health

health

Pulse Pressure

Published by Owen Jones on 7 May 2022
Blood pressure monitor to facilitate working out pulse pressure
Pulse Pressure

Another metric to think about…

Before we begin, let me briefly explain what Pulse Pressure is. It is the difference between the systolic (higher) and diastolic (lower) blood pressure readings. So, if your blood pressure readings are, say, 120/80, then your Pulse Pressure is 40.

I have been monitoring my blood pressure readings for some time now, and for most of that time, my readings for a three-week period have averaged out at about: 126/63 giving me a Pulse Pressure of 63.

Blood Pressure

Normal is: 40-60, but the figure rises with the arterial hardening that typically comes with ageing.

So, on that basis, I was quite happy with a Pulse Pressure of 63. I assumed that the various doctors that I have visited over the last few years were too, since none of them ever mentioned it.

Then, in January 2022, it rose steadily to 65 and then 67. I started to get concerned. By early March, it had risen to 71, but I felt fine… worried, but fine.

Then something unexpected happened.

The aircon in our bedroom broke down, and since we couldn’t get it repaired for a month, we started sleeping in the office. My wife feels the heat more than I do, so she insisted on having the aircon on all day, so she could pop in to cool down whenever she needed to.

March in Thailand is high summer. The temperature rises from about 20-22c in early January to 38-40c in mid-March.

Pulse Pressure Readings

The day after I was put in this air-conditioned environment of 23c, my Pulse Pressure dropped to 65 and after 72 hours, it has fallen to 63.

I had forgotten how much heat can affect the all-important Pulse Pressure of older people. It results because the heart has to pump more blood to maintain a living temperature.

It is why people die here in the summer, especially the old, just like the old die of the cold in winter in the West.

Anyway, thus, I live to fight another day after all 🙂

Regards,

Owen

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Village Food in Thailand

Published by Owen Jones on 9 February 2022

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Village food in Thailand

Healthy Thai food

You may have read elsewhere on this site about how a typical Thai family cook targets meals to the family’s health. However, some people do not have anyone to cook for them, or the family cook does not know the craft in detail. It is easy to understand how this can happen. Parents can die young, or perhaps didn’t know themselves because they flew to the city to earn more money, for example. Such people often rely on takeaways, as they do in the West.

Healthy Village Food

Takeaway Thai village food is usually provided by more mature ladies, who often have no other means of support. These people know their onions… the food is excellent, but it is meant for general consumption.

So, it is not targeted at any one person’s specific health problems.

How could it be?

Thai Cooking

However, that is not a big problem, when you compare bags of home-made Thai village takeaway food, as in the picture above, with boxes of Macdonald’s chicken nuggets for who knows what the poor chickens were fed on, how they lived or how they died?

Village Food is not like that, you only have to know what is best for you yourself.

I was walking around the village at five o’clock this evening and stopped at a shop for a beer. An elderly woman placed eight bags of home-made village food on the counter next to me at 50p each. She had sold the lot within 30 minutes.

Village Take-Aways

£4…wow, big deal, you may be thinking, but if she does that twice a day and makes 50% profit, it is a massive supplement to her £15 a month state pension.

And what trouble is it to cook a bit extra when you are cooking for the old man anyway?

As I am was walking away, she was just delivering six more bags of barbecued meatballs for the evening diners.

Softly, softly, eh?

Daddy’s Hobby – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl In Pattaya

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Massage – A Means to Well-Being

Published by Owen Jones on 24 May 2020

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Massage
Massage

Massage

by

Owen Jones

narrated by

Jordan Moore

The information in this ebook on various aspects of massage techniques, styles and related subjects is organised into 15 chapters of about 500-600 words each.

I hope that it will interest those who enjoy a massage or would like to enter the booming massaging industry industry.

As an added bonus, I am granting you permission to use the content on your own website or in your own blogs and newsletter, although it is better if you rewrite them in your own words first.

You may also split the book up and resell the articles. In fact, the only right that you do not have is to resell or give away the book as it was delivered to you.

The manual is also available in s Dutch and Portuguese and Spanish. It also exists in most other formats, such as Kobo, and on all platforms including Apple’s iTunes.

Amazon ebook     Audible audiobook

Daddy’s Hobby – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl In Pattaya

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Being Ill in the Countryside

Published by Owen Jones on 31 July 2018

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Being Ill in the Countryside

Being Ill in the Countryside

 

Being Ill in the Countryside

A lump has been growing on my back for the last week or two. I haven’t paid it much attention because it didn’t hurt and I have had a non-malignant lymphoma removed before. The surgeon who did that in the UK twelve years ago, said that I could get another one there again or somewhere else in the future, so I put it down to that.

However, this one burst last night, so I suppose it is some kind of boil instead. My wife suggested going to hospital to get it sorted out and I agreed. So, I asked when she wanted to take me to the local hospital and she said they couldn’t deal with something like this there, we’d have to go seventy-five kilometres to a big city hospital instead.

That has got me thinking about being ill in the countryside, if they can’t handle a boil, what about a stroke or a heart attack?

Five or six years ago, my wife bought fifty mapang saplings, which grow into trees, or big bushes, I suppose. Anyway, we’re had a few fruit from them over the years, but they were a little bitter and, so, rather disappointing. However, this year, she has bucketfuls of mapang and they are the best I’ve ever tasted.

Perhaps they just needed to grow up a bit – like children. I’m not certain, but I think mapang are called plum mangoes in English. The name certainly suits their size, colour, shape and taste. They look like large, yellow duck eggs with a big, flat, central stone.

This is Thailand’s summer, so you can expect it to be hot, late thirties to early forties centigrade, but it is also overcast, which is unusual… that doesn’t usually come until May when the Big Monsoon traditionally arrives. However, the old weather patterns are becoming less predictable, as in most places in the world.

