Category: Family Health

A man uses an E-cigarette, an electronic substitute in the form of a rod, slightly longer than a normal cigarette, in this illustration picture taken in Paris, March 5, 2013.

(REUTERS/Christian Hartmann)

A 14-year-old has been blinded in one eye and potentially faces permanent damage to his hands after allegedly testing an e-cigarette at a mall kiosk in Brooklyn, New York. The latest in a string of similar incidents, the teenager’s injury may raise questions over the safety of the devices as well as how much they are marketed to youth.

Leor Domatov said he was trying out an e-cigarette at the Plaza Vapes kiosk in Brooklyn’s Kings Plaza Mall when it exploded in his hands and face, PIX11 reported. The injury occurred after an employee connected one of the vaporizers to the battery of the store.

“I can’t see anything because I got a cut through my cornea,” Domatov told the news station.

Domatov, who is only 14, wouldn’t have legally been able to buy one of the products because state and local law forbids the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. Domatov’s father hired Marc Freund, a partner at Lipsig, Shapey, Manus and Moverman, to reportedly sue the kiosk owner and mall.

"Leor was being marketed at the entrance of the Kings Plaza Mall," Freund told the news station, "a mall that caters to children, and they’re marketing these products, causing all these injuries."

Employees at the kiosk reportedly distribute promotional cards advertising the company’s Instagram account and packaging that resemble popular breakfast cereals.

The employee who allowed Domatov to test the e-cigarette had only been on her second day at the job, PIX11 reported. Her boss didn’t respond to a voicemail left by PIX11.

E-Cigarette Use by Age | HealthGrove

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A flyer explaining what is Zika is posted at the maternity ward of the Hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa, Honduras April 15, 2016. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

Zika may stand convicted of causing devastating birth defects but there still are lots of questions about how much of a threat the virus poses to pregnant women, and what to do about it.

Part of the answer has to do with geography: So far, mosquitoes aren’t spreading Zika in the mainland U.S. That means for now, the main advice for pregnant women here is to avoid travel to Zika-affected parts of Latin America or the Caribbean. But that could change as mosquito season gets into full swing at home.

"It would not be surprising at all, if not likely, that we’re going to see of a bit" of local Zika transmission, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told Fox News Sunday.

Here are some questions and answers about what experts know, and need to learn, as the first mosquito-borne virus known to cause birth defects inches closer to the U.S.

Q: Just what birth defects can Zika cause?

A: Zika had been considered a nuisance virus until a massive outbreak began last year in Brazil and doctors there reported babies being born with unusually small heads, called microcephaly. Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Zika was indeed the culprit – and that it caused a particularly severe form of microcephaly, with serious underlying brain damage, as well as other brain-related abnormalities.

Studies increasingly show Zika gets into a fetus’ developing brain and kills cells, or stops them from growing further, and even can kill the fetus. But even if the brain seemed to be developing normally, still other studies have found stillbirths, poor fetal growth and other problems.

Q: If a mother-to-be becomes infected, how likely is her baby to be harmed?

A: No one knows yet. One modeling study of an outbreak in French Polynesia suggested 1 percent of babies born to women infected during the first trimester alone would have microcephaly. In another study, ultrasound exams spotted some sort of abnormality, not just microcephaly, in nearly 30 percent of women who had Zika during pregnancy. Studies better designed to answer that question are under way now.

Q: Does it matter when during pregnancy the mother is infected?

A: Specialists think the first trimester is especially vulnerable, because that’s when organs develop. But the brain continues to grow throughout pregnancy and some studies have found signs of trouble even if infection occurred much later.

Q: Can the fetus be harmed even if the mother didn’t know she was infected?

A: Again, that’s not clear. Most adults report either mild or no symptoms from Zika, but it could just be that they didn’t notice.

Q: Then how would pregnant women know if they’d been infected?

A: Any who did travel to Zika-affected areas should tell their doctors, who can order the appropriate testing to help determine their risk. There is no treatment for Zika, but those who were infected may need ultrasound exams to check how the fetus is developing.

