Duty Of Care

Recently I have had on my mind the ‘Duty’ we have to care for not only others but also animals and pets. I will explain why this has been on my mind. Recently I found out my mother (I don’t see that often due to distance and she rarely answers the telephone) has needed to be taken into hospital. My mother is elderly (aged 71) and is a shell of the woman she used to be. I found out she had not been drinking enough liquids so became very dehydrated and as she suffers with various illnesses, one of which is a bad back, she has been stuck in bed for weeks at a time, not eating (not having the vitamins and minerals her body has been requiring) and drinking very little. This in turn lead to my mother having hallucinations (think if you will being in the desert with no food and little water, you may hallucinate mirages), this is what has happened to my mother. However, the hallucinations were quite traumatic and has caused my mother to believe in voodoo and such, which she never did before. After speaking to the doctors at the hospital and visiting her over the last week, my mother is doing much better, Praise God, and she seems to not be having hallucinations and hopefully will be able to return home and have help which my partner and I have been able to organise with Social Services, for a career to see her everyday. On top of this we have had a beloved pet die which has struck me quite hard as I were there in the last hour of his life trying to help him live. This brings me to the point I wish to make…

Has humans we are the highest life form on this planet, we not only know what is right from wrong, but we can see and hear when someone or something is being mistreated or hurt intentionally or unintentionally, whether it be mentally or physically. We have a ‘Duty’ to help not only those we know and love but those we don’t know. For example; As you drive past, you see a little old man or lady walking in the rain, weighted down with shopping, would you offer to help them? If a disabled neighbour couldn’t walk down their snowy path, would you take time to clear their drive without having to ask and adding salt so it isn’t icy. These are just some examples of how we can help others, and I do understand that you need to be careful of strangers and you could be attacked. But think of it this way, how many people do we walk past in the street we could say hello to or do you really know your neighbours or next door neighbours plus one?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

I am reminded of something a famous man once said “love your neighbour as you would love yourself”

So if you would want someone to help you no mater the situation, maybe we ourselves need to look how we would help others and how we conduct ourselves

IBS – Wheat and Gluten Free

I thought this would be something worth mentioning as I know this not only effects myself (I have recently been diagnosed with IBS), but others also with the same condition.

I want to start by explaining what IBS is. IBS stands for “Irritable Bowel Syndrome”, and the following information has been taken from http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/irritable-bowel-syndrome/pages/introduction.aspx

(Start quote) Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common condition of the digestive system. It can cause bouts of stomach cramps, bloating, diarrhoea and constipation.

The symptoms of IBS usually appear for the first time when a person is between 20 and 30 years of age. They tend to come and go in bouts, often during times of stress or after eating certain foods.

Symptoms vary between individuals and affect some people more severely than others. However, most people have either diarrhoea, constipation, or bouts of both. You may also have mucus in your stools.

You may find the painful stomach cramps of IBS ease after going to the toilet and opening your bowels.

What causes IBS?

The exact cause of IBS is unknown, but most experts agree it’s related to an increased sensitivity of the entire gut, which can occasionally be linked to a prior food-related illness.

This may be caused by a change in your body’s ability to move food through your digestive system, or may be due to you becoming more sensitive to pain from your gut.
Psychological factors such as stress may also play a part in IBS. (End quote)

As I’ve found it is wheat and gluten which seems to effect me, over the last few weeks and months, I have been looking at making my own wheat and gluten free bread. I have tried to use various recipes and different type of flour but the bread which had been made by hand (I was trained in baking and as a chef many years ago) and in a bread maker, never seemed to rise like normal bread or even the wheat and gluten free breads at the supermarkets. So I have with my partner been looking at the wheat and gluten free range from various supermarkets. We found there are various ones and we have tried most if not all and there is some interesting facts we found out and a surprise we wasn’t expecting.

We found that some wheat and gluten free products have an emulsifier in them, to help them bind the ingredients together. This can usually also be bought from supermarkets and be added to say “Knorr” beef stock cubes (which have no wheat in them) to thicken it up so it isn’t so much like water. We found while researching though, that one of these popular emulsifiers causes me personally to have severe intestinal pain and makes my tummy and intestine bloat up like a ballon, causing more discomfort than if I had eaten wheat and gluten. Because of this fact, when we have to thicken anything we will now either use corn flour or wheat and gluten free flour. Regarding bread, we buy wheat, gluten and locto free bread from Tescos as it doesn’t have the emulsifier in it which causes the issues. The name of the emulsifier which causes the issues for me is: “Xanthan Gum” (I will add a photo of it).

