NATURE DOCTOR – OUR TEETH – THE CONSEQUENCES OF DEAD TEETH 2

I have known patients who lived a healthy life and were never really ill, yet they were not really well either, because they did nothing about their dental abscesses. They would suffer from headaches, slight indisposition, excessive tiredness or pains somewhere in the body, but these would temporarily disappear with treatment. The condition always changed, however, when the abscesses were finally dealt with. These patients would suddenly feel better than they had done for years.

It is especially important for those of us who live in our so-called civilised society to take much better care of our teeth than we generally do. For this, of course, we need to have a good dentist. However, there are other things we need to do in order to care properly for our teeth. These requirements are dealt with below.

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SUSCEPTIBILITY TO CANCER DESPITE A HEALTHY LIFE-STYLE

Vegetarians often claim that one cannot get cancer if one leads a natural life. So it is an understandable tragedy when someone with a healthy life-style and strictly vegetarian diet falls victim to cancer. But what explanation is there for the fact that vegetarians, advocates of natural remedies and treatments, even leading figures in this field, succumb to cancer? Unfortunately, this really does happen, even though they may try to keep it a secret. True enough, experience has proved that a diet too rich in protein, especially animal protein, can contribute to the development of cancer, whereas a healthy diet based on vegetables and fruit does reduce one’s susceptibility to it.

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ARTHRITIS AND GOUT – CHRONIC INFECTION

It is estimated that 4-7 per cent of the world’s population are afflicted by the dreadful, painful scourge called arthritis. Two to three hundred thousand people in Switzerland have fallen victim to it and millions of people elsewhere in Europe and the United States can speak of their personal experience of arthritis, many of whom may have suffered from it for decades. Arthritis and gout mar the sufferer’s happiness and can be sheer agony. It is the purpose of the following discussion to help as many of these people as possible.

Arthritis often has its origin in a chronic infection somewhere in the system. It may be the tonsils, a dental abscess or some other purulent inflammation which keep discharging minute quantities of toxins and poisonous waste products of the protein metabolism into the bloodstream. The effect is damaging to the joints and the internal organs such as the heart and kidneys. Apart from that, arthritis is definitely a disease of civilisation, the outcome of eating the wrong kinds of food and a wrong life-style. In many cases we may also have inherited a predisposition to it; we suffer the consequences of what our forefathers passed on to us, in the words of the Bible, ‘Fathers are the ones that eat unripe grapes, but it is the teeth of the sons that get set on edge.’

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY OF SEX

In 1899 Dr. Denslow Lewis read a paper at a meeting of the American Medical Association, entitled “The Gynecologic Consideration of the Sexual Act,” at the invitation of the Program Committee. The Journal of the American Medical Association refused to publish it because of its “sexual content.” Obviously, it was a subject whose time had not yet come. Like Sigmund Freud, Dr. Lewis was criticized for being forthright in his views about sex.

As a result of Freud’s work and later that of Kinsey, the subject of sex gradually came out of the closet and became the subject of both psychological and physiological study. In the mid-1950s Dr. William Masters decided to undertake an extensive study of the physiology of sexual function. He was joined in this work by Mrs. Virginia Johnson. Their monumental research project led to the publication of the book, Human Sexual Response, which still is the basic text of sexual physiology, and to the development of the successful short-term treatment of sexual dysfunction. Their therapeutic program is described in detail in their book, Human Sexual Inadequacy, and the importance of psychological and emotional factors are discussed in their book, The Pleasure Bond. As a result of their work and publications, many sex therapy clinics have been established throughout the country. Some of these clinics are staffed by those who are well trained but unfortunately, many of them are staffed by individuals who have no training at all or very insignificant amounts of training, and these clinics may do harm to their patients.

Sexual dysfunction is much more common than is generally recognized, and Masters suggests that at least fifty percent of marriages have experienced sexual difficulty of some sort. Couples with sexual difficulty are very anxious to have treatment and unfortunately, often go to a cozener clinic from which they receive no benefit or may be made worse. As a result, attempts are being made to develop some kind of control for the establishment of sexual therapy programs.

In 1976 a meeting was held at the Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Louis, on the ethics of sexual therapy and research. The success of this meeting led to the development of a congress on ethics which was held in St. Louis in January, 1978. A book incorporating a report of the first meeting has been published by Little, Brown & Co. and the report of the congress will be published later.

