MEDICAL MATTERS

[PanBiker]

Mine came out at 91, that will do me, I doubt if I will be able to walk up hills by then.

[Stanley]

You will Ian but more slowly......

[Tizer]

The news media are pushing the story this morning that flies carry many types of bacteria and the public health people didn't know this. As usual they are twisting the story and misleading the public. The real story is that a group of scientists have employed the latest highly sensitive techniques (1) to confirm and provide much more detail to what we already knew - that flies are a major vector of infection, (2) to use genomics to show exactly which bacterial species are carried, and (3) to find out which part of a fly's body carries which type of bacteria. An example of what we couldn't have known before this work is that some flies carry Helicobacter, the bacterial species responsible for peptic ulcers. Here is a more scientific news report of the research: LINK

[Stanley]

No wonder most of us instinctively hate them! Nowhere near as many of them about today.....

[Stanley]

See THIS for a disturbing report on the record rise in the incidence of Scarlet Fever. What perturbed me was the phrase 'easily cured by administering antibiotics'. The question arises, how long will this hold true?

[Wendyf]

This weekend you can watch "The Widowmaker" movie for free via The Fat Emperor's website. This is a film which looks at how and why a cheap and simple scan which can accurately predict risk of coronary heart disease has been suppressed for years....

http://www.thefatemperor.com/blog/

[Sue]

No wonder most of us instinctively hate them! Nowhere near as many of them about today.....

We get hundreds of flies in France. I regularly sweep up 20-30 each day. Its a very rural area, warm and humid. We have fly papers up in the kitchen, always covered, and sticky fly killers on windows and the walls of the kitchen. When we eat we have to have a fan on or light a citronella candle to keep them at bay.

[Marilyn]

I take it you don't have insect/fly screens on windows/doors?!
We occasionally get ONE fly that may follow someone in. Certainly not a daily occurrence!
Gosh, couldn't live with flies...

[Stanley]

Neither could I Maz.... BTW, I put the bus stop pic up in the jokes topic.

[Sue]

I take it you don't have insect/fly screens on windows/doors?!
We occasionally get ONE fly that may follow someone in. Certainly not a daily occurrence!
Gosh, couldn't live with flies...

No, no one in France has them as far as I know. I wouldn’t even know where to buy one or the stuff to make one. In the summer we live with the windows and doors wide open unless it gets very hot, then it is windows open and exterior blinds shut. We don’t get many flies in Rochdale. I suppose the french don’t bother because from April to September they spend most time out of doors anyway, eating most meals outside. They stay out until 10 or 11 at night. From September to April they seem to hibernate, you hardly see anyone .

[Stanley]

Sue, you'd think they would have them, if not for the flies but the mossies! There are lots of them in Bruges, I know because I got badly bitten there one night because the hotel hadn't warned me about them. I woke with a face like a football! The cause there is the canals. You'd think someone had addressed the matter.....

[Stanley]

Maz is going to love this..... I was pretty certain that I had strapped my finger up a bit too tightly so I decided to take the strapping off and relieve the pressure. It wasn't so tight it was stopping circulation, just annoying me. I got all the tackle together and very carefully took the plasters off washing in cold water as I went. I was surprised when part way through I had some fresh bleeding from the bottom of my finger but it stopped and I got the horrible sticky plasters off without doing any damage. Here'[s what I found!



There was so much blood about yesterday that I hadn't seen this. I cleaned it as best I could, as you can see I had had the sticky part of the plaster on the cut, no wonder it was nattering me. I washed it in TCP, put on two non adhesive dressings, one on top and one underneath, gently strapped them in place with low adhesive micropore strapping and put a tubular bandage over the lot with another layer of the micropore to stabilise it.



Quite tidy for one hand even though I say it myself. The bleeding hasn't started again and it's much more comfortable. I would be quite happy leaving it at this but the cut is much deeper than I thought and it's a long while since I had my last tetanus booster so I thought common sense should prevail. I am going into the surgery at 11:30. The nurse will have a look at it and at my jabs record and give me a tetanus booster if she thinks it necessary. She can give me another dressing unless she feels out of her depth. If that's the case it's the Rainhall Centre.
So I'm using my head and looking after myself! I'll report later......

[Marilyn]

That is actually worse than I thought, as that is from the underside and you showed the topside previously.
Nasty!
It is going to take some time to heal...assuming the tendons are in place...
Mind you, colour looks good, so that is a plus. I think you have been lucky.

[Marilyn]

May I add that you did the right thing by washing it and sealing it.
( my husband would have wrapped it in his gammy hankies that he had been blowing his nose on all day!)

