A child’s sleep patterns will vary according to a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including his temperament. There is no doubt that some babies with a ‘difficult temperament’ profile — that is intense, active, babies who have difficulty getting into a rhythm — are much more likely to have erratic, difficult-to-manage sleep patterns. It is equally true that whether or not a child has significant sleep problems is very much a consequence of the transactions between the child and his parents. This then becomes a very important factor in planning intervention and treatment programs, which focus on changing parental reaction to the child’s sleep patterns.

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Some of you will be reading this section because you have the job of preparing meals for someone with cancer who has a poor and finicky appetite. Try to remember that if-your friend or family member is losing weight, it is not your fault, nor is it theirs.

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Do not allow twisting or bending of the spine to happen in ANY direction. It requires three people to move the person and a fourth to steady the head.

Fractured ribs may result from a fall or a direct blow. There will usually be pain while breathing, and tenderness over the broken ribs.

A firm bandage wrapped around the whole chest, or in the case of a woman, a “long-line” bra may be used, firmly done up.

This will help to immobilise the chest and will make movement easier.

A flail-chest may occur particularly following a motor car accident, where the chest is struck by the steering column. Here the ribs are broken on both sides of the breastbone, so that the chest tends to flap in and out on breathing. This can seriously hamper the respiration. The application of a firm, wide bandage, or a folded sheet, fixed around the chest, may be life-saving in this case.

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This may arise as a complication of another eye disorder but most are due to unknown causes.

Primary glaucoma usually arises after the age of 40, being most common in the fifties and sixties.

Acute glaucoma comes on suddenly. It is associated with severe pain in the eye and may radiate to the temple, down the nose or even further around the head and face. Vomiting is common , and this combination of severe headache, vomiting and disturbed vision may be mistaken for migraine.

Vision rapidly deteriorates and haloes may be seen on looking at lights. This is due to swelling or oedema of the cornea, the clear window at the front of the eye.

The eye is reddened and there is watering from an excess production of tears. The cornea looks steamy and loses sensation.

Acute glaucoma is a medical emergency and requires immediate treatment or vision may be permanently lost.

Drops to help the drainage of fluid, drugs by mouth to remove fluid and lower the pressure and, sometimes, operation may be required.

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The number of hairs we have on our bodies is determined before we are born. The hair follicles form early in foetal life and all areas of the body, except the colored portion of the lips, the palms and soles are covered with fine vellus hairs. We each have about five million.

The scalp, eyebrows, under the arms, the pubic areas, and the adult male face have coarser, more pigmented hair called terminal hair.

The hair on our head goes through a cyclical growth pattern over a period which may vary from a few months to three years. It then enters a resting phase while a new hair is developing in the follicle below.

This resting hair may be dislodged by minor trauma, such as brushing or combing, pushed out by the growing hair underneath.

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Next your practitioner should advise you on treatment for the symptoms. They can be treated either by tackling them directly or by treating their cause or both. For example, the pain of a broken leg can be treated with painkillers or by setting the fracture and immobilising the leg in a plaster cast, or both.

As a rule, treating the cause brings more long-lasting benefits than just treating the symptom itself. However, even if cancer is the cause of your symptoms, this does not mean that treating the cancer is necessarily the best approach. As always, you will have to weigh the cost against the benefit to decide what is best.

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If you are still fearful of gaining weight from eating more pasta, bread and potatoes, consider this: the body actually has to use up kilojoules to convert the carbohydrate we eat into body fat. The cost is 23 per cent of the available kilojoules—that is, nearly one-quarter of the kilojoules of the carbohydrate are used up just storing it. Naturally, the body is not keen on wasting energy this way. In fact, the body converts carbohydrate to fat only under very unusual situations like forced overfeeding. The human body prefers the easy option. It is far more willing to add to our fat stores with the fat that we eat. Conversion of fat in food to body fat is an extremely efficient process and body fat stores are virtually limitless. No matter how excessive the amount of fat we eat, the body will always find space to store it.

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As the need for physical activity in day-to-day life has decreased, such activity has become increasingly institutionalised through the development of the modem fitness industry, however, the use of a gym for 30 minutes a couple of times a week probably doesn’t compensate for the decrease in spontaneous physical activity during the rest of the week. The idea of a fitness centre also has limited appeal to many people, particularly those who are excessively fat, and figures show that only 1-2 per cent of the population actually use these facilities on a regular basis.

In schools, the presence or absence of physical education (PE) classes and facilities for physical activity through play can influence the early development of obesity. Where physical education was once compulsory in Australia, this is now often left to the discretion of individual schools. Trials with a compulsory daily PE program in South Australian primary schools in the 1980s showed that this not only decreased body fat and improved measures of health in young children but also aided academic performance. The growth in childhood obesity is now leading to a re-evaluation of the need for PE by education authorities in some parts of the world.

Finally, the increasing urbanisation of the population has, in many cases, led to a decreased opportunity for increased energy expenditure. Where there are facilities such as walking paths, bike tracks, or other recreational facilities, but no street lighting, there are often concerns about personal safety, particularly for women and children. Positive changes to the macro environment to increase daily energy expenditure will need to include provision at the national and local Government level for safe recreational facilities. Indeed, possibly the best way to motivate individuals to increase activity is to present them with easy exercise choices.

If the fitness industry is to participate in fat loss there will also need to be a significant change in its image. New facilities are currently being developed in some countries that de-emphasise the fitness and ‘body beautiful’ aspects of exercise that are de-motivational for so many people, but allow opportunities for safe, regular, low intensity, long duration activities such as treadmill walking, cycling and stair climbing, accompanied by electronic entertainment such as videos, TVs, and stereos.

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