Personal portable superbug protection

There have been so many stories in the press about ‘superbugs’ and the danger of infection in hospitals, or anywhere you are away from home and staying in a public environment. I am a great believer in being proactive, and I have a close friend who has been in hospital 6 times over the last 5 years, and got infected each time – so I was happy to pass on to him some news that came my way this week.

If you are concerned for yourself, or a friend or relative in hospital, or care home, then you could buy them something that will be a lot more welcome than flowers or fruit. Just launched is a product called PatientPak which the manufacturers claim will help protect people when they visit hospital as it is proven to kill pathogens, including MRSA, and is effective within 10 seconds. It is also proven to kill a wide spectrum of viruses and bacteria including E Coli, Norovirus, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria and Avian Flu (H5N1), and can also be used in the home or when travelling.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has proposed that the NHS constitution gives patients responsibilities as well as rights, and that means you are going to be responsible for high standards of personal hygiene in order to avoid bringing infections on to a hospital ward – and also presumably to discourage you from suing them if you do fall ill.

The PatientPak consists of a number of items formulated and developed by medical doctors, which has only been available so far in hospitals. They work by stopping harmful bacteria building up resistance to the active ingredients and this is what you get in the Pak:

** Two types of antimicrobial wipes: one for surfaces for cleaning surfaces and killing germs on door handles, bed frames, toilet seats, food tables, work surfaces and taps and a gentler one for your face and body.

** An antimicrobial sanitising hand spray to use before handling food, after using the toilet and after any physical contact with others, together with a hair and body wash.

** A fabric spray that kills germs that can survive on fabric and can be used on clothes, curtains or bed linen.

** A pH-neutral cleansing soap and nail brush which are essential for removing spores and other pathogens, including C difficile. Your mother was right about always thoroughly washing your hands, it’s the first line of defence against germs.

** Finally, they include a toothbrush plus toothpaste, lip balm and pen.

The pack is a one-off item, you use it and dispose of the contents at the end of your hospital visit to minimize the transfer of bugs when you get back home. All that, plus a leaflet full of advice on good hygiene practice and how you can protect yourself from superbugs. There’s also a polite notice that patients can place next to their hospital bed, which requests that people check that their hands are clean before treatment is given – and includes your visitors who pick over the fruit they have brought you and then leave you with their germs! This note was apparently suggested by the leading charity, MRSA Action UK, to help if you are too shy, embarrassed, or ill, to ask people to wash their hands before approaching you.

The pack retails at £15.99, which sounds like a bargain to avoid all those bugs, and you can buy it in main branches of Boots, Holland & Barret and the pharmacies in major supermarkets. If you can’t find it then you can buy online from www.patientpak.com.

Free home visit eye tests

Not everyone can get easily to the optician, but maintaining your eyesight is a major priority and now – for the over 60′s – you can get a free home visit to have your eyes checked by The Outside Clinic. Eye Health Week runs from 6th – 12th October 2008 in association with The Royal Institute of the Blind (RNIB) and The College of Optometrists. Currently NHS eye tests are only available in the home for anyone who can’t get to an optician without help or support. The Outside Clinic is the UK’s longest established home visiting optician service and is offering a free home visit to anyone over the age of 60, and who has not had an eye test in the last 12 months. It is recommended that the over 60′s should have an eye test every year so that potential problems can be averted and early signs of diseases like glaucoma can be identified.

INTERESTED? The Outside Clinic operates throughout the UK and for more information, or to book an eye test, call 0800 85 44 77 between 6th-12th October 2008 and quoting ‘Happy Eyes’.

Golfers live longer

Though it may just seem that way if you happen to be a ‘golf widow/widower!’ I don’t think of Sweden as a golfing nation, but a study conducted by the Karolinska Institutet, and published in the ‘Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports’, has revealed that people who played golf had a 40% lower mortality rate than their equivalent non-golfing counterparts. In real terms that means they can expect to live 5 years longer.

A round of golf means being outside for four or five hours, walking at a fast pace for six to seven kilometres, all of which are things that are known to be good for health. Also, golf is a game people usually play well into their old age so maintain their level of fitness, plus there are other social and psychological aspects to the game that can be of help.

Mental acuity, plus physical exercise and companionship is a very potent cocktail, and, it may seem unfair, but their research also found that golfers with the lowest handicap enjoyed the lowest mortality rates. It seems this is because it takes more playing time to reach a higher level of proficiency in the game, so you are out in the fresh air and exercising for longer. Another good reason to lower your handicap!

Back awareness week

If you have a bad back, you don’t need an awareness week as unfortunately it is ever present in your consciousness. However, we now seem to have special days and weeks that are celebrated that I don’t remember from my dim and distant childhood – was there ever a Grandparent’s Day? This time I am reminding you that it is Back Care Awareness Week from 4 – 10 October 2008 and its theme and focus is ‘staying positive and believing that’you can do it’.

