Last Night, I Had A Very Bad Night’s Sleep
I usually sleep very well. In fact like my father, if I need a nap, I can even take it on a hard upright chair.
He would have a nap like this every day in his printworks. It also looks like my 53 year old middle son has this ability to take a quick nap.
Last night, I slept very badly and woke about two, with a pain in my hip.
I nearly phoned 111, as I felt so rough. Luckily I didn’t!
I didn’t get much more sleep and eventually had perhaps a nap of an hour or so, before I gave up and got out of bed to do a few puzzles on the Internet.
After a large mug of tea, the pain in my hip receded.
My now-retired GP, reckoned I suffered when the atmospheric pressure was low.
So, did an area of low pressure pass through last night and suck water out of my body?
After a good bath, I certainly feel better now, with no pain in my hip.
In My Strange Skin, I describe an incident, where weather sucked water out of my body!
It’s Now Ten O’Clock
I’ve survived the day and managed to take a train to Reading and back.
I had intended to take pictures in Oxford, but when I got to Reading, it was raining hard and I turned back.
Should All Hospital In-Patients Be Tested For Coeliac Disease?
I went to a medical lecture tonight and I came home on the tube with a cardiologist. As we chatted, the title of this post occurred to me.
Consider.
- A diagnosed coeliac on a gluten-free diet tends to have a stronger immune system.
- I am a diagnosed coeliac on a gluten-free diet.
- An undiagnosed coeliac tends to have a poor immune system.
- It would certainly mean, you got the right diet in hospital.
I also have some further more detailed thoughts.
My Son, George
NHS advice on those, who need to be tested for coeliac disease includes this sentence.
Testing is also recommended if you have a first-degree relative (parent, sibling or child) with coeliac disease.
When I was diagnosed as a coeliac in 1997, I told my three sons to get tested. None did!
A month or so before he did, George ended up in Trafford Park Hospital.
If they had tested him, would they have picked up his pancreatic cancer earlier?
Probably not, but it’s a question that must be asked.
Research From The University Of Padua
This paper on the US National Library of Medicine, which is from the University of Padua in Italy.
The University followed a group of 138 patients with coeliac disease, who had been on a gluten-free diet for at least six years, through the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Padua.
This sentence, sums up the study.
In this analysis we report a real life “snapshot” of a cohort of CeD patients during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Italy, all followed in one tertiary centre in a red area of Northern Italy. Our data show, in accordance with Emmi et al., the absolute absence of COVID-19 diagnosis in our population, although 18 subjects experienced flu-like symptoms with only one having undergone naso-pharyngeal swab.
It says that no test subject caught Covid-19, in an admittedly smallish number of patients.ost
But it reinforces my call for more research into whether if you are a diagnosed coeliac on a long-term gluten-free diet, you have an immune system, that gives you a degree of protection from the Covids.
Conditions Linked To Coeliac Disease
This page on the Coeliac UK web site is entitled Conditions Linked To Coeliac Disease, has the following subsections.
- Autoimmune Disease
- Type 1 Diabetes
- Autoimmune Thyroid Disease
- Down’s and Turner Syndrome
- Osteoporosis
- Lactose Intolerance
- Lymphoma And Small Bowel Cancer
- Autism
- Fertility
Some of the keywords are linked to other pages on the Coeliac UK web site.
Testing For Coeliac Disease
Testing for coeliac disease is not an expensive process and just involves a simple blood test, where the blood goes to the lab.
My now-retired GP reckoned in nearly all cases, the test is decisive.
Dr. David Owen And The NHS Infected Blood Scandal
I am writing this post, mainly using Dr. David Owen’s Wikipedia entry.
This paragraph describes Dr. Owen’s early days as a minister in Harold Wilson’s first government and the early days of Harold Wilson’s second government
From 1968 to 1970, Owen served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Navy in Harold Wilson’s first government. After Labour’s defeat in the 1970 general election, he became the party’s Junior Defence Spokesman until 1972 when he resigned with Roy Jenkins over Labour’s opposition to the European Community. On Labour’s return to government in March 1974, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health before being promoted to Minister of State for Health in July 1974.
There is also this paragraph describing his involvement as Minister of State for Health in the NHS Infected Blood Scandal.
