Published on: 15 February 2017
Last Updated on: 15 May 2021
Dentists have been stressing the importance of maintaining good oral hygiene habits for decades as well as the use of braces, in some cases. If you’re interested in getting a feel on braces and their average prices, click here. We are all well aware that following the proper daily routines can help to prevent conditions such as cavities, gingivitis, dental emergencies, gum disease, and bad breath. However, were you aware that there is a very real connection between oral health and the overall state of your body? Let us take a look at this principle in a bit more detail, for what you learn may indeed be quite surprising.
The first thing that we need to appreciate is the notion that the mouth is a very powerful indicator of what may be happening within our bodies. Why is this the case? Many practitioners will point to the saliva that we naturally secrete minute by minute. There are numerous chemicals contained within this fluid and specific concentrations can hint that there may be metabolic imbalances that would otherwise go unnoticed. Cancer markers, specific types of proteins, and hormones such as cortisol can all be measured by taking a sample of saliva. If the levels of these and other substances are determined to be abnormal, this may very well be the symptom of a more endemic problem.
Oral Health and Inflammatory Response
Were you aware that the condition of your mouth can also hint at the presence of potentially serious conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes? Gum disease can sometimes be a precursor to such health risks. Gum disease is an inflammatory response due to poor oral hygiene and the build-up of other harmful substances within the mouth. While inflammation is one of the ways in which the body naturally protects itself, studies have found that this very same inflammation can spread to other areas; particularly to the bloodstream. Many now theorize that this can contribute to the breakdown of blood vessels and other circulatory tissues over time. As a result, certain individuals could be at a potentially higher risk of developing other serious ailments. The brain itself could even be affected (a stroke is an example here).
The Risk of Infections
Not only is the mouth intended to begin the digestion process, but it is also a very important barrier against harmful infections. Unfortunately, this biological “firewall” can often be compromised if the proper levels of hygiene are not practiced. For example, gingivitis can lead to periodontal disease and there may be instances when harmful bacteria will enter into the circulatory system. Although this might not necessarily be a problem for healthy individuals, those whose immune response is already compromised could become quite ill. And for those that are pregnant, oral health is an important part of prenatal care because poor oral health during pregnancy can affect the baby – and everyone wants a HEALTHY BABY.
These are some of the surprising relationships between oral health and overall health. Unfortunately, millions of individuals do not practice proper habits in order to protect their mouths. This can lead to more profound problems over time. As we gain a further understanding of how multiple systems of the body are connected, it is likely that oral hygiene will have an even greater impact.
For information regarding oral health, please visit the dentist in Cardiff.
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Many of us have been there before: you try doing something simple like bending over to tie your shoes, or even brushing your hair, and suddenly you feel a crippling sensation of pain in your back. Back pain can be one of the worst kinds of pains that you can experience because you rely so much on your back for pretty much every single movement.
Back pain can also be frustrating because it can be hard to know its source, as well as how to treat it. For instance, if you’re experiencing lower back pain, the source of the pain can be hard to pinpoint. You could be experiencing lower back pain because of
Disc damage,
A warped lumbar curve,
Irritated joints and muscles,
Among other things.
In order to get help with your back issues, you will first need to determine which of these problems may be afflicting you. From there, you can make changes to your lifestyle that can help prevent further damage and pain. A chiropractor can help you determine the source of your pain, make necessary adjustments to relieve pain, and also help you come up with a plan to help you feel better for the long-term.
Different Tips You Can Apply For Treating Your Back Pain Are As follows:-
A Simple Treatment Option: Compression Socks:
Your doctor or chiropractor might recommend the use of compression socks to help relieve your back pain. You might be wondering how socks can help you with your back. Well, here’s how.
Compression socks work by applying pressure to your legs to improve blood flow in your body. The pressure in your legs pushes your blood upwards back into your heart and into circulation. There are different levels of pressure that you can get from the type of compression socks you choose, as well as different lengths.
Improved blood flow in your body is essential for relieving back pain and for reducing swelling. Many people who have lower back pain also tend to feel pain in their legs, and compression socks are great to alleviate swelling and pain. Consequently, once your leg pains are gone you are able to move more, which is important to recovering from lower back pain – it’s never good to keep your body still for too long.
The Big Picture: Lifestyle Changes:
While compression socks are an easy way to relieve pain and help you get moving again, you’ll have to do the rest yourself if you want to get better. Exercising is key to a healthy body and also to relieving any pain, you may be experiencing.
