Advice to Parents on Childhood Measles - Part II

Copyright 2006 Peter Nisbet

In Part 1 I explained how a lack of knowledge about measles symptoms and resistance to MMR has resulted in some parents starting up ‘measles parties’ to ensure that their children caught measles early and so gain immunity that way. This is mistaken in my view and many people are unaware that measles is still a major killer. In part II I will explain to parents what the measles symptoms are, in what order they should appear and when to call a doctor.

As a parent you should learn how to recognise measles symptoms. If your child has had the disease, or is immunized, you probably don’t need to know this, but if not you could save a life by being aware of the most important measles symptoms and when to get medical help. Back in the 1950s and 60s they all knew measles symptoms when they saw the, but not now, so let’s try to spot the them in the rough order in which they normally appear. It’s not easy since many childhood infections have similar symptoms. However, they all have at least one which is particular to that disease.

Measles symptoms:

Measles frequently start with symptoms similar to those of a cold or the flu.

1. First a runny nose and a ‘sniffle’, followed by a sore throat.. A typical ‘barking’ cough can then develop. So far, you would not think ‘measles’ The eyes will puff up, may become watery and get red and sore looking. If you know of a possible measles contact you can now get suspicious.

2. A slight increase in temperature will develop, and will increase to around 39 Celsius (102F). The child may shy away from the light or close her eyes when a light is switched on. At this point you may want to call a doctor. If so, you will catch the disease early, but the symptoms are not yet definitely indicative of measles. Most parents will still regard these symptoms as a’ bit of a cold’ or a ‘touch of the flu’.

3. You may not notice this, but about 2 to 3 days after the first symptoms appear, your child will get small spots on the inside of the cheek, round about the molars, called Koplik’s Spots. These look like small red bumps with tiny grains of sand or salt in the middle. These may last less than a day and sometimes even appear within the first 36 hours. If you are with it and aware, you will see this, and you should call your doctor at this stage. This the definitive measles symptom. No other infection shows Koplik's spots. These spots disappear as the main rash appears. They are photographed on my website.

5. The temperature will probably have reduced a bit by now to 37 – 38C (just at or below 100F). You think perhaps she is getting better.

6. The main rash starts to appear about 1 or 2 days after the Koplik’s spots. It forms small spots which join together to form blotches. Definitely doctor time! There is a picture of a measles rash on my website.

7. The rash appears on the forehead around the hairline first, then to the neck, body, arms and legs. By this time you will have called a doctor and your child is diagnosed with measles unless you have an inexperienced doctor, when samples may be taken to identify the virus.

8. The temperature increases again to over 40C or higher (105F). No need for samples now - if the Koplik's spots were missed, this is definitely measles, but by now it is dying out.

9. The rash lasts about 4 days then starts to disappear from the head down. The whole process, from start of symptoms to disappearance of the rash, takes about 10 days on average. The rash itself last about 6 days.

A person with measles is infectious from 4 days before the rash appears to about 4 days after it has appeared, so it can be passed around before any measles symptoms show.

Those most at risk are:

Young children under one year old. Malnourished people. Children who have depressed immune systems, such as those on some cancer treatments or are infected with HIV or AIDS. Children suffering from a Vitamin A deficiency. Pregnant women: the infection can cause miscarriage or premature delivery.

It is said that a doctor’s surgery can be a dangerous place. Measles is extremely contagious, and around 90% of close proximity contacts will catch the disease. If any of the above high risk patients are present in the surgery waiting room when you take your child suspected of having measles, you may be placing them at special risk.

Doctors may not like this, but for this reason alone I suggest that you call a doctor rather than take a child suspected of having measles to the surgery. This is another argument against those who would rather have their child catch measles at a measles party than be given a vaccination to prevent them from contracting it.

Affordable Hair Transplants - How To Choose A Hair Transplant Center

While opting for an affordable hair transplant keep these 10 tips in your mind. And I am sure you will never go with a wrong decision in choosing the right hair transplant center for you:

1. Consistent Results

With dense-packed follicular unit hair transplantation and microscopic graft preparation, natural, finished and reliable results can be achieved. So prefer a hair transplant center with these facilities.

