Climate Change and Your Health
When I hear the continuing arguments about climate change, I often fancy that I can in the far distance hear Nero playing his lyre while Rome burns. In March the BBC reported faster than expected warming of the Antarctic over the last 30 years. This report was based on a paper in the journal Science by a team from the British Antarctic Survey.
Gradual climate change is drawing particular attention in Europe, where the climate is exquisitely dependent on the Gulf Stream. In some places records have been kept for centuries, and there seem to have been genuine changes in a short space of time. A few years ago I was in Stockholm in the week before Christmas, and it was so warm that I was able to walk around in my shirtsleeves. That made it the warmest December in almost 800 years. People notice things like that, and governments and populations are eager to do something before the Arctic is reduced to a puddle.
Even if we are just seeing a natural climatic cycle, the consequences could be disastrous. Leaving aside the obvious matter of a rise in sea level, there is also the impact of global climate change on health. Earlier this year the BBC reported a speech by Professor Paul Hunter from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, to the Society of Applied Microbiology at the Royal Society in London. He pointed out that global warming, with hotter summers and more frequent and heavy rainfall and storms, would create the right conditions for an increase in food poisoning and other gastrointestinal upsets caused by microorganisms.
Global warming could also create conditions favorable for a return of malaria to the United Kingdom. Professor Hunter has published papers on this important topic before. He is no alarmist, and his work underscores the way in which our environment and we are closely interlinked, and even small climatic changes may have major effects on illness.
We could discuss this topic in a great deal of detail. Suffice to say that it is more important than ever for all of us to get into the habit of washing our hands, ensuring the cleanliness of food, and even more so of the water that we use, and that we do all that we can to build our resilience.
There is also another matter of equal importance, and that is the dwindling supply of fresh water around the world. The number of us is growing fast and our water use is growing even faster. A third of the world’s population now lives in water-stressed countries, and it is expected that this will rise to two-thirds by the year 2025. The cruelty of the situation is that there is altogether more than enough water available for everyone’s basic needs. The water is in the wrong places and much of it is unusable.
The United Nations recommends that people need a minimum of 50 liters of water a day for drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation. Global water consumption rose six-fold between 1900 and 1995 – more than double the rate of population growth – and goes on growing as farming, industry and domestic demand all increase.
As important as quantity is quality – with pollution increasing in some areas, the amount of useable water declines. Each year, more than five million people die from waterborne diseases, which is 10 times the number killed in wars around the globe. Most of the victims are children.
Seventy percent of the water used worldwide is used for agriculture. Much more will be needed if we are to feed the world’s growing population, which is predicted to rise from about six billion today to 8.9 billion by 2050. And consumption will further increase as more people expect Western-style lifestyles and diets. Here is a useful statistic: one kilogram of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic meter of water, while a kilo of cereals needs only up to three cubic meters. Many futurists are already predicting that water will become as much of a strategic issue as oil is today, with wars being fought over the water supply.
As of today, we should all start thinking about ways in which we can reduce our own water consumption and make provision to collect and purify water ourselves.
“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” — Charles Dudley Warner (American Author, 1829-1900)
Technorati tags: global warming, water, Environment, Climate Change, pollution
Viruses and Weight Gain
Another discussion in Healing, Meaning and Purpose revolved around the evidence that in addition to toxins, viruses have been attracting a great deal of attention as causative agents of obesity in humans. There are currently seven viruses known to cause obesity in animals and three in humans. This work began almost twenty years ago when a Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar was working in India and discovered that viruses could cause obesity. It started with a chance observation: thousands of chickens were dying, and when they did, they were found to be abnormally heavy. He then discovered that people who had been exposed to a chicken adenovirus called SMAM-1 were consistently fatter than those who had had no exposure. He later moved to the U.S., and has collaborated with other researchers to study whether human adenoviruses, which are common throughout the human population, could be having a similar effect. This led to the discovery that the human adenovirus Ad-36 caused significant fat increases in animals, and furthermore was associated with obesity in humans. Now we have a new report from Leah Whigham and her team at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who tested several human adenoviruses for their ability to increase fat in both live chickens and in cell culture.
It is not at all far-fetched to suggest that there may in the future be vaccines to prevent one of the many causes of obesity. But for now, follow simple rules of hygiene and do everything that you can to improve your own resistance to infection. Which gets us straight back to Healing, Meaning and Purpose!
Technorati tags: weight gain, Nikhil Dhurandhar, virus,
Fungal Contamination of Pillows
I recently came across a study from colleagues at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, that was published in the journal Allergy.
Fungal contamination of bedding was first studied seventy years ago, but there have been no reports in the last seventy years. In this new study, researchers sampled ten pillows with between 1.5 and 20 years of regular use. Each pillow was found to contain a substantial fungal load, with four to 16 different species being identified per sample and even higher numbers found in synthetic pillows. One of the most worrying things was that the microscopic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus was particularly common in synthetic pillows. And fungi as diverse as bread and vine moulds and those usually found on damp walls and in showers were also found in the pillows. Aspergillus is a very common fungus, carried in the air as well as being found in cellars, household plant pots, compost, computers and ground pepper and spices. I have treated many people with invasive Aspergillosis, a sometimes nasty illness that occurs mainly in the lungs and sinuses, although it can spread to other organs including the brain. It can be very difficult to treat, and as many as 1 in 25 patients who die in modern European teaching hospitals have the disease. In France and Germany, this is one of the occasions when unorthodox medicine is often used at the same time as high doses of antibiotics: proper integrated medicine.
Aspergillosis is a particular problem in people with compromised immune systems. Hospital pillows have plastic covers and so are unlikely to cause problems, but patients being discharged home – where pillows may be old and fungus-infected – could be at risk of infection. Aspergillus can also worsen asthma, particularly in adults who have had asthma for many years, and it can cause allergic sinusitis in patients with allergic tendencies. Constant exposure to fungus in bed could be problematic.
The moral of this story is be extra aware that pillows may harbor fungi that can cause or exacerbate allergies and more serious problems in people with other illnesses. If you have allergies, it is best to use foam rather than feather pillows. If you have synthetic pillows, wash them regularly in warm water and with a non-allergenic detergent. Dip the pillow one small section at a time in the solution and squeeze through the pillow. Once the pillow is clean, rinse it out at least three times to remove all of the soap and residue. Then lie the pillow out flat to dry, and turn it frequently. To fluff the pillow, take a couple of tennis balls and put them in the dryer with the pillow and air dry for about 30 minutes.
Technorati tags: fungus, integrated medicine, allergies, asthma
