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How To Survive Your Police Career: A Practical Guide To Health For The 24/7 Bobby
De Darren Moor, Mark Heffernan et Debbie Wade
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Commencer à lire- Éditeur:
- Troubador Publishing Ltd
- Sortie:
- Mar 9, 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781838598730
- Format:
- Livre
Description
Presenting up-to-date research, he offers practical but humorous advice on avoiding infections large and small, what best to eat on rotating shifts, sleeping after nights, training your body to hopefully avoid but then recover from physical injury, and maintaining good mental health especially after traumatic incidents. There is also guidance on female and ethnic health, relationships, fire, water and social media safety, acid and dog attacks, sexual health, preserving eyesight (those damn computers!) and spotting the early signs of cancers and other life-threatening conditions which Bobbies often don’t pick-up on as a result of being so knackered through never-ending shift-work.
With contributions from police specialists in their field, this is a book which every Bobby should have around the home or in their kitbag to refer to when they have questions about their health.
Informations sur le livre
How To Survive Your Police Career: A Practical Guide To Health For The 24/7 Bobby
De Darren Moor, Mark Heffernan et Debbie Wade
Description
Presenting up-to-date research, he offers practical but humorous advice on avoiding infections large and small, what best to eat on rotating shifts, sleeping after nights, training your body to hopefully avoid but then recover from physical injury, and maintaining good mental health especially after traumatic incidents. There is also guidance on female and ethnic health, relationships, fire, water and social media safety, acid and dog attacks, sexual health, preserving eyesight (those damn computers!) and spotting the early signs of cancers and other life-threatening conditions which Bobbies often don’t pick-up on as a result of being so knackered through never-ending shift-work.
With contributions from police specialists in their field, this is a book which every Bobby should have around the home or in their kitbag to refer to when they have questions about their health.
- Éditeur:
- Troubador Publishing Ltd
- Sortie:
- Mar 9, 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781838598730
- Format:
- Livre
À propos de l'auteur
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How To Survive Your Police Career - Darren Moor
Copyright © 2019 Darren Moor; Mark Hefferman;
Debbie Wade; Wayne Goodwin; Jim Ledger
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 9781838598730
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To my wonderful wife, Amanda, who kept on bringing the tea.
Contents
This being a reference manual means that you can delve in and explore at leisure whatever subject takes your fancy. With that in mind the contents section in this book is more descriptive than most in order to show what subjects we cover. And those subjects are …
So, What Is The Purpose Of This Book And Who Is It Aimed At?
The Medical Disclaimer Bit.
Reducing Danger & Avoiding Infection: Part One
What exactly are infections and how can we avoid them. How our body tries to protect us against infections but hasn’t been designed very well to do so. The differences between viruses and bacteria. Antibiotics and when to bug our doctor for them. The importance of vaccinations. Winter flu and why we should have the winter flu jab. The common cold. Glandular fever. ‘Strep’ and ‘stap’ infections, including MRSA. Sepsis and why little wounds can kill us if we don’t treat them with respect. Meningitis. Norovirus. Food poisoning such as E.coli, salmonella, listeria and shigella and how we get them. Hepatitis and HIV. Oh … and why we as police officers should all raise a toast with parade room tea once a year to the memory of PC Albert Alexander.
Exercise
A long Q&A with Mark, our police physio, about how we can make ourselves more resilient to injury through appropriate exercise. What to do if we do get injured. How some minor injuries can quickly become chronic and all-but untreatable if we don’t attend to them properly. Knees, backs and other bits of the body that traditionally cause problems for Bobbies. How to counteract the damage of sitting at a desk or in a police car for ten hours at a time. How we need to adjust our exercise regimes at different stages in our lives to avoid problems … ditch those sit-ups! Some suggestions as to the ideal exercise regimes for different age groups.