2.Affordable hair transplant:

A high hair transplant cost does not guarantee you the best results, it is imperative for you to have knowledge of hair transplantation restoration procedures and costs and know what is applicable to you. You can go for an affordable hair transplant only after a comprehensive decision with other patients.

3. Quality Control

Every step of your hair transplantation should be performed with the highest standards, with full attention from start to finish to ensure that you achieve good results.

4. Choose least time consuming clinic

You should choose a hair transplant center and specially a qualified surgeon who can place your grafts close enough to finish a specific area of head in one surgical session. This will make hair transplant less time-consuming, more convenient, and ultimately less expensive for you.

5. Microscopic Dissection

It will be better if you choose a clinic equipped with modern technologies of hair transplant like Binocular stereoscopic dissecting microscope. Every single graft is prepared in a meticulous manner by using microscopic magnification. All follicular unit hair transplantation will provide you natural and superior results and preserve your donor’s hair also.

6. Total Patient Comfort

Hair replacement center should be comfortable for patients undergoing hair replacement. Choose a replacement center where recreation facilities are also available like listening to music or watching movies.

7. Experience

Before going to a hair replacement center you should check their prior performance and experience in the related field.

8. Dedications and Commitment

Dedication and commitment of doctors is also necessary for a good treatment. You should try to find a hair replacement clinic with well-qualified and dedicated doctors.

9. Recognition

Before going for a treatment check the recognition of the hair replacement clinic. Are they following world-class procedures for hair replacement? Are they really affordable or too expensive?

10. Do not go for fake advertisements-make a research by yourself. Find the center with affordable hair transplant over the internet and then enquire personally.

Aerobic Training: How Doing It Properly Can Improve Health

A lot of people nowadays are using various medications and going on crash diets to lose some unwanted pounds and improve their health. Because of this phenomenon, the benefits of aerobic exercises have been overlooked. Two of the more famous forms of aerobic exercise are running and jogging. Doing these activities lead to improved physical appearance, healthier heart, and elevated moods.

The primary benefit of this kind of exercise is a healthy heart. The human body responds to the increased need for oxygen that comes with running or jogging. As aerobic exercise takes place, the circulatory system responds by pushing itself harder which prompts the heart to beat faster. Just like other muscles in the body that receives a healthy dose of workout, the heart becomes stronger with regular aerobic training. A stronger heart pumps blood more efficiently and improve blood flow to many parts if the body. Because of a healthy heart, climbing stairs can be a breeze and walking or running long distances may less difficult. One's body therefore becomes more efficient in handling everyday tasks that can be encountered.

Like other physical activities, regular aerobic training can give a healthier looking body to individuals who engage in them. For people who workout regularly, the muscles become more toned and lean because fat is burned off. In addition to these physical improvements, greater muscle density contributes to bone strength and reduce the risk of breaking bones as one gets older.

Medical studies also add that moderate or intense physical activities may prompt the body to produce substances called endorphins. These substances are produced by the brain that may elevate one's mood and eliminate feelings of stress and anxiety. This effect is called by many health experts as the “runner's high.”

However, individuals who want to engage in aerobic training should consult health professionals or train with a professional instructor. Because improper or too much training may do more harm than good. Extreme exercise may increase the production of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. These hormones aid the body in switching to a more efficient fat-burning metabolism to preserve glycogen in the muscles and aid blood vessels in the delivery of oxygen to the muscles. However, stress overload can occur if an individuals does not dial down the intensity even for short periods. This may cause an increase in white blood cells that eliminate bacteria, viruses, and even cancer cells. When the intense exercise is finished, the number of immune cells may decrease. It is theorized that any viruses or bacteria present in this stage may multiply and cause infection which may weaken the immune system.

