Reading labels on medicines has been identified as one cause of phantom illnesses ranging from serious diseases, such as cancer, to minor ailments such as a bout of flu – the latest is the rise in the number of cases of swine flu which fortunately, turn out to be nothing more than a sniffle.

One warning sign is when the doctor writes on your prescription, “Oink, Oink, Boom!”, which is the sound a flying pig makes breaking the sound barrier!

Medications are big business in the US with billions of dollars spent on drugs which are prescribed or are available over the counter.  By law, every medication must come with a label which highlights what the medicine is to be used for and possible side effects or contra-indications.  Frequent side effects are quoted as headaches, fatigue, dizziness, feeling sleepy or having difficulty concentrating.  All are vague in their nature but when they are coupled with warnings that some patients may suffer from an increased risk of something more serious, a stroke or cardiac episode, the effect of reading the label combined with an overactive imagination can lead people to believe they have something  more sinister.

The culprit is how the mind works, and psychiatrists have identified a condition termed the “nocebo effect”.  This is the opposite of a placebo – a placebo will make you feel better though it may be a pill containing nothing more medical or therapeutic than powdered milk.  Nocebos actually invoke feelings of ill-health even though there is, in fact, nothing wrong with the patient, but before you think this is quackery, nocebos can be fatal!

One example of the effect of a nocebo is contained in a study conducted in the 1960’s.  Patients were given a glass of sugar water and told that this would make them vomit as part of a procedure to study their stomachs.  Though there was nothing in the glass except sugar and water, 80% of those taking the drink did in fact throw up immediately afterwards.

Research into nocebos has been limited, not least because with a study group, illnesses will be induced because of the power of suggestion.  The Framingham Heart Study followed a group of women over several decades who believed they were part of a high risk group for heart attacks.  The result of the study was that those women who believed they were in a high risk group had a fatality rate four times higher than those women in the same risk category but who were not told of this fact.  Fear played a part in bringing about the condition precisely because they had been informed of the fact.

An Italian study into men and the taking of medication, found that those men who read the label on the medicine which had been doctored to warn of “erectile dysfunction”, reported a far higher incidence of the condition.  Reading the label and especially, reading about the side effects and what the medication is designed to prevent does in fact result in a far greater incidence of the conditions warned of than those who remain blissfully ignorant – a case of “Don’t Read the Label!”

Mark Trumper

My wife for a start, plus my mother-in-law and plus my mother so you can guess I am not going to be arguing with any of them!

Label makers are one of those hang overs from the 1970′s and 1980′s that have never faded away unlike the mullet hairstyle and Duran Duran but today there are a whole new crop of users and with the advent of digital printing, CD and DVD burning the label maker industry has been experiencing a renaissance in the last 5 years.

Digital printing has brought a range of benefits into the home and office; my kids are regularly burning CD’s to share with friends and family while my darling wife has scanned our entire photograph collection and organized it onto a range of disks for viewing on the TV and distribution – I’m not so sure I like the idea of all my high school photographs and obligatory bare butt baby pics being preserved for humanity to drool over in the years to come but I prefer a quiet life now thank you.

Label makers have evolved from the simple Dymo label makers that used a simple piece of adhesive plastic with a clunky letter stamping mechanism which produced labels to mark the cornflakes packet “CORNFLAKES” – we all knew what was in the Tupperware box because it was transparent!

Today, label makers are electronic and link up with powerful image design software to create very individualistic labels for any purpose including full poster sized labels when you want to sell your home before foreclosure or auction off the kids due to earache or open wallet surgery.  Label makers and the labels themselves have adapted to a multitude of uses and designs so you can waterproof label sports and swimming kit, mark up your tools, nuts and bolts to the satisfaction of the most anally retentive and ensure every aspect of your family and working life is marked up to the satisfaction of she (or he) who must be obeyed.

Monarch Price Guns provided by Maverick Labels

Wine itself has been around for over 4,000 years with the Ancient Greeks enjoying a bottle over geometry or calculus, wine jars have also been found in the tombs of the ancient pharaohs from as far back as 3,500 years but just as interestingly, these jars also had wine labels on them.

Famous Wine Labels

The modern wine label came into being with a monk, Perignon who in the 1700’s, hand wrote his monastery’s famous wine labels onto parchment and this was then tied around the neck of the bottle. The manufacturer of glass took off at this time and much more varied shapes, colors and sizes were possible with improvement in glass-making techniques and this, coupled with vastly increased trading opportunities increased the consumption and variety of wine. There was a desperate need to tell the customer what they were about to drink.

Even back in the 1700 and 1800’s, marketing was necessary to sell your products and wine was no exception and while the bottle remained fairly standardized a great deal of flair was exercised in the design of the wine label. Older more established vineyards opted for a simpler style with less flowery design – after all they had a name and brand which by then had been around for a few hundred years; more recent labels had to do something to make up for the lack of history and this is where wine label design started to come into its own.

Here’s a good modern example with Baron Rothschild, the youngest of five brothers who opted to avoid working in the family bank – instead he bought a vineyard in France and started Mouton Rothschild which today is a relatively famous wine and brand. Reading the label will give the impression he has been around for a few hundred years replete as it is with the Baron’s coat of arms and crest – actually, his vineyard is based on someone else’s and he developed the brand to give an ‘old’ established feel using the wine label; in fact, his vineyard and brand have been around for about 40 years.

More custom wine labels.

Fortunately, the overwhelmingly vast majority of missing children are located and very quickly with the bulk of cases of missing children resulting from losing a child at the store or fair through to more involved family squabbles and disputes.  Children are generally not exposed to a significantly higher risk of coming to harm in such cases but the impact upon parents and guardians cannot be underestimated and this is vastly increased for the child in question.

Locating a missing child and reuniting them with their family is an urgent and desperate necessity and yet so many children have nothing to identify them, not even a telephone number for home.

Identity bracelets provide a convenient and secure method of ensuring your child can be identified and more importantly has contact information for you or whoever is caring for the child in question.  Many identification kits are available as part of a package of missing child prevention programs run in tandem with government agencies and voluntary organizations.  Identifying your child and getting in contact with the parents is only part of the equation when it comes to reuniting a child with their family; children who have medical conditions for instance requiring regular or sporadic intervention such as diabetes or epilepsy can be carried at all times.

Fortunately, ensuring your child can be identified and you can be contacted immediately they are located is something that you are not likely to need in practice.  Missing children are a common feature in our psyche simply because of the huge apparatus that exists to locate missing children when this emotional and traumatic incident occurs, however it is a rare occurrence that does not affect most children while growing up though the concern is whether it will be our own child who is lost or missing next.

Post provided by Maverick Label, a custom labels printing company