7 Signs That Your Detox Plan is Actually Working

7 Signs That Your Detox Plan is Actually Working

Look on the sweet side of Love Actually | Brief letters

The Vogue photographs of Theresa May show her in clothes and surroundings of smug luxury (‘Trump was actually being a gentleman’, 21 March). They should have been juxtaposed with photos of the homeless, the bedridden elderly receiving negligible care or workers suffering squalid conditions – with Mrs May’s ambiguous claim as the heading, “The Tories help people to rise up”. Surely, time for the people to “rise up”.
Peter Cave
London

• Sadiq Khan’s summary of the Battle of Cable Street (G2, 16 March) makes two omissions. In listing the coalition that defeated the fascist march he fails to mention the leading roles played by the Independent Labour party (ILP) and the Communist party. Did he forget or didn’t he know?
Barry Winter
Leeds

• Hadley Freeman (whom I like a lot) goes over the top with her hatred of Love Actually (Opinion, 21 March). The characters played by Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Alan Rickman did not sexually harass their female subordinates in the workplace: Alan’s secretary threw herself at him, and the other two relationships are rather sweet. I agree the film is cloying mostly, but Bill Nighy rescues it.
John Richards
Oxford

• I overheard my seven-year-old grandson telling his four-year-old sister to clean her teeth, “or you will end up looking like grandma” (Tooth extractions on children under four rise by quarter, 21 March).
Barbara Symonds
Birmingham

• My mother would make bread pudding for my dad to carry with him when he competed 12-hour cycle races in the 1950s (Letters, passim). It was much missed by me when he stopped racing.
Jenny Haynes
Horkstow, North Lincolnshire

• Ta-ra, Chuck (Obituary, 20 March).
David Hinton
Bournemouth, Dorset

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Look on the sweet side of Love Actually | Brief letters

Fragrance Sensitivities Can Actually Be Very Severe, Study Finds

You may not love the scent of your coworker’s hand cream, or the perfume wafting across the aisle on the train. But for some people, fragrances like those can trigger a range of very real symptoms, according to a new Australian study, from migraines to difficulties with breathing.

For her research, Anne Steinemann, PhD, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Melbourne School of Engineering, asked nearly 1,100 people to complete questionnaires about their exposure to fragranced products—such as personal care products, air fresheners, cleaning solutions, and laundry supplies—and any reactions those products may have triggered.

The findings, published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports, suggest that fragrance sensitivity is not only a common issue, but can be quite severe. One-third of the study participants reported experiencing one or more health issues from scented products (whether they used the items themselves, or were exposed to them in public places).

The most common reaction was respiratory difficulties, including coughing and shortness of breath. Almost 17% of participants reported this effect.

Fourteen percent reported mucosal symptoms (such as congestion and watery eyes); 10% had experienced migraines; and 9.5% said they developed skin problems (like rashes, hives, tingling skin, and dermatitis).

RELATED: 20 Ways to Stop Allergies

Other reactions reported included asthma attacks (7.6%) and gastrointestinal problems (3.3%). Almost 5% of people said they suffered neurological symptoms (dizziness or fainting, for example); and 4.1% reported cognitive problems, such as trouble with their memory and difficulty concentrating.

What’s more, nearly 8% of the respondents said they had missed work or lost a job(!) in the past year as a result of feeling ill from exposure to fragrances in the workplace.

“Based on my findings, it’s clear that the health effects of fragrance sensitivities can be immediate, severe, and potentially disabling,” says Steinemann. Her previous research in the United States found that 19% of Americans experience adverse reactions to air fresheners. 

“Some people feel like they can’t enter public restrooms or walk inside shops because they don’t want to risk an asthma attack,” says Steinemann. “This loss of functionality makes a fragrance sensitivity not just a health issue, but a societal and economic one too.”

For anyone who reacts to fragrances, there are a few simple things you can do to protect yourself, she says. First, get rid of air fresheners, which don’t actually improve air quality; and open windows for ventilation instead. You can also try to go old school with your cleaning supplies, she suggests, using products like vinegar or baking soda to wipe down your kitchen and bathroom.

Finally, don’t be afraid to let colleagues know a second-hand scent (from a candle, for example, or an odor-eliminating spray) is making you sick. “Speak up!” urges Steinemann. “It’s a health hazard and workplace liability that doesn’t help productivity.”

Fragrance Sensitivities Can Actually Be Very Severe, Study Finds

Is Your Dog’s Collar Actually Safe?

Is Your Dog’s Collar Actually Safe?

10 Natural Cures For Headaches That Actually Work

10 Natural Cures For Headaches That Actually Work

15 Weight Loss Herbs and Spices That Actually Work

15 Weight Loss Herbs and Spices That Actually Work

Yes, you can actually work yourself to death. But is that a surprise? | Sohaila Abdulali

When I was 16 years old, I lied about my age and got a job working in the Hostess Twinkie factory in Natick, Massachusetts. Going in at 7 am in my brand new work boots, dollar signs dancing in front of my eyes, I felt mighty good. Coming out at 4 in the afternoon was a different story.

That night, I returned covered in sweet, white chemical goo. I could barely walk and nausea danced a merry jig from my gut up to my eyeballs. You just try standing on the floor with two conveyor belts in front of you, each moving at a different speed. One has Twinkies, one has cardboard boxes, and you have to put six Twinkies in each box. You can’t miss one or it squelches on the floor further down the line. You can’t vomit no matter how seasick you are. You can’t scream. You can’t move. You can’t pee. You might die if you have to do this one more minute. Turns out, you really might die.

A recent study found that the less control you have over your job, the more likely you are to drop dead. Researchers studied 2,363 Wisconsin residents in their 60s for seven years, and found that “those in high-stress jobs with little control over their workflow die younger or are less healthy than those who have more flexibility and discretion in their jobs and are able to set their own goals as part of their employment.”

They also found that people with less control in demanding jobs were 15.4% more likely to die than those with more liberty to structure their own timelines and goals. They recommend that employers ease up a bit, for the good of all and suggest “job crafting,” which involves employees to redesign their jobs to make them more meaningful.

The more freedom employees in stressful jobs have, in other words, the more they flourish. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a Twinkie factory or managing a hedge fund – if you get to choose when you have your coffee break and what you want to get done before that, you’re more likely to be productive, and to live to work another day. If the boss lays off trying to control you all the time, you also get better at your job.

