Dr Nowt

You gave it her gratis, didn't you?

I had a very easy paper round. That is to say, my Mum drove me round in the car.

Oh, you! Its a very broad topic mate, and on the subject of pharmaceutical companies' oft funding for, influence on and vested interest in scientific studies, and how conventional healthcare has gradually moved in a direction financially advantageous to them, my thoughts on it becoming something of a closed-shop are largely theoretical, so I've left those aside. I'm just sharing some observations from getting on for 40 years of experience. Of course scientific studies will always be relied upon as a one-size-fits-all starting point to treating illness, and should be followed until a person has enough maturity, experience and knowledge of their body and nuanced symptoms to assemble their own medical support toolkit, in my opinion as a supplement to the mainstream healthcare which should always play a large part of treatment in the case of serious illness. Conventional medicine is clearly responsible for survival rates in many conditions rising above a historically short prognosis, sometimes of not even surviving childhood, and more than have their place, but they can also keep people pegged in poor health when overused. To solely take and rely on pharmaceutical medication and conventional advice can make a person battling chronic illness very weak overall and be a danger to them; I've seen it time and time again and experienced it myself, having reversed what was seen by medical science as a very grim prognosis, much to my NHS consultant's openly expressed surprise, at the very least partly as a result of balancing my necessary scientifically approved treatment with more natural methods that supported my body through its repeated pumping with required toxic medication, while allowing me to reduce others against strict medical insistence, which have proved not to be as essential as had been previously insisted. Now, clearly I can't provide a scientific study to prove this in great numbers, and nor am I interested in proving myself right or winning any argument on it, but its experience which has served me very well and subsequently been of use to others who also aren't just theorising, but have to live with the consequences of their beliefs and actions on the subject. Conventional doctors (and those interested purely in the science of a subject) will always remain firmly opposed to unproven alternative health means, its against everything they believe in and I understand and respect that, but they can also tell when a patient has recovered far beyond what they expected, and the patient can tell when its not the norm from both their reaction and viewing other people with the same condition and similar prognosis. I've seen kids with serious illness and in hugely degraded health being encouraged to blend up ice-cream on hospital wards as their specialist nutritional advice, and oddly enough not seeming to flourish under such guidance. That's equally as harebrained to me as these supposed people who play healing sounds to disguise quackery and take advantage of naive people who fall for such practices. In the case of someone being prescribed multiple medications for life and often left on them much longer than required, the doctors themselves can't tell you how they all contra-indicate once you go beyond a couple of drugs in combination, or to what degree they're responsible for other issues such as weakening bones and causing diabetes in the case of heavy steroid use, or a shattered immune system in the case of powerful antibiotics, leaving the patient open to further infection and a vicious circle. Scientific studies are the benchmark yes, but when in the situation you sometimes try other things for yourself with an open mind and trust your instincts and observations as a necessity, judging effectiveness on your own responses and changing prognosis as that is all that is relevant and important at the time; the luxury of simply sneering at certain practices doesn't exist if you want to keep bucking important scientific figures such as average life expectancy. I know first-hand how over-treating with medication can be a very dangerous thing, and how things have gradually moved to a situation where pharmaceutical drugs are habitually prescribed more and more readily, where once upon a time doctors would give more rounded advice and treatment. The very superbugs now evidently posing a threat to human health are partially attributable to the overuse of antibiotics for example, prescribed as they so often are by GPs for a cold, when colds are caused by a virus and antibiotics target bacteria. Once taking Echinacea and consuming homemade chicken soup for a few days would have been some typical advice provided by the GP. Its all a balance, and one I believe has become well out of kilter, from observing the healthcare system during an entire lifetime of first-hand experience. The very idea that everything needs treating with medication and therefore pharmaceutical products, and the casual proliferation of use they now enjoy, is the exact mindset I'm talking about - its as dangerous and foolhardy as the idea that pharmaceutical medication is never required. There's a lot more to being healthy than reactively treating and masking symptoms with pharmaceutical products, that's for sure, but you wouldn't always believe it from situations I regularly experience and observe through conventional medicine. The idea that someone like myself with my background would go for treatments and believe in them due to whale music playing in the background does amuse me though, I'll give you that it made me laugh. The only bias should be on remaining as well as possible, using whichever combination of things allied to conventional medical advice that allow an individual to best achieve that, reviewed in the most hard-headed manner possible and based on their own findings. As a final point I will thank you to only refer to me on here as 'Parsley' from now on. Its my spirit guide's given name for me. Om-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m.

