Category: <span>Blog</span>

June and July are the top months for contraction of Lyme disease; however, the month of August still presents a threat of this disease.

 Tick: Not all ticks transmit Lyme disease. In our area, deer tick is the vector for this disease, and it is only the size of a pinhead. The deer tick lives on deer and mice, and favors wood piles and high grass, so be sure to keep your pathways mown. Larger ticks that are easily seen are not a risk. Should you get bit, remove the tick with the head intact. The sooner the tick is removed, the less likely the risk of transmission of Lyme disease. Be sure to remove the tick whole. Ticks can be removed by tweezers, but if the tick is feeding, a special tick remover may be helpful. These can be purchased at camping stores. Save the tick in a jar and take it with you to your physician.

Melatonin is a strong antioxidant. An antioxidant is something that helps keep cells healthy and young. Healthy and youthful cells don’t get cancer, so it’s no surprise that melatonin, being a strong antioxidant, is used in the support of patients with cancer. Did you know that every time you get the sleep you need you are supporting you body’s own levels of melatonin? You are!

Did you know that eating foods you like means that they actually get digested better? That’s right. Your body makes more digestive juices when you eat, or even smell food that you like. That’s why cooking is helpful to your digestion. Your body knows exactly what foods are coming and is ready for them. But, if you’re in a great-smelling restaurant that works too… or if your spouse is a great cook and the whole kitchen smells like garlic, and tomatoes… well, you get the idea.

The first step in many infertility treatments for women is a drug that stimulates ovulation. This means it stimulates the ovary to release an egg, which gets captured by the fallopian tube and deposited into the uterus. This is a fascinating process—the egg is floating around in the pelvic cavity and the fallopian tubes have little fingers and they literally grab the egg and swallow it, where it passes through the Fallopian tubes to the uterus. There it waits patiently to choose its sperm. A healthy woman should have healthy, ovulatory, menses. This means that about every 28 days the period should come, without PMS or cramping of course, and that at the middle of the cycle (around day 15), the ovary should release an egg. A woman can cycle without releasing an egg. This is called an anovulatory cycle and is not normal. What can we do about this? The drug given (called Clomid) can force a woman’s body to ovulate. However, it does nothing to address the cause of why a woman is not ovulating.

Ok, so you’ve made sure that all reproductive parts are present and accounted for. And, the tubing is patent (open)—this means that the sperm are able to get from the testes out of the body and into the woman, and in the woman, that the fallopian tubes can successfully transport an egg from the ovary to the uterus for fertilization. Just because all the cheap Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 equipment is there doesn’t mean that it is always working correctly. In women, we have to make sure that ovulation is taking place. Ovulation is the release of an egg from the ovary. In the middle of the menstrual cycle (around day 15), women may notice a milky-white discharge. This means that ovulation has taken place. What if this doesn’t happen? Read part 3 for more!