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Category: Health

  • Schoolchildren can lose up to 80 per cent of fitness over summer holidays

    Schoolchildren in the UK may be losing as much as 80 per cent of fitness gained during term time through inactivity over the summer holidays, according to the latest research from ukactive. In a bid to provide an accurate measure of children’s fitness, ukactive Research Institute teamed up with Premier Sport and conducted tests on…

  • Mental health outcomes unchanged in four years

    Mental health charity Gofal warns that patient outcomes in Wales have not improved since the Mental Health Measure was introduced in 2012. The Mental Health measure aims to ‘improve the treatment of people with mental health problems in Wales’ and received cross-party support.  However, Gofal’s  recent report, Snapshot 4: Three years on, showed little signs of progress. The…

  • Complementary therapies included in pregnancy guidelines

    Complementary therapy has been highlighted as potentially helpful for the management of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum, in guidelines by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The guidelines on the management of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum cite a study by FHT expert adviser, Denise Tiran, providing evidence for the efficacy…

  • Wholegrain foods reduce the risk of disease and premature death

    Eating wholegrain foods is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature mortality, according to a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies by researchers at the Imperial College London. The study set out to ‘quantify the dose-response relation between consumption of wholegrain and specific types of grains and the…

  • Study links air pollution with mental illness in children

    A large longitudinal cohort study, published in BMJ Open, has found an association between neighbourhood air pollution concentrations and prescribed medication for psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents in Sweden. Researchers examined the data of more than half a million children and adolescents under 18 years of age, with an average follow-up time of three and a half…

  • Absenteeism and presenteeism costs UK workplaces £23 billion per year

    Absenteeism and presenteeism* is costing UK employers up to £23 billion per year, according to the British Dietetic Association’s Work Ready Programme Whitepaper, highlighting the importance of investing in workplace health… The British Dietetic Association (BDA), founded in 1936, is the professional association and trade union for dietitians in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It…

  • Scientists hide wrinkles with ‘second skin’

    Scientists from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a ‘second skin’ to hide the appearance of wrinkles and eye bags. The ‘second skin’ is an invisible elastic film that mimics the properties of youthful skin. The prototype has been tested on the eye bags, forearms and legs of a handful of…

  • High fruit intake may reduce breast cancer risk

    Eating  a lot of fruit in adolescence and early adulthood could reduce the risk of developing breast cancer, according to a study by health professionals in the United States. More than 90,000 premenopausal women aged 27-44 completed a questionnaire on diet in 1991, with over 44,000  doing the same during adolescence in 1998. A follow up on 2013…

  • Happiness gene discovered

    Scientists at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam have found three genetic variants for happiness, in a study published in the journal Nature Genetics. Professors Meike Bartels and Philipp Koellinger conducted a large-scale international study with over 298,000 people and also found genetic differences in symptoms of depression and eleven parts of the human genome that could explain…

  • Dementia Awareness Week

    This year’s Dementia Awareness Week takes place from 15 – 21 May. The Alzheimer’s Society is encouraging people who are worried about dementia to confront their worries by addressing dementia directly and going to the Alzheimer’s Society for information and support. In an article by Nicolle Mitchell, FHT Member and Excellence in Practice award winner, she explains how a combination of…

  • Almost half of us experience a ‘life crisis’

    Almost half (44 per cent) of the British public have either had or are going through a ‘life crisis’, a poll recently commissioned by The Open University reveals. To help people restore their personal balance, The Open University is urging people to discover their ‘Plan P – their ‘Passion Plan’ – and realise their unfulfilled ambitions.…

  • Hormone and neurotransmitter systems disturbed in alcoholics’ brains

    The brain tissue of people with alcohol dependence shows a variety of changes compared to non-alcoholics. All alcoholics’ brains share some characteristics, but some are exclusive to the brain tissue of anxiety-prone type 1 alcoholics or impulsive type 2 alcoholics, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. The researchers analysed postmortem…