Also be aware of pre-made foods, for example “Dolmio Creamy Lasagne Sauce” as even though it doesn’t have wheat or gluten in it from what I can see, it does have the Xanthan Gum stabiliser (image will be added).

If you have or suspect of having IBS, you should speak to your GP (Doctor) and explain to them the issues you are having. Remember that it may not be IBS, so if you go in saying “Doctor, I have IBS”, won’t help… Not unless you are a qualified doctor lol. By all means ask the doctor if it could be IBS and they will probably refer you to a dietitian, to clarify if it is or is not. Making a food and drink diary of all foods and drinks taken each day and what times, including any pain you feel throughout the day in or around your tummy and intestine area. Also making a note of any bowel movements you have: ie; is it loose, hard etc.

I hope this has helped in either helping diagnose a possible IBS condition or just helping finally tuning your meals. Either way I pray this helps. And if you need more information, Google is a good way to find it. But remember, always speak to your doctor when looking at possible conditions, they would rather you bother them over something little than have you wait and keep putting something off and it turns out to be something serious.

iPhone 5S Summary

I recently updated my mobile phone contract from Orange to EE. This being due to EE now owning Orange and the Orange network being one of the top network coverage companies. When upgrading I had a choice of several phone and from what I could see and being use to Blackberry’s I thought about going for the Blackberry Q10. However, upon checking with various network providers I found Blackberry had changed the way Blackberry Smart phone work. They out do the iPhone 5S in almost every way with longer battery life, qwerty keypad, micro memory card slot to add up to 16gb extra memory, higher processor speed, and much more. This however, though sounding fantastic had it’s down side. You couldn’t make or receive calls through your wireless internet anymore, the cost of the phone was very expensive unless you planned on paying £40 to £60 per month, scrolling didn’t work as well as one would think and there was even less apps in the Blackberry App World with the new software, as well as some other things which escape me at the moment. So, I decided to go with the IPhone 5S. I will point out that even though I use Apple Macs for my computers, as a designer I found them fantastic and easy to work with. I am however not a fan of previous iPhones or the iPad (There are better tablets out there than the iPad, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1) . This is due to the fact that I have been prescient in the apple shop on several occasions where I have seen customer after customer come in and complain about both the iPhones and iPads and how easy they had had problems. My choice however was based not just on my research into the iPhone 5S but also because my partner has the iPhone 4S and as she is a journalist, she uses it for anything and everything, from taking video and photos, to texting, emailing, face timing (video chatting) and even using an app as a satnav etc. My partner allowed me to “play” with her iPhone 4S and see how I got on for an hour or so, and I found I stumbled a few times but found after a couple of hours I could navigate the phone with some ease. So… I went with the iPhone 5S which I earlier mentioned and I have found compared to the earlier models, that it is a work of art, nice feel, not bulky at all, quite light weight I thought, big screen and being able to access Facebook and other websites and forum, including emails and the over all experience I have found a pleasure to use the the iPhone 5S. I have noticed however a couple of things I think could be improved upon from a designers point of view.

1. The battery life doesn’t always last a day. My partner bought me a special “Power Bank” which when you have 20% battery power left, you press a button on the front and it will charge your iPhone 5S battery back up to 100%. Which I thought was amazing for £35 from Mobilebiz in Meadowhall Shopping Centre, Sheffield, but they do have stores up and down the country.

2. Not knowing if I am using my wifi signal or 4G sometimes makes me wonder if I am going to use all my data up, so I have to keep checking my online EE account to make sure not over using it.

3. When trying to set a photo or image as the wallpaper or the lock screen, it enlarges the image or photo to a silly size which you can not shrink. I even edited several images and photos on Photoshop and added them to my phone and it still enlarged them. This is a minor thing but could easily fixed with an update from apple.

And my final comment on the iPhone 5S, is I not only set up this blog account but I am posting my blogs from this wonderful little piece of technology 🙂