Something occurred to me yesterday morning. Decided to wait till today to post about it. It wasn’t very “Thanksgivingish”.

#OTD 1901, Queen Victoria's funeral took place. Here's a little medical history THREAD (1/9) about one of Britain's longest reigning monarchs. 👇

"Queen Victorian on her death bed" by Emil Fuchs.

(2/9) On 7 April 1853, Queen Victoria became the first monarch to use chloroform to ease the pains of childbirth. Prince Leopold was born within 53 minutes of administration of the drug, which Victoria described as "delightful beyond measure.”

(3/9) The anaesthetic powers of chloroform was first discovered in 1847 by the Scottish physician James Young Simpson. He and his two friends experimented with it on the evening of November 4th. At first, they felt very cheerful and talkative. After a short time, they passed out.

(4/9) Impressed with the drug’s potency, Simpson began using chloroform as an anaesthetic. In December 1847, he delivered the first baby using it. Simpson nicknamed the girl “Saint Anaesthesia.” Her real name was Wilhelmina Carstairs, pictured here.

(5/9) During this time, Queen Victorian was pregnant with her sixth child. She heard of Simpson’s discovery and was keen to benefit from it, but royal doctors cautioned against it, claiming that painful contractions during labour were ordained by God.

What do peanuts have to do with lockdowns?

Unintended consequences.

A thread:

Peanut allergies were rare among American children up until the mid-1990s, when only four out of a thousand children under the age of eight had such an allergy. But by 2008, the rate had more than tripled, to fourteen out of a thousand.

No one knew why kids were becoming more allergic to peanuts. But the response was natural and seemingly rational: kids are vulnerable so keep them away from peanuts, peanut products, and anything that has been in contact with nuts of any kind.

But there was a severe and negative unintended consequence of this action, which was guided by the best intentions.

Researchers behind the authoritative LEAP study published in 2015 told half of participating parents to follow the standard advice for high-risk kids, which was to avoid all exposure to peanuts and peanut products.

**Know your local vegetable : Ridge gourd**

This is must vegetables for people with

- pre diabetes and diabetes
- cholesterol
- strained liver and gland functions
- Improves eye vision

It's a good detox for your body and aids metabolism

-Many diabetic find Karela difficult to consume due to its bitter taste this is a equivalent beneficial

- This can be used even with skin as raw ingredient for your chutney with varied dals

- Can be used in Sabji as well

- It's a excellent vegetable to nourish your skin and enhance your skin tone

- It's given to people of all age from young children, old aged persons and even to expectant mothers

Per Ayurveda it's a must supplement for

– cleansing large intestine
– cleansing stomach and small intestines
– cough, cold
– chronic poisoning
- enlargement of the abdomen
– anemia
– inflammation

– Disease of the spleen
– Tumors of the abdomen
– haemorrhoids
– skin diseases
– Jaundice, Liver diseases

Health officials should stop hiding behind the law to impose its unjustifiable increased contribution rates.

PhilHealth is allegedly forced to require higher payments from members as this is a provision of the Universal Health Care (UHC) Law.

Totoo ba ito? NO.
1/

True, increased PhilHealth rates are part of the UHC Law. In fact, it is one of the controversial provisions that oppositors wanted to remove or change.

But even if the increased rates are part of the law, is govt really forced to implement it? NO.

Are there precedents? YES.
2/

The Magna Carta of Public Health Workers (1992) states the benefits that govt healthcare workers are entitled to.

But to date, these benefits are not all given to HCWs in govt hospitals. Govt refuses to provide funds for these benefits.

So HCWs still have to fight for these.
3/

The Nursing Act of 2002 states that Salary Grade 15 is the minimum base pay for nurses in govt service.

However, from the outset, govt refused to implement this provision despite pleas and demands from nurses.

The Supreme Court finally decided in favor of the nurses in 2019.
4/

But what did govt do? It distorted the law and SC decision by insisting a wage increase ONLY for Nurse 1 nurses.

Worse, Nurse 2-6 nurses were demoted and the Nurse 7 level was removed, leading to outrage and demoralization.

Yes, govt has a history of NOT implementing laws.
5/

The events of the week have shaken us all. Murray Bowen described 'societal regression.' Anxiety is contagious in any group and a society is one giant interconnected group, so over time, societies become more and more anxious unless the anxiety is displaced.

1/

Displacement requires calm, non reactive leadership at every level and we have lacked that at a federal level, hence the massive escalation of anxiety on the 'system' of our society.

2/

Bowen predicted that as we regress we would no longer be able to listen to each other, we'd become highly reactive, continuing the vicious cycle of catching each others' anxiety and reactivity.

We are there.

3/

But we are not doomed. Especially knowing we have a God who cares.

But it requires calm, aware leadership at every level.

4/

Systems theory often measures anxiety and action through the lens of responsibility and control.

