MEDICAL MATTERS

[Cathy]

Wendy, my heart goes out to what Colin and you have been thru. Maybe you were let down locally because Colin’s needs are specialised ones, not your average GP knowledge etc. Glad you are both feeling relieved.

[Tizer]

I'm glad to hear the positive news about Col, Wendy. The long delays like the scan results are so common now and it's terrible for people with serious illnesses. I'm thankfully troubled by only minor ones but everything has long delays. Also I'm being batted between different hospital outpatient clinics and keep having to repeat what I was told by a different practitioner at previous visits.

[Tripps]

I find it is interesting to compare and contrast a GP of today with one in say the 1950's. Medicine has developed so much and treatments too, that there is really no comparision. The amount of knowledge needed by today's doctor must be hugely more - and the patients then were ill informed, and largely respectful and deferential - not reaching for Google.

I wonder how the likes of Drs Wilfred Pickard and Arthur Morrison would cope in today's medical environment.It's not like this today Doctors

PS Just read the whole of that link. Quite a treasure, with people who no longer contribute. We don't get posts like that nowadays. I wonder what 'Dr Pic' would think of living from eating just days old reheated vegetables.

[Stanley]

I read it too David. As you say, good stuff and a lot of it rescued from my personal archives after the site failed and we lost so much content in 2012.
I think John Wilfred would have been OK with my eating habits. As I remember it there were some eccentricities in his,
PS. I had cheese for supper last night and so far my knee is pain free. I shall repeat the dose tonight and see what happens.....

[Tizer]

Another advance in surgery..
`'A brain tumour the size of a tennis ball came out my eyebrow'' LINK

[Cathy]

Sometimes you read headlines that are hard to get your head around.
Amazing what they can do.

[Stanley]

Quite amazing Peter. Well done the surgeons for realising it was possible. Isn't it good that we have evidence from a patient who has had both this method and the original one and can give us an objective opinion. Night and day she said..... I'll bet it was!
No noticeable effects from another cheese and tomato supper. My knee continues to be pain free. Gott sei dank!

[Tizer]

One thing that isn't mentioned is that those of us, both young and old, who had lived during sugar rationing went on a sugar binge when it came off rationing! So the `experiment isn't as simple as it's being made out to be. The binging probably accounted for a spike in childhood tooth decay...
`Sugar in first 1,000 days linked to poor health later' LINK
The researchers took advantage of a "natural experiment" which took place as the UK recovered from World War Two and food-rationing came to an end. When the rationing of sugar and sweets concluded in September 1953, average sugar consumption in the UK population went from around 41g a day (10 sugar cubes) to 80g (20 sugar cubes) almost immediately.

[Stanley]

I'm not sure about binging Peter, I know that we couldn't afford it!

[Tizer]

I'm not talking about bags or cubes of sugar but all the sweets we used to suck continuously as kids, like kalye (sp.?), sherbet etc.

[Wendyf]

We must have got through a couple of bags of sugar a week at our house in the 1950s. Breakfast cereals, especially Weetabix, would have at least 2 dessert spoons of sugar piled on top, 2 teaspoons in every cup of tea, oranges dipped in sugar, banana and sugar sandwiches. I'm sure it was considered to be good for us!

[Tizer]

I remember as a very young child my grandma used to give me sweetened evaporated milk spread on a slice of bread when mum & dad were out at work and I was left at her cottage! That memory prompted me to look it up on Google and I found this detailed article from 1956: `The Development of the Evaporated Milk Industry
in the United States' LINK [Then click on View PDF]

[Tripps]

Might that have been condensed rather than evaporated milk? That was thicker and sweetened already, so would spread on a butty better, and make the scouse delicacy -
From The Liverpool Echo -

Connie Onnie' Butty
For a generation, 'Connie Onnie' butties were a staple part of childhood. Consisting of condensed milk on white bread, for some, this was the closest thing you could get to a sweet treat. Many children who grew up during and in the years that followed the WWII will have memories of this unusual butty - with younger generations not even being able to imagine trying it. On Facebook, John Sandra Ellis said "Connie Onnie naughty Tommy eating Nellies toffee sticks" and Joyce Browne commented "Yuk. my dad used to eat them."

[Stanley]

My mother used to give us condensed milk butties and she mad salad cream using condensed milk and it was lovely. I have tried to make it but never succeeded.
I know it's a long way from medical matters but mentioning war-time treats has reminded me of a recipe for making pastry that I got from a farmer's wife. She said they had so much cream about pastry was always made by mixing SR flour with cream until it was the right consistency to roll out. They added salt for savoury pastry and sugar if it was for sweet. Try it, it makes the best short pastry ever and never fails!

[Tizer]

Might that have been condensed rather than evaporated milk?

It seems that `sweetened evaporated milk' came to be called `sweetened condensed milk' and then shortened to just `condensed milk'. From the article...