Food & Nutrition
How to tailor what we eat with the demands of our peculiar 24/7 existence. How some foods give us energy and enthusiasm while others knacker us out and bring us down … how some foods can encourage deadly diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure while others deter them. Other, not exactly deadly but never-the-less important, considerations about the food we eat. Free radicals and antioxidants. Super foods and super diets. The Mediterranean diet. Theories around high GI foods, serotonin, and general food combining. The ups and downs of caffeine. The dangers of dehydration. Just what is a sensible diet for the shift-working Bobby and how we should tailor different foods for different shifts. Some advice on nutrition during Ramadan. How to enjoy booze without it affecting our health or getting us sacked or divorced. Perfect poos and ‘orrendous haemorrhoids … with, of course, special consideration given to the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo.
Making Food & Exercise Work Together
How combining what we eat and when we eat it can make a difference to the results of our exercise. Carbo-cycling. How those protein shakes might just be as important as our tight t.shirt wearing members of the team always make them out to be.
Sleep
How a lack of decent sleep is likely to affect the quality and length of our lives. REM and N-REM; the mechanics of sleep and how different sleep benefits us in different ways. Some suggestions for sleeping after Nights, sleeping after Lates and before Earlies. How to stay asleep ... that constant need to wee … why? How to negotiate with our family about getting the sleep we need to make our – and their – lives better. Foods that encourage sleep and others that keep us awake. More about caffeine and how to use it correctly in respect to sleep. What to do when the stress of this job keeps waking us up. The joy of silently singing songs in the dark ….
Mental Health & Wellbeing
Wayne, police inspector and our guru in all matters mental health and trauma, discusses what we can do to keep ourselves well against the odds. A description of common mental health conditions and how they can affect us. Simple things we can do to look after our mental health. Why we react to trauma in the way we do and how we can help ourselves to counter these effects. How to keep good relationships with our partners and children. Acute stress disorder and PTSD. Adjustment disorders. And – yeah – not forgetting the importance of Bob Hoskins in police officer mental health …
Happiness
A brief look at new research into what does actually make us happy – takes ten minutes to read and might just change your life …
Reducing Danger & Avoiding Infection: Part Two
Back to all those bugs again. What to do if we’re spat upon or bitten by some idiot. Needle-stick injuries and how to avoid them. Dangerous dogs and what to do when we’re chomped on by some hound … aaaarrrrrhhhhhhh …!
Skin conditions relating to staphylococcal, impetigo and cellulitis. Head lice and bedbugs. Scabies and ring worm. TB and Ebola. What should we carry around with us to help avoid against infection. Why a knife tube crammed with wet-ones makes such logical sense when you think about it …
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sexually Transmitted Infections But Were Too Afraid To Ask
And, as it turns out, there’s an awful lot to know, starting with some generalisations about STIs that we all ought really to have an understanding of but probably don’t. Pubic lice. Genital herpes … HSV-1 and 2. Syphilis. Gonorrhoea – both super and old school. Pelvic inflammatory disease. Chlamydia. Trichomoniasis. Genital Warts. How to reduce our chances of catching any of these horrors and what to do if we have. A brief description of why we didn’t really want to be catching syphilis during the sixteenth century …
… I Thought I Felt Run Down Because Of The Shifts …
A chapter on cancers and other conditions which can sneak up on us if we don’t look out for them. How we might not notice that we have some serious condition which has fatigue as a sign or symptom because we’re always knackered by shift-work. A description of those conditions – coeliac disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea. lower urinary tract infections, chronic fatigue syndrome, iron deficiency anaemia, vitamin B12 or folate deficiency anaemia and underactive thyroid. A brief guide then to cancers – what exactly is cancer, how it’s caused and how it’s treated. What we can do to lower our risk and what factors heighten that risk. A description of particular cancers relating to the police officer age group – breast cancer in women and men, cervical cancer, testicular cancer, prostate cancer, bowel cancer, skin cancer, leukaemia, ovarian cancer, brain cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, thyroid cancer, lung cancer, ending with a general but never-ending rant about the dangers of smoking.
