Collective Forgetfulness

The common cold is a horrific, terrible disease, forcing perfectly respectable people to lose their dignity into a pile of snotty tissues, sipping gingerly on a lemsip and wincing every time they have to swallow. For days at a time they become incapable of doing anything at all. Conversations become blocked by coughing fits and people failing to understand that there are certain words that are impossible to say with a blocked nose. Every hour brings a new symptom, whether it's a headache, blocked sinuses, a tickly cough: I can think of about another ten but I'm not here to write a list. Let's face it, we have all been in situations where we'd be much better off being back in bed, because there is nothing to be gained from being outside it.

But we all feel obliged to pretend that there is nothing wrong. Why?

Because we have all forgotten. I have a cold right now. And yet I, too, am already forgetting how nasty colds are, and I will once again laugh in the faces of people who claim to have "man-flu"

Three or four days into your average cold, it has whittled itself down to one or two symptoms that are a slight inconvenience and no more. Enough to carry tissues with you everywhere, or to have a bottle of cough medicine by your side, but no more. When you think of a cold, this is probably the stage you remember, because this is the stage that lasts weeks or months. It gets incredibly frustrating, but you can look back on your cold with a rosy glow that you could almost call nostalgia. Colds drag on and on with virtually nothing to mark it out from normal life, except a gentle reminder in the form of a sneeze every now and again, and that's no trouble at all!

But you have forgotten those first few painful days. DO NOT FORGET. There are so many victims out there, who are waiting for someone to tell them that they understand. Because the rest of the people in the world have forgotten already, and remember the good times that follow. Feel pity on those poor victims, who are pressurised into leaving their beds by a society that only remembers the second half of the common cold. Stand up for them by remembering.

Moods again

A few people spoke to me about how bad my mood was in this post and to be quite honest, they had a right to be worried because I was worried myself.

Being in a bad mood for a long period makes you feel helpless. Being in such a bad mood that you can't enjoy anything and are crying several times in a day is scary. It's a complete loss of control. Perhaps it's my academic, thoughtful nature, but I am not used to being out of control of my emotions to such a large extent. I understand myself fairly well and if I'm in a bad mood I can say that I won't be in it forever and have a pretty good guess at what has upset me and what will cheer me up.

I'm scared of mental illness, perhaps more than physical disability, because it would knock my confidence entirely, exactly at the moment when I would need a bit of self-confidence to get me back on my feet. The idea that I could not reason properly is scary, and a change in personality is even scarier. A person whose personality changes may as well be a different person, and will certainly be treated as such. What I value in life is happiness, and mental health is a direct path to happiness, whereas physical health can only be an indirect path. After all, there are plenty of ill people who are happy, and healthy people who are unhappy.

After my little episode I feel like I am recovering. 2010 has been a reasonably good year for the first few weeks, but as you can guess, I have lost a bit of confidence and am not ready to put myself in difficult situations until I become more confident again. I'm happy but always looking around for signs that another metaphorical earthquake could hit and I could be unhappy again as I was before. I think I'm on the way out now and I'm feeling pretty good. Thanks for all y'all who got in contact and let me talk at you about my problems. It helped

Under-fire tea still perfect

Tragedy has struck. Until recently, tea was seen as being perfect in most ways, having flavonoids (that have antioxidant properties), being calming and reducing blood pressure, and also aiding slimming if that's what you want, preventing tooth decay, and many other things.

However, tea has been under fire in the news recently. The first one is that tea prices have been 'surging', as reported by the BBC. Apparently tea on the world market has almost doubled in price because of fears that demand is ahead of supply by 70,000 tonnes per year and because tea producers such as India, Sri Lanka and Kenya (the second, third and fourth biggest tea producers) are having droughts which threaten reducing production even further.

But hang on a minute, the deficit is only 1.9%. If someone told me that I'd have to forgo one cup of tea in fifty because we were running out, I wouldn't be that upset. In fact, I'd feel better if we spent a little more on tea because with prices rising, the producers and pickers might earn a little more. I'm not an expert in economics, so you might shoot me down on that one, but in any case, it's hardly a tragedy or "The new oil" as the BBC are intent on suggesting.

The second news item to attack tea was also featured in the BBC, as well as the Daily Mirror and the Los Angeles Times. A study was done on people in the northern Iranian province of Golestan, where people are apparently known for drinking hot tea. A strong link was found between increased levels of oesophageal cancer and those who drank their tea at hot temperatures. This is obviously horrific and terrible. However, just because the study was done on tea-drinkers, it doesn't mean it only applies to tea. The study was done on tea-drinkers because so many people near the university in Iran drink tea, no other reason. The authors themselves pointed out that there has been suggestion in other studies that all hot drinks could cause cancer, citing articles linking between hot alcoholic beverages and oesophageal cancer, and describing damage done by hot drinks in general.

In any case, it only really becomes a problem is at very high temperatures (65 degrees minumum) whereas the english tend to have milk and therefore drink it colder (apparently).

What this article says is

"be careful not to scald yourself on hot drinks"

Because you could scald your throat, not just your mouth. Scientifically it's more than that, and I don't want to demean the work of the scientists, because it is an interesting study and talks about long term risks, not just short term ones. However, in terms of advice to the public, it shouldn't change much. Don't burn yourself, it's not complicated, and it doesn't mean that tea is terrible because it burns you when it's hot. So do not fear.

It was a great journal article too, because of some splendid phrases that you could only find in a scientific journal. They are totally awesome dude...

"all patients underwent oesophagogastroduodenoscopy"

"Our study found that almost everyone in Golestan Province
drinks tea."

At last

Since the HMV e-mail telling me that my CD, Best of the Cardigans, is on the way, I have been sick for 3 days out of 7. Maybe there's a link, maybe there isn't, who can say? But it arrived a few minutes ago, and it has certainly cheered me up! Being sick is very stressful as well as being boring. I'm only half-way through listening through CD 1, but it's pretty good! Yay