21.02.24

“Measure what you value. Do not value what you measure”.

I was given this quote by David (I think) at coffee time yesterday in The Ludlow Lectures. I believe it should be attributed to Anthony Bryk an American educationalist. It could apply easily to the direction of this site. Today we seem to want to measure every aspect of disease - in the context of individuals this can be, and often is disastrous. If we must measure….. measure what we value, our health, happiness the vibrancy and diversity of our society our wonderful natural world……whatever you think is important!

21.02.24

I often say that I think modern doctoring (and stacks of other stuff ) is ‘linear’, and somebody, quite rightly challenged me the other day to say what I mean by this. Here is an example.

I woke this morning earlier than usual. I knew it was because I should go and empty my bladder! I didn't, I was a bit lazy, and lay in a hazy half-awake state not thinking very clearly.

It reminded me of what I often saw in hospitals. Elderly people were often admitted in a confused state. The holistic (it's not a great word but I can't think of anything better), way of dealing with this is (and was) to talk at length to the patient and anybody else who knew them and to examine them very carefully. One extremely common cause for their confusion was that their bladder filled almost the whole of their belly (they had temporarily lost the power of emptying).  A pathologically full bladder or even massive and neglected constipation (they are often associated) causes confusion, it happens again and again, the nurse from the ‘home’ would know that but probably nobody asked him or her!

The wholesome therapeutic plan would then be to deal with the retention of urine etc, and return the patient, you would hope to a loving home or institution.

The linear approach, I’m afraid now is all too common, it is this.

Old person arrives in hospital, confused - diagnosis after minimal history and examination  -‘confusion’. Plan…… brain scan To “rule out” signs of tumour, an unsuspected stroke or other pathology. if negative can be returned to nursing home.

This is of course the worst possible scenario, but is not by any means unknown!  The cure for such monstrosities…… know human beings as well as diseases. I ironically found increasingly during my working life that cleverer and more able people were progressively being trained to be doctors and they were being shoe-horned into ways of working methods which often end with them doing more and more stupid things. (those not going to medical schools may have ended up working for the post office perhaps). Please see section on Thomas Sydenham in influences, in the navigation section on the top of the homepage.

In the section of the website  marked  thoughts, I will try (eventually) to offer an explanation, in view of the light of very recent lines of thought, why a pathologically full bladder or constipated recto-sigmoid colon may cause confusion, please see that. I think it could be important.

28.2.24 Yesterday Elizabeth Commented……”No one in the hospitals seems to understand that the lack of fresh vegetables, also / especially of fermented foods for patients whose gut biomes are being wiped out by antibiotics, is the exact opposite of healing.”  

I would add……. yes all that is certainly true, though to be fair things are perhaps slowly changing, Honestly, issues like wholesome food have always had disastrously low priority. We are at the very start of understanding the human biome. How to treat the sterilised bowel will become more nuanced for sure. I noticed in the early ‘90s things were changing in hospitals. I seem to remember cleaning was contracted out at that time in the name of ‘efficiency’. Previous, each ward had its own cleaner, who, dare I say it, could be the most therapeutic person….. (I remember a cheery and kindly lady where I did my house surgeon job in the 1970s). She saw people as they were, not just as diagnoses, and I now think this must have been unknowingly beneficial. I don’t know what happens now.

Even worse perhaps…….the way we have separated the sick off from the natural world, into a harsh and sterilised though scientifically correct environ. I loved a recent story in a newspaper where a retired G.P. who died in the intensive care unit of a London Hospital, managed to change his will to leave money for cleaning of the sky-lights, so the bedded patients could see the clouds and the eternal blue beyond! (Your chances of surviving a long stay in an intensive care unit, it is said, are very low, you need to be out in a few days. I would be surprised if seeing the sky did not improve those chances.)

4th of March 2024

On Saturday Sue and I were planting trees in the snow - it was fun even with frozen hands. A Sainsbury’s delivery van passed us in the lane, announcing “Live Better for Less”. I don’t suppose it was meant to be ironic, but I do think that more and more people are being to wonder what is the real cost of the way we live now and how are our grandchildren going to foot the bill.

9th March Alison kindly sent this lovely quote from Dr. Matt Morgan…. “Sometimes it is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than what sort of a disease they have.”

Added 2.4.24 Letters to a Younger Self;

Dear self: You carry a deep yearning to contribute to the healing of the world and fulfillment of its possibilities. This is your deepest desire, and if you abandon it you will feel like a ghost inhabiting the mere shell of a life. Instead, trust that desire and follow it toward whatever service it calls you to, however small and insignificant it might seem.

Charles Eisenstein.

Added 25.5.24 “yet still it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

Kenneth Steven,

Added 29th of May 2024

A week thought from last week.

What an extraordinary day yesterday, by 8 of the evening the sun was still in full cry as the now nearly-full hawthorn moon rose.

The may blossom shone everywhere and mingled with clematis on our roadside.

Added 14.6.24. You might say that water was just a function of oxygen and hydrogen molecules. Then you look at the wondrous multi-fold symmetry of a snow flake.

Added 22.6.24

“We know the world - more or less - we know how it works and can control and subdue it with our science and increasingly through our technology. Only man - and the type of men and women we choose, possees the consciousness we need worry about.”

Yes, that is the spoken or unspoken assumption that most of us have been brought up with and it is a function of the last hundred yearsand more of western thought and practice.

It is what we can now challenge and many many more people are doing so, it a source of increasing strength.……….. thank God.

Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

Think Global but act local.

After Jenny Goodman, please see ‘influences’.