Specific Issues Relating To Female Health
A chapter about female health issues provided by Debbie, our police medical professional, aimed at the ladies but best read by the fellas as well if they want some chance of understanding their crewmate at three o’clock in the morning. Hormones, PMT, and how to reduce their effects. Endometriosis. A brief guide to ovarian cysts. Polycystic ovary syndrome. Toxic shock syndrome. Cystitis. Pregnancy within the service. The menopause. Why routine health checks are so important. Checking your boobs. The various benefits, including erotic, of regularly exercising your pelvic floor muscles ...
Genetic Health Risk Factors For Different Ethnic Groups Within The Police Family
A title, I would like to think, so long that it hopefully needs no further explanation …
Fire Safety
Jim, one of our friends from Trumpton, explains why the three fire phenomena of flashover, backdraft and fire gas explosion means that you don’t really want to be getting anywhere near that house-fire that members of the public are enthusiastically encouraging you to enter and rescue people from – however brave you might be feeling. He also talks extensively about the risk of fire and explosion at road accidents … oh, and that training which senior fire officers are given in the pointing at things, and then quickly pointing at other things, having just jumped out of their fire engines.
Dangers From Open Water
How open water can kill us as police rescuers. How the danger of cold water immersion works against the instincts of our body and turns us from rescuers to someone else who needs rescuing. Practical things we can do to help people without entering the water. The danger of strong currents, rip-tides … and coconuts …
Eyesight And How To Look After It
What we can do to reduce fatigue from those damn computer screens. The importance of breaks and blinking. Why sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats are more than a fashion statement. The dangers of UVA, UVB and various eye conditions which we don’t want to affect us. Why ‘surfer eye’ is not as glamourous as it might sound. Steps we can take to keep our eyes healthy. How, if we wear contact lenses, we need to be very careful about following the instructions provided by the optician that supplied them. What to do if we get something in our eye … and the slowness of turtles …
The Joys, But Mostly Dangers, Of All Things Social Media
Those damn complaints ... how what we commit ourselves to in social media can not only end our careers but also expose us and our families to danger from terrorists and organised crime groups.
Acid Attacks
Some detailed suggested actions for if the worst happens to us when we’re on your own.
Some Observations From A Life Involved In Crime
General advice and rambling, I suppose, which I can’t find a home for anywhere else but is still useful stuff.
Squaring Off Our Bobby Health
Just a little idea which ties together a lot of the theories we’ve discussed in the book …
And, Finally, Something Cheerful To Finish
Because if anyone needs cheering up these days then it’s probably Bobbies …
So, What Is The Purpose Of This Book And Who Is It Aimed At?
My intention with this book is two-fold, firstly to provide practical-based advice to new officers and staff entering the service on how best to maintain their health and well-being while working within such a chaotic 24/7 environment, but also to offer useful information to long-serving Bobbies which might make their lives easier and subsequent retirements brighter. Let me explain more ...
When I first began researching police health I had just turned forty-seven and completed twenty-three years of service, all of it in uniform and almost all on Earlies, Lates & Nights; it was therefore a good time to assess what damage this lifestyle had caused to my system and maybe formulate some theories on how to make things easier. Frighteningly, I’ve discovered that many of the practices and habits I could have adopted to better safeguard my health should have been started twenty years ago … oh good.
I’ve subdivided the booFk into various subjects as described in the contents section and have set out to provide as much practical information as possible without boring you senseless. Just so we’re clear, I don’t pretend to be a boffin on any of these subjects and I’m certainly not a doctor, but I have spent endless hours reading the research that’s out there for anyone willing to wade through this stuff whilst collating enough information for what’s relevant and useful for our needs as police officers and staff. However, when it became apparent that some of the subject areas were beyond mere research I brought on board some specialists to offer advice – Mark Heffernan, a physiotherapist working within the police service for matters injury and exercise, Wayne Goodwin, a police inspector with particular interest in officer mental health, Debbie Wade, a police-employed medical professional who’s provided the chapter on female health and Jim Ledger, a senior fire officer who has spent many years running training courses in fire and rescue. I’m indebted also for help from Natasha Hunt, whose masters degree in pharmacy proved extremely useful when explaining all matters bugs, infection and otherwise, Roy Scott MBE and Tony Ramskill from March On Stress for their assistance with the mental health chapter, Dan Worthington, fellow police officer, who provided advice in respect to nutrition when exercising, and Simon Kempton, another Bobby, who advised me on the dangers of social media. Hopefully, as is the nature with any self-help book, you will pick out some suggestions and information (well, loads I hope) that can make your life as a police officer or staff easier. As they used to say at Training School, knowledge is power.
