Coronavirus and wider health

The Coronavirus pandemic has brought up a lot of general health questions as well as being a tragedy for so many people.

Questions that seem to arise from this crisis are:

  1. Is the current crisis linked to: the increased global movement of people and goods and/or intensive food production and especially meat?
  2. Which of the competing epidemiological advice models will turn out to work. For example will the Swedish model of changing as little as possible fair well against a more stringent containment model?
  3. Which state health systems will cope best and will state health systems that are underfunded be shown up?

On a less global trajectory and closer to the heart of my clinic I have been thinking about advice that I can give to individual patients. As I have written on my front page I am not treating at the moment and can’t treat as both of my clinic spaces have been shut. I have also written that I am happy to offer advice over the phone and have already completed a few telephone consultations. From this experience I can say that it is entirely possible to offer advice and some diagnostics as well with the help of the patient at the other end.

However I keep wondering if there is more general advice that I can give. I think a useful meta-system to use here is the Naturopathic triangle which talks about: the Physical, the Biochemical and the Mental.  Over the next few day I will approach each of these in turn. But before I do, ask yourself: what are these things for you? What is the physical for you? What is the Mental for you? And what is the Biochemical for you?

Back soon.

Ben