Causes of Jock Itch

The damp, warm, cloistered and dark environment of the groin area provides a perfect arena for the following fungi to thrive and multiply and a weakened immune system prevents the body from fighting off the opportunistic fungal parasite: Trichophyton rubrum is the most common fungus causing jock itch that, under the microscope, looks like translucent, branching, rod-shaped filaments or hyphae; Tinea pedis is the fungus which also causes athlete’s foot. A few other fungi known to cause jock itch are Candida albicans, Trichophyton mentagrophytes and Epidermophyton floccosum. Tight clothing causes the affected groin area to sweat and clothing which rubs against the infected skin exacerbates the condition and prolongs the unpleasant symptoms.

Treating Jock Itch

There are numerous remedies for treating the jock itch infection and for relieving its symptoms:

1/ Antifungal drugs in the form of topical creams or ointments such as tolnaftate, clotrimazole, miconazole and butenafine are applied directly to the infected areas. These antifungal drugs stop the fungi from producing essential components for their cell membranes and, therefore, this leads to the ultimate death of the fungus.

2/ To reduce the itching and burning, gluccocorticoid steroids are often used in conjunction with the antifungal drugs but never on their own because this may worsen the fungal infection. Gluccocorticoid steroids will also decrease the risk of a secondary bacterial infection that may be caused by scratching and which may then require antibiotics.

3/ To fight the jock itch more naturally –

- Wearing soft cloth and loose fitting clothing.
- The affected area must be kept clean and dry.
- Clothing, towels, blankets or bed sheets which come in contact with the fungus must be changed daily to avoid transmitting the fungus to other parts of the body.
- Talcum powder will help retain the area’s dryness and medicated powders containing menthol or zinc oxide will alleviate the itching.
- Anti-dandruff shampoos often have anti-fungus compounds such as pyrithione zinc, selenium sulfide and ketoconazole (Nizoral). Anti-dandruff shampoos are, therefore, great for cleansing the distressed groin area.
- Garlic contains allicin which has anti-fungal properties.
- Tea tree oil is also a natural anti fungal.

The best medicine is the preventive kind and the surest way to prevent jock itch is by employing the same methods that are used to relieve it and they are:

4/ Keeping the groin area clean and dry at all times.
5/ Avoiding clothing that is overly tight, rough in texture and rubbing the groin area.
6/ Daily washing athletic supports such as jockstraps.
7/ Applying medicated powders after every bathing.

The Most Common Cause of Jetlag

Traveling by jet plane is the most common cause of jetlag but it does not depend on the time in flight but rather on its direction. Even twelve hour flights that are bound north or south will never cause jetlags because no time zones are crossed. On the other hand, either eastward or westward (trans-meridian) bound flights do cause jetlags even if they are as short as three or four hours because the east-west destinations cross time zones. There is evident which points to the fact that traveling from west to east contributes to jetlag more than traveling from east to west and the symptoms tend to be more pronounced.

The crossing into different time zones brings the body’s clock into disharmony with the time zone of the end destination. In other words, the body suddenly experiences day and night that does not coordinate with the pattern it has become accustomed to. As a consequence, the cadence that determines when it is time to eat and to sleep as well as the regulation of hormonal processes and the gauging of the body’s temperature variants becomes inconsistent with the surrounding environment and with each other. Since the greatest possible disruption is approximately twelve hours, crossing the International Date Line does not add to the effects of jetlag.

The Most Often Reported Symptoms of Jetlag

The symptoms of jetlag vary from one person to another as does their severity and duration the following are the most common ones:

• Digestive problems that may lead to loss of appetite, nausea and irregularity of bowel movements.
• Headaches, stuffiness of the sinuses and pain as well as general body aches.
• Disturbance of sleep patterns and insomnia which then cause weakness and fatigue.
• Mental disorientation, wooziness, irritability and easily triggered bouts of anger.
• Depression and reduced energy.

