Recently in health Category

From the "stating the bleedin' obvious" department.

Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for you than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests.

I mean, really, how much research did that need?

Our bathroom scales gave up the ghost recently. Well, so would you if you had me standing on you every couple of days for ten years. But replacing them gave us a wonderful opportunity for consumer overkill. Not for us a simple set of mechanical scales. No, we bought the Tanita BC-543 Body Composition Monitor. Because you can never have too much data about how overweight you are.

The Body Composition Monitor isn't actually as complex as you think. You tell it your age, sex and height and it measures your weight and your body fat percentage. I think it measures your body fat by pushing a small electric charge into your heels and measuring your body's resistance. Armed with this data it then gives you a barrage of information about your body and its imperfections.

But I reckon they've missed a couple of tricks.

Firstly, nowhere in the mass of information does it include your BMI. Now I know that BMI isn't a particularly useful measure, but it's certainly popular and they have all the information they need to calculate it.

But it's the second omission that has me thinking. Tanita have a web site where users of their equipment can input data and track their health. But that's all too much like hard work. You need to write down the numbers that you get from the monitor, go to a computer, log into the site and then type in all the numbers. Where's the fun in that? We have computers to do all that drudgery for us.

What they should be doing is putting a wireless networking connection in all their products. Then when the monitor is used, it can use the local wireless network to transmit the data directly to the web site. None of that tedious transcription with its potential for errors (or for cheating). Each time you stand on the scales, your data is instantly available on the web site. It's a lazy person's dream. And let's face it, anyone who is using one of these to monitor their weight is very likely to be a lazy person.

I shouldn't be blogging about this. I should be running off to the patent office. Or, at the very least, writing code.

Writing in today's Guardian, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is understandably happy to hear that McDonald's are closing twenty-five of their UK branches.

Even McDonald's European boss, Denis Hennequin, is struggling to put a happy face on the situation: "The UK has been in negative territory for a couple of years now," he admitted. "The brand 15 years ago was very trendy and modern. It is now tired."

It's probably over five years since I've eaten anything from McDonald's I've never been a fan of their products. And this isn't really for either healthy eating or anti-globalisation reasons (although these are both, of course, perfectly good reasons for not eating there). In my case it simply comes down to the fact that I've never enjoyed any McDonald's products that I've eaten[1]. I really can't see the attraction. Most of their food tastes disgusting. I honestly can't understand why people find it so appealling.

[1] Ok, I admit it, except for their thick shakes.

I haven't written anything about my health recently, so let's combine that with a little rant about NHS wastage.

The consultant is very happy with the way that the sarcoidosis is going and wants to slowly cut out my steroids. We're doing this by taking 3mg a day for four weeks then 2mg a day and finally 1mg a day. This is compared to the 30mg a day I was on when the steroids were first prescribed.

I'm currently taking 1mg tablets and because prescriptions tend to be in four week blocks these tablets come in packets of 28. So I need 168 tablets - or six boxes.

We phoned my GP last week to get the prescription filled. My wife went in to pick it up. She noticed that the doctor had made up a prescription for 100 tablets - which isn't enough. She went back to the doctor and pointed out the error. The doctor said she was happy to correct it and changed the prescription to 200 tablets. Rapidly losing the will to live my wife decided not to argue and just took the prescription.

So now I've got 200 tablets. That's 32 more than I need. Almost 20% wasted. All because the doctor couldn't be bothered to do some simple arithmetic. Actually she didn't even need to do that. If she had just written the dosage instructions on the prescription, the pharmacist would have done the maths.

I needed six packets. I've got seven. And because 200 isn't exactly divisible by 28, I've also got another little box containing four tablets cut out from another packet. I hope they can use the rest of that packet for other small amounts prescribed by doctors who can't be bothered to give sensible prescriptions.

Oh, and because the prescription didn't contain any dosage instructions, the boxes all have "take four tablets daily" written on them. Not sure where that came from. It's a good job I'm clued up enough to remember what the consultant told me. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would have forgotten that and just taken the pharmacist's word.

Back St. George's this morning. This time for a bone densitometry examination. This is just a safety measure as the steroids I'm on can reduce the calcium in your bones and lead to osteoporosis. I'm on a calcium supplement to counter that but it's always good to know for sure.

I spent last night back in St George's Hospital. Yesterday evening I started getting a bad pain in my stomach. It got so bad that at about 11pm my wife called an ambulance and they took me to A&E (my first ride in an ambulance!)

Why do these things always happen at night? By the time I had got through triage and had been prodded and tested in various ways and had finally been given a bed for the night, it was almost 4am. Even then, I didn't get much sleep as the pain was to bad.

So it seems that it's a side effect of the sarcoidosis. Or, rather, a side effect of the treatment. My calcium levels are too high and they think this is causing a build-up of acid in my stomach. But they sent me home this morning with some pills that seem to make me feel a lot better.

All in all, not much fan.

It seems that 2005 will go down in history as the year that my body officially gave up the ghost.

Not only was there all the sarcoidosis stuff, but this morning I had an eye test as was told that I should start to use glasses for reading and computer work. This didn't come as a complete surprise as the optician has been muttering about the possibility on my last couple of checkups[1] but it's still a little depressing.

[1] And if I'm completely honest with myself I have been noticing it getting a little harder to focus on close-up work.

Back to St Georges this afternoon. This time for an echocardiogram. And here's a good tip. It might be a good idea to walk down to the hospital (it takes about 45 minutes), but it's not such a good idea in the midday sun when you know you have to take your top off in front of people who have been in a nice cool hospital all day!

So all in all, I was a bit sweaty and embarassed by the time I got there. But never mind. I'm sure they have to deal with far worse.

The process itself was simple enough. It's a lot like the ultrasound scans that they do on pregnant women. I had a few electrodes attached to me to monitor heart rate and then they used a probe (with a bit of gel on the end) to get an ultrasound picture of my heart.

The whole point was to see if the sarcoidosis has effected my heart, or if it's just in my lungs. The results should be through by the time of my next appointment with the consultant in about a month's time. But I assume that they'll let me know before that if they find anything too untoward.

The problem with getting involved with the medical profession is that once they're well on the way to fixing one problem they like to look around to see if there's anything else to work on.

So whilst I the doctors were prodding and poking me in various ways to work out what was wrong with my chest they made a little note to themselves that they weren't entirely happy with my heartbeat and that maybe they should investigate that a bit more closely when they started getting bored with the other stuff. And that time is now.

I was at the hospital on Thursday again for a monthly check-up on the Sarcoidosis. They seem happy enough with the way that's going. They've cut me down to 15mg of steroids for the next month and 10mg for the month after that. And they don't want to see me again for two months. So that's all pretty good.

But yesterday the investigation of my heart started in earnest. They're worried that my heart rate is often a bit higher than it should be so they've decided to monitor it for 24 hours and see how it goes. It's all pretty simple stuff. I have a small ECG machine clipped onto my belt which is attached to three sensors that are stuck to various points on my chest. It all fits under a loose-fitting shirt and no-one need know what's going on. It was all stuck on yesterday at about 2pm and I can take it off at 2pm today. Then I need to drop it all back at the hospital at some point.

Let's hope they don't find anything that bothers them too much.

If anyone is still following the saga of my health then you might be interested to know that I've finally got a letter from the doctor saying that the result from the broncospocy confirm the original diagnosis of sarcoidosis.

Which is good as I've now been taking drugs for that for a month :)