Living above the Arctic Circle - The Last Frontier

I once had a couple of friends who lived off the land and raised a family in a remote valley deep inland from Whanganui.   I am reminded of them when viewing this documentary of a couple who have lived 35 years more or less alone above the Arctic Circle in Alaska.

What a contrast to the crazy, frenetic lives we live today?  And how dissociated from the natural environment have we become?

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The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.  Please give me your support by subscribing to my free email updates. Please shop at my Online Store. Please encourage your family and friends to do the same. While we may not always be able to compete with the big operators on price, we aim to more than compensate through personal service!

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Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).

Stomach surgery 'needed for teens'

"Surgeons are calling for children to be offered publicly funded stomach-stapling operations in a bid to treat soaring rates of extreme obesity.

New Zealand hospitals have been reluctant to consider weight-loss operations in young adolescents because of the risks of major surgery, and the potential for long-term complications such as nutrient deficiency.

However, growing numbers of teenagers are so overweight they are suffering diseases previously seen almost exclusively in adults.

These include type-2 diabetes, sleep apnoea, high blood pressure and gall bladder disease.
Some are at risk of heart attacks and strokes in their 20s.

Paediatric surgeons are saying it is time to make stomach-stapling surgery more readily available with the complicated health needs of morbidly obese adolescents now impacting on the care of other children.... The surgery can cost between $12,000 and $20,000 and about 400 a year were done, most on adults and only a handful publicly funded. "

To read the full article, click on the title above.
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Gary Moller comments:This kind of surgery produces a very uncomfortable feeling in my gut. The reason why is that stomach stapling surgery is an over-priced solution that, at best, only indirectly targets the cause which is the lifestyle of the positionally challenged. It is symptomatic of irresponsible, neglectful parenting, poor food choices and a societal bureaucracy that engenders a fear of all things natural, including the outdoors, sunshine and water.

There is an alternative to stomach stapling: I used to run rehabilitation programmes for long term Accident Compensation clients: people who had been seriously injured, incompletely rehabilitated following surgery, consequently losing their jobs and becoming unemployable due to ongoing health problems, loss of work skills, confidence and poor personal habits.

Rehabilitation focussed on gradually replacing old unhealthy habits with healthy ones. This was a challenging process that took 12 weeks to be successful. Successful it was, and almost without exception - and for a cost of from $3-$6,000. What was a constant frustration were the constant demands by the health and funding agencies to cut back on the cost of these programmes, the preference being to spend their money on high technology surgical solutions at quadruple the cost or more. These intervention programme were progressively reduced to about 5 weeks for several hundred dollars - effectively rendering them a complete waste of time.

The same model of gradual behavioural change can and should be applied in cases of extreme childhood and teen obesity and they need to involve the entire family. Costing probably no more than $6,000 and lasting 12 weeks, the outcome will be fit, strong and healthy families that play together.

This is a far better prospect than surgically turning out thinner teens who then face uncertain lives that are still a constant daily preoccupation with food and at serious risk of malnutrition-related ailments and shortened lives.

Note: The Google Adsense ads to the right of this article can interesting to peruse. You will see that there is quite an industry, involving drugs and surgery, surrounding obesity. It is no conicidence that the call by surgeons for public funding of this kind of surgery for teens comes at the time of year of greatest over-indulgence and just in time to capitalise on all the New Year's resolutions for weight loss. Am I just being too cynical?)

Milking the "Worried Well"

There has been much publicity recently about the cozy relationship between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. I have written several articles about this over recent years, expressing concern about how medical research is swayed towards this or that approach that relies on expensive interventions, encourages the consumption of over-priced commercial products, or downplays the adverse effects of a drug on one's health.

A strategy to increase the reliance of the population on pharmaceuticals is to turn healthy people into unhealthy ones. This is achieved by progressively lowering the threshholds for the prescription of powerful medicines. Blood pressure is a perfect example: Medication was once only considered a possibility if blood pressure exceeded 150/100. Not too many years ago, this threshold was lowered to 145/95 and then to 140/90. Now some bright spark has come up with the ailment called "prehypertension". If blood pressure exceeds a healthy 125/85, then blood pressure lowering medication is on the cards. That's just about every adult on the planet!

Question: Are the exploding rates of dementia in Westernised societies the consequence of excessive long term use of prescription medicines like anti-depressants, statins and beta blockers and not just lifestyle and diet?

We are seeing the same lowering of thresholds with blood cholesterol: Once levels exceeding 6.0 were the point where medication was considered; then it was lowered to 5.5 and more recently to 5.0. Today, even 4.8 may result in cholesterol lowering medication being prescribed.

This is creating a whole new goup of patients: the" Worried Well". Or should that be the "Worried Poor"?

Some experts want to go even further by proposing the development of the "Poly Pill". This will be a pill that contains several drugs to lower blood pressure and cholesterol that can be prophylactically prescribed to the entire adult population. The Poly Pill will supposedly preempt cardiovascular disease that afflicts over 50% of the older adult population. Where does this madness come from and where will it end?

