Health

My son has this idea!

The ideas is that packaging for products should not just have the usual standardised set of nutritional contents, but a QR code* including them directly in an off-line machine readable format.

The concept is that third party apps or standard health apps in a phone can work with these for dieting and general health data. I am sure Slimming World, or Fat Fighters, would love this to include in their apps, for example.

The basic idea is a standard for the product name, the package size (g), the serving size (g), and nutritional information (per 100g) to be included in a simple format that can be easily scanned directly, probably a VCARD style to keep it compact.

Quote from my son... "Getting what you want from subway on MyFitnessPal is a fucking nightmare"... "because cheese"... So Subway receipts that know what you asked for could include the QR code!

But obviously the QR code could ideally include a set of standard allergens as well, or should I say ALLERGENS to fit with current labelling style. Even so, the app could know which you have an issue with and flag it up in nice red flashing text and a klaxon sound when scanned.

Now, if this was a QR code with a link that served a MIME type then it would make sense as a RFC under IETF, but it probably is far better for this to work off-line as well, and actually contain the data. To me that sounds like a European Standards thing or an International Standards thing.

I think we'd be happy to work on the formal definition, after all the list of allergens and standard nutritional information categories already exist - they just need encoding in some simple and well defined format.

The question is, how do we do this? What agency do we poke and how do we progress it?

* I say QR code, i.e. IEC18004 as that seems to have won the battle of 2D codes over IEC16022, which is a shame, but that is not really important here. Let's go for a QR code.

Update:

Someone suggested we propose a specification, so here is a start (here).

Pain killers

I have been quite lucky in my life in that I have not needed pain killers in general. The main reason I have ever had to take such is if I had a headache. There are many possible reasons for a headache (including the occasional hangover) and paracetamol has always been an effective way to tackle a headache, and/or reduce my temperature if I have some infection.

Of course there have been occasions where I have injured myself by way of a cut or a bruise but the pain is not usually a big issue, and I don't really recall having ever taken pain killers for such cases in general.

However, over the last few weeks, things have been somewhat different. I have never had a broken bone before. However, with this cough/cold "virus from hell" that has lasted a couple of months (and is finally diminishing) I did manage to cough hard enough to "do in" my ribs, somehow. I cannot really tell if I just "pulled a muscle" or actually cracked a rib, and I don't have much of a reference to know. All I do know is I was in absolute agony when it happened, could not move, had problems breathing or talking, and (as it was at the office) staff called an ambulance. This was about a month ago.

They put me on gas and air, and said I would feel somewhat "high" or "drunk". Well, it worked to diminish the pain. They gave me ibuprofen as well and that helped. I was prescribed co-codamol (codeine and paracetamol), and so was on pain killers for a while. I also had Valium as a muscle relaxant. A couple of weeks later I managed to do the same on the other side of my chest (no ambulance this time).

So I have been on pain killers for a few weeks now, and had the chance to experiment a bit on how they work. For a start, the codeine does bugger all. I was told I'll be "high as a kite", but to be honest it is no different to just taking the paracetamol, which is what I am now doing, with ibuprofen, every 6 hours.

The pain killers do work - they make the pain in my ribs bearable, now. When this started they helped, but I still could not lie down and so ended up sleeping on the sofa partly sitting up. If I don't take them, then it starts to get very unbearable, so they clearly do work. Overall it is gradually getting less painful, thankfully. Interestingly, the ibuprofen seems to suppress my cough - just taking paracetamol does not. Yes, the scientist in me means I have tried taking one or the other only and even not taking either for a while, just to see how it goes. I am not really that happy being on pain killers, and will be glad when I am back to normal (which is happening slowly).

What struck me today was that this is quite unusual for me - pain killers for such "conventional" pain, as opposed to something like a headache. It seems wrong somehow - the pain is telling me something - not to lie in that particular way, for example. If I don't feel the pain as much, I may be doing myself more harm than necessary and not realising it. This seems wrong. However, I cannot do a lot to avoid a cough, and avoiding the pain from a cough is a good thing! It just seems wrong to avoid pain from "doing something wrong" in terms of my position or movement if that means I "do something wrong", if you see what I mean. Pain is there to tell you that you are "doing something wrong", after all.

