BODY DEFENSES AND MEDICAL REINFORCEMENTS

BODY DEFENSES AND MEDICAL REINFORCEMENTS

You CAN be certain of one thing about your body: it is a battleground. You have had your share of colds and other commonplace infectious diseases and perhaps even a few serious ones. Much more often, hundreds upon hundreds of times, you have been threatened by infection, your body has responded, and invading organisms have been repulsed- all without your being aware of even the threat, let alone the encounter. 

All of us are constantly exposed to microorganisms in the air, soil, and water. Some are harmless; many are potentially dangerous. And the body's defenses are so organized that it is usual for a quick counterattack to be mustered against invading organisms-quick and effective enough to prevent infection.

It is only when invading organisms are too numerous to be fended off in time or when body defenses are impaired through injury or poor health that an infection takes hold. You can probably expect to live a long time, because of your body's natural ability to repulse many invasions and because of the growing arsenal of weapons your physician has to help when necessary. 

Also of tremendous importance: the growing armamentarium that medicine now has to increase your defenses against specific disease agents in advance of attack, and the growing knowledge about natural defenses and how to help keep them intact, knowledge that you yourself can apply. 

Myths about Foot care - Early Problems

 EARLY PROBLEMS on Feet

About 99 percent of us are born with perfect feet and manage to quickly acquire trouble. One study carried out not long ago in seven cities found that 74 percent of children in elementary schools had foot problems; by high school, 88 percent.

There are several reasons for this. Throughout life the feet are subjected to the stress of standing on hard surfaces. Man doesn't do enough walking, which is good for the feet. Standing is an enemy of the feet in the sense that it involves 100 percent use of them; walking involves only 50 percent use since one foot rests while the other supports weight. 

And shoes-poorly fitted and often designed for the eyes rather than the feet -deserve a major share of the blame. Foot specialists who have examined many thousands of feet lament over what they call "man's insistence on forcing a square into a triangle." If you take off a shoe and look straight down at your foot, you will note that the sides make roughly parallel straight lines, and even the front can be described more or less as a straight line running from big to little toe. But look at your shoes and more than likely the toes are shaped like triangles.

Only when man started enclosing his feet in shoes did he have to start worrying about corns, calluses, hammer toes, bunions, and other foot ailments.

MYTHS 

We are surrounded by foot myths. They range from the notion that many foot troubles stem from wearing sneakers in childhood to wearing loafers, which are supposed to be bad because they let the feet spread. 

As one authority on the feet notes, undoubtedly the feet will grow somewhat larger and wider if not restricted by ill-shaped shoes, but this is healthy. The biggest misconceptions center on flat feet and fallen arches. Because the Army once rejected thousands of men with flat feet, the idea that there's something inevitably wrong with flat feet persists. 

 One of the nation's outstanding investigators of the foot, has reported that many people with arches "as flat as pancakes" never have experienced foot pain, while some of the most painful and obstinate cases involve feet with well-formed arches.

According to some authorities, only one out of 1,000 people with flat feet experiences pain because the feet are flat. The best practice for the flat-footed person-and anyone else with a painful foot problem for which there is no clear-cut, obvious cause-is to get advice and treatment from a physician or podiatrist rather than to keep buying arch supports. 

Filling Teeth- Reimplanting Teeth

 FILLING TEETH

Once tooth enamel has been destroyed by acid, it will not be replaced; neither will the dentin of the tooth when it has been destroyed. But if the decay has not gone too far, the dentist can save the tooth by removing the diseased portion and filling the cavity. For this, he drills out the decayed area, applies an antiseptic, then inserts a well-fitted filling. When decay has penetrated to the pulp and root canal, the tooth may ache. 

The nerve dies and infection spreads around the ends of the roots in the jawbone. This may lead to infections elsewhere even when the tooth itself does not hurt.

The dentist tries to save most of the tooth by cleaning out the decay and the residue of pulp and nerve. He sterilizes the root canals, then fills them and the cavity to seal them and keep them sterile. Thereafter, such a tooth is examined at intervals by x-ray. If the infection continues or recurs, the tooth may have to be extracted, but there is a good chance that it can remain in place.

REIMPLANTING TEETH

Techniques of re-implanting dislodged teeth and of inducing damaged tissue to regrow are new and still not matters of routine dental practice, but they are advancing beyond the merely experimental stage. Re-implantation means that, under some circumstances, a permanent tooth that has been knocked out may be reinserted into its socket, reinforced, and encouraged to grow back into the jaw. In regeneration, the tissues and bone around teeth, after being destroyed by disease, may be induced to grow back. 

Dental care tools and how to use?

Dental Care TOOLS

 A toothbrush, preferably soft-bristled, never hard, since it will be used at the gumline as well as on the teeth

 Dental floss

 An irrigator, or water spray, attachable to the bathroom faucet

 Many types are available. Your dentist may recommend one.

