Health news from around the world.

To be lastingly effective, weight-losing diets should be gradual and realistic and must never involve the omission of any meals. If one skips breakfast or any other meal, the body merely stores more of the calories from the next meals in the form of fat to make up for the period of fasting and, at the same time, decreases energy expenditure by one means or another (making one feel tired and sleep more).

Fasting is therefore not usually helpful for those who wish to lose weight. Rather, they should eat three meals a day at specified times, take predetermined amounts of food, eat slowly, and keep food out sight between meals.

One interesting study about dieting and weight loss did not emphasize quantity of food at all, but rather zeroed in on when the food was eaten. Even though the participants did not eat any less than usual, merely by doing most of their eating earlier in the day, these overweight people easily managed to lose five to 10 pounds every month, Postgraduate Medicine (79#4:352) reports.

The dietary research from which this finding emerged involved 595 overweight people treated in the Department of Nutrition at Tulane University’s School of Public Health in New Orleans.

These people were instructed to change their eating patterns from heavy meals in the evening to a heavy morning meal, a modest lunch and a light afternoon snack, with no change in the daily total intake. They were also told not to go to sleep for at least eight and a half hours after the last meal of the day.

The report stressed that this was a “preliminary” finding that needs to be confirmed by studies involving a “control” comparison group treated some other way. Meanwhile, many who are feeling desperate about obesity will no doubt want to give this method a personal trial.

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Symptoms: itching or clogging of ear can; discharge from ear canal; pain; fever; swollen and tender lymph nodes

Home care:

To relieve pain, give aspirin or paracetamol and apply warm compresses to the outside of the ear.

Try to prevent swimmer’s ear in a susceptible child by drying the ear canals after each swimming session; to do this, place a few drops of rubbing alcohol or glycerin in each ear.

After administering any ear drops, keep the child’s head tilted for a little while so that the drops can penetrate deeply into the ear canal.

Precautions

-    Severe pain, fever, or swollen glands, or failure to respond to home treatment within a few days indicate that the child should see a doctor.

-    Earplugs of iamb’s wool coated with petroleum jelly keep water out better than rubber plugs and can be made at home.

-    Never clean inside a child’s ear canal.

Irritation or infection of the ear canal is known as swimmer’s ear. Swimmer’s ear may arise from a middle ear infection that has caused the eardrum to rupture and allowed infected material (pus) to drain into the outer canal. The condition can also occur if an injury to the ear canal becomes infected. Usually, however, swimmer’s ear is caused by swimming in fresh water or pools. Frequent and sustained moisture in the ear softens, swells, and cracks the ear canal, allowing germs to penetrate the canal and cause infection.

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