I frame it through the notion of spaces

1. The space inside me

2. The space between us

3. The space between me and God.

5/

Are #vegan diets really the 'single biggest way' to reduce our carbon footprints & environmental impact on the planet? We argue that this is a highly misleading claim & that the evaluation of dietary change comes with a lot of context & complexity

🧐📑➡️: https://t.co/kYGeTpy8UP

1) Global data shouldn't be used to evaluate local contexts

Regional differences are important & due to very large variations in feed digestibility, slaughter age & weight, climate conditions, management, sociocultural factors, & nutrient security.

2) Further mitigation is possible

A lot of margin is left for higher productivity, feed strategies, veterinary care, smart use of manure, & herd management. A reduction of waste, the re-use of meat-processing by-products, & the valorization of biogas also hold potential.

3) Restricting animal foods only entails a small effect

For Westerners, the effect isn't only small on a yearly basis (1-6%) but especially so on a lifetime of emissions. Some vegetarians may even have higher impacts than some omnivores. Mock products do not solve the issue.

3bis) Aren't we scapegoating animal foods to downplay our non-dietary lifestyle effects?

Taking a flight, for instance, easily offsets one or more years of veganism. Yet, cars, tourism, pets, & smart phones receive little attention in comparison to the dietary quick-fix claims.

@scottorandojin What if the false diagnosis rate was 90%?
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a thorough believer in the existence of this virus.

To exemplify: the NHS is under severe winter pressure. Many staff are unavailable, largely due to forced isolation from testing. Also, I’m told the adaptations to the conditions make normal work almost impossible. Trying to keep apart patients in different categories must be...

...incredibly stressful. I doubt I could ever have coped. Add to this the real stream of sick people & it’s a complete nightmare. My sympathies won’t be accepted but I offer them anyway. As to “the deaths”, do you mean the reported count of “covid19 deaths”? Everyone is doing...

...their very best. But as to that count: it’s nothing to do with clinical judgement. A covid19 death is a death from any cause within 28d of a positive test. So once a person is labelled by a positive test, if they then die, they’re a covid19 death. Back to my substantive...

...question: how reliable is that labelling? It’s not a clinical diagnosis. We’re not used to this idea. Never before in medical history has someone had a disease (let alone cause of death) been defined by the result of a single year alone. Yet that’s where we are. I think that..

Watermelon: Eat Me?
Me: Gladly😋🤤😂

BENEFITS OF WATERMELON
1.Good eye sight
2.Prevent Kidney Disoder
3.Prevents heart problem
4.Helps prevent cancer
5.Heart care
6.Improves sexual life
7.Great for hair and skin

Share this!

1.Good eye sight

Don’t worry about eye health if you eat plenty of watermelon, because, between the beta-carotene, vitamin-C, lutein, and zeaxanthin, your eyes are well protected.

These antioxidants will ensure the protection of your eyes from age-related degeneration

2.Prevent Kidney disorders

Watermelon contains a lot of potassium, which is helpful in cleaning or washing out the toxic depositions in the kidney

It aids in reducing the concentration of uric acid in the blood, thereby limiting the risk of kidney damage

3.Prevents heart problem

The presence of potassium and magnesium in watermelon helps to bring down blood pressure.

Potassium is helps releases the tension of blood vessels and arteries, thereby stimulating increased blood flow and reducing stress on the cardiovascular system

4.Helps prevent cancer

Watermelon has an impressive level of lycopene, a carotenoid phytonutrient compound that is increasingly being linked to cancer prevention

New NHS reforms announced today. Seems to be a story of two parts, plus a missing character. Quick thoughts (1/):

Part 1 of the story is a set of technical fixes wanted by NHS leaders to encourage collaboration in the health system. The direction here makes sense—and fits with what the NHS has been doing for ages. Competition is (mostly) out; collaboration is in: good (2/)

And the need for legal changes to tidy the mess left by Lansley’s 2012 Act has long been recognized. But... (3/)

The benefits of integration are often way overstated, and the risk of reorganizations underplayed. In its first 30 years, the NHS’s structure was relatively stable. But over the past 30, the NHS in England has been on an almost constant treadmill of reform and reorganization (4/)

Overall, evidence suggests that previous reorganizations have delivered little measurable benefit. They can also distract and disrupt, depending on how they’re done. The list of other things for the NHS to be doing during and after the pandemic is very long. So be cautious (5/)

I think that, in the face of an ongoing global health emergency and a pressing need to reopen safely, some form of health pass is a reasonable option to consider. But debate is a good thing, so here are some brief thoughts on various concerns I've heard about them... [thread]

"A health pass discriminates against people who have refused the vaccine." No. A health pass should also support proof of test result for people who haven't been vaccinated, and exemptions for people who cannot be vaccinated (get vaccinated if you can though, for heaven's sake).

"A health pass is an invasion of privacy." No. A health pass should be privacy preserving, allowing you to prove your status to third parties without giving away personal data or letting them track you without your permission.

