1.        Diarrhea is sometimes caused by infection.  The organism is often a bacteria such as Campylobacter, Shigella or Salmonella.   Parasites such as Giardia lamblia occassionally cause diarrhea.  Giardia is contracted by drinking infected water.  This may occur while camping and drinking from a stream or by using a bad well.  All causes of bacterial or parasitic infectious diarrhea can be treated by antibiotics.

                    2.        Primary hypothyroidism or hypothyroidism occuring on its own affects approximately 30% or women over the age of 60.  It is easily diagnosed with a simple blood test and is treated with thyroid hormone (as a tablet) taken each morning.

                    3.       Adult Onset Diabetes or Type II Diabetes is caused by the body's resistence to the activity of its own insulin.  Body fat increases insulin resistence and directly affects the severity of the diabetic condition.  Loss of body fat will make less present the very process by which a person is diabetic.  Type I Diabetes, usually seen in children, occurs by a different mechanism than insulin resistence.

                    4.        A person must always be particularly concerned over diseases which become well established without symptoms.  These "silent killers" include hypertension, glaucoma, mild anemia, and cancer of the ovary.

                    5.        Iron deficiency usually occurs by the gradual loss of iron from the intestinal tract or the uterus (in women) as the result of bleeding.  If the iron lost as hemoglobin is in excess of that consumed in the diet, a gradual depletion of iron develops in the bone marrow.  The loss of iron stores in the bone marrow results in abnormal red blood cell production with small and variably shaped red blood cells being produced.  Thus, iron deficiency anemia is often one of the first signs discovered in the patient having cancer of the colon.