A nation of hypochondriacs?

[Mike_Ayling]

Hi Mike, in answer to your question what’s the 5% non vegan

I’m vegan in everything except on a long ride when the only cake shop we can find is non vegan. Hubby is vegan at home but eats fish or meat when out for a sit down meal. Hope this clarifies for you.

Yes you have to have cake on a ride!

Mike

[softlips]

The new bigbody of the Blighty GPs has put out a suggestion that doctors do too much in our modern life - prescribe drugs and treatments that are, essentially, unnecessary or even counter-productive. He suggests some pressures that tend to cause this: desire to justify the doctor's role; the assumption that doing something is always better than doing nothing; most of all, pressure from patients for treatment.

Cugel

There is a news item this morning (sorry, no link but was on Radio 4) that says that life expectancy in the US is declining (the country that spends the most per head on health in the world).

Various theories (including pharmaceutical drugs) have been put forward as to why this is the case but at the heart of them is that there is something terribly wrong about the lifestyle of Americans.

That spend doesn't fall on all heads. In the US people with no health insurance and who can't afford to pay die untreated if they get cancer or are badly injured in an accident and presumably a child from a poor family with type 1 diabetes will just die from it.

I’ve not worked in healthcare in the USA since President Obama changed things. When I i was there people who were not insured and fell ill were covered by MedicAid or Medicare depending on the circumstances. In many instances this free treatment is better and provides better cover than Obamacare I’m led to believe. It certainly finds many treatments that the NHS does not. The problem is some people could fall in the gap between both policies but it was far rarer than people over here make out.

[Cugel]

I reckon stress and loneliness are at the heart of many diseases,modern life breeds it in one form or another.

You're right about loneliness. I think small health niggles become bigger if you're lonely.
I saw a TV programme about a day in a doctors practice. Quite a number of patients didn't need a doctor, just some reassurance.
If this is repeated across the country it's no surprise you have to wait to see a doctor.

This is also my experience. When hanging about the oncology department awaiting the infusions or blood-letting, it was noticeable how many patients (especially those of the older and single variety) came in unscheduled for reassurance or just company, with a usually transparent excuse.

The oncology staff, particularly the nurses, told me that they regarded these visits and their often hours of giving reassurance or just chat, as part of the cure. It makes a big different to the outcome if a patient feels valued; not friendless; still important enough that someone cares, even if they are relative strangers.

But some patients acquire a habit. Months or even years after they have gone into remission (aka cured but oncologists never use that term) they're appearing regularly in the oncology ward; or even making up symptoms to get attention. It's easy to condemn that behaviour but in today's society (or lack of it) it's very easy to understand and even sympathise.

Cugel

[Cugel]

Hi Mike, in answer to your question what’s the 5% non vegan

I’m vegan in everything except on a long ride when the only cake shop we can find is non vegan. Hubby is vegan at home but eats fish or meat when out for a sit down meal. Hope this clarifies for you.

Yes you have to have cake on a ride!

Mike

When out on the bike I like to have my cake and eat it. However, I do draw the line at those fairy cakes that are 90% lead and 10% sugar icing. For one thing, they sit heavily in the stomach, providing little or no nutritious energy but rather weighing one down, physically and mentally, as the thing sits queasily in your gut telling you that you were a fool to consume it.

Cugel

[Cugel]

The rationing has begun! The motives for this are very mixed, from wanting to stop useless or even counterproductive "treatments" to saving cash to preparing the way for more "private" treatment of the kind highly lucrative to Trump-familiars.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... treatments

".......a list of 34 diagnostic tests and treatments that in future patients in England will only be able to get in exceptional circumstances as part of a drive to save money and relieve the pressure on the NHS.

The sweeping changes they are set to propose include many forms of surgery, as well as ways of detecting illness including CT and MRI scans, and blood tests, for cancer, arthritis, back problems, kidney stones, sinus infections and depression".

Spin doctors will even now be spinning lies and obfuscations about the matter as furiously as the Knitters of Dent made woollen stockings!

Cugel

[dodger]

My friend, who is a GP, says that very many common complaints she deals with would cure themselves within 7 days.
She also says that there is significant pressure from drug companies to prescribe a drug for just about anything.
Apparently, drug companies also are known to offer various "freebies" or sweeteners to GPs to use their pills.
I can't help thinking that our bodies have reached where we are through a million years of evolution and have many defences if we allow them to operate and, importantly, take responsibility for our own well being. (He says, eating another lump of chocolate!)

[Yvonned]

Hi Cugel

Couldn’t agree more about the ‘fairy cakes’. For us it’s most likely to be a thick slice of fruit and nut cake......plenty around now with Christmas on the horizon.

Yvonne

[Cugel]

Hi Cugel

Couldn’t agree more about the ‘fairy cakes’. For us it’s most likely to be a thick slice of fruit and nut cake......plenty around now with Christmas on the horizon.

Yvonne

One day I will allow the world access to the ladywife's many styles and types of cake. She is expert at finding nutritious stuff to replace the sugar (often 50% in many recipes of the cookery books). The resulting cakes are still sweet in their way but not with that cloying sticky sugar taste that overwhelms the taste of all the other nice ingredients.

Many of her ingredients are naturally sweet but not with the sugar-bomb effect that floods one's bloodstream with a huge glucose hit, followed by some sort of bonk and another notch in the climbing pole up to diabetes. Ground nuts of various sorts; dried berry fruits; dates and figs; full-grain flours of various kinds...... .

When correctly marketed these cakes will make her fortune!. Currently she is being inveigled to every possible meeting they can devise by the local Wild Indians (Wimmins Institooters) as she takes cakes ...... The rascals don't pay but offer barter of their lead fairy cakes! Cuh!

Cugel

[Yvonned]

Bwyd dda yn bwysig

Also home made vegan Welsh Cakes with extra spices and fruit.

[Oldjohnw]

There is a news item this morning (sorry, no link but was on Radio 4) that says that life expectancy in the US is declining (the country that spends the most per head on health in the world).

Various theories (including pharmaceutical drugs) have been put forward as to why this is the case but at the heart of them is that there is something terribly wrong about the lifestyle of Americans.

That spend doesn't fall on all heads. In the US people with no health insurance and who can't afford to pay die untreated if they get cancer or are badly injured in an accident and presumably a child from a poor family with type 1 diabetes will just die from it.

I’ve not worked in healthcare in the USA since President Obama changed things. When I i was there people who were not insured and fell ill were covered by MedicAid or Medicare depending on the circumstances. In many instances this free treatment is better and provides better cover than Obamacare I’m led to believe. It certainly finds many treatments that the NHS does not. The problem is some people could fall in the gap between both policies but it was far rarer than people over here make out.

Harvard university reckons that 45,000 die because of lack of healthcare

[axel_knutt]

My friend, who is a GP, says that very many common complaints she deals with would cure themselves within 7 days.

I think that's why you now have to wait 3 weeks for an appointment.

[Mike_Ayling]

. . . < SNIP > . . ..
Imho don't tell the receptionist anything you want to be kept private.

Punch line of joke:
Receptionist: whats wrong with your ear then?
Patient: I can't pass water out of it!

Mine