Sunday, December 4, 2011

Recipe For Ginger Beer - A Wonderful Non Alcoholic Beverage

Ginger beer has a completely different recipe than regular beer, it's completely non alcoholic and easy to make, the confusion that people have probably lays in the term beer, it's just a common mistake. Ginger beer may be mixed with beer (usually a British ale of some sort) to make one type of shandy. Anyone can make this recipe and everyone can drink it, even children.

alcoholics anonymous 4th edition

The process involved of making home made ginger beer is quite simple and quick, it is a lot of fun to make even with your (grand)children. Really anyone can make this refreshing recipe. There are a lot of recipes you can find online but the one we will give you is especially popular. It is the recipe we use in our family for a very long time and we all love it. It is simple to make and a lot of fun. So try making it, you will be proud when you taste it.

ALCOHOLIC

What do you need for your own Home Made Ginger Beer

Ingredients and Tools:

When you plan to make your own ginger beer you need the proper tools and ingredients. For our recipe you will need eight pint (plastic) bottles or four quart (plastic) bottles, and bowls where you can make the mixture in.

Basic Recipe

For this most basic home made ginger beer recipe, the required ingredients are as follows:

- 2 oz. fresh ginger

- 1 tsp. cream of tartar

- 2 lemons

- 1 lb. sugar

- 1 oz. yeast.

- 1 gallon boiling water

You can do without the cream of tartar, some of my family members make it with and others without it and both ways taste excellent. You need sugar in this recipe and you really should not replace it with an artificial sweetener because it makes the taste dry in the mouth. Ginger already has a bit of a dry after taste and a sweetener instead of sugar just makes it more dry.

The preparation is easy, You need to wash the lemons and slice them in thick rings, after that the ginger root should be roughly crushed. Mix the ginger, lemon, sugar and cream of tartar in a large bowl.

Pour the boiling water over the top, stir the mixture and let it cool to lukewarm temperature. After that you need to stir in the yeast. You'll need to leave it for 24-48 hours to let the yeast go to work. Once the plastic bottle is very hard, and can't be squeezed, the beer is done. At that time you need to skim off the yeast and the mixture strained. After that your beer can be bottled. Place the bottle in the fridge overnight. This halts the yeast and stops the bottle exploding. Once it is chilled, pour it into a glass and enjoy. When you just follow this simple ginger beer recipe you can't go wrong.

Exploding bottles

Because of the yeast, ginger beer can be a very aggressive fermenter, it produces high pressure very rapidly. So it is better not to bottle ginger beer in glass bottles. You also should not leave the finished ginger beer in a closed up warm place, because this can result in generating enough pressure to explode the lid of.

This is just one, although very popular, recipe for ginger beer. On the internet or at your favorite brewing supply store you can find many more.

Have fun in making this delicious recipe, and enjoy making it together with your children or grandchildren. Together you can make little changes to make it your personal Ginger Beer recipe.

Recipe For Ginger Beer - A Wonderful Non Alcoholic Beverage

ALCOHOLIC

Stop Drinking Now - Medication For Alcohol Abuse and Dependence

Treatment for alcohol dependency typically includes education and family/friends support to stop drinking, medications to reduce potential withdrawal symptoms and stop alcohol cravings, and finally professional counseling to work through relationship issues. Recently introduced to the marketplace is a drug which can help alcoholics quit. It includes a brand name chemical named ReVia [formerly called Trexan], Vivitrolnaltrexone. Vivitrol is taken monthly as an injection into the muscles. Naltrexone is also available in tablet form.

Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist that interferes with the part of the brain involved in producing the pleasure you get from drinking alcohol or other drugs. Basically, Naltrexone is used to reduce the pleasurable effects received from alcohol. This drug can be used alone or it can be combined with other medicines to treat alcohol dependence.

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

Naltrexone works best to help you stop drinking if you also get counseling.1 Most studies show that naltrexone significantly reduces your chance for relapse after you have stopped drinking. But it might not be effective in treating men with severe, ongoing alcohol dependence. Some side effects of Naltrexone include nausea, dizziness, and fatigue. It can also cause headaches and make you feel anxious, sleepy, or nervous.

You might develop liver damage if you have existing liver disease (such as hepatitis, cirrhosis, or liver failure) and take too much naltrexone. If you are addicted to narcotics taking this medicine will cause withdrawal symptoms. To effectively prevent relapse you might need to take naltrexone for several months. Vivitrol, a once-a-month injection of this medicine, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat drinking problems. This form of naltrexone can be useful for people who have a hard time deciding whether or not to take the medicine each day.

