A healthy Aras

With miracle eczema cures, days of wellness, possible vaccine avoidance and lotus positions, Maurice Gueret will only stop blaspheming when the election’s over

Socialist kneecap

Whose bright idea was it to tag a reality-TV presidential election onto the important amendment to remove blasphemy from our Constitution? I’ll be mighty glad when it’s all over next weekend and the dames and dragons return to their lairs. There was precious little of medical interest in the 2011 election, save for Miggledy’s socialist kneecap, which was hurriedly renovated in a private Galway hospital shortly after his election. Not so in 2018. Hardly a day has gone by without a verifiable miracle of medicine. First we had the great teenage eczema cure, mediated through the holy walls of Knock shrine. Then there was the candidate who did, or maybe didn’t, write a letter to the local school about the HPV cervical cancer vaccine. It seems to be an imperative for modern election candidates to have an ailment or a hardship of some sort to talk about. Those without have to show off their golf swings instead.

Yogi man

With so much illness and woe around, the suggestions of an Annual Day of Wellness almost seem like a good idea. It might pay for itself if protein-shake makers and weight-loss gurus all took stalls once a year up at the Aras. The candidates kept snappers happy, too. Though there was strong criticism by the Twitterati of a hospice hosting a photo opportunity. I loved the video of all the baby buggies under the busts of former Presidents, and the breast-feeding mummies hanging out with Sabina at the Aras. Miggledy seems to have that special bond with the hockey-mom generation, and it should easily see him over the line. I’m not sure Ireland is ready for would-be presidents touring the country in big battle buses, talking about entrepreneurship and child obesity. I prefer the image of a gently ageing President, just home from the latest blockbuster in the cinema. He is in the sitting room, togged out in string vest and stripy shorts. The yoga teacher — instructor Michael Ryan, pictured right, has been teaching Michael D — has arrived, and tonight they are practising their tree poses together. The President’s wife snoozes by the fire with a book of poetry. And the dogs are circling, wondering whether those are real trees or not.

Water, water

There was bad news for the cranberry harvest this year when, before the summer, guidance was issued to doctors, suggesting there was little evidence that the berry’s juice benefits lower-urinarytract infections. Decades of well-meaning advice to cystitis patients went down the tube. The other staple advice to these patients has been to drink plenty of water. New research from Bulgaria was published this month. It says that extra fluid works very nicely if you suffer recurrent infections in the waterworks. Pre-menopausal women who drink three litres of water a day seem to get only half the number of infections that women who take in less than one-and-half litres do. Half the ladies in the trial were given three 500ml bottles of Evian water during each day of the study. I’m sure your tap of Irish Water supply or private well would do just as good a job.

14 Allergens

The tragic case of a 15-year-old girl who died on an airplane trip to France was in the London Coroner’s Court recently. She had a known sesame-seed allergy. A vegetarian baguette she had purchased in Heathrow airport had the seeds baked into it, but the allergen was not listed on the contents. The case raised many issues. The junior doctor who attended her on the flight was not made aware that there was a defibrillator on board. Her father tried to save her life by jabbing two EpiPens into her legs, but the inquest heard that the needle size may have been too small. Her EpiPen needles were just 16 millimetres long. Twenty-five millimetres would have been a better size needle for resuscitating her from the anaphylactic reaction. The biggest question, however, is for those who make and sell convenience food. A campaign is under way to have 14 known allergens always directly listed on foodstuffs if they are present. The list includes celery, cereals with gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, nuts, peanuts, sesame, soya beans and sulphur dioxide/ sulphites. In the UK, a grey area exists in regulations if freshly made food is not pre-packaged. Commenting on the case, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland said many food businesses here are still not compliant, and continue to break the law by not providing written, accurate allergen information for their customers. Be careful out there with all of your takeaway foods.