Lifestyle Choices

Allergic reactions

A potential recipient of bovine collagen implant must first be tested for possible allergy to the substance. The test is simple: a small amount of collagen is injected painlessly into the forearm through a tiny needle. The dermatologist examines the area tested a few days later, and again after a month. Almost everyone allergic to collagen shows a reaction within two days — an itchy, red bump appears at the site of the pin-prick. A few people might not show a reaction for up to four weeks. (more…)

This is the most important step of all, for no house can be a real home unless those who live there hold ideals that are kind, noble, and good. Without high ideals it is easy for even the best of homes to drift apart. There must always be some things that will hold the family together, such as family worship, in which all the members may share. These happy occasions are not likely to come by accident but must be carefully planned by the parents. (more…)

Who Starts the Quarrels?

How do most family quarrels start? This, of course, is hard to say, for usually there is no single cause. Often there is some underlying discontent, particularly on the part of the wife. Marriage has changed her lot completely, while her husband may be carrying on the same work that has occupied his time for years. He may prefer to continue his routine uninterrupted, while she will want plenty of variety. She may then assume that he does not love her. This may be true in some instances, but not in most. In any case she may begin to feel rather neglected. She wants more attention. A brisk family contention may seem a rather rough way to bring this about, but it usually attracts the attention she craves—sometimes much more! Most men will take just so much, then there may be trouble, perhaps even physical violence. The sensible thing to do is prevent such episodes before they reach the place where there seems to be no turning back. (more…)

Almost every healthy person at some time has had a desire to be married. This is the most natural thing in the world.

There may be various reasons for this desire— love, sex, security, companionship, and so forth —but the urge is usually there. And yet it takes far more than a mere urge for one to be happy in marriage. Surely there must be some counsel that young and old can follow to avoid the mistakes so many are making every day. (more…)

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of dates, at least from a boy’s point of view. In one he feels drawn to a girl primarily by her physical attractiveness (which includes a certain seductiveness of personality) and will go as far as he has the boldness to try or as the girl will permit. In the other he is attracted by a girl’s whole personality, including her physical appeal, and wants to know her better; somewhere in the front or back of his mind is the thought that this might possibly turn out to be the exciting relationship of his life.

In a girl’s feelings also there are the two kinds of dates. But there is lots of evidence that a girl doesn’t distinguish so sharply and calculatingly as a boy; she tends to hope that any kind of dating relationship will turn into true love. (more…)

Rain and snow are the original sources of all our drinking water. Raindrops are formed from the heavy vapor that arises from the sea. As the clouds pass over the land, they condense into drops of rain or flakes of snow. We are all familiar with the fact that a rainstorm clears the air, washing it clean and free from dust and smoke.

Raindrops are usually free from germs, although they may contain a little dust and perhaps a few harmless microbes. Trouble starts when the raindrops strike the surface of the earth. The rain that collects on cultivated fields, farmyards, and city streets may contain many different kinds of germs, some of which are harmful to man. Many of these germs found on the ground have come from the digestive organs of animals and human beings. These are the bacteria that often cause serious intestinal diseases.

But the trouble is not always with water that falls onto the ground. People who use tanks and cisterns must also be careful. Roof water may be almost as badly contaminated with germs that have found their way there by dust blowing up from the street. There is also the problem of germs from the droppings of birds. Tank or cistern water should always be boiled or sterilized. (more…)

Should you work part-time or full- time? It depends on your needs. When I had my first baby I did part- time design work at home. Then I worked full-time from an office with resident home help. Then I worked full-time at home with no home help. Now I work at home, full-time during the term and theoretically not at all during school holidays. I have found it easiest (but not always possible) to go out to work full-time, and pay for adequate home help. For me working part-time seemed to involve twice the work for half the money with none of the office perks and protection. (more…)

Make your own decisions: Althoughspecialists may be useful to analyse asituation and suggest solutions, theycannot run your life for you. Onceyour choices are clarified, use yourcommon sense to make your owndecisions. Then force yourself to bepessimistic, to look for the snags inthe arrangements and face them.

Don’t opt out because you don’tunderstand your position. Make your adviser explain it all again until s you do understand it, and so can be b responsible for deciding which path e you want to take. Be prepared to be f responsible for your own decisions. y Life is a risk. Nothing is certain inthis world and there is no guaranteed le security, financial, intellectual or d emotional. Security lies in your own st self-reliance to deal with the problems of life. You will make some right decisions and some wrong ones. Pay the penalty for the wrong ones, cut your losses and start again. (more…)

Now that you have some idea of the kinds of fragrance that are available to you, you need to determine your own fragrance type or personality. Relax, though; you won’t find it hard work at all. Choosing the perfect scent will be an enjoyable experience.