Regards,

by +Owen Jones

Podcast: Being Ill in the Countryside

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In Sickness and in Health

Published by Owen Jones on 10 October 2016

In Sickness and in Health

In Sickness and in Health

In Sickness and in Health

It has been my turn to be ill recently. We are both under a lot of strain what with visas and the requirements therefore, which no-one in authority seems willing to commit to. In fact, my visa days are over. I have a visa for Thailand until the day after my flight leaves, and that is good enough for me, although I am very involved with my wife’s visas since the applications are in English.

Neem requires a visa for Spain and then one for the UK. The Spanish Embassy in Bangkok is very unhelpful and Britain is notoriously mean when it comes to handling out visas, no matter what the press and the Tories say. It is always a struggle to get a visa for there and I have always found that embarrassing. If Britain’s fortunes as a holiday destination are on the wane, the government only has itself to blame.

So, I thought that possibly all this was getting to me and making me ill. Others suggested that I had a hangover, but i knew that I hadn’t drunk enough for one of those, unless my poor old body has finally given up on me.

Yesterday, I lay on my paillasse on the floor of my office moaning and groaning from nine the night before until about three in the afternoon and then I had a really weird experience. A story unfolded in my head. It was not unlike Chalie’s Angels, but the guy with the three girls was a flasher and they kept them ‘near’ to them in order to monitor his behaviour.

I was the narrator, not unlike Bosley, but I was telling myself the story so fast that I couldn’t remember it, yet when I tried to slow down, I could not. This went on for six hours – I could not stop ‘talking’ to myself in my head. Then, my nose started to run and I was relieved.

I knew what the problem was: I had a cold, which is fairly unusual in Thai villages, since it is usually foreigners who bring colds over and we haven’t got any here at the moment.

Apparently, the baby has had it for a few days. I have heard her cough, but not cry, yet I feel like crying all the time. How can a three-year old girl put up with it better than I can?

I suppose it just goes to show that man-flu does exist.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: In Sickness and in Health

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Being An Expat: Financial Aspect

Published by Owen Jones on 23 July 2015

Being An Expat (part fourr)

Being An Expat (part four): Financial Aspect

Being An Expat (part four):

The Financial Aspect

The financial aspect of being an expat boils down to always having sufficient funds to satisfy your requirements, which will vary throughout the year. For example, in Thailand, I need to have either 800,000 Baht (for a retirement visa) or 400,000 Baht (for a spousal visa) in my Thai bank account for the two months prior to and including the day I apply for my visa, but I can spend it after that, as long as I replace it within ten months.

Most people try to leave this fundamentally most basic requirement in the bank at all times and try to ‘forget’ about it.

You also need money for healthcare and or health care insurance, depending on your insurance policy, but this is also an annual premium.

If you don’t have a work permit, you will find it difficult to replace these sums as they become due, unless you have a good pension, or can supplement your income in other ways. Many expats try to do this using the Internet, but it is not easy, especially if you need a regular income.

I was doing well at this until one night Google closed my Adsense account without warning. That cost me $1,000 a month and they wouldn’t tell me the reason. That nearly sent me home with my tail between my legs, and I’m still struggling to overcome the loss now, four years later.

Don’t rely on your government or that of the target country either. Four years before the Google disaster, the Thai Baht dropped from seventy-five Baht to the £1 to sixty in a matter of weeks, and then it fell to fifty. Suddenly, my UK savings were worth a third less than they were when I arrived and they have never recovered.

If you want to live abroad, you’ll need either a cast-iron savings pot full of money or solid determination, but you will probably find that you’ll need both and a supplementary income and nerves of steel.

It’s no wonder that many expats drink too much.

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Being An Expat: The Financial Aspect

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Being An Expat: Legal Aspect

Published by Owen Jones on 22 July 2015

Being An Expat (part three)

Being An Expat (part three)

Being An Expat (part three)

 The Legal Aspect

The legal aspect of being an expat is obviously very important. Many countries, especially those that rely on tourism, operate a relaxed approach to short term (thirty days or less) tourist visas, but this is not the case for expats unless the target country and the expat’s homeland have some sort of mutual agreement, like in the European Community.

Broadly speaking, there are usually two types of long-term visa the retirement (including spousal) visa and the employment visa, which requires a work permit. To obtain a work permit, you usually require the offer of a job in writing from your prospective employer and for a spousal visa you need a spouse who holds the nationality of the target country.

Most expats in Thailand hold a retirement visa, the broad legal requirements for which are that you must be over fifty and have at least 800,000 Baht (£16,000) in a Thai bank. There are other ways of staying here, and many use them, but this is the easiest and the cheapest in the long run at 1,900 Baht (£40) per annum.

Other ways of staying here legally are leaving the country for Laos every three months (£40 per visa) or flying to Malaysia every six months (also £40 per visa). If you use the last two methods, you will have to sleep there overnight. I did the Laos visa run for a year and found the cost to be about 15,000 Baht (£300) for each trip, so it works out expensive at £1,200 a year. I’m told that a return flight to Malaysia is 6,000 Baht, so the total cost could be 10,000-12,000 Baht a time (£200-240), so £400-£500 per annum.

The visa entitles you to breathe and enjoy the weather, but everything else costs, including health care. The citizens of most countries would expect this, but Brits are used to health care being free at the point of delivery. The annual insurance premium will set you back another £500-£600 p.a. which compares well with Western countries.

By the way, health insurance is not a legal requirement, but treatment in a hospital without it or a Thai spouse to stand up for you can be expensive.

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Being an Expat – The Legal Aspect

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