Preventive Medicine
Tis easier to prevent getting sick
than curing the sick. Curing the sick is often corrective medicine, to me.
Most corrective medicine efforts also
help our bodies heal themselves. Our bodies are pretty good at healing most
diseases of all kinds. Often we build some kind of immunity out of this method,
too. Some corrective medicines and treatments do the healing themselves. Not
all corrective medicine efforts will also provide an immunity from future
diseases.
There are
two approaches to this poster and now old military guy. One is more primitive
and the other is more advanced, like even during today’s good times.
For the more
primitive, think about the basics and even how our ancestors may have lived.
1) Emphasize preventive medicine.
2) Keep as clean as you can. That
includes hand washing with just regular soap and water. Expose as much as you
can, like even a bathroom rug, to fresh air and sunshine. That includes bed
linens and even mattresses periodically (maybe four times a year or more), like
the military often does.
a. This method often helps fight lice
and bed bugs, too. Sometimes it will even kill them.
b. If there is no electricity for
vacuuming, you should still use a broom and dust pan to keep all areas as clean
as you can.
c. Clean common areas with soap and
water periodically (at least four times a year ideally).
3) Practice good flu control methods,
like sneezing into something like a handkerchief or even a sleeve, which is later
washed and dried to get rid of the sneeze stuff.
4) Keep the ill as hydrated and warm as
you can. This will help the body heal itself.
5) Treat even small boo boos and
blisters like they are the enemy, which they are, especially during hard times.
6) Depend on both modern medicines and
even try more old fashioned medicines if need be. Make some of your working
medicines if you can.
7) Maintain a cemetery and a religious
leader or a lay-leader. Said another way, sometimes we die. Often death is from
old age, but often it can be from other causes, too. The story about the
President’s relative dying from a broken blister and it getting badly infected comes
to mind (in the 1920’s as the story goes). Another relative of another 20th
century President is believed to have drunk contaminated water on a trip, and subsequently
died, too.
8) Bury our dead according to local
customs and as respectfully as one can.
9) Drink a warm broth or chicken soup
(or something else warm) when you get chilled.
10) Always use “clean” water that you
trust for its intended purpose (and if you can).
11) Maintain your health and diet as
best you can.
12) Have someone be the group doctor or
other medical person (like a medic or EMS person). This person controls all
things medical, including records. Now this person also does have a local boss,
too.
13) Hold a daily “sick call” or “doctors
time” at a common location to best practice preventive and even corrective
medicine. They would handle emergencies
at any time, and will also travel as required to best get the mission
accomplished.
More
advanced ideas are:
1) Go to the doctor or other medicine
person, and always use the modern medical system if you can.
2) Take any and all prescriptions to the
“T”.
a. Don’t abuse antibiotics. Use them
when you need them (and they need to work), and as prescribed or recommended.
These days some people take too many antibiotics and too often, and their
bodies build up an immunity to these antibiotics.
3) Practice and use corrective medicine
as appropriate. The common example is our kids getting ear aches at school.
Sometimes we do get sick. And going to the doctor then makes sense if we can.
4) Get and maintain your vaccinations.
5) Practice good public health
procedures. Do control where you pee and poop, and send it, for example.
6) Be as patient as you can be given
whatever situation you are faced with.
7) Get as much medical training as you
can.
8) Keep common areas clean with as high
tech a cleaning method as you can. Do this periodically, like every month or
more often. This means using your judgment.
You can’t clean all the time where you live, after all. Even use
“partial” cleanings, too.
9) Cooler indoor temperatures tend to be
more healthy temperatures.
10) Don’t get wet and chilled if you can
avoid it.
11) Maintain your septic system if you
have one. Mostly that means not using anti-bacterial soaps so common these
days. It also means several times a year reintroducing the bacteria and enzymes
that keep the septic system digesting our pee and poop and other such things.
Such efforts can be just using things that accomplish such “reintroductions”
either periodically or routinely.
12) Use a “dump hole” for things that are
not digested by a septic system, like feminine hygiene products or condoms used
for their purposes. To not do so usually means having to “pump” the septic tank
in good times, and manually do it in hard times. If you use public waste
disposal to flush our stuff away these days, they have other means to “screen”
the waste water.
13) Keep your clean water sources
separate from your waste water areas, other disposals, and even your cemetery
and other ways of disposing of our dead.
Nobody wants to think their clean water has a relative’s remains in the
clean water that they are drinking,
cooking with, or cleaning with.
14) Keep a warm or hot water source
available 24/7/365. As a Marine, that was often too difficult to achieve (or more
often too low a priority), and cleaning and bathing occurred with cold water.
As an American, a warm bath (even with dirty water) was always enjoyed. And in
the warm season, a swim in a pond often counts as a bath, too. Just make sure
local wildlife uses this pond or stream, too. In many places water streams and
rivers and ponds are often used for waste disposal, too. The intent is to use
wildlife (as well as our noses and eyes) as a safe water indicator for humans.
Even crystal clear “Rocky Mountain” looking streams sometimes can have weird
viruses in them.
15) Control STD’s (sexually transmitted
diseases) as best one can.
16) Use baby wipes and other such methods
to keep clean as best you can, and if there is no clean water for that purpose.
17) A sick person is often a burden to
others, too. That is just the way things are. This is not some way of
suggesting one hide one’s illness from others, but it is a way to suggest to
get healed so one can best and more quickly contribute to their part of the
mission accomplishment.
18) A 40% humidity is generally thought of as
healthy.
19) Remember our home hot water heaters
usually have 40 gallons of clean water in them. Use a garden hose or other
means to use that water in an emergency.
20) Hold periodic health and comfort
inspections.
For more
readings on this subject, here are some links you might enjoy or use:
http://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/pdf/r40_5.pdf
(You’ll need to get a free pdf
reader for this one.)
There are
many more links on this subject, too.
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