These research subjects were a bunch of 60-year-olds, but the principles easily transfer to managing, say, 6-year-olds. We parents know this – give ‘em freedom (or the illusion of freedom) and they’ll grow in confidence and become more competent human beings.

Job angst is very real. In Japan, there is a word for dropping dead from work stress: karoshi. However, let us remember the word for dropping dead from no work and no possibility of work: starvation. Sure, spending your days feeling seasick in a Twinkie factory is awful. But spending your days wondering how you’re going to feed your children has to be worse.

We don’t all have control of our work circumstances, our bosses or too many other factors that box us in to the lives we’ve (sort of) chosen. But sometimes there are choices even within tight constraints. Herman Melville’s character Bartleby, who had a drab office job, one day simply said: “I would prefer not to.” He got away with it. Perhaps, armed with scientific proof that the alternative might be a shorter life on this marvelous earth, we can all find some courage and fight to have more autonomy at our jobs.

Yes, you can actually work yourself to death. But is that a surprise? | Sohaila Abdulali

What actually is the Mediterranean diet – and does it work?

It is said to be better at lowering cholesterol than statins, and able to prevent dementia and heart disease, and will not make you fat. Anything that good for you might be expected to smell foul and come in a medicine bottle, but the Mediterranean diet is generally considered to be delicious, except by those who hate olive oil.

It is a potential answer to the obesity crisis crippling healthcare systems, but few understand exactly what the diet is and most of us do not follow it, including increasing numbers of people who live in the Mediterranean. The scientist Ancel Keys and the cookery writer Elizabeth David, two of the pioneers who helped open the eyes of northern Europeans to the wonders of the Mediterranean diet, must be turning in their graves.

We are constantly presented with paeans to the Mediterranean way of life and were faced with yet another this week, when a study presented at a heart disease conference in Rome claimed that those who ate a diet rich in vegetables, nuts, fish and oils were 37% less likely to die early than those who ate red meat and butter.

But ask anybody what the Mediterranean diet actually is and few will give you the same answer. It is not a weight-loss regime such as the Atkins or Dukan diets. It is actually not a prescriptive diet at all, rather a pattern of eating. In spite of the name, it has less and less in common with the way that many people in southern Europe live and eat today.

In the Greek tavernas, thronged with British holidaymakers in the summer months, the Mediterranean diet so highly regarded by health experts can turn into a lamb kebab with rice and chips, washed down with lager. Pasta, which used to be a side dish, overflows the enormous bowls in which it is served in Italian restaurants. The French have finally lost the battle against the Big Mac.

Seafood, including octopus, is a component of the traditional Mediterranean diet, but consumption varied according to location. Photograph: Alamy

The Mediterranean diet is based on a rural life where people ate what they grew, which is fast disappearing. The UN has recognised the diet as an endangered species. In 2013, Unesco listed the Mediterranean diet as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, Italy, Morocco and Portugal.

Even health experts and nutritionists differ on the detail of the Mediterranean diet, but the principles are fairly clear. It is about an eating style based on large amounts of fruit and vegetables, legumes such as beans, lentils, peas and peanuts, whole grains and especially olive oil.

Fish and seafood are part of it, but their consumption varied in the past according to how close people lived to the sea. Chicken, eggs and small amounts of dairy, such as cheese and yoghurt, are there in moderation, but red meat and sweets would rarely be consumed. The diet includes a small amount of wine with meals. Pasta, bread and potatoes are variables from one region to another. It is quite a high-carbohydrate diet, which was fine when people were physically active on farms or fishing boats.

Notably, none of this comes in a box. The supermarket spaghetti bolognese does not count. The Mediterranean diet has no preservatives. It is freshly picked, plucked and cooked.

The use of olive oil is interesting, according to Tom Sanders, an emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, who has carried out studies involving Mediterranean diets. “If you are trying to get people to eat a lot of vegetables and salad, it’s quite difficult to do without oil,” he says. “And if you are putting oil on top of salad, it also has a bit of a satiating effect. Aubergines or tomatoes in oil – you can have enough of that quite quickly. Whereas something that you’ve got saturated fat in, such as cake or biscuits, it’s easy to knock them back and you don’t realise how much is going in.”

But there is more to the Mediterranean diet than the food on the plate. Unesco waxes wistfully lyrical on a whole idealised lifestyle that may appear to have little to do with the modern Mediterranean as we know it. “The Mediterranean diet involves a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking and particularly the sharing and consumption of food.

“Eating together is the foundation of the cultural identity and continuity of communities throughout the Mediterranean basin. It is a moment of social exchange and communication, an affirmation and renewal of family, group or community identity,” the citation says.

Fresh produce at a street market stall in Naples, Italy. The key element of the diet is eating a large amount of vegetables. Photograph: Alamy

“The Mediterranean diet emphasises values of hospitality, neighbourliness, intercultural dialogue and creativity, and a way of life guided by respect for diversity.”

Shared family meals, it is now widely understood, help people eat well and avoid excess, while the TV dinner habit is linked to obesity.

Keys, a Minnesota academic, started to investigate the health benefits of Mediterranean eating in the 1950s, after a visit to Naples. He was concerned about the large numbers of men dying from heart attacks in the US. An Italian colleague had told him that the heart attack rate among labourers in the Neapolitan area was low. It led to the Seven Countries Study, an enormous project that continues today. The first pilot studies were set up in Nicotera, a village in Calabria, southern Italy, and in six villages on Crete.

The study compared middle-aged men with different lifestyles and diet: on the US railroads, in the villages of North Karelia, Finland, where many men died as a result of heart disease, in the Netherlands, in Italian villages, but also workers on the railroads in Rome, in Crete and Corfu, in villages in Croatia, and in farming and fishing communities in Japan.

It uncovered a link between eating high levels of saturated fat, found in red meat and dairy products, and cholesterol in the blood, and heart disease. The scientists could not prove that saturated fats were the cause, but the finger of suspicion was firmly pointed, leading to changed dietary guidelines in the US and the eventual craze for low-fat everything, with the resulting rise and rise of sugar to make processed food and drinks taste better. Keys has more recently been heavily criticised for opposing John Yudkin, who argued in the 1970s that sugar, not fat, was the problem.

Nowadays, Mediterranean food is often served with chips, while in Italy, pasta has gone from being a side dish to a huge main course. Photograph: Alamy

What did not happen as a result of the study was the wholescale adoption of the Mediterranean diet, although Keys, who died aged 100 in 2004, promoted it in popular books and practised what he preached.

