Waiting for Apollo 11 – Part 3
The Tuesday was a day of waiting. They broke the waters in mid-morning and nothing happened. And then in mid-afternoon, contractions started.
Now my late wife wasn’t a lady with a large frame. Although she was nearly 5ft 5in, she was really only a size 8, so getting the baby out, when he finally arrived after midnight, was a bit of a messy business. Our first son was also about 8lb 5oz, so he was not small and she had quite a few stitches. Luckily, the student doctor , who was nicknamed Smooth Hugh, was very very good.
So that night I got back to Barnet about three in the morning, with mother and son doing well.
In other words exactly forty years ago.
But the time in the hospital was not without tragedy. The lady in the next bed with the unusual ring, lost her baby. Her son was born with a hole in the diaphragm, which meant he was unable to breathe.
But in those days of no ultrasound, it was impossible to diagnose the condition. Six years ago, my granddaughter had the same condition. It was diagnosed before birth and she was operated on at two days old. She is now a bouncing ad very normal girl, with no after effects from her ordeal.
So medical science can solve our problems.
But just as my wife was helped through a difficult birth by Smooth Hugh, good surgery helped in a much worse case to enable my granddaughter to survive.
We must train our surgeons to be the best.
Later that day, Apollo 11 blasted off to the moon. My wife told me later that evening, that everyone was gripped as they watched the huge Saturn rocket take off from Florida.
And there was still a shortage of babies in the hospital. They’d even resorted to ringing round hospitals and the message was the same. Everybody must be waiting for the moon landing.
Dangers in Mexico
One would have thought, that with swine flu, that this was the main reason not to go to Mexico. But they do seem to have their fair share of drug-related killings too.
Perhaps it is best to stay home or get attacked in Naples.
I think it probably illustrates though, that drugs and not global-warming, terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq or swine-flu is the most pressing difficulty facing everybody.
Dignitas and the Care Tax
Two stories from yesterday, should be linked together.
We had the tragic tale of Sir Edward and Joan Downes going to Dignitas to commit suicide together, because of her terminal cancer.
We also had the government outlining proposals that when you retire, you’d have to pay £20,000 for compulsory insurance for your long term care.
I should say that I’ve helped care for someone in the last few weeks of their life and when the pain gets too bad to endure, all sorts of thoughts arise. But for me, as there is nothing afterwards, I would never countenance any premature end for myself. But others should be free to choose.
So if Aunt Sally or Uncle Fred have to retire early because of some long term illness, would the family push them off to Switzerland because they don’t want to pay the £20,000?
The Care Tax is insane!
Something needs to be done and people need to be encouraged to provide for their long term care, but anything compulsory needs to be consigned to the bin.
Waiting for Apollo 11
Not many people know where they were on the 13th of July, 1969. I do because my late wife and I spent an enjoyable but apprehensive day in St. James’s Park in London in the sun.
I say apprehensive. Why apprehensive? Because she was just expecting our first child and we did not have a hospital to go to.
So how did we get into this predicament?
We had been living in Liverpool and I was working for ICI, whilst she completed her studies at the University. But soon after we got married in September 1968, her father died and we decided that we needed to be near her mother in London. It was probably not a good idea, but you do things like that when you are young. She had also got recently pregnant, which again was probably not a good idea, but looking back having our three children young was for the best. For the last twenty or more years of our marriage, we were unencumbered by family and were free to do what we enjoyed most; travel!
So, I transferred to ICI Plastics at Welwyn Garden City and we bought a house at Melbourn near Royston. But horror of horrors the house wasn’t ready and we had to move in with her mother in Barnet.
My late wife was adopted and was actually born in the Victoria Maternity Hospital in Barnet. So there was no way she was going to have our first child there, as it had too many bad connotations for her.
So we found ourselves without a hospital to deliver the baby.
I should also say, that on that Sunday, the baby was about three weeks overdue, so even if she didn’t think things were serious, I did.
Late that afternoon, she said that she was having slight contractions and that we perhaps ought to go to A & E somewhere. She preferred the old Middlesex Hospital, as it had a good reputation.
So we presented ourselves at the hospital and after about twenty minutes, she was seen by a doctor and because of her imminent state, they decided to admit her as an emergency.
It didn’t really matter, as they weren’t very full, because everybody was excited about the first moon landing with Apollo 11, scheduled to take place in a few days. And having babies and other important things was far from peoples’ minds.
Soluble Fibre
In an earlier post, Does Gluten Lower Cholesterol, I pondered why my cholesterol was higher than it should be.
Yesterday, I went to see a dietitian and it would appear that I’m not eating enough soluble fibre; oats, beans and pulses. In fact, with the exception of the odd tin of baked beans and broad beans when they are in season, I don’t eat much at all.
As I drove back home, I pondered why I don’t eat as many of these as I should.
For a start, I should say that I actually love beans and when I was left alone in my teens, supper would nearly always be a cold tin of baked beans and orange squash. How we lived then? I’ll eat most beans and pulses, so why have they dropped from my diet.
