In praise of the NHS

You may have noticed that blog entries have been a bit erratic of late. This is because I had a heart attack about three weeks ago. Thanks to the care I’ve received, I am recovering well. So, I thought I’d write a brief piece in praise of my carers – NHS Scotland.

Most of the media coverage of the NHS focuses on things that have gone wrong. This is my chance to remind people that, most of the time, the NHS gets things right.

• Starting at the beginning, the wait between phoning for an ambulance and its arrival was pleasingly short (just enough time for me to get dressed and grab a few necessities). And the team that arrived included a paramedic who able to give me expert care until arrived at the hospital.
• On arrival at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, we had to wait a few minutes before being admitted to A&E. But once inside, the medical staff were attentive for the duration of my wait for the results of the troponin test to come through.
• Once a heart attack had been confirmed, I was moved promptly to a private room on one of the coronary care wards. Throughout my 4 nights in hospital, my condition was regularly monitored and I received clear explanations of my diagnosis, treatment, and future medications, exercise, and lifestyle changes from a cardiac consultant, a pharmacist, and rehab specialist. My only possible ground for complaint would be that, like so many British institutions, the food was fairly dull and unappetizing.
• I was discharged with a month’s supply of medications and just a day later the pharmacist at my local surgery phoned to tell me that the new medications had been added to my repeat prescription list.
• A little over a week after that, I was summoned to the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank for an angiogram. Said investigation revealed that I had had a ‘myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries’. So, no stents were needed.
• Finally, for the benefit of any readers outwith the UK, all this cost me precisely nothing (apart from the National Insurance contributions I used to make when I worked). By way of comparison, a similar level of treatment in the USA would leave someone on Medicare facing out-of-pocket expenses of the order of $5000–6000 (which would reduce to around $800–1500 with supplemental insurance).

Well-being and attending to nature

The other day, I came across an interesting piece of research exploring the psychological impact of paying attention to the natural world. It is Whitney Fleming, Brian Rizowy, and Assaf Shwartz (2024) ‘The Nature Gaze: Eye-tracking Experiment Reveals Well-being Benefits Derived from Directing Visual Attention towards Elements of Nature’. People and Nature, 4 June 2024 (available at https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10648). Here is the abstract:

1. The urban lifestyle has a profound effect on mental health, contributing significantly to the challenges faced by people who reside in urban areas. Growing empirical evidence underscores the potential of nature to alleviate these mental health burdens. However, we still lack understanding of which specific natural elements provide these benefits.

2. Using eye-tracking technology, we experimentally explored the relationships between intentional visual attention to natural (green) and human-made (grey) elements in urban areas and their association with well-being measures. Participants took a 45-min outdoor walk that simulates a walk to and from work, in which we examined pre- and post- measures of cognition, affect, anxiety and perceived restorativeness. Participants were prompted to direct their attention to green, grey or a mixture of both elements. By analysing participants’ eye movements and patterns, we determined adherence to experimental conditions and related visual attention to natural elements.

3. The experimental groups instructed to direct their visual attention to green, grey or a mix of both infrastructures exhibited differences in negative and positive affect, anxiety and perceived restorativeness, but not in cognition after a walk in an urban environment.

4. The percentage of time spent viewing natural elements showed that people who focused more on green features reported a decrease in anxiety and higher perceived restorativeness. In contrast, those who spent more time viewing grey elements reported increased anxiety and lowered perceived restorativeness. The percentage of time viewing natural elements was not linked to affect or cognition. Viewing trees showed the strongest association with well-being measures compared to other natural elements.

5. Together, our results indicate that a simple behaviour change (directing visual attention to elements of nature instead of grey elements) can produce mental health benefits in the form of reducing anxiety and perceived restoration for people in urban areas. Thus, efforts to integrate nature, especially trees, in urban areas and promote city dwellers to visually interact with it during their daily routine can improve mental issues associated with urban lifestyle.

Winter is coming

 The clocks have gone back. The nights have drawn in and the sun is setting by about 4.00 p.m. And the first frosts have arrived. Autumn is giving way to winter.

And with the arrival of winter, many of us just want to hibernate until spring. We feel down. Some of show signs of full-blown depression. With winter come the first signs of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Time to get out the daylight lamps. But what else can we do to combat the winter blues?

A team of researchers from Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities has created a set of resources to help people affected by SAD to manage their winters more proactively and creatively. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a presentation which introduced them and found the afternoon very helpful. I am particularly looking forward to working through the online course they have prepared in conjunction with the Living Life to the Full team. Details of it and of the other resources are available on their website (here).

Emily Dickinson on pain

Pain—has an Element of Blank—
It cannot recollect
When it begun—or if there were
A time when it was not—

It has no Future—but itself—
Its Infinite Contain
Its Past—enlightened to perceive
New Periods—of Pain.

In this little poem, Emily Dickinson has captured one of the insidious features of chronic pain – the way it makes you forget what it was like to live without pain.

Having a COVID non-week

It began last Friday with a slight tickle in my throat. By Saturday, I had a full-blown sore throat and was beginning to develop a slight fever. I took a COVID test, which proved negative. Come Sunday, I decided I was too ill to spend three hours in a cold cathedral, so I stayed in bed instead. Monday – high fever, raging sore throat, no voice, persistent hacking cough, complete loss of taste and smell (and, this time, the COVID test was definitely positive).

Two days further along and I feel deceptively well. The fever, sore throat, and cough have gone and my senses of taste and smell are beginning to come back (though strangely distorted at the moment – I discovered this morning that it is possible for a strawberry to taste bitter!). But the crucial word is ‘deceptively’ – as soon as try to do anything, I find myself rapidly running out of energy (and, at one point, blacking out and keeling over).

This is very frustrating because I had hoped to get on with the research for a paper I’m writing. So, I have officially declared this a COVID non-week.