Let me describe my job in non-medical terms. I slice into people when they’re asleep (with their consent) and remove things. I should stress that I’m one of the good guys, because despite missing some stuff from their bodies, when they surface my patients feel more whole as a result. As a general surgeon, I have the pleasure of dealing with everything from guts to gallbladders, bleeding haemorrhoids and beyond.
So, while I will be the first to celebrate the marvels of the human body in the journey you’re about to undertake, I won’t hold back on the flaws, dodgy designs and cack-handed wiring that make it so unique. For all its faults, however, this organic life support system that you’re on provides ample opportunity for customisation and even improvement. It’s just a question of understanding how it works, and then highlighting ways to make it, well . . . better.
1. The Heimlich manoeuvre is not the best way to clear an airway
Repeated blows (or ‘blocks’) using the heel of your hand between someone’s shoulder blades is an equally effective initial option as the Heimlich manoeuvre. It’s arguably much less violent than bear hugging a choking victim, especially if they’re elderly. Most emergency choking protocols now recommend five back blocks. Should that fail to fix the problem then perform five abdominal thrusts (previously known as the Heimlich manoeuvre) by placing a hand around someone’s mid abdomen and thrusting inwards and upwards. If the victim continues to choke, call the emergency services.
2. Do not sit on the toilet for more than 10 minutes
Learning to take the strain out of your poo routine will cut down on the risk of haemorrhoids. It also vastly reduces the risk of a horror show called rectal prolapse. Basically, your bum isn’t designed to telescope out of its housing. It’s treatable, but painful and wholly avoidable. To save yourself the agony, aim to limit your time on the loo for number twos to a maximum of ten minutes, but ideally no more than five if you can manage it.
3. You can maintain your bone density without guzzling milk
You’ve probably always been told you need to drink milk for strong bones. This is propaganda from Big Milk. While milk is a nutritious and relatively easily-available source of calcium and energy, the fact is most humans actually lose the ability to digest lactose shortly after birth. What’s more, milk doesn’t contain enough calcium to maintain your bones. If your body doesn’t get enough calcium, it can leech it from your bones in order to prop up your heart and muscles – obviously this isn’t ideal. Happily, other dairy products like cheese and vegetables such as kale are rich in calcium.
4. Use your sixth sense to safeguard your knee joints
Proprioception is the hidden ability you didn’t know you possessed. It allows you to know the position of your joints in space – known as your spatial orientation – without looking. This is down to the fact that your joints and ligaments are saturated with nerve fibres that constantly feedback signals to your brain. Think of it as your internal body compass. Proprioception isn’t a static thing. It can be improved. Essentially, the better your body’s ability to auto-calibrate or correct itself without thought, the lower your risk of injury. For example, if you’re running on an uneven surface then your body is making numerous micro calculations to steady itself and limit damage to the knee. You can improve your proprioception with simple balance exercises. With your eyes closed, stand on one leg that is slightly bent. This forces the muscles around the knee to work harder to maintain your balance and fine-tunes your joint sense. You can turn up the difficulty by moving your head to one side, as this meddles with your inner ear balance too. Alongside balance exercises, the more you partake in regular physical activity, the more your body and brain will instinctively know what to do and how to protect you without conscious signals from you. Ultimately, your knees will thank you.
5. Adopt the 20/20/20 rule when working at a screen
From a practical standpoint, there are measures you can take to protect your eyes and reduce the risk of myopia and other ocular issues. If you spend a lot of time in front of a screen (which is likely to be most people), then adopt the 20/20/20 rule. Every 20 minutes, take a break from the screen and look at a distant object at least 20 feet away for up to 20 seconds. This allows the eyes to relax and turn the focus off momentarily. It’s also good to get away from the screen, right? So why not pop outside and dose up on natural light?
6. Decongest your nose with your tongue and some peppermint
The chemist’s shelves might be crammed with decongestant products, but you could always opt for the far safer home alternative that is peppermint. The active ingredient is menthol, which actually acts as a natural nose unclogger. Alternatively, you can always leverage your weird nose anatomy in order to breathe easier. Push your tongue to the roof of your mouth while pressing between your eyebrows for 20 seconds. Applying gentle pressure to both areas at the same time mobilises the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages. This motion loosens congestion and allows the sinuses to drain.
7. You can stop motion sickness with your eyes
If your nausea is due to motion sickness, then consider your vision to be key to steadying the ship. Why? Because when there is a mismatch between your eyes and balance sensors the brain can interpret it as poisoning. When travelling by a means beyond your control (such as on a ship or as a car passenger) the key is to keep your eyes fixed on the horizon. This lessens the discord between what you’re feeling and what you’re seeing, which helps the eyes and balance sensors coordinate their information better. To that end, if you do struggle with motion sickness, try sitting at the front of the ride to take in as much horizon as possible.
8. Get your sense of smell back after Covid-19 with potent scents
You can lose your sense of smell for all manner of reasons. More often than not, it’s a temporary measure caused by a viral infection like Covid. Common colds can also cause the mucus membranes in the nostril to become irritated or blocked, as can some medication and antihistamines. Losing your sense of smell can sometimes be an underlying marker for high blood pressure or some illnesses, so it’s always worth checking out with your GP. Just like going to the gym to improve your strength, you can give your beak a workout. This can pay dividends if you’ve lost your sense of smell and are in need of rehab. Just be warned, it isn’t fun. It’s tedious, in fact, but the price to pay if you want smell back in your life. On a basic level it involves sniffing potent aromas and scents several times a day. You might need to persist with this over weeks and even months to rewire, retrain and potentially even restore your damaged olfactory system. Begin with a few powerful scents that evoke a specific mood or memories. It could be a favourite perfume, a shampoo or the aroma of coffee beans. Smelling each scent for up to 30 seconds with short, sharp sniffs rather than deep inhales is key, while also focusing on a mental image of when you last encountered it. The aim is to help reconnect or strengthen lines of communication between your brain and the olfactory system. Effectively, smell training helps to trigger and potentially enhance the turnover of specialised nerve cells that can restore your sniffer.
9. Do not rush the pee process
If you are in a rush and need to strain to make it quick, make sure you wait until your stream has started before squeezing. Tightening up before you’ve begun risks shutting off the valves that allows urine to exit the body. Pee patience will always pay off.
10. Drink a glass of water before checking your phone in the morning
Attractively, after a good night’s sleep you can still wake up feeling as dried out as a packet of noodles. Although your body has deployed certain safeguards to prevent dangerous levels of dehydration by powering down metabolism, raising the levels of anti-diuretic hormone so you retain as much water as possible, and even dropping your core body temperature, mild dehydration after a night supine (or curled up in a ball) is inevitable. Even this mild dehydration is enough to impact your alertness, focus and mood in the morning. To offset this mental zombification, drink a large glass of water in the morning to refuel your tank. Ideally, I would recommend reaching for the glass before your mobile phone. Odds suggest that you are guilty of checking it as soon as you prise open your eyelids. From emails to social media and breaking news, you are overwhelmed with distraction, stress and notifications before you’re fully up and running. Prior to waking, your brain emerges from the delta wave pattern of deep sleep to the lighter sleep of theta waves. On surfacing, your brain transitions to the alpha waves that will see you through the day, but what it doesn’t need to know in that gentle adjustment period is how many overnight likes your last kitten post has picked up. This stuff can wait, and your brain will thank you for it.
This is an edited extract from This Book May Save Your Life by Dr. Karan Rajan (Century, $40) is now out.