Stop Drinking Now - Medication For Alcohol Abuse and Dependence

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Bad Effects of Alcohol

We all know that too much alcohol consumption is very harmful in our body. It can lead to various diseases and even death. So what are the specific effects of alcohol consumption? Below are my short list for not taking alcohol moderately.

• It impairs your behavior and emotions. Your judgment becomes uncontrollable and constitute to loss of memory.

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

Alcohol is a depressant. It is an alternative for relieving pain and to induce sleep because is slows down the central nervous system.

• It can damage your liver and may cause hepatitis and cancer.

• It can effect sexual performance. Too much alcohol can result to impotence and infertility. Some develops breast cancer or breast enlargement.

• Menstrual irregularities and early menopause are the common cause for women who drink immoderately.

• It can cause throat cancer.

• May cause peptic ulcer due to the irritation of the stomach lining.

• Can cause severe headache and dizziness.

• Contribute of having diarrhea

• Can cause colon cancer

• Affects the bones by limiting the body's absorption of calcium making it weaker and brittle.

• Increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Most heart problems are linked to excessive alcohol consumption including hypertension.

• You have lower resistance to infection.

If you analyze the list above, all major organs are affected from alcohol abuse. It is better to drink alcohol moderately and occasionally. Prevent yourself from serious health problems caused by drinking alcohols.

Drinking alcohol can give us relaxation and enjoyment. But we still have to reconsider our health and avoid having diseases caused by this vices. Alcohol must be responsibly taken in moderation and with control. Remember to love yourself by living healthy.

Bad Effects of Alcohol

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

The Sobering Truth About Life As an Alcoholic

The Sobering Truth: What You Don't Know Can Kill You, written by Jeff Herten, M.D., is, indeed, a sobering book - but also an interesting one - about the author's fight for his life through the devastating effects of alcohol addiction. Herten was a highly functional alcoholic during a time period of over 30 years. He drank heavily, yet was perfectly able to get up, go to work and lead a productive and successful lifestyle.

alcoholics anonymous big book

Dr. Herten brings acute awareness to the fact that alcohol is the largest and most harmful social ill in the United States today. Alcohol can affect you emotionally and physically, whether you're personally abusing it or know or love someone who's addicted. It can destroy lives - as it almost destroyed Dr. Herten's life.

ALCOHOLIC

When you read some of the side effects of alcohol consumption, you'll be horrified - and immediately sobered. As Dr. Herten explains in great detail, overuse of alcohol can bring on deadly cancers of the colon, liver, breast and esophagus, rot the bones, corrode the stomach lining, suppress your immune system and erode your memory.

Besides the debilitating physical aspects of alcoholism, there can also be mental problems that arise in your own life or in a loved one who is affected by the disease. The Sobering Truth is a blunt and straightforward account of Dr. Herten's personal battle with alcohol and includes many case studies that will open your eyes to the "sobering" truth about alcohol abuse.

The Sobering Truth explores what happens when an alcoholic first realizes that he or she is in serious trouble, how alcohol changes your personality, eventually makes you drunk and what happens when your body and mind begin to die from acute alcohol poisoning and chronic alcohol poisoning.

Alcoholism can ruin the lives of both old and young. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to the constant brainwashing in the media that drinking alcohol can be sophisticated and make you feel "grown up." One wasted moment can change a teen's life forever, and they need to be made aware of the sobering fact that drinking can bring untold destruction into their lives.

Dr. Herten is extremely qualified to write about this troubling addiction. Not only was he a highly functioning alcoholic -- he also has the medical expertise to explore and report on the physical, psychological and social effects of alcoholism. Whether you have a problem with alcoholism or not, you'll be amazed and shocked at how it can affect - and ruin lives.

The Sobering Truth: What You Don't Know Can Kill You, by Dr. Jeff Herten, may just be the wakeup call you or a loved one needs to turn a life around and return to a path that's ultimately more freeing than the prison you find yourself in when you're addicted to alcohol.

The Sobering Truth About Life As an Alcoholic

ALCOHOLIC

The 3 Main Ways You Can Get Viral Hepatitis

A lot has been written about hepatitis over the past few years. It is a virus which is easily spread and which has developed a bad name because of some of the ways in which it is spread and thus infects people; as well as causing serious damage to one's health.

hepatitis

Hepatitis is an infection of the liver which begins by causing inflammation and, as it progresses on its destructive course, causes damage to, and destruction of, the cells of the liver. There are three specific and distinct viral diseases of the liver, thus they are all categorized as 'hepatitis' from the Greek word hepar meaning liver; and itis, which means inflammation. They are thus categorized as Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.
The manner in which the 3 forms of hepatitis infect humans differs from one form of the disease to another, as explained below.

