Archive for category ICONS – Golden apple
Cancer of the cervix : What does the Tampap Test reveal?
Posted by admin in Books, Cancer, Cervical cancer, ICONS - Golden apple on October 18th, 2012
It must surely be a problem for patients when medical practitioners have different views about things.
Take for example a test known as the Tampap test. It does not detect cancer. Instead it detects the presence of HPV (human papilloma virus) in the vagina. Some strains of this virus can sometimes lead to cancer of the cervix, and so you might regard most types (well over 90%) of cervical cancer as a venereal disease caused by a virus. However it is not as straightforward as it seems.
Here is a video telling you all about it.
Two doctors, Dr Dawn Harper and Dr Christian Jenssen endorse it in the video.
Another doctor, Dr Margaret McCartney, has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK about the marketing used for this test and her complaints have been upheld.
She has written an article in The Guardian newspaper about it.
These three practicing doctors all have a media presence but the approach and style of the latter is very different from the two former doctors.
So what do you do when doctors seem to disagree?
Well I suppose you have to suss them out for yourself.
As well as studying their websites, the video referred to above might help you form an opinion about the two doctors who promote the test. So also might watching some of the TV programmes they have made.
A good way to suss out the doctor who made the complaint might be to read a book that she has recently published. It is aimed at the lay public but is full of interesting information that would benefit doctors as well as patients.
The Patient Paradox: Why Sexed Up Medicine is Bad for Your Health
By Margaret McCartney
Three doctors, demonstrating two very different ways of promoting health to their patients.
I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed them out.
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Making a Tippy Tap
Posted by admin in Child Health, Epidemiology, FOOD POISONING, FOOD SAFETY, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, Infection Control, Public Health and Health Protection Agencies, Vomiting on October 17th, 2012
COUNTRY : WORLDWIDE
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Global Handwashing Day 2012
Posted by admin in Diarrhoea, FOOD POISONING, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, Infection Control, Public Health and Health Protection Agencies, Uncategorized on October 15th, 2012
Today, 15th October 2012 is Global Handwashing Day.
“Human feces are the main source of diarrheal pathogens. They are the source of shigellosis, typhoid, cholera, all other common endemic gastro-enteric infections and some respiratory infections such as influenza and pneumonia. A single gram of human feces can contain 10 million viruses and one million bacteria.
These pathogens are passed from an infected host to a new one via various routes but all of these illnesses emanate from feces. Removing excreta and cleaning hands with soap after contact with fecal material –from using the toilet or cleaning a child – prevents the transmission of the bacteria, viruses and protozoa that cause diarrheal diseases.
Other measures (food handling, water purification, and fly control) have an impact on these diseases as well, but sanitation and handwashing provide the necessary protection against fecal contact. They start by creating initial barriers to fecal pathogens from reaching the domestic environment. Handwashing with soap stops the transmission of disease agents and so can significantly reduce diarrhea and respiratory infections, and may impact skin and eye infections.
Research shows that children living in households exposed to handwashing promotion and soap had half the diarrheal rates of children living in control neighborhoods. Because handwashing can prevent the transmission of a variety of pathogens, it may be more effective than any single vaccine. Promoted on a wide enough scale, handwashing with soap can be thought of as a “do-it-yourself” vaccine. Ingraining the habit of handwashing could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention.”
COUNTRY : WORLDWIDE
Why Handwashing with Soap?
Handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal and acute respiratory infections, which take the lives of millions of children in developing countries every year. Together, they are responsible for the majority of all child deaths. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practiced and difficult to promote.Turning handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter. A vast change in handwashing behavior is critical to meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing deaths among children under the age of five by two-thirds by 2015.
Global Handwashing Day focuses on children because not only do they suffer disproportionately from diarrheal and respiratory diseases and deaths, but research shows that children – the segment of society so often the most energetic, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas – can also be powerful agents for changing behaviors like handwashing with soap in their communities.
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Twenty three and a half hours
Posted by admin in EXERCISE, ICONS - Golden apple on October 1st, 2012
There are far too many complex messages about how to be healthy.
But not this one.
This is an excellent video!
The message is simple:
Just limit your sleeping and sitting to just twenty three and a half hours a day!
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Sleep hygiene
Posted by admin in Books, ICONS - Golden apple, SLEEP DISORDERS on September 25th, 2012
It’s a bit startling that getting good night’s sleep is given such a low priority when it comes to healthy living.
