The health and fitness thread about random things

[IJL]

Gout is still common, in most cases however it's simple to treat, it's to do with the way some peoples Kidneys handle Purines, those who are susceptible will create high levels of uric acid which in turn can precipitate into uric acid crystals in the joints.  Despite the rich living reputation many fairly mundane foods are high in purines.

[barakta]

A lot of the diseases in that list are made worse by overcrowded or poor quality living situations and or poor diet.

Gout has a bad reputation for being a disease of excess - making it stigmatised...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Prince Albert is supposed to have died of typhoid! Though as it's a disease of hygiene I'd think it's strongly connected with poverty, overcrowding etc now. Not sure what the link is with mumps, measles and scarlet fever though.

[barakta]

It's not absolutes, it's 'likelihood of contracting the disease' with poorer people suffering in larger numbers.

I suspect measles, mumps, scarlet fever are all more spreadable in overcrowded housing or people who have lower immune systems because of poor diet and living in shitty housing...

[Cudzoziemiec]

I wonder if there's an anti-vaxxer link? Probably not because I don't think that movement has taken off yet in the UK as much as some other places, and in as far as it has, it seems mostly a middle-class neo-hippie thing.

[barakta]

Possibly. I wonder what the demographics of different antivaxxers is. I don't know many cos I'd find them too fucking annoying (and painfully and harmfully wrong).

[JonJo]

5k walk with MrsT this afternoon. On last 2.5 k I realized what a good thing it is that sphincters don't get cramp.

proctalgia fugax . clinical features. a severe, cramp-like pain of the rectum; lasts several seconds or minutes to up to half an hour; pain then disappears completely

DAMHIKT

[hellymedic]

PITA in Latin.

Horrible; sympathies!

[Salvatore]

It's not absolutes, it's 'likelihood of contracting the disease' with poorer people suffering in larger numbers.

I suspect measles, mumps, scarlet fever are all more spreadable in overcrowded housing or people who have lower immune systems because of poor diet and living in shitty housing...

By chance last week I was looking for a death record for my great-great-great grandmother in King's Lynn some time after 1838. I found someone of the same name who was buried in 1845, but she was only 3 years old so couldn't have been my ancestor. I looked at the records anyway. Of 16 entries on 2 pages, 14 burials were of under-10s. And nearly all lived in the densely-populated fishing quarter known as North End (where that branch of my ancestors lived). 



A search in contemporary newspapers suggests that smallpox was a the big killer (especially in famine-hit Ireland). Vaccination was available for free, but it wasn't compulsory until the 1850s. Even back then there was debate in the newspapers for and against compulsion. I've read accounts of court cases in the 1890s where anti-vaxxers were prosecuted by my G GF in his capacity of Inspector of Nuisances. [His patch included the Sandringham estate, and there was once an outbreak of diphtheria there (I think it was diphtheria, but I'd have to go to Kew to check).]


Norfolk Chronicle 22nd November 1845

The WHO declared smallpox eradicated in 1980.

[T42]

5k walk with MrsT this afternoon. On last 2.5 k I realized what a good thing it is that sphincters don't get cramp.

proctalgia fugax . clinical features. a severe, cramp-like pain of the rectum; lasts several seconds or minutes to up to half an hour; pain then disappears completely

DAMHIKT

Maybe the Compex people could produce an appropriately-shaped TENS electrode.

---o0o---

Meanwhile, since we only had -3°C yesterday morning I shoved in two cups of tea and two vasoconstrictive espressos and went for a stiff walk into the East wind to test my coronary arteries. Cardiologist says "not below 5°C" but the only pain was in one of my dodgy ankles.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

[Greenbank]

It's almost certainly a phishing attempt.

If you reply you'd probably be asked for more info at some point (maybe via a different pretence), but they'd have your name, mobile number and DOB at that point. Next thing would probably be your address.

[cycleman]

I rode 21 miles on the e trice today for the first time since before Christmas and my leg muscle is still painful 

[ian]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

Send them a blood pressure reading so low that you'd have to had been dead for a couple of days or so high that you'd have to be a London black cab driver and see if they send an ambulance.

[Mrs Pingu]

Given that the NHS don't usually even leave messages I'd agree with Greenbank.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

Send them a blood pressure reading so low that you'd have to had been dead for a couple of days or so high that you'd have to be a London black cab driver and see if they send an ambulance.

I actually think it's genuine though because it includes the (correct!) surgery name. Not that I intend replying to it anyway. Even if I could measure my BP at home. I could of course just phone the surgery but really ICBA. If they want to know my BP they can contact me in some sensible way and check it.

[ian]

Our surgery sends out somewhat clunky text messages of a similar format, though they've yet to ask about my blood pressure. It's almost like they don't care. They probably don't, I did gripe about their lack of bicycle parking the last time (and the time before that, and the time before that) I was there. My blood pressure might have gone up then.

Today I don't know what is. I don't like having my blood pressure taken, I always think the cuff will sever my arm and it'll end up the floor and the doctor saying well, I've not seen that happen before. Then it'll grow back like a lizard tail. And I mean a real lizard tail and the doctor will say (again) well, I've not seen that happen before. And then I'll end up as a case report in the BMJ.

Generally, I take this as good enough reason not to visit the doctor unless it's genuinely likely that something will fall off.

[Jurek]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

I had one of these a couple of days ago.
It was deleted.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Ian, you seem to have become a minor character out of Bulgakov.

[Si S]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

I had one of these a couple of days ago.
It was deleted.

+1

Something to do with a rollout of the MyGP app. I can't say I'm surprised,  defeating the evil guardian of the doc's calendar to advance to the waiting room of doom fits quite nicely into video game format.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've received a text from "NHS-No Reply" saying they (who?) require an up to date blood pressure reading as part of my "health monitoring" and I should text a number they give with my "name, DOB & BP" so they can update their records. While I'm tempted to write this off as a bizarre phishing attempt, I think it actually means what it says: I'm expected to check my BP at home (how?) and tell someone (who?) as part of some "health monitoring" I wasn't hitherto aware of.

I had one of these a couple of days ago.
It was deleted.

+1

Something to do with a rollout of the MyGP app. I can't say I'm surprised,  defeating the evil guardian of the doc's calendar to advance to the waiting room of doom fits quite nicely into video game format.

Bonus points for taking up most of the doc's time with the most trivial reason and having the most serious condition not being treated!

[ElyDave]

I regularly get NHS texts, mainly due to having a chronic condition, and then overlaid with being run over. I tend to ignore 99% of thethem.

[Kim]

I gargled chlorhexidine before bed last night, in an attempt to fend off cheeky-throaty urgh that's doing a half-decent impression of toothache.

I discovered that if you keep it in your mouth for over a minute the taste starts to wear off and be replaced with pure pain.  Imagine a combination of hot coffee, carbon dioxide, toothpaste, alcohol and bittrex, turned up to 11.

My taste buds still haven't recovered.  Everything tastes like the molecules have been flipped over in the fourth dimension^[1] or something.  I'm forcing myself to eat some cardboard biscuits to fend off the nausea.  Some improvement in symptoms, but my tonsils still look fairly nasty.


_{[1] Concept borrowed from a 1980s children's book inspired by Flatland that hasn't aged well.}

[hellymedic]

GWS Kim!

I've never really been able to gargle (and haven't touched the Corsodyl bottle that's lodged for aeons in the bathroom either).

[andrewc]

GWS.  See my comments in Food & Drink re cheap Highland Park single malt. Much nicer to gargle with & you can share the bottle with Barakta.