chatwithketch

Q: Hello Dr Ketch, what can I do to be healthy especially as we are preparing for our fast?

A: Thanks for writing in.

What to do? Keep eating healthy and focus on gentle exercises.
Breaking a fast is usually not as easy as it should be. You haven’t been eating and now it’s time to eat, so you pick anything you like to eat. Pretty open and shut, isn’t it? But actually, it’s not that easy.
Eating and drinking during a fast (religious or otherwise) should be easy…but is not always so. First, when a lot of people break fasts, they go on a binge. They eat the equivalent of what should have comfortably been taken over two or three meals! 😀 And then they break the fasts with the wrong meals: refined and processed foods (eg cakes, pies etc) which lead to blood sugar spikes. Complex carbohydrates are…

Q: Dear: Doctor I’m 9 weeks
pregnant and going through threatened miscarriage I’m bleeding heavy with clots
I go to my doctor regularly but I always get the same answer that my baby is
still there I just need bed rest. This bleeding worries me a lot, is there
anything I can do to stop the bleeding?

A: A threatened miscarriage also known as threatened
abortion is vaginal bleeding that occurs within the first 20 weeks of
pregnancy. The bleeding is sometimes accompanied by abdominal cramps indicating
that a miscarriage is possible

Causes of threatened abortion include the placenta
trying to latch on to the wall of the uterus (womb), vaginal infections, damage
to the cervix, blood clot around the amniotic sac.

Your obstetrician will make this
diagnosis with an ultrasound scan. If a heartbeat is present irrespective of
your symptoms, then it is a threatened abortion. Absence of a…

Q: Good evening doc . Please i need your advice, i went for scan and i was told my liver is accumulating some fat. I am confused because I don’t even taste alcohol. So doctor what do I do?

A: Hello! Thanks for writing in.

Unfortunately, fatty liver can occur in people who do not take alcohol. It’s actually also referred to as non-alcoholic fatty liver. In this condition, there is inflammation of the liver. As the liver tries to stop the inflammation, scarring of the liver tissue occurs. With more inflammation, more scarring occurs and fibrous tissue spreads to take up more and more space in the liver. If this continues uninterrupted, the abdomen starts to swell as fluid builds up in the abdomen, the veins in the esophagus, swell, rupture and bleed, confusion, drowsiness and slurred speech may also occur. Yellowness of the eyes and enlarged breasts in men…

Q: Hello Dr Ketch, I am a 33 year old guy from Lagos. I am experiencing rapid hair loss which is resulting in baldness. Please I’d like to know if there are natural remedies or vitamin supplements for men with no side effect on fertility. Cheers.

A: Baldness is excessive hair loss from the scalp. It usually starts from thinning hair before it involves wider areas of hair loss.

How does this happen? Usually, a hair follicle produces hair and each hair grows from a follicle for as long as three years before it is shed and a new one produced. Testosterone is produced normally by the hair follicle and these follicles now convert testosterone to Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). In baldness, the hair follicles are overly sensitive to the effects of DHT causing the hair to thin out and also last less than the usual 3 years.

Now it is usually…

Hallos! I hope you the holidays are going down a treat!

Now we turn to the lips…if you’ve got children like mine, you’re probably repeating the statement ‘go and put some petroleum jelly on your lips’ very often these days. Maybe they are listening, maybe they are not. 😀 Let’s give you some more tips to prevent or treat dry and chapped lips.

Moisten a kitchen paper or handkerchief and wet your lips (Or you could use an old soft-bristled toothbrush to gently brush out the dry skin. Don’t do this for more than 60 seconds to prevent irritation and bleeding). Then apply petroleum jelly to your lips and rub your lips together to make sure the jelly is well absorbed.  Then use lipstick (if you’re female), blot out excess by biting on dry wipes and then apply lip gloss…just enough to give a nice shine.

Overnight, apply moisturizer to…

Q: Good morning, Dr. My wife has a bent uterus. What is the cure? Please, help me

A: Normally, a uterus tilts forwards at the cervix towards the stomach. In some women, however, the uterus tilts backwards inside the pelvis towards the spine. This is called a retroverted or tilted uterus. Many women with this condition are born with it but some women may develop it after birth as a result of:

1. Pregnancy: During pregnancy, the ligaments holding the uterus in place become weak and so after pregnancy, some women now find their uteri tilted.
2. Prior surgery, infections and disease conditions like endometriosis may lead to a tilted uterus. In these cases, conception may be difficult but not impossible. Patients here may benefit from seeing a fertility doctor.

For more on endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease, please click on these links:

Daily Health Tips: Can PID Block My FallopianTubes?

Daily…

Q: Dr Ketch, thanks for being there always for those tips for healthy living. Please, is it safe to breastfeed while pregnant? And what fluids can be given to a 7-month old baby asides breast milk? Thanks

A: It’s generally considered safe to continue breastfeeding in pregnancy. In fact some mothers would even breastfeed the new baby and the older one, concurrently. This is called tandem nursing. However, given the requirements of breastfeeding and of pregnancy, this mum must ensure that she is eating healthy and drinking sufficient fluids.

If your already born baby can talk, he may comment on the fact that the taste of your breast milk has changed especially towards the end of pregnancy and a few days after the birth of the new baby as colostrum is produced.

For more posts on colostrums, please click on this link: https://chatwithdrketch.com/2014/05/27/daily-health-tips-what-should-i-do-after-having-my-baby-if-my-breast-milk-doesnt-come-in-immediately/

For the mum, she may notice more…

Q: There are germs inside raw vegetables. Sometimes, washing it alone won’t kill the germs. What do we do?

A: Truth is, there are germs all around us and potentially, in other foods we eat. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop eating, right? 😀 We just need to figure out safe ways of preparing them and getting rid of germs that may be on their surface.

For green leafy veggies, buy them whole from the market. When you’re ready to use them, pick the leaves and then soak in a bowl of water that has salt or food-safe disinfectant in it, for about 5 minutes. Swish the bowl around to ensure that all the sand settles to the bottom. Then pick out the veggies carefully and rinse in clean water.

The same applies to other veggies too. For carrots and potatoes, buy them, scrub and then boil. If…

Q: It’s been two weeks now and my poop is green. What does that mean?

A: This question reminds me of an old show I used to watch, ‘You
are what you eat.’ It involved amongst other things, an examination of stool to
determine ones diet and body. I found it fascinating…useful but also disgusting!
😀

Stool can take a variety of colours depending on diet and the
quantity of bile in the faeces. Bile is initially bright green in colour and
gets progressively darker/brown as the bile is acted on by chemicals and
bacteria on its journey through the intestines.

Let’s take a look at different colors of poop and what they mean –
this sounds absolutely disgusting! 😀

Brown – Normal stool colour. Bilirubin in blood, when broken down,
ends up in the intestine. It is then acted upon by gut bacteria, which turn it
brown.

White –…