Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – Medical Research
Medical Research
I first got involved as a lab-rat in medical research, when I had my second endoscopy to check for coeliac disease at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in 1997. Rebecca Fitzgerald took a sample of fluid from my gut for her Barrett’s oesophagus research.
After my wife died, I asked my contact in Alumni Relations at Liverpool University, if they did widowhood research.
They are one of the few universities that do and I did several interviews for PhD students in the unit, which is in the Psychology Department. It was very much a positive experience and certainly helped with my grieving.
In some ways the most enjoyable piece of research I have been involved in, was at the University of East London, where they were using computers to measure the balance of those recovering from strokes.
My GP also suggested that I get involved in drug tests at Queen Mary University. The tests were abandoned as the drug didn’t have any good or bad effects, but now I’m one of the William Harvey Centre’s lab-rats.
I also help to sponsor pancreatic cancer research at Liverpool University in memory of my son.
In There’s More To Liverpool Than Football And The Beatles!, I detail some research, that I sponsored in a small way.
I may be tempted to do the fund-raising trip again.
I always advise people to get involved in medical or psychological research, as I have found it such a beneficial experience.
One thing that is needed, is an on-line database of all research projects that are looking for volunteers.
Remember, that much medical and psychological research is about as dangerous as meeting someone in a GP’s surgery for a chat or perhaps in a cafe and having a coffee.
Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – A Few Bad Years
A Few Bad Years
In 2007, my wife died of what her consultant at Papworth said was one of the worst cancers he’d ever seen. It was a squamous cell carcinoma of the heart.
Her’s was the only occurrence in the UK that year and someone told me, there were four in the United States.
Our youngest son; George, then died of pancreatic cancer in 2009.
When I had been diagnosed as a coeliac in 1997, my wife and I had told our sons to get themselves tested, as is now advised on the NHS web site.
But George was a sound engineer in the music business, who lived the unhealthy rock-and-roll lifestyle.
A year later, I had a serious stroke in Hong Kong.
I had had a warning a year or so before and Addenbrooke’s recommended I go on Warfarin, but my GP in Suffolk, talked me out of it.
Now twelve years later, my GP and myself manage my Warfarin, where I do the testing of my INR on my own meter from Roche.
But then I am a Graduate Control Engineer!
A couple of doctors have said I have made a remarkable recovery, and I’ll go along with that as the only thing I can’t do, that I could before the stroke is drive, as the stroke damaged my eyesight.
On the other hand, the latest therapy for stroke in the United States is B12 injections and I haven’t missed one of my three-monthly injections since 1997.
If anybody is doing serious research into B12 and stroke recovery, then I would be happy to be a lab-rat.
Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – Coeliac Diagnosis
Coeliac Diagnosis
My health was very variable as a child.
I would often have months off school and my health only really improved, when my parents bought a second home in Felixstowe, where we spent most of our holidays.
Perhaps it was the sea air, as going to Liverpool University didn’t seem to adversely affect my health.
I had been having gut problems for years and then in Autumn 1997, I didn’t see my GP, but a very elderly locum, who as I had recently had my fiftieth birthday, gave me a present of my first blood test.
It turned out that I was very low on B12 and a course of B12 injections was arranged.
As the injections didn’t raise my levels, an appointment was made to see a consultant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
It was a Monday, when I went to the appointment and after a quick chat and no examination, the consultant said that they would take some blood. Which they did!
Within forty-eight hours a letter arrived on my door-mat saying that I was probably coeliac and it would be confirmed by endoscopy.
Two endoscopies without sedative or anaesthetic were performed and I was confirmed as coeliac.
The first was performed by Dr. Richard Hardwick and the second by Dr. Rebecca Fitzgerald.
My gut health has been better since, I’ve been on a gluten-free diet, backed up by three-monthly B12 injections.
A few years later, I was talking to a gastroenterologist in Cambridge and he told me that he thought he had more coeliac patients than any other in England.
The manager of Carluccio’s in the city, also told me that they sold a very high percentage of gluten-free food.
Were Cambridge testing a genetic test for coeliac disease or was it just a Whack-A-Coeliac policy?
They certainly had everything geared up for high-speed diagnosis. They even did the endoscopies without a sedative, so they didn’t need any recovery beds.
Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19 – Introduction
Introduction
I am coeliac and I had an interesting journey through the Covid-19 pandemic.
My experiences will be laid out in this narrative, as I believe they might be of use to someone.
I was born in 1947 and after a good education at Minchenden Grammar School in North London, I read Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Liverpool University, where in addition to getting a B. Eng degree, I met and married my late wife; Celia. We had three boys in the early seventies.
My working life was mainly spent in the solving of mathematical problems and writing software to perform complex calculations mainly in the fields of data analysis, project management, statistics and the solving of simultaneous differential equations.
The Artemis software, that I wrote in the 1970s, controlled the building of the Channel Tunnel, was the software of choice in the development of the North Sea oil and gas fields and was even used by NASA to plan the missions of the Space Shuttles and their refurbishment after each flight.
My business partners and myself sold the company to the American aerospace company; Lockheed in the 1980s.
Since then, I have been involved in various ventures.
The most successful was to back two inventors, who had developed an aerosol valve that used nitrogen as the propellant.
We sold that on to Johnson & Johnson, but the experience led to the development of the Respimat Inhaler for Boehringer Ingelheim.
Coeliac Journey Through Covid-19
I am writing this presentation for a meeting, in the next few days, so there will be several pages with similar titles to this.