As more research becomes available and fresh dangers becoming apparent it is inevitable that we view a reference book like this as a work in progress and in need of periodic updating. With that in mind if you think there are subjects we’ve missed out and would like to suggest for future editions then let us know by contacting the website; what’s of importance to you will undoubtedly be of importance to us – because we are you.
I hope you enjoy the book – and ‘… be careful out there ...’
Darren Moor – June 2018.
Oh, I Knew There Was
Something Else …
The Medical Disclaimer Bit.
Being a long-serving Bobby I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of my working day calculating the risk of being sued for every action I take or fail to take, however marginal that action might be, or wondering whether some actions or inactions of years gone by are going to come back and haunt me. Does that sound familiar? And then I decide to write a book offering advice on health ...
Just to repeat what I said in the introduction, I am, indeed, a Bobby, not a doctor, and are only presenting information here designed to heighten other Bobbies’ general awareness of health issues that can affect us all as opposed to the particular medical circumstances of an individual reader. If you realise after reading some section in the book that you might be affected by the subject described, and so seek advice from your doctor as a result, then that’s brilliant – the book’s done its job. Think of this, then, as a general introduction to many health issues as opposed to a clinical in-depth guide to any particular one of them. Realistically, there’s going to be information I’ve missed out and always fresh research on the information I’ve put in; that’s because if I described everything possibly known on each of the four hundred odd subjects covered in the book it would be enormous and probably need updating every day.
I’m afraid I can’t – and don’t – take responsibility if the information in the book doesn’t satisfy that required for your own particular medical circumstances or if the guidance has changed through fresh research (apologises if this sounds vaguely rant-like, it’s not meant to be – I’m actually a nice chap!). In writing the book I have predominantly used advice and information from the NHS but where this wasn’t sufficient have then gone on to other sources which seem suitably reliable. This information is always going to be pretty generic so please view it as designed to put you in the ball-park of medical advice as opposed to some doctor’s surgery in the middle of that ball-park. It bears repeating, if you feel ill then go and see your doctor because they will always have a better knowledge of any particular medical subject and fresh research than I do – oddly enough. Even more importantly, they will also have a knowledge of you and your medical history, and so can join up those all-important dots. That said, I’m keen to get the advice right so if you read some content that you don’t agree with – or note an obvious gap in the information provided – then let me know via the Contact Us section of the website – I’ll happily make amendments as necessary.
Darren Moor
Reducing Danger & Avoiding Infection:
Part One
Resisting Things That Can Hurt You
Hell, what a voyage of discovery this subject turned out to be. You hear about those first year medical students who become convinced that they have all the symptoms of every new ghastly disease they learn about – well, okay, it wasn’t quite as bad as that but I have certainly developed an appreciation of where I have been going wrong over the years and how lucky – and careless – I’ve been with my own health; how, for example, holding a pen in my mouth which was used earlier by a drug-plugging prisoner to sign for his property might not have been the best idea in retrospect…
I apologise in advance to those ex ‘A’ Level biology students amongst you but we are going to begin this little chapter of loveliness with an unashamed egg-sucking session for everyone on the general causes of infection – rotten I know, but there seems little point in describing techniques of avoiding infections if you aren’t aware of how they develop in the first place. Sorry if some of it appears a little basic, but hang in there; as police officers you’re probably used to, or if new to the service will have to get used to, the job telling you stuff that appears pretty obvious (and, conversely, members of the public always assuming that you know everything about them, their family, their ex-friends and the history of their myriad of problems).
