Costing Complimentary Medicine On The NHS

more about “Truth behind NHS’s homeopathy budget“, posted with vodpod

The data we have shows that from 2005 – 2008 almost £12m was spent on Homeopathic remedies by the NHS.
This works out at an average cost of £170 per episode, per patient with a remarkable £3067 cost per inpatient.

Interesting piece about homeopathy costings here when offered via Britain’s NHS. In the early stages of my meniere’s, in fact before it was correctly diagnosed, I was actually sent to the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.I had an open mind.

Therein I was in the waiting area for 2 hours (this was the early 90′s and the place didn’t seem particularly busy in the way a hospital often seems to be). Once I was in the consultation room it was decided that I was to receive accupuncture for my tinnitus and then emerging dizzy spells.

This took the form of burning needles placed along the upper part of my bare feet(yeah like I’d keep my shoes on but thought I’d better clarify). It was painless. But was it..er…pointless? (sorry weak pun alert).

Peace And Love

I was warned that (in a Ringo Starr ‘warning you with peace and love’ kind of way) that once the accupuncture had been completed there was a danger that I would experience a “rush of euphoria” at some point over the next hour and a half whilst travelling home so I should “just be careful”.

I was a model of caution on my journey home by tube and train and made sure as much as possible I didn’t stand too close to pregnant women, small children or those of a particular infirmity in case I was to literally explode with energised joy whilst in a confined space and perhaps might cause inadvertent injury or distress to those unwittingly close by.

I’m sorry to report that nothing euphoric transpired during those 90 minutes or indeed during the weeks following.

Quack

I hadn’t asked for a homeopathy referral but my GP must have taken this alternative approach seriously. Perhaps there was evidence that the power of the placebo effect for some outweighed the cost of bouncing around the NHS referral system until an adequate specialist hit the nail on the head. Perhaps I was classified as an hysteric for badgering my GP over things that seemed awry with my hearing and balance? Who knows?

In the end some months later I attended a specialist ear nose and throat clinic in London whereupon after a cat scan, a poke in the eye with a lengthen piece of cotton wool and the pouring of hot water into one of my ears (yes now doesn’t that sound like quakery when I actually write it down?) I was diagnosed with meniere’s.

Playing The Lottery

These days the NHS is a postcode lottery and heading again for a huge funding shortfall so no doubt many less proven complimentary services such as homeopathy and even, dare I say NHS funded counselling (the evidence for the latter’s effectiveness to cost ratio is not clear cut by any means) will no doubt face some tough reassessment within various PCT budgets.

Related meniere’s posts

Adopting Patterns And Expectations

From ‘An idea in practice-using the human givens approach’. One of a series of books I’m ploughing through at the moment.

Deluding Yourself And Normalization

I’m currently wading my way through another book on Neuro-linguistic programming albeit one of the ‘dummies guide to’ variety.
It’s fairly well laid out and compared to some tomes on the subject it is pretty light in tone.
I’ve spent a few years flirting with NLP and even attended an evening course at a local adult education outlet in order to find out more.

I have to declare that I’m a natural sceptic with an open mind on most things. Having studied psychology in the past and as someone who unsuccessfully tried psychotherapy I am prone to cherry pick the elements of NLP that I feel should work and why I feel it should be more effective than elements of psychotherapy that can become bogged down in what I see as the dubious merits of a more Freudian approach to people and their perceived problems.

Don’t Normalize Me

In that respect I’ve always been more drawn slightly more to a  Jungian way of thinking together with a humanistic view of people and problem solving. I’ve never been a great fan of psychotherapy. My forrays into psychology and counselling  seemed to me to show that too many disciplines saw human beings in very narrow mechanistic ways and revealed very little about human nature as it was experienced. Putting people into boxes may be what we all do to some extent but it also fosters the notion that people themselves need to be ‘normalized’ when it may be that people are just reacting to an environment that is forcing them the behave in a very un-human way and hence an internal conflict results. Normalizing people to fit into an unhealthy environment seems, to me anyway, a less than noble goal.

Picking Holes

That’s not to say that I don’t pick holes in NLP. The class I attended was a serious let down in that I took an instant dislike to the tutor (sorry but the words ‘self important dickhead’ were never far from my mind) and my feeling was that many of those attending the course were not especially interesting in NLP per se as more just looking for a ‘gravy train’ escape route from their current jobs in order to become NLP therapists themselves. I was honestly (guv) just there because the subject intrigued me. I had no delusions regarding myself going forth and ‘healing the sick’ with my new found powers at a high hourly rate if you please.

Cynical? Moi?
Indeed one of the things that leaves a bad taste in my mouth around NLP is that it can easily focus too much on what I see as quite narrow minded goals whilst ignoring the reality of the world and the social problems within it. Like much counselling ad psychotherapy it can become distorted by our societies narrow individualistic approaches to solving problems whilst ignoring the impact an environment or culture has on an individual. OK so you get what you want or you train you mind to feel that you get what you want whilst feeling better about those that are kicking you metaphorically in the face everyday because the system we live in rewards that?

