Grand designs

[nod]

Just watched tonight’s Grand designs

Nice house But a bit disappointing when a young couple like that don’t even paint a skirting board or move a few bricks

Though next weeks looks a better watch Described as a selfbuild  

[epsilonGreedy]

45 minutes ago, nod said:

Just watched tonight’s Grand designs

Nice house But a bit disappointing when a young couple like that don’t even paint a skirting board or move a few bricks

Though next weeks looks a better watch Descibed as a selfbuild  

 

I thought it was the best of the new season. The couple were maxed out with their separate business, hospital visits, 3 young children and researching non toxic building materials. Were there any bricks in their build?

 

Next week will bring me down to earth, Swmbo says she will be to scared to watch.

[ultramods]

I did feel a bit uneasy with tonights episode. If the children has such extreme allergies and asthma surely it would be better to live out of the city. The children can't be inside the house all the time. 

[epsilonGreedy]

2 minutes ago, ultramods said:

I did feel a bit uneasy with tonights episode. If the children has such extreme allergies and asthma surely it would be better to live out of the city. The children can't be inside the house all the time. 

 

 

The early medical outcome hints they did the right thing. Mum and Dad had London centric businesses, I imagine their incomes would drop 70% doing the same in provincial rural UK.

[AliG]

There are some fantastic new drugs hitting the market for asthma as well as atopic dermatitis(eczema) which is related.

 

Historical treatments work on the symptoms of asthma, these actually cure it by acting on the proteins that cause it.

 

These should be imminently available to help the children. One of them, Dupixent, has just been approved in the UK for AD, asthma should follow next year.

 

This Grand Designs is giving me ideas for a possible new project.

 

BTW I had never had asthma or allergies in my life, but have lived in Central London Monday to Friday for work for the past 15 years. I stayed with the in laws who had a bulldog around 7 or 8 years ago and almost ended up in hospital with asthma from the allergy, the doctor thought I had pneumonia. I do worry about the effects of the air quality. The window ledges my apartment are covered in grey dust.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by AliG

[ultramods]

@epsilonGreedy

 

I'm not doubting that the house is a healthy place to be in, however they will be out of the house 30% of the time. The husband owns a national company so surely doesn't have to live in London.

 

 

 

Edited October 3, 2018 by ultramods

[ultramods]

On a more positive note, it looks like they got quite a lot of house for a build in London with a basement.

[Onoff]

Let's be honest some people rather than move themselves / their kids to a healthier place would seek and have the resources, to control their current environment which to an extent is what I guess they've done. It's a tad boy in the bubble. Creat a micro climate in a sea if filth type thing. We've a number of members here who've seen massive improvements in their health conditions doing the self same thing. 

 

On the other hand SWMBO & I were discussing the obsession with over cleaning and sterile houses the other day along with the lack of exposure to "good bugs" in kid's and indeed adult's lives nowadays. Our two have grown up outside playing in mud, sand pits, the pond etc and are pretty robust and both as skinny as rakes. Close exposure to family pets too I'm sure helps build a healthy immune system. We both were like them and even more outdoors orientated but a lifetime of junk food and antibiotics I reckon has somewhat depleted our gut flora. Aka we're a pair of near chubsters! Was considering having one of those gut bacteria count tests done...

 

Our house must be super healthy if the number of spiders are an indicator. I find they make great natural dust traps! 

[nod]

I think the lady is a yummy mummy 

Sad that all her kids had all sorts of allergy’s 

We wondered what would happen when the kids left the house or went out into the garden

Wouldn't moving out of London and commuting in be better for their children 

He had a nationwide fitness training business and she an art gallery 

I wouldn’t think either would have to be there for 7am each morning 

[newhome]

I haven’t watched it but I’m sure many modern houses, even developer bought ones (yeah yeah I know what people feel about those) could be made more healthy than old damp houses. Hard floors everywhere (I never understand the obsession with carpets anyway), furniture carefully chosen, MVHR, decent vacuum cleaner, no pets, and I’m sure there would be a big improvement for most people. Ultimately some people suffer from severe allergies and I don’t necessarily think that they can be prevented although I’m with @Onoff to a degree re growing up around pets and mud. I had pets and horses and seemed to spend half my childhood wading round in mud outside. Many kids these days just seem to want to stay indoors on their phones etc living a virtual world. Fresh air is good but I don’t really include London or other large cities in that statement. I’m sure that London is not the healthiest place to live. 

[gravelld]

Great work; Mr McCloud needed to be at his creative best to manufacture drama in this one.

[daiking]

I think this is mostly bang out of order. 