Maybe this will soon change. There is a rather off-putting term known as “sleep hygiene” seeping into medical journals. And now a lay person who himself sleepwalks has delved into the subject of sleep and has written a book about it. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal referring to it.
Zlatko Glusica was the captain of an Air India Express plane carrying 166 passengers from Dubai to Mangalore, a bustling port city on India’s southern coast. As his Boeing 737 approached the city, Mr. Glusica woke up from a nap in the cockpit and took over the controls. His co-pilot warned him repeatedly that he was coming in at the wrong angle and that he should pull up and try again. The last sound on the cockpit recorder was the co-pilot screaming that they didn’t have any runway left. The plane overshot the landing and burst into flames. Only eight people survived. An investigation found that the captain was suffering from “sleep inertia.”
The accident was a fatal reminder of the power of something prosaic that most of us typically don’t give much thought: sleep. Yet it’s a lesson that is habitually forgotten. Since that 2010 Air India flight, sleepy pilots have been at the center of several near-accidents, including two this year. In April, 16 passengers of an Air Canada flight were injured after the plane’s pilot went into a sudden dive after he mistook the planet Venus for an oncoming plane. And in July, a Texas judge found that a JetBlue pilot’s bizarre ranting in the cabin was a psychotic breakdown that may have been caused by a lack of sleep.
The book is:
“DREAMLAND : ADVENTURES IN THE STRANGE SCIENCE OF SLEEP”
By David K Randall
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The Mediterranean diet
Posted by admin in DIETS, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, WEIGHT on March 15th, 2011
Mediterranean diets like all others are variable but the general theme is that they tend to be high in fruit and vegetables, high in olive oil compared with dairy fats and lower in meat than in the UK.
A recent analysis of 500,00 people from 50 studies was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology was reviewed by the team at “Behind the Headlines.”
MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET
“Importantly, some of the analyses combined studies that were very different from one another in terms of the sample size, study duration, trial quality and context of intervention. These analyses had a high ‘statistical heterogeneity’, which is a way of measuring whether it is appropriate to pool them or not (higher heterogeneity means pooling is less appropriate). The researchers say that this “introduces a warning about the generalisation of the present results”.
The outcomes were related to risk factors for cardiovascular disease, not the disease itself. It is, therefore, an extrapolation, although perhaps not an unrealistic one, to claim that this study proves that the Mediterranean diet has an effect on cardiovascular disease outcomes.Overall, this research provides further evidence of the benefits of eating a Mediterranean-style diet and quantifies the benefit in terms of the individual risk components of metabolic syndrome.”
COUNTRY : MULTINATIONAL
COUNTRY : UK (COMMENT)
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Webwhispering Diet : Granny McAdam’s tablet
Posted by admin in DIETS, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, The Webwhispering Diet, Webwhispering Diet on March 12th, 2011
Warning! Here is The First Bad Red Egg. The first forbidden treat. One that most healthy diets would not allow!
If Granny McAdam was still alive she would be a great, great granny. She would be delighted to know her recipe for Scottish tablet was appearing on something that would bamboozle her – The World Wide Web. She would be a bit amazed to learn that a recipe brimming with all the diet nasties was being used in a healthy eating diet. Granny McAdam lived till she was nearly a hundred but I’ve no idea how much of her own tablet she ate and how much she gave away. Consequently, I can’t say that her tablet was related to her longevity. However, I know she always had some stored away in a tin box, and visitors were given a little bag of it as they went out the door and a little hand-picked bunch of flowers from her garden.
Probably most doctors and dietitians would disapprove of me having Granny McAdam’s tablet as part of a healthy eating/weight reduction diet. The beauty of having a blog that is not affiliated to anyone apart from myself means that I can tell you about my own approach to my own healthy eating, eccentric though it may be.
The aim is to eat absolute everything I like, but to adjust the amounts and frequency of consumption of each item until weight loss occurs (I am hoping to lose two stones slowly but steadily and keep that weight off for the rest of my life). If you follow any diet pyramid, tablet, sugar and butter will always be near the top – to be eaten in small amounts. Like Granny McAdam, I’m going to have treats available at all times. None of this “don’t have it in the house – it will tempt you” approach. The diet is not gong to control me, I’ll control the diet.
So here is the recipe:
GRANNY McADAM’S TABLET
UTENSILS
Scales or other measuring things
A big thick based pot
A long handled wooden spoon.
A greased square baking tray with edges high enough to prevent the fluid tablet from overflowing.