Here are some tips to help you relieve back pain:
Avoid twisting your body while you sleep – be sure to sleep on your back when you can, but if you are a side sleeper, then use a small pillow in between your knees to avoid putting pressure on your back. Never sleep on your stomach.
Do daily exercises, though if you’re in a lot of pain you should start slow and take it easy. Yoga poses are a great way to help with your alignment issues. Exercises you can do include the piriformis stretch, bridge pose, plank pose, side-plank pose, and knees to chest stretch.
Avoid slouching, and try to maintain a good posture.
Lifestyle changes can be difficult to make, but they will be essential on your path to a life without pain. No matter what you do, make sure that you are constantly moving, and never in the same position for too long. Remember: something as simple as a five-minute stretch can make all the difference.
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Are you a mom-to-be, eager to maintain a healthy lifestyle in the next nine months to help your baby to develop healthy and strong? Maybe you are sick of hearing all those people’s opinions around you about your health and decided to look patiently for the best tips on how to stay fit during the pregnancy week by week? Well, you are lucky because we are here, and we are bringing the 9 tips for staying fit during pregnancy, and we are ready to share them with you!
Why is exercise so important during pregnancy, you ask?
As we know, the doctors recommend for all of us to include exercise in our daily life. This is because of the many beneficial effects that exercising has. But, exercising is especially important and recommended to women during pregnancy.
By exercising during your pregnancy, you will not only stay in a fit shape, but you will also help decrease the risk of gestational diabetes and hypertension. Studies done have confirmed the importance of exercising in preventing gestational diabetes. You can choose from a variety of recommended activities, e.g. yoga, walking, jogging, swimming, Pilates, stationary cycling, etc. Also, exercising is commonly used in back pain treatment during pregnancy. However, you need to avoid activities like ice hockey, football, basketball, some yoga poses, etc. It is essential to get informed by your doctor about the activity that you are interested in taking up before you start exercising. The doctor will decide if the chosen activity will be beneficial regarding your condition, and also he or she will inform you about the dosage and the time you are allowed to spend exercising daily.
What are the 9 tips that we want to share with you?
1. Check-in with your doctor first – Your doctor will recommend the proper activity for you to take up, as well as, share advice with you about the allowed dose and time that you can spend exercising.
2. Choose the right food for your diet to stay energized during exercising - Your diet is just as important as exercising to stay fit during pregnancy. Make sure you include the recommended amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fiber in your everyday diet. With the right diet, you will decrease the risk of overweight, and you will still have enough energy to exercise through the day.
3. Drink enough water - Do not forget to drink the recommended amount of water for the day – at least 8 glasses of water. The water will keep you hydrated and that way you will decrease the risk of dehydration which can harm you and your baby.
4. Avoid sugar and junk carbs – Sugar and carbs will add weight too quickly, while at the same time they will increase the risk of diabetes. Avoid all processed sugar, e.g. pasta, white bread, and breakfast cereal and replace the source of sugar with a healthy amount of fruit to get the needed levels of sugar that your body needs.
5. Choose the right activity for you - Choose the activity which seems interesting as well as comfortable for you to do. Your doctor can recommend different groups where you can go and exercise while you share your experiences of the pregnancy with other moms!
6. Get a good night sleep - By sleeping, you will help your muscles to recover more quickly after a good exercise. Make sure you have enough rest every day and do not push yourself too far when it comes to exercising. Light exercises are more than enough for you to do through the day.
7. Stop weighing yourself - During pregnancy, your body weight will increase no matter how much you exercise. That means that your body is changing, and your baby is growing and developing. With a healthy diet and the right amount of exercise, you will be able to gain weight and remain healthy and strong.
8. Choose the right training clothing – Always remember to dress light during exercising. Many layers of clothes will cause excessive sweating that can lead to dehydration.
9. Warm-up! – Always remember to warm up first before exercising. The warm-up will prepare your muscles and joints for the exercise that will follow. If you skip the warm-up, you increase the risk of pulling a muscle and inflammation.
In conclusion, because of the importance of exercising, the soon you start, the better. Exercising can be a fun and beneficial experience that you can spend doing with your partner or your friends in a newfound group for future moms. Just remember that yours and your baby’s safety should be the most important thing on your mind. We hope that with our tips, we will help you to choose the right activity that can find its place in your everyday routine.
