# 90: The Nation's Health • Safe Sex: Prostitution: To legalise or not to • Homeopathic Tip: Warts

The Nation's Health

As I write this newsletter I'm looking at an A3 poster sent to me by a company called NatCen (The National Centre for Social Research). Apparently they work 'on behalf' of the Department of Health.

NatCen have done a big health survey of England. The study used a sample of 20 000 adults and children and this is a statistically significant sample of the nation. The stated aim of the survey was to:

1. Help plan NHS services
2. Look at ways of improving people's health.
3. Look at changes in the nation's health over time

I suppose NatCen would like me to put this rather ugly poster in red, white and black on one of the walls in my surgery. Forgive me NatCen but I prefer art that helps my patients relax. Still I thought I'd share some of the interesting statistics on your poster with my readers. Here they are:

Smoking: The percentage of the adult population that smokes is 25%

My advice: The recommended amount of cigarettes to smoke a day is 0.

Weight: 40% of all adults are overweight (overweight is generally considered to be between 10% and 20% over your ideal weight.

20% of adult Britons is obese (obesity is more than 20% over your ideal weight)

My advice: Eat 'rationally' and exercise regularly. Do not diet. There are new diets every year because no diet works in the long term.

Fruit and Vegetables: 10% of children in Britain don't eat vegetables on any given day.

My advice: If all else fails, bribe your kids to eat fruit and vegetables ;-)

Alcohol: 40% of young men and 33% of young women binge drink on a regular basis.

My advice: Alcohol in moderation can even be good for your health.

For men: no more than 3-4 units a day

For women: no more than 2-3 units a day.

'Binge drinking' is defined as consuming double the recommended limit.

Safe Sex: Prostitution: To legalise or not to...

This was not in NatCen's poster but was on the front page of Friday's Evening Standard. Apparently the government is seriously thinking of bringing brothels into the public domain where they could perform regular health checks and protect prostitutes (actually 'sex workers' is the politically correct term) from violence. I think this is a very good idea. The oldest profession will never go away. Wherever it is made illegal, it simply goes underground or brothels call themselves 'massage parlours' or 'unisex saunas' where there are no health checks and prostitutes are often at the mercy of ruthless pimps. I think the situation in Holland where prostitution is out in the open and subject to medical supervision is a much healthier way of dealing with the issue than putting our heads in the sand and pretending that it isn't there. The latter is dangerous indeed to the nation's health. Sex workers sitting in windows may not be to everybody's taste, but this can be overcome by allowing this only in designated areas of each town and city. If you don't like it, you don't have to go there.

Homeopathic tip of the week: Warts

For warts on any part of the body take a dose of the remedy Thuja 30 once a day for a week. You can also buy some Thuja mother tincture and put some on the actual wart for a few weeks. Many warts respond to this most famous homeopathic remedy for warts and verrucae.