As Minister of State for Health he encouraged Britain to become “self-sufficient” in blood products such as Factor VIII, a recommendation also promoted by the World Health Organisation. This was principally due to the risk of Hepatitis infection from high-risk blood donors overseas who were often paid and from “skid-row” locations. David Owen has been outspoken that his policy of “Self-Sufficiency” was not put into place (although he was, himself, Minister of Health) and gave rise to the Tainted Blood Scandal which saw 5,000 British Haemophiliacs infected with Hepatitis C, 1,200 of those were also infected with HIV. It was later described in the House of Lords as “the worst treatment disaster in the history of the National Health Service”.
So why did Dr. Owen’s and the World Health Organisation’s view of making the UK “self-sufficient” in blood products such as Factor VIII not prevail?
Did Sir Brian Langstaff and his team go through minutes of cabinet meetings, when Dr. David Owen was Minister of State for Health?
Did Harold Wilson or the Chancellor; Denis Healey overrule David Owen’s view, as they needed what little money we had for other purposes?
I must admit, that if I had been in Dr. Owen’s position in 1974 and the Government were proposing to something against, my engineering experience, I would have resigned. Note that Dr. Owen did resign in 1972, over Labour’s opposition to the European Community.
If any doctors are reading this, who were qualified at the time, I’d like to hear their views.
Conclusion
One way to ascertain the truth, would be to charge Dr. Owen with something serious and led the Law decide.
Thoughts On The NHS Infected Blood Scandal
In the early 1970s, I was working with the Chief Management Accountant of a retail bank, writing a computer system to analyse and compare the performance and costs of all their branches.
We used scatter diagrams and other graphical techniques to show all the branches on single sheets produced by line printers on a powerful time-shared computer. It would be so much easier today.
Any branch not following the rules was often found sitting alone away from the mass of branches on the graphs.
I remember one branch had costs, that were much higher than expected. It turned out it was the Stevenage Branch, where the premises were rented rather than owned freehold.
Expanding The System To Other Industries
The Accountant, who had also been Chief Accountant of a FTSE 500 company, felt that the techniques we had developed had other applications in the management and auditing of large companies and organisations.
Sadly my partner in crime, died of cancer and I went on to other things.
From my own generally good family experiences of the NHS, I feel that this sort of analysis used rigorously could give early warning of some of the scandals we’ve seen in the NHS.
Around the turn of the century, I used similar techniques to improve the manufacturing quality in a diesel engine factory.
Conclusion
Perhaps we need an independent Office of NHS Responsibility?
Gluten Sensitivity And Epilepsy: A Systematic Review
Yesterday, The Times published this article, which was entitled ‘Game-Changing’ NHS Laser Therapy To Prevent Epileptic Seizures.
One reader had made this comment.
Be ace too if they can tweak to help migraine.
I used to suffer from something like migraine about thirty years ago. But after being found to be coeliac and going gluten-free, what ever it was seemed to disappear from my life.
Type “Coeliac Disease and Migraine” into Dr. Google and there are lots of references.
This indicates to me that serious scientists and doctors, must believe there could be a link.
There certainly is with me and going gluten-free eased my migraine-like symptoms.
I then typed “Coeliac Disease and Epilepsy” into Dr. Google and found this paper, which was entitled Gluten Sensitivity And Epilepsy: A Systematic Review.
This information is from the Abstract of the paper
Objective
The aim of this systematic review was to establish the prevalence of epilepsy in patients with coeliac disease (CD) or gluten sensitivity (GS) and vice versa and to characterise the phenomenology of the epileptic syndromes that these patients present with.
Methodology
A systematic computer-based literature search was conducted on the PubMed database. Information regarding prevalence, demographics and epilepsy phenomenology was extracted.
Results
Epilepsy is 1.8 times more prevalent in patients with CD, compared to the general population. CD is over 2 times more prevalent in patients with epilepsy compared to the general population. Further studies are necessary to assess the prevalence of GS in epilepsy. The data indicate that the prevalence of CD or GS is higher amongst particular epileptic presentations including in childhood partial epilepsy with occipital paroxysms, in adult patients with fixation off sensitivity (FOS) and in those with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with hippocampal sclerosis. A particularly interesting presentation of epilepsy in the context of gluten-related disorders is a syndrome of coeliac disease, epilepsy and cerebral calcification (CEC syndrome) which is frequently described in the literature. Gluten-free diet (GFD) is effective in the management of epilepsy in 53% of cases, either reducing seizure frequency, enabling reduced doses of antiepileptic drugs or even stopping antiepileptic drugs.
Conclusion
Patients with epilepsy of unknown aetiology should be investigated for serological markers of gluten sensitivity as such patients may benefit from a GFD.
My Thoughts
These are my thoughts.
