you’ll feel a hell of a lot better much more quickly.”

Get vaccinated. Yes, there’s a pneumonia vaccine. And while it won’t fend off every type of pneumonia in existence, it will protect you from the most common bacterial pneumonia, pneumococcal. It’s relatively cheap, it’s covered by Medicare, it’s side effect-free, and it will last you at least 10 years, perhaps a lifetime. And still, sighs Dr. Munzer, “it’s probably the most underutilized of all the vaccines.”

Dr. Munzer adds: “There’s no harm in anybody who’s interested in preventive medicine asking his doctor about taking the vaccine. If you want to take it, you should be encouraged to do so.”

Get a flu shot. The logic is simple. Influenza can lead to pneumonia. So don’t get influenza. “There’s one way to avoid the flu, and that’s to get an annual flu shot,” Dr. Mostow says. “I recommend it even for young, healthy men.”

Take your time. If you rush your recovery, you run the risk of a relapse. Remember, it takes longer to recover at age 45 than it does at age 25. And some walking pneumonias, such as mycoplasma, leave you weak for many weeks. Rest, after all, is the cure for walking pneumonia, says Dr. Munzer. So stop walking. Take a load off.

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Bulimia may arise from anorexia; half or more of bulimics have a history of self-starvation. A traumatic event, such as a severe loss or change, may trigger the bulimic cycle. So too can an episode of dieting.

Binge eating is pretty common. Between 60 and 80 percent of American women report that they binge once in a while. Another 10 to 20 percent have weekly binge episodes. With statistics like these, we have to conclude that the occasional act of eating a lot of food in a short time is actually normal. Making a diagnosis of bulimia requires much more than that the person experiences an occasional binge.

As we have seen, different events can trigger increased bingeing. There may be a change in the chemical balance in the brain. We know that such changes occur in some types of depression and lead to the symptom of increased eating.

Psychologically, someone may use bingeing to control unpleasant or overwhelming feelings. Bingeing shifts one’s mental focus. Eating a pound of cookies makes it easier to tolerate the anger one feels when denied a raise, for example. But bingeing then stirs up feelings of shame and inadequacy: “I shouldn’t have done that.” The binger thus takes the anger she feels toward her boss and redirects it toward herself. Eating also represents an act of revenge against the world; the binger knows she is doing something both forbidden and gratifying.

The intense sensory pleasure of (over)eating removes-or at least covers up-anxiety, such as dread of an upcoming school examination. Bingeing thus relieves tension in the same way as drugs or alcohol. Furthermore, bingeing produces chemical changes in the brain, changes that may have some direct anxiety-reducing effect.

Loss of control during a binge leads to self-disgust. Strangely, that self-disgust may also serve to reduce anxiety. Before the binge, the woman is haunted by the thought: “I may fail.” Afterward, though, a new thought dominates: “I have already failed.” Her burden is lifted; now she has little left to lose.

Bingeing also provides a familiar and dependable mental state, an escape from the emotional roller coaster. Many patients tell me they originally needed such an escape because of their chaotic family situation-for example, because the father came home drunk and abusive night after night. Others report that a binge provides “company” during times of painful loneliness.

Purging (vomiting, laxative abuse) or excessive exercise also has psychological meaning. Purging acts as “damage control”- a way of canceling out excessive calories. It also offers a way for the “child” part of the personality to return the good graces of the “parent” part by accepting punishment for being naughty.

Purging lets a woman think, “I can do something bad but it doesn’t really count.” In some patients, this thought comes to dominate the pattern-in other words, purging, not bingeing, becomes the goal. At first a woman may purge to “cancel out” her binge. Over time, however, she finds she must binge in order to purge. Calories are seen as “bad”; therefore, the emptiness produced by vomiting or laxative abuse is “good.” Purging restores control to a life that feels out of control.

