Load of pollocks
Fish fingers and fishy claims tend to dominate the healthcare agenda this summer, as looks at parking for parents with sick children
Paris Drifters
Not one to miss a healthcare trend, I kept my beady eyes on pharmacy shop windows in Paris this summer. Well, those that weren’t smashed during the World Cup riots, anyhow. It would appear that plankton is all the rage in the battle to part looks-obsessed French ladies from their banknotes. Now when I was a pupil in biology class, plankton were small water drifters that wandered the world’s oceans, rivers and ponds. Their only life purpose was to act as food for larger marine creatures. The cosmetic industries beloved of France have now decreed that ladies of a certain age should be smearing extracts from these fishy beings on their faces. Planktonology has arrived. It brings with it the promise that extracts of seaweed, marine skeletons and jellyfish will leave you looking as vibrant, healthy and wrinkle-free as the next mermaid. I’m inclined to say, “Pull the other one”. But it’s covered in scales and has a large fishy tail at the end of it.
Fish fingers
I went scouting in our local German discounter for some cod fish fingers recently, but arrived home with a blue box of omega fish fingers instead. The name did puzzle me. I have fished streams, seas and lakes in my time, but have never caught a fish called omega. But we hear so much blurb these days about omega fish oils that the term has become almost synonymous with fishy goodness. So for the purpose of this column, I extracted my purchase from the freezer to see precisely what I had bought. A load of pollocks, according to the small print — 15 boneless Alaska pollock fish fingers, coated in breadcrumbs and paprika, which were caught by trawlers in the Pacific Ocean. The production was done in Germany. Maybe we should be crumbing our own fingers with omega fish caught closer to home.
Heartless
Speaking of omega oil, there was a big study published by trusted Cochrane Library researchers this summer that casts grave doubt on claims that omega-3 supplements do anything much for your heart. Omega-3 is a type of fat, and you’ll find these fatty acids naturally in nuts, seeds and fish. Lazier vitality seekers purchase billions of over-thecounter omega-3 supplements each year. Cochrane researchers found that those who consciously consume more long-chain omega-3 fats have more or less the same cardiac risk profile as those who don’t. Reductions in cardiovascular events were so small, that 1,000 people would have to increase consumption for just one of them to benefit. The researchers concluded that oily fish is a healthy food, but it’s not the omega-3 stuff that protects hearts.
Fat-Bottomed Men
Nude fundraising for cancer may be going a bit too far. I’m all in favour of ladies going for mass skinny dips in the cool Irish sea when breast cancer charities are beneficiaries. But men need to be more careful when it comes to their prostate glands. On the Isle of Man this summer, two near-naked male cyclists were knocked off the road in a hit-and-run incident with a four-by-four Range Rover. The car was overtaking a peloton of peddlers in skin-coloured Lycra who were raising awareness for prostate cancer. It clipped one cyclist and skittled over another. Happily, the red-faced men were released from hospital. Near Naked charity fund raisers say that their skin-tone cycling suits with green G-strings aim to reduce the embarrassment of cancer. They may have another effect entirely on car drivers.
Free Parking
There has been an interesting new development at Crumlin Hospital this summer. Local residents have been asked if they could donate spare parking facilities to families who are bringing sick children to the hospital. It’s a pilot scheme, and if it works well, could be replicated in other healthcare facilities that were built with inadequate planning for the future. As it stands, local people in Crumlin often offer their driveways to harried parents in search of a parking space. To be fair, Our Lady’s in Crumlin opened on a small 12-acre site in 1956 when most families didn’t own a car. The Crumlin plan will be short term, with the hospital due to move to Rialto in 2022. The new children’s hospital at St James’s should have 1,000 new spaces, with two-thirds of these reserved for families. They will be able to pre-book a space just as you can in airports, and parents have also requested a facility to pull up with children outside the emergency department in urgent cases. Dr Maurice Gueret is editor of the ‘Irish Medical Directory’
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