Sex therapists should have a basic knowledge of sexual physiology, as well as an awareness of the psychological factors which may be involved. Unless the sex therapist is well trained in these aspects of the problem, it is likely that he or she will do more harm than good.

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BISEXUALISM: DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION

Bisexualism and bisexuality are synonyms. In established usage, one may speak of the morphologic bisexuality of the embryo or of psychosexual bisexuality of the child or adult. In the Freudian and psychoanalytically derived theory of bisexualism, it is implied that a bisexual tendency lurks covertly, if not overtly, in all people. However, by analogy with embryonic development, it is more accurate to conceptualize an undifferentiated stage of gender identity/role which, in the course of a critical developmental period, becomes permanently differentiated as either masculine or feminine, or as a combination of both.

The bisexual person has traditionally been stigmatized as homosexual, since specialists as well as society at large overlook the heterosexual component in favor penalizing the homosexual component.

As in the case of homosexuality, bisexuality can be defined either mentalistically or behaviorally. The most workable definition is that a bisexual person is one with a history of performing sexually with a person of either genital sex, separately or in a threesome or group. More broadly, the definition may also include those who have not actually performed but have experienced overt imagery of doing so.

The transitoriness or regularity of either the practice or the imagery needs to be ascertained separately. The definition can then be appropriately augmented or qualified. The qualification may include an estimate of whether the degree and frequency of involvement with each sex is approximately the same (50:50) or disproportionate. Usually it is disproportionate. Falling in love, for example, is usually more intense and less perfunctory with one sex than the other.

Ambisexual, a term not widely used, refers to characteristics shared by both sexes—kissing, for example, as a form of erotic expression.

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DISCRIMINATORY PRESSURES INFLUENCING CAREER CHOICE

Both when a woman selects a nontraditional career goal and when she attempts to pursue it, powerful discriminatory forces can come into play. First we will consider the factors inhibiting the choice of nontraditional career goals, then the barriers impeding the realization of these goals.

Which career to choose or what to do when one “grows up” historically has been a critical question for males within our culture. But the cultural assumption about females is that they will not, if they can possibly help it, work out-1 side the home but rather will care for house and children. If they are to venture out into the work world, there are only certain occupations suitable to their sex. These expectations are operative no matter how educated a woman or how extraordinary her talents.

It has become increasingly evident that not all women share the assumption that a woman’s “place” is in the home. Although most women do marry and have children, many also work.) In fact, the proportion of working women has risen from 20% in 1900 to 45% in 1974 (Troll). By 1980, the number of women in the work force is projected to be greater than the number of men.

A great deal of data has been accumulated, however, demonstrating that women still are largely confined to traditional women’s occupations. In the sixties, for instance, there was a disproportionately small growth in numbers of women in professional and technical fields, in skilled trades, and in managerial capacities, but a disproportionately large increase in the number of women clerical workers (Hedges).

Thus, while the numbers of women in the labor force have increased, the scope and range of their activities has not. Even the small numbers who do enter professions seems to wind up in the specialties considered lowest in status (Gross). In law, women are found far more frequently in practices involving juvenile, divorce, or welfare cases than in practices involving tax law and corporate litigation. Similar patterns have been found in medicine in which women typically are pediatricians, dermatologists, or psychiatrists, rather than surgeons, internists, or neurologists. In academia this tendency also has been found to predominate with women comprising a far larger proportion of the state teachers college faculties than of the faculties of wealthier and more revered schools.

Although these statistics may well reflect the hesitancy of women to break new ground, they also suggest the existence of recriminatory forces within our educational and work institutions that discourage women from entering non-traditional fields. Two such forces are the vocational counseling process and the paucity of visible role models.

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MORGAN: THE TRANSFORMATION FROM SEXUALITY TO SOCIETY

Although anthropologists have always been interested in sexuality, they have not always been interested in studying it. A review of the pioneering works of Lewis Henry Morgan, the unilinear evolutionist, and Robert Lowie, an early critic of evolutionary theory, demonstrate this.

Morgan proposed a fifteen-stage evolutionary “in part hypothetical” sequence from a prefamilial stage of “promiscuous intercourse” to the “Monogamian Family,” the ultimate culmination of mankind. The hypothetical “Promiscuous intercourse” stage is low on the evolutionary scale, and it is not clear from Morgan’s account if he is talking about humankind, or a lower animal form:

Promiscuous Intercourse—This expresses the lowest conceivable stage of savagery—it represents the bottom of the scale. Man in this condition could scarcely be distinguished from mute animals by whom he was surrounded. Ignorant of marriage, and living probably in a horde, he was not only a savage, but possessed a feeble intellect and a feebler moral sense. . . . Were it possible to reach this earliest representative of the species, we must descend very far below the lowest savage now living upon the earth.