Often a bulimic sees her “discovery” of purging as a positive thing. At first it makes her feel calmer or better able to cope with stress. She may even feel happy because she loses some weight in the early stages of her illness. Such weight loss, however, is unstable. The metabolic and nutritional chaos that comes with bulimia usually leads to more bingeing, which in turn may lead to weight gain. (Even when someone vomits immediately, the body retains as much as 25 percent of the calories contained in the meal.) Moreover, many bulimics interpret purging as “permission” to engage in more bingeing.

Bulimics keep their binge-purge habits secret because they feel ashamed. What may initially have begun as a response to upsetting feelings now produces upsetting feelings. The pattern becomes a habit. Thoughts and feelings about bingeing and purging occupy more and more of the patient’s time. In fact, she may structure her entire day around her habit. Some make an after-work ritual out of buying binge food, eating it, and purging. As with drug abuse, such devotion to ritual may increase the patient’s isolation from other people and keep her from taking part in a more normal social life. This in turn leaves her with more empty time on her hands; usually she fills that time with even more bingeing and purging. If something happens to prevent her from indulging her habit—social obligations, work pressure—she grows increasingly anxious.

In severe cases, a bulimic purges so frequently that the mere feeling of having food in her stomach produces the overwhelming desire to get rid of it. Similarly, anxiety caused by the very act of eating may be severe enough to promote purging. Frequently, the bulimic tries to distract herself as she eats by reading, watching TV, and so on. Doing so just makes it easier to eat large amounts without being aware of it.

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Joanie Morris knows all too well what loneliness can do to her appetite and her waistline.

In September 1996, Joanie, then a regional manager for a national health-care company, had to leave behind her family in ^ Melbourne, Florida, for a 1 -year job assignment at company head-^ quarters, 1,000 miles away. Every evening, while her coworkers were Q enjoying the company of family and friends, she’d sit by herself in § the small apartment that her employer had provided. She’d read g and watch television until about 7:30, when she’d call her husband i§ ; and daughter back in Melbourne.

“Usually, after I hung up the phone, I’d just sit and cry,” Joanie recalls. “I missed my family so much. I could see them only on weekends—and not every weekend, at that. It was incredibly lonely.”

For comfort, she began treating herself to dinner at a little Italian restaurant next to her apartment building. “My apartment had a kitchen, but I thought that going out was easier,” she explains. “I’d eat a snack when I got home from work, then walk over to the restaurant after talking to my family.” Needless to say, she got to know the menu very well. “I especially loved the large pasta dishes with creamy, cheesy sauces,” she says. After dinner, she’d return to her apartment, where she’d help herself to a bowl of ice cream and some cookies.

While this ritual made Joanie feel better, it also took a toll on her figure. In just 3 to 4 months, she gained 20 pounds. “On one of my weekend trips home, a friend of mine said to me, ‘You may not like your job, but you sure must like the food,’” she recalls. “I was mortified. When I stepped on the scale, it read 142 pounds. I had never weighed that much—except when I was pregnant.”

As she headed back to her job in January 1997, Joanie resolved to start a new after-work routine that would put an end to her nightly binges and help her slim down. As soon as she arrived at her apartment, she’d change her clothing and head straight for her apartment building’s fitness room. There, she’d put in an hour on the treadmill and exercise bike while watching the evening

news. Then, she’d return to her apartment, shower, and call her family.

“Even though I was exercising to lose weight, I noticed that I felt better, too,” Joanie says. “The physical activity seemed to lift my sadness and even out my moods.”

Joanie also cut back on her nightly forays to the Italian restaurant next door, instead stocking her kitchen with healthy staple ingredients for fast ajid easy dinners.

Between her improved eating habits and her nightly exercise routine, Joanie was able to get rid of the 20 pounds that she had gained, plus a few more. She returned home at the end of her job assignment weighing 119 pounds, where she’s stayed ever since.

“I was determined to slim down by the time my assignment was over, and I did,” says Joanie, now a 41-year-old full-time mom. “I think that exercising made the difference. It helped me emotionally as well as physically.”