Let’s start by reminding ourselves that we live a life surrounded by naturally occurring but potentially harmful germ organisms – they’re everywhere. They moon around happily in that germ-like way and congregate on all natural things but, if given the choice, would rather seek out new warm, cosy environments to relocate and multiply in – perhaps like inside or on the body of the nearest rozzer. We as individuals only suffer an infection when they actually succeed in embedding themselves somewhere upon our bodies or manage to smuggle themselves inside.
Now, having created germs harmful to us as humans, nature – with some irony and being that horrendous passive-aggressive monster that she clearly is – also equips us to defend ourselves against them with an elaborate array of mechanisms designed either to keep the pesky fellows out of our bodies when they do come nosing around or indeed fight them internally should they make it inside. It could be argued, therefore, that ‘Mother’ Nature is a little odd in the way that she goes about things; she is, apparently, the type of mother who, having two children, might gleefully provide the aggressive idiot of the pair with a large stick while kitting out the calmer, more thoughtful sibling with a protective suit and crash helmet. It also becomes apparent when you look into this stuff that some of the defence mechanisms devised by nature – those protective suits and crash helmets – aren’t quite as good as they might be.
Nature’s first line of defence for us humans is a tough, waterproof skin designed to keep harmful germs from breaking through into our bodies (or, indeed, fluids seeping out of our bodies, which would prove even more of a design fault). Of course, as defence strategies go, this only works if we can keep that tough waterproof skin intact; if a hole occurs, perhaps because we scrap off the top layers of the skin or allow it to be ripped through accident or surgery, then germs have the opportunity to slip inside us via these open wounds and reap their havoc. That’s why we should always cover open cuts and grazes with waterproof dressings until they are suitably healed and not, despite what our nan might have told us as small children, ‘… let the air get to it …’ as actually what we are doing is allowing air–borne germs to invade our body and potentially cause that infection.
In the absence of any raggedy, recently created and unprotected holes in our skin, those cunning germs might instead opt for the less obvious forms of entry into our bodies such as the eyes or ears, or more likely, that blatantly obvious, and almost always open, super highway into our respiratory system – the mouth and nose – and gain entry that way (we will discuss the other ‘holes’ where germs can enter our body later on during the section on sexual health). Luckily again, having at first made us rather vulnerable to germ attack through designing us with a gaping cake-hole and twin-barrelled conk in our face, nature, almost grudgingly (and probably as an afterthought) attempts to compensate by lining our trachea and nasal cavities with tiny hairs and mucus to catch those germs as they come in, while also teaching us a cough or sneeze reaction designed to expel the little blighters before they have a chance to make themselves at home (not wishing to be left out, eyes employ a similar system in the form of tears, while ears create wax and vaginas create acids to protect against harmful bacteria … did you know that?).
Now, I would suggest that at some stage of evolutionary development nature realised that this idea that she had come up with of ‘catching and then blowing out germs’ from the respiratory system wasn’t that good if she was honest, not that efficient, especially if the person’s ability to cough wasn’t up to much, perhaps because they were getting on in years or were weak or injured. I suspect that this realisation led on to some kind of review, perhaps a project group chaired by someone being fast-tracked for promotion, which concluded that the whole ‘blowing out of germs’ thing and barrier systems (acid in the vagina … wax in the ears – what if they got it mixed up?) hadn’t turned out to be as good as first expected. Of course they didn’t want to upset the person who had originally rolled out the project because that character was now high and mighty within the organisation – very influential in terms of other people’s promotions (and not averse to bearing a grudge if their past work was rubbished), so why not instead have a system that instead of replacing the original project … well, supported it … a second line of defence for dealing with those harmful germs that had actually made it inside the body – the ones that has breached the castle walls as it were? Being such a sensible idea, they ran with the plan – in fact they got rather enthusiastic and came up with two parallel systems designed to operate within the body at the same time and we shall look at these systems now.