David, a debutante, adventurer and lover of the Mediterranean sunshine, had an influence with her articles and books, describing dishes with aubergines, courgettes and other exotica that were all but unavailable in northern Europe in the 1950s and 60s. But the era of convenience food and the sheer quantity that became available, whether in supermarkets or from takeaways, had a greater impact on working populations.

Nonetheless, Sanders says northern Europe is generally healthier than the Mediterranean regions. Things have changed.

“That sort of diet was accompanied by quite a lot of physical activity. There were moderate intakes of wine, but it wasn’t huge: it was about 300ml or 400ml at most a day. And these guys, particularly in Crete, which was looked at, were pretty active and were quite thin.

“If you look at a follow-up of their kids, the second generation in the Seven Countries Study, they tend to be overweight and eating something quite different – a lot more deep fried food. The equivalent of Colonel Sanders really. And what you are seeing in southern Europe, Greece, is one of the highest increases in rates of cardiovascular disease, so there’s been a switchover.

Obesity is increasing in Greece, which topped the OECD childhood obesity league in 2014, ahead of the US, Italy and Mexico. Photograph: Alamy

“If we look at life expectancy, I think it’s longest in Iceland. Whereas southern European countries, they still have a lot of poverty and they’re not doing so well. And they’re becoming more sedentary.”

Greece topped the OECD child obesity league published in 2014, using data from 2010, with 44% of boys aged 5-17 overweight, followed by Italy on 36%. Both countries had higher rates than the US and Mexico.

Studies continue to show the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. In June, the respected Predimed study in Spain found that overweight and obese people, with heart disease and diabetes, who ate a Mediterranean-style diet high in vegetable fat, because of additional olive oil or nuts, did not gain weight, compared with people on a low-fat diet.

There is no doubt that the Mediterranean diet is good for you. But shifting the habits of nations to adopt, cook and eat it regularly in societies dominated by packaged food manufacturers is quite a task.

What actually is the Mediterranean diet – and does it work?

Is Type 2 Diabetes Actually Reversible? (Here’s What You Need to Know)

More of us are suffering from the signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes than ever before.

In fact, type 2 diabetes is now one of the most common metabolic disorders in America – in 2014, experts estimated that 29.1 million Americans suffered from this blood sugar condition, and the number has only continued to grow (1).

What is Type 2 Diabetes?

Type 2 diabetes is a blood sugar imbalance that occurs when your body stops responding to the hormone insulin.

Normally, your body releases insulin to remove sugar from your bloodstream and transport it to your cells, where the sugar is either used for immediate energy or stored to be converted back to energy later on (2).

Imagine insulin as a delivery driver, sugar as a package and your cells as the house that receives the packages.

When sugar enters your bloodstream, your body tells insulin to “pick up” sugar from your bloodstream, and deliver it to the house it’s going to (which is your liver, muscle, or fat cells) (3).

Now, type 2 diabetes occurs when your cells become resistant, or stop responding, to insulin. It’s like the delivery man trying to drop off the packages, but no one’s home to to sign for them and bring them inside.

Why Do Your Cells Stop Responding to Sugar?

Your cells stop responding to insulin when your body is unable to keep up with the amount of sugar that enters your bloodstream. This happens when you over consume foods that are high in sugar, especially processed carbohydrates such as white bread, white pasta, soda, and baked goods.

Since processed sugar contains no fiber to slow down the release of sugar into your bloodstream, it rapidly floods your body with an unnatural amount of sugar all at once. That forces your body to work overtime to produce enough insulin  to keep up with the sugar that’s entering your body.

To continue with the delivery driver analogy, when your body becomes resistant to insulin, it’s the equivalent of being delivered hundreds of the same package every single day.

Only, your house becomes so crowded with packages that you can’t possibly receive anymore. So, you stop answering the door for the delivery men (insulin), and the packages (sugar) accumulate outside your front door (your bloodstream).

Now, when sugar begins to accumulate in your bloodstream, you begin to experience serious symptoms of type 2 diabetes. Let’s take a look at what these unmistakable signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes are.

7 Unmistakable Signs and Symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes

1. Frequent Urination

When your blood sugar levels rise and your cells aren’t responding, your body knows the sugar must be dealt with somehow.

So your body turns to plan B, which is to pull fluid from your cells into your bloodstream and deliver the sugar to your kidneys. And when your kidneys receive more fluid, your body produces more urine. 

2. Unquenchable Thirst

Unquenchable thirst goes hand-in-hand with frequent urination.

Additionally, your body can’t properly reabsorb water when you have an excessive amount of sugar in your blood. This results in symptoms of dehydration, such as cotton mouth and dry lips.

3. Excessive Hunger

In addition to excessive thirst, excessive hunger is another sign of type 2 diabetes. This is because your body thinks you’re starving when sugar stops entering your cells.

Now, glucose (sugar) is the fuel your brain needs to function. And since glucose must enter your cells before it can be used by your brain, your brain doesn’t receive the message that there’s already plenty of sugar in your body. Therefore, your body will send hunger signals which results in an insatiable appetite.

4. Tingling and Numbness in Your Legs and Feet

Consistently high blood sugar levels can damage the nerves throughout your body.

Nerve damage results in tingling and numbness, or a condition called diabetic neuropathy. Diabetic neuropathy specifically damages the nerves in the legs and feet.

5. Bruising and Slow Wound Healing

High blood sugar levels can cause your arteries and blood vessels to stiffen.

This makes it difficult for your body to deliver oxygen and nutrients through your bloodstream that help wounds heal. Therefore, your body takes much longer to repair skin damage from wounds and bruises.

6. Blurred Vision

High blood sugar levels can cause the lense of your eye to swell, which impairs vision.

Over time, blurred vision may result in diabetic retinopathy, which is the leading cause of blindness in North America (4).

7. Sugar in Your Blood After Fasting

The most common way to test blood sugar levels is the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), which measures the amount of sugar in your blood after fasting for 8 hours.

If the OGTT test measures between 140-200 milligrams per deciliter of sugar in your blood, you’re considered pre-diabetic. Levels of 200 milligrams or higher is diagnosed as diabetic (5).

Don’t Ignore the Signs

As you can see, the signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes can cause serious damage to your health and greatly reduce your overall quality of life. Luckily, there’s good news when it comes to type 2 diabetes: it’s a completely reversible condition.

Since diabetes is a blood sugar problem, it’s possible to balance blood sugar, increase insulin sensitivity and reverse the signs and symptoms of type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise.