[PanBiker]

Good plan Stanley, better safe than sorry, your hands are precious and you don't need hampering in the shed.

[Stanley]

Worse than I thought as well Maz, I hadn't noticed the underside because of the blood.
I'd be quite happy to leave it alone now and let it heal, no worries about a scar and all the movement is there, must have missed the tendons..... As you say, I was lucky it wasn't worse.
Very comfortable now.....
12:15. Back from a very instructive visit to see Sam the Practice Nurse. She checked my tetanus history and told me that they reckon that anyone who has had five jabs is protected for life and I have had seven that are on my records, you can add the army as well. So no jab in the bum! She was impressed with my dressing that I put on this morning, also impressed with the hole in my finger but she agrees with me it's clean and healthy looking and all it needed was three modern butterflies to drag the edges in together, an iodine soaked gauze dressing and a sticky Vaseline one on top of that to stop it drying out, some padding and topped off with another tubular bandage. Surprisingly, she has never seen a leather finger stall before and thoroughly approved. She agrees with me, leave it alone for at least seven days and then do another lighter dressing. If it starts throbbing or going green shout for help! So that's that done and dusted and I am reassured about the tetanus. Good result. I shall sit still for as long as it takes!
By the way I told her I was certain that ragged tears like this heal faster than clean cuts and she said she'd never thought about it but suspected I was right. Down to my body now......

[Big Kev]

T2D Reveresal BBC News Story

[Wendyf]

Mmm, a lot of hype about this today. It isn't new, it's based on research done by Professor Taylor at Newcastle University and Dr Michael Mosely's 8 week blood sugar diet is an adaptation based on 800 calories a day of real food rather than drinks. I suppose it's one step up from having a gastric band fitted, which also puts diabetes into remission. You have to ask how sustainable it is and how many people will be able to keep the weight off once back on a "normal" diet. Nope, I'll stick to a delicious, filling low carb diet any day!
I wonder if the charity Diabetes UK will be involved in marketing the drinks??

[Stanley]

That was how it struck me as well Wendy. Mind you. I have an aversion to crash miracle diets! I agree with you. Do you remember the obscure and unsupported scientist who said that reducing fat round the Pancreas was a key factor and was ridiculed?

[Stanley]

As far as one can tell, my finger is mending well. I had a bit of inflammation but that's normal within reason, it's part of the healing process, boosting the supply of blood to the site. (How does the body know to do this?) I took the soiled outer plaster off and replaced it with clean micro porous strapping. I am still being very careful not to knock it and will leave it strictly alone until at least Monday. The worst cut on the bottom of the finger has given no trouble at all, it's the small one on top that reached the bone which continues to feel tender. I have full movement as far as the plaster allows and think I may have been lucky and missed the tendons. It could have been a lot worse!

[Tizer]

I have an aversion to crash miracle diets! I agree with you.

`Top five celeb diets to avoid in 2018, according to dieticians' LINK
Don't try the Katie Price one Stanley or you might end up with a chest like hers!

[Wendyf]

I don't know about the others but to condemn the Pioppi and ketogenic diets as "celebrity" is ridiculous. Real, unprocessed healthy food.

[PanBiker]

Our lad Dan turned off to anything other than raw vegetables and fruit when he was around 5 years old. He ate everything raw and kept it up for over 10 years until he went to college and uni. He had no childhood illnesses and perfect teeth, not a single filling. The only illness I can remember him having during his raw period found him taking to his bed when he was about 15 convinced that he was going to die. It turned out after a quick Q and A session with the stricken lad that he had contracted a bout of the common cold! Raw spuds, turnips or any other veg or fruit that he took a fancy to didn't do him any harm and he was 6' 2" by the time he was 16 so it didn't affect his development. He put a bit of weight on when he was at college with junk food lunches but lost it all when he went to uni on a subsistence student existence of pasta and beans. First thing we used to do on our visits to Leamington was buy him a trolley full of proper food, no different to many other uni kids parents I reckon. He never carried any extra weight again.

[chinatyke]

I guess he ate a much healthier diet than most of us and his lack of teeth decay were proof.
I love raw turnip which we eat regularly. "Good for the throat" my wife says. Every food seems to be good healthwise for something here! Very true - we are omnivores and need food. I don't like raw spuds but other than that we eat many raw vegetables in salads.

[Stanley]

I suspect that in the beginning, cooking food was just a way of tenderising it. We have now turned it into conceptual art. I hate these Masterchef programmes with their twee presentations. I like some veggies raw but I think I'd draw the line at turnips and spuds!