The day before yesterday did not start off particularly well. After I had got myself up and breakfasted, I started my journey down into town to pick up my daily newspaper but two large lorries were partially occluding the end of my drive and, to my dismay, the road sign that I had had erected some years before, which was located in a narrow gravel bed between the kerbstone and a neighbour’s fence, had been uprooted. It took me some time to navigate around the lorries and to get the briefest explanation of what they were doing but as I availed myself of a free coffee in Waitrose, I phoned my son to inform him of what was going on and how I should remonstrate with the workmen. On my may home, I got the car into the drive and then demanded an explanation from the workmen They explained that they were employed to extend a neighbour’s fence and that they needed to uproot the street sign and reposition it 15cm to one side. They argued that the street sign in the gravel strip was actually on my neighbour’s property but, on reflection, I think they were wrong about this. Nonetheless, the exchanges were polite and courteous and they assured me that the sign would be properly relocated. When I went out later to check everything seemed to be fine and, indeed, the street sign had been repositioned at a very slight angle which would improve its readability to oncoming traffic from a particular direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My son and daughter-in-law called around in case I needed any reinforcements in dealing with recalcitrant workmen in the relocation of the street sign, but in the event we seem to have this resolved amicably enough. My daughter-in-law has taken out a subscription to the ‘New Scientist’ and there was one issue that has been discussed which is of great interest to us both and which effects myself personally. A study published last year has produced evidence that post WWII (World World 2) sugar rationing during the first 1000 days of life (i.e. from conception to the age of 2) significantly lowered the risks of chronic disease and the onset of disease later on in life. For example those who exposed to sugar rationing had a 35% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes and a 20% reduction in hypertension. Where cardio vascular disease was present in the population, its onset was likely to be delayed by about three years. Limiting sugar intake during the first 1,000 days led to a dramatic, dose-dependent decrease in adult cancer incidence across five major tissue sites. Most notably, it cut the risk of liver cancer by 69%, prostate cancer by 52%, lung cancer by 41%, rectal cancer by 40%, and breast cancer by 36% More dramatically, those with early-life restricted sugar showed a 25% decrease of all-causes dementia but a 46% lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s. Now all of this is incredibly interesting as it is the result of a so-called natural experiment and we know that the consumption of sugar in the population as a whole doubled when sugar rationing ceased in the early 1950’s. Now having been born a couple of days after the ending of WWII, these findings are of particular interest to me, personally. The research points to two core pathways that explain why wartime rationing prolonged life. The first is via biological imprinting as low sugar during foetal development and infancy protects metabolic programming, regulates insulin sensitivity, and shields the body from long-term chronic inflammation. The second pathway may be termed Behavioural Programming. Because their taste preferences were shaped during a critical developmental window, individuals who grew up under rationing naturally consumed less sugar and ate healthier, more diverse diets even 50 years later. On a cellular level, individuals raised on sugar rations showed slower biological ageing by 1 to 2.2 years. They exhibited significantly longer leukocyte telomeres (the protective caps on chromosomes that shorten as we age) and reduced chronic immune stress markers like Granzyme B. Now I wonder what the sugar industry has to say about these findings and health professionals having led a fight against salt (specifically sodium) intake now have a new enemy in their sights. One has to say that the food industry has a lot for which they need to answer and the amounts of both salt and sugar added to foodstuffs, either to preserve them, or to pander to a sweet taste, is by now legendary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The furore over the BREP (= Bromsgrove Route Enhancement program) involving the A30 that runs down one side of the town received a degree of Parliamentary scrutiny this afternoon. The local Tory MP had secured a debate in Westminster Hall in which there is a debating chamber that I thinks acts as a sort of overflow to the main House of Commons debating chamber. I managed to secure a view of the debate live but only via the parliamentlive.tv link which is not known to many people and is was therefore not on the main Commons TV transmission on Channel 232. In the event, I think there were only about four people in Westminster Hall for the whole of the debate. Our local MP, Bradley Thomas stood and said his piece, a neighbouring Tory MP lent his support and then a junior minister was detailed to offer the reply to the effect that central government might have provided the money but the management of the scheme is in the hands of Worcestershire County Council and the national Highways Agency were just going to let them get on with it. After years of disruption and a completion date of next Spring, we are promised that a journey from the North of Bromsgrove to the south of the town will now take a whole 2 minutes less during the height of the rush hour. The principal cause of the delay is said to be the discovery of streams, culverts, old drainage and gas utilities long since forgotten which got in the way but had to be investigated and then removed. All towns must experience traffic disruption when road works take place but my suspicions are that Bromsgrove has suffered very much more than the average for this type of ‘improvement’ Tonight, a little bit of diversionary TV might have been very much appreciated but there is nothing much on offer until about 9.00pm when the contributions of John Simpson, the veteran reporter, are to be profiled. His career spans some sixty years so there will be an abundance of news clips and news reports which might make for some entertaining TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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