If you have type 2 diabetes, prediabetes or suspect your blood sugar levels are imbalanced, I encourage you to speak with a qualified holistic healthcare practitioner who can educate you further on how to reverse diabetes naturally.

Is Type 2 Diabetes Actually Reversible? (Here’s What You Need to Know)

What"s it actually like to have your first youngster in your 50s?

Many congratulations to Laura Wade Gery, head of multi-channel at M&S, and her husband, Simon Roberts, 67, on the news that they are about to become parents for the first time.

That we are even discussing this happy fact is not just because her forthcoming maternity leave was announced on the stock exchange, but because Ms Wade Gery is 50 years-old.

If a man of the same age were to be taking paternity leave, few would raise an eyebrow, but older mothers are still the stuff of debate – even though the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show one in 25 babies are now born to those over 40; a four-fold increase in the past 30 years.

Our idealized image of mothers may have been forged by young maidens from the Virgin Mary to Duchess of Cambridge but, of course, late motherhood is nothing new. The contemporary twist is that a growing number of women are now starting (rather than making surprise additions to) their families long after peak fertility has waned.

In my case, I had always assumed that I would have a family but I was injured in a car crash in 1994, when I was 33, and spent years recovering from a head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, only compounded by the death of my father in 1996.

Naomi Gryn gave birth to her daughter, Sadie, when she was 51

I was in my early 40s before I met Peter, the first man with whom I could imagine sharing a family, and it then took several more years for us to make that happen, with two miscarriages and four failed attempts at IVF along the way.

The last was the month before my 51st birthday – the cut-off age at the fertility clinic in Barcelona we had been using. With two remaining embryos in their freezer, the clinic extended the deadline by which I could have them implanted by three months.

I had made peace with childlessness on so many occasions before, that I don’t know what compelled me to go back to Spain for one last roll of the dice. Perhaps it was my late father’s maxim that you can’t live without hope.

People’s reactions to the news I was about to become a mother at 51 were mixed. My own mother seemed apprehensive at first – although an active octogenarian, perhaps she was anxious about how much energy either of us would have to handle a new arrival.

My sister-in-law, Jane cried with happiness. In the event, having a child in my 50s has been nothing but cause for great joy.

I didn’t tune into NCT when I was pregnant – partly because I was stretched across several jobs at the time and partly because I thought I might feel freakishly old. But the mothers I meet in my corner of London are often not that much younger than me – and I clearly don’t act my age as they always seem surprised to learn that I’m in my mid-50s.

Many people suppose that it must be much more tiring to have a baby in middle age. As I don’t know what it feels like to be running after a boisterous toddler in your 20s or 30s, I have nothing to compare it to, but all the mothers in the playground look exhausted, whatever their age.

For me, the only eyebrow-raising element of Laura’s news is that she is planning to take only four months’ maternity leave. As a freelance writer and filmmaker, I was not entitled to any at all – although I told one producer for whom I’d been working in the weeks leading up to Sadie’s arrival that I expected to be back in action by December.

How naive. I hadn’t really taken on board how having a child would turn mine and my partner’s world so completely inside out. Three years later, I’m still a stay-at-home mum.

Sadie goes to nursery school two mornings a week, but six hours is hardly enough time to achieve anything noteworthy and even if she dropped her afternoon nap, 9am till 3.30pm rarely counts as a full day in the working world.

In my new role, it’s a problem when Sadie leaves her newly acquired magic wand at a café, a disaster when I’m supposed to meet a deadline on a day when she wakes up with a high fever, and catastrophic when the brakes on her pushchair collapse on the eve of our going away on holiday.

We have to include Sadie’s invisible friend, Yoggish, on family outings, spending our evenings Googling remedies for crayon on the wall (mayonnaise) instead of going to the movies, and question whether Sadie will ever show an interest in potty training.

Diane Keaton adopted her two children at the age of 51 and 55

These have been, however, the sweetest years of my life, each and every day filled with unexpected moments of pure wonder. I took Sadie to see my father’s grave this week, to mark the anniversary of his death. She insisted on wearing her sparkly pink dress because, she said, “it will cheer him up”.

I wish I could have cloned myself so that I might have had both my pre-Sadie life and the family life I am relishing now.

Of course part of me regrets that I didn’t have Sadie at a much younger age – not just because the likelihood of my succumbing to some ghastly age-related disease increases with every passing year (thank goodness Pete is eight years younger) but also because I would have so much liked to have had her company for the journey.

Many of my friends have not had children. For some, it was a conscious decision, but mostly that is just how things have panned out and I am aware as I write these words how childlessness can be the source of terrible pain.

Being childfree, however, can of course be fun. Women such as Laura Wade Gery and me know that we have been immensely fortunate to enjoy, for so long, carefree attractions such as dashing to the theatre because someone has a spare ticket or leaping at a job that entails travel and long hours.

That may make me an even happier mother now, than I might have been earlier: I’ve already seen much of the world and done a lot of partying, and though I have always loved working, younger mothers seem more concerned than me about losing their foothold on the career ladder.

When Mimi, the 20-something daughter of a friend complimented me recently on being a good role model as an older mother, I was appalled. “Please try not to leave it as late as I did,” I pleaded.

But for Mimi, now taking her first steps in the working world, reluctant to have her wings clipped so soon after emerging from school and university, and manacled by student debt, even if she were to meet her perfect match tomorrow, owning a family-sized home is more of a mirage than a distant dream.

Companies such as Apple and Facebook have now started offering to pay for female employees of Mimi’s age to freeze their eggs. Although this might sound like a generous provision, in reality the odds of a frozen egg resulting in a live birth are still very poor and, besides, the message that this is putting across is that women can’t – or shouldn’t try – to combine family and work concurrently.

So we should all be cheering when a high-flying corporate executive is willing to embrace family life, whatever his or her age. Far more worrisome is the fact that women should, in the first place, have to continue to choose between having children or realizing their true potential in the working world.

The real issue we should be debating is whether Laura would have got as far as she has in the corporate world if she had been juggling young children with a hectic working schedule along the way.

But if Laura WG can cope with the job she does, she clearly has the sort of stamina needed to cope with the demands of a young child. And judging by her track record, she will gladly embrace the adventure ahead.

What"s it actually like to have your first youngster in your 50s?

How To (Actually) Discover A Foreign Language Although You Sleep

The previous saying that we can solve difficulties more properly when we “sleep on it” may be especially real if the issue we’re striving to resolve is studying a new language.

