h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh Teuchter -

Sig. S. has had arthritis urica for twenty years and now is on his way to arthrose. A diet avoiding citrus, tomato, funghi, red meat, red wine and other products with a particular protein has kept the au down and some horse pills containing glucosamin has helped fighting the effect of the arthrose.

My point being, as others had said, diet, vitamins and other kinds of products are useful.

Me, I broke my little toe three weeks ago, and I never had time to do much about it. I don't limp anymore, and now it doesn't hurt too much - but still - I think I qualify for the group.

[GDZ]

How am I supposed to conquer the backlog if I wake up to 60+ more posts??

Teuchter, so sorry to hear about your RA. I hadn't realised gold injections were obsolete, either.

On the subject of movies, I watched The Queen last night. Of course Helen Mirren was magnificent. But what, I wonder, was the point of the subtle character assassination of the Prince of Wales?

Only 60?

Sorry to hear about your hands, Teuchter. Wings crossed for medication-related relief.

>>Keanu had to wander about the place looking pretty but puzzled (much like in B&T) which, to put it kindly, plays to his strengths.<<

oh, that's good. Yeah, he's not exactly the brightest crayon in the box, is he now? Or at least that's the way he comes across on screen. A friend of mine lives near him in LA, and says he's actually fairly well-spoken and intelligent in person. I don't know. He looks like my first boyfriend, so I'll aways rather have a soft spot for him looks-wise.

Teutcher, there are lots of good alternatives out there to massive steroids and pain meds. A combination of traditional and alternative medicine works wonders for my grandfather.

You know, I've always been bothered by that phrase, "traditional medicine." No offense to our resident doctor, but when his medical forefathers were wandering around killing people because they didn't understand germ transmission and thus, didn't bother to wash their hands, the true traditional practioners, the village wise women and midwives, were being tried as witches.

I had a long discussion with the this morning about the pros/cons of various meds and have decided to try the one with fewest side-effects first. This is the anti-malarial - or Not Gin & Tonic. It tends to take about three months to kick in, hence the month's course of steroids to try and dampen down the inflammatory response so I don't have any more sobbing-with-pain-in-the-middle-of-the-night episodes.
I'm also going to tweak the diet - and cut my working days to try and reduce the stress levels.

If that doesn't work, I know that there's a whole shelf of other things we can consider later.
Being a health-pro is sometimes a two-edged sword. It makes me want the evidence based data on absolutely everything.
* at self

[ ]

Oh dear Teuchter. I'm going to hope and pray that your medicine does you good.

I got stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act today on my way to work. I wasn't too happy about it, but I wish I'd just smiled and said what a great job the were doing, because I ended up with a big long talk about how the search was random and I was only stopped because I was the fifth person out of the station carrying a large bag. Furthermore the policeman would have been really upset if he thought he'd annoyed me (right... if he's that sensitive perhaps he's in the wrong job). When I got to work I realised I'd completely missed picking up the free paper.

I've been umming and erring about whether to respond to MR's comments about alternative and traditional medicine. I don't want to sound ranty or anything, but I think it's unfair to say that the alternative branch is the rightful descendent of wise old women with herbal cures. Much of modern medicine is drug-based and the drugs often came from something in nature. True, surgery was a dangerous business before aseptic operating theatres, but it still saved lives.

"Alternative" medicine on the other hand is frequently big business, not ancient wisdom, and though some things may be effective they haven't had to go through the trials and so on that demonstrate how good the stuff in the pharmacy is.

Apparently (according to one Mark Hyman in a book called "Ultra-Metabolism") the things in our diets most likely to cause inflammation are saturated fats, trans fats, sugars (especially HFCS) and other high glycemic load carbohydrates. He suggests using fish oil supplements, probiotics, bromelain and other proteolytic enzymes, capsaicin (from hot peppers), green tea, ginger, quercitin (in fruit and vegetable rinds), turmeric and cocoa. He has lots of lists of things to eat and not to eat, but basically it is lots of fruits and vegetables, legumes, fish and seafood, skinless white poultry, olive oil and certain whole grains. Low fat dairy if you don't have a problem with lactose.

Exacterly - a mediterranean type diet. With chocolate - ok, cocoa

I can see where MR's coming from - and share the view, up to a point. It's interesting to note that early medics were almost entirely men - whereas the local wise women were, erm, women. Is it possible that women's skills were less appreciated once the 'scientists' got going?

Have you done any reading around this subject, MR? I'd be interested to know where to go to find out more about this particular gender issue.

My training tells me I must look for the evidence base - but my heart tells me that 'natural' is best, a lot of the time.
And then there's the whole business of the drugs industry and its sometimes avaricious nature.

Well, of course. We ~need~ chocolate.

I will readily admit to being disenchanted with those members of the medical profession who think the way to treat everything is with drugs. I will also admit to believing that many of the claims of the alternative medicine folks is bunk. I do believe that all of us could be healthier than we are if we ate a genuinely high-quality diet. Prescription drugs have nasty side effects. Fruits and vegetables generally don't. I'm as guilty as the next person of liking unhealthy foods. It's really hard to change the habits of a lifetime, though. Right now I'm craving fish and chips and hushpuppies.

...many claims are bunk. Maybe if I stick around here another few years I'll learn to hit the preview button. Nah.

Teucther. Oddly enough gold may be obselete but it's still prescribable and many people are still on it. The good-ish news is that it's disease that affects rich westerners so there's plenty of research and some very effective treatments available. We simply don't see people with the nasty deformities you get with it any more. (Ok we do but in people who had the damage done before the nice new drugs).

The new(ish) biological treatments are available on the NHS at the momen - as long as you give the old ones a go first. This makes sense because the old ones have less scary side effects.

The Arthritis resarch council has some good information available - http://www.arc.org.uk/arthinfo/patpubs/6033/6033.asp

Without wanting to say Modern Medicine is perfect - it certainly has it's faults.

Medicine of modern times is not really very similar to the times that you're referring to. For one thing the medical forebears who did cause serious harm didn't update their practice based on the latest knowledge from science, they weren't involved in active scientific research - they were just the bunch of Quacks that happened to have the approval of the male patriarcy. When the Germ Theory, etc acme along then it was resisted most strongly!

They weren't neccessarily more effective either and in fact more harmful.

The use of Digoxin for heart failure - (which I prescribe regularly) actually came from observation of a village wise-woman's herbal remedy. Actually it's not got the best evidence base. Not *all* studies have been done

Do we think the way to treat everything is with drugs?

I seem to see plenty of doctors saying 'stop smoking' 'loose weight' etc, and generally being ignored by a lot of people.. (including me, whose BMI is getting on for 38 now!).

When it comes to it making big lifestyle changes is difficult and taking medications is easy - so most people would rather take medicaitons.

Also we live in an obsesogenic enviroment and loosing weight and keeping it off is very difficult, the evidence shows that even with determiantion only a tiny amount manage to keep it off.

F38024?thread=4159136

Clean cups! Clean Cups!

(also -- I'm late! I'm late!)

[LP]

Hi LibrarianPear - we've moved threads now, we usually do this when they get to be around 2000 posts long. There is usually a race to reach the new thread first and the last to arrive has to wear a pair of horrible hairy trousers in the salon - this is a less painful option than the previous forfeit which was to receive a cattle prod!

Follow Lil's 'clean cups' link and come over to the new thread

Thanks for letting me know! See you there...