The first system employs happy, harmless bacteria that wait in the body ready to confront the bad germs as and when they arrive (sound familiar? Probably because you’ve seen those adverts from yogurt companies that flog their wares on the basis that it tops up your ‘good bacteria’ and therefore makes you less susceptible to infection). Under normal circumstances this harmless bacteria system, your resident flora, works in balance with natural yeasts, stomach acids, bile and other heroes within your body and all’s good with the world, BUT we need to be aware that this balance can be disturbed by some outside influence, perhaps your consumption of strong medicines whilst ill and, in particular, and as we shall discover, antibiotics.
The harmless bacteria guys work in conjunction with their sister-protectors, your body’s immune system, which itself is broken down into two separate elements – white blood cells and antibodies. White blood cells (now there’s a name not dreamt up by someone involved in equality and inclusion), save us through eating up or neutralising the effects of the bad germs that invade. Sometimes, this may result in the infected area becoming inflamed and swollen as white blood cells contain and then attack the invading microorganisms, and perhaps causing us to feel feverish or cold, or have aches and pains in the affected muscles as our nerves are aggravated. The immune system also produces antibodies which identify and target particular germs before dealing with them. We are all passed on some forms of passive antibodies from our mothers when we are first born, but others – active ones – are only created by our immune system in response to exposure to particular germs invading our body. This means that, in the same way that a probationer only learns properly how to deal with a pub-fight by being exposed to a pub fight, our body only learns how to deal with some kinds of infections once it has seen them up close and personal … can you see the potential problem here or am I going too fast for the non-ex ‘A’ Level Biology students amongst you? Yep, correct, if your body has never encountered a particularly nasty and invasive germ before then it might not be able to cope with it and, before you can say Black Death in England killed a third of the population between the years 1348 and 1350, your poor, unprotected body might be fit only for the undertaker.
Luckily, after thousands of years of people dropping dead from rampant and pretty common diseases, scientists perfected the process of vaccination as pioneered by Dr.Jenner in 1796, when he took it upon himself to slit open the skin of an eight year old boy from his local village and scrap into the wound some live smallpox(!) to test his theory that infecting the lad with cowpox beforehand would make him immune to this horrendous disease ("… can someone get Out Of Hours Social Services on the phone … we want to discuss a PPO …"). It did … as opposed to tragically killing him, which was handy. Incidentally, the cow from which the cowpox used originated, Blossom – I kid you not – became quite a celebrity in her own right and now has her hide hanging on the wall of St.George’s Medical School in London, while the word vaccine comes from vaca, the Latin for cow … but I digress … in simple terms, when vaccinated, our body is exposed to a small and harmless quantity of a ghastly microorganism, through those jabs or something tasting horrible on a lump of sugar that you used to line up for at school, and then the immune system does the clever thing of using this mild exposure to work out how to deal properly with the unpleasantness should it return, all guns blazing, next time. Thank heavens for that. Now, for the first time in history, we can protect ourselves from common diseases that, until quite recently, ravaged the world and killed squillions of people every year. Of course, this has meant that we are now left instead with out-of-control population growth, vast numbers of people who traditionally would have died now desperately using up the planet’s dwindling resources, but, hey-ho, let’s keep things light and worry about things that we do have some control over. (Incidentally, a curious fact for those of you old enough to remember having your polio vaccination on a lump of sugar; that particular generation vaccine ended up being withdrawn as the ‘weakened’ strain of polio it contained turned out not to be as weak as was intended, so resulting in some people contracting the disease as opposed to becoming immune from it … these scientists don’t always get it right the first time).
What’s The Difference Between A Virus And Bacteria?
I suspect the only reason why anyone other than a medico would want to know this information would be through some vague recollection that one type of infection could be treated by bugging your doctor for antibiotics while the other can’t, so let’s provide a quick explanation.
Bacteria are pretty basic, single-celled and mostly inoffensive little fellas of which only one strain out of a hundred will do you any harm. In fact, some, like the ‘resident flora’ that we spoke of earlier, actually do us good through breaking down the food that we scoff and fighting the bad germs that make it inside our digestion system. Sure, there are some nasty bacterial infections like meningitis or syphilis … cholera … Legionnaires’ Disease … that can spoil your day but most bacteria is harmless.
