FIGHTING THE FITNESS URGE

I’ve spent most of my life convinced that my lifestyle meant I was doomed and destined for a premature handing in of my dinner pail. In 2018 a study determined that any alcoholic drink at all was very, very bad for you. Occasionally, so convinced was I of this, I had a “dry” month and felt exceedingly virtuous but was very grumpy  and restless.

Doctors seemed united and thin lipped about this. These cheerless cynics bleakly asserted that when it came to alcohol nil by mouth was what we should aspire to.  Yet if we really had to drink then 14 units a week (disapproving sniff) was the absolute limit; exceeding this would be akin to committing suicide. Despite this a 2019 BMJ Open study of 417 NHS doctors found that 44% of them resorted to binge drinking themselves.

So what the hell was going on? 

Earlier this month a new study came up with a differing account. Here’s the story:

“The European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care will be presented with this study from the University Hospital Bonn in Germany.

628 adults took part with an average age of 72 who were undergoing elective surgery.

The 186 adults in the "medium to hazardous alcohol consumption group" were significantly less likely to be obese or overweight than those who did not drink or drank only occasionally.

The high-drinking group also reported better overall health, less pain and found it easier to perform activities such as getting dressed and seeing family.

Vera Guttenthaler, the study's author, said: "One explanation may be that higher alcohol consumption may lead to elevated mood, enhanced sociability and reduced stress.

"The results may lead to the conclusion that alcohol consumption ... might support older patients to experience a better quality of life before and after elective surgery."

Vera Guttenthaler’s conclusion that alcohol might give you a better quality of life was encouraging to those of us who enjoy drinking. Cheers Vera.

But having established  drinking may, after all, be quite good for you what other lifestyle issues need to be re-examined. Let’s start with exercise. I’m afraid I belong to the Billy Butlin view:

“Whenever I feel the urge to take exercise I sit down until it passes away”. 

But seeing all the rest of my family power-walking, jogging, doing Pilates and generally turning their bodies into objects of well-muscled tautness prompted me to start the restorative process.

I bought a pedometer and now  unless I get in my 10,000 steps a day I feel very uneasy. My wife has watched in alarm as I rush up and down the stairs – 59 of them from top to bottom of the house - or walk round and round the sitting room. I ache all over . But soon I’ll resemble Joe Wicks rather than Mr Blobby.

Next it’s brain exercises. The daily Wordle which I do with my wife honing a series of strategies which have produced a “streak” (that’s a winning run) of over a hundred. 

I might learn a foreign language although that sounds like an  awesome task or write that book I’ve been talking about for ages. Meanwhile I’m trying to fathom the strategy underlying our government’s chaotic activities. Now that’s real brain exercise.

Finally food. My body is a temple – it must be appropriately worshipped. No more pies, no meat, no dairy, nothing that tastes nice. Yeah, well, I’ve tried this before and I doesn’t work. Vegan food just makes me flatulent.

It’s very simple. Let’s listen to Epicurus:- 

“Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”

 

WHEN HELP DOESN'T HELP AT ALL

We’ve moved house and so had to register with a new GP. As I used to have high cholesterol I take statins and had to renew my prescription. The conversation with the new Doctor went well enough until referring to my medical notes he started talking about “my heart disease.”  “What heart disease? They once thought I had it but after an angiogram they found I didn’t” “Oh yes; you do have it …it says so here”…and he read something extremely fast that was both news to me and incomprehensible.

I went home and sat down. Evidently I wasn’t very well. In just a few minutes I’d aged 20 years. I wondered if my funeral would be before or after the Ashes series was over.

I went to bed.

I want to talk about “iatrogenics”. The term was unfamiliar to me before reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of ‘The Black Swan’ and ‘Antifragile’).  From the Greek "brought forth by the healer" it refers to any effect on a person resulting from a Doctor’s treatment which rather than being helpful has the opposite effect.

