Is Your Kid a Candidate for Skin Cancer

There are many factors that dictate whether you more susceptible to skin cancer than others. If you fall under any of the following categories, it is believed that your skin cancer risk is elevated:
• Those who have fair skin that is easily burned and prone to freckles or other common skin markings.
• People who have suffered at least one case of severe sunburn earlier in life.
• Those who have fair hair and/or blue or green eyes.
• People with naturally depleted skin pigmentation caused by other medical conditions such as albinism.
• Those who have many moles on their skin, especially unusually shaped or colored moles, or large ones that they have had from birth.
• People who have suffered skin cancer before, or have family members who have suffered in the past.
It is important to note that these causative factors can work in combination. If for example you are a fair skinned, red haired, blue-eyed individual with several unusual moles who suffered really bad sunburn a couple of times as a youngster (which with this physical make up is extremely likely), the chances of continued or repeated exposure to the sun causing cancer are a great deal higher.
This highlights one of the main reasons why it is so important to know how to prevent sunburn and how to treat it if it unfortunately happens. Anything that increases your melanoma risk levels is something to be taken extremely seriously. Managing the risk of sunburn before the event is by far and away the best way of treating this risk with the respect that it so obviously deserves.
Having been presented with both sides of the ‘is sunshine good for you' argument, I would suggest one thing should be abundantly clear.
Whilst too much exposure to the sun is clearly potentially dangerous, particularly for certain types of people, a lack of exposure to the sun can be equally harmful. Consequently, the only sensible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that a balance needs to be struck between exposing your body to sunlight and keeping covered up at other times
You might be wondering why I am writing about this topic in the middle of winter but the truth is that 'snowburn' is as bad as 'sunburn'. Also many families go south for a holiday in the winter and the kids are often so much in a rush to get out in the sun and warm up that really bad sunburns tend to occur within minutes!

Parenting Tips
, , , , ,

Canalith Positioning for Dizziness

Do you have a child with chronic vertigo or dizziness? If so then try the following maneovers which you can do manually with your child. You can sometimes cure the dizziness almost immediately.
This s a simple physical activity known as canalith repositioning or the Epley maneuver. You move your child's body through a series of head and body positions that are designed to dislodge the crystals in the inner ear that are supposed to cause dizziness…
Although this procedure is initially carried out under expert supervision by your doctor, it is nevertheless something that is relatively easy to learn, so it is quite likely that he or she will be able to teach you how to do this in the comfort of your own home.
This procedure is remarkably simple, with the underlying principle being that by following the step by step procedure, you dislodge the crystals in your own or your child's ears that are the root cause of the dizziness and move them to a position where they are no longer going to irritate the nerve hairs in your ears to cause vertigo.
Since this simple physical procedure was first identified as being a non-invasive treatment for BPPV by Dr John Epley in 1980, there has been an increasingly persuasive body of supporting scientific research for this particular strategy built up.
If you suffer from BPPV and you have never attempted this particular procedure, this really is all that there is to it:
1. Sit on the floor in an upright position;
2. Turn your child's head to a 45° angle towards the side where you have a BPPV problem before reclining the child onto his or her back
3. Stay in this position for up to 5 minutes;
4. Swivel the child's head through 90° so that it is now at the same angle facing in the opposite direction;
5. Stay like that for up to 5 minutes once again;
6. Roll your child in the same direction as you are already facing with your head still at an angle to his or her body so that the nose is now facing the floor, and stay here for the final five minutes;
7. Return to the sitting position, take a break for 30 seconds to 1 minute before repeating the whole process two or three more times.
As you can see by this straightforward description of the procedure, there really is very little to the Epley maneuver, which is probably one of the reasons why it is as successful as it has so far proven to be.

Parenting Tips
, , ,