Q: Are mosquitoes the only risk?

A: They’re the main way Zika spreads, and the reason for CDC’s advice for women who are pregnant or attempting conception not to travel to Zika-affected areas. But the virus can be spread through sexual intercourse, too, as it lasts longer in semen than in blood. So if a man is exposed while his partner is pregnant, the CDC advises abstaining or using condoms until the baby is born.

Q: Is there any risk to future pregnancies if a non-pregnant woman is infected?

A: The CDC says women who traveled to a Zika-affected area or who became infected should wait eight weeks before attempting conception. She may be advised to wait longer if the father-to-be also was exposed or infected.

Q: How could Zika begin spreading in the mainland U.S.?

A: All it takes is the right kind of mosquito biting a returning traveler who’s infected, and then biting someone else nearby. That’s why CDC wants all returning travelers to take steps to avoid mosquito bites for three weeks after they return home – by using insect repellent, covering up, or staying indoors.

Q: Do officials expect widespread outbreaks in the U.S.?

A: No, but they do expect local clusters of cases – just like has happened in previous years with a Zika relative named dengue fever that’s spread by the same mosquito, a species named Aedes aegypti. It’s not just a threat in the South but reaching into parts of the Midwest and Northeast.

Q: When will we see a vaccine?

A: Not for a while. NIH’s Fauci hopes to begin small safety steps of a candidate by September but that wouldn’t make any dent in the Latin American outbreak.

Q: Are there risks beyond to a developing fetus?

A: Zika also has been linked to a nerve disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome that can be triggered by various infections, and there have been occasional reports of other neurological problems. Researchers need to explore those further.

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After she gave birth to her son, Valerie Orsoni knew what to expect: a prescription from her doctor for 12 sessions of physical therapy to rehabilitate her pelvic floor muscles.

 “Even when you’re a little girl in France, your mom always tells you to stay stretched and to always tuck in your tummy and contract your abs. When you do that, naturally it leads to contracting the perineum,” Orsoni, 45,  the founder of Lebodychallenge.com, said.

After the birth of her son, now 19, Orsoni underwent biofeedback, a treatment that uses an electrode or probe inserted into the vagina to measure the strength of the pelvic floor muscles and to help ensure that Kegel exercises are done correctly.

Although she was prepared for it, Orsoni admits she was a little embarrassed. “At first, it’s pretty surprising. They’re putting something in your vagina,” she recalled.

Orsoni, who now lives in San Francisco, Calif., said postpartum rehabilitation is so important in fact that doctors in France won’t give women the green light to start exercising again without completing the two-to-three month program.

“The worst thing that you could do would be to go back to doing regular exercises after giving birth without doing perineum rehab,” she said.

Rehab for your pelvis and abs

After giving birth, it’s common for women to deal with issues like urinary incontinence, diastasis recti— a separation of the rectus abdominis muscle— and pelvic pain.

In fact, approximately 85 percent of women have pain the first time they have sex after childbirth and nearly a quarter of them still do at 18 months postpartum, a recent study in the journal BJOG found.

“Most moms are in pain after birth and they just figure it’s common and normal but there is treatment for it. They don’t have to live with it,” said Marianne Ryan, a physical therapist in New York City and author of “Baby Bod: Turn Flab to Fab in 12 Weeks Flat.”

In France and other countries like the Netherlands and Australia, postpartum physical therapy is a common treatment to help women recover from the rigors of childbirth. Yet in the United States, women have a 6-week postpartum check-up and are told to resume their normal activities.  

“Not only do we do nothing in the U.S., but also if a woman goes to her physician, particularly her obstetrician, with these complaints after delivery it’s written off as ‘Well, you just had a baby,’” said Stephanie Prendergast, co-founder of The Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center in Los Angeles, Calif. and author of “Pelvic Pain Explained.”

“While that’s true, there are still musculoskeletal implications that come with both pregnancy, labor and delivery and of course, C-section,” she said.

Although they might be well-intentioned, OB-GYN’s are not trained to identify pelvic floor or abdominal problems like physical therapists are, Prendergast said.

