The faces of Cononialism.

email from JKS Weerasekera.

Cut Alzheimer's risk by walking

It only takes 20 minutes, 3 times a week, say Cambridge scientists

Scientists found a third of all cases of Alzheimer's are down to lifestyle factors such as smoking and high blood pressure, but lack of exercise had the biggest impact.

Read the full story:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690880/Cut-Alzheimer-s-risk-walking-It-takes-20-minutes-3-times-week-say-Cambridge-scientists.html

14 July 2014

Polonnaruwa Hospital, Sri Lanka.

Polonnaruwa has developed and so has the orthopaedic sector

The following is the fresh report  by me made in 2013. 
The picture shows orthopaedic surgeons, nurses and all staff in the brand
new conference hall of Polonnaruwa Hosptial


The Sri Lanka Orthopaedic Assossiation on the 18th of May 2013 conducted a
workshop 
 at the newly built two storeyed hospital building within  a   large  100 ft
x 100 ft auditorium.

Our workshop was  intentioned to upgrade  orth. work. 

 150 nurses attended  showing  sustained interest in the lectures and
plaster casting hands-on work over 6 hours!


In  recent years a permanently stationed  orthopaedic surgeon functions with
five assistant doctors. 
 In comparison, in 1984 as I came to the mighty General Hospital Colombo I
had just one  House Officer. 

The  surgeon has enough and more operating time and theatre facilities using
the Image Intensifier for guided surgery. 
Soon they will  have one more  orth. Surgeon ( yet  training in Colombo.)

Showing  similar expansion elsewhere in the country, Sri Lanka now has over
40 govt.orth. Surgeons  across  all areas in the country-up from a bleak 10
only 15 years ago.

The health budget is raised this year to Rs 120 billion, possibly at 3% of
the GNP- I am guessing. It was 2% or less in the previous years.

Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena himself is an efficient low profile
organizer who has  received rare official recognition abroad.
  According to locals even his opponents are well disposed towards him.

Looking back 10 years, Polonnaruwa  is a far cry from what it was on my
visit then to the hospital. With many  war injured around there soon after
that  Ceasefire.   

As an aside on other Polonnaruwa developments, the all island winner Miss
Sri Lanka was from Polonnaruwa and I was there fitting artificial limbs the
day she was felicitated at an all night musical show.

The main roads are superb with a busy bus service to all parts of the
country even in the nights.

A vexed issue is the occurrence of far too many with chronic renal disease
(CKD) , affecting mostly farmers over 40 yrs. Mostly males. 
The  physician who has been working there  4 years  said that this incidence
and pattern of renal disease did not prevail in Chilaw where he worked for 3
years, nor Kandy.

The cause is of CKD is obscure yet, bio-concentration of pesticides in plant
produce being a possible cause among many. 
Misuse of agrochemicals may come high up as a factor. 

Mercury and Cadmium are less likely   than highlighted in the daily media. 
Drinka many a  pinta water can do good, do no harm and also reduce  problems
like renal ones.

Of course, travelling comfortably in a tourist bus, we visited the new ECHO
Park wild life sanctuary hair on end seeing  30 roaming elephants,
And the Minneriya Park with  so many birds this time of year,
 
Finally we  happily plopped  at  a rocky jungle  waterfall for a last  bath
followed by string hopper lunch,  3 Km off the beaten  track.
A good time! 
Susiri W

Doctors committing suicide.

Interesting article for your reading... 

Best

Dujeepa

When doctors commit suicide, it’s often hushed up. Washington Post article 

An obstetrician is found dead in his bathtub; gunshot wound to the head. An anesthesiologist dies of an overdose in a hospital closet. A family doctor is hit by a train. An internist at a medical conference jumps from his hotel balcony to his death. All true stories.

What are patients to do?

When they call for appointments, patients are told they can’t see their doctor. Ever. The standard line: “We are sorry, but your doctor died suddenly.”

In most towns, news spreads fast no matter how veiled the euphemisms.

About 400 doctors commit suicide each year, according to studies, though researchers have suggested that is probably an underestimation. Given that a typical doctor has about 2,300 patients, under

hi

s or her care, that means more than a million Americans will lose a physician to suicide this year.

