Posts by dyan campbell
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Can anyone suggest some good web links with (fairly) un-deniable authority, to which people can be pointed?
This is from the David Suzuki Foundation - the whole website is quite interesting.
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Given the disparity between relative health spends between Germany and NZ (NZ spends 50% more per head than Germany), can someone explain to me why health care in NZ isn't significantly better?
I am not familiar with German health stats, but I can see from rankings in international tables that NZ's record in paediatric health is so woefully poor that I can correctly assume Germany has better stats without even bothering to look - seeing where NZ falls in the ranking tells me enough.
Preventable Diseases in NZ Children
Among OECD
countries NZ was 24th out of 25th for Health and Safety. This information was no
surprise to health professionals working with children in NZ.For serious skin infections our rates are double other countries.
For whooping cough and pneumonia our rates are 5 to 10 times those of other
countries. For Bronchiectasis our rates are 8 times those of Finland, the only
other country studied. For Rheumatic fever our rates are 13.8 times higher than
other countries.
For every paediatric hospital admission there will be tens of thousands of dollars spent, and in some cases such as bronchiectasis or rheumatic fever for instance - where the damage is going to cause health problems that will severely compromise their health as adults throughout their lives, the cost will run to hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient. So a lot of money is spent treating acute illness when the real savings would be in improved housing, improved nutrition and improved rates of immunisation.
If Don Brash thinks the way to NZ achieving prosperity is to stop funding medical access for poor kids, he needs to have another look at the sums.
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Cued into the tone perfectly, despite missing the actual meaning?
Exactly. I think Salinger was trying to show how the intention behind a derogatory term is much more powerful and easy to interpret than the term itself.
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So every term that could ever be come up with will be used in a derogatory way eventually. It's mostly in how it's done, rather than the words used. Tone, non-verbals etc.
Exactly what Ben said.
JD Salinger wrote a short story called Down at the Dingy portraying exactly that. It's about a small boy who overhears the housekeeper call his Dad "a big sloppy kike". The boy is so upset that he disappears and is finally found crying inconsolably. His Mum asks him if he understands what the housekeeper meant by "kike" and the boy answers "Yes, it's one of those things that goes up in the air with string."
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Yes, thank you Malcolm from me & Paul too - we had a great time, it was wonderful meeting everyone. What a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. We loved chatting to everyone afterwords too.
The tour was fantastic! Best part - climbing out over the stage on those slats and looking down - and also Malcolm trying to explain the Civic Lions are actually Asiatic panthers while Jim & I cheerfully kept contradicting him. Jim pointed out more people might believe that if the Civic lions weren't painted gold but black and I agreed, especially if didn't also have tufty tails and manes... and weren't... obviously lions and not panthers.
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Also we need to move away from the confused notion that sports in any way deliver significant amounts of exercise to people, especially children.
Dyan: I'm curious as to why you make this point so strongly.
I do disagree with you, but not from the perspective of Sport is good for all (panacea). Rather that Sport as a means to exercise has been hijacked and presented to kids in the wrong context.Well, I've attended many sci/med conferences devoted to the study of obesity, and been involved in the planning of a few of them.
Also I taught gymnastics for a long, long time, so I have seen first hand the difficulty of relying on a sport to deliver physical fitness, and the difficulty of teaching a sport to children who are not fit: it can't be done, You can't really teach much to a kid who isn't already strong and flexible with good balance and excellent proprioception. They'll just break their necks.
The silly mania for "competitive" sports is undermining the ability to do well at sports. I have written about this - at length and many times to various people at SPARC (who met with me several times) and was both delighted and infuriated (as I was not even credited, let alone paid) to see several of my ideas (including whole intact phrases) cited in some of their material. The great soccer players of all time - South Americans I mean - played soccer for joy and without keeping score much of the time when growing up. The latitude play gives an individual to develop bicycle kicks for instance - or that indefinable sense of "music" that lets a player predict where the ball is going to be can't be developed during a serious competitive sporting game. Physical fitness is a comprehensive set of biomechanical, proprioceptive and cardiovascular skills. Sport is the hobby you take up with your fitness - fitness is developed over time and through many different activities.
In Canada and the USA where baseball is huge and little-league can get serious as young as 8 - 9 years old, it's finally been recognised that getting kids to pitch overarm - like the big kids - instead of that girly side-arm flick tiny kids do - will cause long term injury to the elbow, shoulder and sometimes neck. The musculature, joint and ligament development is sometimes not mature enough for the movement that the kids are told they should be doing. That side-arm flick might look like a pretty crappy pitch, but the kid's body is right, and that is the most biomechanically sound and efficient way for them to pitch until they are ready to do otherwise.
Also competitive sports eliminates those who need exercise the most and introduces a tiresome element that sucks all the joy out of physical activity.
Sports are fine for kids over 8 or 9 who have some other form of training that focusses specifically on all muscle groups, core strength, cardiovascular fitness, balance, proprioception, flexibility and mental concentration. But thinking something like soccer, netball or cricket is going to provide much in the way of fitness is silly. It's like going skiing to get fit. You go skiing to have fun and you are wasting your time unless you're fit before you go skiing. Same with sport. -
Could you imagine the 'nanny state' backlash if taxing poor quality foods was raised?
