Theathens Directory

We often read or hear news reports about antioxidants and how they can improve our health, yet we rarely hear about the role they play in the pleasure we obtain from sex and intimacy.

To understand antioxidants and the ways they can enhance genital health, we first need to understand the role that free radicals play in damaging our cells. In essence, free radicals are the toxic byproducts of our metabolism. Free radical production can increase as a result of the foods we eat (as is the case with charbroiled meat) or the air we breathe (as is the case with second hand smoke).

Using several enzyme-based systems, our body does its best to combat free radicals. When our body’s defenses fail, though, free radicals cause individual cells to become damaged or die. If left unchecked, free radicals cause tissue damage, premature aging, and loss of cellular function. In other words, our cells become oxidized, much in the same way that rust forms on iron when it is exposed to air and water.

Antioxidants help to combat free radical damage by shoring up the body’s enzyme-based systems. Vitamins C and E are popular antioxidants, as are the polyphenols found in plants and in certain foods and beverages, such as cocoa, red wine, green tea, and ginseng.

Antioxidants can also improve sexual pleasure and intimacy. Women who are perimenopausal, menopausal, or post-menopausal – along with women who use oral contraceptives – can experience genital oxidative stress, which can result in vaginal dryness and a lack of sexual desire. In a sense, antioxidants are an aphrodisiac, in that they preserve the nitric oxide needed to dilate blood vessels in genital tissues, which in turn causes sexual arousal.

Eating or drinking foods and beverages with antioxidant properties is sure to improve your overall feeling of well-being, but antioxidants delivered in the form of a lubricant to sensitive genital skin can have a positive impact on sexual pleasure and intimacy. When organic antioxidants penetrate the skin, they energize nerve endings.

Genital skin care should be an ongoing priority. When looking for an antioxidant to promote genital health, it is important to find one that is water-free and non-oily. Instead, it should be polymer-based and have a non-sticky feeling. In addition, it should be a product that can be used on a daily basis.

By: Chris Robertson

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When you or someone you love comes down with a sudden illness or gets injured, you don’t want to have to scramble to find urgent medical care. Whether you live in Valley Stream or Lynbrook of Nassau County, New York, it’s important to know the location of your nearest urgent medical care facility. Perhaps it’s in Malverne or maybe it’s in Rockville Centre, or it could even be in Oceanside. Knowing the exact location, distance, and what type of care is offered will be a tremendous benefit when emergencies arise.

Urgent medical care centers are available to you if you have an urgent medical need at a time when your family physician is not available. This could be due to holidays, emergencies after hours, or heavy scheduling. Urgent care centers are also available for patients who don’t have a physician or don’t like waiting in for long periods of time at the emergency room.

Treatments Available in Urgent Medical Care Centers

There are many health conditions or needs that can be treated at an urgent medical care center. Urgent care centers offer labs on-site to patients who require blood work to determine their illness and the treatment they will need. On-site x-ray services are available to patients who are experiencing back pain, joint pain, or abdominal pain. X-ray service is also available for treatment of sports injuries such as sprains and fractures.

Service is provided for patients with cuts requiring suturing at urgent medical centers. Less severe illnesses, such as a persistent sore throat, ear or eye infections, cold and flu symptoms, skin rashes, urinary tract infections, and sinus problems can all be treated by an urgent care physician. Patients who have been diagnosed with hypertension can also receive treatment at the facility.

Exams and Screening

Different types of physical exams such as annual exams and Department of Transportation (DOT) exams for truck driving are also provided at urgent care centers.

Sexually transmitted disease (STD) screening is also available for both men and women. Cholesterol screening and diabetes testing is also offered by urgent medical care centers. Rapid diagnosis, which helps to determine the cause of the illness faster, is offered by many centers as well. This will help in treating the illness without delay.

About Urgent Care Centers

Urgent medical care centers are open seven days a week with convenient hours from morning to night for patients seeking emergency medical needs. Medical treatment is provided for patients of all ages, and since the centers are walk-in, appointments are not needed. Conveniently, most major insurance plans are accepted. Physicians at the medical centers are board certified in emergency medicine and usually provide all patients with personal attention and excellent care.

Whether you are a local resident, tourist, or business traveler in Nassau County, New York and have an urgent need for prompt and professional medical attention, it is good to know the location of the closest urgent medical center.

By: Chris Robertson

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History of the Miniature Dachshund

The history of these Miniature Dachshunds mirrors that of their larger relatives; Dachshunds can be traced back to Germany for many years, back to around the 15th Century, athough many believe that ancient Egyptian art depicts images of dogs similar to Dachshunds; perhaps their ancestors.

Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers (“Dachs” means Badger). Badgers were a formidable prey and Dachshunds were bred to have courage and bravery bordering on the reckless! Their size and shape makes them perfect for hunting both above and below ground.

The breed club was set up in 1888 to standardise the breed characteristics and to ensure that these dogs had beauty to match their intelligence.

Miniature Dachshunds were used instead of ferrets to drive rabbits out of their warrens.

Appearance of the Miniature Dachshund

In appearance, the Miniature Dachshund really is just like a dwarf version of the standard Dachshund. They are found in the same coat varieties; long haired, smooth haired and wire haired.

With their long, low bodies Dachshunds are one of the most instantly recognisable breeds. Often called “Sausage dogs” by children, it is easy to see why!

Despite their miniature proportions, Dachshunds are strong and muscular dogs with broad shoulders and hindquarters.

The Dachshund has beautiful almond shaped eyes that are set into a perfectly proportioned, long face.

Dachshunds come in an enormous variety of colours; tan and black are perhaps the most widely seen colours although many variations exist.

Temperament of the Miniature Dachshund

Dachshunds are faithful and good tempered though they can be wary of strangers.

Dachshunds are extremely intelligent, though are not necessarily easy to train as they have a real mind of their own! Early training and socialisation is of real benefit to these dogs; their hunting instinct is deeply ingrained so good control of these dogs off lead is essential.
Socialised early with children, these dogs make good family pets. Children must be taught to handle these dogs with respect, as they will sulk if they are treated unfairly. Dachshunds have a tendency to bond particularly strongly with one member of the family.

Grooming a Miniature Dachshund

Miniature Dachshunds come in a variety of coat types; long haired, wire haired and smooth haired. A moderate amount of grooming is necessary, particularly in the long haired Miniature Dachshund.

Miniature Dachshund Exercise Requirements

Although they are small, Miniature Dachshunds were bred as hunting dogs and as such, they enjoy their exercise! Miniature Dachshunds require a moderate amount of exercise; perhaps 20 – 40 minutes a day.

Care must be taken when allowing these dogs off lead because of their natural hunting instincts. If they detect a scent, they may well try to go to ground, to dig out they ‘prey’!

A well fenced, secure garden is a must for Miniature Dachshunds – they are world class diggers and may well dig themselves to freedom given the opportunity!

As a result of their elongated spine, Miniature Dachshunds should be limited in their access to stairs to prevent spinal damage.

Miniature Dachshund Health Problems

The main health concern with Miniature Dachshunds relates to their elongated spines. Ruptured discs are a common problem. Care must be taken to avoid these dogs using stairs or jumping on and off furniture, to minimise the risk of damage.

Miniature Dachshunds must not be allowed to become overweight as this places extra stress on their spines. It is essential that their weight is carefully monitored.

Some Dachshunds suffer from skin problems, such as baldness or lack of pigmentation in their skin.

By: Stephanie Bayliss

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I don’t remember the one who said this, but for some reason this phrase was etched in my mind: the biggest unfairness is when children fall sick. You will hardly raise an objection against it, when you see that your child suffering. And even if he was healthy from birth, still various infections start bothering him sooner or later, and this means they start bothering his parents as well. Chronic tonsillitis is among them.

It can appear already appear in two-year age. And then it’s reminding of itself during the whole life. But you should remember of tonsillitis not only because it bothers your child, but because it’s also dangerous and guileful for adult people to the same extent. We need to learn more about this disease, in order to understand the rigidity of official point of view.

There is no point in examining your gullet every day. However, we will have to do it in a certain case, to understand why we catch cold suddenly right in the days when white flies are flying behind our windows. Well, as we know, there’re 6 tonsils in our gullet. Two of them are hidden so deeply, that we cannot see them. Children have another tonsil also, which disappears with age. Another one is situated in a base of tongue. And two – on each side, these are so called palatine tonsils, which we usually examine in the mirror with our mouth wide open in case of tonsillitis. We will talk about them, as inflammation of these tonsils causes tonsillitis.

Our organism is arranged the way that it has protective resources everywhere, which prevent outside dissocial forces from breaking its vital functions. Tonsils, which are used to be called glands, also are meant to protect us from infections. This is a peculiar first defence zone, which prevents viruses from coming inside through nose and mouth. Moreover, this is a part of a general protective mechanism of organism that forms immunity. And under tonsillitis, pharyngeal tonsils become a pesthole.