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Any Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner (AGNP), or individual considering moving into this booming area, will probably be aware that it involves more than supporting patients through short term illnesses or meeting their needs in a hospital or nursing home.
As a rule, the older a patient gets, the more likely they are to experience chronic health complications which interfere with their day-to-day tasks. For much of history, such patients were written off, encouraged to take to their beds and be supported entirely by others, doing very little. They often didn’t live very long. But all that changed on account of one remarkable nurse, Dorothea Orem, whose legacy continues to shape the nursing profession today. This article examines her groundbreaking self-care deficit theory and looks at how AGNPs might use it for their nursing career.
Dorothea Orem
Dorothea Orem was born in Baltimore in 1914 and studied nursing in the late 1930s. This was a time when nursing schools were still a new phenomenon and there was a lot of experimental thinking in the nascent profession. Though she spent time on the wards as a staff nurse, she also worked as an administrator and consultant over the course of her career, spending her later years focusing on theory.
A naturally focused and attentive person, she soon began recording observations about the patients she worked with, leading to her self-care deficit theory of nursing, for which she strongly advocated for her entire life. It was theory which, in its early years, transformed the way nurses thought about patients and their duties. It laid the foundations for nursing today.
Universal Self-Care Requisites
Orem’s theory recognizes eight universal self-care requisites, or SCRs. Here, universal refers to things every human needs, regardless of circumstance. Air is needed for respiration. Water is needed to maintain a healthy level of hydration. Food is needed to maintain healthy energy levels and prevent starvation. Elimination or toileting, a polite way of referring to the expulsion of urine and feces from the body, is required too.
In addition to these four things, Orem posits that every patient needs a balance of physical activity and rest. Everyone needs social interaction, but also some alone time. People need to manage their lives to avoid or remove hazards, and, finally, they need to promote normality. This means that they need to achieve and maintain a way of living and relating to the world which is normal for them as individuals and does not involve psychosis.
Health Deviation Self-Care Requisites
When patients are recovering from injury or illness, or living with a chronic illness or disability, they can be described as experiencing a health deviation. This is not pejorative – it simply establishes that they differ from the norm. Health deviations are more common in older demographics, as they have additional self-care requisites.
These requisites include following doctors’ instructions (taking medicine on time), identifying problems caused by their conditions and attending to them effectively (sitting down until a dizzy spell passes), and knowing when and how to seek help from a caregiver or healthcare professional.
It is also important that these patients can understand and accept that their bodies have changed and can adjust psychologically to cope with it.
What Is A Self-Care Deficit?
A self-care deficit occurs when people are no longer able to carry out basic tasks. This can be because a disability makes them physically impossible to perform, or a number of other reasons. For example, some people get so overwhelmed by the way their bodies have changed that they stop trying to live. This doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve sympathy – it is an understandable response to an extreme situation – but it might mean that there is potential for improvement.
For some people, self-care deficits are permanent or are likely to worsen due to progressive illnesses. For others, however, they can be temporary, even in extreme old age. Self-care deficits stemming from a broken arm, for example, will normally dissipate after the arm heals, but this is less likely if the patient has learned to feel helpless in the meantime.
Assessment, Diagnosis, And Implementation
When using Orem’s theory, nurses have three steps to work through. The first is undertaken during the initial assessment of a new patient and involves identifying any self-care deficits. These are not always obvious from looking at a patient and the process may require gentle but persistent questioning. Some people may be embarrassed and hesitant to talk if they are unable to care for themselves.
The second involves full diagnosis of the deficits, including establishing causes. The third step is to draw up a treatment plan based on these diagnoses. In her work, Orem stressed the importance of recognizing that every patient is a unique individual, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this type of planning. In each case, AGNPs will need to work with the patient to establish the most effective way forward.
Five Ways Nurses Can Help
There are five strategies nurses can use to address self-care deficits when establishing patient care plans:
For the most severely incapacitated patients, it may be necessary to perform actions on their behalf, such as washing or dressing them.
Patients struggling mentally or who lack confidence can be guided through actions, ideally to the point of independence.
Patients can be taught new ways of approaching day to day tasks which make them easier to accomplish, such as taking a break to have a shower in the afternoon if it is too hard to find the energy at other times.
AGNPs can focus on the patient’s environment, making it easier for them to carry out self-care activities, such as suggesting kitchen gadgets to reduce the physical effort involved in preparing meals.