Another issue is that although women are encouraged to do Kegel exercises, doing so can make perineal tears worse. What’s more, a study in the journal Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery found that 23 percent of women who said they knew how to do Kegel exercises did not do them correctly.

If problems are left untreated, over time they can lead to low-back pain and hip problems, urinary and bowel function issues such as urgency, frequency, burning, constipation, anal pain, and infection and pelvic organ prolapse, a condition in which the bladder, uterus or other organs descend into the vagina, Prendergast said.

What’s more, studies show that even if women feel fine after childbirth, it could take between 6 and 10 years until these issues become a problem.

How physical therapy can help

“In an ideal world, everybody should have an evaluation to identify what their particular issues are and get a specialized home program,” Prendergast said.  

A physical therapist can help identify impairments in the tissues, muscles, nerves and joints and evaluate the abdominal wall and the pelvic floor muscles to determine what has changed during pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Once the issues are identified, women are given an individualized program to help the muscles heal, improve urinary, bowel and sexual function as well as the overall stability of the pelvis so they can do things like pick up their babies, Prendergast said.  

Physical therapists can also help moms do daily tasks in a way that doesn’t put pressure on the abdominal muscles, or even teach them how to have a bowel movement without straining the pelvic floor muscles, Ryan said.

Biofeedback, the therapy Orsoni used, can help, especially for those women who have recently given birth and find it hard to pinpoint their pelvic floor muscles. It can also help identify a temporary neuropathy, or damage along the nerve that controls the muscles.

“They may need electrical stimulation to help those muscles fire if the nerve can’t direct the muscle to do so itself,” Prendergast said.

Caring for a new baby can leave little time for sleep, a shower or a workout, much less multiple physical therapy sessions. Yet experts agree it’s one of the best things women can do for their health, both right after childbirth and in the future.

“Women deserve treatment,” Ryan said. “Your body is not going to just magically snap back together.”

Julie Revelant is a health journalist and a consultant who provides content marketing and copywriting services for the healthcare industry. She’s also a mom of two. Learn more about Julie at revelantwriting.com.

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Women who wait until 35 or later to have kids face a higher risk of problems, everything from miscarriage to diabetes to chromosomal problems with the newborn.

But as Medical Today notes, that hasn’t kept the average age of first pregnancies from creeping steadily up. Now, however, Swedish researchers are weighing in with good news for older mothers: Their kids tend to grow up healthier, taller, and better educated, they say in a press release.

In fact, their study in Population and Development Review suggests that the benefits outweigh the risks for women who delay childbirth into their later years.

The reason is deceptively simple, and it’s on the "macro" level: The longer she waits, the more improvements come along in society as a whole. To illustrate the point, Quartz cites the example of a woman born in 1960 who has a child at age 20 and another at age 40.

"A lot of things happened in those intervening 20 years, including dramatic improvements in medicine, mortality, and education: the kid born in 2000 is much more likely to go to college than the sibling born in 1980." The study followed 1.5 million Swedes, and researcher Mikko Myrskylä of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research says the findings should factor into family decisions: "Expectant parents are typically well aware of the risks associated with late pregnancy, but they are less aware of the positive effects.” (Another study suggests that your birth order affects your weight as an adult.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Good News for Moms Who Wait to Have Kids

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CrossFit trainer Emily Breeze is a mom-to-be who has chosen to maintain an intense fitness regimen throughout her pregnancy—and received serious backlash for it. Breeze was recently filmed lifting more than 90 pounds 37 weeks into her pregnancy, which scored her praise from some commenters and outrage from others.

Watson is a CrossFit trainer who recently told the Today show that working out is “her life.” She regularly updates her Instagram page with healthy lifestyle pictures and videos for her 15,000 followers to enjoy, and she’s gained attention over the last few weeks for her ability to deadlift crazy amounts of weight while pregnant. Though Breeze has assured her followers that she’s been listening to her doctor’s advice as far as fitness is concerned, many have said they’re worried she’s jeopardizing the health of her pregnancy by maintaining such an active life in the gym.

