This month the main topic is sleep. Sufficient good quality sleep is extremely important for maintaining wellbeing. As the editor is very busy at present a referral is made to an excellent online resource for brushing up your knowledge of sleep.

Sleep well.

The main article in next month’s issue is titled Eliminating Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. This painful wrist problem became a lot more prevalent after the widespread use of computers. Orthodox treatment fails to remove the underlying cause. Dr Jenny Tylee addresses the underlying cause and provides alternative ways of treating the pain and discomfort until the problem is completely eliminated.

This information is available for free to ezine subscribers.

This empowering information is available for free to ezine subscribers.

The latest problem to become obvious involves the seasonal flu vaccination currently being used in Australia. Well, currently may not be correct as health authorities have ordered its use stopped pending an investigation into the multiple acute ill effects it has caused. Note that these are only the immediately apparent problems, no one recommending use of such vaccinations knows what long term problems they cause. No honest and thinking clinician can seriously believe that they can and will cause no problems. That is an untenable belief.

Yet for various reasons, some benign and well-meaning, others far from pure, people who should be trustworthy continue to actively promote the use of mass vaccination programs. Using such programs at all is unwise but using then for something like seasonal influenzas is madness. It is simply impossible to do anything even resembling safety testing in the short time periods available betwen identifying an appropriate viral strain and the beginning of each season.

In the rush, things go wrong. Sometimes the vaccinators get away with it. Sometimes they don’t. This time they didn’t and sadly, one child has died and hundreds have been seriously affected.

Hundreds of children in Queensland and Western Australia suffered fevers, vomiting and convulsions after being immunised. In Brisbane, a two-year-old girl died a day after receiving the seasonal flu shot.

That merely prompted health authorities to temporarily ban the vaccine for those under five. I wonder if those same authorities will be prepared to personally have the vaccination before giving it the all clear for use again. Somehow I doubt it.

Ian Barr from the World Health Organisation (WHO) influenza centre says the affected cases involved several different batches of the vaccine. Other health authorities agree that this is likely.

West Australia’s chief health officer Dr Tarun Weeramanthri says there are now 251 confirmed cases in the state of children aged under five having adverse reactions to flu vaccinations. The WA Health Department says 55 children have had convulsions after being vaccinated while nearly 200 others have suffered fever and vomiting. One child remains in a serious but stable condition at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Dr Tarun Weeramanthri says confirming the number of cases is a significant step forward in the search for the cause of the adverse reactions. “We’ll now be sharing that information with our colleagues from other states and territories. Once that national picture is built up this week we’ll know more about whether there is a problem, which areas it is in, what possible causes there are,” he said.

Dr Weeramanthri says he is working with other states and territories to determine the scale of the problem. “We don’t have any idea for national figures. We’ve agreed on a standard way to report the cases nationally. All states and territories are gathering the information very actively and we should be in a position to share that information nationally by the middle of next week,” he said.

Dr Weeramanthri says it will take time to determine the cause of the problem. “First of all we have to work out how much of a problem this is,” he said. “As you know, fever with illness in children is common due to any cause, so there’s lots of viruses circulating at any one point in time.

“We also know that fever following vaccination is not uncommon, so what we’ve done is gather as much information as we can about the numbers of children affected; both overall with any kind of reaction, but also at the more serious end, this group with febrile convulsions.”

While immunisation numbers are down, Dr Weeramanthri says he is confident parents will continue to vaccinate their children once the source of the reactions is found. Unfortunately, he is correct, many parents will do just that beacuse they trust their health care providers or are simply ignorant. Hopefully increasing numbers will be prompted to investigate immunisation further and will reach a more enlightened conclusion.

In a paper published in the April issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Samuel Badalian and Paula Rosenbaum studied 1,961 women and found 23% of American women over the age of 20 have a pelvic floor disorder, which often leads to urinary incontinence. Women who are overweight or who have had more than one child are at an increased risk.

The researcher found that low vitamin D levels predicted pelvic floor disorders, even in younger women and that urinary incontinence was twice as likely in vitamin D deficient women compared to women with higher vitamin D levels.

The authors concluded:

“Our findings suggest that treatment of vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women could improve pelvic muscle strength, with a possible reduction in the prevalence of pelvic floor disorders, including urinary incontinence.”