Strep Throat and Rheumatic Heart Disease

If your kid gets strep throat, watch out! It can cause a much more serious condition.
Rheumatic heart disease is an inflammatory condition where the valves of the heart are damaged by rheumatic fever which is itself a condition that develops two or three weeks after infection by group a Streptococcus evidenced by scarlet fever or a ‘strep throat' (strep pharyngitis).

Despite the name, the condition that causes rheumatic heart disease, (rheumatic fever) actually has nothing to do with genuine rheumatism. Instead, the name comes from the fact that there are similarities between the symptoms of the condition and rheumatism.

Rheumatic fever is generally a condition that causes inflammation that affects many of the connective tissues of the body including those of the brain, skin and joints as well as those of the heart. In many cases, the damage caused by rheumatic fever is permanent and irreversible.

In developed countries of the West, rheumatic fever and the heart damage caused by it is relatively unusual nowadays. However, in developing countries, rheumatic heart damage or disease is the leading cardiovascular cause of death.

Strep throat can also cause Myocardial ischaemia or ischaemic heart disease. This is a condition caused by reduced blood flow to your heart, a condition that is most commonly caused by arteriosclerosis of the coronary arteries (a narrowing of the artery caused by thickening of the arterial wall).

As myocardial ischaemia generally results from a thickening of the arterial walls which produces restricted blood flow to the heart, it is a condition that tends to worsen with age. This is why heart disease is so often called the 'silent killer.'
Flus, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases can also give your kid cardiomyopathy. This is a term that refers to any form of reduced effectiveness and efficiency of the myocardium, the muscle element of the heart that makes it what it is. People who have cardiomyopathy are at a significantly increased risk of heart arrhythmia, sudden cardiac failure and/or heart attacks.

It can also cause irregular heartbeats. These are called arrhythmias. This is a catchall phrase that is used to describe any heart malfunction which is caused by irregularities or defects in the electrical signals being sent to your heart.

Don't just shrug off any case of strep throat in your family. Be aware it could lead to much more serious complications.

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How Do You Know If A Product Is Natural?

I was really mad when I found the following information out. Like you might be, I was wondering how people who manufacture lotions and creams can get away with putting cancer causing agents in it. How can they get away with it? Especially with a kid's product?

The answer is very simple.

There is no legally agreed definition of what is and what is not natural when it comes to skin care products, beauty treatments, soaps, lotions and the like.

There is therefore nothing to stop a product manufacturer highlighting the use of a fragrance without suggesting that it is completely artificial.

For instance, you will see products on the drug store shelf that contain ‘fragrance' that has a picture of flowers or a summer meadow on the container, clearly implying the fragrance is entirely natural.

However, even though nothing could be further from the truth, product manufacturers know that consumers buy cosmetic and skincare products based on the smell. Hence, they make sure that they smell nice even though the fragrance is completely artificial.

You must therefore be extremely careful when buying commercial products and you need to know what to look out for.

Another argument that is sometimes put forward for including chemicals of these types in cosmetic and skin care products is that in tiny doses, they are harmless. This may be the case but it takes no account of the cumulative effect of using a product that contains these chemicals over a long period of time.

Furthermore, you should remember that make up or moisturizer that is applied before retiring for the night is going to stay on your skin for many hours giving your skin every opportunity to absorb as much of the potentially harmful chemicals as possible.

You might also have heard it suggested that people have been using skin care and cosmetic products that contained the same substances for many generations and that it never did them any harm, but do the facts support this? If you consider the statistics for the prevalence of cancer and other similar problems back in those days, the answer is, probably not.

Similarly, you have already seen that some of these chemicals cause headaches, dizziness, chest pains and depression and there can't be many people who don't know someone who suffers from some of these problems from time to time.

Of course, people suffer from these problems for many reasons but chemicals could potentially be one of the reasons.

Anyway, the bottom line is very clear. If you are going to use commercially produced skin care products, make absolutely certain that you know exactly what the ingredients are before buying, and if there is any doubt, put it back on the shelf. Do it for the safety of your kids!

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