Lack Of Vitamine D Linked To Asthma And Allergies

Australian researchers have found that children with Vitamin D deficiency are more likely to develop asthma and other allergies later in life. This is the findings of a study published in the ‘Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology’.
Similarly, the findings conducted by researchers from Western Australia’s Telethon Kids Institute, also showed that repeated bouts of Vitamin D deficiency in early childhood are linked to higher rates of asthma at age 10, as well as allergy and eczema.
Vitamin D are any of a group of vitamins found in liver and fish oils, essential for the absorption of calcium and the prevention of rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Asthma is a chronic disease involving the airways in the lungs.
These airways, or bronchial tubes, allow air to come in and out of the lungs. If you have asthma, your airways are always inflamed. They become even more swollen and the muscles around the airways can tighten when something triggers your symptoms.
Allergies, also known as allergic diseases, is another condition that could be caused by Vitamin D deficiency. Allergies are a number of conditions caused by hypersensitivity of the immune system to something in the environment that usually causes little or no problem in most people.
These diseases include hay fever, food allergies, atopic dermatitis, allergic asthma, and anaphylaxis. On its part, eczema is a group of diseases that results in inflammation of the skin, characterised by itchiness, red skin, and a rash.
NAN reported that the researchers tracked vitamin D levels from birth to age 10 in Perth in Australia and found that children were at high risk of developing asthma and allergies as they grew older if they lacked the nutrient at a young age.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Elysia Hollams, said the findings showed that Vitamin D played an important role in regulating the immune system as well as promoting a healthy lung development. “Our study is the first to track vitamin D levels from birth to asthma onset, and it has shown a clear link between prolonged Vitamin D deficiency in early childhood and the development of asthma.
“We have also shown for the first time that babies deficient in Vitamin D have higher levels of potentially harmful bacteria in their upper airways, and are more susceptible to severe respiratory infections,’’ Hollams said.
However, she cautioned against rushing out and purchasing Vitamin D supplements as more research needed to be done in the field. “We still do not know what the optimal level of vitamin D is for good lung health and immune function.”

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Why Some Woman Cannot Achieve Orgasm During Sexual Intercourse ( 2 )

( being the concluding part of yesterday's article on the factors inhibiting women's ability to reach orgasm during sexual intercourse)
 2. Perceiving sex as immoral or bad: Many women have acquired distorted views about sex early in life during the process of socialization. In general, parents’ negative attitudes toward nudity, masturbation and sex play have a powerful influence on both male and female children’s feelings about sexuality and the sex act. As a result, people typically grow up viewing some sex acts as acceptable and clean, and others as dirty and bad. In addition, some religions, especially rigid belief systems, perceive sex as an expression of the baser or sinful nature of human beings. When women take on these attitudes, they tend to see sex as forbidden, shameful and bad. They feel guilty about wanting, seeking or experiencing pleasure in lovemaking, and expect negative consequences or actual punishment.
3. Guilt about breaking the mother-daughter bond with a mother who is sexually repressed: As explained in Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships, “Girls learn by observation and imitation to be like the mother and feel strange or uncomfortable when they are different from their role model.” Therefore, when a mother is held back sexually, it is very difficult for her daughter to go beyond her in terms of enjoying sexual fulfillment in her adult relationship. A woman’s guilt and fear in relation to surpassing her mother in this area are often transferred to other women in her life. Because of these feelings, women are often afraid of standing out from their peers as mature, sexual women.
4. Fear of arousing repressed sadness: For many women, feelings of sadness related to emotional pain in childhood surface during a sexual experience, especially when sexuality is combined with emotional intimacy. For women who were mistreated or rejected early in life and feel unlovable, the contrast of being loved, pleasured, and sexually fulfilled brings out deep and painful emotional responses.  When women try to hold back their sad feelings, they become cut off from themselves, both emotionally and physically, and removed from the sexual interaction.
In Beyond Death Anxiety, I noted that “a close sexual experience can also cause individuals to become acutely conscious of their existence. They experience a heightened awareness of themselves and the value of their lives. Paradoxically, these uniquely positive feelings come with a price–the special appreciation of life makes them aware of deep and painful sadness that their lives are terminal.” For this reason, many women pull back after an especially intimate encounter.
5. Fear of being vulnerable:In my latest book, The Self Under Siege,I write, “Accepting love leads to a feeling of increased vulnerability and challenges aspects of the negative identity formed in the family of origin.”  A woman may enjoy casual sexual encounters, but “as a relationship becomes more meaningful and intimate, being loved and positively acknowledged can threaten to disrupt one’s psychological equilibrium by piercing core defenses.” Depending on another person to satisfy one’s wants and needs breaks into the defensive posture of being self-sufficient and pseudo-independent. Being open and receptive to another person threatens an inward, isolated, self-soothing way of protecting one’s self from emotional hurt. Combining sex and love leads to a sense of vulnerability and is anxiety provoking because many women and men are afraid of being completely committed to a significant other, especially if they have been previously hurt emotionally.
6. Fear of arousing repressed memories of abuse and trauma:Being close sexually to a partner and freely experiencing orgasm tend to trigger unwanted memories in women whose histories include sexual abuse or molestation.  Estimates are that one out of three to four women were abused sexually or experienced some type of inappropriate sexual contact with a relative or stranger before they were 18. In these cases, being sexual can be unconsciously associated with the abuser, particularly when the abuser is a family member, and sex becomes guilt provoking, tinged with emotional pain, and unacceptable in the woman’s mind. Any similarity between her partner and the family member increases the probability that these memories will emerge.
7. Fear of loss of control: Women who rely heavily upon maintaining control as a self-protective defense mechanism are prone to be resistive to a freely expressive sexual encounter. This can show up in an overall fear of losing control or in more specific fears, such as fears of making noise or moving, or even fears of urinating or defecating when letting go. Control is related to existential issues of life and death. Faced with issues of death anxiety, people tend to detach themselves from their animal nature and disconnect from a body that they know is mortal. This dissociation can inhibit feeling pleasurable responses in the here and now interaction during sex.

