Alternative medicine -1

Traditional medicine is largely mechanistic treating the body as a machine with separate parts to be treated separately. Alternative, or complementary, medicine treats the body holistically, dealing with the whole body in its environment.  In the past alternative methods, many of them ancient have been ignored by physicians. Today, however certain types of alternative medicine are used increasingly to complement traditional methods.

Acupressure: ancient Chinese and Japanese healing massage using fingertips pressure on pain relieving points around the body.  These pressure points lie along the meridians used in Acupuncture. Acupressure balances the flow of Qi or Chi, the energy flowing through the meridians.

Acupuncture: Treatment of illness by sticking special needles into one or more of 2000 specific points that lie along invisible channels called meridians. This ancient Chinese therapy is believed to control the flow of Qi, the energy flowing along the meridians. Used in the treatment of arthritis, allergy, back pain and many other disorders.

Alexander technique: A method used to retain the body’s movements, positions and posture during all activities including sitting or reading. The method, which must be learned from qualified teachers, is believed to encourage good mental and physical health, and resistance to stress, by promoting harmony between mind and body.

Aromatherapy:  Use of concentrated plant oils such as bergamot, eucalyptus or rosemary to treat conditions including stress, headaches and arthritis. Extracts, or essential oils, are massaged into the skin by aroma therapists; they can also be inhaled or added to baths.

Art therapy: Use of drawing and painting to encourage patients to explore and resolve deep seated fears and emotions that they find difficult to express in words. Used to treat addiction, alcoholism, anorexia and other conditions.

Immunization

While immunity is being acquired a person develops symptoms of the disease. But some infections can be prevented b allowing the body to acquire active immunity artificially. This is achieved by the introduction into the body of a vaccine made from dead or weakened micro organisms that are no longer capable of causing the disease itself. When injected into the skin or blood stream9 Or, as in the case of polio vaccine, swallowed) they stimulate B-lymphocytes to produce antibodies but no significant disease symptoms. And if, or when, the body encounters the real disease causing micro organism, it is already protected against infection because the memory cells immediately produce antibodies. Booster shots may be needed at later dates to ensure the active immunity is still effective. Vaccines are available against many formerly dangerous diseases including polio, measles and diphtheria. Immunization programmes for children have virtually eliminated most common childhood diseases, and confer immunity into adult life. But vaccination is advisable for travelers to countries where they may contract potentially fatal diseases not previously encountered.


Sometimes antibodies themselves, from external sources, are injected into the body to provide protection without stimulating the immune system. This is called artificial passive immunity and is useful in providing instant protection where a disease might kill the person before their active immune system has time to come into operation. Examples include gamma globulin, given against hepatitis A infection; am antitoxin to treat tetanus; and anti rabies injection.

Vitamins and Minerals

     Vitamins and minerals are substances required in small amounts, that essential for the normal, healthy functioning of the body normal growth and development, energy productions, body maintenance, and general well being and vitality.

       Vitamins are a diverse group of organic substances that cannot be manufactured by the body – except for the vitamin D (which is produced in the skin when it is exposed to sunlight) and niacin (made in the body from the amino acid tryptophan) – and must, therefore, be obtained from food. Absence of one or more vitamins from the diet will, in time, lead to well defined deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beriberi or ostemalacia. The 13 major vitamins, each of which is found in many different foods, are divided into two groups. Fat soluble vitamins- A,D,E, and K – are found in fat or oil containing foods, and are stored in the liver, so that daily intake of these vitamins is not really essential. In fact, excessive consumption of fat soluble vitamins, usually by taking too many vitamins tablets, can be harmful. Deficiency of fat soluble vitamins is usually caused by disorders that stop the intestine absorbing fat efficiently. Water soluble vitamins- the B complex vitamins and vitamin C are not stored in the body (apart from vitamin B 12). To avoid deficiency, therefore, food containing water soluble vitamins should be eaten each day to keep supplies “topped up”. Because water soluble vitamins are destroyed by prolonged cooking, processing and storage, fresh or lightly cooked foods make the best sources.

     Minerals are simple chemical elements that cannot be made by the body but must be present in the diet o maintain good health. There are 20 minerals known to be essential in small amounts, in addition to carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, which are needed in large amounts to construct the body’s framework. Some, including calcium phosphorous, potassium, sulfur, sodium magnesium and chlorine and some traces of minerals such as iron cobalt copper zinc molybdenum iodine and selenium are also important for mammals.

Human and other living creatures

From the time when human beings first began to grow crops and live in settled communities, their numbers increased fairly steadily until about 1700. Shortly after this the industrial revolution led to a doubling of the population in about 100 tears. In 1800 the world‘s population was around one billion.

