Natural Child, Natural Society: health

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'Obese patients being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses' - ACE study is routinely ignored. Why?

To the Editor,

I read the article 'Obese patients being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses' by Dennis Campbell, Health Correspondent, writing in The Guardian, Wednesday 10th August 2022 with some degree of sadness.

Obese patients ‘being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses’

Obese patients ‘being weight-shamed by doctors and nurses’

Exclusive: Research shows some people skip medical appointments because they feel humiliated by staff

The ACE Study, carried out by Vincent Felletti and colleagues at Kaiser Permanente, some years ago studied the health outcomes of more than 50,000 people, and found a very strong correlation between health issues such as Obesity, Addiction, Heart problems and early Adverse Childhood Experiences. Further research has show the linkage is beyond mere correlation. Early adverse experiences - bullying, sexual abuse, neglect, poverty etc can have profound long term health impacts, that emerge and present many, many years later.

http://erikwblack.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/104348885/AllFilesIPLH2.2016.pdf

It is obvious that such early experience of trauma and chronic stress is not the child's fault. How can it then be the adult's fault as those illnesses present?

I have on three occasions spoken as a caller on LBC about the ACE study, and asked why the insights of this evidence base is routinely ignored. On all three occasions I was rebuffed by the presenters. They dismissed the information. They tended to discuss food, sugar and self control. They rejected the information I was presenting.

Blaming the vulnerable is a common form of discrimination.

Lack of knowledge is part of this, as is wilful ignorance.

How is it possible that GPs and Nurses tasked with care of people with health issues are unaware of the ACE Study? I assume it is for similar reasons most people are unaware of the ACE study findings. Is it that no one wants to admit that early childhood trauma and chronic stress exists to the degree it does, and that form many sufferers, this has health outcome impacts that ruin people's lives? Is it that children ought to be seen and not heard is still a thread that runs through our culture?

Whatever it is way, that lack of knowledge and sensitivity translates into cruelty.

We must and can do much, much better.

Kindest Regards

Corneilius Crowley

London

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Substandard Housing, the NHS and the Health of the people - solving problems by nurturing people's homes.

It is estimated that more than 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.

It's not a bad deal to invest £9 billion to improve the lives of 8 million citizens, who will put all of that back into the economy, twice over, and repeat. People in happy secure homes contribute to the economy on many levels.

I think that on a fundamental human level, radical security of home, hearth and table is a key building block of healthy community. Every one is at home.
A little empathy and a budget of £9 billion could go a long way in terms of designing and delivering a policy that could bring about a direct social material improvement in the living situation for a significant population of fellow citizens, those 8 million souls currently living in substandard housing.

Update Edit : As we roll into the Autumn and Winter '22 and energy price speculation drives homes and business energy bills into outrageous levels (the costs of producing have not changed much in the past three years), the adverse health impacts are clear. Sir Micheal Marmot lasy them out.

'This is not airy-fairy stuff, this is shortening lives.'

Former WHO chair Sir Michael Marmot tells LBC that cold homes this winter will cause 'permanent damage to the lungs of children'.@TomSwarbrick1 | @MichaelMarmot pic.twitter.com/1nntnowhhT
— LBC (@LBC) September 1, 2022

One irate caller rang in just after the Marmot segment had finished to say "we 'ad it tough and we survived!" Tom Swarbrick has not having it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/01/generation-britain-long-term-illness-cold-poor-winter-cost-of-living-crisis

