Dangers of DIARRHEA IN CHILDREN- Prevention and treatment

DIARRHEA IN CHILDREN

Once diarrhea ranked as the leading cause of death in infants in America

 The reasons included contaminated water and milk; poor sanitation and refrigeration which encouraged germ growth; inadequate knowledge about it and therapy. Exposed to harmful organisms at a time in their immunity was low, countless young children died of infections which doctors then could not combat. IIHI.IY, the situation has changed so greatly that we are apt to forget diarrhea still is a serious threat to the health of infants and young children. 

With good medical care, virtually every child affected by diarrhea ran get well. The important need is for parents to understand the signals so treatment can be started early enough. The child develops severe diarrhea-for example, watery stools passed than once an hour-call your doctor without delay. If he cannot III' reached, take the child to the hospital.

Less severe diarrhea usually can be cared for at home, especially if it has been caused by foods or formula that does not agree with the child. But if bacterial infection is setting in, the diarrhea may progress to the point of bloody stools, requiring immediate medical help. Assuming that the diarrhea is mild, no vomiting accompanies it, and you cannot reach your doctor, this is what you should do:

1.       Discontinue the usual formula or foods. Don't worry about the child starving; he will benefit from resting of the inflamed digestive system.

2.       Stop any medicines until you talk to the doctor, because paregoric, patent medicines, and other medicines may make the child worse.

3.       For infants, you can prepare the usual formula and dilute it with water to half-strength or you can use half-strength diluted skim milk. Offer it to the baby in small amounts frequently.

4.       For an older child, a diet consisting of dilute skim milk, clear broth, ginger ale, and weak tea with sugar, puddings or gelatin dessert, crackers or toast is appropriate in any mild diarrhea.

But if mild diarrhea is accompanied by vomiting and you cannot reach your doctor, somewhat sterner measures are needed in the diet. For babies change to the following formula as a temporary measure: 1 quart of boiled water, 2 tablespoons of sugar or Karo syrup, and 1 level teaspoonful of salt (be sure to use no more salt than this). 

Offer the same thing to an older child. If, as is likely, he refuses the water-sugar-salt formula, substitute any clear liquid-water, weak tea, ginger ale, etc.

But note: The child needs salt which is not present in plain water or such drinks. Add the salt in the proportion of a level teaspoonful to a quart-that is, 1/4 level teaspoonful of salt to 1/2 pint of liquid. Remember that these restricted diets are meant only as temporary measures-to be used until the doctor can be reached, and, at any event, no longer than 24 hours.

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. 

The Feet - foot care

 THE FEET

BECAUSE FOOT problems are so common, and because so many of them are the result of misunderstanding, improper care, neglect, and a kind of fatalistic acceptance of them as inevitable and unavoidable, the feet deserve and are here getting a special chapter of their own. 

Actually, except for the common cold and tooth decay, no human ailments are more prevalent than foot troubles.

As many as 80 percent of adults have one kind or another in their lifetime

 And while a huge sum-some $2 billion annually-is spent on foot powders, sprays, pads, supports, and potions to correct foot ailments, much of the money is wasted. 

ENGINEERING MASTERPIECES 

In terms of anatomical engineering, the feet are-and, indeed, have to be -masterpieces. When you stand, your feet carry the dead weight of your body. Walk-and if you're average, you will walk some 65,000 miles in your lifetime-and you impose upon them a force of hundreds of tons a day. In walking just one mile, a 150-pound man brings down on his feet a total work load of 132 tons, or 264,000 pounds. 

The feet have to absorb the impact of body weight and keep the shock from traveling up the network of nerves and joints throughout the body. In addition, they have to balance the body, propel it, and working against gravity gets blood flowing up the legs back to the heart.

To accomplish all this, you have 52 bones in your feet, one fourth of the total number in the body, and they are encased in an intricate system of some 200 ligaments, 40 muscles, and millions of muscle fibers and blood vessels.

 The biggest foot bone is the heel, which is one of the seven tarsal bones; the other six tarsals arch in front of it and meet five long bones, the metatarsals, whose heads make up the ball of the foot. A major part of the body load is borne by bones in the rear of the foot; the rest is spread among the long bones in the forepart of the foot. As you walk, body weight comes down on the heel but is quickly transferred to the ball, and from there some goes to the toes which, by their spreading action, prevent turning on the ankles and aid in takeoff for the next step. When something goes wrong with the feet, the trouble isn't necessarily confined there. 

Foot discomfort may cause a shift in gait or change in posture. Other parts of the body, including the spine, may be thrown out of kilter to cause other troubles. Some low back disturbances, joint complaints, and even headaches have been blamed on the feet.