Giving diseases a national identity, an inanely xenophobic practice at best, is now regarded as politically incorrect. Referring to rubella as ‘German measles’ might still be considered merely naïve, but any mention of ‘mongolism’ (once a widely used synonym for Down’s Syndrome) is likely to be met with severe censure. The term ‘French letters’ has important medical connotations but is not a disease.
This week I read that rickets, the illness referred to in some European countries as ‘the English disease’ due to its prevalence among the poor on this island in the 19th century – is making a comeback in England. Rickets, a disease which softens the bones of children causing fractures and skeletal deformity most noticeably bowing of the legs, is caused by a deficiency in Vitamin D. You can get it in foods like fish and egg yolks but this vitamin is unique in that it can be made by the body on one condition – that you get enough sunlight. Dark skinned people, who need more exposure to sunlight for this purpose may certainly be more prone to getting rickets but the authors of a paper on the increase in the incidence or rickets,published in the British Medical Journal point to another cause.
The men in white coats in Newcastle (a city which has 20 new cases of rickets a year), Profs Cheetham and Pearce suggest other possible causes. One is kids choosing to stay indoors and play computer games over getting some exposure to sunlight outside. Another is that parents, fearful of the harmful effects of the sun, overuse sun-blocking creams.
It’s not only our children that suffer from lack of Vitamin D. More than 50% (sic) of British adults lack Vitamin D in the sun-free seasons of winter and spring. My colleague in the New Medicine Group, Dr Damien Downing has been ranting about this for many years at our weekly clinical meetings and elsewhere. As he has relentlessly pointed out, Vit D deficiency is also responsible for a broad spectrum of illnesses including various cancers.
The fact that the return of rickets and Vit D deficiency to our shores isn’t headline news is a national disgrace. It is emetic that the media continues to host the vengeful, vindictive, vituperative, vicious and disingenuous campaign against homeopathy while hardly mentioning the increase of an easily treatable vitamin deficiency affecting half the British public! (Sorry but I had to get that alliteration in somewhere) Perhaps the return of rickets is simply not ’sexy’ enough a topic to sell newspapers and television programmes?
Unlike most of the other bad news we read about every day, this is something we can easily do something about
- Make hay when the sun shines. Without overdoing it, make sure your skin gets a little exposure to the sun. This is even more important if you have a dark skin.
- Take a high quality Vitamin D supplement in the winter and spring and check with a doctor that you are taking the right dose.
Posted: 31.01.2010
Current Affairs Health
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In it’s TV programme Pill Poppers, Horizon has just given BBC2 viewers an unforgettable lesson in pharmacology of unprecedented educational value. The curative power, paradoxical effects (even ‘homeopathic’ eg. in the case of Ritalin), addictive qualities and side effects of modern pharmaceuticals were brilliantly conveyed to the lay viewer.
But wait a minute! Not everybody understands [...]
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Posted: 21.01.10
Homeopathy
In a discovery of cosmic significance, it has just been proved scientifically that men are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes after enduring great stress. Didn’t we already know this? Apparently not. Let me explain…
Organisations such as the British Heart Foundation (BHF) have until now claimed that ‘there is no evidence to [...]
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Posted: 19.01.10
Current Affairs Provocative Therapy
The word ‘stress’ is so commonly heard these days that it’s difficult to believe that it has only been used in the context of the human condition for about 80 years. It was introduced by endocrinologist, Hans Selye, who did a huge amount of work that demonstrated the role of stress hormones (mainly adrenalin and [...]
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Posted: 13.01.10
Autogenic Therapy
In the history of anatomy, it is an extremely rare occurrence for a part of the body to be declared not to exist. Yet this week the Journal of Sexual Medicine will publish an article that claims that the ‘idea of a G-spot is subjective’ – which means that the much written and chattered about [...]
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Posted: 04.01.10
Current Affairs Provocative Therapy
Meditating on the decade that was, the words of the poet W.H. Auden came to mind:
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to [...]
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Posted: 01.01.10
Provocative Therapy
So what can we say about the year that was? There is a curse that says: ‘May you live in interesting times!’ and for those of us who support whole-person medicine, 2009 was an interesting year indeed.
For the loud and aggressive espousers of the school of fundamentalist naïve realism in medicine, 2009 started well but [...]
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Posted: 21.12.09
Current Affairs Homeopathy
Dec 1, 2009: A wonderful day for British Homeopathy
Here follow the immortal words of Health Minister, Mike O’Brien: ‘We take the view that it is not our job to stop clinicians prescribing these medications if they feel they are appropriate.’ See more here. Striking a blow for liberty worthy of John Stuart Mill, [...]
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Posted: 01.12.09
Current Affairs Homeopathy
This week the ‘homeopathic question’ was asked by a House of Commons Science & Technology Committee. A mixture of experts and alleged ‘experts’ were apparently ‘grilled’ in order to ascertain whether there is any evidence that homeopathy works. You can see a transcript of the proceedings here:
Dr Peter Fisher, chief physician at the Royal London [...]
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Posted: 27.11.09
Current Affairs Homeopathy
The Pie Man has the noble duty of delivering this pie chart to those who jeer at homeopathy and CAM because they consider them to be less than evidence-based. In the name of truth and beauty*, the Pie Man attempts to make it clear that most of common conventional medical interventions are far from evidence-based [...]
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Posted: 19.11.09
Homeopathy Provocative Therapy The Pie Man Strikes!
The ‘English Disease’ is no joke
