The importance of explanations

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The last couple of days Little One has been poorly, with a high temperature. Of course the general advice is to keep them cool and give paracetamol or ibuprofen (available as allegedly child-friendly fruit-flavoured suspensions) to bring down the fever. The snag with this simple advice is that she simply refuses to take any, and getting a couple of big adults to hold her down and force her mouth open while pouring a spoonful down her throat would probably constitute child cruelty and could also be dangerous. So, what to do? I have some dispersible mini-aspirin, so I thought perhaps I could drop one of those into her glass of water and treat her that way. But the instructions on the pack said ‘Not for children under 6’. But why not? There was no explanation at all, and after all aspirin has been around for decades and has no really serious side-effects that I knew of, so I thought perhaps that was due to concern about the effect on a sensitive little stomach. In that case I thought perhaps dispersible aspirin would be OK, since it would be taken just a little bit at a time and wouldn’t sit against the stomach lining to cause an ulcer. Just to check I looked online and found that there is a possible association with the potentially-fatal Reye’s syndrome I have never heard of this and wouldn’t know anything about it if I hadn’t made the extra effort to look for more information – why can’t an extra sentence be added to the packing note? This reminded me of other medical advice years ago. I used to work in the biomedical field and did quite a bit of work on osteoporosis. Part of the advice regularly given to those at risk, particularly post-menopausal women, is to take regular exercise and ensure an adequate dietary supply of calcium and vitamin D. Suggested foods include dairy produce and canned salmon. I puzzled over this for years, literally. What could possibly occur during the canning process that would make canned salmon a good source of calcium, but not fresh salmon? Do they add some source of calcium to it? The ingredients on a can of salmon suggest not. I was totally mystified – and I’m not stupid. In the end I found that the people who disseminate this health advice assume that people who eat canned salmon eat the entire contents of the can, and don’t pick out the nasty crunchy bones as I always do on the rare occasions that I eat it. I can’t believe I’m the only person who does this – why don’t they simply write ‘Good dietary sources of calcium include canned salmon – as long as you eat the bones.’ I can just imagine that plenty of people discuss their diet with the doctor and explain that they often eat canned salmon, and the doctor probably nods and agrees that is a good thing to eat and doesn’t ask whether they eat the bones, and the patient naturally doesn’t volunteer the information, and so everyone remains puzzled as to why it isn't having the desired effect. Again a little bit of explanation is all that’s needed. All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2017.