Viruses, on the other hand, are just horrible little fascists. They’re tiny – even smaller than the weeniest bacteria – and can’t survive or achieve their evil aim of reproducing and spreading mayhem except by invading and then taking over cells, perhaps those within your body, which they then re-educate into other virus-creators in their own image. Some viruses target particularly important parts of your body like the liver or the respiratory system. In the worst case scenario they transform good cells into rampaging monsters that spread cancer and other ghastly conditions all throughout the body. Well, you did ask …
So, where-as, for the most part, bacteria aren’t a bad thing (sorry, did I mention bubonic plague …?), viruses are; in fact they’re pretty horrible as it goes.
Antibiotics – What Are They Good For?
In some cases, antibiotics can help with infections caused by bacteria; they don’t, however, work with those caused by viruses. If you’re anything like me you won’t remember this essential difference unless you have a memory-prompt. Being a boy born in the 1960s who spent much of his school days machine-gunning his mates with imaginary bullets I’ve always relied upon a rather complicated Second World War analogy as my own prompt and it goes something like this; the newly introduced antibiotics that became available during the latter part of the war saved thousands of Allied soldiers who, in previous conflicts, would have died of their wounds as a result of these gaping holes in their body becoming infected by mud and other rubbish whilst lying around on the battlefield – the point being that it was the bacteria from the mud and rubbish entering through the wounds that caused the infection and death of the soldiers as opposed to someone sneezing virus spittle on them … get the idea? I hope so because I’m getting pretty confused with this explanation myself… in fact let’s instead just use the memory prompt supplied by Natasha, my pharmacist friend and general fact checker on all things infection, as it’s considerably easier to remember…
The letter ‘B’ is contained in both Bacteria and
Antibiotic, whilst there’s no ‘B’ in Virus.
All those years of study, huh …
Antibiotics – The Ticking Time Bomb.
Having grown up in a world where these wonder drugs have always been around to deal with our infection problems, it is rather disconcerting to realise in recent years that bacteria has decided that it’s not going to be pushed around so much by those hard-assed antibiotics.
Rather in the same way that your body learns how to create antibodies when exposed to a dangerous microbe, bacteria seems to be learning how to overcome antibiotics because they are exposed to so many of them. To a certain extent we, as a society, have brought this upon ourselves through the over-prescription of antibiotics for quite minor complaints that would have cleared up anyway. There’s also the problem of antibiotics wrongly being prescribed – we catch some rotten virus and go to our doctor where we moan and groan about it; they, during the brief five minute appointment allotted to us, haven’t really got the time to investigate the precise underlining cause of the problem and so pacify us by prescribing antibiotics that are never going to improve our symptoms – but will throw yet more antibiotics into circulation for bacteria to experiment with and learn how to overcome, the net result being that bacteria becomes stronger and cleverer, we become weaker. A further problem is that we are correctly prescribed antibiotics for a bacterial infection but then, feeling better halfway through the course of meds, don’t bother finishing them. In this case the bacteria isn’t quite killed off, just rather resentful about being knocked around a bit and a little more experienced when fighting that particular antibiotic next time … damn you nature and your skill at evolving …
As mentioned above there are also good individual, as opposed to society-wide, reasons why we shouldn’t take antibiotics unless we really have to. Antibiotics can cause problems with our natural resident flora – our good bacteria – thereby reducing that good bacteria’s ability, along with our naturally occurring yeasts, to deal with digesting food and its other functions. The killing-off of our good bacteria in this way leaves us unprotected from the rotten bacteria which, in turn, makes us feel even worse than we did before. That’s probably why I always get the raving poos three or four days into a course of antibiotics.
Quite how this general bacteria – antibiotics confrontation is going to develop in years to come should be very interesting to watch – in a frightening kind of way. News reports in 2016 were full of concerns about antibiotic-resistant infections becoming more prevalent, resulting in hospitals sometimes experimenting with older generation antibiotics in the hope that bacteria had somehow forgotten how to deal with them. I suspect that we are going to hear a lot more about this issue in years to come.