Are Boots Marching In The Wrong Direction?
My family has used Boots at the Angel since about 1900.
But have they ever been so disorganised?
Yesterday, I went to pick up some Warfarin, which I have taking for a dozen years.
It must be one of the most common and cheapest drugs they dispense.
I needed both 1 mg and 3 mg tablets.
But they didn’t have any 1 mg tablets.
The pharmacist explained that Boots didn’t have any.
Surely, this is a bit like Sainsbury’s running out of baked beans?
Coping With My Cough
Over the last few weeks, I’ve developed a terrible hacking cough.
I used to get these as a child and regularly had months off school.
I can remember that our GP; Dr. Egerton White was worried and visited me regularly.
But I can’t remember having one since and certainly, I never had one in the forty years I lived with C.
About ten days ago, I noticed that a Marks and Spencer chilli con carne seem to calm my coughing down.
So I consulted Doctor Google and found several pages like this page on Rochester Regional Health, which is entitled Spicy Foods and Your Health.
Under a heading of Spicy Foods Help with Cold Symptoms: FACT, this is said.
Spicy foods contain capsaicin, the bioactive ingredient in chili peppers. Capsaicin breaks up mucus, which can help effectively relieve coughing and a sore throat. However, capsaicin can increase the production of mucus, causing a more prevalent runny nose.
My nose is running, but not excessively so. But I am generating a lot of mucus, just as my father always did.
His remedy was a mixture of strong mints and catarrh tablets.
I have started eating my Leon breakfast, that I eat most days with a pot of their chilli sauce.
It does seem to calm my cough throughout most of the day.
The Cough Goes On!
The cough that started last week has still not left me and it’s like the ones I used to get as a child, that went on for months and months. At least twice, I had six months and more off school. Sadly, those sections of my medical records got lost after University, so we can’t find out what the good doctor Egerton White thought!
UK’s Largest Carbon Capture Project Will Turn 40,000 Tonnes Of CO2 Into Sodium Bicarbonate For Dialysis Machines, Pharmaceutical Tablets And Baking Soda Every Year
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in the Daily Mail.
These bullet points summarise the article.
- A facility that turns carbon dioxide into sodium bicarbonate was opened today
- Tata Chemicals Europe will remove up to 40,000 tonnes of CO2 each year
- The resulting sodium bicarbonate will be used as baking soda and in tablets
- Much of it will be used in haemodialysis to treat people with kidney disease
When I worked at ICI in Runcorn, the company had a facility at Winnington.
- In the 1960s, when I was there the main product was soda ash, which was produced by the Solvay process.
- The plant is now owned by Tata Chemicals Europe, and I suspect the new process is a replacement for the Solvay process.
- The carbon dioxide probably comes from a local 94 MW gas-fired power station on the site.
This ia a good example of Carbon Capture and Use, where a modern process is much better for the environment.
How much better could we protect the environment and the health of everyone, by improving or changing industrial processes?
Memories of the Solvay Process
I went over one of the Solvay processes a couple of times, when I worked at Runcorn.
- I can’t remember why now, but it was probably just to give the newest engineer in the department some experience.
- ICI trained me well at that time, especially in Health and Safety.
- One of the Victorian plants, I went over was built using a framework of oak beams, rather than the steel, we’d use today.
- The thing, that I remember most was the white sodium bicarbonate powder everywhere at the finishing end.
All the grades had uses from baking down to clearing up acid spills. Wikipedia details these uses.
Solvay Process Repurposed
Searching the Internet for more information on Tata Chemicals Europe’s process, I found this article on Scientific American, which is entitled Desalination Breakthrough: Saving The Sea From Salt.
The first paragraph outlines the problem.
Farid Benyahia wants to solve two environmental problems at once: excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and excess salt in the Persian Gulf (aka the Arabian Gulf). Oil and natural gas drive the region’s booming economies—hence the excess CO2—and desalination supplies the vast majority of drinking water, a process that creates concentrated brine waste that is usually dumped back into the gulf.
Benyahia, who is a chemical engineer at Qatar University appears to have solved the problem, by repurposing and simplifying the Solvay process.
I suggest that if you’ve got this far, that you read the Scientific American article all the way through, as it paints a horrific vision of the dangers of water desalination.
Hopefully, though Benyahia has the solution, which turns the problem into baking soda and calcium chloride.
We Can Suck CO2 From The Air And Store It In The Ocean As Baking Soda
The title of this section is the same as that of this article on New Scientist.
I first heard about this process on Radio 5.
It concerns some work by Arup Sen Gupta at LeHigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
He seems the sort of researcher, who does it properly and his research on capturing carbon dioxide and turning it into baking soda, that is stored in the ocean may well be an idea in the right direction.
It further supports my view that research will find new and better ways of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
NHS Prevention Programme Reduces Type 2 Diabetes By A Fifth
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Participants are given free Fitbits or smart watches to help them lose weight
These two paragraphs outline the program.
An NHS scheme that sends obese patients to slimming classes and gives them free Fitbits has cut diabetes rates by one fifth.
The NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, also known as Healthier You, offers health advice alongside free cookery and exercise sessions online or in person. Participants are given NHS-funded Fitbits or smart watches to monitor their activity to help them lose weight.
Note.
- Manchester University have analysed the project.
- Those on the scheme lost five pounds on average.
- The Healthier You programme is available in all parts of England.
It sounds like the programme has been a success.
I’d like to hear of peoples’ stories about this programme.
The Anonymous Widower 