There are those that spend much of their lives on pain killers for something, and they have my sympathy. This is a strange state to be in, and one, for me, that is very much temporary.

However, having wondered if things were better enough to stop taking pain killers, and now realised that is definitely not the case, writing this blog has given me time for the pain killers to "kick in" again and I can perhaps get back to sleep.

Good night!

The Queen's cold

Gotta love iPhone suggested location

Obviously there is no way to know if it is the same virus from which the Queen has been suffering, but I, like so many people I know, have suffered from a particularly bad cold over the last few months. It is telling that she was publicly so ill as to not attend Christmas events.

I really am sick of it, and it has now been a month.

More than once (like today) I started to think it may be over now. It is mostly a cough, sometimes dry, sometimes coughing something up, but seems to have lots more in store than just a cough. I was tired, feverish, aching all over, to various degrees for the whole month.

I am not one to stop working for something like a cold, though I was trying to work from home even more than usual as no need to infect the office. Most of the time I was able to do some work, but quite a few days I could not even do that. I know some will cry "man flu", and I understand that, but this has been a real bugger.

A few times I have had to go to the office - two TV interviews in the last week. Thankfully recorded so they can edit out the coughing. As often is the case with a cough, if I stay still, don't talk to anyone, and work at home, I feel like things are going well. Go outside and change temperature, or start talking, and shit hits the fan.

I'd love to know how/why a virus can be so much more resilient than others. Clearly we win the battle - everyone I know who has had this, whether 3 weeks or 6 weeks or whatever, has "survived" it. So what makes one virus take so long to be defeated I wonder?

Even so, this really long bout of being ill is depressing. I have been taking paracetamol and sudafed regularly (at a bit below max dosage, as I do worry) for weeks now.

This week was extra special, on Tuesday I went to the office to meet a TV crew for Euronews. I had a coughing fit, and coughed so hard I pulled a muscle. I do not recall agony like this ever before, I was thinking I must have cracked a rib or something, I could not move, I could hardly breath, let alone talk. My staff were great, especially Andrew and Jimi, an ambulance was called. They got me on gas and air which helped. They concluded I had pulled something! After a couple of hours I was able to struggle though a TV interview thanks to a very patient TV crew before getting codeine and valium, which I then spent two days solid on. I could not lay down properly, ended up sort of propped up on my sofa to sort of sleep. To be honest, neither codeine nor valium seem to do much for me. Thankfully over the two days the pain has gradually reduced.

So, once again, I find myself hoping that this is close to the end. The muscle pain is mostly gone, or at least manageable. I have to be "careful" coughing, which is, in itself, strange.

Good luck to anyone else that has this - I know some that have had it as "an annoying cough" for many weeks and little more - well done for fighting it so well. Personally, I have been suffering. I suspect there are those way worse off than I, and you have my sympathies. Get well soon.

P.S. I discovered the ambulance crew were self employed working for a company that subcontracts the work from NHS, and so we like Uber drivers, even fined if they have too long a break. That is going to be the next uproar, I am sure. They were very good though.

Boiling a frog, and old age

We know the story of boiling a frog - you start with cold water and gradually make it warmer, that way the frog does not notice and jump out. [who would do that?!]

Well, I have noticed that getting old is like that. Several times now I have discovered a change in my life that only strikes me when fixed. Being diagnosed diabetic was scary as only when I was on medication did I realise how much all the symptoms crept up on me over the year before. These are symptoms I knew to look for and had drummed in to me by my mother since I was a child, and still they eluded me. Mostly tired and thirsty. I had got used to taking a glass of water to bed - which stopped being necessary as soon as I was on medication. Now I am on insulin, and my diabetes is well under control, or so I thought. Indeed, the annual reviews and HbA1c tests are all good.