Researchers from two Swiss universities desired to know if they could increase the learning of phrases from a foreign language by exposing individuals to the phrases in the course of non-quick eye movement sleep (NonREM sleep) – the deep, dreamless rest time period that most of us knowledge for the duration of the very first number of hours of the night.

To discover out, they gathered two groups of study participants, all of whom were native German speakers, and gave them a series of Dutch-to-German word pairs to learn at 10 pm. One particular group was then instructed to get some sleep, although the other group was kept awake. For the up coming handful of hours the two groups listened to an audio playback of the word pairs they’d currently been exposed to and some that they hadn’t however heard.

The researchers then re-gathered the two groups at two am and gave them a check of the Dutch words to uncover any variations in learning.

And certainly there was a distinction: the group that listened to the phrases for the duration of NonREM sleep did drastically better at recalling the phrases they’d heard at 10pm.

The basic however potent trick the researchers employed is acknowledged as “verbal cueing,” and this isn’t the 1st declare created for its accomplishment although sleeping. But what can make this review various is that it puts a finer point on the situations necessary for this trick to truly work—namely, it only operates when we’ve already been exposed to the verbal cues before we rest.

The researchers extra a techie dimension by conducting electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of the sleeping participants’ brains to track neural electrical action throughout the understanding time period. They found that finding out the foreign phrases overlapped with the appearance of theta brain waves, an intriguing consequence since theta is the brain wave state often related with heightened understanding whilst awake (usually we’re in either the large-frequency, higher-alertness alpha or beta states while awake, but it’s believed achievable to induce theta state—slower in frequency than alpha and beta—through concentration techniques).

So, to make useful use of these findings you will require to make positive of two circumstances: only perform audio of foreign words you’ve currently heard, and set the audio to run for the first two to 3 hrs of sleep. When you wake, give oneself a quiz to test your recall.  Do that for a couple of weeks just before going on the big overseas vacation, and you will most likely discover your self communicating more fluently with the locals.

The research was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

You can discover David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website The Everyday Brain. His most recent guide is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Electrical power To Adapt Can Alter Your Lifestyle.

Related on Forbes…

How To (Actually) Discover A Foreign Language Although You Sleep

Do We Actually Have to Fear About Shower Curtains Creating Fat Obtain?

I’m afraid we can appear forward to a good deal much more of this sort of nonsense.

Numerous days ago an article titled “Is Your Shower Curtain Generating You Unwanted fat?” appeared in the magazine Spry and was then reprinted in the Dodge City Everyday Globe.  The article drew readers’ focus to the dangers of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), giving 5 examples of chemicals utilised in each day client merchandise (BPA, phthalates, PVC, PFC’s, and PBDFs).

With a quote from a professor of pharmacology and references to a couple of crude, published research, the writer, Catherine Winters, conveyed the message to her readers that they are surrounded by merchandise containing EDCs that can play havoc with hormonal signaling and induce ailment.  The shower curtain reference was primarily based on a examine that located that shower curtains containing PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, “release up to 108 volatile organic compounds (VOC), some of which could be detected in the air 28 days following the curtain had been hung.”

Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the kind of publicity to the chemical compounds needed to cause the adverse health results mentioned.  You would consider that she is speaking about occupational publicity where 1 is breathing in dust and fumes from these chemical compounds 40 hours a week, week-in and week-out.  In truth, exposures encountered in daily existence are likely to be trivial to non-existent.

English: Plastic bottles in the back of a pickup truck, ready for recycling (Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

I refer to this article not simply because of the wide reach of these publications but simply because the story is symptomatic of anything that is really widespread, not to say pervasive.  We read through and see claims and suggestions of this kind, if somewhat significantly less clearly silly, in newspapers, including the New York Instances, the media a lot more generally, and, even in supposedly peer-reviewed scientific journals.

So this is truly a general, society-wide phenomenon.  In portion, the media and the public are encouraged to think these unfounded scares by bad studies that get published in journals, due to the fact scientists and institutions that should know greater give them currency.  The media can then be depended on to pick up the titillating benefits of these sloppy studies.

If, in truth, as I wrote final week, we are far from comprehending the causes of the weight problems epidemic, we can be sure that in the coming many years a excellent deal of interest will be targeted by researchers on achievable variables that have received significantly less focus but that Could play a role in the improve in weight problems above the past 3 decades.

A hint of a new tidal wave of research that will undoubtedly make numerous new linkages between  a variety of exposures and a multitude of overall health effects is contained in a 2009 paper entitled “Ten Putative Contributors to the Obesity Epidemic.”  The paper has 22 authors and is 79 pages extended.  The lead authors are from the Pennington Biomedical Investigation Center at LSU and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Along the very same lines as I discussed last week, the authors commence out by calling into question the typical explanations of the weight problems epidemic.  They publish that, “Marketing practices of energy-dense meals and institutionally-driven declines in physical exercise are the alleged perpetrators for the epidemic, regardless of a lack of reliable evidence to demonstrate their causal role.”  They refer to these widely cited factors as the “Big Two.”

Even though making it possible for that the Large Two – extreme intake of calorie-dense meals and lack of bodily action – play a position, the authors make the situation that other factors, which have obtained minor  attention, may contribute to fat gain.  For every single of the 10 “putative” elements, they summarize the various varieties of evidence (experimental, ecologic, epidemiologic, and so on.) and examine how every single issue may possibly contribute to the problem.

The ten aspects are:

• Microorganisms


• Epigenetics – that is, variables that affect which genes get expressed


• Growing maternal age


• Greater fecundity amid individuals with greater unwanted fat retailers – that is, the chance that body fat individuals could be a lot more probably to have young children


• Assortative mating – i.e., a unwanted fat particular person may possibly be much more probably to marry a unwanted fat particular person


• Rest deficit


• Endocrine disruptors


• Use of prescribed medicines


• Reduction in the temperature assortment we are exposed to


• and intrauterine and intergenerational effects.

This definitely represents an ambitious study system.  Some of the products signify more centered hypotheses that could be tested (assortative mating rest deficit increasing maternal age), whereas other individuals represent whole new disciplines (i.e., the microbiome endocrine disruptors).

These factors might nicely merit review in relation to weight problems, but it ought to be pointed out that, at current, the evidence for some of them is quite slight.

To the extent that these inquiries are properly-formulated and higher-high quality scientific studies are carried out to handle them, this proposed system is a constructive advancement and is most likely to create new and valuable expertise.