Remedial Cures for Jetlag

The best and time proven cure for the symptoms of jetlag is to allow the body to do its own synchronizing in an effort to catch-up or to fall-back to the local time zone. Some say that melatonin, a hormone, speeds up this process but it has not yet been tested or approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration or by any other official agencies. Sildenafil (Viagra) has been tried on hamsters with a 50% rate of success but no human subjects have been tested and, therefore, sildenafil is not yet recognized as a remedy for the symptoms of jet lag.

Additional Symptoms of Jaundice

Besides the unnatural yellow tint of the skin and the sclera that was mentioned above, jaundice is accompanied by several other symptoms such as:

• The stool becomes whitish as the bilirubin that gives it its darker brown coloring is missing.
• The urine becomes brown as the bilirubin that accumulates in the blood begins to make its way out of the body through the urinary tract.
• Severe itching of the skin throughout the body which is also referred to as pruritus.

Causes for Jaundice

Red blood cells have an average life span of 120 days and then they are destroyed. The hemoglobin, which is the chemical within the red blood cell that contains iron, is released, its contents are extracted and the remaining chemical is then transformed to bilirubin which is essentially a waste product within the bloodstream that is ultimately processed by the liver and then transported into the intestines for elimination in the fecal matter. Jaundice becomes evident when:

1/ More bilirubin is produced than the liver can handle, and this often occurs in patients with -

- Hemolytic anemia because this condition results is an extraordinarily rapid destruction of red blood cells which, in turn, leads to the productions of tremendous amounts of bilirubin and its huge deluge into the bloodstream.
- Ineffective erythropoiesis is a dysfunction of the red blood cells that leads to over-production of hemoglobin in the bone marrow.
- Hematomas that are caused by severe bleeding and the absorption of too much hemoglobin by the soft tissues.

2/ The liver is malfunctioning and failing to remove the bilirubin from the blood. This may be due to a disease of the liver such as –

- Cirrhosis whose symptoms are extreme weakness and fatigue, swollen ankles, muscle atrophy, a buildup of fluids in the abdomen, mental confusion, bleeding intestines and coma.
- Inflammations of the liver such as viral hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, Tylenol-induced liver toxicity, chronic hepatitis B and C and autoimmune hepatitis.
- Cancer of the liver.

3/ The bile ducts have become blocked by various cancers (pancreatic, liver, bile ducts), gallstones, an inflammation or abnormal development of the bile ducts such as in Caroli’s disease, therefore, the bile and bilirubin cannot pass through on their way to the intestines. Bile breaks down fats within the intestines to excrete vitamins and release them into the bloodstream. Insufficient flow of bile may lead to unhealthful vitamin deficiencies.

4/ There is a long list of prescribed, over-the-counter and recreational drugs that may cause hepatitis or inflammation of the liver, inflammation of the bile ducts as well as interferences in the normal chemical processes within the cells of the bile ducts and/or the liver.

5/ Genetic disorders such as –

- Crigler-Najjar syndrome is caused by the absence or the low level of an enzyme that processes the glucuronic acid into bilirubin.
- Dubin-Johnson and Rotor’s syndromes are brought about because of an irregular discharge of bilirubin into the bile.
- Gilbert’s syndrome is a mild form of the Crigler-Najjar syndrome and usually causes no ill effects.

Causes of Joint Damage

Joint damage can affect any component of the joint and it can be caused by countless injuries and innumerable accidents as well as diseases. One such disease is hemophilia which leads to joint damage due to frequent internal bleeding into the joints. However, most joint damage is the direct or indirect result of various forms of arthritis. As a matter of fact, arthritis is a general term that points to well over one hundred different medical conditions that cause pain, stiffness and inflammation in one or any number of joints in the body. The most often occurring among them are the following:

• Osteoarthritis is the inflammation of the joints due to the destruction of their cartilage and, in certain instances, the development of bony outgrowths called bone spurs.
• Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) which is a chronic inflammation of the joints and the adjoining tissues due to an abnormal separation, growth and proliferation of the white blood cells in the synovial membrane which can also lead to destruction of the joint’s cartilage.
• Systematic lupus erythematosus which is a chronic inflammation that affects not only the joints but also the skin and internal organs.
• Ankylosing spondylitis which is the condition that stiffens the spine and its surroundings.

