Claustrophobia: Its Symptoms and Treatments

Some people may suffer from an irrational fear for being in enclosed spaces or claustrophobia. This situational phobia may happen to everyone with certain traumatic or unpleasant experiences. The experiences can be in the ones in childhood or later stages of life. For example, the experience of being trapped in child game or being trapped in an elevator. The person suffers from this phobia may get panic and or out of control.

Symptoms of Claustrophobia

We may find some symptoms to people with this phobia. Those symptoms may include that the person sweats a lot and has an accelerated heartbeat. In some cases, the person also suffers from nausea, or even he/she is fainted. Other symptoms are light headache, shaking, and hyperventilation.

Claustrophobia can be really bad for someone because he cannot enjoy the social living and suffers psychologically when the person is inside a room or a building or a vehicle. The person will not be at ease in a party, taking elevator or airplanes. It may even lead to depression and isolation.

Treatments for Claustrophobia

Claustrophobia can be treated with some techniques of behavorial therapy such as flooding in which the person is flooded with similar situations until the person can handle the anxiety. Another technique is counter conditioning in which the person will be given a relaxation before being reintroduced to the situation. We can also use Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) or regression hypnotherapy as the treatments and/or combined with some anti-depressants.

Identifying the Causes of Hair Damage

It is undeniable that every woman wants to have beautiful hair. However, according to H & A Global Survey Study in 2006, 8 out if 10 women experienced hair damages. Half of them have problems with dry hair such as hair thinning due to the lack of fat in the bottom of the cortex and cuticle. What are the causes of hair damages? At least there are four main factors/causes of hair damage.

The first factor to cause the hair damage is environmental factor. Exposure to the sun, exposure to pollution, and air-conditioned work environment can make our hair dry. The hair will slowly erode and become dry. 

The second factor is the mechanical one. Wrong method in washing or hair, for example using a shampoo that is too heavy for hair drying process, can also make our hair broken. You do not need to rub the scalp vigorously when shampooing. You do not have to rub with a towel to dry either. If you rub it too hard there is  a chance that your hair cuticle or outer layer can be peeled off.

The next factor is thermal factor. Too often using a hair dryer can also remove the hair's natural moisture, making it difficult to set up and not shiny. Dry your hair with a good fan. After that, cover it with a towel so it absorbs water.

And the last one is chemical factor. Hair coloring process may results in hair damage. Balance your dying habit with appropriate shampoo treatment. When you experience those four factors every day, slowly the hair which consists of cuticle, medulla and cortex, would be damaged. Try to prevent it by avoiding above mentioned factors.

The Need of Taking Vitamin Supplements

In order to function properly, our body needs vitamin, and sometimes we can get it from what is so called as vitamin supplement. Most of us do not have a balanced diet, and as a result we may lack of certain vitamins. It means we require vitamin supplements to prevent from any deficiencies of vitamin. In this case you can consult the health specialist in considering taking them. You have to understand that some vitamins can be toxic if we consume. Or else, we may need not taking a vitamin supplement, if there is enough of the vitamin already in the food we eat.

Some people may require more vitamin supplements than others. For example, vegetarians are often deficient in certain vitamins that are only found in animal products. Vegetarians do need to take vitamin supplements which manufacturing processes involve animal products. There are a large number of synthetic vitamin supplement products they can consume safely.

Meanwhile, young children often need a vitamin supplement, because they do not eat a sufficient variety of foods and a vitamin supplement can help compensate for this natural deficiency. But you do not need to worry because most of baby milk formulas have already contained additional vitamins to fulfill the need for vitamins.

Vitamin supplements may also be needed by elderly people or those suffering from certain diseases or illnesses. Their bodies often need a vitamin supplement to compensate for loosing certain vitamins in their normal diet. Therefore, the need to take the vitamin supplements

Be Healthy with Coffee

Caffeine content of coffee could not be separated from health issues, ranging from negative to positive ones. Therefore, research on coffee still continues today. As quoted in the Livestrong, consuming coffee properly will provide benefits to health.
For those of you who like to enjoy a coffee, here are some of the benefits of coffee that you may not know.

Coffee and Stroke
As media reports of  "Los Angeles Times" a number of researches conducted between 2008 and 2011 found that coffee could reduce stroke risk. While other studies in Finland, 2008 showed that as many as 26 thousand male smokers who drank eight or more cups a day, had 23 percent lower risk of stroke, compared with male smokers who avoid caffeine.

