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This post is based on a bit of selfish research really. You see I'm 20 weeks pregnant now and last night I experienced tear jerking pain in my lower back while I was resting in bed. I know as the baby gets bigger and everything starts moving around different areas are feeling pressure they don't normally. And apparently this means different nerves get squeezed. I want to know how I can remedy this, or at least understand more about why it happens.

Brian, my husband, bought me one of those full body snuggle pillows for me to use while in bed. This is something which is supposed to help alleviate slumber troubles and aches and pains.

Sciatica is a general term for pain originating from the sciatic nerve. Sciatica is a symptom of a disorder that causes mild to sharp and sometimes excruciating pain. Patients have described sciatic pain as mildly disturbing to burning, aching, deep, and similar to a sudden bolt of lightning. I believe this is different than the pain I felt in my lower back, but I did experience this nerve pain last week and eventually something must have shifted because the pain subsided after a couple of days.

Okay, so regardless of the reasons for pregnancy back pain, what are the solutions?

I admit warm baths are helpful. In fact if I could take a warm bath each day it would be a blessing. Unfortunately after i take a bath I always feel the need to take a shower later in the evening to actually get clean. Our bath tub doesn't fill up with much warm water though and I'm tempted to boil a pot and bring it up to the tub with me for refills.

You should avoid sitting for long periods of time and you should avoid standing for long periods of time. If you are standing then make sure you have supportive shoes. If you are sitting you should make sure your seat is supportive and firmer is better than softer. (This is true with your mattress as well).

Avoid lifting heavy things AND avoid reaching for thing on high shelves. Oy vey, all these things to avoid. And see with Christmas just having passed there are a lot of things I feel like I need to do and one of those is some serious cleaning. Little bits at a time though, if you can't avoid something at least pace yourself, right?

Do any of you have other helpful tips?

Labels: back pain, pregnancy

My husband and I have had stem cell discussions recently and it hasn't gotten heated or been because of some controversy we've heard about in the news. It has been based on the fact that I am pregnant and we are being asked about donating the umbilical cord or having it saved for our own purposes should we ever need it. In fact at one of the first visits we had with the gynecologist she asked us to begin thinking about it because of the benefits of saving your babies cord blood stem cells.

Stem cell research does not have to be a terrifying topic, I wish it didn't have to start out that way. Knowing you can safely preserve stem cells from a newborn's umbilical cord should be reassuring.

One of the tricky parts in making this decision is the cost factor. Preserving the cord for yourself is extremely expensive. There are ways to donate the cord for anyone to be able to use should they need it isn't as expensive.

This is why organizations like Cryo-Cell have come into existence, because they understand both the benefits of research which comes with having stem cells and they understand the financial aspects of saving the cells.

U-Cord, Cryo-Cell's stem cell cord blood preservation service. Gift cards for this service are the ideal gift for family and friends who are expecting a baby in the near future and want to preserve vital stem cells that are collected from their baby's cord blood. Stems cells found in cord blood are known to treat over 75 diseases including leukemia, anemia, lymphoma, diabetes and cerebral palsy. A Cryo-Cell holiday gift certificate is the ideal gift to be given by co-workers, grandparents, aunts and uncles to welcome the arrival of a newborn.

For most families, banking their baby's cord blood offers peace of mind that should there be a need, their family's stem cells are readily available. I bet you never thought you could help give the gift of peace of mind. =o)
This is a sponsored post.

Labels: stem cells

The myth is thought to have arisen through a flawed interpretation of a vaguely scientific experiment by the US military in the 1950s. In those studies, volunteers were dressed in Arctic survival suits and exposed to bitterly cold conditions. Because it was the only part of their bodies left uncovered, most of their heat was lost through their heads.

The face, head and chest are more sensitive to changes in temperature than the rest of the body, making it feel as if covering them up does more to prevent heat loss. In fact, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other. If the experiment had been performed with people wearing only swimming trunks, they would have lost no more than 10% of their body heat through their heads, the scientists add.

That makes sense to me. If you only had a hat on you would certainly lose all your body heat from everywhere else.

The most important organ in your body, your heart, will be kept on its temperature as long as possible. And that's why your legs and arms get cold first starting with cold toes and fingers. Then your brain, and finally the rest of your body.

Labels: body temperature, heat, myth

Researchers at UC-Berkeley have found that kids from low-income backgrounds demonstrate "a noticeably lower level of activity in the prefrontal cortext, the part of the brain that is important for creativity and problem solving."

From study co-author Robert Knight:

"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult.

"We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."

I'd like to know what other similarities these children have, because I just cannot believe this is the only correlation. Could it just be a coincidence, is it because these children haven't been stimulated as much? It's all interesting to me, but at the same time I find it hard to believe that "status" could cause such a difference in brain function.

The frontal lobes are considered our emotional control center and home to our personality. So does this mean children who come from a low-income home have trouble with their emotions? Maybe because their parents are stressed about finances or their parents aren't around much because they are out trying to make ends meet?

So why doesn't the study say anything about the impact of parental involvement or lack thereof? One of the most common characteristics of frontal lobe damage is difficulty in interpreting feedback from the environment. So would this mean with proper behavioral therapy or stimulation that they would be able to learn how to better interpret things? It just seems like something is missing from this research. That's just me though. =o)

Labels: brain, status

I'm currently reading a book about autism which is written by the mother of a child who has autism. She mentioned all the research she has done to better understand the disorder. So of course in her studies she came across the famous H.M.

H.M. died this past Tuesday, December 2, 2008, at the age of 82. His real name was revealed after his death: Henry Gustav Molaison. A lot of what we now know about memory, we learned from studies on H.M. H.M. suffered from epilepsy and his entire life became a study; an experiment in real-time.

Epilepsy is something which many children with autism have been wrongly diagnosed with first. This is because the workings of the brain are very much a mystery even today with the advancements in modern medicine. In the book I'm reading the little boy had seizure after seizure and was diagnosed with epilepsy but the epilepsy medicine wasn't working and the neurologists (at first) were useless.

I am sure there are many connections and theories about how epilepsy and autism are related. How they can go hand in hand, but it is very clear that is a child has autism that treating just epilepsy will not help.

Experiments in the last century found that by breathing carbon dioxide (CO2), an epileptic patient boosted acid levels in the brain and could terminate a fit, although the molecular switch for achieving this was veiled in mystery. So if there is an oxygen overload of some kind could it cause neurological damage or just a moment of euphoria? I know there are places with actual oxygen bars where people go to purposefully inhale pure oxygen.

Further studies are in the works for finding the exact area of the brain which registers these balances and how to administer a drug which will stop the process and therefore stop a seizure. I wonder if this new research will also benefit people with autism. It will be interesting to see the correlations if there are any.

Labels: autism, epilepsy, neurology