If you're shaking your head at my posts Dog, by all means share some first-hand experience of living with a serious condition and using both conventional and quote unquote alternative means to treat it, which qualifies you to be so dismissive of what I've written. Overuse of pharmaceutical medication and reliance purely on conventional means to deal with a chronic condition carry their own dangers; a balanced, integrative approach is optimal in my experience. If you're not referring to my posts, then I've misunderstood where that was aimed.

Great stuff mate, made up for you.

You're just fessin' Vlad, you feel me?

Going private gives you access to the same drugs, it improves the surroundings you're treated in, shortens the waiting list and other such things which make the overall experience far more refined. However, at least a large chunk of the doctors travel from their normal place of work at an NHS hospital to perform private consultations. It's still the same mindset, albeit much less in and out in a flash and therefore at times chaotic than a free hospital. As an example, the other half blew a disk in her back around 5 years ago. Completely incapacitated her of course. My friend who's an Osteopath took one look at her and told her exactly what he could do to resolve it. She had private medical care through work and thanked him but said she'd pursue that first. After an examination under epidural they immediately advised her they wanted to remove the disk. She was 29 years old. All of us as family agreed that was a non-starter, as remove a disk and ultimately the back can or will weaken again in around ten years or less, as many who've had such a procedure will no doubt attest - I know several who've done so and still have a lifetime's problem with their back. She went to see our friend who within a couple of weeks had her back around 80% improved. She now has a few days a year where it plays her up enough so she notices it. Cost her nowt but even without knowing him would have cost someone £140 for 4 visits, then the odd maintenance appointment once or twice a year. That made me very suspicious of private healthcare, as it could be viewed they just wanted to perform the most costly operation first, when in my opinion such a drastic procedure should have been the last resort. Bearing in mind the bill for review was a thousand pounds for a couple of hours in the private suite and an epidural, I'm not going to guess how much a disk removal comes in at. And I've no idea what water having a memory means mate. I wasn't advocating homeopathy per se. I was just indicating that often people who practice it have far more to their knowledge base and appeal than that one much derided form of treatment, and are very accomplished at healing people and making them well. I know a good many very bright people who've been extremely unwell over a long period or been diagnosed with a significant illness, and who have improved greatly after spending time with such people. It's an easy thing for people to think that there's lots of idiots who'll just pay money for magic beans without any positive results because they're not discerning. As amusing an image as it is, it's often a small part of the reality, in my experience.

Chris Tarrant's let himself go.

And the Cup Winners. Fucking David James.

