News From the Hill

Archive for January, 2009

This post was prompted by Suzan over at Scrub Oak, who posted about some books she is reading at the moment. I thought I would post about the book I am currently reading.

The book is called Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs, by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne.
I think it would be a very informational read for anyone in healthcare or a caring situation. It may help you understand the drugs being prescribed for yourself or for someone you care about

I am still working through the book and will probably do a book review of sorts when finished. It is fascinating stuff although I have to admit that the beginning of the book, which concentrates in the pharmaceutical industry had me fairly angry, huge parallels to the energy industry and the oil/nuke boys wanting to control the entire market and have us all entirely reliant on them – oops - think that’s another post?

The book goes into quite a bit of detail about “blockbuster” drugs such as statins, high blood pressure pills, pain-killers and anti-inflammatories, anti-depressants etc. I found it fairly shocking really that so many of these drugs do so much harm, for example in Britain more people die from prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) than from some cancers.

I have become aware that I don’t know what sort of drug regularity structures we have in this country, do we rely on US FDA recommendations? I must try to educate myself more. The FDA and the British body MHRA are scarily inept and often the people in charge have links to the Pharmaceutical industry, until recently it was not illegal in Britain for MHRA decision makers to be on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies – hard to believe!

The majority of these “daily” drugs are designed to deal with symptoms, not causes. If we never deal with the cause of the “unwellness” then we will always need these drugs to maintain the status quo.

Not only are some of these drugs designed to be a part of our daily lives, some of them actually produce a need for more drugs! Some NSAIDs (including aspirin) are so hard on the stomach lining that they require the use of another drug to protect the stomach and at worst sometimes cause gastro-intestinal bleeding.

I bought the book to educate myself about arthritis aches and what nutritional advice I could follow to protect myself from these aches without resorting to prescription drugs. Anyway, so far I have discovered that the usual healthy food advice applies in reducing the aches and pains.

Supplements such as chondroitin, glucosomine, msm, omega 3, epa and dha (healthy fats) are all advised for daily consumption to ease inflammation and should be just as useful as taking a daily NSAID.  Naturally daily exercise is also important.
That’s what I gleaned so far, I had skipped ahead and had a quick look at the relevant chapter after I bought the book so that I could do some supplement shopping too before heading home and now I am reading from the beginning.
I am hoping that about six weeks from now I will know if the new regime of supplements and taking nuts, seeds and hemp oil will help ease the aches I have started to feel over the last two months.
I am guessing that doing all those healthy things would help delay the onset of the aches for some people. Obviously these are just my opinions and should not be taken as advice to anyone.

Yeah, we had more of the white stuff today!

Snow Deep

I had a lovely morning, I reckoned that the rain would come at some time today so I was enjoying the snow while I could. I did all the morning jobs listening to that lovely crunch underfoot as I filled water buckets to feed the big pot on the stove for hot water for dish washing, decanted spring water from the large outdoor containers into the container that we use indoors, fed the cats and swept the snow off the PV (photovoltaic) panels.

Sweeping the PV Panels

I did the morning jobs at a nice easy pace, enjoying the work, knowing that I would go for a walk when I had finished, knowing that I would walk uphill a bit today to see the views from up higher before the fog moved in.

The Hill Road

Before I emptied the compost bucket into the compost heap I had to clear the snow off the waiting heap first. I knew that the cut grass pile that we use to cover the compost heap was running low, I had intended to move a few of the smaller grass piles closer to the compost area but the snow made that difficult so I emptied the ashes from the fire over it instead.

Snowy Views

I went in to light the fire and I was watching the morning weather forecast say that it was raining whilst it was still snowing outside. However I suspected that they probably would be right eventually so I grabbed a banana and the camera bag and headed off for a walk in the falling snow.

The Tree Line

The Snow Fence

We had some real snow today, about seven or eight inches, it snowed all day, only stopping occasionally and then not for long.

We went for a walk, threw really good snow balls and made a snowman. Today was a really good day for messing about and having fun!

I also took a few photos…

Snowy Handle

Snow Scene

Lovely Trees

I woke up yesterday morning and noticed that the world was very quiet, so even before I opened my eyes I knew that it had snowed overnight. I jumped out of bed like a kid and quickly had a mug of coffee as I lit the fire and headed out the door to play!

I don’t have a sleigh or sled so I grabbed an old empty plastic coal bag (from the stash of useful empty heavy duty bags) and made my way down the field to the hill, regretting that we hadn’t managed to cut all the rushes last year. Unfortunately this meant that the best sliding spots were too rushy and there was not enough snow to overcome the rushes.

There were a few good slopes at the sides of the field but they headed straight into briar patches = ouch! Didn’t want to try that! I did the best that I could with the conditions, it wasn’t exactly adrenaline pumping fun but it was fun. I had the best results by sliding face down, head first downhill, I wasn’t going fast enough for it to be dangerous and really I enjoyed myself.

Later I went for a walk over to the forest, it’s so beautiful to walk on crunchy clean snowy ground with few tracks. I walked past a few places where I know that badgers or foxes cross into the forest, there were no tracks there.

Tracks in the snow

I did see tracks further down the lane and followed those for a while. They were the tracks of wild and savage mountain anlmals.

Ok, subsititute silly and small-brained for wild and savage and you have hill sheep. Hey – up here in the hills we take our fun where we can get it.

Wild and savage beasts...

I have just been relaxing for a while here on a frosty Leitrim afternoon, catching up on reading other blogs that I enjoy.

Correction – I wasn’t really relaxing, I was working- I was actually waiting for the washing up water in the sink to be the right temperature to wash the dishes without scalding my “dainty” little handies. The reason that the water is so hot is that I heated it up in a great big saucepan on the wee stove that heats our home. Sometimes I do this to conserve the use of gas however today I chose this method because our water system is frozen, has been for days now so we have no water on tap.

Yes, this is the twenty first century and this is still Celtic Tiger Ireland and I am going out into the yard with a bucket to break the ice on the rain-water barrel in order to collect water to heat over the fire and do the dishes and what’s more – I did it with a song on my lips. Have you seen the sky this evening?

Stop reading now, go outside right this very moment and look upwards. The sky this evening is just breathtaking, awe-inspiring, just completely beautiful!

I had been reading through my fav blogs, as I said earlier and I had really enjoyed Liz’s post about the wolf moon when I noticed that the fire was going down and remembered that I had to bring in some fuel from the shed. This led to a chain of events because I then remembered that the dishes were waiting in the sink and that I needed more water to put the big pot back on the stove and that the cats needed to be fed.

So out I went, gloves and hat on, bucket in hand – to be stopped in my busy tracks by the moon.

What a sight! The sky was just so beautiful and the moon so close and inviting of admiration that I started to sing a moonsong - you can make up your own to whatever tune you please.

Every direction was beautiful, the colours in the sky so lovely.

So the cats were fed, the fuel for the fire brought indoors, the ice broken and the water collected all with me singing my heart out. This is one of the many times that I am so very grateful to live in a somewhat isolated place.

I reckon Liz must be right, this has got to be a moon for wishing or praying or placing intention – whatever you wish to call it, I feel that is a particularly good moon for it.

I think that I had better go do the dishes now…