Aerobic training and other physical activities should be done properly to avoid ill-effects that improper or over-training may bring. Individuals who want to engage in such activities can begin aerobic training by walking or jogging five minutes in the morning and another five minutes the evening. The next they they can add a few minutes to each aerobic session. Soon, they could be walking briskly or jogging for 30 minutes a day and reap the benefits of regular aerobic exercise.

Aerobic Benefits and History

Aerobic Benefit:
The word ‘aerobic’ means “with oxygen”. Researchers consistently recommend that regular physical activity with healthy eating habits is the most efficient way to keep yourself fit and control your body weight. Aerobic activity helps you to control or reduce your weight by using excess calories that otherwise would be stored as fat. Everything you do uses the calories including sleeping, digesting food and breathing. Any physical activity to what you normally do will use extra calories. So doing regular aerobic exercise gives you a sense of positive attitude that helps to counteract stress. Aerobic activity increases the body’s production of endorphins.

Benefits of aerobics:
* The heart works more efficient and becomes more stronger.
* It helps to control your weight.
* Reduces the risk in developing diabetes, obesity and any heart disease.
* There is an increase in good cholesterol and decrease in bad cholesterol.
* It increases endorphins.
* Increases the body’s ability to take in oxygen and makes you breathe faster.
* It helps to reduce and control the body fat.
* Improves the body muscle strength and flexibility.
* Improves the quality of sleep that freshens you early next morning.
* Helps to avoid chronic diseases like heart disease and hypertension.
* Aerobics increases the resistance fatigue and gives you more energy.
* Improves your mood and reduces depression, stress and anxiety.
* It avoids overheating.
* Aerobics pumps the blood faster and more forcefully.
* Helps in prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
* Builds the muscular strength and makes your body more flexible.
* Helps to reduce blood pressure.
* Prevents from certain types of cancer also.
In short aerobics burns your fat. Aerobics makes you live longer and live healthier and happier.
It builds up a positive attitude in you and changes your perception of looking towards life.

Regular aerobic exercises will force the heart to gradually enlarge and it is important to always target your heart rate.

Here safety is first:
Vigorous aerobic routine can cause sprains and injuries. So never neglect the pain and immediately consult your doctor. If you have any medical concerns the consult your doctor and then start the routine. If a problem like dizziness, vomiting, back pain or any other arises consult your doctor and then continue the aerobic activity.
Aerobic history: “Origin of the way ending in a fit and healthy world”

Aerobics is nothing but a system of exercises to help prevent coronary artery diseases which was first put forwarded by a physician called Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper in San Antonio air force hospital in Texas. Shortly after the publishing of cooper’s book about the exercise system, Aerobics in 1968, a person known as Jackie Sorenson developed a series of dance routines known as the aerobic dance to considerably improve the cardiovascular fitness. In this way aerobic dance and other form of exercises gain existence and made its way cautiously among the masses all over United States and many other counties and that too in a very short span of around two decades. The number of aerobics participant in the US alone raises from an estimated 6 million in 1978 to 19 million in 1987. Thus from the above lines one can easily see the tremendous popularity of aerobics among the people around the world.

Something about sportaerobics

Howard and Karen Schwartz are the two persons who developed a very new and competitive sport known as sportaerobics in the year 1983. Their group organization called the sport fitness international holds the credit of organizing the first national aerobic championship in the year 1984. Sportaerobics at the beginning, started featuring competition in four categories namely individual male and female, mixed pairs and trio which have the facility to include any of the three athletes. In the year 2002 the competition was upgraded to a group of six athletes. The judgment of the competitors is done on a one minute, forty-five seconds routine done to music. Judges choose two criteria namely the artistic merit and the technical merit with an overall 10 pints each. In 1996 sportaerobics is formally adopted as a Gymnastique discipline.

Growth of aerobics since the early years

Aerobics since the day of its introduction is growing at a tedious pace. All sorts of people are finding aerobics to be convenient and helpful in maintaining a fit and healthy body structure. Today the present scenario is such that every person in between a heavy work schedule makes out atleast half an hour to work out either in the gym or in the home. Every one today stress on the need to stay healthy and hence aerobics and all its form of exercises are rapidly gaining popularity.