Of course, every one of us has had tonsillitis. And we remember how our temperature rose up to 39C, headache, but most of all we suffer from painful feeling while swallowing. Tonsillitis – is a chronic process, when pains in gullet bother us almost always. And a man, especially a child, who is not used to pay attention to such “trifles”, can easily ignore a slight increase in body temperature and pains in gullet, which he will regret of with time.

The danger is in the fact that angina (with rare exception) always leads to tonsillitis, which constantly develops and reminds of itself all the time. Inflamed pharyngeal tonsils become a favorable medium for pathogenic microbes’ abode. This way reserved suppurative inflammations appear.

An inflammation process grows stronger so much, that tonsils become bigger and close up pharynx gap completely. Microbes come through lymphatic viae, what leads to increase of neck glands. Under more detailed investigation of this disease we can find a lot of other terrible things, peculiar only to tonsillitis. List of diseases, connected with tonsillitis, is rather long: from rheumatism to system erythema centrifugum. However, we won’t delve into details, which should be known to experts, but concentrate on ways of protection from tonsillitis, if it’s chronic, and this means it’s constant.

First of all, parents are responsible for their children’s diseases. That’s why they should come to hospital with their children, if catarrhal diseases become frequent. We have to remind, that timely visit to a doctor and preventive measures will determine your child’s state of health in many respects. And you should take care of yourself too, find time to visit otolaryngologist. He will give you lots of practical advices about ways to struggle with tonsillitis. Out-patient treatment is also possible, i.e. without staying at hospital.

Chronic tonsillitis is considered to be an infectious-allergic disease. To avoid possible after-effects, which it brings in itself, you need to start conservative treatment – when you affect tonsils and carry out bracing therapy.

First of all, you need to cleanse palatine tonsils lacunas, i.e. conduits of different caliber with disinfectants. You can also smear tonsils with special extracts, one of the most famous is Lugol’s iodine. But today special pulverizers are used more often, which act according to a principle “three in one”: medicine under pressure cures inflammation, cleanses tonsils and does a peculiar hydro massage.

Folk remedies also can help a lot – for example, garlic gargling. Take 2 small bits of garlic, pound in small particles, pour with a glass of warm milk, filter and then gargle. It’s rather nasty, but effective. Resolving mixtures are more pleasant, they reduce weals and change the structure of inflamed tonsils. Take carrot, pound in small particles, mix with think honey, several drops of propolis spirit extract and a tablet of vitamin C. Put this mixture into mouth, press to palate and resolve slowly.

Conservative treatment is carried out twice a year, during 2 weeks. However, before you start treatment, you need to put teeth in order, cure caries and any inflammation processes in nose, to determine an exact picture of disease.

This may seem to be tiresome to someone. Of course, those, who stick to radical views, can think about taking out tonsils. They think this way: no tonsils – no angina and tonsillitis, no problems. However, as it turned out, surgical operation has other bad after-effects in the form of nose and paranasal sinuses diseases, and also severe weakening of immunity in general. And now experts all over the world are inclined to think that conservative treatment is better. Visit a doctor! He will advice what you should do! And quite possible, you need not only smearing of tonsils with light extracts, but also tablets and injections, to avoid more serious after-effects.

By: Yana Mikheeva

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Lung Surgery is a variety of procedures which are used to diagnose or treat diseases connected to the lungs. One such procedure is a biopsy when a small amount of tissue is extracted from the lung for diagnosis. Another kind is resections when a portion of the lung is removed, whilst there are other forms of lung surgery which aim to reduce the volume of a person’s lungs, remove any cancerous tumors that have appeared or just to improve the functions of a person’s lungs.

Any lung surgery carried out will depend on what the underlying disease or condition is as well as other factors.

We will now look at the kinds of lung surgery that can be performed.

1. Pneumonectomy. This is usually performed in order to remove a lung or sometimes just one or more lobes (sections of the lung containing lung tissue, air sacs, ducts and the respiratory bronchiole). This is most commonly used when certain forms and stages of lung cancer have been diagnosed.

2. Thoracotomy. An incision is made in to the chest wall by the surgeon and this type of surgery is used to provide another way of diagnosing what the problem is with a person’s lungs if other procedures have failed to provide adequate information.

3. Lobectomy. This type of lung surgery is when a surgeon removes a lobe of a person’s lung. It is commonly used for those suffering from lung cancer, and it may also be used of people suffering from Cystic Fibrosis for whom all other forms of treatment have failed.

4. Segmental Resection or Wedge Section. A segmental resection is often performed in order to remove part of the lung (especially if they wish to remove a tumor). Whilst a wedge resection is as its name suggests an operation performed in order to remove a wedge shaped portion of the lung tissue.