Anyway, having concluded the basis of infection, let’s now highlight some particular causes for concern and decide what we can do to protect ourselves.
Have I Been Properly Vaccinated Against Reasonable Risks?
Knowing what we now know, or probably already knew before but mostly forgotten, it’s got to make sense that the first thing we do in orchestrating our anti-infection plan is to confirm that our normal NHS vaccinations have been administered and are up to date. This may or may not be easy depending on the relevant helpfulness of your local surgery. When it comes to vaccinations my own surgery can never seem to make up its mind whether I should be speaking to a GP or a Practice Nurse, depending on whether the position of Practice Nurse actually exists at that time, which in turn depends on their current financial state. I would suggest, therefore, that the easiest way to make this enquiry is to email the surgery addressed directly to your designated doctor simply asking them to consider in slow time whether your normal vaccinations and boosters are up to date, but also whether they suggest you need any additional vaccinations on the basis of your employment as a police officer and therefore exposure to rum-like characters in society. Professionals tend to respond more efficiently to written correspondence which is handy as it also saves messing around on the phone. I have even drafted the email on your behalf and you can cut and paste it from the website:
‘I would be grateful if you could check my medical records and assess whether my programme of vaccinations and boosters are currently up to date. I should inform you also that I work as an operational police officer and are regularly present at incidents where blood has been spilt, often from people with uncertain hygiene or medical history. I also have frequent contact with people recently arrived in the UK from all parts of the world. Please consider whether I require any further vaccinations as a result of this operational role. Love and kisses …’
Give it a go – see how helpful your surgery is!
I could at this point list the vaccination programme for different age groups as suggested by the NHS but won’t as it could well change by the time you come to read this book. You can check it yourself using one of the various NHS Choices websites or the Gov.UK ‘Green Book’ – a regularly updated guide on vaccines and vaccination procedures within the UK.
A Brief Aside; The Dangers Of Infection Whilst
Travelling in Exotic Lands.
The general discussion above on the causes of infection is tailored for our rather benign UK climate where, fortunately, we don’t have to worry too much about blood-sucking mosquitoes or small, heat-loving mites laying eggs in our private parts after a swim in that marvellous looking lagoon that we come across on holiday but none of locals go anywhere near. However, if you haven’t got kids and so wish to rub it in to those who do by taking expensive holidays in exotic locations then you may wish also to discuss with your doctor or local pharmacist additional jabs for foreign travel to that particular location (Natasha, my friendly pharmacist, also points out that many of her high street colleagues offer private travel clinics with advice and vaccinations tailored to your holiday needs). You can also conduct your own research using The Centre For Disease Control’s (older readers might remember Dustin Hoffman in the film Outbreak) famed ‘Yellow Book’ or The National Travel Health Network & Centre (NaTHNaC) website, both of which provide up to date health information for the adventurous traveller. Each have their own homepages and app.
Travel vaccinations are available for, amongst others:
•Diphtheria
•Rabies
•Hepatitis A & B
•Japanese encephalitis
•Meningococcal meningitis
•Combined measles, mumps and rubella – the MMR jab
•Typhoid
•Polio
•Cholera
•Tetanus
•Tick-borne encephalitis
•Tuberculosis
•Yellow fever.
… but you will probably have to pay for them. Oh well, you’ve got the money; let’s face it, a decent vaccination providing you with years of protection against something ghastly probably costs the same as a toddler’s pair of shoes which they’ll grow out of within a couple of weeks (and school trips … have any of you exotic holiday-taking non-parents got any idea how much the most basic of school trips – that visit to the zoo that the sprogs don’t even want to go on – costs? Grief, why do you think I need a second career writing this stuff). You may also be recommended a course of anti-malaria medication if your destination is deemed a high-risk area as currently there is no actual vaccination for malaria.
Be aware also that some countries won’t allow you entry unless you can prove, by production of an International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) that you have been vaccinated against particular diseases. For example, if travelling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages you will need to demonstrate that you are protected against certain strains of meningitis, while other countries won’t let you in if they see you have travelled from somewhere
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