Great post. Many people routinely deride homeopaths, for example, but when you visit such "alternative" and "holistic" therapists, in addition to whatever primary treatment they provide they generally direct you towards a variety of relevant natural products and advice, including dietary, which often do a very similar thing to the equivalent medication produced by pharmaceutical companies, without the common toxic side effects, overall making the body a less fertile environment for illness. The emphasis is on the patient as one whole entity, on them completely recovering their health where the problem is acute and becoming as strong and vital as possible where it is chronic, proactively looking for both solutions to the underlying cause of illness and ways of making the body strong enough to ultimately overcome it on its own, and a generally positive mindset and approach, while maintaining realism. They will also look into ways of making the body better able to process pharmaceutical drugs where those are inevitable and genuinely required as there is no alternative, as is of course sometimes the case, rather than just tracking deterioration caused to the likes of the liver. They are in the health business. Most people with a long history of treatment via medical science who've seriously looked into alternative health as a supplement to their care will have stories to tell, many of invaluable mainstream support and a network which has been a huge positive in helping keep them on the planet, but also those regarding the ever-growing over-reliance on medication, a too often negative and doom-laden approach, which risks becoming self-fulfilling prophecy in constantly reinforcing the inevitability of both a lifetime of ill-health and things getting worse, even to those with a pragmatic attitude who understand their situation implicitly but aim for the best outcome possible regardless and recognise the crucial importance of mental approach to that process, and the oft troublingly casual attitude towards prescribing multiple medication for long periods without effective checks, which upon patient requested review regularly transpire not to have been needed for an age, sometimes even for many years. There's a balance to be found where an integrative approach between the two would be ideal, but over time things here have swung way too far in the favour of just dishing out pills, reactively managing symptoms and in the case of complex, multi-system disease, prescribing medication for one facet of the condition which causes major side effects with others, then prescribing further medication for that, and on and on. In a very simple sense there's being unwell, not being unwell and being actively healthy. The medical science approach only when dealing with long-term illness, particularly as it has become ever more in thrall to pharmaceutical medication, often stops people from being in either of the two more extreme groups and pegs them in the middle one, in my experience.

How did that work out for them again? I never can quite recall what happened. Football | Europe | Dinamo Bucharest 5-1 Everton - BBC 15 Sep 2005 - Everton's Uefa Cup hopes lie in tatters after a heavy first leg defeat to Dinamo Bucharest.

Just repeating "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME" no matter what she says doesn't count jonny.

Hearing about Paisley today and the various history being gone through put me in mind of this:

He wouldn't get hit by a bus, he'd get hit by a rickshaw that he drove all round India in, 10 years before it became passé.

That fashion a few years ago for the sequin style t-shirts of old 80's bands was a good one. Would have been easy to stitch a lot of people up Chris Morris style with a load of Tony Manero word combinations. "They were massive in the fantasy metal scene".

To be honest, a lot of people like to define themselves by their supposedly more refined and expert than everyone else's tastes, using it as a form of one upmanship across all manner of subjects. "I've got a really eclectic taste in music" being a good one to watch out for, before often being presented with proof of a completely normal taste range. Such people are often best ignored or taken the piss out of for their pretentions. A mate of mine was particularly bad for all that I did it/liked it/had it first exclusivity shite, pouting disdainfully at anything anyone else had or did, and I was particularly chuffed to be at his one day when a parcel arrived. It was a garish bright neon orange watch which he eagerly presented to me as one of only 20 in the world or some such mindblowing numbers. It transpired not to work a beat. Couldn't script it better.

Tastebuds, innit. No right or wrong answers. Even if singing along to The Backstreet Boys should be a criminal offence.

Presumably he told the proprietor it was a betraaaaaaaaaaayal that they didn't serve whatever he wanted?

Missed a trick there didn't you. "Tony Manero knows" wrote itself.

You need to urgently see your doctor.

They're enablers, aren't they.

There will be an appeal, surely, as it's now been signposted that he likely won't do proper jail time, and I read in one of the broadsheets' live feeds that South African legal experts have questioned the interpretation of law in terms of him firing 4 times into a confined space without being aware it would/could kill. Similar to stabbing someone, once done the power as to whether it actually kills or not is out of the person's hands, but that it can cause life-threatening injuries is a given to any adult.

Hodgson's attitude isn't even just short-termist, selfish and dismissive towards Liverpool's best interests, medium-term he's displaying exactly the same lack of concern towards the national side, and as usual Cunt London of the UK media will only twig and report this after the fact, in a couple of years when he's long gone and some other manager has half the Daniel Sturridge at his disposal, because the pompous prick keeps misusing him so dangerously. Not to mention the risk to the player himself's career. We've seen it all before with Owen and Torres in terms of what repeat injuries strip away from a pacy striker's game, yet Roy's "40 years in management" shtick means there's more chance of him getting offered a job back at Liverpool than there is him accepting he knows less on the subject than anyone else, let alone seemingly everyone else.

By the sound of it I wouldn't want to be the poor cunt who has to chisel it on your headstone.