Mad Dogs and Englishmen.....

I’m writing this in 28 degrees of heat.

You can guess that I am not at home – it’s cold and rainy there. I am in Gran Canaria trying to meet a deadline and I am sitting indoors with a huge bottle of water. We went out for a walk at 7.30 this morning and will go out to the pool at 4pm or so. It really is too hot for fair skinned northern European types.

Last week, the body of British TV presenter Dr Michael Mosley was found on the Greek island where he had been holidaying, after days of speculation re what had happened to him. The most reported fact was that he had gone missing in 40 degree heat, the middle of the day.

The first reports of him being missing came through mid week. He had disappeared, just gone out for a walk and got lost, or had fallen and was waiting somewhere to be rescued, hopefully after crawling into some shade. Many had presumed, as we do in these days, that he had his phone with him and had raised the alarm and it was just a case of pinpointing exactly where he was, and then getting him out of there.

He was 67 but very fit, healthy, a media spokes person for living a healthy life.

Then the story, and the rumours, started to get a bit bizarre. He had gone out alone in 40 degrees of heat for a walk. CCTV captured him in an empty street with a small rucksack, a hat and a black umbrella for shade. He had in the past, talked about the mental benefits of going for a walk without a phone, technology is a good servant and a bad master. 

On the day he disappeared, he did not have his phone with him.

He also seemed to have either got lost or changed his mind about where he was going, it was only when the CCTV (in a different location to where he was presumed to be) showed him walking past a tavern, down a deserted street, that the search teams realised they had been focused in the wrong area.

Something, that turned out to be his body, was spotted situated on the rocky coast by a boat patrolling the area, looking for signs of life.

They found him lying against a fence  near the Agia Marina Beach. A PM was carried out, it turns out that he had died on the day he disappeared, of natural causes. He may have taken a wrong turn but  knew he was near the marina but collapsed before he could reach it.

Probably heatstroke and exhaustion. 

He was an interesting man, a doctor who had a way of making complicated things simple, god alone knows how many lives he has saved and changed for the positive by encouraging people to do ’just one thing'.  I have his book of that name and it’s exactly what it says – do just one thing to help change the bigger picture of your health and the health of the nation. Standing on one leg while brushing your teeth was one of his favourites. He popularised the 5 to 2 diet - eat well but healthily on five days and then stay under 500-600 calories on the other two days of the week.

                                                      

He was always popping up on the tv, on the radio, with his friendly approachable style, giving advice on diet, exercise and healthy living. I read somewhere that he had been a diabetic but had to adjust his eating and his lifestyle to reverse the changes. Which I presume means that he was an non-insulin dependent diabetic and when he lost weight and learned to eat to in a way that didn’t stress his pancreas, his blood sugars maintained a good level without medical intervention.

He also ate a tape worm just to show that it wasn't a good idea to have such a parasite in your system for 6 weeks. I didn’t see the programme but it's reported it was wonderful TV !!  "infested; living with parasites" if you want to look it up!

Here are a few ideas from his Just One Thing book.

Eat a little bit of dark chocolate a day.

Eat beetroot

Buy some house plants ( I typed that as “house pants” which - on either side of the pond - could be useful!)

Dance!!

Learn to visit and value green spaces

Allocate ten minutes a day to day dreaming.

Read 30 minutes of fiction a day. Good for mental health !!

                                                                    

He was very likeable, personable and was always hugely enthusiastic about life.

Which makes his demise all the more bitter

An MP who lost 4 stones following one of Mosley diets was quoted as saying “Through courageous, science-based journalism, Michael Mosley has helped thousands of people get well and healthy. I’m one of them.”

Somebody else said, “He did change the types of conversations people have about health care and what people can do for themselves”.

 All of which begs the question, "What was he doing out walking in that heat, without enough water?"  I’m presuming in a region that he did not know that well, otherwise he wouldn't have got lost. And if the diabetes story is true--- all of the above even more so.

It’s just a very tragic situation.  A sad day for us all.