Environmental

Did you know it is actually possible to have too clean of a home? Did you realize that when your home environment is so clean that this can actually cause health issues? This is because the human body and immune system has been well adapted to live on the surface of the planet with all types of diseases, viruses and pathogens.

Your immune system is well engineered and the human body is in engineering marvel. However, if your immune system never gets a workout because you live in a super clean environment then when your immune system does detect a slight irregularity or germ it goes ballistic and attacks that area. Sometimes it goes overboard and overkill and that means the immune system may also in up attacking normal healthy cells.

That is kind of a bummer for the clean freak. Are you someone who likes to make sure that your home is completely clean and that your living environment is spotless? Many of us are and if you are like that you may actually be causing yourself and health risk. That is unfortunate indeed. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever suspected that your sinus condition might be influenced by your environment?

Well, duh!

Perhaps you have suspected, but not given it serious thought. Here’s a short summary of the most obvious that you might have some ability to control.

Do you smoke?

That is the controllable environmental factor that still affects far too many people — and not just the smokers. When I am driving in a city environment, I can usually tell if anyone in the next car up is smoking. When I am talking to someone face-to-face, I can usually tell if that person is a smoker. I remember college, and having fellow students proclaim that they just had to have a cigarette during exams to ease the tension, but they were running my tension level through the roof.

One person’s philosophy on smokers was, “You can smoke if you want, just don’t exhale.” Read the rest of this entry »

Even in our Internet world, our ability to communicate still includes using our voices. For most people our voices re our jobs. This is most obvious with singers and public speakers. So what happens if the voice or speech quality suffers? Loss of income, of course. So this is serious stuff.

The most common vocal problem is hoarseness. Hoarseness can be a temporary response to a temporary trauma or a symptom of serious diseases. Many people can walk into a room full of smokers and suffer a few hours of hoarseness. As a matter of fact, this happens so often that many people consider hoarseness a normal condition. It reminds me of a line the
late comedian Buddy Hackett was famous for. “When I went in the Army and began eating Army food I found out that heartburn wasn’t normal.”

According to Drs Nagarathna and Nagendra, hoarseness is due to one of three factors:

Spasms of the tissues that control vocal chords

movement

Thickness of the vocal chords from inflammation Read the rest of this entry »