Leading a healthy life in 2011 is harder than ever before. As doctors prescribe more antibiotics for the treatment of colds, viruses, and non-urgent illnesses, the results are becoming quite disastrous. Instead of getting better, people are still getting sick only to be resistant to the antibiotics that are used to treat them. The results are a bacteria nightmare with cases of staph infection and MRSA raging out of control at schools, hospitals, and athletic facilities. At CSGGRP.com, we are dedicated to helping Americans stay well. Read along and you will learn how you can prevent diseases and avoid bacterial infections that are often deadly.
Winter is just around the corner and it’s time to start thinking about flu prevention. Every year, flu season really hits its swing around January and children are usually absent from school in large numbers by February. The former strands of the flu virus have been tough to cope with, but rarely fatal. Then a few years ago, the H1N1 flu hit the United States and claimed many lives in the months that followed. If you want to prevent contracting H1N1 this winter, there are some important steps you can take. Check out these tips to prevent Swine Flu and stay well this winter.
- Wash Your Hands Frequently.
This one is almost a no-brainer, but still it is worth the reminder! Wash your hands often during flu season (and always!). Be sure you wash up after you use the bathroom, before eating or touching food, after shaking hands or touching shopping carts and door knobs in a public area. You can also carry hand sanitizer to kill germs quickly when you aren’t able to wash your hands.
- Get Vaccinated.
While some controversy does surround the flu vaccine, it is still a very important step that many Americans choose to take in order to stay well. You can get a vaccination against H1N1 at almost any pharmacy, doctor’s office, or public health department. Many places even offer these vaccinations for free. Studies have been released that claim people have a significantly reduced risk of contracting H1N1 after taking the vaccine. Some people still refuse them due to concerns about potential side effects. Ultimately, the decision is yours alone, but vaccines are at least an option to consider.
- Stay Away from Contagious Zones
There are certain places where you will be much more likely to catch the H1N1 virus during the winter. If you have a weak immune system, avoid shopping malls, crowded waiting rooms, or public transportation if at all possible. These areas are a breeding ground for germs and they are often contaminated with the flu virus as well.
Every parent knows that the winter months can be difficult. Children tend to get sick more during colder weather and every winter, a round or two of the flu will wipe out entire elementary classrooms. In order to keep your child as healthy as possible during the winter months, there are several things you can do. Here are three quick tips to help your little ones stay well this winter.
First, encourage your child to be careful about sharing germs. You can talk about little things like covering your mouth while coughing or sneezing and washing hands frequently. Small children often share food and toys, with no thought to whether their friends are sick or carrying germs for the flu, strep throat, or even the common cold. By making your child aware of germs, you can help prevent some of the spread of illnesses during the winter.
Second, make hand washing a priority at home. When your children come home from school, be sure that they wash their hands immediately. Before eating a snack or starting on homework, everyone should wash their hands thoroughly with soap and warm water. You can also use antibacterial hand sanitizer when you are out in public. Keep a bottle in your purse, diaper bag, and in the car. Make it a habit to use it every time you shake hands or get back in the car after shopping.
Third, take steps to keep your child in a germ free zone. While you can’t keep your kid in your bubble, you can eliminate a lot of germs with easy prevention steps. Use disinfectant hand wipes to wash off the shopping cart handle before your child sits down. Use high chair covers and wipe down the table at restaurants where your child is eating. These easy steps can keep your child from catching many of the common illnesses that hit during the winter.
If you pay much attention to health news in the media, you have undoubtedly heard about MRSA many times in the past few years. Pronounced as “mer-sa”, MRSA is short for Methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus Aureus. Basically, MRSA is a form of a staph infection, caused by a bacterium that is frequently found in hospitals, doctor’s offices, fitness centers, and sometimes schools. MRSA is very dangerous because it is antibiotic resistant and is very difficult to treat.
Contracting MRSA results in a skin infection. Patients will often have an open sore or wound that just won’t heal, no matter how many kinds of creams of ointments they might try. MRSA is resistant to most oral antibiotics that physicians ordinarily would prescribe to treat this kind of infection. The fact that it is so difficult to treat combined with the infection’s ability to also infect the bloodstream or internal organs, makes it extremely deadly. While most people who are infected with MRSA do not die, many face a long battle to get better. Some doctors have referred to MRSA as a “super bug” that can live in spite of many of the treatments that doctors have tried.
