Your Daily Health

I love reading the Daily Mail on a Tuesday. Tuesday is the 'Good Health' day, and I like nothing better than to freak myself out reading about diseases I never knew I might have. Last week was particularly squeamy as there was an article about some bloke who didn't clean his contact lenses properly and now has teeny, tiny micro-scopic miniscule bugs chomping away at his corneas. The treatment involved words like 'injection', 'scraping', 'acid' and other such stomach cringing yukkiness.

'Phew,' I thought, 'thank heavens my left eye-ball is too quick for me to get a contact lens in.'

This week has a light-hearted article about 'well, would you believe it?' type things you can do to ease minor complaints. Like using duct tape to remove a verruca, which was a revelation because I always thought it was called 'duck tape'. And eating coconut to relieve diarrhoea. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Oh, hang on...it says you have to take it from the shell first.

Wearing socks in bed eases insomnia. If you have a stitch, give a grunt and it'll go. Swallow sugar to stop hiccups. Stick your fingers in your ears to ease the pain of a sore throat. Who does that, then? The sufferer or the sufferer's partner, who has to listen to them moaning about their throat? I won't go into where they suggest you put a banana skin because you might be eating a banana and it'll put you off.

I did flinch a bit at the idea that you should cough when you're having an injection to beat the pain. Apparently, the act of coughing causes a 'sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest, inhibiting the pain-conducting work of the spinal cord.' I thought, how do you relieve yourself of the additional pain in your arm/leg/derriere when a violent cough causes the needle to snap off mid-plunge? To be fair, the article goes on to warn that you shouldn't cough heavily, in case excessive movement causes the doctor or nurse to 'make a mistake.' I think I'll just stick to my usual injection distraction method which is TALKING REALLY LOUDLY ABOUT THE WEATHER AND SAYING OUCH!

Another article details a new way of listening to knee noises in the diagnosis of osteoarthritis. Well, given that there is a preponderance of creaky knees in this family (I can hear Heather going up and down the stairs from the kitchen with the radio on) we're all doomed. But wait, it's not the noises that you CAN hear that are the issue; it's the noises that you CAN'T hear that are the key. Well, that's really helpful isn't it?

'Doctor, I can't hear any noises in my knee. Do I have osteoarthritis?'
'Probably not. Tell me, do you often listen to noises you can't hear?'
'Only when the pixies tell me too...'

There's an article entitled 'Is You Medicine Making You Fat?' which is no good to me as an excuse as I don't take any medication. So it's just eating too much and moving too little that's causing my fat dollop of a doughnut body image issues then. Sigh...

I don't get migraines, so the item on 'How cutting out your frown muscles stops migraines and wrinkles,' is irrelevant. I admit I have got a couple of faint frown lines because I tend to scowl when I am writing (it's concentration really, but pretending I'm scowling makes people think I am cross so they stay well away and let me get on in peace) but I'm not having anyone come at me with a pair of surgical secateurs to do a bit of age-related pruning. I shall continue instead to a) wear a fringe and b) push everything facial back upwards when I slap on the moisturiser twice a day.

I am pleased that as a twice a day brusher 'n' flosser I have decreased my chances of bacteria getting into my arteries from my gums and causing heart disease by 70%. I don't have to worry about beating jet-lag. Or ice-cream headaches. Or mouth ulcers. Or my teenage voice breaking. The recipe for 'Food to Lower Blood Pressure' looks nice - Spanish Roasted Tomato Salad - but it's Andy that has high blood pressure, not me, and he thinks tomatoes, like nuts, are poisonous.

The article on bowel movements was marginally interesting and I'm flirting with the idea of irritable bowel and /or coeliac disease, but both are unlikely because even though I haven't been completely right since taking that course of antibiotics for my ear infection back in February, with the help of pro-biotic yogurt and wholemeal everything, the matter is slowly improving. I'm sorry, was that too much information? Would you like to hear where to put the banana skin now??

There is a picture of a cute goat on page 48 and a not so cute prawn on page 44 and questions about blurry vision and sperm in the 'Ask the Doctor' section. Two separate, unrelated questions, I hasten to add, although I wonder if the Good Health editor is exercising their sense of humour in an ever-so-subtle way today.

So there we go. A relatively mild week on the health panic front. And nothing about bugs eating eyeballs, which is blessing especially as I'm still heaving after what I found in the bottom of the fridge on Sunday. But if I ever have need of a hip replacement, I want the £99 screw which will be sterile, and NOT the 20p equivalent one can buy from B & Q which, if previous nail purchasing experiences from DIY chains are anything to go by, will be covered in dust.