Treatments of Joint Damage

The most common treatments for joint damage are:

• The surgical replacement of the damaged joint with an artificial version. This, however, is not a viable option for young patients because of the risk of wearing out the prosthetic device after approximately ten years.

• Cartilage has no nerve supply and, therefore, when damage begins there are no pain impulses to alert the sufferer. Furthermore, cartilage does not have the self-healing properties of the other organs of our bodies and is not expected to repair itself. To prevent an early onset of osteoarthritis, a clinical procedure to repair the cartilage is prescribed mostly to patients under the age of 40 who are experiencing pain in the knee joints due to conditions such as -

- Earlier injuries to the ligament or the meniscus of the joint in question.
- Osteochondral fractures from sports injuries.
- Chondromalacia patellae which is the spontaneous breakdown of the cartilage in adolescence.
- Osteochondritis dissecans which is a condition mostly occurring in teenagers and young adults and results in pieces of cartilage and bone separating from the surface of the joint.
- The early onset of osteoarthritis that resulted from the above conditions.

• Cartilage transplantation can be accomplished by four methods –

- Osteochondral grafts which include a shell of cartilage and its subchondral bone cut to size to fill the defect.
- Grafting of the cartilage without the subchondral bone and gluing it to the damaged area.
- Chondrycytes are isolated and cultured.
- Osteochondral allografts.

• Kogenate FS is a drug administered to the very young hemophilia patients which helps prevent or control excessive bleeding into their joints.

image from Unscriped Drama (http://www.unscripteddrama.net/diabetes.php)

The Metabolic Process

A percentage of the food that is ingested is broken down and converted to glucose (sugar) which is then dispersed into the bloodstream and conveyed by insulin (a hormone secreted by the pancreas) into the cells of the body. Under normal and healthy circumstances, the pancreas produces the exact amount of insulin that is needed to metabolize the glucose present in the body. However, in patients with Juvenile Diabetes, one or both of the following occurs: (a) the pancreas produces either not enough insulin or none at all; or (b) the body cells respond abnormally to the insulin produced by the pancreas. In both cases the glucose accumulates in the bloodstream, spreads out into the intestines and the bladder and then leaves the body unutilized in the urine.

Possible Complications Resulting from Juvenile Diabetes

Among all other chronic diseases of childhood years, the risk of Juvenile Diabetes is the highest and when it is left untreated or poorly controlled, it can cause the following serious and irreparable damages:

• The Eyes. In due course, the arteries in the retina get weak and begin leaking to form small hemorrhages as parts of the retina are deprived of oxygenation. In advanced stages, the condition worsens and may lead to retinal detachment, glaucoma and blindness.

• Blood Vessels. Damage and blockage of the blood vessels increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

• Nervous System. Impairment to the nervous system can result in foot ulcers, impotence and an assortment of digestive disorders.

• Kidneys. Disruption and disturbances of kidneys’ functions can ultimately lead to their failure.

Typical Symptoms of Juvenile Diabetes

Depending on the severity of the case and on the individual, the symptoms of Juvenile Diabetes may vary but they are typically as follows:

• Intense thirst and endless craving for food.
• Rapid weight loss for no apparent reasons.
• Frequent and urgent urination during the day and at night.
• Constant fatigue and great weakness leading to drowsiness and lethargy.
• Blurred or cloudy vision.
• Tingling sensations and numbness of the extremities (hands and feet).
• Breathing difficulties.
• A fruit-like odor in the breath.

Treatment of Juvenile Diabetes

Treating Juvenile Diabetes with great deal of care and diligence is of utmost importance and the treatments include:

• Insulin injections.
• Low carbohydrate, low sugar and low fat diets.
• Regular exercise routines.
• Self-monitoring of blood glucose levels.