Well, once a person heads down this sorry path, the only end is drugs-soaked misery - much to the delight of the drugs industry I'm sure. Why? Because one drug leads to another. For example; blood pressure medication is one of the leading causes of male impotence. So, shortly after the blood pressure prescription, the patient is placed on viagra in an attempt to resurrect his drooping sexuality. Within 15-20 years of the first prescription, the patient will be on at least 10 different prescription medicines. Quality of life declines with each prescription. Isn't medicine supposed to improve quality of life? Once on these pills, getting off them is not always as simple as just stopping. In some cases, it can be dangerous to stop suddenly once started.

Making perfectly healthy people dependent on drugs is abhorrent and something to be strongly resisted. Especially when healthy alternatives abound in most cases.

Sure, preventing the development of disease is important. This is best done by proper monitoring and using healthy lifestyle-based interventions to prevent progression into desease. This is a much more sensible and palatable approach. A good example of this can be found in my e-publication for monitoring blood pressure. Have a careful read and you will also learn the secret for living 100 quality years - without the aid of drugs.

Hospital Dumps 1,800 Patients off Waiting Lists

The Hawke's Bay District Health Board has unanimously approved a move that would see 1,800 people cut from its waiting lists. They will have to go back to their GPs with no hope of surgery in the foreseeable future. Board CEO Chris Clarke says the hospital cannot keep up with the rising demand for its services. 12/04/2006NewstalkZB

Gary Moller comments:
This news is hardly a surprise and something we are all going to have to get used to as our populations age and the positionally challenged youthful generations begin to get old and suffer diseases of old age, such as diabetes, osteoporosis and CHD, in their 30's and 40's. The current medical model simply can not cope with the tsunami of ill health.

When I was doing my studies in rehabiliation through the Otago School of Medicine, our lecturers frequently referred to the "dreaded specialist appointment". This appointment was dreaded by rehabilitation health professionals because it signaled that nothing would, or could, happen with a patient while waiting to see a specialist. Of course, this appointment would be several months out and it usually would take more than a few further appointments before anything of substance would happen.

A typical interaction between a therapist and a patient goes a bit like this:

Therapist: "I would like to start you with a gentle exercise programme to begin strengthening your lower back"
Patient: "I am not allowed to do anything like that until I have seen my orthopaedic specialist about my suspected prolapsed disc".

Nothing happens and any opportunity for early and active intervention is lost because a lesser expert cannot pre-empt the specialist that is yet to be consulted. This is very frustrating.

What we know is people on waiting lists do not get better; the rule of thumb is that they deteriorate. Adding to the problem; if a person is unable to work, due to a health problem, the chances of getting them back into productive employment plummets with each week they are laid up. After about 3 months, the odds of getting this person back into employment are looking pretty grim.

I have written about this growing problem many times and published a substantial discussion paper that offers one piece to the jigsaw, as far as solutions are concerned. You can read it here.

Resorting to dumping people off waiting lists is not the solution; although it might help a little over the short term by enabling some kind of intervention to begin, instead of having the patient sit around doing nothing and getting worse. Sadly, general practitioners, who are now being asked to deal with these dumped patients, are poorly equipped to offer lasting solutions to ailments that are mostly the result of ageing, combined with the effects of poor lifestyle and nutrition choices.

Will bombing Iran ruin your quality of life?

Two headlines dominate our papers today; escalating oil prices and news that Iran has developed uranium enrichment technology.

During the Iran-Iraq war (September 1980 to August 1988), Israel bombed Iraq's fledgling nuclear programme. This air strike signaled to countries like Iran that they should not put everything in one place. If The USA or its proxy, Israel, were to do another bombing, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, the task is no longer simple and is likely to escalate to be widespread and prolonged. The consequences will be absolutely disastrous for our way of life.

Here are some interesting facts and specualtions that I obtained from reading an investment newsletter:

• Iran, awash with petrodollars, has been arming itself to the teeth as a response to the US invasion of its neighbour, Iraq. Its arsenal includes shiploads of sophisticated missiles
• If Iran was attacked it could easily shut off the narrow Strait of Hormuz which stops most of the oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and all of Kuwait's and the Arab Emirates.
• If it shuts off its own production, that means a total of 20 million barrels per day are taken off the market
• This would be catastrophic on a scale that will dwarf any of the previous oil shocks
• Oil will rise to more than US$120 per barrel overnight and many countries will simply have to go without!

Zimbabwe, here we come!
If this happens, many people will be wishing they had still that spare bicycle in the garage propped next to the SUV. Higher energy costs impact on every aspect of our lives and we can expect this knock-on effect to be catastrohic and to go way beyond just the extra cost of a tank of fuel. While we have to adapt to escalating energy costs and shortages, we need time. Bombing Iran at any time would be downright stupid.
When the US invaded Iraq and then began talking tough about Iran, it was hardly a surprise that the Iranians responded by escalating their big defense spend, including getting closer to developing nuclear weapons. Iran, unlike Iraq, really does have a proper army that is armed to the teeth with modern weapons. Taking on the Iranians is not going to be any kind of pushover. Invading Iraq will probably go down as the dumbest Presidential act in US history; attacking Iran would be even dumber.
If you value your way of life, urge your politicians to lobby for moderation on this issue. It is time to exercise diplomacy and not to talk up the situation, or in any other way to add heat to an already tense situation.