"All I want is a room somewhere./ Far away from the cold night air …/warm face, warm hands, warm feet. Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly.
To Eliza Doolittle’s lament we can add, not just “loverly”, but healthy, too. George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion was the source for the film My Fair Lady, was writing about Edwardian London. Yet cold and poor is the reality facing 66% of the population this winter in 21st-century Britain.
Both “cold” and “poor” will contribute to worse health and greater health inequalities. It is a humanitarian crisis. One that will not be solved by tax cuts or removing levies that favour green energy, as seems to be the “solution” proposed by our likely next prime minister. We need to act on the immediate crisis, but we also need to ask how we got here, and what to do to solve the problem of fuel poverty, and its effects on health inequalities, in the longer term.
Fuel poverty has three components: the price of fuel, the quality of housing and ability to pay. The definition used to be having to spend 10% or more of household income to heat your dwelling to an acceptable level. Some variant of that is still used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, the definition changed, which makes comparisons difficult: a household is fuel poor if the property has a low efficiency rating and the household disposable income, after housing and energy needs, is less than 60% of national median income.
For the cold part of cold and poor, the causal chain is simple. Inflation in general, and the cost of heating, will lead to fuel poverty. Fuel poverty will lead to cold homes. Cold homes will damage mental and physical health. The health effects are considerable, as laid out in our report, Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK, published today by the UCL Institute of Health Equity.
The health effects start in childhood with lungs damaged by cold, but also by mould and damp that tend to accompany cold in substandard housing. Children who live in cold, damp homes have more respiratory illnesses than children who do not. This higher burden of illness is likely to continue through into adulthood.
Cold damages mental health. Children growing up in cold homes have more psychological symptoms than children in warm homes. They also perform less well in school. A combination of days missed through illness, inadequate conditions for study and homework, and the effects of cold on mental health and development all contribute."
Grift and Wealth Extraction.
First, take a moment to enjoy this satirical Pythone scene of grandees celebrating their past poverty and current wealth, Who among the Tory Party will celebrate after electing Truss or Sunak, both of whom are more or less ignoring the poverty being imposed on millions of British households by rising energy prices, years of wage stagnation, austrity, privatisation of social care and grift, warming in the glow of their extra-large shareholding dividends and low taxation.

"We 'ad it tough!"?

How callous is that?

How much money was lost or or how much wealth was extracted by the corrupted VIP PPE contracting to cronies? How many millionaires were minted? At what cost, was the failure of Test and Trace in impeding spread of the Virus, beyond the 'lost' money? 200,000 avoidable deaths, often of vulnerable people. 1.4 million cases of long COVID. Economic disaster for 3 million small businesses.

What does it mean when the the loss of what it could have been used for, had it been deployed in practical and proven ways to suppress transmission which would have saved lives, prevented chronic disease is of so little interest to our Rulers?

It bears repeating. Minting millionaires whilst negligence 'allowed' 200,000 horrific deaths, each death a catastrophic trauma event. 1.4 million cases of Long Covid. Poverty increasing. Minting Millionaires and celebrating the fact with Wine Fridays! #torydeathparties NHS on it's knees.

Johnson advises the poor to buy a new kettle, during his self congradulation tour.

This Parliment, and this Government, is unfit for purpose if the purpose of Government and democracy is Justice and Healthy Governance.

To be honest, and to be fair, all of that negligence, waste and grift is unforgivable; injustice prevails as long as those new millionaires still have those millions to hand, and as long as the grifters in power remain unindicted.
They - we know who they are - must be sent to trial for Misconduct in Public Office, Corruption, Corporate Manslaughter by Negligence and the newly minted millionaires subjected to class action civil litigation claims to return the misappropriated wealth to the States coffers.

Substandard Government, Substandard Housing, Top Notch Wealth Extraction.
With regards to substandard housing, we do know that such an investment - £9 billion, maybe £12 Billion given recent rises for materials and labour - would pay for itself.
It would, in terms of tax expenditure and future returns as peoples lives are improved, provide a decent and orderly base from which those 8 million people could operate. And, in terms of the savings arising from preventing the harms of substandard housing going forwards means, it makes for a sound economic public health policy.
Avoiding avoidable harms is a sound axiom of healthy governance. An a priori ethical stance. Avoiding avoidable harm is common sense.

If we become aware of a harm, then we cease causing that harm. We look again, and we find another way to do whatever it is, a way that does not cause harm.
And that is why taking reasonable action to assure that the security and comfort of a comfortable, clean and econimically sustainable home is an actualised and lived Human Right, that it is fully met and upheld, has to be an essential element of a healthy democracy.
There is no good reason to not devote such a small part of total government expediture to significantly reducing levels of chronic stress, distress and unhappiness substantively, in quantifiable observeable reality, for millions of people by improving the material standards of 2 millioon substandard homes.
In some sense that reflects how bio-logical life on Earth works. Everyone is at home.

And yes, our civilisation is flawed, and our circumstance as citizens, varied. We all know now that England in 2022 is far, far from a healthy democracy. It is a kleptocracy, it's governing system is operating as a bully cult, and it's people are being bullied by billionaire wealth extractors.

Who will stand up to the bullies?

It is estimated that 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.
Which brings me to the matter at hand. I live in substandard housing, have done for 19 years. My landlord finally put in central heating four years ago. I wage a constant battle against mould and damp. I am being evicted because the landlord wants to take the capital gains he has made in the past 20 years, by selling the property, and of course he will not share any of that with me, in spite of the rental income he has gained in that time. I serve merely as an object from which he extracts wealth.

