Well it really has been an extraordinary week for me! Very occasionally I get offers that are hard to turn down. A few months ago I was asked by a company that make pacemakers (amongst a great many other medical things) if they could show me around their factory and pick my brains. There have been some really exciting developments in the world of pacemakers in the last year or two, and of course I can’t deny my ego loved being asked for its help!
(As an aside, I tend to have a chronic case of imposter syndrome – the feeling that at any moment someone will burst into the room and expose the fact I’m not at all qualified / experienced / good at being a consultant cardiologist, and will be carted away to do something more appropriate for my skillset. The first time I ever thought to question this was when I started working with a leadership coach a few years ago. He called me ‘teflon’ as compliments slipped off me and I would gloss over them, preferring to be self-deprecating. I still have imposter syndrome, but am getting better at accepting compliments when they come my way!)
As it happens, the factory was in Los Angeles.
Who am I to argue? And so it was that I flew out on Wednesday, and am writing this from California. I even got to fly business class for the first time which was really fun. At 6’3” economy long haul is always a tough one, so stretching out with some good food and wine was lovely.
In this week’s video I will talk about some of the things I have picked up from my visit regarding pacemakers. I totally understand this is a bit niche, so have tried to pick out a few highlights which will be of interest to the general reader.
It’s only a short visit, and work-based, so I haven’t had time to visit Disney or Universal Studios. However something I was really intrigued to visit, and made a point of doing so, was……
A supermarket.
I am rather food obsessed. ‘Food is medicine’ is rather a trite quip, but holds a lot of truth. If we could improve the diet of our nation, the reduction in chronic disease, and improvement in wellbeing would be huge. I follow a few American doctors, scientists and journalists online, and regularly hear about the ‘Standard American Diet’. SAD
I was therefore really keen to see with my own eyes what this looks like. The food scene there really has to be seen to be believed though. The sheer quantity of food available, and the over-riding poor quality in supermarkets is astounding. Processed and ultra-processed food is the norm. In the supermarket I visited, the ‘fresh’ section was a tiny corner of a huge building, squirrelled away. The meat was homogenous, indistinct. There is no doubt we have a lot of nutrition problems in the UK, but I was shocked by how things are in the US. Remember also that this is California, seen as progressive by many other states. The sheer size of the hotel breakfast was overwhelming. More calories were on offer than I would normally eat in a day.
Last week I spent a lot of time tending to my garden. We have a new veggie patch which I’m very excited about, and a few shoots are showing and growing. The contrast between last week and this is stark!