Coeliacs Prior To 1960
Consider.
- Even if my excellent GP; Doctor Egerton White, felt I was coeliac, there was no test until 1960 for coeliac disease.
- And the test that was developed using endoscopy wasn’t anywhere near to the endoscopies of the present day.
- My late wife, who was a family barrister, likened the test to child abuse on a young child.
- I have heard some terrible horror stories of doctors looking for coeliac disease in young children in the 1950s.
- But there were some successes. A friend of mine, who is in her eighties, was successfully diagnosed by her parents using food elimination. But they were both GPs.
- Recently, I’ve met two elderly ladies, who only in the last couple of years have been diagnosed as coeliacs.
Luckily, I was never tested until 1997 and I was diagnosed in 48 hours, by gene testing.
Methodology
The methodology was based on a systematic computer-based literature search of the PubMed database.
This has these advantages.
- The rules for the search can be published and peer-reviewed.
- Its Wikipedia entry says PubMed is a free database including primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics.
- The technique can surely be applied repeatedly, to see how results are changing with time.
- The search can be modified to analyse any topic, drug or condition, that appears in the PubMed database.
- The analysis could surely be applied to other databases.
As a writer of data analysis software, developing this sort of software, would be really enjoyable.
AstraZeneca Withdraws Covid Vaccine After Drop In Demand
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the first paragraph.
AstraZeneca is withdrawing its Covid-19 vaccine worldwide, citing a “surplus of available updated vaccines” since the pandemic that target newer variants of the virus.
This was my experience of the vaccine.
I am coeliac and have a very strong immune system, as it gets all the fuel it needs.
When I had my first AZ vaccine, my immune system started to attack the chimpanzee adenovirus-based viral vector vaccine.
I felt dreadful and I’ve now been advised by doctors, not to have any more viral vector vaccines.
Interestingly, I had no reaction to the second dose, so my immune system had probably decided it was a friend.
When I had that second dose, there was all the controversy raging, about whether the AZ vaccine causes blood clots.
So I did an experiment, which I described in My INR Readings Before And After My Second AstraZeneca Jab.
I found that my INT bounced all over place, just as when a wheel hits a pothole.
Conclusion
I shall not be taking the AstraZeneca Vaccine for COVID-19 again and would think twice before allowing myself to be injected with a viral vector vaccine.
Study Highlights Increased Risk Of Second Cancers Among Breast Cancer Survivors
The title of this post, is the same as that of this news story from the Cambridge University.
This is the sub-heading.
Survivors of breast cancer are at significantly higher risk of developing second cancers, including endometrial and ovarian cancer for women and prostate cancer for men, according to new research studying data from almost 600,000 patients in England.
These are the first three paragraphs of the story.
For the first time, the research has shown that this risk is higher in people living in areas of greater socioeconomic deprivation.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK. Around 56,000 people in the UK are diagnosed each year, the vast majority (over 99%) of whom are women. Improvements in earlier diagnosis and in treatments mean that five year survival rates have been increasing over time, reaching 87% by 2017 in England.
People who survive breast cancer are at risk of second primary cancer, but until now the exact risk has been unclear. Previously published research suggested that women and men who survive breast cancer are at a 24% and 27% greater risk of a non-breast second primary cancer than the wider population respectively. There have been also suggestions that second primary cancer risks differ by the age at breast cancer diagnosis.
I have a few thoughts.
The Data
The story says this about the data.
To provide more accurate estimates, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from over 580,000 female and over 3,500 male breast cancer survivors diagnosed between 1995 and 2019 using the National Cancer Registration Dataset. The results of their analysis are published today in Lancet Regional Health – Europe.
A large number of cases were analysed and with these types of analysis, more is definitely better.
I would hope that this study will be repeated in a few years, when more data is available.
The Death Of My Wife
This happened to my late wife.
At about 55 in 2004, my wife developed breast cancer. Strangely, it was in the same position, where a car air-bag had bruised her breast, when it went off in an accident, a few years before.
Chemotherapy was recommended and she tried one round at home, but she couldn’t get on with it.
So she eventually had a long course of radiotherapy in Harley Street going up every day on the train. She was also doing as many court cases as she could to pay for it all.
It appeared everything had worked well and in the Autumn of 2007, she was given the all clear for the breast cancer.
But in October 2007, she was diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma of the heart.
She died in December 2007 at just 59.
My wife’s second cancer and her death seems to fit the pattern of the patients in the news story.