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How Soldiers, Police And Others Sexually Harrass Female IDPs In Nigeria

Nigerian soldiers and policemen have raped and sexually abused women and girls fleeing the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
Forty-three cases of “sexual abuse, including rape and exploitation”, were documented in July, HRW said.
The women and girls were housed at seven camps in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, where Boko Haram’s seven-year insurgency began. That insurgency has displaced more than two million people and killed some 15,000 in Nigeria’s northeast.
An army spokesman declined to comment and referred the matter to the defence ministry. A spokesman for the department could not be reached by phone and did not respond to a text message. A spokesman for the Nigerian police could not be reached on his mobile phone.
The rights group said it was also told of abuse carried out by camp leaders and members of security groups set up to help the military fight the insurgents.
Four people told HRW they were drugged and raped. Thirty-seven said they had been coerced into sex through false marriage promises and material and financial assistance.
A 17-year-old girl said she was raped by a policeman who approached her in a camp.
“One day he demanded to have sex with me. I refused but he forced me,” she said, adding that it happened once. She said he threatened to shoot and kill her when she discovered that she was pregnant.
Another girl – a 16-year-old, who fled an attack on Baga, near Lake Chad, last year – said she was drugged and raped in May 2015 by a community security group member in charge of distributing aid in the camp.
Boko Haram, which controlled a swathe of land in the northeast around the size of Belgium early last year, has largely been pushed back to its base in the northeast’s vast Sambisa forest in the last few months.
Aid workers and soldiers have gained access to the group’s former northeastern strongholds, revealing famine-like conditions which UNICEF says could kill 75,000 children over the next year if they do not receive aid.
Nigerian lawmakers in early October said they would investigate the use of government funds intended to assist displaced people, amid claims that money had been diverted.

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Why Some Woman Cannot Achieve Orgasm During Sexual Intercourse

According to a PsychologyToday blog by Lisa Thomas approximately 25% of women have difficulty achieving orgasm or have never experienced one, and even for women who are orgasmic, the frequency is only around 50-70% of the time.  Other researchers found that most women do not routinely (and some never) experience orgasm during sexual intercourse.
There are a number of physiological factors that can inhibit a woman’s sexual desire and her ability to reach climax: hormone imbalance, low testosterone, medications such as anti-depressants, her anatomy (the distance between the clitoris and the vagina), and, of course, partner issues. These can include the partner’s lack of appeal or insensitivity, and, in relation to a male partner, insufficient knowledge of the female body and premature ejaculation. To make matters worse, focusing on having a climax creates pressure in a woman that runs counter to sexual arousal; telling herself to “relax” simply doesn’t work.

Many developmental issues also affect women’s sexuality: Parents’ intrusiveness, emotional hunger, withholding of affection, indifference, hostility and intolerance of being loved leave lasting scars on their offspring. Women react to the resultant emotional pain by developing a poor self-concept or body image, distrust of their partner and other protective and pseudo-independent defenses that, in turn, predispose alienation in their relationships. Basically insecure (anxious or avoidant) attachment patterns they developed in childhood persist into adult life and strongly influence numerous aspects of sexual relating.