Yet Another Way That Doesn’t Work

My worries over the positive mental attitude aspects of NLP over and above the need to extricate oneself from unhealthy environments is perhaps summed up by a quote in an article on the BBC news site that looked at how mental health professionals were now being employed by the government to deal with people who were long term unemployed with depression.

It’s that aspect of continually papering over what may be a hopelessly bad situation by re-framing an appalling environment with better feelings that still has me concerned over some aspects of NLP. At what point do we throw in critical thinking and standing up for yourself come into play if at all. Or are we saying that a different mental attitude will melt away other ‘bad thinking’ that we may randomly encounter in the world?

Maybe I’m just too riddled with British cynicism to fully delude myself enough to give NLP a chance.

Photo by psd under this creative commons license

Bacteriostatic Deoderant Alternative

PitRock...er...Rocks

I’ve been a bit worried about what goes into under arm deoderants for a while now with worries over various aluminium and zirconium salts being possibly linked to breast cancer and other ill effects on health.

This PitRock was offered at a good price in our local supermarket and we’d heard quite good things about it so took the plunge. It’s a stick of natural mineral salts that does not deodorise or block the pores but has a bacteriostatic action which should nip the main unpleasant cause of any under arm body odour (yes, sorry to bring that up) in the bud.

It seems to take a short while for your body to adjust but so far it does seem to be working and clearly though the 100g stick costs more than most roll on deodorants (£4.48 in our local Asda and just over £6 in most other stores) it will clearly last a lot longer (quite how long I’ll have to let you know).

I’ve tried the mineral based deodorants from Lush in the past but they literally had a burning effect and were overloaded with accompanying perfume (or so I found).

In this instance the perfume , if required, needs to come from elsewhere. Either from your favourite perfume , body spray or washing product whilst the rock does it job in keeping the causes of unpleasant body odour at bay.

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Recipe: Chunky Bacon And Cheese Frittata

Ingredients:

• 8 rashers of rindless back bacon or vegetarian bacon substitute
• A bunch of spring onions sliced
• 8 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 85g/3oz cheddar cheese cut into cubes
• Knob of butter
• Tomato salsa & thick slices of bread to serve

Method:

Snip the bacon into small pieces.Cook in a non stick frying pan for approx 5 mins. drain off any excess oil or fat and then add the spring onions and cook for another 5 mins until the bacon is crisp.Vegetarian substitute may require less cooking time.

Preheat the grill

Beat the eggs and milk together and add pepper if required. Hold back a little of the bacon & mix in with the eggs, spring onion & cheese.

Melt the butter in a 23cm/9 inch frying pan. Pour the above mixture into the pan and cook gently, without stirring for 5-8 mins until mixture is set.

Scatter the top with the remaining bacon.

Put the pan under the grill to brown the top.

Cut into wedges and serve with salsa and bread as required.

A PDF version of this recipe can be downloaded here

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Down But Not Out

As I write this the screen is gently spinning from the effects of dizziness whilst my right ear is screaming blue murder via a very loud tinnitus level. I’m clearly in another protracted period of meniere’s attacks.

I’ve probably got used to working around the temporary disability periods though it requires flexibility. It’s not always something you can ‘carry on regardless’ through as sometimes this will just make things worse.

Sometimes it’s just down tools, lay down and live with it until the symptoms improve.Luckily handling a computer is something you can partially do whilst laying down.Learn the keyboard shortcuts and with some processes you don’t even need to see the screen. Apple’s speech configuration does allow for vocal commands to control programs & processes.

At the moment I admit the tinnitus is annoying me greatly due to its sheer volume

Spinning Into Infinity

I’m currently on day three of an ongoing Ménière‘s attack which is the longest for quite some time. Mercifully the room is only spinning very slightly though the tinnitus is at jet aircraft level which is making hearing a bit of a problem.

So I’m taking the buccastem tablets to quell the worst of the attacks which leaves a very unpleasant taste in the mouth as these tablets have to be dissolved slowly under the top lip. The ‘good’ side effect is that they play around with your dopamine levels so it can ingest a bit of light merriment sometimes (not always a desirable side effect when you’re laying on the platform of Network south east trains with a station attendant assuming you’re smacked out of your brains on drugs as you try to explain that you’re just taking a moment or two to get over a sudden lack of balancing abilities whilst speaking in a pseudo lisp caused by trying to keep a buccastem tablet under your tongue whilst finding the whole situation comical enough to have to stifle a few giggles.)

The tablet is nearly dissolved now and I have a cup of tea ready to take away the bitter after taste which will slightly impair my enjoyment of the cuppa but such is life.

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