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Research that has recently been conducted in Scotland has suggested that going for a short, but brisk, walk can be a good way to combat depression. It has been known for a long time that intensive exercise is a good way to combat depression, but information about whether less strenuous exercise and its ability to deal with depression was, until now, unclear.
It is currently estimated that around 10 percent of people will suffer from depression at some point during their life. The condition is something that can be dealt with with medication but doctors for the most part suggest that mild depression be treated with exercise.
The research has been based on eight separate studies that involved nearly 350 patients. The report stated that they believe walking is an effective way to stop depression developing and that this effect is almost as profound as that which is seen from vigourous exercise.
The authors of the study have said that before any firm conclusions are drawn, more research does need to be conducted but they are confident about their early findings. Prof Taylor, a scientist who looks at the effect of exercise on depression has stated, “The great thing about this study is it shows that something we all do can have a potential benefit for treating depression.”
The study seemed to suggest that whether you walked inside or outside didn’t matter, it was simply the effect of the exercise that was beneficial to combating depression. However, the charity Mind has also previously conducted research which shows that simply being outside is a good treatment for depression.
Therefore it might be possible to combine these two treatments by walking outside, to get the maximum effect. The charity has stated that they highly recommend outdoor exercise as way of treating depression
Research that has recently been released suggests that women who are drinking more than two cups of coffee a day are more likely to avoid depression. The authors of the study have not found out exactly why this is the case but they believe it has something to do with the way caffeine affects the brain’s chemistry. The reason they are so sure it is the caffeine in the coffee is because when they performed a study with decaf, the same effect was not seen.
The study involved over 50,000 nurses in the UK and has recently been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The researchers behind the study, and other experts in the field, suggest that the study is a promising start to more research the needs to be conducted in the field.
Doctors have said that this study is enough evidence for them to start to recommend drinking coffee to women who are more likely to suffer from depression. They have also said that coffee can be a good way for people to boost their mood.
The study has come out of Harvard Medical School and the data was collected over a decade between 1996 and 2006. The data was collected by asking nurses to fill out questionnaires about how much coffee they consumed. Of the 50,000 women involved in the study, around 2500 of them developed depression during the decade. There was a correlation between the women who were drinking less coffee and the rates of depression.
The study suggests that women who drink more than two cups of coffee are about 15 percent less likely to develop depression. For those women who drink four or more cups, their risk of depression is cut by around 20 percent. The study also showed that those who drink coffee were also more likely to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
 Hollywood actress reveals bladder weakness problems Award winning actress Helena Bonham Carter has revealed that she wore nappies on the set of the Harry Potter films as her pelvic floor wasn’t strong enough to keep her leaky bladder in check.
This news will greatly cheer the millions of women for whom incontinence pads have become a key part of their everyday life. It also gives hope to the 15,000 new mums that every week seek help and advice from the NHS, mainly in vain, regarding their pelvic floors after childbirth
The NHS treatment for women who suffer from pelvis floor weakness is painfully inadequate and any story that highlights one of the most taboo of medical matters is welcomed with open arms.
.In a recent survey of GP practices 62% of women seeking help and advice for pelvic floor problems were just sent home with a leaflet that lacks any evidence of clinical effectiveness and does not even follow NICE guidelines. Specialists in the field have long recognized the weaknesses of this indifferent approach.
Clinical estimates suggest that a third of women cannot identify their pelvic floor and how to squeeze it in the first place, so giving them just an instruction sheet is of no real benefit and leads to frustration and despair.
Fewer than half (47.8%) of practices could correctly identify the current NICE Guidelines that recommend that women be individually assessed, trained and supervised by a specialist in a three month programme of Pelvic Floor Exercise (PFEs). Only 20% actually refer patients to physiotherapy or a continence nurse for such treatment.
Fewer than 2% of practices are prescribing the PelvicToner device that offers the greatest hope of a rapid improvement of pelvic floor muscle tone, and is clinically proven to be as effective as supervised PFEs but at a tenth of the cost.
The consequence is that tens of thousands of women each month are not getting appropriate advice and the NHS is wasting tens of thousands of pounds of scarce resources.
In terms of effectiveness, the ‘Exercise your pelvic floor’ leaflet is in the same league as those other great NHS attempts to get the populace to take the healthy option – the ‘Please Stop Smoking’ and ‘Please lose eat less’ leaflets.
Any women with stress incontinence or symptoms associated with pelvic floor muscle weakness should expect their GP to prescribe a PelvicToner™ exercise device. New mothers will receive their PelvicToner free of charge on presentation of a valid Maternity Exemption Certificate so there is no financial excuse for ignoring the potential problem.
For those women too embarrassed to discuss the matter with their GP, the PelvicToner costs just GBP31.99 (including p&p) and can be purchased from www.pelvictoner.co.uk, 0117 974 3534 and all good pharmacies.
A recent review that has been conducted in the UK and has been published in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin has shown that many of the over-the-counter treatments for insect bites do not do a great deal. The study has also shown that in most cases the best treatment is no treatment at all and that insect bites should be left well alone.
The study concluded, “These treatments do not seem to be very effective for treating insect bites. The symptoms of bytes are usually very mild and it is best that those who’ve been bitten leave the bites alone.”
When an insect bites someone they inject saliva into the bites location which can cause a reaction such as inflammation or itching. In some cases the bites can result in an infection which can lead to anaphylactic shock or the development of eczema. This is not something that the study looked into in great depth but it did find that the over-the-counter treatments were not effective at preventing these various reactions.
Steroid creams are often promoted as a way of treating insect bites. They are effective at treating conditions such as eczema, but when it comes to bites, there is very little use using them at all. The study also showed that steroid tablets were of little use to people who had had a severe reaction to insect bites. They are often recommended by marketing to be used as treatment for this type of bite, but the study found that they have almost no effect.
The study urges people to use steroid creams very carefully and says that they should never be used on the face or any skin that has become broken. Many people often take antihistamines to reduce the itching of insect bites, but the study showed this has little effect in reality.
A leading charity has recently stated that it is likely that those who are suffering from diabetes also have high blood pressure. The combination of these two diseases can have a significant consequence on people’s health. The charity, Diabetes UK, has found these figures after studying 2 million people across the country who have the condition.
Around 50 percent of those involved in the study who had diabetes, also were suffering from high blood pressure. The charity have also said that they are concerned about the lack of treatment for high blood pressure and people who’ve been previously diagnosed with diabetes.
The head of the charity is Barbara Young and she has commented, “It is well known that there is a link between diabetes and blood pressure, and this study has simply confirmed this. The chance of these patients developing complications such as kidney failure, stroke and heart disease is increased and we want to see better treatments for these conditions in people with diabetes.”
The information was gathered from diabetes sufferers with both type I and type II forms of the disease. The analysis was done by the charity and this is not the first year that it has been conducted. The charity said they are also worried that on a year-on-year basis, the figures are not improving.
A spokesperson from the Department of Health has stated, “People with diabetes and high blood pressure do have an increased risk of developing certain further conditions. We think it is very important that healthcare professionals make certain that patients get regular health checks on an annual basis.
We encourage them to deal with any concerns they have immediately in order to reduce the risk of any further conditions developing. That said, there are steps that people can take on their own, such as exercising and stopping smoking.
In the last decade it is estimated that in the UK the occurrence of womb cancer has jumped by 20 percent. These figures have come out of the well-known charity, Cancer Research UK. Interestingly, women are more likely to live longer after a diagnosis has been made, but the total number of deaths from the disease has increased. This shows that treatment has improved, but some other factor, which is expected to be obesity, has increased the number of deaths.
The charity has stated that the results are very troubling and commented that this type of cancer typically occurs in women who have been through the menopause. Between 1970 and the mid-1990s, the level of womb cancer remained relatively static, but in the last decade it has begun to increase significantly. Currently it is estimated that just under 20 women in every 100,000 in the population will develop womb cancer. This is an increase of around 40 percent.
Fortunately, in the last decade the survival rate has also increased, with nearly 80 percent of women surviving for five years after the disease has been treated. However, the number of women dying from the disease has increased from three in every 100,000 to 3.7. In 2010 it is estimated that just over 1,900 women died from the disease.
A cancer expert from the charity, Prof Jonathan Ledermann, has commented, “The fact that more women are dying from this cancer is rather troubling, but we should also point out that women are living longer after diagnosis.
