Archive for the 'Cancer' Category

GYNECOLOGICAL CANCER: COLOSTOMY BAGS AND THE IMPACT ON RECOVERY

Friday, July 29th, 2011
Colostomy:  The term colostomy is when the bowel, through surgery, opens onto the outside of the abdomen.
Surgery for most gynecological cancers does not require a colostomy except for the most advanced cases, or where bowel obstruction occurs as it can in advanced ovarian malignancy.
Sometimes surgery for ovarian cancer results in the need for a temporary colostomy with less than ten percent (10%) of surgical patients needing a permanent colostomy. A colostomy is needed when the surgeon has no option but to remove or divert part of the digestive system, which may be damaged due to the spread of the cancer beyond the ovaries. This means the body cannot rid itself of waste in the natural way, and needs a surgical opening (a stoma) to help do this. One of the greatest fears for women undergoing surgery for gynecological cancer is the thought of being left with a permanent colostomy that requires a bag. This means that the woman will no longer be able to pass faeces (‘pooh’) through her anus as normally happens. The faeces are now excreted via the colostomy (or stoma). The contents are collected in a colostomy bag that is attached to the outside of her abdomen.
A colostomy bag is seen by many women as having a devastating impact on lifestyle, self-image and intimate relationships.
However, this need not be the case.
Colostomies are temporary when the bowel needs time to heal effectively. Once everything is returned to normal, the bowel is reconnected and the colostomy is removed. No more bag! A marvelous feat of human plumbing! In some cases, however, the damage is so extensive to the digestive organs or bowel that the colostomy may be permanent.
It is important that you discuss with your doctor what all your options are.
The colostomy bags are cleverly designed and come in a range of sizes, and each with its own clamp to prevent leakage, and charcoal filters to reduce any smell.
Your stomal therapist (colostomy expert) will ‘fit’ your correct size and teach you how to manage the bag.
However, despite all these marvelous advances in bag technology, it is perfectly normal that women needing colostomy bags will experience a range of emotions. There will be a feeling of grief at the loss of normal bodily function, the change to body image, a feeling of being ‘ugly’ and loss of self as an active, sexual being. It is quite common for a woman to feel depressed in the early phases of adjusting to life with a colostomy, and before the realization that life (a good life) will continue. It is really important to communicate your feelings to your stomal therapist, partner or close friends about this. If the depression is severe, psychological counseling may be recommended. Some women go through a temporary phase of not eating to avoid the bag filling. In severe cases, this may lead to the onset of anorexia.
It is really important to discuss all your feelings, especially issues around intimacy and sexuality, with your partner. To discuss what feels most comfortable in intimate moments. If you do not feel like sex immediately, (and for some women this may take days, weeks or months to resume) hugging and kissing can still give enormous pleasure. Make your partner an active part of your management team. Include them in formal meetings, and encourage participation in managing your bag. Blocking them out of your feelings and other needs will only create fear and anxiety in them . . . and inevitably damage the relationship.
*42/144/5*
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THE BASICS FOR SAFE NON-TOXIC CLEANING SOLUTIONS (ALL-PURPOSE SPRAY CLEANER; FURNITURE POLISH; VINEGAR DEODORIZER)

Monday, May 23rd, 2011
1/2 tsp. washing soda a dab of liquid soap 2 cups hot tap water
Combine the ingredients in a spray bottle and shake until the washing soda has dissolved. Apply and wipe off with a sponge or rag.
1/2 teaspoon oil, such as olive (or jojoba, a liquid wax) 1 / 4-cup vinegar or fresh lemon juice Mix the ingredients in a glass jar. Dab a soft rag into the solution, use on wood surfaces. Cover the glass jar and store indefinitely.
Keep a clean spray bottle filled with straight 5 percent vinegar in your kitchen near your cutting board, and in your bathroom, and use them for cleaning. I often spray the vinegar on our cutting board before going to bed at night, and ‘don’t even rinse, but let it set overnight. The smell of vinegar dissipates within a few hours. Straight vinegar is also great for cleaning the toilet rim. Just spray it on and wipe off.
*34/165/1*
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WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO STUDY DIET AND CANCER?