A knife.
A tin storage boxIf you want to give it away some clear bags suitable for food.
If you want to make it really, really pretty, some ribbon to tie them with.
INGREDIENTS
1/4 lb butter
1 cup water
2 lbs white sugar
Vanilla pod or vanilla essence to taste.
1 tin Fussel’s condensed milk.
(Granny McAdam always used Fussels. Nothing else would do. However, since then companies have been buying each other over and nobody knows who’s who nowadays when it comes to condensed milk. They’ll need to use Carnation Light Condensed milk seems to be much the same recipe as Fussels NOT Carnation Evaporated milk…… THIS WON’T WORK)
PROCEDURE
Put butter and water in the pan and melt.
Add sugar then condensed milk.
Bring to the boil, stirring all the time.
(Granny McAdam used to say the secret was in the stirring. You must stir and stir without ceasing she said. For half an hour if necessary.)
When getting sugary at the sides of the pan, stir in vanilla pod and remove when flavour is right, or add vanilla essence to required taste.
Test consistency by spooning out a little into a cup of cold water. It should set sugary not runny.
Keep stirring all the time – it should turn into a deep golden colour.When consistency and colour is just right, pour into greased tin.
Before it has cooled completely mark into even squares.
Break up into pieces when cold
Scrape every bit that remains in the pot, store it in a jar and use it for sprinkling on ice cream – another treat!Enjoy!
It might take a bit of practice to get the consistency, colour and texture right. This is NOT fudge and it is NOT toffee. It is Scottish tablet, and this recipe once mastered, if you keep stirring according to Granny McAdam’s instructions, makes the best tablet in the world!
A real treat!
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Prevention of heart disease
Posted by admin in Cardiovascular disease prevention, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple on March 9th, 2011
When it comes to clogging up the coronary arteries – a gradual process which in time has the potential of resulting in angina, coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction, then prevention really is better than cure.
The Mayo Clinic gives guidance on ways to help yourself without medication.
5 MEDICATION-FREE STRATEGIES TO HELP PREVENT HEART DISEASE
COUNTRY : USA
“Heart disease may be a leading cause of death, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it as your fate. Although you lack the power to change some risk factors — such as family history, sex or age — there are some key heart disease prevention steps you can take.
You can avoid heart problems in the future by adopting a healthy lifestyle today. Here are five heart disease prevention tips to get you started.”
The English approach is here:
CORONARY HEART DISEASE – PREVENTION
COUNTRY : UK
“There are several ways that you can help to reduce your risk of developing coronary heart disease (CHD), these include reducing your blood pressure and cholesterol levels. There are a number of ways you can do this….”
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Food pyramid review
Posted by admin in DIETS, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, The Webwhispering Diet, Webwhispering Diet on March 3rd, 2011
Here is yet another food pyramid with loads of carbohydrate on the base.
Once more, I am of the opinion that I could not under any circumstances devour a diet with such a large proportion of carbohydrate and have already decided that fruit and vegetables will be the predominant food in my own Webwhispering Diet.
What interests me is that there seems to be a nutrition expert questioning the wisdom of following a diet so rich in carbohydrates. He seems to think it might be making the American population fat. He also emphasise the needs for diets to reflect the individual rather than “one size does all.”
Cell Biology Professor Richard Feinman Discusses the ‘Food Pyramid’ Dietary Guidelines: MyFoxDC.com
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Webwhispering diet: food pyramids
Posted by admin in DIETS, Healthy Eating, ICONS - Golden apple, The Webwhispering Diet, Webwhispering Diet on February 16th, 2011
It is fashionable to turn healthy eating into the form of a pyramid.
There are several types of food pyramid and each relates to cultural eating patterns. For example, there is a Mediterranean pyramid, an Asian pyramid etc.
It seems to me there is a problem. Nowadays in the UK we enjoy a multicultural diet, so what pyramid do we follow? Do we flit form one pyramid to another? If so, will that prevent losing weight to a healthy level because we convince ourselves we can eat all the foods freely from the bottom level of all the food pyramids?
I’ll need to prepare my own food pyramid before I start dieting. One thing for sure, it won’t be the one shown here. My “base” will be fruit and vegetables. There are two reasons for this. I love fruit and vegetables and wouldn’t want to restrict them much. Furthermore, a diet with a basis of fruit and vegetables means that it is possible to have very quick meals without any cooking involved at all – and this has a huge advantage if you don’t have much free time to spend in the kitchen.
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