Healthcare

Pixie · Post by **Pixie** » 22 Feb 2006, 19:34

Concerns about health care in the future seem to crop up regularly in this forum so I thought I?d put together a few thoughts and suggestions which hopefully people will find helpful.

First up get some basic first aid training. If you?re employed by a large firm find out if you can train as a ?first aider at work?. Otherwise contact your local St John?s Ambulance office for details of local courses.

Secondly, a good introduction to holistic healthcare is a ?Touch for Health? course. Combining a good basic knowledge of anatomy with an introduction to the meridians (the energy channels used in acupuncture), muscle testing and nutrition, Touch for Health is taught at 4 different levels, each level taking 2 days. After the first level you are encouraged to start practising what you?ve learnt with friends and family before moving on to the next level. For details of courses in your area try www.kinesiologyfederation.org/coursedates.php and choose ?Foundation level? or ask in your local health shop (many areas have a newsletter about or directory of local holistic therapists and courses) or try your yellow pages for kinesiologists (may be under 'complementary therapies').

Thirdly, here are a couple of great books that give a good introduction to the essentials of home healthcare. Borrow them from your local library, and if you find them really useful get a copy from your local independent bookshop.
?The Fragrant Pharmacy? by Valerie Worwood is about using essential oils. After you?ve read it you?ll never be without a selection, especially lavender which is a good natural antiseptic and is also good for burns and for promoting healing.
The New Holistic Herbal by David Hoffman. The Holistic Herbal has been one of the best herbal books for years, giving not just essential knowledge but also explaining well why holistic medicine looks at life and health and disease differently from modern medicine.

I?m happy to recommend other books if folk are interested but that?s probably enough for now.

Best wishes, Pixie
(Qualified nurse and student homeopath)

Post by **mikepepler** » 23 Feb 2006, 07:44

Has anyone tried thse books, I'd be interested to know what they're like:

"Where There Is No Doctor: Village Health Care Handbook" David Werner

"Where There Is No Dentist" Murray Dickson

MacG · Post by **MacG** » 23 Feb 2006, 11:04

I think that the single largest health-related issue for any group is childbirth. Apart from antibiotics, I think that safe births is the area where modern medicine are saving the largest number of lives. This is a major issue to adress for any low-tech society. Preserve the knowledge and organize society so a majority of the women can have safe childbirths.

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 23 Feb 2006, 12:53

I've got 'where there is no doctor' and it is a useful and interesting read, grusome in places.

I ordered 'where there is no dentist' but then it got cancelled and i was told it was out of print. bummer.

Pixie · Post by **Pixie** » 01 Mar 2006, 23:52

MacG wrote:I think that the single largest health-related issue for any group is childbirth. Apart from antibiotics, I think that safe births is the area where modern medicine are saving the largest number of lives. This is a major issue to adress for any low-tech society. Preserve the knowledge and organize society so a majority of the women can have safe childbirths.

Well...yes and no... Good midwifery makes a difference but I have to say that apart from in a few rare cases hospitals and doctors are not the places or people to be around for the healthiest or safest pregnancies or births. Doctors cannot resist the temptation to intervene and have managed to convince everyone that birth, far from a natural process, is a medical emergency. Amazing how humans made it for millions of years without them...
Recomend this article for starters, which includes statistics and an overview of some studies
www.gentlebirth.org/ronnie/homejjg.html

Also recomend these sites, firstly the Association of Radical Midwives
www.radmid.demon.co.uk
and in particular this article:
www.radmid.demon.co.uk/deniswalsh.htm

These sites are from The Farm, an intentional community in Tennessee that has been going for years and years and that has specialised in, amongst other things, midwifery:
www.midwiferyworkshops.org
www.farmcatalog.com/birth.htm

As for antibiotics, they have their place but thanks to gross overuse (both by doctors and in animal feed as 'growth promoters') we now have so many bugs - especially in hospitals - that are resistant to antibiotics (the best known being MRSA of course) that that place is getting smaller and smaller. Doctors like to claim that it was antibiotics and vaccinations that made a huge difference to morbidity and mortality rates in the early twentieth century but the statistics don't match up. Better living conditions (ie clean water, reducing the overcrowding that had became the norm in the industrialised cities in Victorian times, better diet, and reducing air pollution) are what made the biggest difference

bigjim · Post by **bigjim** » 02 Mar 2006, 01:32

Yeah, I was going to say, if we could keep our sewage network reliable for a few more decades we should be okay, that's done more for public health than any drug ever did. I'm reading Rubbish by Richard Girling at the moment and the first chapter deals with public health and Londoners treating the Thames as their waste disposal system and it sounded disgusting.