Aerobic Pictures - The Truth About Their True Effectiveness!

I know how skeptical people typically are about motivational pictures. Everyone has seen and got fed up with that tripe posted on the partition walls of their cubicles – some stranger conquering an impossible mountain against the canvas of a magnificent sunrise with some stupid caption about “persistence”, or “excellence” under it, or some poor little kitten cutie struggling to hang on to the edge of a table with her babyish claws, beneath which is inscribed, invariably in corresponding bubbly cutesy letters, “hang on”.

Hey, you might not believe me when I tell you this. If I were a listener like you, I would probably not believe in it either. Nonetheless, I have an urge to tell you this simple yet rarely acknowledged fact that nothing inspires people quite as much as aerobic pictures to get fit and back in shape.

It is considered a sign of very low refinement even to put such thing up, let alone to confess to be motivated by them – unless you are a middle manager, in which case low refinement is considered more of a virtue than a vice. However, at least in the case of aerobic pictures, it is true. The right picture can really give people that extra push and get them moving.

Well, you think I am exaggerating. No not really. Seeing people sweating every day enables me to tell the gleam of sweat from the gleam of confidence. What I see here is definitely the gleam of confidence. They look at those aerobic pictures and stand up straighter, work that much harder, and I believe, go home feeling a whole lot better about themselves. Even the aerobic exercise classes seem to go better once the pictures are present.

I should know. I am a manager at the Skinny Booty Gym downtown, and I oversee various tasks including decorating the walls. It has given me plenty of time to observe people in their workouts, and the differences that those aerobic pictures make are surprising. Before I stick them up, many people seemed to be just painfully dragging on with their workouts, without hope of ever attaining any fitness goals. Since I put up the aerobic pictures, however, things have taken a dramatic turn. It is like the aerobic pictures lift everyone's morale that makes them practically shine with confidence.

After seeing this effect on people, I have even taken down my other motivational posters and put up the aerobic pictures around my cubicle in the gym. Even when I am not doing any exercise, the pictures of fit, trim people doing their aerobics workouts seems to tell me I should put in a little bit more effort into whatever tasks I am attending to at the moment. There are many types of decorations which are more beautiful, more exciting, and flashier than aerobic pictures, but I have yet to find one that exerts a bigger positive influence on the work ethics. And isn't that the most crucial thing of all?

Aerobic Activity

The term aerobic means "with oxygen." During an aerobic activity , the cardiovascular system, which includes the heart, lungs and blood vessels, responds to physical activity by increasing the oxygen that is available to the body's working muscles. Aerobic activity involves an exercise routine that uses large muscle groups, is maintained for a long periods and is rhythmic in nature. Regular aerobic activity improves your fitness as your heart becomes stronger and begins to work better. The result is that the heart can pump more blood (thus increasing oxygen delivery to the tissues) with each heartbeat. As your aerobic fitness increases, you can work out longer with greater intensity and recover quicker at the end of the session. Aerobic activity is often coined either High Impact or Low Impact. High-impact aerobic activity includes actions that take both feet off the floor, thus causing more jarring of the joints when the body weight hits the floor again. An example of Low Impact is walking while High Impact is jogging or jumping up and down.

It is important to start at a low intensity and increase this over the following few weeks as the exercise feels easier. For example, 20 minutes of walking, jogging or a combination of walking/jogging may be sufficient to leave you rather breathless and fairly tired at the start of your program, but as the weeks go by, you may need to increase the pace or introduce jogging up some shallow hills to achieve a further increase in fitness. Remind that the heart works better when it is strong. Because the heart is a muscle, it can be made stronger with regular physical activity or aerobic activity. Explain that there are two types of exercise: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic activities use the arm and leg muscles and give the heart (and lungs) a continuous workout. Anaerobic activities build and tone muscles but are not as beneficial to the heart and lungs as aerobic activities.