Experts recommend that you sample a maximum of three fragrances when shopping for a new scent. If you spray on too many, your nose loses the ability to distinguish between them. Also, apply the fragrance directly to your skin when testing it; the true qualities of a perfume or toilet water are not revealed when sampled only from the bottle. Dab it on, and allow the warmth of your body to develop the fragrance on your skin. Ideally, you should wait at least ten minutes after you have applied the fragrance to decide whether or not it is for you. That lets the alcohol evaporate and the blending of the fragrances with your skin’s own unique oils to be at its zenith. Now take a whiff! (more…)

4. Discover Your Own Guidelines

Find out how many different principles and ways of managing stress you can successfully incorporate into your life. Then do it. Stress in a relationship can be a way of improving not only the quality of the relationship but also the value that one places on it. This demands facing discontent clearly and squarely and expressing it in a way that doesn’t try to make someone else responsible for it. For instance, there are two ways of complaining when your mate squeezes the toothpaste in the middle. One is, “My God, you did it again. What’s wrong with you?” and the other, “You know, I have a problem. I am really bothered by people squeezing the toothpaste in the middle. I can’t seem to get over it. I’d be grateful if you didn’t do it. It would help me a lot.” (more…)

So in personal terms, for the sake of mental and physical health and beauty it is important that every woman develop an awareness of her own personal relationship to stress and come to terms with it. This is all part of what is known as “stress management.” There are many different methods of going about it. If you are familiar with them you can choose which ones work best for you and you will be able to live with your own stress, an inevitable part of every human life, and enjoy it instead of allowing it to turn to distress and make you miserable, ill, and old before your time. (more…)

Behavioral psychologists begin with the notion that eating behavior is learned and maintained as a result of interaction between you and your environment. And their definition of environment includes everything around you—people, events, things you see and respond to. These psychologists are not very interested in deep-seated motives for compulsive eating and they acknowledge that there is nothing you can do to change your genetic inheritance. But what you can do, they say, is to get to grips with overweight by looking at it as a voluntary disorder brought about by habit and environmental stimuli (remember how the habit of eating at certain times or the sight of food triggers hunger in overweight people). Change your environment, they say, and you will alter your habits and your eating patterns so you lose weight and keep it off. (more…)

Your unconscious mind is tremendously powerful. It is a source of energy and creativity which—provided you can get in touch with it and turn it toward your desired ends—will work wonders for you. The use of creative imagery specifically geared to slimming can help you harness your own power. Following the principles of creative imagery, here are a few imaginary trips you can take to help you slim. Some will bring insight and increased self-awareness, others will help you get accustomed to yourself as a healthy, lean woman, still others can help you shed old, no longer useful thought patterns that have been hampering you. (more…)

Stress during labour

Childbirth can be a time of intimacy, excitement, wonder and openness. It can also be a time of fear and pain, sometimes in a place that is forbidding and lacking in warmth. There may be all kinds of left-over feelings, which are usually repressed. First of all, the birth hurts you — it is quite natural for some women to be angry about this. Secondly, you may resent the way your delivery was handled. Unfortunately, the case history above is not an isolated example. I have heard of so many similar and worse cases that it sometimes makes me feel ashamed of my profession as a doctor. The resentment is usually related to lack of consultation on decisions. Medical interventions are sometimes carried out (for instance, routine episiotomies, injections to speed up the birth of the placenta) without any explanation of side-effects. If the side-effects occur, the natural reaction is anger, but this is often repressed, with the explanation that the doctor knows what is best. It is this attitude of the patient handing over authority to the doctor and the doctor taking assumed authority over another’s life that may lead to later feelings of resentment. Some women have told me they felt like a nonentity, going through a process that was designed by the hospital to maximize speed and efficiency. Others have told me that it felt like being taken over by machines and fingers. The residue of resentment may go very deep and is usually repressed, with a resultant depression of spirits in general. (more…)

There are particular periods in your life, when changes are faster, more far-reaching and often more stressful than at other times. It is difficult to put exact ages on these times of change because people vary greatly in their timing of the stages of life, as well as in how much difficulty they have with each stage. Any stage that is only partly negotiated,or avoided, can lead to a period of depression.