Pixie, great suggestions! I'll try them out!

bigjim
Student Radiographer

Post by **mikepepler** » 02 Mar 2006, 07:32

bigjim wrote:Yeah, I was going to say, if we could keep our sewage network reliable for a few more decades we should be okay, that's done more for public health than any drug ever did.

Well, if we all fed our sewage into biogas digesters, we'd end up turning it into good compost and also methane, which is used partly to heat the digester, and some spare for cooking, or running an engine to generate power. I believe a sewage works near Reading generates 1MW this way, but I don't know if they put the compost to good use or not.

On my MSc course I've seen digester designs that have no moving parts, and are built simply out of brick or concrete, with one pipe for the gas! They're intended for hot countries though, so might need modifying here.

MacG · Post by **MacG** » 02 Mar 2006, 07:55

Pixie wrote:Well...yes and no... Good midwifery makes a difference but I have to say that apart from in a few rare cases hospitals and doctors are not the places or people to be around for the healthiest or safest pregnancies or births. Doctors cannot resist the temptation to intervene and have managed to convince everyone that birth, far from a natural process, is a medical emergency.

I think we are somewhat spoiled and are taking safe childbirths for granted. When visiting a graveyard in the very north of Sweden (Pajala) where many graves from the 1800's remained, almost every 3:d- 4:th grave contained a woman in her 20's-30's and a child born and dead on the same day. Seem to be similar in dirt-poor countries today.

tattercoats · Post by **tattercoats** » 02 Mar 2006, 10:09

The history and politics of childbirth is a complex issue... medical intervention has not always been beneficial by any means; nutrition, simple hygiene, and pre-existing level of health all factor as well. The cascade of intervention that begins with getting in the car and going to hospital is prefaced by all of these. And don't start me on expectations of pain versus expectations of being able to do the thing - cultural conditioning, most women never having witnessed a birth, etc...

Home birth works. Pixie, I hope we have someone like you in the community when TSHTF.

Tattercoats, shutting up now. My, isn't it chilly today?

SherryMayo · Post by **SherryMayo** » 02 Mar 2006, 11:24

While I agree to a fair extent with tattercoats and pixie re medicalisation of chilbirth, the ability to do cesearians in a *real* emergency does save lives (eg when the bub really is too big/stuck). Here in Australia though 20% of births are cesaers now .

Childbirth pain is a weird thing - yes it is really painful but somehow your body/brain is geared to cope at the time. The first visit to the loo afterwards is another thing altogether though...

[sorry if that was too much information...I'll shut up now]

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 02 Mar 2006, 13:39

I think that the well-meaning suggestions about learning alternative therapies, and the casual dismissal of the efforts of medical doctors, are contributing to the devaluation of genuine medical science. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, we may lose our most precious knowledge of science and medicine. So while qi gong, hypnosis, homeopathy, acupuncture, and all the other unproven therapies use little energy to administer, they take us back to pre-Enlightenment uncritical thinking, which will ultimately benefit nobody.

I fear that peak oil is going to drive us back into a scientific and medical dark ages. We risk losing a lot of the knowledge and experience gained by scientists over many years. Some of that knowledge will be critical to the welfare of future generations.

Blue Peter · Post by **Blue Peter** » 02 Mar 2006, 13:52

caspian wrote:I fear that peak oil is going to drive us back into a scientific and medical dark ages. We risk losing a lot of the knowledge and experience gained by scientists over many years. Some of that knowledge will be critical to the welfare of future generations.

Though, you might say that its all that scientific knowledge which has delivered us peak oil and climate change etc.

Peter.