A video posted by Emily Breeze Ross Watson (@emilybreeze) on Apr 11, 2016 at 11:10am PDT

Related: 18 Things You Should Never Put In Your Vagina

Breeze is not the first to encounter this criticism. Just last month, Australian trainer Chontel Duncan came under fire for continuing high-intensity workouts during her pregnancy. And fitness competitor Stacie Venagro received backlash for her six-pack pregnancy in January, as well. But despite the overwhelming backlash, experts say maintaining a fit, healthy lifestyle during pregnancy is often what’s best for mother and child.

The most recent set of American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines state that exercise during pregnancy has been shown to have minimal risks (though the ACOG does recommend modification based on normal physiological changes throughout the nine months). In fact, regular physical activity during pregnancy often brings with it several benefits, like: weight management, physical fitness, a reduced risk of gestational diabetes in obese women, and improved psychological well-being. The guidelines suggest that women with uncomplicated pregnancies take part in aerobic and strength-training activities before, during, and after their pregnancies. But the ACOG warns that any pregnant woman should speak to her doctor and receive a thorough clinical evaluation before embarking on a fitness regimen.

Related: 8 Sneaky Ways To Debloat In Just One Day

“[Exercise] is all I know,” Breeze said. “It’s what I believe in, and I want to have a healthy, fit pregnancy.” In cases like these, it’s important to remember that what’s right for one mother may not be right for another. “While regular physical activity is encouraged in uncomplicated pregnancies, each patient should consult her physician before starting any exercise routine during pregnancy,” Nitasha G. Jain, M.D., assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Columbia University Medical Center, tells SELF. “We consider each patient as an individual, because everyone’s a little different. Exercise in pregnancy should be tailored to each individual’s baseline capacity and should be discussed with an obstetrician at the beginning of the pregnancy.”

For Breeze, this might mean lifting 90 pounds. And for you, it might not. Like Jain said, it’s all about individual differences and needs.

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A man billed as a "perfect donor" by a sperm bank turned out to be a mentally ill felon whose lies on his donor application weren’t uncovered for more than a decade, according to families who are now terrified for their children’s futures.

On its website, Georgia-based firm Xytex described Donor 9623 as a completely healthy man with an IQ of 160 who was working on a PhD in neuroscience engineering, the Toronto Star reports.

In reality, he was college dropout Chris Aggeles, a 39-year-old man who has been diagnosed with bipolar and narcissistic personality disorders and schizophrenia and has spent time in prison for burglary.

His sperm was used to create at least 36 children in Canada, the US, and the UK between 2000 and 2014. Families discovered his identity after Xytex accidentally included his name in an email and they Googled his name.

Three Canadian families with children between 4 and 8 years old are now suing Xytex, and lawyer Nancy Hersh says she may also file suits for British and American families, the Guardian reports.

The lawsuit, which notes that schizophrenia can be hereditary, alleges that Xytex allowed Aggeles to keep selling his sperm even after problems surfaced. Angie Collins, one of the Canadian mothers suing, tells the Star that her big problem is not with Aggeles, but with the companies that sold his sperm without checking his background.

Collins—described by Hersh as the "Erin Brockovich of the sperm-bank set"—has devoted much of the last two years to pushing for greater oversight of the industry to make sure this never happens again.

(Here is what women do want in a sperm donor.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Sperm Bank’s ‘Perfect Donor’ Was Mentally Ill, Fathered 36 Kids

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Many women with a bowel disorder that can affect fertility choose not to attempt pregnancy even though treatment may make it possible for them to conceive, a recent study suggests.

Researchers studied more than 1,300 women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which involves chronic or recurring inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the most common forms of IBD. People with Crohn’s have inflammation throughout the entire digestive tract, while in ulcerative colitis, only the large intestine is inflamed.

Almost one in six women were voluntarily childless, often because they were older, had worse IBD symptoms or were unaware of options that might improve their odds of having a baby, the study found.

"Poor knowledge is one of the drivers of voluntary childlessness," said lead author Dr. Christian Selinger, a gastroenterologist at the University of Leeds in the U.K.