WINNING ACTION

Boost your mood without food. Feeling blue? Instead of heading for the fridge, lace on your sneakers for a few minutes of physical activity. Research has shown that exercise can improve your mood by triggering the release of endorphins, opiate-like brain chemicals that can make you feel good all over. You’ll avoid a binge, and you’ll burn some calories to boot.

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Marion was prescribed Valium when her husband died thirteen years earlier. Over the years she was so occupied raising four children that she just kept swallowing the pills. She became so tired, it was an effort to get out of bed and she wondered if it had anything to do with the Valium. Her doctor sent her to a consultant who was helpful and understanding. It was suggested that she came off her Valium quickly in hospital. She was given other drugs to help her symptoms, and was Valium-free two weeks later. She stayed in hospital for a further three weeks. Her physical appearance changed quickly, and by the time she left hospital, her skin and eyes had come back to life.

For a few days in hospital, she had felt overwhelmed by grief for her husband. The pills had suppressed her emotions for so long she was relieved to be able to cry.

She has coped well since she got home, although at first she was depressed. Six months later, she looks very well and is patiently waiting for her sleeping pattern to return to normal. The spaces between the ‘down’ spells are getting longer and longer. Her friends are delighted to see her sense of humour returning to normal.

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Feelings of the Ground Moving

Many people say that they feel as if the ground is moving when they walk, or that they are walking on cotton wool. It can be alarming but does settle down as withdrawal progresses. This unsteady gait (ataxia) can be experienced in severe anxiety states where no drugs are being used.

Tingling, Numbness, Burning Sensations

Many people complain of tingling and numbness in hands and feet (although the feelings can be anywhere), and also feelings like electric shocks going through the body. Some of the tingling may be due to overbreathing. It could be that an exaggeration of normal nerve impulses is the reason for the electric shock feelings. All these feelings and the burning in the spine, vulva and inner thighs (or elsewhere) also disappear when withdrawal is complete. _

Tingling feelings in withdrawal is complete.

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The aimless hyperactivity experienced by some can be very hard to live with. The constant desire to move is exhausting. Unfortunately, the energy cannot be utilized. The sufferer usually wanders about doing a small part of one task, then another without achieving anything. One caller said ‘I wash two plates, then find myself putting laundry away upstairs. Two minutes later I am sweeping up leaves in the garden. My mind won’t let me use the extra energy I have had since cutting down my pills’.

Pressure of thought and speech often accompany this stage. Endless conversations (sometimes from years before) or the same song can go around and around in your head.

Relatives often complain that the user has become completely self-centred, talking incessantly about the drugs and withdrawal symptoms. The sufferer is usually very anxious about these symptoms, and may need constant reassurance that they will pass.

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Accepting withdrawal symptoms as part of getting well could shorten your recovery time. Try to see a new symptom as a positive step nearer to a drug-free life.

You are working towards a state of physical and mental well-being that you may not have experienced for years. You may have been emotionally dead for so long, unable to respond normally to pleasure or pain. So even if you are uncomfortable in withdrawal, you will be coming alive again and will have glimpses, even in the early days, of a world you thought you had forgotten.

Anxiety

Most of the withdrawal symptoms are due to manifestations of anxiety. This does not mean simply worrying about the weather or which dress to wear for a party, but disabling physical and emotional symptoms which prevent the sufferer from leading a normal life. Clinical tests have proved that anxiety levels after the drugs have been discontinued can be six times greater than pre-withdrawal levels. This is called rebound anxiety.

Tranquillizers appear to stop that part of the brain that deals with anxiety from working—but this is not really so. It carries on working overtime under the ‘lid’ of the drugs, and consequently when the ‘lid’ is removed, it erupts like a volcano. This is temporary, and will return to normal.