"A health pass is unfair to people without smartphones." No. A health pass should accommodate people without a smartphone, e.g. with a printable option as a fall-back (though for most of us, carrying a digital pass on our phone will be much more convenient).

"A health pass will become obsolete as the virus mutates." No. A health pass should actually give us more insight and flexibility to adjust our response as our knowledge of the virus, and the ways we test / treat / vaccinate for it, increases.

1. Last NYE was a quiet one for @AmyMcLellan2 & I, after a busy year writing and helping @DavidHHeadley and @LizzieCurle organise @CapitalCrime1

Someone I follow on Twitter shared this story, and we jokingly said we hoped it wouldn’t be another SARS.

2. A few days later, after watching social media footage coming out of Wuhan, I went for a meeting to plan Capital Crime 2021, and said it was likely we’d have to cancel the festival because of the emerging pandemic. My partners in crime looked at me as though I was unhinged.

3. As the situation worsened, I reconnected with people I knew from my previous life working as a consultant to the medical industry, and it became clear we were witnessing the start of a pandemic.

4. Knowing something about the history of pandemics, I was aware that early intervention, and quick and decisive action were essential. I was asked to write a report for Matt Hancock on the risks of reinfection and long-term ill health caused by coronaviruses.

5. Knowing the public health and economic costs of a pandemic, I joined people like @DrEricDing trying to raise the alarm in February, calling for decisive government action. In the report sent to Hancock, I recommended a 4-week precautionary border closure and lockdown...

Quick thread on what can happen if you hold your nose and mouth and then do a sneeze.

(Sources here: https://t.co/Ksy95o7im7)

You've probably heard the urban legend about what happens if you sneeze with your eyes open.

Well, you'll be pleased to have it confirmed that your eyeballs do not pop out of your sockets like champagne corks.

The air spaces in the nose and throat aren't connected to anything behind the eye, meaning that there's no way a sneeze can create pressure that would force your eyes to shoot out and dangle around like a game of swingball.

However, there are other dangers to sneezing that I wish I didn't know about but I'm going to tell you here because fuck you I guess.

Take for instance a perfectly healthy 34-year-old man who, for reasons unknown, decided to try and block a sneeze by covering his mouth and holding his nose at the same time.

@sbarnettARK Epigenomic biomarkers are becoming more established for #LiquidBiopsy and #CancerScreening, and we have seen the big players positioning themselves in this #epigenomics race recently.

Catching signs of #cancer early is crucially important to the disease management and survival rates, so the question is: how can we find out if there is something wrong going on early enough?

The first generation of high-throughput technologies was predicated on finding mutated (tumor) DNA in the individual's body (somatic), different from their (normal) DNA. Tumor/Normal (T/N) comparisons of the individual's samples, biopsies or ctDNA will indicate if there

are signs of cancer already underway. So why do we need #epigenomic profiling if we can do all this with the detection of mutations? Well, the argument is that if you can see sufficient mutated copies of DNA, cancer may already have progressed beyond the initial stages.

Then people asked the question: is there an earlier mark that we can detect for earlier stages of cancer before the Tumor/Normal mutations signal amps up? Here is where #epigenomics profiling took hold.

THREAD 4

#ALEPH2020:

#ALEPH2020: humans are physiologically adapted to animal source

#ALEPH2020: Nutrients are not always easily obtained from plants

#ALEPH2020: special needs of vulnerable populations are met with animal source

#ALEPH2020: restricting animal source foods may put the young at

Many people meditating have felt this pulse, and it has brought instantaneous emotional and spiritual, and sometimes even physical healing to some people.

1. Some thoughts about picking over the bones of the referendum loss.

TLDR - get over it, move on, and most importantly, find a better strategy.

2. From an analytical perspective, I don’t think there’s much point in constantly assessing the referendum.

3. The answer is either so simple as to be banal (bad campaign etc) or too complicated (deep rooted societal roots etc) as not to provide any simple lessons. In any case, the result was very close.

4. Rather than dwell on the past, live in the future. Influencing what happens next is much more important than focusing on historic defeat.

5. You don’t see current Brexiteers lamenting the woeful state of their plans do you?

Over the past few days I’ve been speaking to several frontline NHS staff working in hospitals in London and surrounding areas and it seems that the situation is incredibly dire

-- THREAD --

One doctor in a London hospital tells me that following a huge spike in cases their hospital is struggling to cope and they now have no choice but to ration Oxygen: “No beds, no space, minimal Oxygen supplies. We’re having to ration Oxygen.”

A senior doctor at one of the biggest London hospitals tells me that all elective surgery has now been cancelled and that roughly 80-85% of beds are currently being used for COVID patients.

At one hospital in London a specific team has been set purely to aid with the patient discharge process. Why? Simply to free up as much bed space as possible because demand is higher than it has ever been.

One medic tells me that the number ITU beds has increased at their hospital as they try and deal with extra demand but they only have staff to cover half of them: “Yes we have extra beds but what is the point if we don’t have any staff to actually work on them?”