Time for a Moan
So Murray’s finished with Wimbledon for another year and life can back to normal.
Perhaps a night in watching the television. But then if today’s Pick of the Day from The Times is anything to go by as to the quality of what’s on, I suspect we should give that a miss.
Horne and Corden – The golden boys of Gavin and Stacey, Mathew Horne and James Corden, were rewarded with their own sketch show on BBC Three, which attracted a record audience of 817,000 for the first episode. After that, it was downhill all the way. Directed by Kathy Burke, the show was roundly slated for being amateurish, crude and aggressively unfunny. Viewing figures collapsed, with only 434,000 bothering with the final episode. In one sketch, two teachers give a joint lesson to a class on how to draw penises; in another, James Corden keeps shouting “I’m going to come!” while having sex. Elsewhere, he pulls up his shirt and rolls his stomach in front of a burger bar as a form of consumer complaint. The acting is accomplished enough, but that’s as far it goes. Viewers on terrestrial television can now find out what they haven’t been missing.
There’s no decent sport on the box either.
So perhaps, I could go to the cinema. In Haverhill, there appears to be nothing on and anyway, I hate going to the cinema by myself. I’ve only done it a couple of times and that was usually in somewhere like Boston, when I had a couple of hours to kill. I remember, that I saw Crocodile Dundee there and they laughed in different places to everybody else, such was their view of New York.
Then I could go for a walk. But at present, I’m crippled with a foot that I cut on Holkham Beach. I’m now on penicillin for it – gluten-free of course!
So I’m reduced to watching Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads on UK Gold.
Such is my lot. At least I can waste time trying to cook something nice.
Widowhood Research
Kate Bennett of the School of Psychology at Liverpool University is recruiting volunteers for studies into widowhood.
This is Kate’s description of the first study.
One is a two week study looking at a model of bereavement called the Dual Process Model. This study takes part over two weeks. At the beginning we will interview participants about their general experiences of bereavement, and they will complete a questionnaire. Then over the next week they will complete a daily diary about their experiences – they can write as much or as little as they like. At the end of the first week, there is a short interview and a questionnaire. In the next week they complete the diary everyday, and then are interviewed and have a questionnaire at the end. This study is being run by myself and my student Lizzie Evans.
And the second.
The second study is an interview study which focuses on changes in social relationships, activities and support before and after the loss. This forms part of my student Laura’s PhD.
There are more details, including how to join, at this web page.
Ritalin, ADHD and a Gluten-Free Diet
In my previous post on Tamiflu, I found the Electronic Medicines Compendium.
The EMC is very comprehensive and contains all of the details you need to know about a drug. Type something as simple as Cough into the search and you get a list of proprietary cough products, with cough in the title. This sort of search is very useful, as finding a gluten-free cough mixture is very difficult. One of the Boots ones is gluten-free, but I’m not sure which. Many use glucose as a soothing agent. And where does the gluten come from. Wheat!
Out of curiosity I used one of the advanced search features of the EMC to search for wheat. I got ten hits and one of them was Ritalin. The tablets contain wheat starch.
Ritalin is used to control ADHD and similar problems in children.
As someone who follows the gluten-free literature, I have come across many references to using a gluten-free diet with ADHD, autism and Asperger’s.
Now I don’t know how much wheat starch Ritalin contains, but it does strike me as surprising, that one method of treatment might be undermined by another.
Update – It is three hours since I posted the original. If you type Ritalin gluten into Google, this post is now second. Does that mean that the connection is not spoken of commonly. I’ve also found that Ritalin is a pretty old drug and this may account for the wheat starch filler. Now, drug componies know more about coeliacs.
Coeliacs and Tamiflu
I haven’t got the dreaded swineflu yet, but can I be sure that Tamiflu is gluten-free.
A lot of medicines are not and as an example most cough mixtures contain wheat-derived glucose. Boots Chesty Cough Linctus is OK, as it is based on sucrose.
I have found some information on the web, one US site says that all Roche products are gluten-free and I’ve also found this list of exgredients for Tamiflu.
Capsule core:
- Pregelatinised starch (derived from maize starch)
- Talc
- Povidone
- Croscarmellose sodium
- Sodium stearyl fumarate
Capsule shell:
- Gelatin
- Yellow iron oxide (E172)
- Red iron oxide (E172)
- Black iron oxide (E172)
- Titanium dioxide (E171)
Printing ink:
- Shellac
- Titanium dioxide (E171)
- FD and C Blue 2 (indigo carmine, E132)
This list just shows what does go into some of the things we take.
I got this information from the Electronic Medicines Compendium. I tried to search for another couple of drugs at the main site and it worked.
The Anonymous Widower 