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Every attempt to unravel the relationship between diet and cancer runs up against a whole series of difficulties.
• Diet is very complex. We have already made it clear how many different factors there are in the average diet. Not only is it always going to be difficult to work out which factors are important but we must recognize that they are not likely to act independently. A diet that is rich in something that causes cancer might not seem too bad if it is also rich in something which gives protection against cancer. Unravelling the interactions between these factors presents real problems.
• It is difficult to measure diet accurately. Not only is there great variation in diet but people make a lot of mistakes in recalling their food intake over the previous days. In some studies as many as 50 per cent of people will be found to have made a mistake about important dietary elements when these are cross-checked against independent observations of what they have actually eaten. For some reason, fruit and vegetable content seems to be particularly vulnerable to errors of recall.
• It is difficult to know the amount of a nutrient in any item eaten. For instance, if you have a steak, how much fat is there likely to be in it? This will vary from animal to animal and depends on the preparation and method by which it is cooked. Some of these variations are moderate for the minor constituents of diet. For instance, the variation in carotene, en important constituent of many vegetables, can be two- or threefold between different vegetables. Essentially the more orange a carrot is, the more carotene it contains. Two- or threefold variations may not be crucial hi working out the quantities of a substance in someone’s diet but other factors In the diet may vary several hundredfold. Selenium is an element which has been associated with a protective effect against cancers in some studies. The selenium content of a food will depend upon the selenium content of the soil upon which the vegetables were grown or the animals grazed.
Selenium can vary between such low levels that animals are at risk of selenium deficiency through to such high levels that animals are at risk of selenium poisoning. The selenium content of meat may vary two hundredfold and, for most dietary histories, the source of a particular food may not be knows. It can be seen that dietary histories that are taken in an attempt to estimate selenium intake are not likely to be worthwhile and other approaches to this topic have had to be found.
• Laboratory experiments are difficult to interpret. The impact of diet on cells grown in laboratory dishes is not easy to work out and if we observe the impact of changing the nutrient fluid in which the cells are suspended such observations will only give us weak clues as to what we might expect from any changes in exposure for these kinds of cells in a person. Observations on rats and mice which are fed on diets with differing contents of, for instance, fat or vitamins have given us some clues. However, the diets of small animals cannot accurately reflect what happens in people. Information from experiments may contribute a little piece to the jigsaw as we try to build the truth about the relationship between diet and cancer but they will never be capable of giving us clear answers.
• Epidemiological studies are hard to perform on diet. Case control and cohort studies of the kind which we discussed earlier are difficult because it is hard to estimate exactly people’s exposure to different risks in the diet. Nevertheless, they can be done and they have been undertaken for many important dietary factors. The greatest difficulty for the epidemiologist is that he or she cannot easily do the intervention studies that may be most informative. Any intervention study can only be conducted with the consent of a very large number of people and those people then need to stick quite well to the rules within the study. Major change in diet is hard enough to achieve even for a compelling personal reason like obesity. It is that much more difficult for the sake of a scientific study. The individual people involved cannot be absolutely certain that the changes in the diet are going to benefit them. Smaller dietary changes like adding supplements in the form of capsules or tablets may be possible and it is in this area that most progress has been made.
*55\194\4*

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO STUDY DIET AND CANCER?Every attempt to unravel the relationship between diet and cancer runs up against a whole series of difficulties.• Diet is very complex. We have already made it clear how many different factors there are in the average diet. Not only is it always going to be difficult to work out which factors are important but we must recognize that they are not likely to act independently. A diet that is rich in something that causes cancer might not seem too bad if it is also rich in something which gives protection against cancer. Unravelling the interactions between these factors presents real problems.• It is difficult to measure diet accurately. Not only is there great variation in diet but people make a lot of mistakes in recalling their food intake over the previous days. In some studies as many as 50 per cent of people will be found to have made a mistake about important dietary elements when these are cross-checked against independent observations of what they have actually eaten. For some reason, fruit and vegetable content seems to be particularly vulnerable to errors of recall.• It is difficult to know the amount of a nutrient in any item eaten. For instance, if you have a steak, how much fat is there likely to be in it? This will vary from animal to animal and depends on the preparation and method by which it is cooked. Some of these variations are moderate for the minor constituents of diet. For instance, the variation in carotene, en important constituent of many vegetables, can be two- or threefold between different vegetables. Essentially the more orange a carrot is, the more carotene it contains. Two- or threefold variations may not be crucial hi working out the quantities of a substance in someone’s diet but other factors In the diet may vary several hundredfold. Selenium is an element which has been associated with a protective effect against cancers in some studies. The selenium content of a food will depend upon the selenium content of the soil upon which the vegetables were grown or the animals grazed.Selenium can vary between such low levels that animals are at risk of selenium deficiency through to such high levels that animals are at risk of selenium poisoning. The selenium content of meat may vary two hundredfold and, for most dietary histories, the source of a particular food may not be knows. It can be seen that dietary histories that are taken in an attempt to estimate selenium intake are not likely to be worthwhile and other approaches to this topic have had to be found.• Laboratory experiments are difficult to interpret. The impact of diet on cells grown in laboratory dishes is not easy to work out and if we observe the impact of changing the nutrient fluid in which the cells are suspended such observations will only give us weak clues as to what we might expect from any changes in exposure for these kinds of cells in a person. Observations on rats and mice which are fed on diets with differing contents of, for instance, fat or vitamins have given us some clues. However, the diets of small animals cannot accurately reflect what happens in people. Information from experiments may contribute a little piece to the jigsaw as we try to build the truth about the relationship between diet and cancer but they will never be capable of giving us clear answers.• Epidemiological studies are hard to perform on diet. Case control and cohort studies of the kind which we discussed earlier are difficult because it is hard to estimate exactly people’s exposure to different risks in the diet. Nevertheless, they can be done and they have been undertaken for many important dietary factors. The greatest difficulty for the epidemiologist is that he or she cannot easily do the intervention studies that may be most informative. Any intervention study can only be conducted with the consent of a very large number of people and those people then need to stick quite well to the rules within the study. Major change in diet is hard enough to achieve even for a compelling personal reason like obesity. It is that much more difficult for the sake of a scientific study. The individual people involved cannot be absolutely certain that the changes in the diet are going to benefit them. Smaller dietary changes like adding supplements in the form of capsules or tablets may be possible and it is in this area that most progress has been made.*55\194\4*

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