The latest example is one where, over time, I have realised that whilst generally feeling reasonably heathy, I was going to bed tired sooner, and feeling much more apathetic and doing less work. If I was up at 9pm there was a joke in my family that it was past my bed time. That should have been a clue. I would sleep for like 9 hours a night, and not do a lot of work during the day.

Then I was put on indapamide as my blood pressure was getting higher, as I blogged recently. The 2.5mg dose was too high and I felt like crap, but now on 1.25mg, I feel better. I realise that since I started on the indapamide I am feeling "better". Over the last few weeks I have designed, coded, and deployed the whole 2FA systems for A&A (four separate systems), whilst also coding a load of other stuff including a Monzo API library and a few other things - documenting it all, and testing it all.

To my surprise, I look back at last week, and realise a couple of days ago I was up at 5:30 am and working solidly until 11:30 at night with no problem, only to be up at 6:30 the next day. I am finding I am bored just watching TV or going to bed, and instead am doing stuff. All last night I was designing in my head new code for a feature on the FireBrick which I ended up getting up and documenting first thing this morning. I feel like I have my mojo back.

The issue is not, as I see it, the blood pressure, which is what the indapamide is for, but it has changed the way my diabetes is working - I am having to take more insulin, about twice what I was, but I am much more stable now. It will be interesting to see my HbA1c in a few weeks time. Indapamide is not listed as a treatment in any way for diabetes, just that it can impact blood glucose levels. What is encouraging is that, having mentioned on a recent blog, I am not alone. Others with diabetes found they were "revived" (which I feel is a really good description) once on indapamide. So maybe it should be a diabetes related treatment?

Now I wonder what the next thing will be - something that will creep up on me over many months before I realise.

Indapamide

We live in a strange world where some times we share personal information and sometimes we don't and sometimes it is a problem and sometimes not. There are those that will say I should not have said I was diabetic in a previous blog post.

To be honest, I find the lack of information, and/or overwhelming information, on the Internet to be an issue when facing some of the challenges of growing older and more broken over time. So I hope these occasional health related blog posts can be of interest to those who find themselves in the same boat as me in the future.

For a little while I have been on some blood pressure medications. I was originally not at all keen on this, but apparently high blood pressure is a "silent killer" and so it is important. The thing that swayed me was when I realised that my higher blood pressure was actually related to some headaches. I found I could not drink more than a certain amount without suffering with a crippling headache all night - nothing like simple de-hydration, and very binary - below a certain level was fine, above it was agony. Being a tad scientific I got an optic for my whisky bottle so as to understand how much I was drinking, and over time the amount I could "safely" drink got lower. Only when I was put on blood pressure medication did I realise the connection - some Perindopril and now Ramipril made all the difference. But over the years things have progressed, and so something more was needed.

I was put on Indapamide 2.5mg which works somewhat differently, and, well, works well on the blood pressure - too well in some ways! I have my first review of this with the diabetic nurse this week, and we'll see what she says - I'll add to this post.

Yes, I can drink what I like, but there have been a few odd effects. To start with, as they suggested, a lot more going to the loo, but that settled down. Headaches for a couple of weeks, but that has cleared up. Initially blood pressure somewhat all over the place, nearly passed out at one point. Again, settled down.

Overall, after a few weeks all I am left with is issues with low blood pressure (100/70) which mean standing up quickly, running up stairs and cycling up hill, are causing me problems. I hope we can address this with review of the medication and dosage.

But there is one really weird change - my blood sugar rising (one of the listed symptoms) meaning I have gone from 38 units a day to 56 units (so far) to try and address high blood sugar some of the day. However, oddly, I am actually finding myself much more awake and "with it" all day now, and sleeping just as well at night.

So overall, if you are put on Indapamide, I would say you may well have a few weeks of hassle in various ways. I got through quite a lot of ibuprofen in the first few weeks, but overall, it really works.

I hope this post was of some use...

Update: They don't have 1.25mg available, but do have a combined perindopril 5mg and 1.25mg indapamide combination - so trying that. Wish me luck :-)