Finally, AGNPs can train a family caregiver to provide appropriate support.
These five strategies involve numerous actions, skills, and tools that nurses can use. Patients may need particular assistance with the following tasks.
Helping With Eating
Patients should always be encouraged to do as much for themselves as is reasonably possible. When it comes to eating, nurses should start with encouragement. Many older people lose their appetite and don’t feel motivated to eat, especially when it requires effort. So, an AGNP can point out that they have more energy when they manage to eat regular meals.
If the patient can get food to their mouth by themselves, nurses should resist the temptation to assist, even if they sometimes drop the food. Instead, nurses can reassure them that this is not uncommon and all they need to do is take a little more time. Nurses should also be alert to the possibility of choking issues and arrange X-rays if concerned. If some food proves difficult to eat, they can discuss the possibility of dietary adjustments.
Helping With Toileting
Nurses should reassure patients that, awkward as they may feel, there is nothing to be embarrassed about. The nurse must ensure they can transfer on and off the toilet safely and consider options like raising the height of the seat or installing grab. If there is a risk of falling, AGNPs may suggest bedpans for use when no caregiver is present. If adult diapers are needed, nurses should ensure that patients know how and when to change them (even if they are not soiled) and how to protect their skin against rashes or bruises caused by wearing them. Finally, nurses can also discuss medical options for softening stools or speeding up or slowing down digestive transit.
Helping With Dressing And Grooming
A balance must be struck between helping patients be more independent in dressing and grooming themselves and enabling them to maintain a style or standard of appearance that is natural for them. Some older men prefer to be clean shaven but end up growing beards because it is easier to trim a beard than it is to shave safely and neatly, for example. Some clothing options can be easier to get into than others, depending on a patient’s particular mobility difficulties. Simple devices such as a stick with a hook on the end can make adjusting the back of a garment or doing up a zip much easier. Nurses should pay particular attention to footwear to make sure patients can stand or walk safely.
Reducing Hazards
Whether a nurse is helping a patient to move around and complete self-care tasks in a hospital ward, a care home, or their own home, they must always pay attention to hazard prevention. Hazards can include mess, a layout created without regard for disability, or other people or pets moving around. Nurses can start by ensuring that the patient is aware of the risks and can recognize dangerous situations.
They should discuss simple measures like installing handrails or changing routines to make it easier to keep the area tidy. Nurses can also ensure that the patient can summon help if something goes wrong, by persuading them to install an alarm system or carry a charged mobile phone at all times, for example.
Care With Communication
Often, older patients who have self-care deficits also have difficulty with communication, whether due to physical or cognitive disability. Depending on their lifestyle in recent years, they may also be unfamiliar with modern technologies, but shy about admitting this. It is important for nurses to make sure that when they are addressing issues around essential needs, the patient understand them properly and vice versa.
It can be helpful to use pictures in communication, which are often available in support materials. When meeting a patient in the place they are going to be living, the nurse and patient can explore it together (in stages, if necessary) so both parties can directly identify issues.
Seeing Each Patient As An Individual
An essential tenet of Orem’s theory is that patients must be treated as individuals. This increases the chance that they will stick to treatment plans, as well as directly improving their psychological wellbeing.
Any nurse that’s interested in Orem’s theory and is considering joining this field will be looking into gerontology nurse practitioner programs online. The best courses place a lot of emphasis on adaptability and on learning how to manage different types of patients in different environments. The program at the University of Indianapolis, for example, encourages students to develop the patience and listening skills essential to getting to know patients and making them a part of the process. This communication and relationship building is essential to developing plans which will really benefit patients over the long term. The course at the University of Indianapolis is an eight-semester program designed for working nurses, involving part-time study and an intensive clinical placement.
The Nursing Profession Continues To Benefit
Thanks to Orem and her self-care deficit theory, patients are no longer left to waste away as they begin to struggle with old age. Generations of nurses who have practiced this theory have observed that, even in later life, patients can often improve and regain their self- care abilities with the right support. Advances in assistive technologies continue to make this even easier.
The right support, focused on facilitating and encouraging independence, enables seniors to go on living satisfying lives on their own terms for much longer. Even when they need extensive practical support, giving them more control helps to maintain their morale and ability to navigate the final chapter of their lives. In the process of providing this support, AGNPs also get what they really want; to see their patients thrive, no matter what they must overcome to achieve it.
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