My government supports that wealth extraction, by refusing to legislate fair social rents and by encouraging buy-to-let landlordism to maintain property value increases in order to serve the lenders, more wealth extraction.

I am one in 8 million, powerless to affect the situation, voiceless in policy discourse, marginalised and dehumanised by the billionaire press and broadcast media.
https://www.bregroup.com/press-releases/bre-report-finds-poor-housing-is-costing-nhs-1-4bn-a-year/

Substandard housing costs the people who have to endure living in such conditions more than the rent they are forced to pay. People in substandard housing bear a burden of ill health and chronic stress through no fault of their own.

Substandard housing also costs the NHS billions annually in terms of illness, accidents and injuries, and the costs go further, in terms of chronic stress and psychlogical health, all the while a group of landlords rake in wealth, extracted from poor, low income folk and from Housing Benefits.

This is unjust. It is an atrocity. Good decent people, our fellow citizens are being exposed to avoidable harm. 8 million people, individuals, families, men, owmen and children, entire communities... cities of people living in disrepair, trapped by a refusal to invest as the landlord extracts wealth, a trap, a socially and economically structured trap. It is not right. It is not fit and proper.

Perhaps the money paid to landlords for Housing Benefits of people living in substandard housing ought to be ring fenced, matched with Government funding, and spent on upgrading these houses to a good standard, to include forward planning adaptations towards lower carbon footprints, and only after that should landlords be allowed to take full profits.

There's a few good arguments for nationalising aspects of housing, as a common resource, maintained by the society as a social resource, a commons that good folk would choose to cherish and nurture.
Contrast the unhappiness and ill health of those who endure substandard housing to the fact that landlords have the increased value of the property which can be used as collateral for further borrowing to buy more property to let, an 'entrepreneurial dynamic' that builds a wealth extraction web of activity, supported by neoliberal legislators whose primary concern appears to be the interests of Wealth Extraction. Unhappiness of renters and the happiness of wealth extractors, the former feeding the latter. The profit of others tears.

Another way to put this is to say the chronic ill health and distress of people living in sibstandard housing is an externalised cost, part of the economics of profiteering of some landlords. The people pay the price, they bear the burden, millions of us.

Is it true that middle class, medium and high earning working class folk tend not to understand exactly what substandard housing means? How could someone who has never lived in substandard cousing really understand what this aspect of England is really like.

It certainly does not have to be this way Resolving the situation would build a happier, safer more civil society.

The following is taken from the article linked above.

BRE report finds poor housing is costing NHS £1.4bn a year - 9th November 2021
BRE report – ‘The Cost of Poor Housing in England’ – quantifies the cost burden to the NHS caused by hazards arising from poor quality homes in England.
Findings reveal that 2.6 million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – are categorised as ‘poor quality’ and therefore hazardous to occupants
Most common hazards are those that cause injuries on stairs, while the costliest issue for the NHS (£857million p/a) is poor quality housing leading to excess cold
According to BRE’s analysis, more than half (£857 million) of this annual NHS treatment bill can be attributed to defects in poor homes which expose residents to excess cold, while the second biggest cost to the NHS comes from hazards which cause people to fall and injure themselves, predominantly on staircases.
Both issues are particularly dangerous for the most vulnerable in society, such as older people and families with young children.
BRE was able to quantify the cost of poor housing to the NHS by combining existing data from the 2018 English Housing Survey (EHS) on health and safety hazards in the home, with NHS treatment cost figures.
According to the latest EHS, an estimated 2.6million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – contained at least one ‘Category one hazard’ and were therefore considered ‘poor’.
Today’s report follows a similar study by BRE published in 2016.
The most common Category 1 hazard is the risk to a fall on stairs, such as disrepair to, or a lack of a handrail or balustrade, with over 1 million such cases recorded in 2018.
Fixing this issue alone would save the NHS £219million a year in treatment costs. Dampness is also a common and costly issue for the NHS, with 75,000 homes in England suffering from the most serious dampness in 2018, leading to a £38million annual bill for the NHS. In addition, there are many more homes with non-category one dampness (less serious) which have an impact on people’s health.
The cost of addrressing this vs the costs of allowing this situation to continue.

source: article linked above

As part of the study, BRE also calculated the total cost of eliminating each Category one hazard.
From this, we can see that the cost of mitigating risks associated with dampness, for example, would effectively be paid back in seven years, thanks to costs saved.
In total, BRE estimates that the total cost to remedy all Category one hazards in homes in England would amount to £9.8billion – which is around seven times the cost the NHS faces annually for first year treatment costs from these hazards.
Within its report, BRE also identifies that, beyond the cost to the NHS, there are ‘societal costs’ brought on by poor housing, such as those relating to long-term care, mental health and poorer educational achievement. BRE’s findings indicate the cost to wider society of poor housing could equate to £18.5 billion per year.