So what’s the proper response if your doctor died by suicide? Would you deliver flowers to the clinic? Send a card to surviving family? What’s the proper etiquette for dealing with this issue?

Physician suicide is rarely mentioned — even at the memorial service. We cry and go home, and the suicides continue.

I’ve been a doctor for 20 years. At 46, I’ve never lost a patient to suicide. But I’ve lost friends, colleagues, lovers — all male physicians. Four hundred physicians per year are lost to suicide, according to a Medscape report,which pointed out that “perhaps in part because of their greater knowledge of and better access to lethal means, physicians have a far higher suicide completion rate than the general public.”

What can we do? To start, let’s break the taboos that have kept this topic hidden.

Physician suicide is a triple taboo. Americans fear death. And suicide. Your doctor’s committing suicide? Even worse. The people trained to help us are dying by their own hands. Unfortunately, nobody is accurately tracking data or really analyzing why doctors may be depressed enough to kill themselves.

I’m a family physician born into a family of physicians. I was practically raised in a morgue, peeking in on autopsies alongside Dad, a hospital pathologist. I don’t fear death, and I’m comfortable discussing the issue of suicide. In fact, I spent six weeks as a suicidal physician myself. Like many doctors, at one point I felt trapped in an assembly-line clinic, forced to rush through 45 patients a day, which led to my own despair and suicidal thoughts. Then I opened my own clinic, designed by my patients. I’ve never been happier.

Despite my own trouble, I was clueless about the issue of physician suicides until one beautiful fall day in Eugene, Ore., when a local pediatrician shot himself in the head. He was our town’s third physician suicide in just under a year and a half. At his memorial, people kept asking why. Then it hit me: Two men I dated in med school are dead. Both died by “accidental overdose.” Doctors don’t accidentally overdose. We dose drugs for a living.

Why are so many healers harming themselves?

During a recent conference, I asked a roomful of physicians two questions: “How many doctors have lost a colleague to suicide?” All hands shot up. “How many have considered suicide?” Except for one woman, all hands remained up, including mine. We take an oath to preserve life at all costs while sometimes secretly plotting our own deaths. Why?

In a TEDx talk I gave to help break the silence on physician suicide, I pointed out why so many doctors and medical students are burning out: We see far too much pain; to ask for help is considered a weakness; to visit a psychiatrist can be professional suicide, meaning that we risk loss of license and hospital privileges, not to mention wariness from patients if our emotional distress becomes known.

Internist Daniela Drake recently addressed this topic in her article-gone-viral “How being a doctor became the most miserable profession.” She identified underfunded government mandates, bullying by employers and the endless insurance hoops we have to jump through as a few of the reasons. “Simply put, being a [primary-care] doctor has become a miserable and humiliating undertaking,” she wrote. “It’s hard for anyone outside the profession to understand just how rotten the job has become.”

In a rebuttal article, “Sorry, being a doctor is still a great gig,” pediatrician Aaron Carroll disputed the misery claim: Doctors are well respected, well remunerated, he writes, and they complain far more than they should. He predicts people will soon ignore doctors’ “cries of wolf.” But to cry wolf is to complain about something when nothing is wrong. Yet studies have found that doctors suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and thehighest suicide rate of any profession.

So what should we do?

Etiquette rule No. 1: Never ignore doctors’ cries for help.

Bob Dohery, a senior vice president of the American College of Physicians,downplayed physician misery in a blog post on the ACP Web site this spring. His suggestion was classic: When doctors complain, quickly shift conversations from misery to money: their astronomical salaries. But when a doctor is distressed, how is an income graph by specialty helpful?

I run an informal physician suicide hotline. Never once have I reminded doctors of their salary potential while they’re crying. Think doctors are crybabies? Read some of their stories before dismissing doctors as well-paid whiners.

Physician suicide etiquette rule No. 2: Avoid blaming and shaming.