In contrast to “Promiscuous Intercourse,” a stage which “lies concealed in the misty antiquity of mankind”, is Morgan’s modern “Monogamian Family,” the final accomplishment in his history of human progress from savagery to civilization. At this stage, the paternity of children was assured, the joint ownership of real and personal property was introduced, and the inheritance by children was guaranteed. All known advances and institutions are related to this ultimate advance, for in Morgan’s own words, “Modern society reposes upon the monogamian family”.

Morgan’s theoretical goals included the refutation of the “degradation hypothesis” explanation of barbarian and savage populations found to be both physically and mentally below the standard of the supposed original man. Although Morgan treated sexuality as part of his larger argument, he did not set out to explore human sexuality as an important topic among contemporary peoples.

According to Morgan, the lowest conceivable stage of savagery was a stage of promiscuous, uncontrolled, unchecked sexuality. Such a stage of sexuality provided a theoretical counterpoint to the modern family, not to modern sexuality. Unrestrained sexuality among persons with a “feeble moral sense”, interacting in a prefamilial mode, is ultimately replaced by the institution of the modern, monogamian family. Morgan’s unmistakable point of departure is an attempt to document the transformation of raw animal sexuality into a multifaceted modern human social form. Progress is at the expense of sexuality; it does not incorporate it. For Morgan, the “facts of the human experience” are facts which show the institutions of family and government to have evolved from an earlier stage of unbridled sexual license.

One consequence of this reasoning is that anthropologists should study the family instead of sexuality, or ideas about sexuality. To the extent that modern theorists assume that sexuality is “under control” in every known society, the family and/or the mechanisms of control demand study, not sexuality itself. This seems to be a serious error in logic and a potentially serious deterrent to competent ethnography.

This epistemology which opposes or transforms sexuality into social organization is not easily relegated to the writings of one outmoded theorist; Morgan’s legacy is still with us. It is evident in the beginning sentence of Fox’s chapter on “The Incest Problem” in Kinship and Marriage: “If primary kin were allowed to mate, then many of the elaborate arrangements we are going to explore in this book would be unnecessary”. The implication is that kinship as we know it and study it would not exist, were sexual relations allowed in the family unit (outside of husband-wife). Stated in another way, the management of sexuality generates the primary structures of kinship and social organization which anthropologists have made as the core of their discipline. With or without tacit acknowledgment of the preempted role of a suppressed sexuality, anthropologists usually tend to address themselves to what sexuality hath wrought (kinship and social organization), rather than to how sexuality operates in a symbolic world, and how it perseveres as an important element of interpersonal relationship and ideology. This oversight finally was noticed in the important work of Schneider and Kemnitzer.

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CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: ATTITUDES TOWARD MARITAL SEX

Among groups, with few exceptions, men regard marital sex as a natural right, to be sampled regularly and enjoyed. As with orgasm, the data for women are more variable. Rainwater, in his study of marital relations in four cultures of poverty, found a range of responses to questions on interest and enjoyment of marital sex by women. The gamut went from, “If God made anything better he kept it to himself,” to “I would be happy if I never had to do that again; it’s disgusting”. The norm among his four groups, however, was closer to the latter attitude. Sex was generally considered to be a man’s pleasure and a woman’s duty. Women were believed not to have sexual desires at all or to have much weaker needs than men had. In Tepoztlan respectable women were expected also to have strong negative attitudes toward sex. Women who needed men sexually were called loca (crazy) and perhaps bewitched (Lewis).

Although data are scant, the women of Mangaia, Bala, and East Bay appear to have more positive attitudes toward the sexual parts of their marriages, if frequency is any indication. Even so, a high normative interest and positive regard for sex by married women is not frequently encountered in the cross-cultural literature. Reasons for this are not hard to find: emphasis on virginity for girls, with lack of premarital experience; the cultural/experiential factor in women’s orgasmic response, typically observed to be more important to women than to men; the characteristic male domination of marital sex, in that males initiate sexual activity and direct it to their satisfaction (with some exceptions as previously noted); the consequences for women of pregnancy and child care; the fairly widespread regard for women as sexual property, to be used, bartered, an exchanged; and rules of modesty, religious sanctions, and taboos which are directed more against women’s participation in sex than against men’s.

