Just About Everything

To get ourselves started, let’s start with a simple reassurance: there are some excellent drugs on the market that will treat even the most serious outbreak of heartburn. They are called proton pump inhibitors and they work by reducing the amount of stomach acid your body produces. The good news is there’s less acid to leak out of your stomach and cause the pain. The bad news is that, with less acid in your stomach, it takes longer to process the food. So put the drugs to one side for a moment and think about the problem. When food passes into the mouth and, after chewing, falls down towards the stomach, your body gets ready to break the food down into its chemical ingredients. The good stuff gets syphoned into the blood stream and sent off to where its going to do the most good. All the rest gets expelled from the body. The $64,000 question is how the stomach does the processing. It all starts with the acid, but mixed into it are a series of different enzymes to help break down the different types of food. Your body is a very clever machine and, left to its own devices, it produces just enough acid and enzymes to clear the stomach quickly.
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Every time you want to move from A to B, you are on your feet and legs are in motion. Without knees working well, this can be painful or impossible. They are the joints that act like a hinge, moving to allow us to twist and turn, stand and sit, walk and run. At all times, they carry our increasing body weight, absorbing the impact as that weight hits the ground through the legs. If anything goes wrong. . . Well, what can go wrong? More than a million people are carried into ERs every year with severe knee trauma. In most cases, this is tied into the work place, exercise or sport. Every time we lift something heavy or start training for that marathon, there’s a risk of damaging the joint. This may be a strain on the tendon that holds the joint together, or the cartilage designed to support the joint may be damaged. Continue Reading »