As I have been officially obese for the past few years, I was in my regular new year weight loss mode and wanted to do it in a healthy way. The book sounded like an intriguing approach so I bought it on Kindle.

Unlike the relentless quackery that surrounds diet and diets, this was written by a man who worked his entire career as a doctor and researcher. His credits include the NIH and the Cleveland Clinic. I have to say, he makes a very strong case. If you can’t face the very very long book, grab a copy of the Forks Over Knives documentary which summarises his and other doctors’ thinking.

The core argument is that the gigantic increase in meat and dairy consumption is to blame for many of our ailments and these problems can be stopped and even reversed by switching to a much more veg-based diet. Basically like we used to eat in every society before we became rich.

So for kicks and giggles I have decided to try a mainly plant-based diet for the next “while” (duration TBD). I haven’t given up meat and dairy completely but I have cut down hugely.

In the past two weeks I have had no red meat, no eggs, cheese once, some weekend rashers/sausages and a smattering of turkey/chicken. The only dairy I get is a splash of milk in my tea. I tried both rice milk and soy milk and they are gross. A soy latte is an abomination.

On the veggie side, I have had lots of veg (duh), lots of fruit, seeds, wholemeal breads, porridge, hummus, salad and pickled veg. On the pure veggie side I have had Dee’s Spicy Bean Burger (not bad), Linda McCartney’s veggie sausages (surprisingly spot-on both for texture and taste), Brendan’s Vegetarian Burritos (nice taste but pure slop) and fried tofu with a ras el hangout coating (texture is too squishy).

Things I cannot stand about most veggie food in cafes etc are the ubiquitous bell peppers, aubergines and courgettes. Everything tastes the bloody same.

Tomorrow I’ll do a middle-eastern type thingy with falafel which I have become addicted to.

On the recommendation of several veggies I got the Veganomicon cookbook which I have just started and is a good fun read.

Plan for next week is more beans, more texture and less chicken/turkey. The only thing I’m not giving up is the Friday chicken curry. I did a butternut squash curry last week and I’m sorry, but no.

Texture remains an issue with all the non-meat proteins. I’m going to take trip into Quay Co-Op on Saturday to see what else they have. Seitan maybe? I’ll also see what else Tobairin in Bandon has (they do the burritos and the tofu).

Funnily enough I’m doing more a vegan thing than a vegetarian thing. Who would have thunk? Let’s see how long I last.

Another update in a few weeks.

My type of running is known, by experts in the field, as walking Last year I did the Courtmacsherry 10k, the Dingle Half-Marathon and the Galway Bay Half-Marathon. All done incredibly slowly and all tough. My dodgy ankle did not help.

My aim for Bandon is to shave at least an hour off my time. It’s not going to be easy since the route is pretty challenging due to hills. But that is balanced by the fact that the views are great. TBH I really didn’t enjoy the Galway race. Urban running, in traffic, even with sea views, cannot compare to something like the Dingle Peninsula. The Bandon run is in some of the lovely back roads between the Clon road and the Dunmanway road near the river. See below:

If you have never run before, why not go for the 10k route? It’s a great way to spend a morning and the pints taste mighty fine afterwards.

I believe the Dingle weekend is their busiest business weekend of the year. Let’s hope the same ends up being the case for Bandon.

Hopefully see you on the route. I’ll be the mentalist wearing these:

“It Must be the Music” is a night of Musical entertainment in aid of Action Breast Cancer, brought to you by Laoise O’Hanlon, joined by a variety of Cork women singers, including Kay Deering, Jamie Harper Kingston, Roos Demol, Bernie Harrington, Sinead Tracey, Jenny Bradley and Molly Lynch.

The accompanist is Deirdre Long and the MC is Ciarán Bermingham

Tickets are only €15 and are available from Roos on 086-8508548 or An Tobairín on South Main Street, Bandon.

Lots of discussion about it over on Facebook if you want to know more.

Yesterday I did my first ever Half Marathon in Dingle. Yes it nearly killed me and I had to walk lots of it but I finished and I had several hundred people behind me. Compared to some of my friends who regularly do Triathlons, my achievement is nothing special. But for someone who spent 20 years sedentary and started running in January, aged 41, with a gippy ankle and hugely overweight, I’m pretty proud of myself.

One application I have been using is CardioTrainer on my Android phone. It started as a pretty simple app but just gets better and better with each revision. It uses GPS to record distance, speed and elevation as you exercise. The most recent version finally has a “permanent account” feature so you can change phones and keep your exercise history. It saves everything on the phone and online. It also posts to Facebook which I love.

Last night whilst watching TV with my completely seized up left knee, I played a little more with it and suddenly discovered it has Google Health integration. This is a service that has always intrigued me but I had never used. Unlike many people, I would love to have a permanent online store of all my records that all my health providers would input to and read from. No more silos. My GP, various hospitals, physios etc could update and access what is appropriate to them.

So this afternoon I signed up for Google Health and connected CardioTrainer to it. I’ve been sitting here for the past hour looking at it with some “big ideas” bubbling around in my head. They are not quite formed but it goes something like this.

1. Android phones will become ubiquitous in the next two years
2. You can already get basic models for £100 un-subsidised in the UK
3. CardioTrainer is free in its basic form. They just released a calorie counter app and have an inexpensive weigh-loss app
4. Google Health is free
5. There is some opportunity around tracking your exercise, eating, weight, etc and uploading via CardioTrainer to Google Health
6. Your health professionals could track your progress and give advice, feedback and encouragement
7. The HSE could hand out those phones and create a preventative care group for billions less than it costs to deal with the health problems related to obesity, diabetes, alcohol, heart disease, smoking etc etc etc. Hell they could even outsource the whole thing to Malaysia.
8. Someone from FourSquare could help with gaming dynamics to build incentive systems into these apps to encourage people to get healthy
9. Think “Operation Transformation” for everyone
10. If Google wanted to do it themselves, they could finally find a practical use for Latitude.

Ok, so you can see where I am going with this. As I said, the idea isn’t fully formed but there is something valuable here centered around cheap mobile technology, the cloud and the health of our country.

Please head over there and show your support.

The concert, which still has no name (ideas welcome) will be held on October 29th in the Brogan Inn in Bandon. At the moment we are practising a barbershop song. It is quite challenging, but we’re having a lot of fun with it.

So from Dec 29th to Feb 9th, I have lost 20 pounds.

How? No booze, no snacking, no sweets, normal breakfast, normal lunch, smaller dinner, fruit whenever I’m peckish and a small amount of treadmill Mon-Fri.

My BMI, body fat and visceral fat are all still atrocious but on the way down.

On advice from @adventsparky on Twitter, we invested in a body fat analysis machine (aka tarted up weighing scales) on Amazon. This Omron BF510 Body Fat & Composition Bathroom Scales has both feet pads and handgrips to give a much more accurate analysis of fat by running a small signal through your body.

I then track that in a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Next major milestone will be the 2 stone mark. I figure about another 2ish weeks for that.

Eventual aim is 4+ stone reduction by mid-late summer. Fingers crossed.

#1 – The first rule of Fat Club is, you must talk all the time about Fat Club online.

#2 – The second rule of Fat Club is, you MUST TALK about Fat Club online.

#3 – If someone says stop, goes limp or taps out, the de-fatting has just begun.

#4 – Lots of guys fighting fat.

#5 – One kilo at a time.

#6 – Baggy shirts, running shoes.

#7 – De-fatting will go on as long as it has to.

#8 – Every night at Fat Club, you have to weigh yourself and Tweet/Facebook it

I’m in. Anyone else?

You can expect to see a lot of information about the treatments in which he specialises (particularly Frequency Specific Microcurrent) appearing on the site in the coming weeks.

If you are in need of services like this, Eoghan is a real pro and you won’t regret having a consultation.

Imagine if, instead, those millions of people went outside, dug up a square metre or two of their perfect lawns and planted some vegetable seeds? Or if they lived in an apartment in Ireland, they contacted Irish Allotments about organising patches in their locality?

Then instead of some silly hour-long nonsense they could:

• Reduce CO2 throught the action of the plants
• Reduce petrol consumption through less shopping
• Reduce fuel miles by not buying foreign vegetables
• Save money
• Get their kids outside
• Take part in Seed Saver schemes
• Eat healthier
• Get fit

We could call it Gardener’s World

Of course taking care of this veg patch takes a wee bit longer than one hour a year and isn’t news-worthy so maybe we should just turn off the lights and keep playing mushroom instead.

I just got a lovely email from someone who was in such a hospital in the 1950s wondering if I’d got any feedback. Unfortunately I hadn’t. So I thought I’d just pop this up with the aim to allow anyone to give their thoughts, reminiscences etc of these places. Good and bad. Feel free to pass on to anyone you know who had TB back then. Of course commenters can remain anonymous/pseudonymous.

If the State’s Chief Medical Officer says that dioxin is only dangerous if a person is exposed to it over a long period of time, then why the hell are we destroying millions of Euro worth of food?

We all eat chicken that spends its life sitting in its own faeces in the dark and lots of the pork we eat is dosed up to the eyeballs in sub-therapeutic antibiotics, so how is a slight possibility of a touch of PCB going to make our health any worse?

Related to this, I’ve met with a few small food producers recently and I don’t know how they stay in business with the nonsensical levels of paperwork and measurement that they have to deal with. Is this actually part of the problem? An unbelievably bloated bureaucracy unable to measure and react quickly because they are drowning in irrelevant form processing? A bit like Sarbanes-Oxley in the US causing people to be so obsessed with process, they forgot about the intent and allowed the banks to trade recklessly for years. 

Finally, I thought we had full meat traceability from field (or concrete pen) to fork? Why not just release the tracking codes of all the individual batches we need to destroy? Or are we all a bit too thick to manage that?

This Sunday’s rasher sandwich brought to you by the letter P and the Caherbeg Television Workshop:

The range of products on sale there has always amazed me. From vitamins to organic food, chocolate, cosmetics and alt-med stuff, she has something for everyone. Now I’ll be totally open here, I’m not a fan of a large number of alt-med approaches despite having a friend who is a homeopath. However, having said that, there is a huge amount to be gained in the area of health by everyone thinking about the products they use on their bodies, and more importantly, the things they eat.

So her new project, the Fionnuisce Healing Centre (web-site not live yet) in Heron Court on Market Quay holds great interest for me. Apart from the alt-med side, there is a large meeting room with a demonstration kitchen area. So far this space has been used for yoga, dance and various workshops including cookery demonstrations in co-operation with Karen Austin of legendary Lettercollum Kitchen Project.

There are lots of interesting cookery events lined up for September that include a Sushi Saturday and Mediterranean Veg.  In October Karen will offer Indian Vegetarian, November Thai and December Christmas Veg.  There will be a wholefood cookery night class running Tuesdays from 1st week in October for 10 weeks with Dorothee Clarke.

She had me at sushi

They are also running a cool 1-day drama workshop on Sunday 13th July by Belinda Wild who describes it as being for anyone with or without experience in Drama who is interested in exploring creative self-expression through the medium of theater – and she guarantees to make you laugh. I’d honestly be tempted, having played Sybil Walling in “Brush with a Body” in the Kieran’s College school play, aged 17.

If you are interested in any of the above, shoot Mary a TXT on 086-3882440. I’m trying to convince her to start a blog since I think any place that has regular events is ideally suited to one instead of a static brochure page. It might be worth her putting all the events up on Yahoo Upcoming too.

UPDATE: Some of the dates for the foodie events are as follows:

• Saturday 6th September, Succulent Sushi with Delwyn Klevenow
• Suturday 20th September, Mediterranean Vegetables from Karen Austin’s abundant garden
• Saturday 18th October, Indian Vegetarian with Lettercollum Karen
• Saturday 15th November, Thai Cookery with Lettercollum Karen
• Saturday 12th December, Vegetarian Christmas with Karen

Women’s voices count in politics. Two Tits and a Vote is an online Irish Women’s Health Campaign empowering you to advocate for better women’s healthcare in Ireland. You can be part of improving Irish women’s health care from the comfort of your very own chair. Learn how to take part now!

I think the name is superb and cuts through all the bullshit to get right to the heart of the matter. The time for politician’s weasel words and acceptance of the criminal incompetence of the HSE and Dept of Health has to end. I hope this effort by Sabrina and others plays a big role in that. Please sign-up on the site and support them.

2007 hasn’t been a great year for ground-breaking innovation since most things I’m familiar with have just really been refined. I haven’t heard about one thing that make me stop and go “wow that’s incredible”. I might do so when CUH stop sending out hand-written appointments and use a fancy thing called a computer and Microsoft Outlook to schedule x-rays.

I mentioned BiancaMed in a previous post and I’m going to nominate one of their developments as the Invention of 2007. In fact their whole product line should get the gong. I don’t just say this because I was in college with Conor Hanley and Conor Heneghan, their developments are the first step in an entirely new approach to medicine. Expect these guys to exit for a huge amount of money in the coming years (or buy GE Healthcare!).

The BiancaMed Overnight Sleep Monitor sits on your bed-side locker and measures your breathing patterns with no contact whatsoever. It can provide critical data to diagnose sleep apnea and other sleep disorders and medical conditions. It will be able to send that information via mobile phone to a back-end system that your medical practitioner can log on to and analyse. It is genuinely revolutionary and there will be a multitude of spin-off products from this including baby monitors and fitness equipment.

As someone who has slept badly since he was 6 years old I’d love to get access to this and maybe finally get to the bottom of it. As a parent, I know many people will pay a LOT of money for a baby monitor which may help avoid SIDS.

A bit more impressive than a poxy phone, isn’t it?

The benefits of such a machine could be enormous

• Massive reduction in GP queues
• Reduction in incorrect self-medication (e.g. anti-biotics for viral infections)
• Prompt addressing of potentially dangerous conditions
• Diagnosis by subject-area experts globally rather than by potentially incompetent local hospitals
• Blue Sky: Your own portable MRI with “lump” detection

We are starting to see this sort of thing appear here and there, from equipment for diabetics to portable defibrilators to the awesome sleep-apnea equipment by the BiancaMed guys. Some day we’ll get to the point where your health isn’t in the hands of a dysfunctional bureaucracy and you’ll control your own destiny.

A company called 3G Doctor in Kerry provides a service whereby you can get a video consultantion with a qualified doctor using your 3G phone.

I’ve written all about it here. I’d be interested to hear what you think and whether the 3G coverage is good enough yet so that it is useful to the people who need it most.

For those who think 3G phones are outside their budget, the fabulous Sony Ericsson K800i is little more than €100 on pay monthly upgrade. That’s barely two visits to the doctor.

I’ve just been informed that budget was put aside to deal with this in 2004 and was then re-allocated. In the interests of accuracy I have decided to contact the HSE under the Freedom of information act to find out who, why and when decisions were made in this area since the 1970′s.

Below are my questions. Please add to them or improve on them in the comments section and I’ll put together a combined list and send it to the HSE. It’ll be interesting to see if there is any attempt made to delay the answers until after May 17th.

1. On what dates was the decision made and then implemented to stop providing BCG routinely to newborn babies in the Cork region years ago?
2. Provide the names of all the senior individuals (medical, administrative, consultant, board members) involved in the making of that decision
3. Provide the names of all past or present TDs, Senators or Councillors who were on the Southern Health Board when that decision was made
4. Did the board authorise that decision? If so, provide the names of all members of that board
5. Provide the names of all past or present TDs, Senators or Councillors who were on the Southern Health Board since the decision
6. Confirm whether the provision of BCG as a matter of routine was agreed to be re-introduced at any point since then, on what dates and by whom
7. Confirm whether that NEW decision was overturned, for what reason, by whom and when
8. Confirm that BCG shots are available in some locations nationally on demand and list the places where there is no waiting list
9. Confirm that residents of Cork can avail of these BCG shots and provide contact information for arranging these shots

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease caused by bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacteria usually attack the lungs. But, TB bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. TB disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States.

TB is spread through the air from one person to another. The bacteria are put into the air when a person with active TB disease of the lungs or throat coughs or sneezes. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected.

Current waiting list for BCG in Cork – 5 to 6 months!

HSE, get up off your asses, get all the BCG shots in Ireland down here NOW, advertise it everywhere and get the children of every copped-on parent vaccinated asap!

Or do we have to wait until the first child dies from complications when they go from latent to active?

UPDATE 1; Good thread here on MagicMum. Like almost everyone else we didn’t get our youngest 3 done in Cork as it was not offered and we cluelessly did what we were told. Seriously regretting that now and signed up in a six month queue. Maybe a trip to Limerick is in order?

If your child dies from the side-effects of measles, it’ll be due to you listening to uniformed clueless dimwits like her. Remember that when you are casting your vote. Oh and don’t drink the water, it’s CIA mind control.

UPDATE 1: On a related topic, the HSE have announced that all babies born in Cork from this October onwards will be routinely offered the BCG vaccine against TB. Welcome to the 20th century. Oh wait a sec, that’s over already. Wonder if there will be any civil suits taken against the individual bozos responsible for the current situation between now and then?