Some of the best forms of aerobic activity are the traditional sports. If you get together and play basketball twice a week with friends, this alone might be enough to keep you fit and healthy. The important thing is to get some kind of aerobic activity, and to make it something that you enjoy enough to keep with it. Some people should consult their doctor before they start a vigorous aerobic activity program. The best advice I have is to join a gym for a month. This will let you try out lots of different aerobic exercises and find out which ones you like.

Aerobic Exercise for Weight Loss Can Be Fun

The word aerobic literally means "with oxygen" or "in the presence of oxygen." Aerobic exercise is any activity that uses large muscle groups, can be maintained continuously for a long period of time and is rhythmic in nature. Aerobic exercises utilize oxygen as the major fuel for sustaining activity for relatively long periods.

In general, aerobic exercises are those activities that require large muscle work, elevate the heart rate to between 60 percent and 80 percent of maximal heart rate, are continuous in nature and are of 15 to 60 minutes in duration. An aerobically fit individual can work longer, more vigorously and achieve a quicker recovery at the end of the aerobic session.

Aerobic exercises fall in two categories:

Low to Moderate Impact aerobics – These include walking, swimming, stair climbing, step classes, light water aerobics, rowing and cross-country skiing. Nearly anyone in reasonable health can engage in some low- to moderate-impact exercise. Brisk walking burns more calories than jogging for the same distance because it takes more time to walk than jog that distance and poses less risk for injury to muscle and bone.

High-Impact aerobics – Activities that belong to this group include running, dance exercise, tennis, racquetball and squash. High-impact aerobics should be performed on alternate days. People who are overweight, elderly, out of condition or have an injury or other medical problem should do them even less frequently and only with clearance from their doctor.

Here are some of the many aerobic exercises you can do and because of the variety you have to choose from, it can not only take the bordum out of doing it, it can make doing it downright fun as well.


1. Walking
Walking is a popular form of exercise because it requires little in terms of equipment or facilities. Walking an extra 20 minutes each day will burn off 7 pounds of body fat per year. Longer, moderately-paced daily walks are best for losing weight.


2. Jogging/Running
In jogging or running, an individual is able to cover greater distances in a shorter period of time. Therefore, greater numbers of calories can be burned per time spent.

3. Choreographed Aerobic Exercise
Choreographed aerobic dance is a very popular form of exercise throughout the world. Aerobic dance helps in toning up the muscles of the body and many people find it fun to do as well.

4. Step Aerobics
Step aerobics incorporates the use of a step or bench typically about one foot wide and three feet long and about six inches high. Instructors use many moves that require participants to step up and down from the platform. This way, the activity will not be boring and tiring, but will be lively and motivating.

5. Water Aerobics
Water aerobics incorporates a variety of movements from both swimming and land aerobics to develop vigorous routines that are aerobic in nature. It utilizes the resistance to movement that water creates to elevate heart rates and also helps you if balancing yourself on land is difficult. It is a good way to lose weight.

6. Swimming
Swimming is a very popular form of regular exercise. Due to the resistance of water, the amount of energy required to swim a certain distance is greater than that needed to run or walk the same distance. In other words, swimming can burn more calories than running per time spent.

7. Stationary Cycling/Bicycling
Stationary cycling or bicycling are excellent forms of aerobic exercise when done continuously. Like swimming, cycling is a non weight bearing activity that builds muscular endurance and strength and improved flexibility of selected muscles of the legs and thighs.

8. Jumping Rope
Jumping rope can be a great aerobic workout as long as it is performed at a slow to moderate pace and is done continuously for a relatively long period of time (15 minutes or more).

The key to effective weight loss is through use of a healthy exercise program which is performed on a regular basis while following a healthy dieting & nutritional plan. Aerobic exercise is good for weight loss because it uses more calories than other activities and helps raise your metabolic rate.

This helps your body burn calories at a faster rate. It is an effective way to lose fat only if you are motivated enough to do it frequently. Aerobics only burns fat during the workout itself. So if you want encouraging results you need to be able to exercise daily and for longer periods.