15 May 09 EXERCISE RISK

The idea that participation is better than watching seems to have taken hold in Australia as well as other developed countries and the Western world is on a fitness kick.

Not only the young, but the middle-aged and even the elderly are walking, jogging, swimming and playing tennis and squash.

We have been told that it is all good for our health and likely to reduce the risk of having a heart attack.

When a jogger drops dead, this receives great publicity and can make those of us who are pushing our ageing bodies harder than we have for many years, just a little anxious about whether we are doing the right thing.

The point must be accepted that physical fitness may not protect completely from developing coronary artery disease, nor may it reverse or delay its progress in someone who has recently taken up physical exertion.

People still have heart attacks and some die while sleeping or making love. That shouldn’t keep us awake or make us choose celibacy.

Regular sustained physical exercise, tailored to the needs of age, present fitness and state of health is good for one and may protect from the development of a heart attack. Nothing is absolute in medicine.

The trend back to active exercise for many can only be good for the majority even if, for a few, their exertions are foolhardy or even dangerous.

While exercise may not increase the quantity of life it does seem to increase its quality. Those who take up exercise usually take other steps to improve health such as stopping smoking and improving their diet.

*352/71/1*

Tags: General Health

15 May 09 CANCER OF THE WOMB – GENERAL INFORMATION

Cervical cancer may occur in young women, but its peak incidence is in the late Forties. It is more common in women who have had many pregnancies, in those who have had regular sexual intercourse from an early age and in those who have had many sexual partners. It is also more common in those with a lower socio-economic status.

The herpes virus and the human papilloma virus which causes genital warts are thought to be causes of cancer of the cervix.

Most people still associate cancer with pain but this is usually a late symptom. The earliest symptoms of cancer of the cervix are bleeding and discharge. The bleeding may occur between the periods and may follow intercourse. The discharge is initially clear but later becomes blood-stained and offensive.

But there is a screening test for cancer of the cervix and, if every woman at risk availed herself of it, we could prevent or cure every such case of cancer.

In 1933, Dr George Papanicolaou showed that a simple test of placing a scraping from the cervix on a slide and examining it under the microscope could detect cancer in its earliest stage.

This test has been widely used since the late Fifties but, unfortunately, many women fail to take advantage of it.

*102/71/1*

Tags: General Health

15 May 09 WHY YOU ARE THE BEST PERSON TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT YOUR OWN TREATMENT – IMPORTANCE OF THINGS

However good and caring your practitioner is, he or she can only consider the medical side of things when recommending treatment. You are the only person who can combine the facts about possible treatments with your own ‘inside’ knowledge in order to arrive at the best decision for you. You know whether it is important for you to live as long as possible whatever the cost. You know how important the changes in lifestyle likely to result from your disease or treatment are to you. You know how important your body image is to you and what things about it are most important for you. Provided you can get the necessary ‘outside’ information, this all makes you, without question, the best person to make the decisions.

I’ll just mention one thing that makes these decisions difficult for anyone, not just for you. Nobody can look into the future and predict definitely what will happen to you, as an individual, if you take a particular course of action. Your practitioner should be able to tell you what is average or likely, what is possible but unlikely and what is so unlikely as to be a miracle if it happens. To start with you should base your decision on what is likely. All patients hope they’ll be the exception—the one who makes a miraculous recovery. By all means keep hoping for this, but base your decisions realistically on what is likely or average. Say your practitioner tells you that one in ten patients get a remission on a particular treatment— that means that nine in ten patients do not. If you have this treatment, you are not likely to get a remission.

*132/40/1*

Tags: Cancer