After losing so many colleagues in my town, I sought professional advice from Candice Barr, the chief executive of our county’s medical society. Here is her take:

“The usual response is to create a committee, research the issue, gather best practices, decide to have a conference, wordsmith the title of the conference, spend a lot of money on a site, food, honorariums, fly in experts, and have ‘a conference.’ When nobody registers for the conference, beg, cajole and even mandate that they attend. Some people attend and hear statistics about how pervasive the ‘problem’ is and how physicians need to have more balance in their lives and take better care of themselves. Everybody calls it good, goes home, and the suicides continue. Or, the people who say they care about physicians do something else.”

So what works?

Our Lane County Medical Society established a physician wellness programwith free 24/7 access to psychologists skilled in physician mental health. Since April 2012, physicians have been able to access services without fear of breach of privacy, loss of privileges or notification of licensing and credentialing bureaus. With 131 physician calls and no suicides in nearly two years, Barr says, the “program is working.” Even doctors from outside the town are coming for support.

It’s important to “do something meaningful, anything, keep people talking about it,” Barr says. “The worst thing to do is nothing and go on to the next patient.”

What’s most important is for depressed doctors and those thinking about suicide to know they are not alone. Doctors need permission to cry, to open up, to be emotional. There is a way out of the pain. And it’s not death.

Which brings me to physician suicide etiquette rule No. 3: Compassion and empathy work wonders. More than once, a doctor has disclosed that a kind gesture by a patient has made life worth living again. So give your doctor a card, a flower, a hug. The life you save may one day save you.

Wible is an author and board-certified family physician in Eugene, Ore.

Jayamangala Gatha being sung at a wedding in Avissawellla, Sri Lanka.

Please click on the web-link below:-

http://youtu.be/Qbf5XOk4rS4

Mohamed Ali in the 1970s?.

email from Gallege De Silva.

This is well worth listening to.

Do listen!!

On his first trip to London he told news reporters 

“ You have a Queen here what you need now is a King”

An amusing interview with handsome Mohammed Ali in his glorious days.

This is not long, it’s interesting.

Enjoy!

An interesting and, sometimes, amusing interview with Muhammad Ali.

Click on the web-link below:-

Lost Footage: Muhammad Ali Keepin' it 100!!

J C Bose and the radio.

This is from Wikepedia  on the work of  J.C.Bose[edit] in relation to  using radio waves. .

Jksw

“In November 1894, the Indian physicist, Jagadish Chandra Bose, demonstrated publicly the use of radio waves in Calcutta, but he was not interested in patenting his work.^[85] 

Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using electromagnetic waves,^[86] confirming that communication signals can be sent without using wires. He sent and received radio waves over distance but did not commercially exploit this achievement.

Bose demonstrated the ability of the electric rays to travel from the lecture room, and through an intervening room and passage, to a third room 75 feet (23 m) distant from the radiator, thus passing through three solid walls on the way, as well as the body of the chairman (who happened to be the Lieutenant-Governor).

The receiver at this distance still had energy enough to make a contact which set a bell ringing, discharged a pistol, and exploded a miniature mine. To get this result from his small radiator, Bose set up an apparatus which curiously anticipated the lofty 'antennae' of modern wireless telegraphy— a circular metal plate at the top of a pole, 20 feet (6.1 m) high, being put in connection with the radiator and a similar one with the receiving apparatus.^[87]

The form of 'Coherer' devised by Professor Bose, and described by him at the end of his paper 'On a new Electro Polariscope' allowed for the sensibility and range to appear to leave little to be desired at the time.^[87] In 1896, the Daily Chronicle of England reported on his UHF experiments: "The inventor (J.C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel."

After Bose's Friday Evening Discourses at the Royal Institution, The Electric Engineer expressed 'surprise that no secret was at any time made as to its construction, so that it has been open to all the world to adopt it for practical and possibly money-making purposes.' Bose was sometimes, and not unnaturally, criticised as unpractical for making no profit from his inventions.^[87]

In 1899, Bose announced the development of an "iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector" in a paper presented at the Royal Society, London.^[88] Later he received U.S. Patent 755,840, "Detector for electrical disturbances" (1904), for a specific electromagnetic receiver. Bose would continue research and made other contributions to the development of radio.^[89]