Tenterden Osteopath » Health

First Aid: The modern way to do CPR

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:56:08 +0000

The British Heart Foundation have just brought out a new instructional video featuring Vinnie Jones that shows you how to do CPR on someone who is breathing but unconscious. Appropriately doing compressions to the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive helps reinforce the message and makes sure that the lifesaver keeps to the beat (100/min).

I love the video, it’s modern and the message is sticky. Being slightly cynical I wonder why the advice on CPR seems to change every couple of years, surely it’s not just a way of drumming up business for first aid course providers …

When we understand consciousness will we understand pain

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:25:10 +0000

We still don’t understand exactly what consciousness is made of or where it resides. Lorimer Moseley gives a good summary of some of the latest hypotheses but sadly none of them answer the question definitively. The question is important because if we need consciousness to experience pain, as many believe, then to know more about the process has the potential to unlock treatment modalities to help people who suffer chronic, presently untreatable pain.

Lorimer seems fairly sure that the answer lies in the brain. Maybe he needs to have a chat with John Upledger who proposed the "energy cyst" model several decades ago. In this model trauma is "felt" at a cellular level and sets up a continuous noxious input that requires local reorganisation to contain its effect.

A good review, well worth reading can be found here: http://bodyinmind.org/how-does-the-brain-produce-consciousness

A spinning class with a difference from Spain

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:28:27 +0000

Instead of pounding away to heavy metal or whatever compilation your instructor brings to the class, why not have live music while you spin. Something uplifting and traditional and very Spanish. “Spinning a ritmo de jota” from Zaragoza. Enjoy …

Massage oil: a fire hazard

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:24:42 +0000

Wiltshire fire and rescue service has issued a warning about the risk of towels and linen catching fire. There have been several incidents recently in laundrettes, salons and homes where fires have started in tumble driers. The problem has been traced to low temperature wash cycles, sometimes as low as 15°C. At this temperature the washing detergents are unable to break down and remove oils that have been absorbed by the towel. When the towel or sheet is put into a tumble drier there is a greater risk of it catching fire.

This can be a particular problem for beauty therapists or anyone using oils for massage or aromatherapy.

Use a 40°C wash or above to be safe.

You are younger than you think

Bill Ferguson — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:14:46 +0000

According to the television show QI you are probably much younger than you think. When you consider that your body is made up of cells and most of those cells are less than 10 years old, then even if you have just celebrated your 55th birthday most of your body is less than 10 years old.

Some examples:

The epithelial cells that line the surface of the gut last only 5 days
Red blood cells last only 120 days
An adult liver is replaced every 300 to 500 days
The entire bony skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults
Cells from the intercostal muscles taken from people in their late 30s, have an age of 15 years

Stem cell researcher Jonas Frisén, suggests that the average age of all the human cells in an adult’s body is somewhere between 7 to 10 years.

The problem with ageing is not however the age of the cells; it is the transcription errors that creep in each time they are replaced. Like making a tape recording of a tape recording, each time you repeat the process the quality degrades.

This might hurt – don’t look away

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:23:07 +0000

I wrote last year how mirrors were being used to treat phantom limb pain. Now they are being used in a slightly different way to carry out research into how the brain processes pain.

The researchers found that if you look at your hand, rather than looking away from it you can tolerate more discomfort, in this case they used a hot probe to test heat tolerance on volunteers. They also found that by magnifying the size of your hand, using mirrors, your heat tolerance increased even more. Doing the opposite, using mirrors to shrink your hand, will reduce your heat tolerance.

So next time you have a painful injection in your arm, follow Professor Haggard’s advice: "look at your arm but try to avoid seeing the needle".

Read the BBC news article here

How to deal with a sore throat

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:15:51 +0000

I have researched three methods and they work for me, usually, but not always. Let me know how they work for you.

Gargle with nasty cheap red wine. You know the wine that you get for free with a five euro lunch in France, it will be high in tannins and other phenolic chemicals that are great for killing strep bugs. Gargle with it then spit it out, try not to swallow too much. Best not to do it at the table …
Make some ginger tea. Not really tea but an infusion. Grate some fresh ginger root into a small pyrex bowl, add a spoonful of runny honey and a cup/mug full of boiling water, let it infuse for 5 minutes, strain into a fresh cup and sip. Repeat hourly until bedtime.

Ginger root
This is an old fashioned naturopathic treatment that also works (for me) for hayfever congestion as well as sore throat. Take a flannel and soak it in cold water, fold it in half lengthways and put it over your throat like a scarf. Put a dry handtowel over it and secure the ends at the back of your neck. Lie down or sit still in a chair for 30 minutes. Prepare to be amazed at the result. You will probably be quite sweaty and have coughed up or sneezed up impressive amounts of gunge by the end of the process.

Acupuncture treatment for anxiety

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:58:10 +0000

We now know which parts of the brain are involved with feelings of anxiety, sadness and pain. See the Sky News article for further information.

The two main parts of the brain that increase their activity when we feel stressed or anxious are the prefrontal cortex and the limbic centres. Recent research carried out in USA has shown acupuncture to reduce activity in these areas. The trials were done using fMRI a technique that lets researchers see which parts of the brain are active when the body is stimulated, eg by having an acupuncture needle put into a muscle.

The exciting possibility is that we may be able to treat chronic anxiety and some forms of depression with acupuncture.

Why Hungarian red sludge is such bad news

Bill Ferguson — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:06:39 +0000

Red sludge is a by-product from the Bayer process, used to extract aluminium from Bauxite ore. Over time the sludge will separate into two phases, a highly alkaline liquid and a sediment of arsenic and heavy metals (mainly chromium, manganese and nickel). The two phases are usually dealt with on site in different ways and made safe. In this case heavy rain caused the reservoir to break and 200 million gallons of the stuff escaped.

Two main problems are the alkalinity, at pH 12 the caustic liquid will quickly remove your skin and destroy pretty much any living tissue in a short time. Breathing in the vapour will quickly damage your lungs: its worse than tear gas. Arsenic in solution will kill fish and other marine life, arsenic and the heavy metals will get into the soil and may even leach into aquifiers, poisoning drinking water for many years into the future.

I can understand why the media are downplaying the severity of the problem, the consequences of this event are likely to be severe. Especially if, as is being hinted at, there is a further leak.

What is the point – sham acupuncture

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:06:37 +0000

Yet another waste of time. What is this obsession with sham acupuncture? Anyone who is involved in acupuncture realises that the effect begins when the tip of the needle touches the skin of the patient. After that there are two variables: the intensity of the treatment and the responsiveness of the patient.

One study looked at two treatments: shallow acupuncture that they called ‘sham’ and deeper acupuncture. Surprise, surprise there wasn’t much difference in effect. Their conclusion ‘acupuncture is no better than sham’. My conclusion ‘their sham was not sham at all, it was acupuncture’, if it proves anything it is that depth of needling is not very important.

A much better trial compared acupuncture with a drug known to control hot flushes.
Acupuncture was just as good at controlling the symptoms with fewer side effects, and no doubt a lot cheaper. I don’t suppose this trial will make the headlines – or am I just an old cynic.

This is what I would like to see: compare acupuncture directly with the normal drugs that are used routinely for arthritic joint pain, for IBS, for headaches and migraines. That would be a good start.