Effects include anxiety about or annoyance with the Doctor. So bingo…. I was a victim of “iatrogenics.”
I’d felt less well immediately…as though I’d been poisoned. Later on I recalled completing a form on my alcohol consumption from the NHS. I’d said it was on average 24 units a week. I then got a text asking if I needed to discuss reducing my consumption levels. It made me feel like an inebriate. (Stop looking at me like that! Anyway I’m off to New Zealand.)

Melissa Kite the journalist wrote recently about being denied HRT patches because of NHS guidelines about its dangers (allegedly small). Eventually in despair and not sleeping,  she snarled at her Doctor: “Give them to me I’m a danger to the public otherwise”.

Is the NHS is ignoring the simple strategy of encouraging people to feel well? Better surely to have a slightly shorter, happier life than live to be an old valetudinarian.

Stanley Holloway was renowned for his monologues like “My word you do look queer” about a guy who recovering from being ill is told by everyone how dreadful he looks. It has immortal lines like

“Oh, dear! You look dreadful: you've had a near shave, 
You look like a man with one foot in the grave…….    
I heard you were bad, well I heard you were gone. 
You look like a corpse with an overcoat on.” 

Eventually someone says ….
“You're looking fine and in the pink!'
I shouted, 'Am I? ... Come and have a drink!” 

So is the NHS spending too much time worrying about tactics and changing the rules (what for instance, is the “5 a day” Campaign but an invention by the Californian Fruit Marketing Company?) rather than improving morale?

Let’s relax a bit more… overall we’ve never been healthier…

“Are we really?”

“Yes”.

“Come and have a drink.”

And let’s beware of iatrogenics.

GETTING ANGRY ABOUT SUCCESS

My site minder said somewhat peevishly “you could do with more passion in your blogs. You’re at your best when they’re angry”.

Bastard!

Well I’ll tell you about what makes angry. It’s the persistent moaning about how terrible everything is with no acknowledgement that the world consistently gets better. For sure, because we are human, there are odd exceptions and hiccoughs but overall the world is a better place.

“Oh yes. What about today’s youth? Drunk, drugged and up the duff and on benefit as like as not….”
Well the facts are somewhat different. Alcohol consumption is down in the UK, especially amongst 16-24 year olds. Drug use is down and, as one pundit wryly observed, “drugs aren’t cool anymore.” As far as teenage pregnancies goes they’ve also gone down to the lowest level since the 1960s.

Yet every morning on the Today programme I hear the Welsh and Scottish lilts of Humphrys and Naughtie pronouncing imminent Armageddon ….. the collapse of the NHS, the decline of education….of transport.

There’s never been so much airtime devoted to “news” and so little devoted to wondering what’s expressed in the immortal lines from Mel Brooks film  “The Producers”

“How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?”

Where did we go right?

Take transport. Best service you can imagine from Brighton to London – 11 trains between half past six and half past seven in the morning, they take an hour yet all I hear are grumbles. We have a fantastic underground, bus service and so it goes on.

Live departures and arrivals board for London Victoria

Time	From/To	P
17:58a 18:01	Littlehampton & Ore	17
18:02 On time	Brighton (East Sussex) Starts here	13
18:03 On time	Ashford International via Maidstone East Starts here	3
18:03 On time	Epsom Downs via Norbury Starts here	9
18:03a 18:01	From Orpington Terminates	5
18:04 On time	Bognor Regis via Horsham & Portsmouth Harbour via Horsham Starts here	19

The Boris Johnson brand of gung-ho “we can do it…just watch” is seductive because it’s rooted in a series of truths.  As the Olympics and Shard have shown we have the best civil engineers in the world.
London is the no. 1 capital city.  We are the top country in the world for the arts….no don’t interrupt…..
If the NHS were a private enterprise most of the problems would be discreetly solved as opposed to the constant attempt to fix the plane in flight with the media watching… basically it’s a brilliant product.

Angry….I’m mad for all the wrong reasons. I’m beginning to feel that Britain has become,  like that silly joke about France, “a brilliant country apart from the people”.

We are skilled at innovation and change.
We have an innate sense of fairness.
And we want to win….don’t we?

But that silence in response to the question may be the problem.

www.colourfulthinkers.com