So it is quite clear that for a relatively small direct investment, the Government could transform the lives of millions of people. Investments that engender best physiological and psychological health, work that will offer a boost to local community level construction industry. Adaptations to existing stock that can add to better carbon foot print for the nation's rented housing stock.

A government enacting a policy to do all of this will walk away with the kudos and warmth and respect of having achieved genuine social improvements that also support the NHS and improve educational outcomes - did I mention that children living in substandard housing do not fare so well at school as do their contemporaries living in good standard housing?

That is a win-win situation for any Government.

That is a win-win situation for tennants and landlords alike.

Failure to take action on this matter is criminally negligent and socially stupid.

Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions' - pushing back at cunning linguists.

A letter to various Editors of News Papers and others. Concerning the use of bad language within the context of policy decisions in the middle of a global pandemic. A gentle nudge of sorts.

Dear Editor,

After 20 months of Pandemic, I have had enough of a certain, deliberate linguistic inaccuracy.

Preventative Public Health Measures are not 'restrictions'. They are measures designed to protect Public Health, a fundamental moral and legal duty of care of every decent Government.

'Restrictions' is an emotive word trap. It engenders an emotional reaction to resist being restricted. It is a wholly inappropriate term to use under the current conditions.

There are some cunning linguists in positions of Public and Civil Authority, and in the Press and News Media and elsewhere.

We must outwit them. To protect the Public Health.

Yours sincerely,

Corneilius Crowley

London

Take a Moment, Ownership, Misogyny and Climate Change.

It is often stated that the problems we facing are "everything to do with land distribution/equality, wealth distribution/equality, resource distribution/equality, and the lack of.."

Hmmmm..  fairer wealth distribution….? seems so far away, so bright!

Even if we have equitable distribution of wealth, power, land and technology would that culture leave the aboriginal peoples living on undeveloped lands to sustain their ancient tenure?

Wealth itself is problematic. It's an institutional concept:

The Moment

by

Margaret Atwood

“The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round" 

Margaret Atwood - 'The Moment'

source 

Is wealth a healthy concept, when it results, in material terms in the degrading of the environmental abundance that is so freely available, easily nurtured.

What is healthy behaviour for the biological human social species? 

Freedom 

Try explaining all that stuff about freedom, and gender roles, to healthy egalitarian pre-conquest cultures, and they'd think you desperately ill in your soul.

For egalitarian healthy adults, freedom is not a concept they play with. There's no need. They are born and live free, because they eschew power play. Egalitarian.

If we today are are talking about freedom, it is because we live in a social dynamic where the urge to control, to dominate, is common place, overt and covert. Misogyny is a fine example of how liberals and intelligentia keep missing the root.

It has nothing to do with gender, even as it presents if it were.

It has everything to do with 'property' - that one can do as one wishes to one's own property (without consideration of the environmental outcomes of what ever action is taken) because ownership is entitlement to control. Religions claim ownership by virtue of their God. Kingdoms, by Divine Right, by virtue of their violence and business acumen. Blessed by God. Misogyny is a fallacy built to enable the owning/bullying of women, and their children, as part of a system of hierarchies of power and violence. Not because they were/are women or children, but because they were/are viewed as property. The possessive relationship, that needs contractual guarantees.

Ownership.

Margaret Atwoods poem' The Moment' speaks to me of a sense or a context of masculinity and femininity that is ecologically deeper, more fundamental to the health of our species than those on offer within the dominating psyche, or those offered up in dissenting reaction to that dominating psyche.

Nature nurtures, and that is all nature does.

So yeah, freedom from the self-limiting desire to frame freedom from within a prison, to gain better freedoms, within that prison.

Experience.

As soon as one enters into the 'owning' psyche, one closes the doors of perception, the sensitivities that that enable one to connect fully as a part of the world, totally connected to the environment within which one lives.

