Medicine? It’s all just basic machinery with parallax error

Some time ago my GP decided, with no apparent prompting, that my blood pressure was high, extremely high. This terrible, but symptomless, condition would apparently lead to explosions in the heart department and other such catastrophic breakdowns if left unattended. Now I have never been diagnosed with elevated blood pressure before and I don’t live a particularly unhealthy lifestyle so I must confess I found this sudden deterioration unusual but as an Engineer I identified a likely cause.

When my wrists were repaired a large amount of metal was added and this takes up space in my body, if the pump remains pumping the same volume at the same rate into a smaller space the pressure has to increase. As good as this logic is I don’t have an easy solution since the body is dead set on a specific volume of the red stuff, just letting some out isn’t an option well at least not a long-term one. Since the body was being all biological about matters I had no choice but to take the drugs prescribed by my GP and set about this with the enthusiasm of a sloth.

The first choice of prescription, I have since been told, was for the medical equivalent of a 1950s lump hammer. Whilst beta blockers do reduce your blood pressure they are an unwieldy tool akin to using an air wrench to undo an M3 nut and it was very quickly apparent that they were not for me. The weekend came around after a few days on these pills and I arose on the Saturday morning with little planned, after making a cup of tea at 7am I relaxed on the sofa and woke up again at 10! The problem with beta blockers is that they calm you down, I am already calm if you calm me down then it all ends rather horizontal and that is not a good plan.

Prescription 2 resolved the beta blocker issues and my blood pressure was quickly brought into line much to everybody’s delight. After a couple of months with the new super clever drug I noticed that I was suffering a lot of hair loss, it does seem to be my side effect of choice. A review of the literature confirmed that it is a reasonably common side effect and this was confirmed by user reports on the internet so off I headed to the GP. In my GPs defence he checked the side effects listed on the prescribing screen and did not find hair loss so sent me off to collect more of the same.

Collecting the second prescription I checked the paperwork and the side effect of hair loss had moved from “less common” to ” common” apparently its specific to generic variations and I was clearly heading downhill. My solution was an experiment, after all we all love an experiment don’t we? I would stop taking the drugs and monitor my blood pressure to be on the safe side. My hair loss reduced but in fairness I can’t be sure that is not simply a result of dwindling stock, what is interesting is my blood pressure which has steadily improved. I have gone from routinely hitting the 210+/100+ to, the much more socially acceptable values of 131/77 (3 week average) and 127/80 (last week average) quite an achievement for giving up medication surely? For reference the target is 120/80 and below.

So what is responsible for this miraculous recovery? Well firstly I have to make a confession, I have taken to measuring my blood pressure as soon as I wake up and I had a sneaky suspicion this was pushing the figures towards the low side. New research, by me, actually says that this is not true it is recommended to take it when fully relaxed and they caution that even walking between rooms can elevate the pressure. I have changed my diet over the last few weeks but that is only to reduce carbohydrate in keeping with my more sedentary lifestyle so that was more about preventing increases than causing decreases.

I think I have hit upon the answer and it could save the NHS millions. I have changed the cuff for my blood pressure monitor to one that fits. Unbeknown to me the ‘medium’ cuff that all of these machines come with has a strict size limit and it is not immediately obvious since the cuff will still fit oversized arms. Because the ‘large’ cuff increases in width as well I can be confident that everyone is using medium, which would make sense as I am not a large person.

I am writing this now because, having pondered for some time, I spoke to my mate the man mountain that is Rick and he confirmed my theory. In Rick’s case people had been using the standard 120/80 which is clearly incorrect for a man the size of a house, to get blood to circulate that machine you’re going to have to pump harder. But he was also advised by his GP that undersized cuffs cause elevated readings. I have tested this theory myself and when the smaller cuff recommends dialling 911 the larger one is most comfortable with its readings.

So the answer is simple, as indeed it always has been. If you don’t like the value change the way you are measuring it!

 

Disclaimer: The author is not medically trained and does not purport to offer medical advice. Even for those who have not met him in person following any ‘advice’ from this blog is, well frankly, pretty dumb.

