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For years your doctor, your mom and your friend who goes to the gym multiple times a week have probably been telling you to eat better and exercise more. It’s all you hear on television, in the newspapers and on talk radio. New doctors and dieticians usher in new diets, new fads, and so you’ve made some lifestyle changes – cutting back on your fat and sweets intake, and doing some cardiovascular exercise a few days a week. Despite all this, you still feel burned out, can’t drop those extra pound …

There is no such thing as an ileostomy diet. An ileostomy is not a sickness, so there is usually no health reason for not eating the foods you ate in the past.  If you have a special diet because of heart disease, diabetes, or other health problems, you should ask your doctor about a diet that will work with both the problem and your ileostomy.You may wonder if you will be on a limited diet after surgery.  Here are a few simple guidelines about your diet.  Doctors often have their …

PBEXKRHERCY3Our friends at the Ostomy Help blog have posted about the benefits of both sunlight and Vitamin D in maintaining your overall health.  With the warmth of summer still several months away, we would like to remind our readers of the benefits of taking Vitamin D as well as Calcium, both in the form of daily dietary intake as well as supplements when we can’t get our daily dose of Vitamin D from the natural sunlight we normally do in the middle of winter.As mentioned in the Ostomy Help a …

 When traveling overseas (or any flight lasting more than eight hours), being prepared is key. We all know to bring a good book or gadgets to keep us entertained, but what about support stockings? A recent article in The Wall Street Journal warns of a potentially life-threatening condition called Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), also known as blood clots, in travelers on long flights. The connection between blood clots and travel occurs when the traveler remains immobile for long periods of time. “An …

While many parts of the central and eastern USA have seen near record high temperatures in the past couple of weeks coupled with a very mild weather pattern this winter over the majority of the country, the end of winter may not be closer than we think. Amidst mostly cloudy skies, and temperatures in the low 30s, the famous groundhog "Phil" saw his shadow in the little town of Punxsutawney, Pa last week signaling "six more weeks of winter". Whether or not you put stock into Phil's predictions, h …

Last week we posted about controlling your ostomy output via using irrigation to train your body to empty at specific times.  Today we would like to elaborate as to when irrigation works and how.Obviously different ostomy surgeries produce different varieties of output.  This is largely due to the location of the ostomy and the stoma. One of the colon's functions is to absorb water from the contents of the bowel.  As such, the more colon that is left intact after your surgery, the more solid you …

3UKQS7E9FZXAWhile there are only three major types of ostomy surgeries; Colostomy, Ileostomy, and Urostomy, there are many types of surgeries within those groups.  Each surgery has its own properties, treatments, and side effects.  A Colostomy is of course the surgically created opening of the colon (large intestine) which results in a stoma. A colostomy is created when a portion of the colon or the rectum is removed and the remaining colon is brought to the abdominal wall.  This provides a new …

Nearly a third of middle-aged Americans regularly take a baby aspirin in the hope of preventing a heart attack or a stroke or lowering their cancer risk. But new research shows that aspirin is not for everyone, and that in some patients this so-called wonder drug is doing more harm than good.“I stop a lot more aspirin than I start,” said Dr. Alison Bailey, director of the cardiac rehabilitation program at the Gill Heart Institute at the University of Kentucky. “People don’t even consider aspirin …

Alzheimer’s disease, with its inexorable loss of memory and self, understandably alarms most of us. This is especially so since, at the moment, there are no cures for the condition and few promising drug treatments. But a cautiously encouraging new study from The Archives of Neurology suggests that for some people, a daily walk or jog could alter the risk of developing Alzheimer’s or change the course of the disease if it begins.For the experiment, researchers at Washington University in St. Lou …

Isn’t it interesting that people with normal intact bowel tracts and urinary systems manage odor problems in an acceptable manner in our society? But when disease or trauma strikes, and the person is the owner of an ostomy, the one big concern is the fear of offending society with an odor.What’s an ostomy? Basically an ostomy is a man-made exit site that changes the point of exit from the bottom or back of our body to the front. Our eyes and noses are obviously on the front of our body, which le …