A small, inexpensive, plastic-handled mouth mirror, available from your dentist or drugstore

How TO PROCEED

BRUSHING

 Properly used, a toothbrush can clean three of the five surfaces of the teeth-chewing, cheek side and tongue side. Note: A critical, often missed zone is the last one-sixteenth inch of the tooth at the gum margin. Plaque and bacteria near the gum as well as on the rest of the tooth must be removed. Direct the brush bristles gently into the crevice between gum and teeth. 

Mildly vibrate brush handle so bristles do not travel and skip about but can dislodge material in this area. A soft-bristle brush gently used will do no damage to gum tissue; a stiff bristle brush may. Next, move brush, applying gentle but firm pressure, so bristles travel over surface of tooth. Brush upper teeth with a downward motion; lower, with upward motion. 

Brush surfaces next to tongue and surfaces next to cheek. Then clean the chewing surfaces, brushing across tops of teeth. Brush at least half a dozen strokes in each area.

FLOSSING

 Plaque must be cleaned away from the other two surfaces of the teeth-the sides, or interdental surfaces. Floss can accomplish this. Cut off a piece of floss 18 to 24 inches long. Wrap the ends around the forefinger and middle finger of each hand, leaving the thumbs free. To floss between upper teeth, use thumbs as guide; hold thumbs about 1 inch apart, keeping floss taut. For lower teeth, use forefingers as guide, keeping them 1 inch apart.

 Slip the floss between each pair of teeth. Do not try to snap floss through a tight area; work it gently back and forth until it passes through. Carry the floss to the base of one tooth, stopping when it is just under the edge of the gum. Scrape the floss up and down against the side of the tooth until you get a rough or "squeaky" feeling, which indicates you have broken through the plaque and are actually touching the tooth. After cleaning the side of one tooth, clean the side of the adjoining tooth.

 RINSING

 After brushing and flossing, vigorous rinsing will remove dislodged food particles, plaque, and bacteria. An irrigating spray also helps clean under any bridges or braces and in gum pockets where brush and floss cannot reach. Place the spray tip in the mouth pointing toward the tongue and adjust water flow until pressure and temperature feel good. Move tip so warm water washes spaces between teeth and between gums and teeth. The spray should not be painful at any time. 

The Teeth and how to care about it?

 THE TEETH

THE most exciting news in dentistry today is not any new drill, anesthetic, denture material, or other fix-it device or procedure. Just the opposite: It's a whole new concept which puts the emphasis on stopping dental disease before it can happen rather than treating it after it does. It is based on the development of simple, practical tools for calling a halt to tooth decay and gum disease. It promises, if you use it, to cut your dental pains and dental bills and could do much for your appearance and general health as well, no matter how old you are or even how much you have been ravaged by dental disease up to now. It is high time we had it. 

Good teeth contribute not only to appearance but to good digestion. They are necessary, too, for good and clear speech. And teeth that are free of disease provide no portal of entry for infections that may spread to affect other areas of the body. And yet tooth and gum troubles, which have plagued man through all recorded history, do so even now.

Even though American dentistry has been the best in the world from a reparative standpoint, the American mouth is a disaster area, getting worse, not better. Right now, more than 20 million Americans have lost all their teeth; 90 million have at least 18 missing, decayed, or filled teeth; and there are more than a billion unfilled cavities in the country. By age 35, one of every five of us needs dentures; by 55, one of every two. 'Fifty percent of all two-year-olds have decaying teeth; by the teens, five of every six youngsters do. 

On top of this, gum disease takes a huge toll, affecting not only older people-90 percent of those over 65 and 80 percent of the middle-aged -but also two thirds of young adults. Even among 12-year-olds, four out of five have gingivitis, the precursor of most gum disease. Dentists have been kept so busy fixing and patching that, according to a recent survey, 40.3 percent of the 90,000 dentists in the country are unable to take on any new patients. This, despite the fact that 40 per- cent of the population, practicing complete neglect, have never once visited a dentist. 

So bad is our dental health that, according to the American Council on Education, if all the dentists in the country were lined up on the East Coast and moved westward, taking care of the needs of the population as they went along, they would get only as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before having to turn around and go back and start over again. Such facts, coupled with insights into the why of both decay and gum disease, are galvanizing the dental profession. Its leaders and the best dental schools now are working to turn dentistry into a new kind of profession-no longer mechanical and reparative in major emphasis but rather primarily devoted to making dental disease as avoidable, in effect, as measles or smallpox.

Already, the Armed Forces dental corps has developed pioneering programs which are producing dramatic results. At the U.s. Naval Academy, Rear Admiral Frank M. Kyes, Chief of the Navy's Dental Division, has reported, "Dental decay has virtually be- come a thing of the past." In a recent cross-country trip to visit dentists leading in introducing the new preventive dentistry into private practice, one of us found them reporting enthusiastically that decay can be reduced by as much as 90 percent and even more in both children and adults; that gum disease also can be checked; and that the required measures are to a very great extent simply new, more effective methods of home care.