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Doctors recognize four types of reaction in which the immune system responds to an antigen so strongly that unpleasant symptoms are caused. These are called hypersensitivity reactions. The reaction caused by mast cells and IgE is the most common and troublesome of the four, and is known as Type I hypersensitivity. The other three reactions involve different parts of the immune system. Type II hypersensitivity is not relevant here, while Type IV hypersensitivity is a very slow immune response produced by a particular group of immune cells. It may be involved in some reactions in the gut, such as Crohn’s disease but it is not generally relevant to food allergy. This section is therefore confined to Type III reactions. These occur when there is a substantial production of antibodies in response to an antigen in the blood. It is the sheer weight of numbers that causes the problem – die antigens and antibodies, bound together in immune complexes, are like so much litter going round in the bloodstream.

In the case of food, undigested molecules get into the blood through the gut wall, after a meal. This is a normal process that occurs in the healthiest of individuals, although in the food-sensitive person it is likely to be more pronounced because the gut wall is more leaky. Once the food molecules enter the bloodstream they encounter antibodies – again a natural, healthy process which leads to the formation of immune complexes when the antibodies and antigens bind together. Immune complexes attract the attention of phagocytes or ‘eating cells’, the vultures of the immune system that clear up any debris, dead cells and invading bacteria they come across.

Immune complexes form all the time, whenever antibodies encounter their antigen. Normally they are cleared from the blood by the phagocytes within a few hours. But if the immune complexes are both large and numerous, the phagocytes may not be equal to the task. Then the immune complexes accumulate in the blood, and eventually they are deposited in the blood vessels. This is the condition known as Type III hypersensitivity or serum sickness.

Serum sickness happens in autoimmune diseases, such as SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus; where there are a great many antibodies to the patient’s own proteins circulating in the blood. It is also believed to happen, to a lesser degree, in rare cases of food allergy – in some types of kidney disease, for example, where the disease seems to be induced by food. Although there is no definite proof for this, the circumstantial evidence is quite strong.

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Scientific and popular periodicals have devoted much space to the subject of royal jelly. True, this promotion no doubt has something to do with cleverly disguised advertising, since every manufacturer believes his product to be the best on the market. On the other hand, these efforts demonstrate that today’s world needs a biologically safe natural tonic, as opposed to a chemical or synthetic one. No one really knows how the bees manufacture the natural compound. All we can say is that the Creator gave them the necessary instinct to make this complex substance from the raw materials they have available in nature. What they produce proves the truth of the concept that ‘Food should be medicine and medicines should be food.’

Some years ago the newspapers reported that the Pope had recovered from a severe illness after his personal physician, Dr Galeazzi, had prescribed royal jelly as a tonic for him. It also was reported that Dr Paul Niehans, an eminent endocrinologist and specialist in live-cell therapy, was of the opinion that royal jelly vitalises the glandular system in a similar way to an injection of fresh endocrine cells. These observations are a strong enough indication that it is indeed appropriate to pay much more attention to royal jelly in the future.

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Cabbage leaf poultices or packs are excellent for the treatment of tumours. In the case of cancerous growths, their effect is very good when alternated with clay poultices. It sometimes happens that the condition or pain becomes aggravated at first, but after a while improvement usually follows. Cabbage pulp can cause a strong reaction; it can increase the secretion of urine, cause blisters, or simply dry out on the skin. Tests on myself and the testimonies of patients have always proved the effectiveness of these poultices.

Cabbage leaves are usually available in your kitchen, so why not try a pack when you suffer bruising, notice a growth or experience some internal inflammation? Apply the crushed leaves, in addition to taking the necessary oral medicine. Many chronic ailments can be successfully treated with cabbage and clay packs applied in alternation; one day apply the pulped leaves, next day the clay packs. In this way it is often possible to avoid the surgeon’s knife.

Good results are also achieved with onions and raw horseradish. Some skin diseases clear up when a paste made up of bran and an infusion of marigold or horsetail is applied. Or you can soak some wheat, put it through a mincer, then mix it with marigold or horsetail to make a soothing and curative paste.

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