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Q: What is the cause of enlargement of prostate?

A: The prostate gland is a small organ located just below the bladder. It produces semen and the urethra which transports urine from the bladder and semen from the prostate, passes through the prostate. This organ grows throughout a male’s life and sometimes grows so big that it blocks the flow of urine from the bladder. This condition is known as Benign Prostatic Enlargement or Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy or Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. This is more likely to happen as people age and when there is a family history.

The symptoms of this include
•    Feeling like urinating very frequently
•    Feeling the need to urgently urinate
•    Not being able to start urinating immediately despite the urgency
•    Straining at urine
•    When the person does start urinating, the flow trickles
•    Feeling that the bladder was not completely emptied
•    Urinary tract infections due to the fact that there is always urine in the bladder encouraging the growth of micro-organisms
•    Bladder stones
•    With time, kidney function becomes reduced

These are some of the symptoms that may bring the person to the hospital. The doctor will perform a detailed examination which include a rectal examination. Tests like Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) assay, prostate biopsy (taking a piece of the prostate and examining it) etc will form part of the array of tests to be done.

Treatment modalities include medications and surgery. The doctor will determine which works best for you.

Prostate-friendly diets include loads of fruits and veggies and less fat in the diet. Exercising daily and limiting alcohol intake are also thought to be helpful.

Have you got pets? A cat or a dog or perhaps any of those very esoteric pets that children love to keep these days? Well, they are very obviously a means of teaching our children responsibility as they learn to love and look after someone else apart from themselves. Of course, man’s best friend is also good at enhancing security at home!

However, there are some inherent risks in having these pets at home as infections can readily be transferred from them to us. The commonest means of getting these infections is by getting bitten, getting in contact with the faeces or sometimes through contamination of food.

To prevent these, here are our top five tips:

• Please wash your hands whenever you have handled or played with the pets especially if you are to prepare, handle or eat food soon after. A good anti-bacterial soap suffices for this purpose.
• Also wash your hands whenever you come in contact with the pets’ poo. Ensure that children do not play close to these areas.
• Your pets’ immunizations should be up to date. You don’t want to be known as ‘the owner of that rabid down the street’.
• Your pets’ fur should be kept clean with regular shampooing.
• If you are a fan of reptile pets, please consider delaying on getting one if you have children under the age of 5 years old.

Let’s keep ourselves and our pets safe, clean and healthy. We want our pets spreading love….not germs.

Asthma is a disease that affects quite a few in our population. If you are a mother with an asthmatic child, you will remember the heart wrenching agony you felt when the diagnosis was first given to you. You imagined a lifetime of wheezing and crises. However, this may not be so. Hygiene around the house plays a large role in ensuring that allergens which are substances that provoke allergies and could start up an asthmatic attack are on the low side and therefore your child healthy.

Dust mites are small organisms that are not usually visible to the naked eyes found in fabric, feathers and wool. Thus they are usually resident in pillows, throws etc and feed on dead skin that human beings shed normally everyday. They love moisture and heat and thus can be found on beds as a result of the sweat from people. Though they do not fly, as beds are being made and they can fly across the room and cause allergic reactions on people who are prone or trigger an asthmatic attack in people with these conditions.

How to hold this small but mighty organism at bay? Here are our top five tips

• Remove dust. Try dusting with a damp napkin or an oiled duster. This ensures that the dust doesn’t get airborne to settle somewhere else. Worse still to settle inside the airways of an asthmatic. This is sure to provoke an attack. Try vacuuming instead of using a broom or brush.
• Use allergen proof mattress covers. These covers are tightly woven; they trap and prevent the dust mites from escaping from the mattress to provoke the airways into spasm.
• Wash beddings every week. This should also be done for stuffed toys. Ensure that this is done with hot water to kill the dust mites and remove allergens. And stuffed toys should be kept off beddings.
• Limit the use of carpeting and other dust collecting items of furniture around the house like curtains and upholstered chairs. These are major reservoirs of dust mites. Scrub, polish and keep your floors clean; change curtains to horizontal blinds and reduce the population of these mites significantly.
• Keep the moisture and humidity low and reduce clutter. These would reduce the breeding places of the mites.

With simple hygiene tips, even diseases like asthma can be controlled. So join us as we do this.

Are you a new mum still amazed at the fact that you have been blessed with such an awesome bundle of joy bit also wondering how you can keep it all together and not make mistakes? Are you also wondering what rules of hygiene to observe and how to let other people politely understand your hygiene rules for your baby? Well, we all have those questions. Let’s give you our top hygiene tips to get you and baby on the right road to health.

• As much as practicable, wash your hands before picking up your baby. This ensures that you’re not transferring germs from the outdoors or anywhere else you’re coming from the baby.
• Wash your hands after a diaper change. This should be done routinely after every diaper change be it that your baby urinated or pooed. This ensures that you are not transferring germs from your baby’s diapers to food or even other people when you pat, hug or dress them after a diaper change.
• Encourage visitors to wash their hands before picking up the baby. You can keep a bottle of sanitizer by the side to encourage this hygienic practice if hand wshing is not practicable at that time.
• Keep a flannel on your shoulder when you carry your baby on your shoulder. You know how children love to suck every surface that comes in contact with their lips. Well don’t let that surface be your shoulder. Imagine all the germs and bacteria that have been deposited there all day. You don’t want them ending up in your baby’s tummy.
• Pack and disinfect baby’s rattles and toys at least once a day to ensure that when they play with them, they are clean.

Spend time bonding with the baby. This is not just for mummies…daddies also need to bond with the babies and get the baby on to a great emotionally sound start in life.

Do you find yourself wanting to do well but ending up doing the exactly the opposite? Starting out with noble intentions…wanting to eat vegetables but ending up dousing them in lots of oil and totally destroying any chance of the survival of any nutrient with the excessive cooking? Well these tips are for you. Listen up. Here are our top five tips for handling and cooking our vegetables in a healthy way.

• When you buy vegetables in the market, buy them whole. Do not have them cut in the market. When you do this, you are exposing the very fragile water soluble vitamins in the vegetables to the air and denaturing them. And then you still have to wash them before use…this leads to bleeding out of the essential nutrients through the cut ends of the vegetables
• Then do not fry or over cook the vegetables. Just lightly steam them in a pot with some spices as desired. Heat can actually break down and destroy 15-20% of some of the vitamins in vegetables
• Research has shown that for vegetables like carrots, boiling is the best way of preserving the nutrients in carrots and sweet potatoes. Be sure to leave their skins on until after cooking. The anti-oxidant effect of tomatoes are also more pronounced after cooking
• Stir-frying. As the name suggests, this involves lightly greasing a pan with oil and continually stirring your thinly cut vegetables or cubed chicken breasts. Emphasis on the words lightly greasing. For best for best results and shorter cooking time, use a really hot pan or wok
• You can poach your vegetables in hot fluid…could be hot water, hot vegetable or meat stock. This preserves the nutrients and gives awesome flavour especially when poached in stock

So, there you go! All the best 😀