Motörhead fan"s vigorous headbanging leaves him with blood clot on the brain

Motörhead lead singer Lemmy performs with his band. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Hefty metal actually can do your head in, in accordance to medical professionals who treated a Motörhead fan with a blood clot on the brain caused by headbanging.

The 50-yr-old German man created the condition following getting carried away at one of the rock band’s concerts.

German doctors say they handled the fan whose headbanging habit in the end led to a brain injury, but that the danger to metal supporters in standard is so little they do not need to give up the shaking.

This is the fourth documented case of subdural haematoma linked to headbanging – a single of which proved fatal.

Professionals handled the fan at Hannover Medical School two weeks after he started suffering a continuous, worsening headache that affected the complete head.

The patient, who was not recognized, had no history of head injuries or substance abuse issues but explained he had been headbanging regularly for years – most recently at a Motörhead concert he attended with his son.

Soon after a scan, physicians identified their patient had a brain bleed and needed a hole drilled into his brain to drain the blood. The patient’s headaches soon disappeared.

In a followup scan, the medical professionals saw he had a benign cyst which may possibly have produced the metal aficionado much more vulnerable to a brain damage.

“We are not towards headbanging,” stated Dr Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian, a single of the medical doctors who treated the guy.

“The danger of injury is very, extremely low. But I think if [the patient] had gone to a classical concert, this would not have took place.”

Islamian said the violent shaking of the head in headbanging can be sufficient to lead to injury as the brain bumps against the skull and mentioned other heavy metal followers had suffered comparable injuries in the previous.

The newest situation was described in a report published on the web on Friday in the Lancet.

A evaluation of the health care literature revealed three earlier instances where headbanging led to blood clots. One particular, an acute haematoma, resulted in sudden death.

Other conditions attributed to headbanging have incorporated a torn carotid artery, a whiplash injury, a fractured neck and air in the chest cavity.

The medical professionals defined headbanging as “a modern dance form consisting of abrupt flexion-extension movements of the head to the rhythm of rock music, most frequently observed in the hefty metal genre”.

Islamian described Motörhead as “a single of the most tough-core rock’n"roll acts on Earth.”

Medical doctors mentioned headbangers need to not be discouraged from enjoying their favourite bands.

“There are most likely other greater chance occasions going on at rock concerts than headbanging,” explained Colin Shieff, a neurosurgeon and trustee of the British brain injury advocacy group Headway.

“Most individuals who go to music festivals and jump up and down although shaking their heads never end up in the hands of a neurosurgeon.”

Islamian agreed that heavy metal followers ought to not automatically skip the headbanging.

“Rock’n"roll will never ever die,” he stated. “Heavy metal fans must rock on.”

Motörhead fan"s vigorous headbanging leaves him with blood clot on the brain

Football fans warned about dengue fever risk at Fifa Globe Cup in Brazil

Sao Paulo is fighting a significant outbreak of dengue fever. The disease spreads swiftly in crowded locations. Photograph: Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil has the highest incidence of dengue fever in the globe.

Final year, instances spiralled to a new substantial of 1.4 million and the trend demonstrates no indications of abating. São Paulo, host city for the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup on June twelve, battled a significant dengue outbreak this month. “Our campaign has not been effective,” laments Guilherme Ribeiro, an epidemiologist who specialises in infectious ailments at the Institute of Collective Health at the Federal University of Bahia. “We commit a great deal of funds and dengue is a priority for the government but regrettably 2013 was the worst 12 months on record.”

Ribeiro understands the mosquito-borne illness effectively having suffered the fever twice and studied it up shut in his native Salvador. A sprawling metropolis of two.6 million with large rises towering more than a sea of shanty towns, Brazil’s third largest city is a prime breeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito which transmits dengue. Salvador is a single of the twelve host cities for the Planet Cup and wellness officials are paying near consideration. In mid-June, the rainy season will commence tapering off and dengue will be at its peak in the area.

Not like malaria and yellow fever which are primarily found in the Amazon states and other thinly populated components of the nation, dengue is rampant in urban places in which 85% of Brazil’s population lives. Swiftly increasing cities and towns have supplied an best environment for the spread of dengue. A tropical climate combined with bad infrastructure for water and sanitation motivate the proliferation of the Aedes mosquito, which can breed in as little as a teaspoon of water.

But what can make the urban mosquito specially hazardous is the truth that in densely populated neighbourhoods, it does not have to travel far to infect a massive number of individuals. A latest examine warned that, “overcrowded cities current extremely favourable situations for enhanced transmission,” and that São Paulo was in danger of turning out to be a sizzling spot due to the fact all four dengue virus strains have been in circulation there throughout an outbreak in 2013 – a first for a massive city in Brazil.

There is no cure for dengue and it can sometimes be fatal. Public health professionals are pinning their hopes on a vaccine which they feel will be the most powerful way to fight the ailment. A number of vaccines are in growth and Brazilian scientists are doing work on one edition at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo. It was produced in partnership with the US-primarily based Nationwide Institutes of Health. Early outcomes are promising and the vaccine will be moving into phase 3 clinical trials at the finish of up coming year.

In the meantime, the best way to get rid of mosquitoes is to eliminate their breeding locations but Salvador is a excellent example of how chaotic urban sprawl can make the process almost not possible. “The mosquito is incredibly effectively adapted to our urban setting,” says Ribeiro pointing to the blue water tanks which are a common sight on rooftops close to the city. They also come about to be an ideal incubator for mosquito larvae which thrive in dark, damp spaces. The tanks are extensively utilised because piped water provide during the city is intermittent. There is widespread public awareness about the want to keep tanks and water containers covered and clean but it does not always translate into action. “The campaign only functions when the local community participates,” says Angélica Andrade Santos, a well being official in the Pau da Lima area.

A single of the favelas (shanty towns) in Pau da Lima is a base for epidemiologists like Ribeiro who go there to perform discipline research on infectious ailments. There are presently a few dengue instances in late March, such as one particular 16-year previous with hemorrhagic fever, the most virulent sort. In accordance to a nevertheless-to-be published research carried out in 2010 by the Institute of Collective Wellness and the Oswaldo Cruz Basis, 95% of the adults in this favela have been exposed to the virus. But dengue is not confined to poor neighbourhoods. Other research have located that the virus circulated in densely populated neighbourhoods across the city affecting rich and bad alike.

Dengue Mata (Dengue Kills) billboards greet visitors as they drive into the city from the airport. It is a blunt warning from the well being department to the several site visitors and soccer supporters who will quickly be arriving in Salvador. Simon Hay, an Oxford-based epidemiologist, urged Brazilian authorities to aggressively remove mosquitoes all around the northeastern stadiums.

But Ribeiro says it is unlikely that the ultra-modern Arena Fonte Nova poses a dengue threat simply because it is a nicely maintained public space with extremely tiny standing water. He advises site visitors to instead be alert to the risk on the streets saying, “one week in Salvador is a lot more risky than currently being at the stadium.”

Study a lot more stories like this:
• Preparing for a dengue fever vaccine: why Brazil’s ahead of the game
• NTDs: ailment handle is about a lot far more than medicines
• Malaria: where’s the evidence of drug resistance?

Join the community of global advancement professionals and specialists. Become a GDPN member to get much more stories like this direct to your inbox

Football fans warned about dengue fever risk at Fifa Globe Cup in Brazil

Football fans get FFIT through Scottish premiership scheme tackling weight problems | Rachel Pugh

Prison officer Alastair Christie at the summit of the Carn a’Gheoid munro in Scotland, soon after dropping 9 stone through the FFIT scheme. Photograph: Fraser Band

If 26-stone St Johnstone football fan Alastair Christie had been advised 4 many years ago that his passion for his Scottish Premiership team would electrical power him to shed nine stone and to conquer 37 of Scotland’s highest mountains, he would have responded with a option expression from the terraces.

