HG Smart

People who can always breathe easily never really understand asthma. Unless and until you have experienced that slow tightening of the chest, the reality of the fear and distress it causes never strikes home. At least, that should be fear and distress in the beginning. People who have it should learn to live with it. Millions grew up before the inhalers and modern drugs came on to the market. Not for them the freedom to squirt relieving chemicals into their lungs. They either learned how to control the problem naturally or ended up in hospital, hooked up to an oxygen bottle. Today, we see children and their parents living in the shadow of asthma as if it’s some kind of death sentence. Yesterday, we had athletes and sporting heroes as our role models – people who had conquered asthma and reached the highest levels of performance. Now children are not allowed to leave home without their inhalers plus back-up. And schools have been trained to deal with asthma attacks. The world is walking around expecting the worst.

This shift in culture has been engineered by the pharmaceutical industry. It has convinced everyone that the sufferers can only survive by using these magic products. This is not completely dishonest. There are times when the attack is severe and the drugs relieve what could have become a serious threat to health. But that does not justify using these drugs routinely.

That said, since no one now learns relaxation techniques to control breathing, the young are dependent on drugs to do it for them. For the more serious cases, it’s become customary to rely on steroids as an anti-inflammatory. Because inflammation of the airways and lungs is not limited to asthma, these drugs are actually used for almost all diseases of the lungs. Indeed, the practice is to pump large amounts of steroids into you through an intravenous line if you present at an emergency room. The most common of the oral drugs is Prednisone. Because of the risk of side effects, this is not used unless the asthma is serious or has been difficult to control over a long period of time. This can avoid the need to go to hospital. There are two approaches. One is a so-called steroid burst where you take a high dose for a short period of time. The other is a very low dose taken for a relatively long period of time. Read more…

Do you think younger men worry about losing their hair? If you ask them they will all state some great-sounding reasons about the judgement of society and discriminating, but it really all comes down to sex. Young men wish to look attractive to women. Even when they have talked their way into a steady relationship, they remain confident about their ability to find another partner should this one fail to live up to expectations. The problem starts in the following situation. In our culture men are thought to look older if they are losing their hair. And this is not unreasonable. It’ snatural for men to lose their hair as they get older. But if a man founds himself the singles market, hair loss is going to slow down the recruitment of his next partner. Well, unless he happens to be rich.. Somehow, rich men never seem to have a problem in finding willing women no matter how much hair they have. Since the majority of men do not have the odd million or so as pocket change, keeping up appearances becomes very important. How else is a man to ensure his genes get carried forward into the next generation unless he keeps his hair? Read more…

One of the building blocks of medical treatment is the need for the patient (that’s you) to consent to whatever treatment is proposed. Hopefully, the doctor gives you a good explanation of the all costs and benefits, and this allows you to make a properly informed decision. The problems with this in the real world come on both sides of the equation. Some doctors act as if they walk on water and you should do whatever they tell you and be grateful they were actually prepared to speak to you. Some patients come with prejudices and, no matter what the doctor tells them, they don’t want to hear anything that conflicts with their own beliefs. In the middle come the doctors who are bad at explaining and the patients who struggle to understand. The result is that many pain management clinics fail to give a comprehensive and satisfactory range of treatments to every patient, i.e. many patients are left in pain. Read more…