Children start life as almost totally dependent on their parents and must, for their own personal fulfilment, break away to form their own lives in their own way. But the period ofbreaking away, usually in adolescence, though it can be at any time between the ages of 12 and 40, is often fraught with conflict. You want to be independent, but you still may want your parents‘ love, and perhaps their house, food and financial support for your education too. (more…)

Those more influenced by external authority have a greater tendency to be depressed. Obedience to something outside yourself and lack of freedom of action involve repressing your own vitality and your own inner authority. The outside authority may be a forceful parent or spouse, or the inflexible regime of the institution you may live in or work for.

The most extreme example is being literally imprisoned. Your anger at your loss of freedom is likely to be repressed after a while; you are likely to be bored; you may well lose hope; in addition, you will lose the freedom and sometimes the capacity for self-regulation. Regulating yourself, making your own decisions, assessing your own risks and choosing your own paths are essential aspects of living life to the full. On the other hand, being in prison is very safe: it provides free housing and free food, and does not involve a great deal of personal responsibility. Most people in fact choose at least some form of relative imprisonment in order to feel safe and secure. The American psychiatrist Abraham Maslow, reckoned that only five per cent of people were truly autonomous, the other 95 per cent following without challenge the rules of life that had been dictated to them. (more…)

Just as every home has different sets of patterns of what should be expressed and what repressed, so cultures and sub-cultures vary in the unwritten rules of what is, and what is not, permitted. It would be interesting to compare statistics of the incidence of depression in more or less repressed cultures. But this is not possible, firstly because definitions of depression are so variable, and secondly because the more repressive political regimes will not allow the publication of any statistic which might put the management in bad light. Thirdly, repression is qualitative as well as quantitative — what is repressed in one country may be freely expressed in another and vice versa. (more…)

Any severe illness and some medical measures, such as operations, radiotherapy and the use of some drugs, may deplete energy and therefore mimic depression. At the same time the prospect of long-term illness or of facing life with debility creates all kinds of feelings which may be repressed.

Losing the function of part of your body, being permanently debilitated, losing part of your body through amputation, or knowing you are going to die naturally cause grief. An initial numbness or disbelief about your condition may sometimes amount to a complete denial of the facts. Sometimes people who are told they have cancer manage to block the fact so effectively that they have no memory of knowing or of ever being told. More often the fact is known but there is remarkably little worry, or an unrealistic optimism. Some degree of denial may continue for a long time. (more…)

The most debilitating effect of unemployment and retirementcan be the feeling of uselessness. Such a feeling may prevent you getting another job and render you of less use than you need to be. If you feel like this, consider the following:

Do something useful. It does not matter how small it is. Choose a small, though useful task, such as putting the children to bed, cleaning something or repairing something in the house or garden. Any completed task will give you a better feeling about yourself (see Reasons for living, overleaf).

If you are unemployed, remember that an attitude of despondency will stop you getting another job. If you feel despondent when you go to a job interview, act. Muster all the enthusiasm you can, practise it on friends and act eager and interested at the interview. It quite often happens that the initial pretence breaks through a barrier to your genuine enthusiasm. Do as much research as possible on the job you are applying for and gather every bit of available information on potential jobs. Consider doing jobs that you would not normally consider, just to get yourself started and to regain some self-respect. (more…)

Choosing a psychotherapist is not an easy task. Some of thefollowing questions and answers may help you clarify what you are looking for. The quality and integrity of your therapist is far more important than the technique used. Nevertheless, what you hope to gain from therapy is to some extent related to the technique and form that are mostappropriate for your needs.

• If you have the blues temporarily, consider supportive psychotherapy.
• If you want to go slowly and with caution, use a more analytical approach.
• If you want to go fast, find someone who is familiar with some of the alternative approaches.
• If you tend to be over-analytical, consider a technique which stresses feeling and vitality.
• If you are prone to depression (down to grey) and wish to learn how to mobilize your own body energy, consider bodywork.
• If you have long-term loss of sparkle or grey depression caused by an inhibited reaction to a life event, consider short-term explorative therapy.
• If you have loss of sparkle or grey depression caused by family problems, consider individual short-term explorativepsychotherapy, or else therapy for couples or for families.
• If you have long-term loss of sparkle or grey depression caused by a long-term attitude, perhaps relating to childhood, or personality traits predisposing towards depression, consider long-term explorative therapy.

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