Preventive healthcare

Preventive healthcare

       First the wiki link on the subject:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventive_healthcare

            Now here are some common sense Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) ideas that might help you and your Family where you live. These ideas can apply in good times, hard times, or even during any epidemic that may erupt.

First the simple ideas:

1) Keep the ill as warm and hydrated as best you can.

2) Wash your hands with simple soap and water, or anything else you can get your hands on. Bottom line, try be as clean as you reasonably can.  Said another way, try disinfect as best you can. After all, a lot of outside work, like gardening, often does get us dirty.

3) Inside when in a group situation, like a Home or a School, sneeze into your sleeve if you can.

4) Clean simple cuts, scrapes, boo boos, etc., as best you can and as soon as you can. A reasonable standard is within a few hours.

Now here are the slightly more complicated ideas:

1) Try the snake oil kind of things, like taking zinc or Echinacea  and see if it works for you.  Even some over the counter (OTC) drugs often work quite well. Again, try them out to see if they work for anyone ill. Include the sometimes medicinal qualities of some foods, too; like using garlic as a mild anti-biotic while using it for food flavoring, too.

2)  Lead by your own example, including your own choices about what you eat and how you serve it. All things in moderation is still good advice.

3) Clean your food, cooking instruments, eating things, etc., as best you can.  For me heat and steam and boiling does wonders in killing germs and viruses. Now it is not a be all, end all, but still pretty simple.  Now I hear it might also reduce the food value, but I figure that is the lesser of two evils.

4) If you want to avoid mad cow disease kind of things, mostly avoid meats that include brains, brain stems, and sometimes bones. They may have prions in them, and heat and boiling won't kill prions. Now in fairness, they probably don't have them these days.  So for the squirrel hunters and eaters of T-Bone steaks, I would say keep it up.

5) Practice simple public health things, like maintaining clean water and a waste water method to prevent simple diseases like cholera and typhoid. Be ruthless as necessary. One obvious example is preventing people from peeing or pooping all around the yard. Dig a hole instead, for example. That idea alone will save a lot of lives, in my opinion.

6)  Clean up our ill peoples' possible vomiting and diarrhea  messes, and dispose of these messes in the hole dug into the ground.

Now for the most complicated kind of ideas:

1) Get to a doctor if you can when you think the situation justifies it. Sometimes viral things, like the flu, can turn into bacterial pneumonia, for example, which can get serious.

2) Prepare a cemetery plan, if you can. Today's life expectancies will probably go the wrong way. I suspect our infants (like we used to be) will suffer quite a bit.

2A) Develop religious leaders to help tend to the ill, and help bury the dead.

3) Try not to overreact. Our own bodies do a pretty good job of healing ourselves if we give them time, and keep them warm and hydrated.

4) Learn about genealogy as it applies to your loved ones.

5) Ensure trying to obtain needed medical drugs are part of any barter plan.

6) Erect an outhouse over any kind of dug hole. In the interim, use any kind of portable /RV type toilets to help the cause. Help people get chamber pots, too.

7) Have somebody responsible for the outhouse areas, to include "burning the toilets" , if you can. Have them provide toilet paper or other such means to help clean ourselves after peeing and  pooping.

Bottom line, keep the ill as warm and hydrated as you can. Getting dehydrated (like from vomiting and diarrhea)  will kill us in many cases. Try keep them from getting sick in the first place if you can without getting nutty enough to try do so.