5. Volume Reduction Surgery. This is a much newer kind of lung surgery and helps to relieve shortness of breath as well increasing a persons tolerance for exercise. This kind of operation is especially good for those people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases such as emphysema.

There are many other surgeries being performed and these are continuously being improved in order to say make biopsy’s less invasive and thus making surgery more effective. Such ones are video assisted lobectomy.

There are some risks involved not just with lung surgery but any major surgery involving general anesthesia and this may include a reaction to the anesthetics or medication, bleeding, infection and problems restoring breath. Lung surgery also has the added risk of a patient getting pneumonia or blood clots.

The outcome of any lung surgery performed will depend on many factors and the severity of the person’s disease. However, in general the benefits from such surgery is good. People who have had a Thoracotomy have been provided with a definitive diagnosis in 90% of all cases, whilst volume reduction surgery has been shown to relieve some of the symptoms as well as improving the quality of life for some patients who suffer from severe emphysema.

In fact the mortality rate for those who have lung surgery improves as the procedures move from the more complete pneumonectomy to just lobectomy and where segmental resection is concerned it has the lowest rates of all.

By: Lee Dobbins

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If you are currently covered by health insurance, or are investigating new health insurance options available to you, it is always vital to know whether your physician and hospital will accept the coverage you have or will be purchasing in the future. This is important for a number of reasons, primarily to ensure that when medical services are rendered, you will not receive reduced coverage by your health insurer, or even be required to pay the full out-of-pocket cost to a non-network provider. If you have a PPO plan (Preferred Provider Organization) type policy, but it does not cover certain types of medical procedures, or perhaps you were ridered (i.e., the plan declined pre-existing conditions coverage for a period of time), you may still at the very least qualify for network repricing, or lowering of the charges to reduced rates, if your provider does in fact accept that particular plan’s PPO network.

There is no substitute for doing a little research by reading your policy carefully and asking a good health insurance agent or broker which doctors or physician networks will accept the plan. While it is permissible to call your doctor’s office to find out if they will accept a certain plan, this is not always reliable as oftentimes the doctor’s office may not be familiar with every carriers’ plan offerings. For example, if you were to call in to your physician’s office and mention to the billing staff that you are going to be changing to Aetna health insurance, they may readily state that they are happy to accept Aetna’s plans, but in reality they may accept MOST but not necessary ALL of Aetna’s plan offerings. And so one might be unpleasantly surprised after purchasing the coverage that it is not going to be quite so acceptable after all.

A good way to ensure that this does NOT happen to you is to find out exactly which type of coverage you are considering, and more specifically, the plan’s exact name. Then you may refer to the carrier’s website where you can check to see if your physician is in the provider directory for that particular plan. An online provider directory is usually superior to a printed booklet directory in that the information is generally current and the provider list is updated frequently to reflect the providers recently joining the network, as well as to exclude providers who have recently left the network.

In some cases, especially when you have group health insurance through an employer, the carrier covering you may contract with a large independent national PPO network to provide its repricing and negotiation services. Usually this network will be shown somewhere on your health insurance ID card. In that case you may need to look up providers at that organization’s website. An example of a large national network that numerous reputable insurance companies often contract with is Multiplan. The provider directory in this instance could be found at Multiplan.com.

A question you might ask yourself in the event that you have found a plan that you would like to purchase but your doctor does not accept it is: are you willing to change providers? If you are not necessarily joined at the hip with your primary care physician or specialist, and are willing to change to other suitable providers of varying specialties that are in the plan’s network, then you may feel that it could still be a wise decision to purchase the new coverage. Or you may decide that even if the provider does not take the insurance, you will just pay that provider directly without regard to the insurance, and simply utilize your coverage for the event that a more catastrophic medical situation arises.

One other option is to purchase supplemental indemnity coverage, which can reimburse you directly a stated benefit amount for many types of medical procedures, including office visits. A big advantage to this approach is that the plan will usually reimburse you for ANY licensed physician that you choose to visit without limiting you to a certain list of doctors. This supplemental coverage may also help cover any deductibles or coinsurance that your primary health insurance plan may require you to pay.

Also if you are considering applying for medically underwritten insurance, be aware there is a chance you might be declined due to preexisting conditions. In that event you may want to explore certain guaranteed acceptance health insurance options. Again the suggestions of a good health insurance agent or broker, in addition to your own research and the advice of other friends and family members who have experience in this area may be helpful.

By: Brandon Sears

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