Given that 52% of the population now gets back pain – a 5% increase on last year – a positive attitude seems to be definitely called for. You now have full permission to stow the vacuum cleaner as the most common causes of bad backs apparently are spring cleaning and housework. As Quentin Crisp famously observed ‘There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’ You may feel that’s a bit extreme but as a principle I could get excited about it.

More worrying is the fact that a recent study found that between 13% and 50% of teenagers have already had episodes of back pain and as many as two in every class of 15-18 year olds experience back pain on a recurrent or chronic basis. It’s apparently a combination of too much time in front of a computer, not enough physical activity and the increasing ‘couch potato’ syndrome. There are many options for the management and prevention of back pain and the earlier you seek help then the better it is. Back pain as well as physically causing immobilization, can cause many people to feel trapped by back pain. Even something simple like getting in or out of a car can become an enormous and painful challenge, so much so, that some people stop doing it and become housebound. This can lead to a downward spiral of pain, depression, lack of self-belief and negative feelings about your ability to lead a normal life. It is a ‘can do’ attitude that the back awareness week wants to promote to counter this.

Personally I am a big fan of chiropractic, particularly McTimoney which is less invasive and bone cracking than the more widely known osteopathic practices. There are plenty of events going on around the country, kicking off with a major exhibition at Olympia. If you would like to now more then visit the website at www.backpain.org.uk

Flame retardant clothing – Bad for children?

I wasn’t sure why this would be the case, but a warning put out on one of my natural news networks has confirmed that there are many hidden chemical dangers in even children’s clothing. I was reading about an 18-month old baby with sky-high levels of chemical flame retardants in her blood – two or three times the amount that’s known to cause major nerve damage in lab rats – and she had absorbed these chemicals through her skin. In the USA and the UK there are regulations in force relating to children’s nightwear and I am not suggesting you disregard them, but I do think it’s important to bear in mind the effect such chemicals have, particularly on infants and small children.

A recent study by the Environmental Working Group in the USA looked at 20 families and found that ALL the childen under school age had a level of chemical fire retardants in their blood that was an average of three times higher than their parents.

The chemicals in question are known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Unlike the flame retardant antimony, which is generally the kind used to make clothing fire-resistant. Its found in every conceivable household item you can imagine: mattresses, TVs, computers, remote controls, and more.

Like antimony, PBDEs have been known to cause brain damage in animals, but now doctors are concerned that the possible effects on human children could range from hyperactivity to damage to hormone systems and reproductive organs.

Fortunately we are not so insistent on the high levels of fire retardant chemicals in clothing as they are in the USA, but it might be worth considering switching to natural, untreated, cotton garments and maintaining sensible fire precautions in the home – particularly if the child is sensitive to allergens or has a compromised immune system.

A natural face lift

In keeping with helping you avoid the surgeon’s knife, I thought I would remind you that there is an alternative to botox, chemical peels and the trauma of a surgical face lift if you want to go the DIY route to preserve your looks – or even enhance them if you are lucky. Of course it won’t cost you as much – in fact it’s free – but it does require some of your time. This entirely natural facelift will improve circulation, eliminate toxins and reduce stress and tension so you will lookmore relaxed, and the skin will be smoother with more radiance and that helps you look younger.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
You are going to stimulate the acupressure points on the energy meridians of your face by using your fingers to apply firm pressure to each point and the whole thing shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. To eliminate crows’ feet and tone the eye area:

Place your middle fingers on the inside edges of your eyebrows. Apply light pressure going along your eyebrow, round to under the eye, pressing your fingers on the top of your cheekbones. Then continue to the inside corners of your eyes. Repeat in a circular motion around the eyes 30 times.

To soften fine linesand wrinkles around the eyes:

Put your fingers on the outside end of each eyebrow, then trace down until they are parallel with the centre of your eye. Lightly touch these points for three seconds, then release. Repeat 30 times. Now do the same for the points directly under your pupil on the top edge of your cheekbone.

There are also some other points to rejuvenate the rest of your face: For each of these points, again lightly touch them for three seconds and release, repeating 30 times.

* Either side of each nostril, on the face not the nose itself.

* The point between your top lip and nose, and the point between your bottom lip and tip of the chin. Touch both of these at the same time using your index and ring finger.

* Put your finger directly between your eyebrows, then trace up until just before you reach the slight bump in your forehead, about midway to your hairline. Massage this point gently with a circular motion to release tension. It might help to do these actions facing a mirror for the first few times so you can be sure you are pressing in the right place. Ten minutes a day, every day, and you should see results within a few weeks. No before and after photos please, I will be happy to just take your word for it!