In 1853 Gail Borden applied for a U. S.
patent on his idea of preserving milk in a
semi-fluid state after evaporation in vacuo. This
followed some 10 years of experimentation. In
August, 1856, he received patents from the
United States and England. Although the claim
of the patent granted Gail Borden was that of
"producing concentrated sweet milk by evapo-
ration in vacuo without the admixture of sugar
or other foreign matter," Mr. Borden's com-
mercial development was in the manufacture of
sweetened condensed milk. Equipment design
has greatly changed, but the principle of the
vacuum evaporator developed by Gail Borden
is still a foundation of the industry. Gall Bor-
den's original vacuum pan can be seen today
at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

[Stanley]

Still in respite as far as knee pain is concerned. I have not identified a cause for the improvement beyond the fact that walking in moderation doesn't seem to be a bad thing.....

[Tizer]

After many weeks of constant mist and fog we were relieved to have a few days of blue skies and some sunshine but we're now back in the fog and mist. There's going to be some bad health consequences due to lack of vitamin D as a result of the lack of sunshine.

I've been reading a book (Here Comes the Sun) by the biologist Steve Jones and he relates how the sun has influenced human evolution and our health. It's written for a general readership but I'm enjoying some of the facts and figures and his anecdotes. He describes how the role of sun in health was recognised even in ancient times and how more recently people began to wonder about the mechanism involved, especially its ability to heal tuberculosis patients. Experiments with rats showed that those kept in sunlight stayed healthy but those without sun became ill. Then they found that feeding skin from rats that had been in the sun to the sun-less rats cured them. That led to further experiments that showed an active chemical could be extracted from the skin and eventually it was purified and called Vitamin D. At the same time other scientists followed up a long held belief that eating fish could have similar effects to sunlight and they found that the active chemical was the same one and it resided in the liver. And, as they say, the rest is history!

[Tripps]

You're a bit late to the party for Vitamin D Tiz.

Dr Nurse John Campbell, and his eminent medical guests have been pushing it for ages. I think Professor Dalgleish is a fan. Google him and be impressed.

Here's an example Vitamin D one of many I could have posted.

There is now no need to eat rat skins - even a double strength tablet is available from Aldi without prescription for about 2 pence per dose. Aldi Vit D 250mg No billions for the pharmaceutical companies.

I read that supplements during the non Winter months aren't necessary, as sufficient for our needs is naturally obtained from just sunlight, but can be beneficial when the sun isn't about. I think it is also involved in the disease Rickets which is rarely seen any more. I remember from my childhood, that 'bandy" legged people were once quite common, but never seen these days.


Perhaps people that dressed in "clogs and shawl" were more at risk, and nowadays perhaps ladies who choose to cover themselves from head to toe in black, may also be.No one will ask that though.

PS Make of it all what you will. One day we are told to avoid the sun at all costs, and cover up to avoid skin cancer, the next we learn we are not getting enough of this wonderful sunshine. One can't help thinking that the aim is for us to be constantly confused, and a little frightened. That is tending towards 'conspiracy theory' and must be avoided though.

I keep these next to the computer in the winter - little downside I'd guess.

Vit D 125mg.JPG

[Tizer]

You're a bit late to the party for Vitamin D Tiz.

Not really, I was just passing on some interesting snippets from Steve Jones's book. I was on regular `malt and cod liver oil' as a kid and was selling cod liver oil as a trainee dispenser at Boots in the 1960s. Oh, and I've always taken a multivitamin tablet and an omega-3 fish oil capsule every day since they became available. Cheap insurance!

[Tripps]

I've been looking into dosage. All a bit confusing. My tablets are 12.5 mg which I find equals 500 International units. The instructions say "one tablet a day, and do not exceed the stated dose".

I've seen a video from a Blackburn Doctor on Campbell's site, who says he takes 40,000 I.U.'s ' per week! That's 80 of my tablets, or more than ten times the dose recommended on the label.

Doctor Google is a mixed blessing.

There is also mention of side effects of large doses, which involve taking Vitamin K.

[Stanley]

I became aware a while ago about the benefits to be obtained from Vitamins D3 and K2 and take it for insurance. I believe that as you get older you need supplements more. As Peter says, good insurance!
My morning routine is to take a full range of fish oil and vitamin supplements. Not expensive and so far it seems to be working well.

[Wendyf]

I take a daily 4000 IU capsule of D3.

[Stanley]

Have a look at the relationship between D3 and K2 Wendy...... Could be important.

[Cathy]

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IMG_3811.jpeg

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Even with all the sunshine that we have here in Australia, I take 2 x 1000IU Vitamin D3 tablets daily, as recommended by my doctor.
(And 2 x Odourless Triple Strength Fish Oil 3000, and 2 x 500mg Vitamin C tablets daily.)
.

[Stanley]

And very wise too Cathy.
My motto about supplements is when in doubt take them. The dangers inherent in too many supplemental vitamins is far less than the consequences of not having enough.