Entries Tagged 'health' ↓

(A rare personal note. It’s more efficient than telling this to people one at a time.)

A month ago while walking I had to stop and grab something, anything, to avoid falling. The pain coming from my hip was sharp and overwhelming; the leg underneath it signaled it would no longer support my weight. Or rather, the signal from my brain telling it to stay up seemed to be blocked by pain.

Once safe I caught my breath and in a second realized this could prevent me from dancing again. Or walking. Maybe I’d end up in a wheelchair after all. I waited until my hip felt stable enough to keep going and called to get an appointment the next day.

August was terrible for my Health. A tendinitis made it very difficult to type, allergies and digestive troubles came back.

I have a new drug regimen. The first 10 days of homeopathy are done, but there’s still essential fatty acids, probiotics, anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritis medications. It’s a lot of pills, but it won’t be for very much longer: apparently I should be pill-free in a couple months.

I already feel 100 times better. The trouble that started in January 2007 is not completely undone, yet I feel like a fog has lifted. My mood and concentration have both improved. A week into my regimen I felt like going to the gym to lift weights. I felt pumped!

It’s not the first time a naturopath turns my life around, so I can’t understand what took me so damned long to see one this time, especially since I’m now a free-lancer. When charging per hour of actual work, being sick and unable to work is a double-whammy, costing money and revenues.

So if I post a few things about health and ergonomics in the next few months, now you know why it’s top of my mind.

Graphic images, disturbing if you don’t know what’s going on. I knew what she was doing, but still wasn’t prepared for the emotional shock of seeing that face start moving:

And so his question stands: what do you do after that?

When trying to eat healthier foods, lots of people read labels. This can be rather scary when there are lots of ingredients you can’t even begin to pronounce.

Some people even put things back on the shelf after reading terms like ascorbic acid. Yes, I have seen several people refuse to eat foods because it contains vitamin C.  Cyanocobalamin (B12) and Pantothenic acid (B6) can elicit similar reactions or horror and disgust.

Being afraid of food is no way to live.

Rejecting all chemical additives can lead to very boring diets, and too often people just give up their quest for healthier eating. Unless they chance on a distilled list (like Marc-Andre’s Hacker’s Healthy Guide), most people don’t know where to start and ignore real health risks like trans-fats.

I suggest you pick a product every day. Read the label, and google those terms you don’t know. Within days, you’ll know the most common ingredients. After a couple of weeks, you’ll rarely need to lookup more than 2 ingredients on a new package.

I finished reading The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor last week-end. Andy Kessler is a Silicon Valley geek that struck it rich, and wants to find the next big thing in medicine. I give the book 3 out of 5 stars.

Looking for areas where silicon meets biology, he documents one year of dialogs with various researchers including Nobel prize winners. No doubt being wealthy opens many doors. Silicon gets better, faster and cheaper - surely if we can bring these qualities to medicine in a way that can scale we can cure many diseases?

I’m not convinced Kessler is quite on the right track. While the technologies he describe are very promising, modern medicine has had plenty of spectacular failures and the future rarely unfolds as expected. We have bottled water and oxygen bars, but we still don’t have flying cars or X-Ray machines in every living room.

More to the point, his emphasis on early detection misses the most obvious point: prevention. Several times when dining with eminent researchers Kessler judges whether they are true believers by the fat content of their meals. Apparently someone convinced that their research will bear fruit wouldn’t subject themselves to bland and healthy food.

We are already doing much better at curing some cancers like childhood leukemia. Even while more children fall ill, fewer die. In other words, more and more children go through the ordeal of cancer treatment and we still aren’t sure what’s causing the disease.

Perhaps Kessler thinks his bacon and eggs are worth the risk of needing treatment. And in his mind, treatment will be quick zaps at the very earliest onset of the disease. I hope so, but doubt it.

My hope for the future is radically different. As more sensors let us capture more and better data, and as early diagnostics help us better associate environmental conditions and diseases, we will be able to more clearly identify causes. We may finally answer whether and which pesticides cause childhood leukemia.

Prevention won’t make anyone billions the way cheap silicon wafers cancer diagnostic kits and advanced imaging will. Because Kessler is chasing money, he misses the obvious - that prevention always saves many more lives than treatment.