How to Stop Bedwetting - Helpful Tips
Bedwetting is a fairly common problem in children under 7 years old. It can be very frustrating for the parents, and embarrassing for the child. It is important to remember that bedwetting is not normally a medical problem, and it is usually not associated with psychological or physical problems. In the majority of cases, children simply sleep too deeply and do not feel the urge to go to the bathroom when they need to, and as a result they wet the bed.
Bedwetting will almost always go away on its own eventually. But there are some things you can do to help your child stop sooner. Here are some treatment ideas and general tips:
Don’t give your child fluids for two hours before bedtime. Let him have plenty of fluids up until that point, however, to prevent dehydration and constipation. While this may not completely stop bedwetting, it may reduce its frequency.
Make sure your child goes to the bathroom right before bed, and that he completely empties his bladder. Tell him to try again once his bladder feels empty, just to be sure. This is called double voiding. If more urine comes out, have him try one more time.
Some children’s bladders are simply too small to hold their urine through the night. Bladder stretching exercises may help in these cases. These simply require your child to hold his urine a bit longer than usual. If he generally goes to the bathroom at certain times during the day, have him wait 15 minutes or so before going, then increase the time slightly each week or so. This will take several weeks, and possibly months, so be patient.
Take your child to the doctor. There are some underlying problems that can cause or contribute to bed wetting. The doctor can check for these and treat the problems he finds. As a result, the bedwetting may go away on its own.
Use a bedwetting alarm. These have moisture sensing pads that go in the child’s underwear at night, sensing moisture when it first starts to dribble out. The alarm then wakes the child with sound or vibration so that he can go to the bathroom. After using an alarm for a while, children often become conditioned to wake up when their bladders are full, eliminating the problem.
Consider medication as a last resort. There are medicines that can help prevent bedwetting by slowing urine production or relaxing the bladder. They do, however, have potential side effects. Consider using them if the other methods fail, or perhaps keep some on hand to give your child for sleepovers or trips.
Avoid scolding your child for bedwetting. It’s not his fault, and scolding will only make him feel hurt and ashamed.
How to Keep Your Skin Moisturized During the Cold Season
Winter is a great time for snuggling by a fire, having snowball fights, and singing carols, but it also comes with freezing temperatures, dry air, and harsh winds. All these things can take a toll on your skin, leaving it dry, flaky, and looking bad. Don’t let winter take a toll on you; get started now to keep your skin looking healthy all the way to summer.
The most important step for keeping your skin moisturized is to drink plenty of water. Creams and lotions are great, but they can only do so much. If your cells aren’t properly hydrated, they will not only be rough and dry but can also become red, bloated, and simply unhealthy looking. If you get enough water to drink, your skin will stay more moist and your body will stay more healthy.
We all know using moisturizers during the winter is important to keep your skin from drying out. They not only provide hydration - they also form a protective barrier to help your skin hold moisture in. But when choosing which product to buy, remember that all moisturizers are not created equal. Choose moisturizers that contain nutrients like vitamin A, D, and E that will nourish your skin and help it retain more moisture.
The reason your skin gets so dry during the winter is mainly because the air around it is so dry. The drier the air, the more water you lose from your skin. While you can’t make the air more humid outside, you can control the water level inside. Setting up a humidifier in your home and office will help your skin stay soft and supple all year round.
While you can’t use a humidifier outside, you can protect your skin from the dry air by covering it up. While you might think you don’t need to bundle up for a short walk outside, putting on a coat, gloves, and a scarf will help keep your skin hydrated. If you’re going to be outside for longer periods of time, you can protect yourself more by putting on lotion before you cover up.
Another offender for drying out your skin is soap. As the cold and flu season revs up, we’re much more likely to wash our hands and use harsh antibacterial soaps that suck the moisture from our hands and the rest of the body. To keep moisture in, find moisturizing hand soap and use moisturizing cleansers as opposed to soap for the rest of your body. Just like lotions, look for soaps with added vitamins to help stop your skin from drying out.
Just because it’s cold and dry in the winter, doesn’t mean you have to deal with itchy and embarrassing dry skin. Just take these few extra steps to keep it looking and feeling great all year round.
When is the Last Time You Had a Mammogram?
We all know that mammograms are an essential part of the early detection of breast cancer, but many of us still don’t get them as often as we should. It is important for all women, especially over the age of 40, to know what a mammogram is, and when and how often they should have a scan.
A mammogram is simply an x-ray designed specifically to look for abnormalities in the breast. They show lumps and abnormalities that may not be detected by simply looking at or feeling the breast. While they often detect benign lumps as well, they are fairly reliable at detecting cancerous growths.
While most doctors agree that women should get mammograms regularly after a certain age, they tend to disagree on what that age is. You may think the earlier the better, but not only do early mammograms use time and money, they have a high rate of false positives that could lead to unneeded invasive procedures. This false positive rate is higher the younger the patient. This not only wastes time and resources, but causes an immense amount of stress on the women who undergo these unneeded procedures.
Most doctors recommend you get your first mammogram between the age of 40 and 50, and then continue to get them every one to two years after that. Almost all doctors recommend getting at least one mammogram before the age of 50. This is not necessarily to detect a problem, but to give the doctor something to compare later scans to. By being able to see changes in the breast, your doctor is better able to detect a problem early.
The age of a first mammogram shouldn’t be the same for everyone though; there are a few factors that make getting them early more important. The first is family history. If your mom or grandmother had breast cancer, you’re more likely to get it as well, so your doctor will probably want to give you a more thorough screening. Also, your doctor may want to perform a mammogram earlier if you or they find a suspicious lump they want to investigate.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about digital mammograms. This is a great technology that can help save lives, but that doesn’t really mean you need to get a digital mammogram instead of a normal one. These two machines produce the same picture, but a digital mammogram can do it faster because it doesn’t require films to be developed. This new technology allows doctors to take a picture of an abnormality while they’re performing surgery, making their cuts more exact, but it makes little difference when getting a routine scan.
While mammograms are important, they shouldn’t be your only defense against breast cancer. It is also important to perform a monthly breast self-exam to help with early detection of problems, and to have yearly exams by your doctor to detect breast and reproductive issues.