But a scheme run by 13 clubs in the Scottish Specialist Football League has aided Christie and hundreds more overweight, middle-aged, football followers to get in form in accordance to study published this week in health care journal, the Lancet and BMC Public Overall health.

The analysis by Glasgow University on 747 men who went by means of the Football Fans in Training (FFIT) programme found that they lost nine instances as a lot weight as these not on it.

The randomised 12-month examine from June 2011 of a well being programme delivered in a football club setting (perhaps a world first) identified that as properly as losing bodyweight on the twelve-week programme, almost forty% of guys in the examine maintained a excess weight reduction of at least five% of their authentic physique fat a yr later on.

In accordance to the 2011 Scottish overall health survey, just below two-thirds (64.three%) of adults, aged sixteen and above, had been classed as obese or obese. With weight problems linked to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer and other wellness issues, these benefits couldn’t come swiftly adequate for individuals operating in public well being. Guys are notoriously hard to engage in wellness programmes but one particular of the excellent successes of FFIT, in accordance to the analysis, was that it attracted guys from across the socio-economic spectrum.

The formula is basic – organise male-only sessions in Scottish premiership clubs and run it “just like going to the pub but with no the beer”, capitalising on the men’s devotion to their club.

“From what I was – a fantastic, big, heavy, strongman – to currently being able to climb mountains, and play football with my son Blair, is like evening and day,” says Christie, 43, a prison officer, who utilised to gasp climbing the stairs in Perth prison. He heard about the programme from a fellow fan. Club-primarily based recruitment was by way of web sites, in-stadium marketing, and FFIT recruitment staff approaching possibly eligible men on match days. Above the weeks, the 15-robust group at the Perth-primarily based St Johnstone FC turned up in their football shirts to discover about a very good diet plan and how to get fitter, with the help of a coach.

Powerful relationships have been formed that turned into walking groups, 5-a-side teams and Munro-bagging parties.

“For me, it was the banter in between everyone and the coaches that produced it feasible,” says Christie. “It produced coming to FFIT entertaining and not a chore. Performing the programme at McDiarmid Park most absolutely spurred me on to change to a more healthy way of life which I have continued.”

Professor Sally Wyke, a single of the two principal investigators from the University of Glasgow says: “We now have ‘gold standard’ evidence that the FFIT programme can assist men drop weight and preserve it off.” Study will now focus on the 60% who did not keep the bodyweight reduction at the 12-month adhere to-up.

Her team has secured a €6m (£5m) EU grant to produce a equivalent programme in Portugal, the Netherlands and clubs in the English Premier League.

Fellow researcher Cindy Gray is doing work with Sale Sharks, an English expert rugby union club, to see if FFIT can function in a rugby context. She is also exploring an equivalent for females.

The FFIT notion has gone into two Scottish prisons – Perth and Castle Huntly, close to Dundee – as a consequence of Christie’s good results. A PE instructor colleague spotted that the guy known as “Large Al” was approaching half his authentic size and he decided that Al’s secret might do some of the prisoners very good.

Kevin Fenton, national director of health and wellbeing at Public Well being England, is interested in FFIT’s achievement. A quarter of adults in England are obese. “There is expanding proof that physical exercise has a essential role in preventing cancer, coronary heart ailment, variety-2 diabetes and high blood stress as a result obtaining much more men physically lively is essential to enhancing the overall health of the population.”

A note of caution is sounded by professor Jason Holford, chairman elect of the Uk Association for the Study of Obesity, who says: “The football sector itself – and other sports like rugby – need to consider it a stage further and wean themselves off alcohol and junk meals sponsorship, as they did with smoking.”

Football fans get FFIT through Scottish premiership scheme tackling weight problems | Rachel Pugh