While IBD doesn’t necessarily reduce fertility, medications to treat these conditions can impact the odds of conception and are also linked to certain birth defects. Surgical treatments can also lead to scarring that limits fertility, and many patients with IBD also experience sexual dysfunction.

Despite these challenges, many women can still conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive technologies.

For the current study, Selinger and colleagues surveyed female members of the patient support group Crohn’s and Colitis U.K. who were between 18 and 45 years old.

Participants were 33 years old on average. Almost 59 percent were diagnosed with Crohn’s, while 38 percent had ulcerative colitis.

While 14 percent of the women had kids before they got an IBD diagnosis, 26 percent had kids afterwards and another 36 percent said they planned to in the future.

The women who said they didn’t want kids tended to have more hospitalizations and were more likely to have had surgeries for IBD than their peers who were mothers or planned to start a family at some point. The voluntarily childless women were also more likely to be single and unemployed.

Some women with no plans to have children also said they were concerned their baby might inherit IBD or that the disease might make pregnancy difficult, and they expressed concerns about raising a child while coping with their disease.

Because the study only included people in a patient support group for IBD, it’s possible the women surveyed were more knowledgeable about their medical issues and fertility options than women in the general population might be, the authors note in the Journal of Crohn’s and Colitis. In addition, the study relied on self-reported health information that wasn’t verified with the women’s doctors or medical records.

The study also doesn’t assess exactly how women who opted not to conceive decided that they didn’t want to have children, Dr. C. Janneke van der Woude, a researcher at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, who wasn’t involved in the study said by email.

Symptom severity may very well come into play, said Dr. Yvette Leung, a researcher at the University of Calgary in Canada who wasn’t involved in the study.

"The vast majority of treatments for Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis are completely safe for a female to take when she is conceiving and equally safe during pregnancy and breastfeeding," Leung said by email.

"For patients who are acutely ill, however, from their Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis, there may be multiple good reasons not to have children including depression, malnutrition, amenorrhea (lack of menstruation), and general poor quality of life," Leung added.

Still, women who get acute symptoms under control and ensure their specific medications are safe during pregnancy shouldn’t necessarily be deterred from trying to conceive, said Dr. Jane Andrews, head of the IBD service and education at Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia.

"The news is almost all good," Andrews, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. "Very few women should be advised not to go ahead with a family due to IBD."

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Women who use in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive technologies may be more likely to have children with certain birth defects than their peers who conceive the old-fashioned way, a U.S. study suggests.

The authors caution that the findings are too preliminary to deter women from trying to conceive this way.

They say the increased risk of complications may be at least partly due to older maternal age and other health factors that lead women to try assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the first place.

The study team couldn’t tell what was behind the increased risk of birth defects in babies conceived using ART, said Dr. Sheree Boulet, a health scientist in the division of reproductive health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who led the research.

"That said, our manuscript suggests that factors related to underlying subfertility – which is what leads many couples to explore ART services – could increase the risk of birth defects," Boulet added by email.

Boulet and colleagues reviewed data on more than 4.6 million babies born in Florida, Massachusetts and Michigan from 2000 to 2010.

Number of Fertility Clinics by State | HealthGrove

About 1.4 percent of these babies, or roughly 65,000, were conceived using reproductive technology, according to a report in JAMA Pediatrics.

Overall, for every 10,000 babies, almost 59 of those conceived using ART had at least one non-genetic birth defect, compared with about 48 of those conceived the old fashioned way.

Most of the women who didn’t use ART were under 30, while the majority of the women who conceived using reproductive technology were at least 35 years old.

Even after researchers adjusted for mother’s age and other health characteristics, infants born via ART were 28 percent more likely to have these birth defects than babies conceived without reproductive technology.

Among babies born after an ART process known as fresh embryo transfer – when a woman is stimulated with fertility medications and has eggs retrieved and embryos implanted all within the same reproductive cycle – the risk of birth defects was 53 percent greater with women who had ovulation disorders.