 

Fair enough to suggest they built a cob house out of unicorn phlegm and fairy belly button fluff instead but to criticise their parenting and life choices? When all they’re trying to do is the best for their family in line with what would be considered mainstream best advice?

 

For a start, if you required frequent medical care and potentially urgent medical treatment, the last place you’d choose to live is the countryside, 40 miles from the nearest hospital only to find the immunologist (or whomever) was shit.

 

 

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, daiking said:

I think this is mostly bang out of order. 

 

Fair enough to suggest they built a cob house out of unicorn phlegm and fairy belly button fluff instead but to criticise their parenting and life choices? When all they’re trying to do is the best for their family in line with what would be considered mainstream best advice?

 

For a start, if you required frequent medical care and potentially urgent medical treatment, the last place you’d choose to live is the countryside, 40 miles from the nearest hospital only to find the immunologist (or whomever) was shit.

 

 

 

Not really a criticism and I feel desperately for them, more some musings as to the why as to the increase in allergies in the Western world. Depletion of good bugs has been shown to have a massive impact on health. Kids are being born via elective caeserean when there's no medical need just to fit in with parent's schedules. There is some evidence that that plays a part in the development of the immune system. It's great that we are able to some extent throw money at problems which may as a society in fact be of our own making.

[newhome]

1 minute ago, Onoff said:

It's great that we are able to some extent throw money at problems which may as a society in fact be of our own making.

 

Great for some people perhaps but the vast majority couldn’t afford to. 

 

[NSS]

1 hour ago, daiking said:

I think this is mostly bang out of order. 

 

... When all they’re trying to do is the best for their family ...

 

 

I don't think anyone is knocking them for trying to do the best for their family, just questioning how they've gone about it. As someone whose build was all about creating the right environment for my wife and her chronic lung and allergy conditions (not to mention multiple other serious health conditions), and as I said over on the other thread, obsessing about low voc materials is irrelevant if you then create so many dust traps.

[recoveringbuilder]

My friend and I were just talking about this the other day, when we were young and indeed our children you very rarely heard of all these allergies, also obesity was very rare in children too but then again we and our children were out playing whenever we could, I can remember rolling down hills which had been newly cut for hay , playing at burns (streams) dabbling in the water and generally getting mucky ,it was a fantastic childhood, not sitting in front of a screen!

[Onoff]

As  a kid we would happily use dry cow pats as frisbees, sometimes they were only dry on the outside! :) We would make camps from sticks and logs covered in leaf mould and ferns. Every year we'd collect frogspawn, collect conkers etc. Apples, walnuts, greengages, blackberries were eaten straight off the bush/tree without washing our hands. Open fires were used to cook apples. spuds and sausages etc after stripping a bit of silver birch bark off to get it going. Cats and dogs were our playmates / pillows in some cases. 

 

Not a bottle of hand sanitizer in sight! I looked like a xylophone standing on end I was that skinny. The bug count I was exposed to must have been huge. Mum had a bottle of bleach and some Dettol but the most the worktops got was probably a wipe with a rinsed out dishcloth. Vim & Ajax were the only "cleaners" I remember.

[NSS]

21 minutes ago, Onoff said:

As  a kid we would happily use dry cow pats as frisbees, sometimes they were only dry on the outside! We would make camps from sticks and logs covered in leaf mould and ferns. Every year we'd collect frogspawn, collect conkers etc. Apples, walnuts, greengages, blackberries were eaten straight off the bush/tree without washing our hands. Open fires were used to cook apples. spuds and sausages etc after stripping a bit of silver birch bark off to get it going. Cats and dogs were our playmates / pillows in some cases. 

 

Not a bottle of hand sanitizer in sight! I looked like a xylophone standing on end I was that skinny. The bug count I was exposed to must have been huge. Mum had a bottle of bleach and some Dettol but the most the worktops got was probably a wipe with a rinsed out dishcloth. Vim & Ajax were the only "cleaners" I remember.

Agree with all that, but there are exceptions. Mrs NSS for example spent chunks of her childhood in oxygen tents and bandaged from head to toe due to chronic asthma and eczema. Her allergies have always been bad but she has become allergic to an increasing range of 'things' and her reactions more severe despite being a child of the sixties (so exposed to all the same things you mention).

Edited October 4, 2018 by NSS

[newhome]

There is a definite tendency for kids, especially teenagers, to sit on their phones all day. My brother has twins who compete in athletics at county / national level but they still lie on their beds using their phones all day given the chance. 