While MRSA is not commonly a problem, some people do contract it despite every attempt to stay well. Staph bacteria are actually found all over our bodies. In fact, the majority of the population carries staph on our skin and even in our noses. While we won’t get sick by the presence of staph bacteria on our bodies, we will become very sick if it somehow makes its way inside our bodies.
The bacteria often get in through a small cut or sore. It starts as a small skin infection, but can quickly progress to a large wound. Most of the time, these sores can be treated with antibiotics, but in some cases, the staph infection is resistant at which time it is classified as MRSA.
Disturbing news is hitting the antibiotic world. India manufactures a third of the world’s antibiotics. In this $12 billion pharmaceutical industry area a superbug and supergerm has been discovered. At this time, doctors are not able to treat or combat a new superbug.
As you know the more a particular antibiotic is used for various strains of infection, the likelihood of the infection to become immune rendering the antibiotic useless against it is extremely high. This happens often. Since India produces mega loads of high-powered antibiotics, they use these antibiotics to treat anything and everything.
Aiding to this resistance is the very poor hygiene used in India. These super resistant germs are being dumped into the water system ad sewers. The residue from antibiotic manufacturing along with medical waste are now found in the sanitation system.
The superbug and supergerm has found its way into France, South Africa, Canada, Kosovo and Italy. Oddly enough these superbugs have been found in people that have not traveled outside their homeland.
This is scary stuff. We all don’t like to be sick or see our little ones sick. Using antibiotics at every whim will cause your body and germ not to respond the way antibiotics should. If these superbugs and supergerms are finding their way to other countries, what does that mean for you and me? Be sure if you are traveling outside the United States, do some research in where you are going and what you can do to help protect yourself from harm. As of now, there are not any medications you can take to shield yourself from these superbugs and supergerms. Just be educated before going.
I was never much of a fan of lazing around in my family’s hot tub. My husband was the one who spent the most time there; every morning he started his day with a cup of coffee and 15 minutes in our outdoor hot tub. I thought I was much to busy to spend ¼ hour of my day sitting still. My whole concept of hot tubs changed when I broke my back.
We are alfalfa farmers and as such our summer days are filled with tractors, swathers, balers, a touchy harrow bed, trucks, bucking bales and not much sleep. Without proper sleep a person can get pretty stupid; I lacked sleep and I got stupid.
One hot July morning I saddled one of my horses with an English saddle and set off for a nice ride along the river that flows through our place. For 45 minutes every bit of that ride was fabulous; then I rode past one of the big hay barns where a semi-truck was backed in loading bales. As I came around the end of the barn the engine backfired; it sounded like a rifle shot. My horse did not panic but he did lurch sideways a couple of steps. He was sweaty and my saddle slipped like it was on Vaseline. I opted to jump rather than fall; I landed hard on my head, hip bone and shoulder. When I woke up I could not move; the hay crew saw what happened and came running.
I was lucky, my lower back was broken but the spinal cord was intact. I had extreme bone bruising that took 4 months to go away. In a case like mine there was nothing really that could be done, it had to heal on its own. For six months I was off tractors, equipment and horses.
The physical damage was bad enough but the mental damage was worse; I had never been hurt and my invincibility was shattered. I wanted to heal. My physical therapist was pleased to learn we had a hot tub; at first the hot tub was used to help manage my pain. As healing progressed calcification began to set in and mobility in my back decreased. There were days that I practically lived in the hot, soothing waters of our hot tub.
Once healing was considered “complete” I found that a cup of coffee and a soak in the hot tub got my day started right. Nowadays I start every day with a dip in the hot tub.
Soaking in the hot tub makes my life better; it soothes away the pain and relaxes my back so that I can walk properly. If you have suffered from an injury similar to mine, check out the following links to learn more:
- Find out how Jacuzzis and indoor saunas really work by reading the articles posted here.
- Learn the difference between resistance pools, 2 person tubs, and regular Jacuzzis here.
- Shop for an outdoor whirlpool, corner bath tub, or any other kind of jetted tub you may want at this discount site.
My mother suffered a massive debilitating stroke one year ago. It took her away most of her abilities leaving her unable to walk or care for herself in any way. Her speech was non-existent for a time but slowly she began to form words and then short sentences. She is far from her pre-stroke self but she has amazed me and her doctors by coming back in some totally unexpected areas.