It's probably more effective to impose any penalties on the manufacturer as highly processed foods are the problem.
The "built environment" is the most important factor in this whole thing. Cities and buildings must be built with an intention of producing the greatest positive effect on the people that use them. Also we need to move away from the confused notion that sports in any way deliver significant amounts of exercise to people, especially children.
There are ways to incorporate movement and play into just about any subject in a curriculum. And it's now backed up by research that cardiovascular fitness enhances brain function, so all the more reason to take the three Rs outside, at least for some of the conceptual part of the lesson.
Obesity rates can be affected by: transportation, food regulations, cultural traditions, architecture, perceived safety. Many people don't exercise because they don't feel safe going out alone, even in daytime. Actually I've been assaulted more than once while running - never seriously enough to put me in the hospital, but certainly enough to scare me out of the habit of running alone, even in daytime.
But addressing any of the above issues is a big a remedy as any dietary change. You can create a cultural habit of exercising - walking, cycling whatever.
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we know more about eczema than we ever have before, and are constantly inventing new treatments. Here we have something that it is much harder to invent evolutionary reasons for the rise of.
Eczema sounds terrible, it sounds like a thousand mosquito bites. There has been some encouraging work at Otago - it's not quite as simple as "just eat some yoghurt" but have a look at this study - there is no overwhelming success, but there it is still promising, but I understand they are using probiotics before the digestive and immune systems are fully developed. It might be worth emailing the researchers for a word of advice anyway - they are based in Otago (see paper).
Probiotics to treat eczma - Otago study
I have a friend in Canada who had eczema as a child (severe) and swears it was cured by eating 8 - 12 fresh walnuts every single day. It turns out he may be right, and as walnuts are pretty nice anyway it might be worth a try. It took a good 6 months to take full effect, but he has been eczema free for years.
Walnuts - Nutritional Benefits
Islander, this may be useful for you:
This website may be useful in general for anyone. Fabulous recipes.
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This conversation is, nine times out of ten, totally judgeypants and dispiriting
I'm afraid I'm considered one of the main offenders on that count, but my point of view and intention could not be farther from a position of judgement.
My involvement in sci/med conferences concerning obesity - as someone who has both attended and organised the damn things - and having had my Mum die of diabetes (or rather with diabetes at 83) is far from judgemental.
There is no point delivering penalties in the form of withholding access to necessary medical care. There is a complex (only now being unravelled) epigenetic component to complications from obesity- or metabolic syndrome - same thing. In other words our maternal grandmother's health may have almost as much impact on our health as the choices we make ourselves.
This is especially evident in populations where the rise and fall of access to decent nutrition can be traced with records over time (India, post war Holland, England to name a few places) - and the reverb that can be felt in subsequent generations health - clearly show how we are not entirely in control of our health outcome over time.
In short if spending the health budget was left to those who actually have the knowledge and experience to make the best use of the money, specifically the doctors, then there would not be all that much wrong with the system.
I would agree with most of this assertion, except doctors are far from the only experts that should have any input here. Most of them know shockingly little about epigenetics, or the hormonal drivers of obesity or metabolic syndrome. So I think some endocrinologists, epidemiologists, geneticists, and numbers geeks should also be included. As well as urban planners, food industry scientists, social scientists - and the general public - all need to have input into the solution to the sharp rise in obesity and the attendant diseases.
The biggest factor that could change public health would not be related to food or exercise in the specific go to the gym kind of pursuit. The most efficacious thing that can be done in a community is to provide access to green spaces, easy and safe and pleasant routes for pedestrians, skaters, cyclists, skateboarders, those in wheelchairs and those on walkers. If you look at populations that live in areas where these needs are recognised and provided for, the population will be healthier and happier. It's interesting that rural kids (in Australian stats anyway) suffered greater rates of obesity to urban kids - and I think that is direct reflection of access to safe, sociable, non-exercise oriented exercise. That is a turn on the Nevsky Prospect - the Seawall - Cornwall Park - whatever your city offers.
Auckland offers very little in the way of parks and greenspaces where you can escape cars, and what is available is not well integrated for use by different ages and pursuits. The best urban plans are those where every demographic can enjoy the space but not intrude on each others' pursuits.
There are physiological, psychological, social and habitual drivers behind any bad health choice - cigarettes, heroin, overwork, overtraining, overeating. There are trends in food industry (high fructose corn syrup, trans fats) that result in what one poster described - children whose growth is stunted while they are also obese. There are calorie dense, nutrient poor foods that are causing a kind of starvation that can be accompanied by adipose tissue. No one chooses to be in this state of health, and it usually associated with poverty.
Actually George Orwell wrote (in The Road to Wigan Pier) interesting stuff about choices made by those actually experiencing poverty, as opposed to those who knew what to do to remedy poverty. He talked about how the miners knew that fried food, candy, alcohol, tobacco and sugary tea was not as good for them as salads, but that after a hard day and given a hard life, people seek comfort food. He pinpointed the fact that drivers that are in one part of our brain that is most emphatically not the conscious logical part, and that when stressed, we are most likely to give in to the unconscious drivers - whatever the poor choice.
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I don't have any movember photos at hand. So here is an older photo, from when I had just been released from rehab.
Steven, did you do rehab on Easter Island?