The idea of that 'withdrawal' by Nature, Gaia, Mother Earth is an echo of the wrath of God, which is a belief, and a scientific and logical fallacy.

Nature nurtures, and that is all nature does. Earth is also a dynamic environment, constantly changing at every level, in vastly differening time frames, and all emergent organisms are designed to respond to those changes in ways that support the biological health of both species and environment. Not worrying about freedom leaves one open to that. Being oppressed pushes that into the background. And it is always there. It just takes a moment to re-connect.

So yeah, freedom from the self-limiting desire to frame freedom from within a prison, to gain better freedoms, within that prison.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe"

Thank you for reading this blog. All we need to do is be really honest, responsive to the evidence we find,and ready to reassess when new evidence emerges. The rest is easy.

Obedience, Discipline and Environmental Health.

Here's two essays/articles passed to me by contacts.

http://thedailymohsin.com/2009/03/23/distinguishing-between-discipline-and-obedience-in-parenting/

"So next time you see a 2 year old running round, singing and dancing, bear in mind that it is not necessarily the case that the child should sit down and shut up. Unless there is a rational and explicable basis for him not to do so, then, quite simply, there is no rational or explicable basis for him not to do so- so let him do so. Or else, explain it to him. Blind obedience to authority is one thing we don’t need any more of."

and

http://www.newearthrising.org/2009/03/good-bye-industrialism-hello-life.asp

"For example, the 'solution' to what is probably the world's number one industrial disease, cancer, is to call on industrial medicine to create more industrial chemicals that are marketed as drugs to mask the symptoms of the underlying cause -- instead of doing anything to stop the underlying cause.

Of course this is how a dominator paradigm, which is the dominant paradigm in Western industrial civilization, wants things to be. If they can keep people focused on, or distracted from, the symptoms, they don't have to worry about them demanding change to the underlying cause.

As Thomas Pynchon wrote, "If they can get you asking the wrong question, they don't have to worry about the answers."

These two pieces serve to tie in together the related issues of psychological conditioning and the damage the current status quo of Industrial Society is inflicting upon all life on Earth. And they show the way forward.

End the conditioning. Engage the natural wisdom and common-sense inherent in the people who form the grass roots of industrial society to make the changes necessary to halt the damage and to heal the wounds. Work with nature.

It really is that simple. Honor the innate expectations of the natural child and all will be well for those that do so.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Natural Building, Community, Vitality and fun!

Self reliance built from nature at the grassroots level is the best and only sustainable solution to the issues we are facing regarding our use of the environment.

Genuine autonomy also underpins a sense of community and shared values, which we in the industrialised world have all but lost, that is at the core healthy and psychologically functional living.

There is no genuine autonomy without self empathy, and with that empathy for others, a sense of how sacred each persons autonomy is, how precious a gift that is to share with others.

And note the vitality of peoples happiness, and their ability to be empathetic in spite of different languages!

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

Nature Works!

And this we know to be one of the fundamental truths of our very lives.

Nature works beautifully, and in doing so provides every living thing within nature the resources to meet those beings needs so that each can grow towards full potential, from microbes to the largest whales!

Nature does this by sharing those resources, through the growth of each living being and through constant recycling, thus creating no waste.

We would do well to mimic natures observed proceeses and innate values - in general resources are not witheld from those that need them, and there is ample evidence of widespread altruism in nature too!

Nature is not a series of mechanical processes that science of old held, there is a sentience and intelligence at work here. Just because we do not speak the lingo, does not mean the inhabitants are stupid..

Western Civilisations idea that the human being is the most intelligent creature here, or that humanity is to dominate nature and exploit nature are blatantly untrue. We are differnet, yes, and so are all living beings.

It follows that there must be something within all living beings that allows them to get information and to respond appropriately to that information so as to thrive.

Current research into the heart suggest that the heart is also a sensing organ, and that the heart can transmit and receive electromagnetic signals. The heart emits an electromagnetic pulse that is 5000 times greater than that of the brain.

Find out more about this incredible research and what it implies.............

www.heartmath.org

Note too that in school the heart is sentimentalised, through literature and a false evelevation and portrayal of science, and thus the conditioned brain is favoured as an information processor.

Without access to that part of us that connects to, is integrated with therefore accurately and reads nature, it is no surprise that so much of what we, in the westernised post-idustrialised world do that does not work, and is in fact destroying the vary basis for healty life, for all life.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe