Your Health Depends On Where You Live

Bill Davenhall - Your Health Depends On Where You Live

This is the TED talk I have chosen for my health-related blog post. The speaker is Bill Davenhall who shows the importance of environment in our lives. He works in the U.S., where he has been living his entire life, as a Senior Health Adviser at ESRI. The video is filmed in October 2009 and is approximately 9 minutes long. The goal he is trying to accomplish is to include environmental and geographical data and merging them into patient's medical record together with medication and surgery history.

Summary

Having experienced the heart attack few years ago Bill decided to find the culprit of it. He started looking where no other doctor had looked before: environment. Air and toxic gases, that factories are letting out and which we inhale every day are damaging our health. But we do not worry about it because they are insidious. What we cannot see cannot harm us, right? Our body and our health depend highly not only on our lifestyle and genetics, but on the environment as well.  

3 useful phrases from the video

Geo-medicine - this is new branch of the medicine so many people haven't even heard about it yet. It is the branch of medicine that takes the environmental, climatic and topographic* impact into consideration. It uses modern technology to see the connection between the patient's health and the exposure to the places he/she has been. This is happening while the patient is in doctor's office. 

(source: https://www.esri.com/library/ebooks/geomedicine.pdf
  http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Geomedicine)

*topography is earth science, graphic representation of the surface features of a place or region

Intensive care ward - if you would suffer from serious disease like trauma (injury), sepsis or organ failure, you would be put in an intensive care ward. It is a room in hospital separated from the rest of the hospital and there work highly trained doctors and nurses. If you're in emergency department and your condition deteriorates, this would require immediate transport to the intensive care unit.

(source:http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ward

               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_care_unit)

to recuperate from emergency surgery - if you're recuperating from a surgery it means your recovering, your condition is getting better,  you regain your strength, be on the mend
(source: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/regain)

What is the takeaway message for me?

I am glad I stumbled upon this topic by accident because this is the topic I really like. What I like about it is that Bill took example from his life, his experience and based on that explained why is the area where you live so important for your health. People always talk about how air is polluted, how others don't recycle and how we should start taking care of the planet. But have doctor's taken this global problems into account? No. I hope that you, dear readers, as well as my friends and family will take environment into account next time you don't feel well or feel something is not the way it should be. This is tightly connected to the environmental problems and pollution and I honestly hope that people will start taking care of the planet because it means taking care of your health as well. 

Presentation skills

The first thing that caught my eye was the introduction. First, he starts with rhetoric question: "Can geographic information make you healthy?" It's interesting because the question is so simple but it really makes you think. And, in my opinion, it is because people never really thought about it or read about it. It continues with metaphor he later explains. He says: "In 2001 I got hit by a train. My train was a heart attack." His entire presentation is accompanied by a very good presentation that makes it easier to understand. He speaks in a normal speed and uses words everyone can understand so his message can be delivered to everyday people and not only experts of this field. He also has few humorous moments and what definitely intrigued the audience to pay attention throughout the presentation.

I hope you enjoyed my post and learned some new words as well as notice some tips for the presentation you thought were irrelevant before. If you want to find out more about geomedicine here is the link to Bill's official website:
http://www.esri.com/industries/health/geomedicine
https://www.esri.com/library/ebooks/geomedicine.pdfHis Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BillDavenhall
And some of his posts in Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-davenhall/

All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

The TED video I have chosen is called “All it takes is 10 mindful minutes”.  The speaker is Andy Puddicombe, who is from Great Britain. He is a former Buddhist monk and mindfulness expert. Puddicombe has also founded a social platform called Headspace that offers guided meditation sessions. The video was published in January 2013 and is nine minutes and 25 seconds long.

Summary:

This video is not about physical health, but mental health. Andy Puddicombe introduces us into the topic of meditation, but in a different way to what we expect. He says it just takes 10 minutes a day to change our view on life. In these 10 minutes you should try to think about nothing; not about the past nor the future, not about happiness nor anxieties. We spend a lot more time than that caring about our look or material possessions. Our mind, however, is the most powerful possession we have, so we should take care of that one too.

We can’t change every little thing that happens to us in life, but we can change the way that we experience it. 

Vocab work:

preventative, also preventive: intended to stop something you do not want to happen from happening, for example an illness

collocations:

preventive measure, preventive  action

to be inundated: to receive so much of something that you cannot easily deal with it all

context/usage in the video:

“You get stressed, you do some meditation. I hadn't really thought that it could be sort of preventative in nature, until I was about 20, when a number of things happened in my life in quite quick succession, really serious things which just flipped my life upside down and all of a sudden I was inundated with thoughts, inundated with difficult emotions that I didn't know how to cope with”.

to be agitated: to be so nervous or upset that you are unable to keep still or think calmly
commonly used:

to be in an agitated state, to grow agitated

context/usage in the video:

You might find a mind that's really restless the whole time. Don't be surprised if you feel a bit agitated in your body when you sit down to do nothing and your mind feels like that. 

Personal reaction:

When Andy Puddicombe first said that we should try to do nothing, to not even think about anything, I was like “Not thinking anything? That’s not even possible!” I have tried to do that several times before but somehow I never succeeded. Maybe I didn’t have the right motivation. I was just curious to see if you can really do something like that. Another point Puddicombe addressed that affected me in a certain way, was that we spend so little time in the present. In the moment we are living right now. We are always thinking about the past, regretting chances we didn’t take and moves we didn’t make. And if we’re – for once – not thinking about the past, we think about the future. I believe that this is totally true. Even now, as I am writing this post, I am thinking about the future. I am thinking of which grade I will receive, if I will pass the upcoming exam, if I will be proud of myself. Or disappointed. All these thoughts take over my mind and make it hard for me to concentrate on the truly important things. Friends, family, love. That is what makes me happy and therefore keeps me mentally healthy. If I ever happen to be in a hopeless situation though, I will remind myself of Andy Puddicombe’s words and sacrifice 10 minutes for mindful thinking.

Presentation technique:

Andy Puddicombe starts his presentation with a statement, followed by a question to the audience. I think this is a very good way to start a presentation because people start listening and thinking about what you say if they are addressed directly. Puddicombe also uses gestures to emphasize his words. He shares his own experiences with the audience to make this topic more interesting. Sometimes he also tells little jokes. Additionally, he gives examples to help the people understand what he wants to say and uses juggling balls to demonstrate his thoughts. It really fascinated me how he can talk and juggle simultaneously. On the whole, I really enjoyed watching his presentation and it inspired me to try out meditation.