Even so, even though the authors do a credible job of laying out the scientific proof for their 10 elements, there is a disturbing lack of essential viewpoint on some of the data they current.  For example, in their discussion of endocrine disruptors they refer to the truth that most of the population has measurable amounts of these chemical substances in their blood and urine, but they do not query whether these trace quantities are likely to have any biological effect.  They also refer to an association of levels of phthalate breakdown goods in urine with stomach obesity in the NHANES, with out any qualification regarding the uninterpretability of this kind of an association in a cross-sectional study (i.e., in which are the data have been collected at one particular point in time).

It is fine to study these things, and, if carried out right, we are very likely to acquire new and crucial knowledge.  But the final results are unlikely to bear out simplistic suggestions.  They are a lot more probably to flip our interest to things that we didn’t suspect heretofore.

Do We Actually Have to Fear About Shower Curtains Creating Fat Obtain?

The Science Of Maureen Dowd"s Higher: Is Consuming Pot Actually Riskier Than Smoking It?

As more states are on the street to legalizing medical marijuana, a distinct pot conversation has heated up: The likely health risks of consuming marijuana-infused edibles. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd even documented her personal knowledge with edible pot in the kind of a candy bar, which left her “curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hrs.” There have certainly been reviews of ER medical professionals in Colorado seeing much more individuals with intoxication from pot-infused edibles, as nicely as some startling incidents of psychotic behavior and deaths from the items. But is edible pot really any worse than the inhaled edition? Or are have individuals just identified a new plaything that they just don’t know how to operate?

The response is a small bit of the two.

(Photo credit score: D.C.Atty)

One particular of the concerns lies in how the two kinds of the drug are metabolized, and how rapidly the high comes on. “The key difference is in the absorption of the [edible] merchandise into the blood stream,” says Kari Franson, PharmD, PhD, the Associate Dean for Skilled Schooling, Division of Clinical Pharmacy, at University of Colorado at Denver. “Once it is in the blood, it rapidly goes to and has an result on the brain. With smoking, the peak blood amounts happen within 3-10 minutes, and with consuming, it is 1-three hrs. Note that the two are about a three-fold difference, but most users are inclined to wait 10 minutes, not 3 hours before re-utilizing.

In other words, it is less difficult to self-monitor when smoking a joint, since one particular feels the results so quickly. But with edible pot, because there can be an hours-extended lag prior to going through the substantial, you may inadvertently eat an overdose quantity although waiting.

And what you previously have in your technique issues more with edible marijuana – whether or not you’ve eaten lately or not, or have other meds in your body can also impact how the energetic ingredient, THC, is metabolized. These variables can alter “the quantity in the blood five-fold,” says Franson. “The THC will compete for metabolism in the liver with other medicines. Issues that are inhaled can go right to the brain and not have these interactions. So even assured consumers can get shocked with an edible.”

One more, trickier situation is that it’s extremely difficult to know what you’re acquiring when you consume a pot-infused candy bar or other edible. Though there have been latest attempts to regulate it, Franson says she’s even now skeptical about the standardization of the merchandise. Laboratory tests have proven that the real quantity of THC can differ extensively in either route, with some items containing more and some much less than the amount indicated on the packaging’s “nutritional info.” A new law calls for far more rigorous testing of edible goods in an hard work to standardize the sum of THC, and remove from the shelves that ones that exceed the highest 100 mg of the lively ingredient. But time will inform how, if at all, this will minimize the threat.

The signs of an overdose from edible marijuana are related to that from inhaled model, but apparently have the likely to be a lot more extreme, for some of the factors pointed out over. Like smoked pot, the signs and symptoms can be each physical and psychological in nature.

“The most frequent presenting symptom to the ER are anxiety and panic attacks, and acute psychotic episodes – confusion, disorientation, delusions, hallucinations, depersonalization [feeling as if you are observing by yourself from the outdoors],” says Franson. “Physically, individuals have tachycardia, impaired motor potential, ataxia. The time of onset can be thirty minutes to 3 hours and last from three to 10 hours.”

In her editorial, Dowd writes that her symptoms lasted for eight hrs. “I barely manufactured it from the desk to the bed,” she writes, “where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the up coming eight hrs. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, positive that when the space-support waiter knocked and I didn’t solution, he’d get in touch with the police and have me arrested for getting unable to handle my candy.

So how will the edible pot issue perform out? Tighter laws on edibles could support relatively, but it’s partly a matter of raising awareness of the dangers – and waiting for the finding out curve to degree out, says Sam Kamin, PhD, JD, professor of law and director of the Constitutional Rights &amp Treatments Plan at the University of Denver.  “I think edibles pose a true challenge,” he says. “They let a particular person to get really high, often without meaning to. Labeling and dosing will aid with this, but there will nevertheless be a finding out curve.”

Sadly, more lives could be misplaced while the nation is nonetheless obtaining its way in this new territory. But there are nevertheless riskier substances out there, says Kamin, and comparatively speaking, the threat of pot-infused edibles is even now pretty lower. “One does not need to be an apologist for the industry, even though, to note that incidents connected to misuse or overuse of marijuana even now pale in contrast to similar incidents connected to alcohol.”

People will carry on experimenting, of program, and pot-infused edibles won’t be the final new merchandise to increase concern: Pot-infused coffee may quickly be launched in Washington. This, and other new goods, will, no doubt, pose a set of troubles and debates of their very own.

Stick to me @alicewalton or find me on Facebook.

The Science Of Maureen Dowd"s Higher: Is Consuming Pot Actually Riskier Than Smoking It?

Assisted dying Bill: can you actually tell if someone"s of sound and settled thoughts for suicide?

Of program, if we were ever to have an assisted suicide law, it would have to be limited to individuals who are mentally capable, but as a psychiatrist I know just how hard assessing psychological capability can be. And who will be asked to make that judgment? The GP in the surgical treatment, or the medical doctor on the hospital ward. Yes, capacity evaluation is a standard component of a doctor’s role, and physicians routinely make judgements about no matter whether a patient understands a proposed test or therapy. But, when medical doctors assess capacity, they do it to safeguard their patient from harm, not to clear the way for them to commit suicide. If they make a error, the error is on the side of patient protection.