Diabetes and memory loss solution

Another story that interested me this week, also came from Canada and the Baycrest Center. This time they were reporting on the link between diabetes, high-fat foods and memory loss.

Apparently, adults with type 2 diabetes who eat unhealthy, high-fat, meals can suffer from some reduction in their ability to remember things immediately after eating such a meal. Possibly because they have fallen asleep while digesting such a heavy meal, but there is hope as the temporary memory loss can be offset by taking antioxidant vitamins C and E with the meal.

It is already known that diabetes is linked to the ability to retain information, but now it seems that adults with type 2 diabetes are especially vulnerable to acute memory loss after eating unhealthy foods. The new findings appeared in a recent issue of Nutrition Research, a professional peer-reviewed journal, and suggests that taking high doses of antioxidant vitamins C and E with the meal may help minimize those memory slumps.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with chronic oxidative stress, a major contributor to cognitive decline and Alzheimer disease. If you have an unhealthy diet, then that raises your level of free radicals and those unstable molecules can damage tissue, including brain tissue. These destructive molecule reactions typically occur over a one-to-three hour period after you have eaten but don’t think that popping a supplement pill will do the trick on its own. It’s a place to start, and the study used vitamin C of 100mg and vitamin E of 800 mg taken with the meal, but do check with your doctor as there are contraindications for taking high doses.

Specifically, tell your doctor if you are taking warfarin as you may not be able to take vitamin E without special monitoring during treatment, and also consult your doctor if you are pregnant or breast-feeding a baby.

Ideally you will change your diet to one that is high in antioxidants to chase down those free radicals – look back at the article on the Mediterranean Diet as it is generally accepted to be one of the most health-giving there is.

DVT risk from pollution

We have become used to the idea that being immobile for long periods such as on a long-haul flight, or sitting in the same position at a desk for hours, may pose a risk for DVT (deep vein thrombosis), but now it seems that the air pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels can drastically increase the risk of developing these potentially fatal blood clots as well. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health did some research on the air pollution levels in the Lombardy region of Italy. They chose an area where 870 known DVT patients lived, along with their 1200 healthy neighbours. When they analysed the air pollution they found that for every 10 microgram per square meter increase in particulate concentration, a person’s risk of DVT increased by a staggering 70%.

I don’t know if Lombardy is particularly polluted, but if you live in an industrial area, it would pay you to know about the warning signs for DVT – though it has to be said sometimes, there are none at all. The first sign can be chest pain or discomfort which usually gets worse when you take a deep breath or when you cough. You might have get an unexplained sudden onset of shortness of breath, which is the most common symptom, or feel lightheaded, dizzy or even a bit anxious. If you are at all concerned, please consult your doctor, and if it is a severe chest pain get immediate help.

Retrain your brain after stroke

Apparently just walking on a treadmill every day for six months can really help stroke victims regain control of mind and body – even years after their stroke. A German study of stroke victims, half of the whom could walk without assistance with the rest used a cane, a walker, or a wheelchair, has found that using a treadmill not only improved walking speed and fitness, but appeared to rewire their brain circuits. The repetitive walking action seemed to recruit unused brain circuits to take over for those destroyed by the stroke and MRI scans showed greater activity in other parts of the brain too. Stroke patients are typically told to learn to live with their disabilities, and most rehabilitation programmes focus on short-term improvement, ending just a few months after the stroke, so that over time the patients’ improvement plateaus and fitness often wanes. But this study suggests that it’s never too late for the brain and body to recover, the researchers said, noting that patients in the study had significant improvement even nine years after a stroke.

Cut heart disease – Put on the kettle

I was giving a talk on alternative medicine on a cruise recently and mentioned the many health benefits of green tea – a substance I am very fond of. So, imagine my surprise when I went to the buffet to get a cup and couldn’t find a green tea bag anywhere. I spoke to the catering manager who couldn’t understand it either, but told me suddenly everyone was drinking green tea! So for all those converts, and those who aren’t here is another good reason to head for the green stuff – it can cut your heart disease and stroke risk in HALF! New studies on green tea (or epigallocatechin gallate to give it the proper name) show it has all these benefits:

* Lower your cholesterol counts by 9 points
* Prevent cancer cells from ever forming
* Protect DNA from mutating
* Boost production of disease-fighting T-cells
* Even prevent tooth decay

It has been called the ultimate antioxidant, and to enjoy it at its best let it steep for a couple of minutes then drink without milk or sugar. I often add some fresh mint leaves for taste although you can now buy several different flavoured varieties, and sweeten with honey if it’s not to your taste. However you drink it, try to get one or two cups a day into your routine – your health really will benefit.

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