Profitable villains and tidal prophecy

I should start this post by saying that the only property that interests me is pubs. I pass fantastic houses that would, in the past, have inspired dreams and piqued my architectural interest and don’t give them a second glance. I no longer look at my rental home and long to own a building again its all about the pub. In fairness, as I explained to somebody earlier today, I do technically own a house its just that I don’t live in it and ‘owe’ 80% of it to someone that has never worked and really doesn’t like me, but I digress. It occurred to my, whilst walking along the coast, that I don’t actually remember when this changed but it has. Nowadays my rightmove searches are just to reassure me that there is a residence on the island once I am able to go. It doesn’t occur to me to look at purchasing a house because I know that any domestic property is simply a stop gap until the pub.

A pub that has caught my eye on a couple of occasions was deserving of a closer look this weekend. The pub in question is a lease which is far from my ideal but sometimes you need to consider other options and it is a free of tie lease. My background research seemed to indicate that the pub company we’re shiny the current tenant out. There were lots of supportive comments and even recent gigs to support a well liked local landlady. When I checked the pub companies website there was no mention of the sale though, further research revealed that the tenant is in fact selling on her lease. In a shrewd move she has claimed that the pub company are selling out from under her when in fact it is she who is selling. Whilst this is clearly a single shot deal it does give her the benefit of increased trade in support of her plight, after all we all know that pub companies are mean spirited don’t we. So she plays the martyr and fills her tills whilst bemoaning the landlord and then presumably disappears when the sale completes.

This is yet another reason why good research is critical. In this case the outgoing tenant will have positioned the business such that there is no goodwill to transfer. You will arrive with a smile and a jaunty step to a crowd of upset locals who ‘know’ that you are part of the reason their beloved landlady is no more.

In other news I am another step above the analogue watch snobs now. I have saved myself the effort of looking out of the window 3 times today alone because my watch tells me what the tide is doing. In fact when I walked to the shops this morning I deliberately didn’t look at the sea, so confident was I in the accuracy of Mr Yan San’s device. This is true progress, technology making life simpler and easier. Why even as I sit here typing this I know that the reason that I cannot hear so many children is that the tide is in so the beach is empty. Not for me the archaic means of looking, oh no I am the master of technology and it tells me all I need to know. Some may say that I don’t need to know the tide state or the barometric pressure but to those I ask “do you need to know what your friend had for lunch?” Of course not but you still logged onto Facebook!

For those that are following my recovery I have an update. At the moment the medical profession is looking to be leading as Ms Nature makes a very strong assault. I have been in a lot of pain for the last few days which is what the medical nuts predicted some time ago. I view this as a desperate last push by the nefarious Ms Nature and am convinced that my stubbornness will win out, watch this space.

Squares and manly lengths

Technology is a marvellous thing, every year we develop more new and fantastic things that our forefathers could not have dreamed of. Square ‘wraps’ are not such a thing, they are a leap too far. Square bread, that makes sense if for no other reason than that it fits the toaster. When I did my grocery shopping on Friday the store had run out of standard round tortilla so I selected the neighbouring alternative. That alternative was a square wrap offered by a well known national bakery brand.

When you fold a tortilla you tuck the edge in to collect all the ingredients, no such option with a square variant. These monstrosities allow you only to roll the contents up and proceed to try and chase the contents from the front as it exits from the rear. I would politely suggest that, whilst you can market them for many uses, you don’t market them as wraps.

This morning brought with it an education that I never thought that what I would need. As the proud owner of a full set of finger nails I set about trimming them but what length to? Luckily google was on hand to advise me of the correct length for gentlemen’s finger nails. I am not sure that I count as a gentleman but I figured the length was generally adopted across the male population.

Having read much debate I concluded that this is a question that vexes many of us. There were vocal proponents and opponents of manicures (why are they not called womanicures?) and even talk of clear varnishes. My conclusion was that nails should be trimmed slightly below the end of the finger, some shaping is allowed but nothing that involves a brush. Of course the next problem is actually operating nail clippers, with visibility of said nail, when dexterity is not on your cv.

This was one of those exercises that reminded me that my recovery will never be full. If filmed it would make an excellent YouTube video. The killer, the one that took some ten minutes to line up was the little finger on my right hand. I am right handed, my right wrist does not rotate fully and to cap it all my little finger has rotated outwards. In the end I achieved the trimming of this one with the aid if a mirror! I am reasonably pleased with the result, although I have over trimmed one, and remarkably proud to have beaten the nail biting. I am however acutely aware that my perspective was skewed during this exercise so any scrutiny will not be appreciated.