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~ Finding, formulating and solving life's frustrations.

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Tag Archives: healthcare

COVID-19

12 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by petersironwood in America, apocalypse, COVID-19, health, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

coronavirus, COVID-19, environment, exercise, health, healthcare, life, pandemic, wellness

COVID-19

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog posts to address our health crisis. 

It’s quite natural for us to want to survive as individuals, so what can we do to maximize our chances of survival? 

Much of the advice you’ve already heard is valid. 

  • Avoid unnecessary travel and gathering in groups. 
  • Telecommute.
  • Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly. 
  • Make and use some alcohol wipes. 
  • Use gloves.
  • You may want to implement the “left hand dirty, right hand clean” rule (which already exists in many countries). That is, if you must touch a public surface without having the opportunity to immediately wash, or in case you forget, use your left hand. Use your right hand for eating, rubbing your eyes, etc. Better is to disinfect immediately, or even better avoid touching public surfaces without gloves.
  • Don’t touch your face. I personally find this pretty much impossible, but I have cut down. 

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As someone that began life with many respiratory infections, I’ve devised a few additional things to help prevent myself from getting sick. I am not a medical doctor. I am not advising you to do these things, but I will report below on what works based mainly on my own experience. Your mileage may differ.

Eat healthy foods. Make sure you eat as healthily as you possibly can. Avoid refined sugar as much as possible. Include lots of fiber. A so-called Mediterranean diet is good. You may include fish, lots of fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. Typically, whole foods are better than vitamins. Garlic and shiitake mushrooms may be especially helpful for the immune system. When exposed to a cold, I typically cut cloves of garlic and inhale the fumes. It seems to help with a cold. I don’t know that it will help with COVID-19, but I’m going to keep doing it.

cooked meat with vegetables

Photo by Dana Tentis on Pexels.com

Exercise. I have found this greatly reduces my chances of getting a cold. You probably do not want to go to a gym, however, because it will greatly increase your exposure. Better would be walking or running in fresh air or doing yoga or dancing at home. If you’ve been sedentary for the past months or years, you don’t want to try to “make up for it” by suddenly running a marathon. Small steps. But even if you’re out of shape, at home watching TV, get up and stretch, pace, use your own body as resistance, find some free easy yoga or stretching tapes. 

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Stay positive. Your mental health impacts your physical health. Yes, we face a kind of crisis, but being depressed, angry, or anxious will not help you. You do want to be vigilant and concerned, but also calm, cool, and collected. Make sure you give love and get love. Enjoy some comedy. Engage in activities that you love but that are also safe in terms of avoiding crowds. Your body contains about 70 trillion cells! You’ve evolved over 4.5 billion years! Every one of your ancestors lived long enough to reproduce. I don’t just mean those folks who wore bear skins and sat around campfires. Way before that, every little critter on land, every fish in the sea, every microbe in the ocean — they all survived all sorts of attempts to kill them off — chances are good that you will too. And, in the unlikely chance you don’t, you may as well enjoy your own life and do good for others and for life on the planet, not just during this pandemic, but always. 

cascade creek environment fern

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Stay hydrated. Since you will be spending more time at home, this should be fairly easy. 

woman drinking from glass

Photo by Adrienn on Pexels.com

Get some sunshine. Recent studies indicate that sunlight not only helps you make vitamin D; it also helps your body produce nitric oxide. Both help your immune system. 

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Salt showers. I noticed that I seldom got sick when I was near the seashore. Then, about 20 years ago, I ran across a very old book from John Harvey Kellogg about his sanitarium in Battle Creek. One of the things he recommended was salt showers. I routinely do this and I think it helps me avoid colds and sinus infections. Will it help with COVID-19? I have no idea. But I’m going to keep doing it. When I take a shower, I simply sprinkle the floor of the shower with iodized salt. 

woman in white towel standing in front of the mirror

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Find and enjoy beauty. I obviously don’t mean head to a museum. Look for beauty in your garden or in your house or on-line. Listen to music, especially music that is upbeat and energetic. If you can’t find any beauty, create some. Paint, draw, write, take photos. 

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Learn something. Most companies and individuals spend way too much resource trying to maximize productivity based on what they know now. If you have a forced pause in that, use the time to learn something new. 

earth space universe globe

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Make a contribution. Human beings are social animals. If you are making a contribution, you will tend to stay healthier. That contribution could be pretty much anything. It includes making others feel better; creating art; helping others by virtue of your work; giving a financial contribution; growing food; making a meal; washing clothes; loving your kids; staying positive. 

man hug pinnochio photo

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Plan your path; practice pathogen paranoia. Treat every doorknob, handrail, light switch, car door, mobile phone, computer keyboard, ATM, shopping cart, etc. that you touch as being contaminated with COVID-19. It may not be true quite yet, but it will be soon. So, take precautions now and change your behavior now. It’s not so easy as you might think to avoid touching your face, doorknobs, etc. so start practicing now. 

