Information on popular complementary and alternative medical topics

There are many different syringes of varying sizes for various medical purposes, but the insulin syringe has a special shape and markings to ensure that the dose of insulin is measured accurately.

It is essential to obtain the correct insulin syringe and learn how to use it.

Syringes are made of plastic and are disposable; that means that they are designed to be used once and then thrown away. Whether they can be used more than once is discussed later.

There are a number of brands of syringes available, but there are only two sizes of syringe. There is a 1 ml syringe which holds up to 100 units, and a 0.5 ml syringe which holds up to 50 units. Standards for manufacture of syringes ensure that the markings of the different syringes are similar, any syringe can be used with any of the available insulins, and the numbers marked on the syringe always refer to the number of units that has been drawn up.

1. The 0.5 ml syringe (Lo Dose)

This syringe measures up to 50 units, it is the best syringe for those people who need a small dose of insulin (less than 50 units). It has a long narrow barrel and the numbers on the syringe refer to the numbers of units. Marks on the syringe each represent one unit. This allows very accurate measurement of small doses.

2. The 1 ml syringe

This syringe measures up to 100 units and is used for those people, particularly teenagers and adults, who may need more than 50 units of insulin in one dose. As with the smaller syringe, the numbers on the syringe refer to the number of units, but in this syringe the marks on the barrel each represent two units.

The needle

Syringes are supplied with a fine needle attached and ready to use. All the recommended syringes are designed so that there is very little wasted space left at the tip of the syringe and in the end of the needle; these syringes are called ‘minimal dead space’ syringes, and they have the advantage over older syringes in that virtually all the insulin you draw up is given and none remains in the tip after the injection. This means almost no insulin is wasted and if you have to mix two insulins in the syringe before injection, then you can be sure the mixture remains in the correct proportions.

Can single-use plastic syringes be re-used?

Single use or disposable plastic syringes were intended to be used once and discarded. This would certainly be the practice in hospital where there would be a risk of transferring germs from one person to another if the syringe or needle were used a second time. This is not a risk at home.

Very many people with diabetes have re-used the same disposable syringe many times without any harmful effects. This is not surprising, because the possible contamination of the needle or syringe will be confined to harmless germs that live on that person’s skin. Provided there is no infection in the skin (for example boils, pustules or infected scratches) then these germs are quite harmless. The body is used to them and they aren’t causing trouble. Insulin has a preservative added to the bottle which keeps it sterile and this preservative then protects the inside of the syringe after use. There is no need to wash out the syringe or sterilize it.

It is of course essential, if you use the syringe a second time, to replace the cap over the needle immediately and keep the syringe covered in a clean and cool place such as the refrigerator. If the syringe were handled by someone with dirty hands or contaminated in any way it must be discarded. One objection to using a syringe several times is that the needle may become blunt and may hurt more as it enters the skin. Few people find that this is a problem if the needle is just used twice.

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Aluminum

Aluminum has been linked to dementia because it has been found in patches of cell damage in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. The results are not conclusive but we should perhaps be wary of it anyway.

The main sources of aluminum are indigestion tablets (antacids), deodorants and anti-perspirants, anti-caking agents found in some dried milk, aluminum cookware, soft drink cans and foil. High levels of aluminum can be seen from the analysis of a hair sample.

What You Can Do

• Buy aluminum-free deodorants at health food shops, where the ingredients will be listed on the containers.

• If you are taking indigestion tablets, have the cause of the problem investigated either medically or with a good nutritional therapist.

• Get rid of all your aluminum pans and buy cast iron, enamel, glass and stainless steel. (People used to cook rhubarb (a very acidic fruit) in an aluminum pan to ‘clean’ up the pan, which it did very nicely, as the aluminum was neatly absorbed into the rhubarb.)

•The same applies to acid drinks like colas in aluminum cans. They should be avoided for a number of reasons, including the leaching of aluminum into the drink.

Cadmium

This is an inorganic poison present in tobacco smoke and is a well-known mutagen. It interferes with your zinc levels which are crucial for both male and female fertility. The main answer is for both of you to stop smoking.

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What they are?

Stones made of calcium salts that are produced by and lodge in the kidney. Some stay there and produce no symptoms for years and others pas down the tube (the ureter) that leads from the kidney to the bladder, causing great pain as they do so. Such stones hospitalize more than million North Americans each year. Many millions of others have small stones which pass without being noticed or with only a small amount of abdominal or loin pain.

What causes them?

The fluids that pass through the kidneys contain many different chemicals and minerals. Two of the more plentiful of these are calcium and oxalate, which combine to form calcium oxalate. If there is too little fluid or too much of these salts they begin to settle out and crystallize. More crystals are attracted until, like a snowball, the deposit increases in size and becomes a small, hard stone. This in turn can grow in size to almost fill the cavity of the kidney.

Just what starts off this crystallization process is not known but it is thought that a tiny piece of organic matter such as a bacterium could do so.

The population appears to be divided into two broad categories-stone-formers and non-stone-formers. An analysis of 24-hour urine collections from stone-formers shows that between 40 and 60 per cent has too much calcium in their urine. One study found that stone-formers ate more purine-containing foods and another found that they consumed more meat, fish and poultry and less bread, grains and starch. Research shows that both protein and glucose increase the rate of calcium excretion in the urine and that the glucose effect is exaggerated in stone-formers. This led one researcher to claim that kidney stones are a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism. Adding sugar to the diet increases the amount of calcium put out in the urine.

Another feature of the diet of the countries in which kidney stones are common is the amount of animal protein they eat. Research has found that the more animal protein we eat the more oxalate and calcium we excrete into our urine.

Dietary fibre traps and reduces the absorption of sugars, and wheat bran definitely produces beneficial effects on carbohydrate metabolism and the control of blood sugar. One study found that wheat bran reduced the absorption of calcium from the diet by as much as 50 per cent and that the increased absorption of calcium normally produced by sugar was reduced in those taking bran.

A study in Ireland, where 8 per cent of the population has a kidney stone at some time in their lives, found that the diet of fifty-one stone-formers was different from those who never formed stones. The stone-producers ate less fibre, got fewer carbohydrates from fruit, vegetables and grains and ate more fat and red meats.

An Australian study compared thirty meat-eaters with thirty vegetarians and found that the animal proteins caused an abundance of calcium to be excreted into the urine. They also found that the lower the calcium intake, the higher the oxalate excretion, so clearly reducing calcium intake alone is no good if you have kidney stones-you need to reduce your oxalate level as well.

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