For the subset of women who underwent a newer ART process known as assisted hatching – when scientists help the embryo emerge from a layer of proteins so it can better attach to the uterus – the risk of birth defects was 55 percent higher.

One limitation of the study is that it lacked data on birth defects in pregnancies that didn’t result in a live-born child, which means it may have underestimated the prevalence of birth defects, the authors note. It’s also possible that ART-conceived babies are monitored more closely, resulting in a higher detection rate for birth defects among these infants.

"Even though the study found differences in risk of birth defects, it should be remembered that overall prevalence of these defects is low," said Judy Stern, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and pathology at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

"The vast majority of babies born from ART were normal," Stern, who wasn’t involved in the study, added by email.

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Winter is officially here, which means seasonal cold and flu virus season is also officially here, but you shouldn’t rush to buy a new “immunity-boosting” multivitamin pill. Instead, consider these simple and effective tips, which have the potential to save you money on both supplements and medical visits.

1. Get Adequate Sleep

Adequate sleep plays a crucial role in keeping your body healthy. There is evidence that lack of sleep and the resulting stress response can lead to inflammation of the body and cause immunodeficiency. The recommended amount of sleep is between 7 and 9 hours for most adults and up to 13 to 14 hours for small children. Boost your immunity by making adequate sleep a priority. You will reap beauty benefits as well.

2. Manage Your Stress

Studies have reported that an inflammatory response is initiated in the body during stressful events. According to the Ohio State University research team, psychological stress releases hormones that negatively affect the immune system. Stressful situations that can lead to inflammation include physical stress, social stress and even isolation.

Consider embracing some strategies to control stress and avoid unnecessary stress triggers as much as possible. Exercising, proper nutrition and adequate sleep can help with controlling stress. Spending quality time with friends and loved ones can also strengthen your immunity.

3. Nutrition

Unsurprisingly, nutrition plays an important role in boosting your immune system and protecting you from getting sick. Evidence has shown that malnourished people are more susceptible to infections. Rather than following a specific diet, you may want to focus on incorporating foods that are rich in the micronutrients that protect from immunodeficiency, such as vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.

Among the foods that you should eat (unless you are allergic to them) are:

• Dark leafy greens (especially kale and spinach)
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Cooked mushrooms (especially Reishi, Enoki, Maitake). Do not consume mushrooms in a raw form, as some of them contain carcinogenic effects when they are raw.
• Berries (especially elderberries, blueberries and strawberries, which are a good source of polyphenols)

4. Take Sunshine Vitamins

Vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin, is essential to our immune system. The best source of vitamin D is bare skin exposure to the sun’s rays; however, due to the potential health risks for the skin, it is extremely important that you follow the recommendations provided by the Vitamin D Council.

If for any reason you are not able to fulfill your nutritional needs or you are not able to get sun exposure for adequate Vitamin D intake, these are some supplements that you should consider taking:

• Vitamin D: Take Vitamin D3 supplements, (which are more potent than Vitamin D2)
• Omega 3: Fish oils are a good source of omega 3 fatty acids. In particular, cod liver oil, is a good source of omega 3, and also a great source of Vitamin D.

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Essential oils have grown in popularity in recent years, and for good reason. Therapeutic-grade oils do more than smell great – they can play a part in healing and promoting health and well-being. Read on to discover 9 ways you could help to boost your home’s health and mood.

Editor’s note: Prior to usage, please consult with your health care practitioner regarding oils that you or your family will be ingesting or applying topically. Read all ingredients to ensure no one in your family is allergic, and try a patch test before administering full doses to the skin.

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Aid Tummy Aches and Headaches

Peppermint oil is cooling and may help to relieve pain and soothe digestion. Since this therapeutic-grade oil is powerful and may cause skin irritation, it should be mixed with a carrier oil. Common carrier oils include sweet almond, apricot kernel oil, grapeseed, jojoba, avocado, coconut or olive.

Mix 1 teaspoon of peppermint oil with a carrier oil and apply 1 to 2 drops directly to the area in pain. When using for headaches, gently massage into the temples and sinuses, avoiding the eyes. For stomachaches, apply 1 to 2 drops on belly and smooth into skin.

