HIV: MEDICAL TREATMENTS-THE RANGE OF AVAILABLE THERAPIES

July 24, 2011

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, medical treatments could do little except relieve unpleasant symptoms. As researchers understood more about HIV—how it infects, how it multiplies—they began to find drugs that slow the infection, and even to understand how to custom-build drugs to attack HIV. The result of their understanding was and continues to be a rapid succession of new drugs to treat HIV itself.     We now know that certain drugs will delay the development of AIDS. We also know that certain vaccines and antibiotics will delay or even prevent the opportunistic infections that define AIDS. These drugs and vaccines are part of traditional medicine.     The medical care of people with HIV infection can be divided into traditional medicine and alternative medicine. Traditional medicine is traditional to us in the West—in the United States and the Western world—and is based on specific scientific standards. Alternative medicine has diverse forms: some borrow heavily from” Eastern (Chinese, Japanese, or Indian) philosophy; some use methods based on the mind-body interaction; and some are based on nonapproved drugs or diets or other treatments that, measured by the standard yardstick of the science of medicine, have no established merit.     Nearly all people with HIV infection receive traditional medical care. As many as a third of the people with HIV infection receive some form of alternative treatment as well. Both traditional and alternative medicine make the same claims: the treatments kill HIV or prevent HIV from reproducing, or strengthen the immune system, or relieve symptoms. People with HIV infection hearing these conflicting claims are understandably confused.     The first section discusses the drugs of traditional medicine and their side effects, and—another source of concern for people with HIV infection—how to pay for them. The next section discusses how drugs are tested to find out whether they are useful and how best to use them. The last section is on alternatives to traditional medicine—treatments that have not been and are not likely to be tested—and whether they are likely to help or be harmful.*175\191\2*

COPING WITH EPILEPSY/ACCEPTANCE: THE BIGGEST PROBLEM – WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND PARENTS DO ABOUT FRIENDS WHO SEEM SO UNCOMFORTABLE AROUND THEM? WHAT ABOUT THE HANDICAPPED YOUNG ADULT?

July 10, 2011

“What do you recommend parents do about friends who seem so uncomfortable around them?”"Friends, even good friends, may be uncomfortable asking about your child’s problems. They may be so uncomfortable they can’t even ask how he’s doing, or what’s new? In many, perhaps most cases, it’s not because they don’t care. Perhaps it’s because they care too much and are afraid of hurting your feelings or bringing you more pain. Perhaps the best way for you to help them is to bring the questions up. Make them feel that you are comfortable talking about your child and his problems with them. You may have to be the one to take the lead.”"What about the handicapped young adult?”"One of the saddest experiences for a counselor is to encounter a young adult with limitations, whose seizures are under control but who has been so overprotected by loving and caring parents that as a child he never learned to care for himself, never learned survival skills. The parents are now getting older and finally realize they won’t be around forever to care for him. They begin to worry about what will happen.”Our local epilepsy association has apartments where we teach these individuals independent living and survival skills. But the skills are much harder to teach and to learn at an older age. It is difficult to break patterns of dependency that have built up over the years. Much of the overprotection and the resultant handicap could have been prevented if the family and the child had had good early counseling. The life of the whole family would have been much better.”*237\208\8*

CHARACTERISTICS OF BDD IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS: CASE HISTORIES

July 5, 2011

Kristin, a 17-year-old adolescent, had many of the classic BDD symptoms shown in Table 9. I met her in the hospital after she’d tried to commit suicide. She said she’d attempted suicide primarily because of her appearance concerns. Since age 13 she’d been excessively preoccupied with her nose, which she thought was too large; her breasts, which were too “small”; and her hair, which “wasn’t right.” She described her concerns as “very, very distressing—an obsession. They’re so horrible I get suicidal; it’s why I overdosed. I couldn’t stand the pain any more.”Kristin thought about her appearance “every second of every day,” and she checked mirrors, store windows, and other reflecting surfaces for hours a day. “I also constantly compare myself to other girls, and I ask my mother a million times a day whether I look okay, but I really don’t believe her when she says how pretty I am…. Sometimes people compliment me on my hair, but it makes me angry. I think they’re saying they like my hair so they don’t have to say how ugly the rest of me is.” Because she thought she was so ugly, Kristin avoided seeing friends and dating. She also failed some of her courses and eventually dropped out of high school. To feel better about how she looked, she had a nose job, which diminished her concern with her nose, but she then worried more about her breasts.At the age of 14, Eric became preoccupied with the idea that he had severe acne, wrinkles around his eyes, and “stuck-out” ears—deformities that weren’t discernible to others. Eric often checked himself in mirrors and kept lights dimmed so his “defects” wouldn’t be visible. He covered his forehead with his bangs and a baseball hat, and he wore makeup to hide his supposed acne. Eric had had many friends and had been a very good student and a star soccer player. But as a result of his appearance concerns, his grades plummeted, and he became increasingly self-conscious, depressed, anxious, and socially isolated. Eventually, after several years of these symptoms, he was unable to attend school and became housebound.*155\204\8*

Random Posts

• NITRATES AND NITRITES
• RECURRENT NIGHTMARES
• STIMULATE YOUR DETERMINATION: NEVER TOO OLD TO LOSE
• THE FACTS-THE FIRST SEIZURE AND THE DIAGNOSIS OF EPILEPSY: OTHER CAUSES OF IMPAIRED OXYGEN SUPPLY TO THE BRAIN-VERTIGO
• ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES FOR BONE DENSITY: LILLIAN’S STORY
• HRT AND MENOPAUSAL SYMPTOMCONTROL: SEX LIFE
• NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS FOR FERTILITY: ZINC
• SEX & COLOUR: COLOUR IN THE BEDROOM
• THE INFLUENCE OF CORRECT BREATHING ON ILLNESS – LUNGS, CHESTS AND DIAPHRAGMS
• HERBS: ANGELICA