By 1990, the numbers had risen to over five billion people will be looking for shelter and food somewhere on the earth. One species cannot increase explosively without affecting all the others. Since about 1700, at least 300 species of vertebrates have become extinct. Now a days we can observe in detail most creatures that are being lost, and the estimate is between 50 and 100 species a day. If the present trend continues at least a quarter of all living things will have disappeared before the human population reaches its levels out, probably in the middle of 21st century.

Extinction of Plants

Plant extinctions have followed the same pattern as animal extinctions. Destruction of environment, particularly on isolated islands, has led to the most dramatic losses. On Hawaii, for example, about 300 plant species have become extinct within the last 300 years. On St. Helena, only 20 of over 100 species of native plants survive and of these 15 are in danger of extinction. It is said that of Barbados all native trees were felled within 40 years of the island’s discovery by European.
Just as an animal species may depend on one plant for survival, the reverses may also be true. For instant, the dodo tree, once abundant in Mauritius, has been reduced to 13 very aged trees since the extinction of the dodo, which ate and dispersed its seeds.
Commercially valuable plants have often been exterminated by over exploitation. Mauritius ebony and Sanfernandez sandalwood are both extinct, examples of felling without provision for regrowth. The wine palm of Dominica, tapped to make spirit in a way that killed it, became extinct in the 1920s.
Habitat destruction is the greatest threat to plant and animal species worldwide. In some cases, such as felling of tropical forests or draining of wetlands, damage is frequently done under the impression that the environment is being improved for human food production or habitation. In others, lack of understanding of the importance of particular environment in the life cycles of certain species has led to their downfall. Drainage of mangrove swamps, nurseries for many kinds of fish.

Birds

Birds evolved from reptilian ancestors about 140 to 150 million years ago. The earliest known bird is the Archaeopteryx, several fossils of which have been found in Germany; about the size of a pigeons. Archaeopteryx had many reptilian features, including toothed jaws and lizard like tails, but it also had feathers and was undoubtedly a bird. Birds are the only animals with feathers, which clearly evolved from reptilian scales. As well as aiding birds in flight, feathers help them to maintain their bodies at a constant high temperature. Each feather has a horny shaft, a rachis and numerous branches, barbs. The barbs of the outer feathers are linked together by hooked branches, barbules. The wingtip feathers are primary or flight feathers; those nearer the body are secondary feathers.
 Modern birds have no teeth and with their front legs turned into wings, their bills or beaks have to collect and process their food. The bill of each species is admirably suited to its diet. Many birds have lost the power of flight during their evolution. The ostrich the world’s largest living bird- grew too big to fly. However, its size and fast running in short burst give it plenty of protection. Rheas in South America, emus in Australia and cassowaries in New Guinea have evolved in similar ways and have all come to look alike, although they are not closely related. Birds living on islands with no mammalian predators often became flightless. The kiwi of New Zealand is a familiar example. Some of these birds died out when man introduced cats and other mammals, and many more are now in danger of extinction. Penguins cannot fly in the air, but they use their powerful wings as flippers to fly underwater.

Reptiles

The reptiles came into being about 300 million years ago; descending from some kind of amphibian ancestor that gained a scaly waterproof skin and the ability to lay shelled eggs that could survive on land. Most living reptiles still lay eggs, although some give birth to active young. They live on land in fresh water and in the sea, and between them they eat almost every kind of food. There are about 6000 living species, of which some 3000 are lizards and 2700 are snakes. Turtles, tortoises, crocodiles and alligators make up the rest of the class.
Reptiles are said to be cold blooded because they have no internal mechanism for maintaining a constant temperature like birds and mammals. Many however can adjust their body temperatures by varying their behaviors. They bask in the morning sun to warm up, hideaway in the midday heat and then come out again in the evening.
The lizard like tuatara is the only living member of a lineage more ancient than the dinosaurs, but it has hardly changed since its relatives died out of over 200 million years ago. It lives only on a few off shore islands of New Zealand, having been exterminated elsewhere in the country by introduced predators.

Origin of Life

The earliest traces of the life on earth have been found in the rocks about 3.5 billion years old. They are layered structures similar to those formed by some of today’s marine bacteria, and it is generally accepted that the first forms of life were some kind of bacteria. We do not know exactly how these first living things or organisms were produced, and probably never will, but laboratory experiments suggest that energy from lightning or from ultra violet radiation could have caused gases, like methane and ammonia to combine with simple minerals to produce proteins and other building blocks of life such reactions would probably have taken place in shallow water.

As more and more life’s building blocks were formed, they inevitably mingled and reacted with each other to form new compounds. Eventually, a chance combination gave rise to a molecule of DNA, a self replicating material that is the basis of all living matter. Here, perhaps, was the “spark of life” and the scene was then set for the appearance of the first cells and the subsequent evolution of all life on Earth. Since the beginning of life, millions of different kinds of organisms have come and gone. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 different kinds of plants in the world at the present time, and there may be over five million kinds of animals- or some estimates, nearer ten million – although only a little over a million of these have so far been described.