Thank You Twitter – Irish Hospice Foundation July 27, 2011
Posted by inshin in Social.add a comment
Hi all,
This is a thank you letter received from The Irish Hospice Foundation to all you who voted for the charity donation made recently.
Thanks!
DV
An unexpected win against Hay-fever June 7, 2011
Posted by inshin in Health.add a comment
I’ve been tweeting about this for the past couple of weeks and many have asked me what am I doing that I am not suffering from the awful annual effects of Hay-fever.
To put it in context, I have suffered pretty badly from hay-fever since I was a teenager. Terrible effects such as itchy and very swollen eyes often reaching the stage where there is just no vision, sneezing fits so violent it was not unusual to pull back muscles and desperate itchy and wheezy lungs that often resulted in very bad states where breathing was extremely difficult. All in all it is an awful affliction and has a huge impact on your ability to do anything, including work.
So you may say there must be a solution and there are so many products advertised that surely the problem is under control. Well maybe for some it is, but I know there are many like me who have tried these products. Some have absolutely no effect, others may give very minor relief the first year they are used but nothing in subsequent years.
Hay-fever is not just a simple condition that affects everyone the same way and has one solution. It is an allergy based illness, and the primary element that sparks it is pollen. However that’s where the complications start. There are so many types of pollen, they enter the air at different times of the year and different people will react to different pollens! So the season can run from spring right through to late summer, although most people will suffer their worst symptoms for about six pretty miserable weeks.
So solutions? Well I thought I had found a homeopathic one some years ago and it definitely did ease symptoms for a few years but then again it just stopped working. The current thing that has worked at relieving some symptoms is Flixonase. This I have used for three years and it does reduce the nasal impact some what but all other symptoms remained.
This year however has been completely different. There’s a bit of background that leads into this. I’ll put my hands up when it comes to diet. I have always had a complete aversion to almost all vegetables!! This in itself of course isn’t a good thing but no matter what efforts were made by family and myself, I just could never eat 99% of vegetables. On top of this certain very stressful issues occurred over the past few years and in particularly early this year which have resulted in a complete change in life circumstances. So there was a general need to set a few fitness issues straight once and for all!
One night I was watching, I think The Late Late show, and one Patrick Holford was being interviewed. I was amazed at the content of this discussion. He was talking about the way the body and mind reacts to what is put in it. The classic example being alcohol. There are chemical reactions that affect what the body does. Similarly, with prescription medicine, in particular those used in the treatment of psychiatric conditions, they affect the way the brain works. But his studies and experience showed that there was real evidence that if we identify what the body is missing, in terms of nutrition, and then used supplements to balance out the discrepancy, then the overall mental and ultimately physical state of the body improves. Now of course this still refers to taking substances into the body, but these are the natural minerals that the body would get from normal sources. One of the most obvious being Vitamin D which some northern hemisphere states get a limited amount from the natural source the Sun.
So I am trying to summarize a pretty big area which Patrick Holford has of course already documented in numerous books. The one that was of interest to me was ‘The Feel Good Factor’. This focused on the way nutrition supplements and how our diet is structured could help your general well-being and once the brain is getting what it needs mood improves, and your interest in more active and healthy lifestyle is increased significantly. At this stage I should make it clear that I have no connection with Patrick Holford in any way, my sister actually just bought me the book.
Within a few chapters a lot of what was said made huge sense to me. I was greatly concerned with the discussions about how the big pharma companies were so dependent on the use of psychiatric drugs and how the various national medical licensing bodies handled reviews of some natural products determining them as medicine and thereby removing any possibility that they would be retailed without massive prohibitive investment.
Well to the Hay-fever. I started a series of standard off the shelf nutritional supplements in April. Not very scientifically determined as I was too impatient to complete the book before starting, so just went ahead, reassured that taking these would not harm and could only help. I focussed on some of the main ones indicated in the book, at least two cannot be purchased in Ireland as they have been classified as medicine and therefore require enormous investment to produce so these I will have to wait on! I just simply started Vitamin C, D with Calcium, B, Folic Acid, Fish Oil, and recently Zinc. All in capsule form, no multi-vitamin, thereby allowing me to get as close to the recommended intakes identified generally in the book. The thing that had jumped out at me during reading was that one of the benefits of this could be that the effect of allergies could be reduced if not resolved completely.