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THE VALUE OF EXERCISE IN CASE OF OSTEOPOROSIS: RECOMMENDATIONS

If you’ve been sedentary for an extended period of time, first get approval from your doctor before starting any exercise programme. Your physician is in the best position to suggest the type of activity best for you, its intensity and duration, beginning at an easy level. A vigorous workout for someone else could be hazardous for you; overexercising is dangerous and impractical. Jogging, for instance, would not be suitable if you have a history of heart disease or if you are already osteoporotic, since the activity could severely jar your frame. Check also with your doctor if you are already athletic and want to step up your training programme, since too vigorous activity could unbalance your hormone production, with loss of oestrogen and menstrual periods, triggering loss of bone calcium reserves.

Exercise and movement doesn’t have to be rapid or difficult to be effective – even house cleaning can help by bending and stretching your body to move it. For maintaining healthy bones, choose an activity that calls for pull and stress on the long bones of your body: aerobics, bicycling, skipping and walking.

Exercising should be fun and enjoyable, doing the things that you want to do in your spare time, making it part of your lifestyle and not a special short-lived programme. Exercise should be on a steady daily basis, or at least three or four times a week, not a surge of effort just at weekends.

Do you prefer an outdoor or an indoor activity? And what time of day suits you? Taking into account your own biological clock, the best time to exercise is either early morning or late afternoon, avoiding midday heat or late-night exertions that may keep you awake. Always pay attention to what your body tells you. If you feel uncomfortable, you are probably trying to do too much. Take a break and resume at another time or another day. Try different activities and times before deciding on your fitness routine and making it part of your day. A variety of exercise will keep you interested, not bored, so you stay the course.

Do you want to join an exercise group, exercise with a friend, or exercise alone with TV or video tape? If you exercise alone, and you are elderly, tell someone in case you need assistance. Joining a group can make exercise more fun and stimulating; there are many different organizations offering classes. Ask your local authorities what sports are available at nearby centres:

church or synagogue,

civic centre, recreation centre or senior citizens’ centre,

local college or Further Education authority,

YMCAs and YWCAs,

your firm’s recreation club,

private clubs.

Before joining, attend a class to watch. Is the instructor about your age? Are the people in the class about your age and level of fitness? What are the objectives of the group? What do they think of the programme of exercise? When you do join, don’t compete with others, as each of you is responding to exercise in a different way. Only compete with yourself to bolster your improvements. For aerobics, never dance with bare feet. Avoid injury by wearing correct shoes to cushion the balls of your feet and make sure the floor is carpeted over padding.

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WEIGHT CONTROL IN CASE OF OSTEOPOROSIS: ANOREXIA NERVOSA.

This disorder (after the Greek ‘anorexis’, without longing, without appetite) is dieting to the point of self-starvation, with an obsessive desire to be ultra thin, because of peer pressure among young women or the power of advertising. A girl with this condition can literally waste away to death. It is not well known in countries where there are real shortages of food, but it seems to be on the increase in the Western world where it mainly affects young girls. Recent conservative estimates indicate that 1 in 100 schoolgirls in Britain have anorexia to some degree. Although most anorexics are female, about 6 per cent are adolescent boys; occasionally the disorder is found in older women.

An anorexic may begin to diet to lose a few pounds, but become so intent on losing weight, with a revulsion towards food, she starves herself until weighing perhaps only 60 or 70 pounds -while still falsely believing herself to be fat.

Hormonal changes occur to make her reproductive system unbalanced, she will become infertile and cease to menstruate because of oestrogen deficiency, she will risk heart failure, kidney failure and liver damage. Nutrition has no chance to build up her bone structure, and with frequent induced vomiting, her teeth decay rapidly with the bile acids that rot the enamel.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital report that although most of the damaging consequences of anorexia nervosa are reversible with therapy and weight gain, the reduction in bone density might not be. Bone building may resume with a return to normal eating habits, but it may be impossible to compensate for the time when bone growth was impaired.

Reduced bone mass may continue throughout the lives of formerly anorexic girls, making them even more vulnerable to postmenopausal fracturing.

To effect a cure, counselling and individual therapy is vital, if you have a daughter with this disorder, or know a young person on a deliberate starvation diet.

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