HEPATITIS

• In the case of Hepatitis A, the virus is found in the excrement of an infected person, and it is transmitted from the infected person to others by way of them drinking water or eating food which has been contaminated by the infected person, who most probably did not wash his or her hands properly.

Hepatitis B is the disease with the worst reputation, because it can be transmitted by drug addicts using dirty needles or by anyone having unprotected sex (although it is not classed as a sexually transmitted disease or STD). Even though this is the case, the majority of people who are infected with Hepatitis B contracted the disease from much more mundane sources. The most common way of becoming infected with Hepatitis B is as a baby at birth, when the infected mother passes the virus on to her baby. Other major sources of infection come from blood transfusions which are not specifically screened for Hepatitis B, or coming into direct contact with the blood of an infected person; medical, dental or tattooing equipment which is not properly sterilized; and even the sharing of personal items like toothbrushes, where traces of blood from bleeding gums may adhere.

• In the case of Hepatitis C, the way the virus spreads from human to human is almost identical to that of Hepatitis B, but the major difference is that a lot of past infections occurred from transplanted organs and blood donations which had not been specifically screened for this virus.

It should be borne in mind that many misconceptions about all 3 forms of hepatitis still abound. In order to attempt to straighten out the facts pertaining to both Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, it must be clearly understood that it is impossible to become infected with these viruses simply by being in close physical contact with an infected person, such as by hugging, kissing or even simply by shaking hands. An infected person who sneezes or coughs near to you cannot infect you with these viruses. One cannot become infected with these two viruses by way of food or water; and one cannot transmit it by breastfeeding one's baby either.

The 3 Main Ways You Can Get Viral Hepatitis

HEPATITIS

Friday, December 2, 2011

It Can Take Up To 20 Years Before Hepatitis C Symptoms Appear

It can take years before hepatitis c symptoms manifest themselves and, many times, they do not appear at all. All three variants of hepatitis, i. E. A, B, and C, cause serious inflammation of the liver. The infection often occurs as a result of certain medications, poisonous toxins in the liver, or drinking large amounts of alcohol. The HCV (Hepatitis C Virus) is responsible for the C type.

If inflammation persists, the disease becomes chronic, which means that it will become a long-term health condition. If this occurs, the patient will likely be vulnerable to serious liver disease that will frequently be fatal. Of most hepatitis cases, 75 percent of infections are caused by the C virus. In the case of liver failure, the patient's only hope is a liver transplant.

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

Like all cases of hepatitis, the C virus is contagious. It is transmitted through blood and the most common mode is via contaminated syringes used by drug addicts. Even somebody who used a syringe for recreational drugs only once is at risk of developing hepatitis C.

Less common causes of transmission are from mother to infant during childbirth, sexual intercourse with an infected partner, or having multiple sex partners. You can contract the disease when you share eating utensils, nail clippers, razors, and also other personal items with an infected person. On the other hand, you will not get hepatitis when you live with an infected person, touch them, or be near them.

The alarming fact in regards to this disease is that 80 percent of individuals with it don't even know they are infected. This is due to the fact that it normally shows no symptoms and, when it does, they might only appear between 10 and 20 years after being infected. Even then, the symptoms might be erratic, vague, and mild. Often, by this time, the liver is already seriously damaged.

Occasionally, symptoms are shown within the early phase of infection. They normally happen 5-12 weeks after exposure to the virus. They can very best be described as typical flu symptoms. Typical ones consist of vomiting, nausea, loss of appetite, diarrhea, pain under the right side of the rib cage, fatigue, pale stools, dark colored urine, and jaundice.

Cirrhosis of the liver can typically occur with chronic cases of HCV. This is a condition that generally affects alcoholics. If cirrhosis develops, further damage occurs simply because tough fibrous tissue replaces the liver's healthy tissues. Over time, this will cause complete liver failure and loss of all the organ's functions. Symptoms of cirrhosis include confusion, hallucinations, vomiting blood, fluid retention, weight loss, persistent jaundice, itchy skin, swelling of the limbs and belly, and sleep disturbances.

As mentioned earlier, hepatitis c symptoms don't always present themselves early, if at all, as a result this disease might be known as a silent killer. Anybody who has it can manage it with some necessary lifestyle changes. A healthy diet is important, as is regular exercise, and medical support. Additionally, alcohol need to be avoided completely. Further liver damage may be prevented if this regime is adhered to. It is also advisable to be vaccinated against the B and A viruses.

It Can Take Up To 20 Years Before Hepatitis C Symptoms Appear

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

How to Win Your Hepatitis Disability Case

Contrary to what many people suffering from Hepatitis believe, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is very familiar with the disease. In fact, SSA considers Hepatitis to be such a potentially serious medical condition that federal law provides that if their hepatitis is advanced, a person can be found disabled based on laboratory test results alone!