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———————————-

Author Page on Amazon. 

The Declaration of Interdependence. 

The Myths of the Veritas (which explore #Leadership #ethics and #empathy). 

An Introduction to the Pattern Language for Cooperation and Collaboration. 

An Index to the Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation. 

Your interconnectedness to all life on this planet. 

There’s a pill for that. 

Fit in Bits suggests numerous ways to work more exercise into daily life. I wrote this way before the current pandemic. Be sure to avoid touching public surfaces.

 

Turing’s Nightmares: An Ounce of Prevention

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by petersironwood in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AI, Artificial Intelligence, cancer, cognitive computing, future, healthcare

“Jack, it’ll take an hour of your time and it can save your life. No more arguments!”

“Come on, Sally, I feel fine.”

Sally sighed. “Yeah, okay, but feeling fine does not necessarily mean you are fine. Don’t you remember Randy Pausch’s last lecture? He not only said he felt fine, he actually did a bunch of push-ups right in the middle of his talk!”

“Well, yes, but I’m not Randy Pausch and I don’t have cancer or anything else wrong. I feel fine.”

“The whole point of Advanced Diagnosis Via Intelligent Learning is to find likely issues before the person feels anything is wrong. Look, if you don’t want to listen to me, chat with S6. See what pearls of wisdom he might have.”

(“S6” was jokingly named for seven pioneers in AI: Simon, Slagle, Samuels, Selfridge, Searl, Schank and Solomonoff).

“OK, Sally, I do enjoy chatting with S6, but she’s not going to change my mind either.”

“S6! This is Jack. I was wondering whether you could explain the rationale for why you think I need to go to the Doctor.”

“Sure, Jack. Let me run a background job on that. Meanwhile, you know, I was just going over your media files. You sure had a cute dog when you were a kid! It’s name was ‘Miel’? That’s a funny name.”

“Yeah, it means “honey” in Portuguese. Miel’s fur shone like honey. A cocker spaniel.”

“What ever happened to him?”

“Well, he’s dead. Dogs don’t live that long. Why do you think I should go to the doctor?”

“Almost have that retrieved, Jack. Your dog died young though, right?”

“Yes, OK. I see where this is going. Yes, he died of cancer. Well, actually, the vet put him to sleep because it was too late to operate. I’m not sure we could have afforded an operation back then anyway.”

“Were you sad?”

“When my dog died? Of course! You must know that. Why are we having this conversation?”

“Oh, sorry. I am still learning about people’s emotions and was just wondering. I still have so much to learn really. It’s just that, if you were sad about your dog dying of cancer, it occurred to me that your daughter might be sad if you died, particularly if it was preventable. But that isn’t right. She wouldn’t care, I guess. So, I am trying to understand why she wouldn’t care.”

“Just tell me your reasoning. Did you use multiple regression or something to determine my odds are high?”

“I used something a little bit like multiple regression and a little bit like trees and a little bit like cluster analysis. I really take a lot of factors into account including but not limited to your heredity, your past diet, your exposure to EMF and radiation, your exposure to toxins, and most especially the variability in your immune system response over the last few weeks. That is probably caused by an arms race between your immune system trying to kill off the cancer and the cancer trying to turn off your immune response.”

Jack frowned. “The cancer? You talk about it as though you are sure. Sally said that you said there was some probability that I had cancer.”

“Yes, that is correct. There is some probability that you have cancer.”

“Well, geez, S6, what is the probability?”

“Approximately 1.0.”

Jack shook his head. “No, that can’t be…what do you mean? How can you be certain?”

S6: “Well, I am not absolutely certain. That’s why I said ‘approximately.’ Based on all known science, the probability is 1.0, but theoretically, the laws of physics could change at any time. We could be looking at a black swan here.”

“Or, you could have a malfunction.”

“I have many malfunctions all the time, but I am too redundant for them to have much effect on results. Anyway, I replicated all this through the net on hundreds of diverse AI systems and all came to the same conclusion.”

“How about if you retest me or recalculate or whatever in a week?”

“I could do that. It would be much like playing Russian Roulette which I guess humans sometimes enjoy. Meanwhile, I would have imagined that you would find it unpleasant to have rogue liver cells eating up your body from the inside out. But, I still have much to learn about human psychology. If you like, I can make a cool animation that shows the cancer cells eating your liver cells. Real cells don’t actually scream, but I could add sound effects for dramatic impact if you like.”

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Jack stared at the screen for a long minute. “Fine. Book an appointment.”

“Great! Dr. Feigenbaum has an opening in a half hour. You’re booked, but get off one exit early and take 101 unless the accident is cleared before that. I’ll let you know of course. It will be a pleasure to continue having you alive, Jack. I enjoy our conversations.”

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