So what will the new Bill propose as safeguards? We must locate out on Thursday June 5. Perhaps it will try out to improve on Lord Falconer’s final Bill. Probably it will say that, if a medical professional has any doubts about capability, there have to be a referral for psychiatric evaluation. Nicely, which is what Oregon’s law says but, as we have witnessed, it doesn’t appear to function there.. Assessing mental capacity is not like checking the oil or water degree in a vehicle! It really is a complex process. And it is not the kind of factor that can be done in a single consultation, specially if the determination in question – as it is in this case – is a single with life-or-death consequences. If any doctor, such as a psychiatrist, is to have a fighting possibility of producing a sound judgement about capacity in a matter of such gravity as assisted suicide, he or she wants to know the patient properly and above a time period of time.

That goes also for establishing regardless of whether a request for assisted suicide stems from a settled intent. But how robust is the notion of a settled intent? I suggest that this is rather a fluid idea. And how can it be established by a doctor who has been launched to the patient solely for the purpose of supplying lethal drugs? That occurs not infrequently in Oregon when a patient’s normal medical doctor refuses to consider a request. It is interesting also to note that, in the couple of situations in Oregon the place patients have swallowed prescribed lethal medication but have not died as a outcome, none of them have sought to repeat the method.

Folks do modify their thoughts. This happened to a buddy dying of motor neurone illness who informed me six months prior to his death, that he would gladly get a lethal prescribed drug if it was obtainable. Considerably closer to his death, when he was very frail and incapacitated, he confided that it had been a precious journey and he had so valued the closeness and closure that this time had brought him. He died gently and peacefully possessing learnt to let go.

We would do nicely to remind ourselves what the law is there for. It really is there to shield us, all of us and especially the most vulnerable amongst us, not to satisfy the determined choices of a vocal minority. Dread about dying calls for much better palliative care solutions, a field in which Britain is previously a planet leader,and for a public that is better informed about the realities, rather than the scare stories, about death and dying.

Another pal dying of cancer, Mike Capper, wrote just last weekend about his own expertise of dealing with the end of his daily life:

“Somehow, writing to you is quite helpful to me as I struggle to make sense of my present experiences…..and my interest to the process and manner of my departure. Virtually each day, I am fascinated by how friends, acquaintances and strangers try to figure out how I might be feeling, and how greatest to relate to me. This looks a lot more marked the longer I am about and seeming so really well on some days and so extremely sick on other people. It is a mystery to me too!”

He is another who is learning to let go.

Baroness Hollins is a past president of the Royal University of Psychiatrists and chair of the BMA Board of Science

Assisted dying Bill: can you actually tell if someone"s of sound and settled thoughts for suicide?

Can Cash Actually Buy Happiness? Well, Maybe

Happiness study in excess of the last decade has a lot more or significantly less concluded that we can in reality get happiness, as prolonged as it comes in the type of experience. The conclusion can be described thusly: investing funds on items, no matter how elaborate, leaves us wanting more, even though investing on experiences, specifically with other individuals, yields long-phrase fulfillment. Very good? Very good.

Except maybe that conclusion is not quite very good enough.

New research from researchers at San Francisco State University takes a wrecking ball to that neat dichotomy by suggesting that for many of us, paying cash on experiences also leaves us wanting.

“Everyone has been informed if you devote your money on life experiences, it will make you happier, but we found that isn’t often the situation,” explained Ryan Howell, an associate professor of psychology at SF State and co-author of the research. “Extremely materials customers, who signify about a third of the all round population, are sort of caught. They are not actually happy with either purchase.”

The “extremely material buyers” Howell describes suffer a kind of fulfillment blindness about what purchases mesh properly with their personalities and values.  For these folks—and in accordance to Howell they’re a single in every 3 of us—buying experiences is actually no more successful than buying things, since the experiences will not accurately reflect who they are. In other words, no matter how they devote their funds, they miss the mark of authentic “identify expression.”

Howell supplies an instance: “I’m a baseball fan. If you inform me, ‘Go devote cash on a life knowledge,’ and I buy tickets to a baseball game, that would be authentic to who I am, and it will possibly make me satisfied,” Howell mentioned. “On the other hand, I’m not a massive museum guy. If I bought tickets to an artwork museum, I would be paying funds on a lifestyle expertise that looks like it would be the correct selection, but due to the fact it’s not real to my character, I’m not going to be any happier as a outcome.”

Howell and his staff surveyed consumers with questions designed to find out what factors limit the happiness they should come to feel (in accordance to prior scientific studies) from spending income on experiences. They located that the heaviest consumers of material factors felt the least happiness from experiential purchases.

“The benefits display it is not correct to say to every person, ‘If you commit money on lifestyle experiences you will be happier,’ because you want to consider into account the values of the purchaser,” mentioned Jia Wei Zhang, the lead writer of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley who conducted the research with Howell even though an undergraduate at SF State.

So what’s the remedy? According to the researchers, it’s all about directing our getting power toward experiences that jibe with who we think we are. Spending on experiences that others say are universally edifying (i.e. museums and art galleries)–but that really do not genuinely mesh with our identities–is likely to leave us feeling just as empty as investing cash on possessions that lose their novelty minutes after we get them.

“There are a good deal of factors a person may buy something,” Howell stated, “but if the explanation is to maximize happiness, the best thing for that individual to do is obtain a existence experience that is in line with their personality.”

Although I believe this research adds a valuable dimension to happiness studies, I’d like to know a lot more about the impact of investing income on that which pushes the boundaries of our expertise. Would seem to me that someone who hasn’t traveled outside the U.S. could simply say, “I’m not a Europe kind of man or woman,” but really have no thought what that statement indicates. With out taking a possibility on new experiences, our “identity expression” may by no means increase past the relaxed, and limiting, life niches we carve out for ourselves.

The study will be published in the June edition of the Journal of Study in Persona.

You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website, The Day-to-day Brain. His newest guide is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Power To Adapt Can Adjust Your Daily life.

Relevant on Forbes…

Can Cash Actually Buy Happiness? Well, Maybe

What is it actually like to be a midwife right now?

Burton, who has just been named Midwife Of The Yr by Johnson’s Child awards, admits it can be difficult when the wards are complete. “With the birth fee increasing, we have our genuinely, genuinely hectic intervals and it can be tough at times,” she says. “You give ladies the 1-to-a single care they require and deserve, but when you have received a big maternity unit, you try out to make it not like a conveyor belt.”

