Remedicated

You’ve probably used the phrase “pain in the neck” many times in your life. Most of us use it in a humorous way, but actual neck pain is nothing to laugh about. Neck pain caused by injury, bad posture, or a poor sleeping position can profoundly affect your quality of life.

Don’t be tempted to reach for the over-the-counter pain relievers. While medications may treat your pain, they’re only a temporary fix. As soon as the medicine wears off, your pain will come back - and you’ll be right back where you started.

For a more long-lasting and effective treatment, treat the source of the pain. A doctor or chiropractor should give you the go-ahead before you try any of these home remedies for neck pain.

1. Massage. May cases of neck pain are due to stress, strain, or overuse. An expert massage can loosen tight muscles and relieve inflammation in the neck and shoulders, easing your pain.

2. Acupuncture. This ancient Eastern remedy is still feared by some Westerners, but it’s nothing to shy away from. Acupuncture is painless and effective and can give you almost instant pain relief. Qualified practitioners use ancient techniques to insert needles at specific points to ease pain and help you feel better overall.

3. Yoga. Yoga may help immediately with a stiff neck by encouraging you to loosen up. But it’s even more helpful in the long term. By building core strength and increasing your flexibility, yoga can prevent future neck strain. And you don’t even have to contort yourself in strange postures - just a few simple yoga positions can get you on your way to a stronger and more stable neck.

If your neck pain continues despite your best efforts to relieve it, you may have a serious underlying musculoskeletal problem. When in doubt, it’s always best to see your doctor to rule out a serious condition such as a spinal injury.

If you have children, lice is probably an issue that concerns you. Although you can get lice at any age, the closeness of children in schools makes kids more likely to acquire the bugs.

The treatment recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics is an over-the-counter chemical that you apply twice, the second application a week after the first. While this method may be effective, it contains harmful substances that you may just not want seeping into your child’s skin. Or maybe your child’s lice have grown resistant to the type of chemical treatment you’re using. What else can you do, short of shaving your child’s head?

Folk remedies for head lice have been abundant for as long as anyone can remember. Most of the home remedies involve smothering the lice and their eggs so that they suffocate and die. Others rely on the bugs’ natural dislike of some herbal substances.

1. Mayonnaise. Not Miracle Whip or any other mayonnaise substitute, mind you. The thick and greasy texture of mayonnaise has been used by many mothers to smother lice and their nits (eggs). You apply it liberally to the affected person’s head, cover it all with a shower cap, and leave it on overnight. The next morning, wash the hair thoroughly and use a nit comb (a small, very fine-toothed comb) to remove lice bodies and nits.

2. Olive oil soaks. With the head over the sink and protective cloths covering the clothing, saturate every last strand of hair with olive oil. Leave the olive oil on for 30 minutes and then comb with a nit comb. Wash the hair with dish soap to remove the oil. Repeat the process every other day for two weeks.

3. Tea tree oil. You can buy tea tree oil shampoo at just about any retailer these days. If you would prefer, it’s also effective to put a few drops of tea tree oil into your child’s regular shampoo. Then comb the hair very carefully with a lice comb to remove the bodies and nits.

When you use any lice treatment, it’s very important to treat your bedding, soft toys, and head coverings. Lice die without a host within 48 hours, so put those things that can’t be washed into an airtight plastic bag for 2-3 days to kill the little bugs. For the things that can go in the washing machine, wash them on hot and then dry them on high for at least 30 minutes.

The human body is an amazing thing, isn’t it? It has the ability to heal itself, create new life, and digest entire turkey dinners. But this incredible machine doesn’t always perform perfectly. Sometimes there’s a genetic anomaly that causes a problem, or sometimes a virus or bacteria can invade and make the whole thing go all wacky. The marvelous human machine can harbor almost an infinite number of maladies. While the diseases below are certainly nothing to take lightly, they are interesting conditions that you may not have ever heard of.

Capgras Delusion: This condition leads it sufferers to believe that a close friend, relative, or spouse has been replaced by a lookalike. It usually occurs in patients who suffer from schizophrenia, but has also been observed in patients who are suffering from dementia and brain damage. In some cases, the patient decreases or breaks off contact with the person they believe has been replaced.

Prosopagnosia: A similar condition to Capgras Delusion, prosopagnosia affects a person’s ability to recognize faces. In this condition, however, sufferers can not recognize any faces at all. They are still able to recognize other types of objects, but faces - even their own - do not register in their minds. This condition is often the result of brain injury, but new evidence suggests that some people are born with the inability to recognize faces.

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Is there anything worse than a summer cold? Well…yes, but they are pretty annoying. Who wants to deal with a stuffy nose when there’s gardening to be done and fun to be had? If you want to relieve the stuffy nose and congested head that go along with that cold without the fuzzy medicine feeling, try these easy remedies for relieving a stuffy nose the natural way.

1. Nasal Saline Irrigation. This is an ancient remedy that’s made its way into drug stores almost everywhere. The little plastic spray bottles that you stick up your nose can bring almost immediate relief from congestion. The saline moisturizes the nasal cavity while flushing out excess mucous and relieving painful pressure.

2. Hot peppers. No, don’t stick them up your nose. Just chew on some spicy food and you could find yourself breathing easier…temporarily, at least. Chips with salsa or a hot curry dish are excellent ways to encourage some nasal drainage. Unfortunately, the result is not very long-lived.

3. Steam inhalation. This is probably the very last thing you want to do on a hot summer day, but if you can stand the treatment it’s a good way to loosen up and drain some of that cruddiness in your head. Add some eucalyptus or rosemary essential oil to the steam to further loosen the mucous.

4. Stay well hydrated. This is one tip you see repeated here over and over, and for good reason: keeping your body hydrated is possibly the best thing you can do to keep yourself healthy. In this case, staying hydrated makes your nasal passages less sticky and keeps your head from feeling all stopped up.

5. Avoid dairy products. Dairy thickens the mucous and makes you feel more plugged up all around. Avoid all dairy products when you’re trying to recover from a stuffy head and you’ll get over the stuffiness much faster.

6. Garlic. This is another awesome natural treatment that can be used for numerous conditions. Eating garlic (cooked or raw) when you have a stuffy nose may help to relieve congestion and heal the condition that’s causing it.

Recently we detailed how to take care of a sunburn if you happen to forget the sunscreen this summer. Now we’ll take a look at two more serious summer concerns: heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke occur when the body isn’t able to cool itself quickly enough. Ordinarily, sweat acts as our cooling system by evaporating on the skin and carrying heat away from our core. In the increased humidity of summer, it’s more difficult for sweat to evaporate, meaning that we stay hotter and our boy temperature can rise to dangerous levels.

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