My Wife’s Genetic Background
This is rather bare, as she was adopted. Although, I do have her plaits from, when the cut them off at 18, as she’d kept them and I found them after she died.
But she didn’t come from a deprived background.
I Am Coeliac
If I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t encourage her to go gluten-free after the first cancer.
It might have boosted her immune system to help.
Conclusion
Anybody, who has breast cancer must beware a second attack of cancer.
Uf it can kill my fit 59-year-old wife, it can kill anyone.
Did A Day In A Class 350 Train Lower My INR?
Yesterday, I went to Birmingham to take pictures of the rebuilt Birmingham University station.
- I travelled by West Midlands Trains catching the 11:23 to Birmingham New Street station, where it arrived at 13:45.
- Coming home, I caught the 15:36 from Birmingham New Street station, which arrived in Euston at 17:49.
So I spent nearly four and a half hours in the train.
This morning, when I measured my INR, it was only 1.8.
Did the weather and the train’s air-conditioning conspire to lower my INR by removing water from my body?
A Redbrick Station For A Redbrick University
My late wife; C and myself, met at Liverpool University in the 1960s.
Liverpool considers itself as the Original Redbrick on its web site.
This Google 3D visualisation shows why.
Note.
- This 3D picture was taken from the East.
- The white building in the bottom-right corner is the Electrical Engineering and Electronics, where I did most of my studying.
- The building above it is the Harold Cohen Library.
- The clock tower in front is part of the Victoria Building.
There’s a lot of redbrick on the University site.
These pictures show University (Birmingham) station.
Note.
The Architects didn’t spare the red bricks.
- The station has an NHS Clinic
- The bridge has lifts and steps.
- There is a lot of glass.
There are a pair of bi-sexual toilets, which seems to the standard for new stations these days.
Will Other Universities Want A Station?
Here are a few thoughts.
Liverpool University
I wrote about the possibility in A Railway Station At Liverpool University.
This is an extract.
In Liverpool’s Forgotten Tunnel, I showed this map, which shows a proposed reopening of the Wapping Tunnel as a passenger route between Liverpool Central and Edge Hill stations.
Note.
- The map shows a station at University
- The Wapping Tunnel is shown as a dotted blue line.
- Between four and eight trains per hour (tph) would be running through University station.
Liverpool has other projects on its mind at present, but I wouldn’t rule it out in the future.
Manchester University
This Google Map shows the location of Manchester University.
Note.
- The red arrow picks out a notable building in the University.
- Manchester Piccadilly station is in the North-East corner of the map.
- Manchester Oxford Road station is in the South-West corner of the map.
- In recent years I’ve walked between the two stations.
- The Castlefield Corridor passes through the University.
A station on the Castlefield Corridor could be a possibility.
I Was Kathleened At The Weekend
Saturday
At 0200 on Saturday morning, I couldn’t sleep.
So in the end, I got up, made myself a mug of tea and did Saturday’s puzzles in The Times.
I had no trouble doing them, so my brain function was normal.
But my left hand wasn’t working that well.
I had breakfast in Leon and had a bit of trouble with their sauce containers, but otherwise I was fine.
I did a bit of shopping in M & S on Moorgate and came home.
I wasn’t having any problems.
For the rest of the day, I watched television and listened to the radio.
Sunday
I got up late, as I was probably catching up the sleep from the night before.
I had lunch in Gordon Ramsey’s Street Burger about one.
My left hand wasn’t working that well and I was making a bit of a mess.
After, I got home, I watched television and listened to the radio.
Monday
I slept in late, but as my left hand wasn’t being very co-operative, I had a small bit of trouble dressing, due to an uncooperative left hand.
My INR was 2.0, so I took 5 mg. of Warfarin.
I had breakfast in Leon, where I made a mess with the sauce container.
I then went looking for a book, which I couldn’t find.
Tuesday
Everything seems better today.
My INR was 2.1, so I took 5 mg. of Warfarin.
I did my usual Monday morning trip, of visit to Marks & Spencer for about three days of food and then had breakfast in Leon.
Conclusion
This seems to be a pattern.
- A storm goes through, I can’t sleep and after some drinks of tea or zero alcohol beer, I feel a bit better.
- My left hand often stops co-operating and won’t do simple things.
- But it does seem to clear up, when the storm passes.
This is probably the third time, that it’s happened.
Note.
- My left humerus was broken by the school bully.
- I had a stroke in 2011, which affected my left arm.
- If I carry shopping in my left hand, the pulling action on my humerus seems to help.
Any ideas will be gratefully received.
The Anonymous Widower 