Could it be that, when it comes to vegetables, that I actually prefer the broccolis, cauliflowers and greens of this world? I do and I wonder if it is because my late wife didn’t eat any of them, so when she cooked the vegetables were inevitably peas or if it was something like sausages, baked beans. So now, I’m in charge these have been relegated to the subs bench. I do eat baked beans, but because of my high cholesterol, I’ve been avoiding the sort of fatty foods that I usually eat them with!
So it looks like I could have been drawn into a trap of my own making, by cooking food I like for myself, rather than following a correct diet.
How many others don’t eat enough soluble fibre becuase of ignorance like me?
There was a sad footnote to the appointment with the dietitian. They used to know my old doctor from Woodbridge, Dr. Ian Bowles, who was our GP for perhaps fifteen years or so. It was sad to hear that he died a couple of years ago, many years before he should. Such is life!
Coeliacs and Goat’s Milk Products
If you want to read an interesting take on health, go to DogtorJ’s web site. He is an American vet, who is also a coeliac, and uses his insight to try to explain the health or should it be unhealth around him.
Here’s what he says on goat’s milk in a section called The Answer. Read it!
Wheat had an amazing history and clearly played a major role in shaping the medical conditions that would follow. But, the same thing happened with dairy products. Before 1500 A.D., the principle sources of milk and its derivatives were sheep and goats. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans demonstrated their understanding of the true value of these animals by elevating them to the heavens. The sheep was honored for it’s wool and milk and given the astrological name Aries. Capricorn, the goat, was valued for its milk. In fact, part of the name given to this honored creature meant “foster milk”. The ox, Taurus, was deified for his work in the fields. It wasn’t until much later that man veered from his natural course and chose to mass-produce cow milk.
In fact, it wasn’t until the middle of the second millennium that this took place. Somewhere between 1300 and 1500 A.D., our ancestors decided to go into the dairy industry using cows. A decisive factor had to be the usual motivation for most that we do as humans, supply and demand. The corollary to this is ignorance and greed. Suddenly, there was a demand for greater and greater quantities of milk and the cows larger udder was a tempting source. The rest is history.
The main problem with this seemingly logical yet devastatingly ignorant decision was that there was a vast difference between cow milk and that of its predecessors. The protein, fat, mineral, and vitamin content as well as the pH buffering qualities were all different. Some of these differences were subtle; others would be the difference between tolerance and intolerance. Goats milk was much more digestible, forming smaller curds and being lower in the indigestible components such as lactose. However, the most vital difference would not be discovered until the days of immunology and quantitative analysis arrived.
Now we know that the biggest difference between cow and goat milk is the absence or low quantity of one protein fraction, alpha S-1 casein. Understanding of this dairy protein not only serves to explain the lower allergy rate to goat milk, but also sends us in the right direction on our search for the culprit behind other immune-mediated food issues. Casein makes up 80% of the protein in cow milk. In bovine milk, 75% of the casein is alpha casein. In goat milk, the majority is beta casein. The dominant component of the alpha casein in cow milk is the alpha S-1 casein, the culprit we just identified as being responsible for most immune reactions, including milk allergies. There are other differences in protein concentrations, including those lactalbumins in the whey portion, but we will focus later on casein as it relates to the induction of villous damage in the small bowel.
The milk history lesson doesn’t end here. The reader is directed to remember the possible relationship between the advent of common wheat and the start of then Dark ages because history repeats itself. The first pandemic of plague occurred shortly after wheat’s creation. The second pandemic of plague, by far the worst of the three, immediately followed the introduction of cow milk. This was a phenomenal coincidence to me. This devastating epidemic known as the Black Death started in Europe in approximately 1300 A.D. and killed one fourth of its population. The pandemic occurred in 1400 and spread across Europe into Asia wiping out nearly 40 million people. Just as the dairy industry was getting into full swing in 1600 in England, its true land of origin, the Great (bubonic) Plague of London occurred, killing another 100,000 people. The third and last pandemic occurred in the mid 1800s in China, causing over 20 million deaths over a 75-year period. Had milk and wheat finally reached their land?
On reading this, I decided that if I must have milk products, then I would use goat’s milk products where I could.
So I switched to the Waitrose goat’s milk and use St. Helens Farm cream and yoghurt.
I think that I feel better, but how would I actually prove a scientifically correct proof of it?
Incidentally, I always find that goat’s milk lasts a lot longer than cow’s.
Swine Flu
The son of two of my friends, has just been diagnosed with swine flu. It’s funny, but it seems that mainly the young get it. Perhaps, Dr. Rosemary on the BBC was right, when she said that older people like me got an immunity in the 1950s.
I’ve just sent them this list of swine flu jokes to cheer them up.
Remember that hangovers are now called wine flu.
Living Alone Increases Change of Dementia
Swedish research has shown that if you live alone and have a particular gene variant, you are more likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer’s. Not good. The full article is on the BBC and here’s an extract.
The researchers studied 2,000 men and women from eastern Finland aged around 50 and again 21 years later.
They looked at their marital status and also carried out genetic tests to see if they carried the gene APOE variant 4.
People living alone in middle-age had twice the risk of dementia than those who were living with a partner.
But widows and widowers had three times the risk of dementia.
And those with the APOE gene variant who had lost their partners and remained living alone had the highest risk of all of developing Alzheimer’s.
Not good.
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.
The Anonymous Widower 