Much of this is because of better care and the introduction of clinics for women suffering from bleeding that can occur after the menopause. Advances have also been made in radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery.” Experts predict that if the level of obesity continues to rise, so will the prevalence of womb cancer.
The UK has recently seen the introduction of a new treatment type that has been shown to be particularly effective in treating children with certain types of cancer. The treatment is advanced radiotherapy and it is hoped that it will help to treat over 1000 patients in the country every year.
Before this year, the treatment was only available in Switzerland and the United States but it is now going to be offered in both London and Manchester hospitals. The government said that they are going to be spending £250 million on developing treatment centres for this type of disease.
The treatment actually involves something called proton beams, which are high energy beams that are capable of destroying cancerous cells. They are good for treating complex forms of cancer, especially in children, and can prevent some of the side effects usually associated with treating childhood cancers, such as loss of intelligence, deafness and the development of secondary cancers.
Although the therapy is going to be introduced this year, it is not thought it is going to be available everywhere in the country until 2017. The government is still committed to making the treatment available to people in the UK however and until that time they are going to be paying for people to receive the treatment in Switzerland or the United States. It is estimated that these foreign treatment practices are going to cost the NHS £30 million every year until the new system is developed.
The health secretary, Andrew Lansley has recently stated at a visit to a hospital, “We feel this is a vital service for helping cancer sufferers across the country. Patient outcomes are the most important part of the health care service and we think the proton beam therapy can improve this figure. The government funds will give several hospitals unrivalled cancer treatment facilities.”
Exercise is not something that is capable of changing the genetic code of a human being, but it has been shown that DNA molecules do structurally and chemically change when people exercise. These changes are a sort of DNA modification that provides genetic reprogramming to increase muscle strength and help the body reap the benefits of exercise.
The type of modification that occurs to DNA is known as epigenetic modification and involves the change of chemical markers to the DNA which are beyond the normal DNA sequencing which involves a A, G, T and C.
A recent study has shown that when people exercise changes take place in the DNA and they are essentially responsible for turning on genes that adapt our body to be more suited to exercise. When people exercise it was shown that fewer chemical marks could be found on the DNA and this was confirmed with lab tests of muscle.
The turning off, or turning on, of these different genes is a very simple process for the body and it goes to show how flexible we can be towards exercise. The researchers on the study commented that by exercising we encourage our genome to make our health better.
Viaspan is a solution created by the pharmaceutical company, Bristol-Myers Squibb which is used for the preservation of organs before they are transplanted into a recipient. An investigation is currently taking place as to what caused a bacteria outbreak in the solution and it is believed to be a faulty pressure gauge at the company.
On Thursday night the company announced that they were issuing a recall of the solution after bacteria was found in a solution used in Austria. A spokeswoman from the company has stated that the problem was revealed during routine testing of the solution.
At the production facility, another solution is being run through the system, which will be able to identify if there are any bacteria infecting it. The company are also going to be testing all of the stocks of the substance to make sure that it is all bacteria free.
The spokeswoman commented, “We are conducting an urgent investigation into the situation and we are testing both production facilities, and all of the stock we have recalled.” Currently the government in the UK are working to secure liquids that can replace Viaspan until the situation is cleared up.
However, the government have said that they will continue using Viaspan and prescribing antibiotics to patients who have received a transplant just in case the bacteria is present. If the liquid were to be completely disused, patients would die from lack of available organs. The bacteria found is a type that commonly causes food poisoning which symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea and nausea.
New research has recently shown that hormone replacement therapy for women who have undergone a hysterectomy provides protection against breast cancer for many years, even after the treatment has been ceased. However, the therapy, which is oestrogen only can increase the chance of womb cancer and so is usually only given to women who have undergone hysterectomies.
The research has come out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, which is located in the United States. The study looked at over 7000 women who had been taking the treatment for six years before stopping it.
The study found that these women were one fifth less likely to develop breast cancer over those who had not received the treatment. It also showed that they were less likely to develop a fatal form of the disease and had a better survival rate over the following five years.
The leading professor on the study was Garnet Anderson who commented, “This should leave women who are receiving this treatment assured that they are and no greater risk from cancer, in fact they have a greater protection from the disease because they are receiving this treatment. This study reassures their safety and highlights the low risk of hormone replacement therapy.”
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