Did you know?
If you have asthma, COPD or emphysema, your doctor might have prescribed an inhaled medication for you. There are various devices used to deliver these essential medicines, and the best known is a ‘puffer’ or pMDI, pictured below. Puffers contain propellants, which are greenhouse gases thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. One two-hundred dose puffer has the climate impact of a 290km car journey! Fortunately, for most teenagers and adults there are alternatives to these devices which are just as effective, and often easier to use. If you are currently using a puffer, you might like to ask your doctor about more climate-friendly alternatives.
Please do NOT cease your asthma medications without talking to your doctor.
Health Promotion: Bowel Cancer Awareness Month
June is Bowel Cancer Awareness month. Did you know the government has lowered the age for bowel cancer screening to 45 years of age? This government-funded program is for a 2-yearly faecal test. If you are over 74 years old or have had a recent colonoscopy, you may be ineligible for a government-funded screening; however, it’s important at any age to speak with your doctor if you have any new symptoms, especially blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss or a recent change in bowel habit.
A diet high in vegetables, wholegrains and fibre can help prevent bowel cancer, but there are well known links with other diet and lifestyle habits and bowel cancer, including:
- A diet low in fibre
- High red meat consumption, especially processed meats
- Being overweight or obese
- Alcohol consumption
- Smoking tobacco
To start on the bowel cancer screening program, call 1800 627 701 or visit the National Cancer Screening Register website here. You can also request a kit from our clinic.
Fun Fact
Simone is one of the welcoming staff you will meet on reception at Merri-bek Family Doctors. When not at the clinic, Simone transforms into a dynamic fire performer, specialising in fire-eating, breathing and spinning. Her passion for performance has taken her to a range of events, from Melbourne Fringe to fundraising for Transplant Australia, and even to stages in Cambodia.
Whether supporting patients or lighting up the stage, Simone brings precision and a warm, approachable spirit to everything she does.
Heart Food
Enjoy with us this beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and peace activist who died in 2022.
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
|to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.