The picture of a conveyor belt is a terrifying 1, epecially when midwives are doing work twelve.five hour shifts, as Burton does 3 occasions a week. “You’re lucky if you get a lunch break,” she says. “It’s just so manic there’s no 1 to alleviate you or there’s girls you can not depart. If you get your lunch at five o clock in the evening you are lucky.”

twelve hour days

Her day sounds much more like how I imagined an investment banker’s to be, not a healthcare professional’s, but it is common for a component-time midwife. She tells me about one particular certain shift the place she delivered 4 infants back to back. It meant getting there for the labour, placenta, weighing the baby and then filling in the paperwork. “I was totally exhausted. I didn’t want to see yet another little one once more,” she laughs.

She after even had to birth a child in a lift at the hospital. She says: “I had one particular exactly where we had been expecting a lady in and her husband banged on the door and mentioned, my wife’s waters have just gone. She’s standing by the lift, like, I’m sorry it is coming. I delivered the infant, fundamentally caught it as it came out. I wrapped the child in dad’s jumper and place the mum in a wheelchair.”

With stories like these, it is no wonder Burton is often exhausted, but how does she do it day-in day-out, and make sure that she nonetheless gives the greatest care she can to her individuals? “I need to admit, with the birth price rising, it does get busy,” she says. “Sometimes it’s really emotionally tough. It tests your strengths and emotions as effectively. I really do not believe any individual can turn off entirely. You find out to deal with it but you are not like a robot. You nevertheless have empathy.”

_{Caroline Burton with Louise carrying her little one Zachary}

One particular of her most challenging deliveries was for a girl named Louise who gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Scarlett. “It was extremely challenging because naturally she’d regrettably died inside and you really do not often know what you’re dealing with,” she says. “The baby looked completely perfect when she came out – but it can be very… you really don’t want to break down in front of them when they’re striving to remain sturdy.

“The girls and husbands seem at you like a pillar of support. If you break down, it is not going to help them but I must admit there is been a handful of instances I’ve received in the automobile to go home and just burst into tears.”

Pillars of help?

Burton supported Louise throughout the stillbirth, and then by way of her second pregnancy. She won the ‘Midwife of the Year’ award for assisting Louise by means of her 2nd birth to a healthier son, in which she even changed her shifts to come in and assist with the complex Caesarean pregnancy.

It sounds more like a scene from Phone The Midwife than reality, and Burton agrees that degree of help is no longer the norm. “We really don’t tend to remain in touch with everybody but most of us, if there is a person in this situation and she lives close by to me, we do keep in touch.

“Nowadays you have to be quite careful with Facebook and social media to keep your specialist and your private life separate. We shouldn’t really do it but I gave her my mobile mobile phone quantity since I knew she wasn’t going to go off and promote it on the black marketplace. She needed to mobile phone me up and allow off steam.”

Specialist guidelines mean that midwifes can’t be like their 1920s predecessors, no matter how tough they try out. The barriers of packed maternity wards and the prolonged hrs include to that issue, and Burton thinks midwives need to have far more assist.

“We need a lot more nurses, health visitors, medical doctors and items like that simply because the population is getting so large,” she says. “I know there’s people out there who want to do the job but it’s getting them to do the paperwork, get educated and maintaining them.”

Midwives v. Rottweilers

Recent headlines suggest that it is getting hard to persuade midwifes to remain, or even enter into the market. Midwifery appears to have two contrasting pictures – one particular of the warm, glory days of the past, and a darker modern day one particular.

Burton agrees that folks usually don’t see midwifes in the greatest light. “People presume we’re these stocky matron kinds,” she says. “Someone when said, ‘what’s the distinction among a midwife and a rottweiler?’ A rottweiler does not put on nail varnish.’ Nowadays I feel it’s modifying. Midwives are perceived a lot much more as normal human beings rather than this scary girl.”

Midwifes no longer put on uniforms – alternatively they dress in a function polo shirt and informal wear. Burton says it indicates people are much more relaxed close to them, and stresses that the United kingdom technique is much much more personable than a US one, where ladies do not get the exact same degree of personal care. She says: “We’re extremely significantly led by the females now. They have their birth strategies and we do what we can to adhere to that. It’s not as surgical or sterile.”

_{Call The Midwife nurses}

It sounds like Burton and the other midwifes are making every energy to cope with challenging situations, to try out and give sufferers the assistance they deserve. It is not very Get in touch with The Midwife, but it isn’t the terrifying picture frequently presented in the media.

In reality, Burton tells me it is a great deal more like the BBC Television series than I considered. When she was a neighborhood midwife in Kent, she did pay a visit to her individuals on a bike – only it was a motorbike. She says: “I could get close to rapidly, get via the visitors and it would result in a handful of looks when I’d flip up at the door in complete leathers and say, ‘I’m your community midwife’.”

It’s not the typical picture I pictured, but it is undoubtedly greater than the idea of a conveyor belt and “robot” midwives instantly delivering infants for twelve hours a day. From the sounds of it, the Uk could do with a lot much more midwives to ease the strain on maternity wards and so too very good ones, like Burton, can foster the next generation.

What is it actually like to be a midwife right now?

The actually barbaric practice of FGM | @guardianletters

If French campaigners’ incredulity at Britain’s failure to tackle female genital mutilation (FGM) is unfounded, this government must both supply the evidence it is, or agree that it is not undertaking ample to safeguard younger females. The Uk must at least be doing what the French are (Zero-tolerance by French authorities, 10 February). Perhaps Labour can say what it would do if in government.
Peter Stewart
London

• I even now recall the day when, as a 10-12 months-outdated boy in Sudan, I returned house to locate my sisters minimize and their lives blighted. The memory of their soreness, compounded by my very own sense of helplessness, shame and guilt at not being ready to safeguard or comfort them, has remained with me ever because. As a medical professional, I would come to recognise the struggling that girls endured at each and every stage of their lives due to the fact of what is referred to as circumcision. (My sisters and I never spoke about their trauma, but just lately I have been ready to use it as a backdrop for my novel, The Baobab’s Covenant with Rain.) To deliver this barbaric practice to an finish it is essential that we target the men on whose behalf it is carried out. FGM is hidden since in these societies the females themselves are hidden. But the men are not and are not able to pretend that they have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Isam Babiker
Bristol

• To call FGM cutting, or even mutilation, does not convey the total horror. The clitoris, which is the major female organ of sexual feeling, is almost constantly cut off. In other phrases, if 1 have been to try to uncover a male equivalent, it would be comparable to castration. So, please aid individuals to recognise what FGM is really all about, a brutal attack on women’s sexuality.
Jean Robertson-Molloy
London

The actually barbaric practice of FGM | @guardianletters