Of the five senses, the skin’s sense of touch has a peculiarly vivid and explosive quality and differs from other sensations in arousing response. It is the most extensive sense, as the sensory organs of touch are distributed all over the body in the skin and the adjoining mucous membrane. The sensation of touch is of two types—active and passive. If you touch your partner the sensations you feel are active sensations. On the other hand, if your partner touches you, it is termed a passive sensation. Both types of touch sensation are necessary to enhance sexual excitement and pleasure and lift sex from the level of the humdrum to the sublime. However, to feel these sensations normally or to be sensuous, the sensory centre in the brain where these sensations are interpreted should be free and uninhibited. As I shall describe in the next section, it is very easy to inhibit or brake the sensations from childhood. If your sensory motor is braked from childhood, you can never respond freely and totally in sex: you are like a car trying to accelerate with the hand-brakes on. But you can learn to release the brakes, even if your parents have anaesthetised you sensually. Robert Browning wisely advises:
‘You should not take a fellow eight years old and make him swear to never kiss the girls’
Touching plays an important role in the normal, well-balanced emotional growth of babies. Infants thrive on cuddles and caresses. Without contact their personalities become deprived and warped. Harry Harlow in a series of experiments isolated the young ones of monkeys from their parents, thus depriving them of early childhood experiences like touching and fondling by their mothers or playing with other baby monkeys and watching adult monkeys having sex. When the secluded monkeys grew up and attempted sex they were very clumsy. In another experiment, Dr. James Prescott of the National Institute of Health, USA, demonstrated that young infants, when deprived of sensory experiences like touching and fondling, grew up mentally retarded. It is customary in our culture for mothers to hug and kiss their daughters, but not the sons for fear that they may grow up into ‘sissies’.
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Bleeding gums are usually a symptom of gingivitis. Gingiva is the medical term for the gums, and it is means inflammation. Some people have severe bleeding of the gums, severe pain, and severe gingival disease with rapid tooth loss over a period as short as two or three months. This rapid loss of the structure that supports the teeth is called periodontitis. Periodontitis and gingivitis both are more frequent and severe in people with HIV infection.
The cause of gingivitis and periodontitis is not clearly established. Most dentists think the cause is the same bacteria normally present in the mouth which have, for some reason, gone out of control. Like other conditions, gingivitis is also common in people without HIV infection, but it is more frequent and more severe in those with the infection.
Care must be taken to distinguish gum bleeding caused by gingivitis from bleeding caused by the low numbers of blood platelets that are a part of ITP, which is an entirely different complication of HIV infection. The distinction between the two is easily made by a blood test that counts the number of platelets, or by a consultation with a dentist who will identify diseases of the teeth and gums.
For gingivitis and periodontitis, the treatment is usually mouthwashes containing germicides. One such mouthwash is chlorhexidine in a concentration of 0.12 percent, known as Peridex. Another is povidone-iodine, or Betadine. Both can be purchased in most pharmacies; Peridex requires a prescription, Betadine does not. Chlorhexidine has a high alcohol content that can cause pain in people with advanced gum disease. In this case, it is probably more appropriate to apply povidone-iodine, which is less painful, for several days and then switch to chlorhexidine mouthwashes when they can be better tolerated. For people who have extensive periodontitis, the dental procedure usually recommended is removal of plaque by planing and scaling, a procedure done by dentists. In many cases, antibiotic treatment with metronidazole (Flagyl) is also recommended.
These treatments should be accompanied by rigorously doing what your dentist has always told you to do: use dental floss, brush regularly with a soft toothbrush, and see a dentist regularly.
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By trial and experience man has identified a number of compounds around him and using them for cure of certain illnesses. Amongst these toxicological properties of certain oils and fatty acids have received a considerable attention over a period of 100 years. Clark first noted antimycotic properties of fatty acids and Kiessel reported that the antifungal property of an oil is increased with an increase in the fatty acid chain length. Later, studies by Linderberg and Linderberg supported the above view. The antimycotic nature of certain fatty acids and their wide occurrence particularly in the preening glands in birds and sebaceous glands in human beings have prompted interest in using oils and fats as natural antimicrobial agents. Kitajima and Kawamura reported that unsaturated fatty acids are more inhibitory to fungi than their corresponding saturated fatty acids. While Wyss et al. noted an increased inhibitory effect of fatty acids with both chain length and degree of saturation.
The wide application of vegetable oils in hair cosmatics could be a possible explanation for this. A number of recent reports including a reviewed information by J.J. Kabara have indicated antimicrobial property in various oils. Jain and Agrawal (1 992) have reported cent per cent inhibition in the spore germination of Aspergillus flavus, Absidia corymbifera, Penicillium nigricans and Candida albicans in the presence of mustard and coconut oils.
Essential oils and perfumes represent another group of oils which are mostly terpenes. Most of them are the secondary metabolites or by products of plant metabolism. The importance of these compounds was well recognised even in the ancient time. Our record shows that the studies on germicidal properties in essential oils were started in the second decade of present century as is evident from the publications made by De and Subramanayam. Since then a number of reports have appeared on the antimicrobial and antifungal properties of essential oils of various plants. Besides these some of reports have indicated inhibitory properties of some essential oils against dermatophytes and related keratinophilic fungi. Jain and Agrawal (1978) reported very high antifungal activity in the essential oils of Amomum subutatum against some keratinophilic fungi. Goutam et al. tested antimycotic properties of the essential oils of Angelica archangelica, Artemisia vestita, Mentha arvensis and Mentha piperita against six strains of Nannizzia (member of Microsporum gypseum complex) and found a variety of responses of these fungi against test oils. There are several other reports which indicate that the essential oils from different plants differ in their toxicity against different test fungi. A well planned screening programme to test antimicrobial and antifungal properties in the essential oils of different plants can be of much help to develop certain chemotherapeutants for the control of fungal diseases in men and animals.
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