Use this article as the cornerstone to developing and winning your social security disability claim.

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS

Step 1 Having a Liver Transplant is not a prerequisite to Winning your Disability Claim

While your hepatitis or liver disease must be at a relatively advanced stage, you can win your disability case even if you have not had a liver transplant.

Step 2 Find a compassionate, supportive Gastroenterologist

This may not come as a surprise for you to learn that gastroenterologists are often not overly compassionate with regard to their patients who have hepatitis. In my practice, I talk weekly with doctors of all medical specialties regarding their patients disability claims. Without trying to stereotype, I must confess that I have talked with many gastroenterologists who appeared to lack bedside manner and patient empathy. This is important, because if your gastroenterologist is not compassionate, he or she will likely also be reluctant to support your disability case.

A supportive gastroenterologist is important for two reasons. First, they are the doctors SSA views as the specialists trained to diagnose and treat hepatitis. Second, SSA gives the most weight to the disability opinions are rendered by a claimant's treating physician. Furthermore, SSA gives even more weight to the disability opinions rendered by a specialist such as a gastroenterologist.

Step 3 You must Undergo the Battery of Tests to Confirm the Hepatitis diagnosis and to Determine the Severity of the Disease

One key to winning your Hepatitis case is good laboratory testing. However, laboratory testing alone is not enough to win your case; once the testing is done, the issue will then be how advanced it the disease is.

The information SSA uses to approve a claim based solely on laboratory testing is contained at Listing 5.05 (Specifically 5.05(F)) of the Administration's criteria for Digestive disorders.

F. Confirmation of chronic liver disease by liver biopsy and one of the following:

1. Ascites not attributable to other causes, recurrent or persisting for at least 3 months, demonstrated by abdominal paracentesis or associated with persistent hypoalbuminemia of 3.0 gm per deciliter (100 ml.) or less; or

2. Serum bilirubin of 2.5 mg. per deciliter (100 mg.) or greater on repeated examinations for at least 3 months; or

3. Hepatic cell necrosis or inflammation, persisting for at least 3 months, documented by repeated abnormalities of prothrombin time and enzymes indicative of hepatic dysfunction.

In my experience, many people win their disability case based on meeting the criteria in #3. The reason is that necrosis or inflammation can be confirmed by liver biopsy, and prothrombin time and liver enzyme abnormalities can be measured by a simple blood panel.

In my opinion, in order to have any chance of winning your hepatitis disability case, you should have a relatively recent liver biopsy performed and have blood work dating back for at least 6 months prior to the date you allege you became disabled.

One benefit many hepatitis claimants have is they usually have undergone all the required medical testing prior to or during the time their disability claim with SSA is pending. Thus, if your Hepatitis is at an advanced and serious stage, winning your claim may be as simple as obtaining (or having SSA obtain) your relevant medical records and submitting them to SSA for review to see if it meets the criteria.

Step 4 If your Hepatitis is not advanced enough to meet the SSA Criteria, you can still win your Disability Claim (i.e. Don't Quit!)

It is important to understand that if your Hepatitis does not meet the criteria set forth above, you can still win your disability case. How? By proving that you are unable to work full-time in an unskilled sedentary (sit down) job.

Alternatively, if you have other medical and/or psychological disorders in addition to Hepatitis, SSA will consider the combined effects of your symptoms and limitations from all your medical diagnoses. It is common for many Hepatitis patients to also have a depressive or anxiety disorder. It is possible for the combination of the Hepatitis and psychological problems to equal in severity the criteria listed above. If SSA deems this to be the case, your claim would likely be approved.

It is also possible for you to be unable to work due to severe side effects from taking medications to treat the Hepatitis. Many people are unable to work during the time and for a significant time thereafter they have received interferon treatment. The side effect of overwhelming fatigue from medication can also help you to equal in severity the criteria listed above.

Step 5 Be Free from any Alcohol or Illegal Substance Abuse

As of 1996, a person cannot be approved for disability benefits based on alcoholism and/or substance abuse. In fact, your claim will be denied by SSA if alcoholism or substance abuse is a material factor in your inability to work. You can be sure SSA will likely scrutinize your disability claim because Hepatitis can be contracted through alcoholism or substance abuse. If either of these conditions is a part of your past, to have your best shot at winning, you should be prepared to show that it is not a material factor in your inability to work.

Remember, one key to winning your disability case is to never quit and keep fighting for the benefits you deserve!

How to Win Your Hepatitis Disability Case

ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS