New year and "new" idea!

This last new year was probably the most uneventful one I've had in recent memory. In the last 5 years I've spent my new years' eves under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in beautiful Cape Town, in snowmageddon Baltimore, in smog-filled Jakarta, and in a secure compound in Nigeria. This year however I spent it on a remote sheep farm in the Little Karoo of South Africa. I'm even a little embarrassed to say that I didn't even stay up for it!

It was on another night, when I happened to be struggling to sleep, that I conceptualized my personal philosophy on health and wellness. I wasn't on the farm this night so counting sheep was not an option. There are many ancient belief systems and contemporary ones that see the healthy human frame as being in perfect balance or harmony (or ease), and the unwell as being out of sync or imbalanced (or dis-eased). Similarly my approach to my patients is to explore their person to begin to understand the origin of the disharmony. This may be challenging in a 15-minute consultation which is often the case, but as I've begun to gain the confidence of particular patients through repeated visits, I have become more aware of the factors, events and behaviours that disrupt their homeostasis.

And with this word, HOMEOSTASIS, I would like to summarize my philosophy/approach to maintaing health. How-you-stay-as-is (homeostasis) is essentially the biological process whereby an organism maintains a constant internal environment. I'll elaborate further on some ideas relating to this concept with regards to how it may improve and furthermore maintain your health in subsequent posts. This isn't a new idea but is essentially a novel way of exploring the concepts related to maintaining your homeostasis.

Have a balanced year!

Cancer Hopes - Burzynski Clinic

If you have researched the Burzynski Clinic and Research Institute on the internet then I have no doubt that you have encountered very polarized opinions ranging from the avid supporter to the vehement sceptic. I would like to give you an overview of the treatment they offer and my personal perspective as to why Healtheon is collaborating with them.

The media and internet comments generally portray The Burzynski Clinic as an alternative cancer treatment facility. This is where the majority of the scepticism comes from I believe, as they have been lumped together with the likes of Gerson and other treatment modalities that truly have no scientific evidence. Burzynski has also been labelled as pseudo-science, in attempting to gain credibility in scientific eyes by publishing loads of poorly designed data. This is what formed the basis of my initial scepticism.

The buzz word in cancer therapy now is gene-targeted therapy. The largest oncology centres around the world are increasingly using gene targeted medication which is seen as the future of oncology, of which there are over 40 registered now I believe, in treating the various kinds of cancer that patients present with. Each medication has a particular indication for which it has gained FDA and other medicines control councils' registration (so for example x drug is indicated for colon cancer with x gene marker). This is exactly what the Burzynski clinic has been doing, but to a greater degree, and with more individualized therapy.

Why Invest in Health in Indonesia

What determines the health of a nation? How does one determine the burden of disease that the population has? Is it the average life expectancy? Or is it a series of statistics reflecting child and maternal mortality/morbidity? While the most accurate answer is likely a combination of these suggestions and others, child and maternal mortality statistics are frequently used to ascertain the state of a population’s health.

Living in Indonesia

As with all manner of animals, one of the primary survival instincts or needs for humans is to find shelter. The ability to feel comfortable and secure in Indonesia, being the shelter you have “chosen”, may be regarded as vitally important, as this safety and security may be the foundation upon which you justify your choices.

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there may not be a specific reference to medical care being a basic human right, but in Articles 3 and 25(1), where “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person…” and “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services…”, respectively, reference is made to security and medical care. These aspects are vital to your sheltering in Indonesia.

A month in Equatorial Guinea

In 2004 I had the amazing opportunity of working in Malabo, the island capital of Equatorial Guinea. I found some photographs of my trip recently and decided to post some of my experiences and memories. I've pre-dated the post back to 2004 to maintain a timeline even though I'm actually writing this January 2012.

This was to be my first locum contract with International SOS who had only contacted me 2 weeks previously (May 2004) with the plan that I'd work in Nigeria in August sometime. It just so happened that there was an attempted coup-de-tat in Equatorial Guinea and the hired mercenaries included some South African ex-soldiers. So I was asked to urgently fly in to provide medical cover for the Marathon LNG plant there since most of the South African doctors needed to return home to get a police clearance, which can take months.

I arrived in Malabo via Zurich (I had to fly from Windhoek to Johannesburg, then to Zurich, and then back down to Malabo! Windhoek is geographically closer to Malabo than Johannesburg or Zurich). I was greeted by the immigration security and ushered to a back room, which was probably the only back room in the tiny airport. A security officer in military attire sat at a table with his back to me while I stood in the doorway surrounded by a few other guards. He proceeded to question me about why I was there, why I had visited South Africa so many times, why I had my visa granted in Paris instead of South Africa among a few other questions. He then opened up my computer and found a directory with photographs I'd taken from home and recent travels to Istanbul and Israel and then asked me who each and every person was. I approached to try point out people and had taken no more than a couple steps when he abruptly put his hand up and said I need to stay back. He never turned to me so I never saw his face through this entire interrogation. The paranoid and aggressive state of the immigration personnel was to reflected by the military and police throughout my stay.