Health and medical information

When the reality of your loss sinks in, you may get depressed. Then you may get angry, sometimes directing that anger toward yourself, which creates guilt, shame, and decreased selfesteem. As you know by now, these psychological states inhibit sexual desire. Only after you successfully negotiate these stages of the grieving process can you truly accept your loss, put it in perspective, and get on with your life. Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in one of the early stages of grieving or, like Wendy, find one last obstacle blocking our path to acceptance.

We worked with Wendy for twelve weeks without seeing any change. Nothing we suggested enabled her to warm up to Bill and even the sexual fantasies she could conjure up were invariably interrupted by memories of Mark. There was a barrier that seemed inpenetrable, but on her thirteenth visit to our office, Wendy confronted it directly.

“Sometimes my memories are so clear,” she was saying. “It’s like my life with Mark was recorded on videotape and I call replay whatever I want to remember whenever I want to remember it. It’s almost like he’s still with me. It’s .. .” She stopped in midthought, her eyes widening. We could practically see a light bulb go on in her head. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t want to have sex with Bill.” She looked at us in amazement. “If I start a new life with Bill, I’m afraid I’ll lose my old life with Mark, all those memories that have kept him alive for me since his . . . since his death.”

As Wendy’s breakthrough insight reflects, when you lose your spouse or lover through death, divorce, or the breakup of your relationship, you eventually reach a point where you truly have to let go, finally severing the ties that connected you to that person. Letting go does not mean forgetting that person or what the relationship meant to you. Moving on does not mean you didn’t really love that person. Experiencing sexual desire and enjoying sex with a new partner is not an act of betrayal. However, if you consciously or unconsciously feel this way, you will not be able to accept and work through your loss—and ISD may be a way to make sure you don’t have to.

Suffering ISD after losing a loved one or ending a relationship is also likely to occur if:

• Deep down inside, you harbor hopes and fantasies about rekindling your old relationship.

• You cannot bring yourself to take the risk involved in beginning or maintaining a new relationship (which could bring a new loss and new pain).

• You have been “out of circulation” for so long that social and sexual situations fill you with anxiety and self-doubt.

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The question the reader will ask at this point is ‘Given all this epidemiological study, do we know the causes of cancer?’ Broadly the answer is ‘yes’ in many circumstances and for many cancers, and the opportunities for prevention that this understanding generates are there to be taken. We do not always know how the factors that have been identified by the epidemiological studies discussed in this chapter link up to what is being learned in the laboratories of the molecular biologists. This connection is being made rapidly and will be increasingly clear by the end of the century. Epidemiology has been very successful in discovering or confirming which features of our lives in the Western world can be now identified as causes of cancer.

Tobacco smoking has been shown to be the cause of most lung cancers in the Western world, particularly in men, but the link is becoming increasingly apparent in the developing countries. Probably 40 per cent of all cancer deaths in men and some 20 per cent in women are attributable to smoking, with the majority being caused by lung cancer, but with important and well-demonstrated links to cancers of the larynx, mouth, gullet and bladder, and with some suggestion also that there is a link to cancers of the kidney, cervix, nose and even the stomach. Tobacco sniffing and chewing also cause cancer, and smokers can quite possibly cause cancers in those who live with them by the process of passive smoke inhalation. Constituents of tobacco smoke can be found in the body fluids of non-smokers.

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1. Helps in long term glycaemic control which is achieved by (I) increasing in the insulin receptors and (II) improvement in the insulin sensitivity.

2. Helps in reducing body weight.

3. Helps in reducing requirement of Oral Hypoglycaemic Agents (OHA) and/or Insulin.

4. Improvement in Hypertension.

5. Improvement in lipid profile by : (I) reducing serum triglycerides and serum cholesterol, (ii) reducing Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) & Very Low Density Lipoprotein (VLDL), (III) increasing High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), specially HDL2.

6. Improvement in cardio-vascular functions.

7. Increases body fitness and stamina.

8. Increases sense of well-being.

9. Improves quality of life.

10. Exercise therapy has a special role to play in the prevention of atherosclerosis and ageing.

RISKS OF EXERACISE

1. ‘HYPERGLYCAEMIA’    - in poorly controlled diabetes patient..

2. KETOACIDOSIS.

3. HYPOGLYCAEMIA       – in tightly controlled diabetics.

4. HEART ATTACK – Sudden Mycardial Infarction (Ml) in patient with silent Myocardial Ischaemia.

5. SUDDEN BLINDNESS   – in diabetics with Proliferative Diabetes

Retinopathy (PDR) due to vitrous haemorrhage.

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