Clean Water Bottles

Lemon oil can act as an antiviral and antiseptic – and it’s known to taste great. Add 1 to 2 drops of oil to your family’s water bottles and the funk may be significantly decreased. This is a particularly good trick for kids’ school water bottles. The taste and power of those few drops will last a few bottle fillings. Grapefruit oil also works well.

Use as an Antiseptic

Purification is a home medicine cabinet staple for essential oil users – it is applied topically to cuts and "owies." It can help with small injuries like skinned knees and paper cuts, as well as on bigger injuries like deep cuts. The oil is a blend made up of citronella, lemongrass, rosemary, melaleuca, lavandin and myrtle and is considered to have antiseptic, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal and sanitizing properties.

Help Soothe a Fever

Peppermint oil can help cool a fever. Stir 1 to 2 drops into warm water and sip, or mix a few drops with a carrier oil and apply to feet. Considered to be clarifying and stimulating, the smell is also soothing.

Aid in Sleeplessness, Bad Dreams and Anxiety

A good night’s sleep is important for everyone. Unfortunately, many people have bouts of less-than-perfect sleep. Oils that are known to help promote sweet dreams are lavender and Peace & Calming, which is an oil blend of tangerine, ylang ylang, orange, patchouli and blue tansy. For nervousness and anxiety, try Valor, a blend of spruce, rosewood, blue tansy and frankincense. Rub 1 to 2 drops on chest or pillow, or use an oil diffuser.

Help Protect from Colds and Flu

During the winter months when colds are easily passed around, take extra immunity-strengthening measures. A regular application of Thieves oil blend may give your family the extra edge. A blend of clove, lemon, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus radiata and rosemary cineol, Thieves is considered antiviral and antibacterial, and can help protect the body from the onset of colds or flu. Simply apply 1 to 2 drops to the bottom of feet.

Help Heal Burns, Bruises, Cuts and Bug Bites

Lavender oil is often used to soothe skin issues, from sunburns to bee stings. Applied directly to the affected area, it may bring some quick relief while helping heal wounds faster. Panaway is also a notable pain reducer.

Soothe Respiratory Issues and Seasonal Allergies

Try RC and eucalyptus to soothe respiratory issues, including seasonal allergies. RC is a blend of eucalyptus, myrtle, peppermint, tsuga, cypress, pine, marjoram and lavender. To breathe with ease, massage onto the chest, place a few drops on the pillow at night or place in a room diffuser.

Relieve Tension

Taking a bath is a great way to unwind. Add 1 to 2 drops of your favorite soothing oil and let the aromatherapeutic qualities take hold. This can also be a great way to calm wound-up kids at bedtime – just add 2 to 3 drops of lavender or Peace & Calming right in the tub.

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Your body goes through a lot for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) which is why you need to take good care of it, including avoiding heavy lifting for the first few days. As the embryo is implanted into your uterus on the day of your IVF, you will be instructed to lie still for at least an hour and to take it easy over the next few days. If you need to get back to a job that requires lifting or you have pets or other children at home, this may prove difficult.

• Relax your body for at least eight hours once you get home following the embryo transfer. The most exercise you should get during this time is walking from your bedroom to the bathroom or living room.

• Increase your physical activity gradually after eight hours. Take short walks around your block to get your body moving.

• Lift slowly using mostly your arm and shoulder muscles and less of your core muscles if you must do any heavy lifting within 48 hours of IVF.

• Lift more weight once you return to work, going at a gradual pace. If your job consists of lifting more than 50 lbs, it is best to avoid these activities for at least 48 hours.

• Continue with your normal exercise routine such as cardio and weight lifting after 48 hours following your IVF procedure. It is recommended you abstain from rigorous physical activity until you receive the results of the IVF procedure about 1 to 2 weeks following the implantation.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid heavy lifting (over 50 lbs) for at least 48 hours following the embryo transfer.
• Avoid demanding exercises, such as long-distance running or high-impact aerobics for around 1 to 2 weeks after treatment.

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