In this article, we focus on seven psychological factors that tend to negatively impact a woman’s sexual desire, arousal and orgasmic capacity.  The list is not meant to exhaust all possible psychological issues; however, in clinical experience, it has been found to be fundamental and understanding and useful in helping women achieve richer, more satisfying sexual lives.
1. Critical thoughts toward one’s body: Many women experience intrusive thoughts or critical inner voices about their body that interrupt the smooth progression of sexual excitement that typifies the arousal cycle of approaching orgasm. They can have self-conscious thoughts about their breasts: Your breasts are small. They’re not like other women’s breasts. Your breasts are misshapen. Or they may have negative thoughts about their genitals. Your vagina is too large. You’re too dry. You’re not clean, so don’t have oral sex.
Many women have internalized their parents’ negative attitudes toward bodily functions during toilet training, thereby developing images of their bodies and sexuality as dirty. In particular, the genital area becomes imbued with an anal connotation and is confused with excretory functions. Women’s shameful feelings about this area are extended to anything below the waist, (including menstruation) and they end up feeling dirty or contaminated in a manner that can interfere with their becoming aroused or achieving orgasm. When women have negative thoughts about different parts of their bodies they find it difficult to take pleasure in being touched in those specific areas. If they feel critical about their body image in general, it is more difficult for them to fully enjoy sex...
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW.

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Mixing Energy Drinks And Alcohol Is Like Cocaine In The Brain

Drinking highly caffeinated alcoholic beverages has been shown to trigger changes in the adolescent brain. The changes are similar to taking cocaine. According to findings of a study published in the journal ‘PLOS ONE’, the consequences of drinking highly caffeinated alcoholic beverages, last into adulthood as an altered ability to deal with rewarding substances.
Cocaine, also known as coke, is a strong stimulant mostly used as a recreational drug. It is commonly snorted, inhaled, or injected into the veins.
Mental effects of cocaine may include loss of contact with reality, an intense feeling of happiness, or agitation while physical symptoms may include a fast heart rate, sweating, and large pupil. Cocaine has a small number of accepted medical uses such as numbing and decreasing bleeding during nasal surgery.
Science daily reported that Richard van Rijn, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, looked at the effects of highly caffeinated energy drinks and highly caffeinated alcohol in adolescent mice.
According to researchers from the Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, U.S., these alcohol studies cannot be performed in adolescent humans, but changes seen in mouse brains with drugs of abuse have been shown to correlate to those in humans in many drug studies.
These energy drinks can contain as much as 10 times the caffeine as soda and are often marketed to adolescents. But little is known about the health effects of the drinks, especially when consumed with alcohol during adolescence.
Van Rijn and graduate student, Meridith Robins, published results in the journal Alcohol that showed adolescent mice given high-caffeine energy drinks were not more likely than a control group to drink more alcohol as adults.

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Too Much Watching Of TV Can Damage Children's Brain Structure

Watching too much television can change the structure of a child's brain in a damaging way, according to a new study.
Researchers found that the more time a child spent viewing TV, the more profound the brain alterations appeared to be.

The Japanese study looked at 276 children aged between five and 18, who watched between zero and four hours TV per day, with the average being about two hours.

MRI brain scans showed children who spent the most hours in front of the box had greater amounts of grey matter in regions around the frontopolar cortex - the area at the front of the frontal lobe.
But this increased volume was a negative thing as it was linked with lower verbal intelligence, said the authors, from Tohoku University in the city of Sendai.
They suggested grey matter could be compared to body weight and said these brain areas need to be pruned during childhood in order to operate efficiently.

These areas show developmental cortical thinning during development, and children with superior IQs show the most vigorous cortical thinning in this area,’ the team wrote.
They highlighted the fact that unlike learning a musical instrument, for example, programmes we watch on TV ‘do not necessarily advance to a higher level, speed up or vary’.
‘When this type of increase in level of experience does not occur with increasing experience, there is less of an effect on cognitive functioning,’ they wrote.

The authors said the impact of watching TV on the ‘structural development’ of the brain has never before been investigated.
‘In conclusion, TV viewing is directly or indirectly associated with the neurocognitive development of children,’ they wrote.
‘At least some of the observed associations are not beneficial and guardians of children should consider these effects when children view TV for long periods of time.’
The children in the study were an almost even split between girls and boys.
The findings, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, highlighted an association between TV viewing and changes in the brain but do not prove that TV definitely caused the changes.
Scientists also cannot be sure whether missing out on activities such as reading, playing sports or interacting with friends and family as a result of watching TV could be behind the findings, rather than TV being directly to blame.
But they did say that the frontopolar cortex area of the brain has previously been associated with ‘intellectual abilities'.

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