Five Tips to Prevent Disease at Home

5 Tips to Prevent Disease at Home

Protecting our health and that of our children is becoming even more important these days, what with the fear of swine flu and other illnesses disrupting and even taking lives. Good health begins at home; it depends on our lifestyles and our sense of hygiene. And if you don’t realize this, your family could be prone to various ailments, all of which could have easily been prevented. Help your loved ones maintain their health by:

• Adhering to hygiene: The most important part of maintaining hygiene is to wash your hands as often as you can. Our hands are magnets for germs, and when we fail to wash them before we cook, eat or touch our children, we pass on the risk of infection to them and also fall prey to it ourselves. When we emphasize cleanliness at home and make our children realize its value, we are doing all we can to keep disease at bay.
  



• Realizing the value of exercise: Regular exercise is a boon to those who are prone to diseases because it not only helps you reduce weight but also boosts your immune system and makes you stronger and fitter. So set an example for your children by working out at least four times a week. Get them to play a sport too as they need to be active and alert instead of spending all their free time in front of the television or with their video and computer games.
  



• Emphasizing on fresh air: Very often, we tend to keep all our doors and windows closed because the thermostat is on and because we don’t want our homes to become dusty. But when we do this, we lose out on the fresh air that Mother Nature provides us with every morning. If you cannot throw open the windows to your home, take a walk in the fresh air every morning to inhale the breath of health and energy.
  



• Cooking healthy food: When you pay attention to the nutrition value of food, you know you’re giving your children good health as a gift. We eat to live, and live healthily we must. So plan your meals and reduce the amount of processed food, snacks and junk food allowed at home. Emphasize on fresh fruits and lots of vegetables in every meal and steer clear of aerated sodas that have tons of sugar and only serve to increase your weight.
  



• Knowing basic first aid: If you are prepared to administer basic first aid at home, you could save yourself the trouble of an extended visit to the ER. Small cuts, burns and other minor injuries don’t become serious if you’re able to stop the flow of blood or minimize the symptoms before you’re able to get your loved one to the hospital. Also, if you know how to provide basic first aid when someone is choking or experiencing a heart attack, you could end up saving their lives.

By-line:
This guest article was written by Jennifer Johnson, who regularly writes on the topic of nurse practitioner schools . Jennifer welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: jennifer.johnson1@rediffmail.com

MRSA

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a type of bacteria, a.k.a staph, that is resistant to certain antibiotics. These antibiotics include methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. Staph infections, including MRSA, occur most frequently among persons in hospitals and healthcare facilities (such as nursing homes and dialysis centers) who have weakened immune systems.

There is also a type of MRSA known as community- associated MRSA, which affects otherwise healthy people in the wider community (such as children at school).

Symptoms:

Most MRSA infections are skin infections that produce the following signs and symptoms:
* cellulitis (infection of the skin or the fat and tissues that lie immediately beneath the skin, usually starting as small red bumps in the skin),
* boils (pus-filled infections of hair follicles),which are often red, painful or have pus or other drainage.
* abscesses (collections of pus in under the skin),
* sty (infection of eyelid gland),
* carbuncles (infections larger than an abscess, usually with several openings to the skin), and
* impetigo (a skin infection with pus-filled blisters).

Transmission:

By direct skin-to-skin contact or contact with shared items or surfaces that have come into contact with someone else's infection (e.g., towels, used bandages).

Prevention:

* practicing good hygiene (washing hands well with soap & water or an alcohol based hand sanitizer). * covering skin abrasions or cuts with a clean dry bandage until healed.
* avoiding sharing personal items (e.g., towels, razors) that come into contact with your bare skin; and using a barrier (e.g., clothing or a towel) between your skin and shared equipment such as weight-training benches;
* maintaining a clean environment by establishing cleaning procedures for frequently touched surfaces and surfaces that come into direct contact with people's skin.

Treatment:

*Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole-1 tablet PO bid
*Minocycline or Doxycycline-100 mg PO bid
*Rifampin (Adult dose: 300 mg PO bid x 5 days; pediatric dose: 10-20 mg/kg/day in 2 doses not to exceed 600 mg/d x 5 days) in combination with Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, Minocycline, or Doxycycline has been shown to have a synergistic activity against