Mom loved puzzles and word games all her life. Today it is difficult to tell just what she is capable of; we know she cannot write, read or spell words. However, she does like to draw simple pictures and seems to understand simple number games. The care facility where she lives takes excellent care of the patients; they have achieved what seems to me to be the perfect balance between taking care of patient needs and letting patients try some things for themselves. The Activities Director at the facility tries very hard to engage the patients both physically and mentally in hopes of preserving and even stimulating thought and motion.
It was by accident that I learned that mom was entranced by colors and numbers. I was sitting by mom’s bed waiting for her to wake up; I was killing time playing free bingo on my laptop. When she awoke she took a long look at the screen and started pointing at various features of the game. She particularly liked the computer “announcer” calling numbers in the game I was playing. I decided to see if she would find enjoyment in playing online bingo. I hoped that her memory might improve by playing games like bingo where some short term memory is involved.
I was really surprised by her reaction to the start of a new bingo game. Even though her speech is garbled it was clear that she could hear the announcer’s voice and knew there was a place to look for the number just named. To my delight she had some memory that up until then, none of us had been aware of. From that day on it became my task to introduce new bingo sites gradually to expand her range of experience.
It took about a week for mom to learn that she needed to listen to the announcer for a number and then she had to remember that number long enough to look on her card and see if she could find it. It was slow at first but she go better and better; her doctor said she was relearning a skill.
She has her favorite online bingo websites now; bingo street, xbingo and wonder bingo are the best as far as she is concerned. These three websites are user friendly, easy to navigate, action packed and each offers plenty of free play– perfect for my mom.
We do feel that playing free online bingo has helped my mom’s memory to improve.
The healthcare community is constantly looking for new ways to treat patients with MRSA. Rarely, patients contract this antibiotic-resistant staph infection after having surgery or visiting a hospital where staph infection is rampant. The staph infection can travel into the body through any small cut and result in large open wounds that are resistant to antibiotic therapies. Though medical researchers are working hard to find new ways to treat MRSA, the disease is also constantly adapting and changing, making it hard for even the best doctors to keep up with it.
MRSA is most commonly seen in nursing homes, hospitals, or among people with very weak immune systems. A recent study showed that MRSA was responsible for over 60% of reported staph infections in US hospitals. A Texas study also revealed that children are 14 times more likely to carry MRSA then they were just two years prior.
Upon contracting MRSA, patients usually visit the physician with complaints of infected cuts, sores, or even gaping wounds. These sores are typically not responsive to topical antibiotics and some are not responsive to oral antibiotics either. In most cases, doctors will administer an injection of antibiotics in high doses or admit the patient to the hospital to be carefully watched and given IV antibiotics until the infection properly heals. In rare cases, surgery might be necessary, particularly if the infection causes permanent damage to a small joint.
To avoid dealing with MRSA, patients should wash their hands frequently and keep all cuts and open sores covered by a bandage while out in public. People with weak immune systems should also be very careful to wash their hands and avoid exposure of any open skin while visiting the hospital or other healthcare facilities.
In 2009, the H1N1 virus swept through the nation leaving thousands of people sick with this new “Swine flu” and killing many. By June 2009, a “pandemic” was declared by the World Health Organization and new immunizations were developed to combat it. In 2011, the H1N1 virus is expected to continue spreading, particularly as the winter months approach and 2012 begins. It’s important to understand what the swine flu is in order to prevent it from causing illness or even death in your family.
Despite the common belief that swine flu was introduced from pigs, the H1N1 virus was nicknamed swine flu because researchers noticed that it was similar to a virus that infects pigs in North America. However, further research uncovered that this virus is not the same as the one that causes pigs to get sick, but it was more like a mix of flu viruses.
With two genes that match the virus that affects pigs in Europe and two genes that match the virus that affects birds and humans in North America, the H1N1 virus is sometimes deemed the quadruple virus. It is something completely different that former forms of the flu that have been seen in the United States in previous years and it has caused the medical research community to scramble to find a possible vaccine to prevent it.
H1N1 spreads in the same way as a common cold or flu. It passes from one person to the next through a sneeze or cough. Germs are easily encountered for the swine flu during cold winter months and the spring. To prevent contracting H1N1, the best steps you can take are to make sure you do proper hand washing and use antibacterial disinfectants on surfaces where your family eats.
Be sure you stay away from other infected individuals and avoid hospitals and nursing homes in the peak months of flu season. In 2011, there is a vaccine available to prevent the swine flu. While some have experienced significant problems as a result of the vaccine, others have done well with it. Talk to your health care provider to find out if you are a good candidate for the H1N1 vaccine.