 

[lizzie]

6 hours ago, NSS said:

Agree with all that, but there are exceptions. Mrs NSS for example spent chunks of her childhood in oxygen tents and bandaged from head to toe due to chronic asthma and eczema. Her allergies have always been bad but she has become allergic to an increasing range of 'things' and her reactions more severe despite being a child of the sixties (so exposed to all the same things you mention).

+1 with Mrs NSS.  Am just about to start a very lengthy course of outpatient treatment for some extra allergies. Great....newly apparent debilitating allergies, now deemed chronic but only appeared since we moved into our ‘healthy,’ new build.....injections are so expensive bupa do not cover have to be done on nhs after passing the eligibility criteria (health not financial).  

 

It was always the joke I would end up living in a bubble and then eventually we decided to build my bubble as I was so increasingly unwell in our home of 30 years.  ATM it looks like my healthy bubble has a leak and is not the healthy home for me we had hoped for, everyone else thinks its great, me I spend half my life drugged or at the hospital and I am far worse than I was in the previous house. 

 

BTW I too was a child of the sixties and grew up in Wales, my mother believed a bit of mud and dirt was good for kids and we were never prissy ...hard to be in house full of dogs, cats, rabbit .

etc.......even the horse but that was outside so go figure on my state of health. Rest of the family are fine.

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, lizzie said:

+1 with Mrs NSS.  Am just about to start a very lengthy course of outpatient treatment for some extra allergies. Great....newly apparent debilitating allergies, now deemed chronic but only appeared since we moved into our ‘healthy,’ new build.....injections are so expensive bupa do not cover have to be done on nhs after passing the eligibility criteria (health not financial).  

 

It was always the joke I would end up living in a bubble and then eventually we decided to build my bubble as I was so increasingly unwell in our home of 30 years.  ATM it looks like my healthy bubble has a leak and is not the healthy home for me we had hoped for, everyone else thinks its great, me I spend half my life drugged or at the hospital and I am far worse than I was in the previous house. 

 

BTW I too was a child of the sixties and grew up in Wales, my mother believed a bit of mud and dirt was good for kids and we were never prissy ...hard to be in house full of dogs, cats, rabbit .

etc.......even the horse but that was outside so go figure on my state of health. Rest of the family are fine.

 

What have you got to lose?

 

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/fecal-transplants-allergies-autism-and-autoimmune-disease

[lizzie]

@Onoff thank you for that....I am a big fan of ‘alternative’ medicine and probably something of a nightmare for my conventional medics team as I always want to know the detail of everything proposed - the how and why and then I go away and research it. I like to know what is proposed for my body, I only have one!!!  I will pass on this site to my least fave consultant for his review  and ask him to report back to me??

[NSS]

2 hours ago, lizzie said:

+1 with Mrs NSS.  Am just about to start a very lengthy course of outpatient treatment for some extra allergies. Great....newly apparent debilitating allergies, now deemed chronic but only appeared since we moved into our ‘healthy,’ new build.....injections are so expensive bupa do not cover have to be done on nhs after passing the eligibility criteria (health not financial).  

 

It was always the joke I would end up living in a bubble and then eventually we decided to build my bubble as I was so increasingly unwell in our home of 30 years.  ATM it looks like my healthy bubble has a leak and is not the healthy home for me we had hoped for, everyone else thinks its great, me I spend half my life drugged or at the hospital and I am far worse than I was in the previous house. 

 

BTW I too was a child of the sixties and grew up in Wales, my mother believed a bit of mud and dirt was good for kids and we were never prissy ...hard to be in house full of dogs, cats, rabbit .

etc.......even the horse but that was outside so go figure on my state of health. Rest of the family are fine.

Hi Lizzie, really sorry to hear your new home has not had the positive impact on your health that ours has had for my wife. Feel bad for getting your hopes up when I first reported how much better she's been since moving in, and just hope things take a turn for the better for you soon.

[lizzie]

@NSS please dont feel bad its the way of things with this rotten ‘condition’ (s) I’m sure you are used to the unpredictability of it all and the dreaded phrases chronic and ideopathic...... I am very pleased for Mrs NSS and hope she has many years of better health in your lovely bubble

[Onoff]

41 minutes ago, lizzie said:

I always want to know the detail of everything proposed - the how and why and then I go away and research it. 

 

No sh!t!

 

SWMBO & I, only half jokingly, suggested to the two skinny as rakes kids, that they might like to "donate" so Mum & Dad could recolonise our depleted gut bacteria.

 

I'm going to sound like a conspiracist nutter but I really believe modern "life" knocks the sh!t out of us, pun intended. Even if we're eating healthily, what we're putting in is so sanitised it's making us all out of balance.