So the apparent miracle? I have had practically no effects whatsoever from this year’s hay-fever season. I do continue to take Flixonase and do have itchy eyes, but I have had no sneezing fits at all and no breathing difficulties. This at a time when there is a huge amount of silage activity in the rural area I live in. I have also played several hay-fever free rounds of golf and walk almost every day passed typical hay-fever traps such as woods, silage and hay cut fields and large tractor-trailer units drawing silage frequently, and no effect.
So my conclusion at this stage? The use of nutrition supplements, which have had other benefits as primarily indicated in the book, has had a significant effect on my reaction to the dreaded pollen attack.
One very important point. I have no medical training whatsoever and I am only giving summary information from a very detailed book that has far more information that would be important to review before making any decisions on what is right for any individual. I would also say that my personal experience should not be seen as an indication that anyone under current medical supervision change their routine without fully consulting their medical provider. This article is purely to provide information to people who have asked me, primarily via Twitter, what it was that was working for me. There is no guarantee that this will work for everyone, and as I mentioned the book is not about tackling allergies, that is just a side effect or benefit that can occur.
I hope this helps some of those who asked. This is the site for Patrick Holford, and as I mentioned the book I have is ‘The Fell Good Factor’
The Summer Debate August 9, 2010
Posted by inshin in Politics.add a comment
For those not living in or connected to Ireland, a brief explanation as to what happens during the summer months. The Irish Political Establishment ‘officially’ goes to sleep, holidays, rest. The Irish people, they go mad, complain about the political holidays, threaten to bring down the government at the first opportunity and then hope the rain will subside and a few hours of sun will arrive.
But the times are a bit different this year. We have the big ‘R’, Recession. So there’s a little more interest than the Celtic Tiger decade of BBQ’s and symbolic moans. How is a resting government going to subdue the annoying and irritating rumblings of its ‘subjects’ ? Find a black sheep and throw it to the wolves.
This ‘black sheep’ has been in the preparation phase for some time. What a prime catch, a young politician in the days of Haughey, but perhaps someone who was a little bit too ambitious for his own good.
The topic of the summer is Ivor Callely. His CV will read among other things, elected in 1989, youngest chairperson of Eastern Health Board, 5th highest national vote 1997, assistant chief whip Fianna Fail 1993 -1995, Minister for State – Department of Health & Children 2002 and Minister for State – Department of Transport 2004.
His public decline began in 2005 when it became known that he had received free services from a building contractor involved in public contracts during the 90′s. And so it began. He lost his seat in 2007 and was thrown an unusual life-line by the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, placing him in the Seanad, Ireland’s Governmental ‘second house’, after failing to be elected there too.
So, what has he done now? Well, he was being investigated for claiming €80k+ expenses for travelling to work from a second home instead of his perceived permanent residence only a few miles away from the Government Houses. That stirred up a fair bit of reaction among the public and set us up for a good summer moan. Seems that wasn’t going according to plan however, as we have become a bit more suspicious than recent years and suddenly we discover that he is also being investigated now for submitting false invoices for other expenses too! Now we have uproar, and the rapidly graying and gaunt figure of Callely is back for more punching. That’ll keep us quiet.
Not quite, there are still those of us who aren’t buying into the fact that the whole summer has to be spent crucifying a politician who clearly has done wrong and should be dealt with as any wrong-doer is, quickly, effectively and finally. So we roll out another bit of distraction, a politician who runs up anywhere from €13k (government) to €100k (journalists) expenses hoping between debates and big business deals that will help sort out the country.
The thing is, there would appear to be an enormous amount of waste in how the country is run. (Mild)
Other thing is, the people that are running the country keep telling us there is an enormous amount of waste in how we run the country, and they seem to be spending a lot of money to tell us.
Look, bottom line, I run my own business, probably badly and I’m not sure for how long more, but I can’t spend a single cent unless there is justifiable need for that spend. Clearly, this is not how the Government of Ireland operate. The upcoming visit to Argentina for a housing conference is a classic example of a complete and somewhat perverse way of demonstrating idiotic policies.
My issue with the whole ‘pick a politician and slaughter him publicly’ policy is that for me it suggests a huge effort to hide other issues that are still not being addressed.
While I understand Ivor Callely has, during his career, done good deeds and assisted many people, my own parents included, I can see clearly that his role in politics is at an end, and rightly so. That being the case, get him out, encourage him to resign, let the police and other authorities handle him as necessary, and move on before other wrong doers are afforded even more time to conceal the corrupt activities that have flowed effortlessly through the Irish establishment in recent years (that’s not to ignore those that clearly happened for decades before).