In 2009, researchers at UCLA examined the relationship between coffee consumption and risk of stroke among nine thousand participants of national health and nutrition survey. The research team reported that patients with stroke are highest in people who do not consume coffee, and lowest in the coffee drinkers.

Published in "Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health" 2011 shows 81 thousand men and women in Japan who drank two cups of coffee per day reduced the risk of death from heart disease by 23 percent.

Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a neurological disorder that affects movement and speech. In neurons contain a neurotransmitter called dopamine which causes this disease. The loss of dopamine can lead to imbalances of neurotransmitters, causing a person becomes slurred speech and difficulty moving. Therefore, the role of coffee in order to prevent Parkinson's disease is really significant.

Researchers at the University Honolulu learn as much as 8004 the Japanese and American men aged over 30 years, reported that men who do not drink coffee were five times more likely to develop symptoms of Parkinson's disease, than those who drank coffee only about 500 mg per day.

Eric H. Chudler, MD, of the University of Washington suggest that coffee contains chemicals that can inhibit adenosine receptors. Adenonsin receptor blocking can increase dopamine production. Unfortunately, coffee does not have the same protective effect in women, said Alberto Ascherio in "American Journal of Epidemiology, 2004."

Miscarriage and fetal growth
According to R Barker, author of the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" saying that coffee consumption in pregnant women do have a bad effect. Dutch study in 2010 found that women who consumed coffee during pregnancy gave birth to her baby are shorter than average length. In "European Journal of Epidemiology," found a high incidence of miscarriage and birth of babies who died in pregnant women because it consumes more than 100 mg of coffee daily.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FOOD ELEMENTS

There are various elements found in food. Those elements are starch, sugar, fats, albumen, mineral substances, and indigestible substances.

Based on their chemical composition, the digestible food elements are often grouped into three classes: carbonaceous, nitrogenous, and inorganic. The carbonaceous class includes starch, sugar, and fats; the nitrogenous, all albuminous elements, and the inorganic comprises the mineral elements.

Starch is only found in vegetable foods. All grains, most vegetables, and some fruits, contain starch in abundance. Several kinds of sugar are made in nature's laboratory; cane, grape, fruit, and milk sugar. The first is obtained from the sugar-cane, the sap of maple trees, and from the beet root. Grape and fruit sugars are found in most fruits and in honey. Milk sugar is one of the constituents of milk. Glucose, an artificial sugar resembling grape sugar, is now largely manufactured by subjecting the starch of corn or potatoes to a chemical process; but it lacks the sweetness of natural sugars, and is by no means a proper substitute for them. Albumen is found in its purest, uncombined state in the white of an egg, which is almost wholly composed of albumen. It exists, combined with other food elements, in many other foods, both animal and vegetable. It is found abundant in oatmeal, and to some extent in the other grains, and in the juices of vegetables. All natural foods contain elements which in many respects resemble albumen, and are so closely allied to it that for convenience they are usually classified under the general name of "albumen." The chief of these is gluten, which is found in wheat, rye, and barley. Casein, found in peas, beans, and milk, and the fibrin of flesh, are elements of this class.

Fats are found in both animal and vegetable foods. Of animal fats, butter and suet are common examples. In vegetable form, fat is abundant in nuts, peas, beans, in various of the grains, and in a few fruits, as the olive. As furnished by nature in nuts, legumes, grains, fruits, and milk, this element is always found in a state of fine subdivision, which condition is the one best adapted to its digestion. As most commonly used, in the form of free fats, as butter, lard, etc., it is not only difficult of digestion itself, but often interferes with the digestion of the other food elements which are mixed with it. It was doubtless never intended that fats should be so modified from their natural condition and separated from other food elements as to be used as a separate article of food. The same may be said of the other carbonaceous elements, sugar and starch, neither of which, when used alone, is capable of sustaining life, although when combined in a proper and natural manner with other food elements, they perform a most important part in the nutrition of the body. Most foods contain a percentage of the mineral elements. Grains and milk furnish these elements in abundance. The cellulose, or woody tissue, of vegetables, and the bran of wheat, are examples of indigestible elements, which although they cannot be converted into blood in tissue, serve an important purpose by giving bulk to the food.

With the exception of gluten, none of the food elements, when used alone, are capable of supporting life. A true food substance contains some of all the food elements, the amount of each varying in different foods.