Homemade Cough Drops to Soothe Your Sore Throat

No matter if you have a dry cough or a wet cough, next time when you have a bothersome cough, don’t take the commercial medicine immediately as you can ease a cough and soothe your throat naturally by using the readily available ingredients in your kitchen.

This DIY cough drops not only relieve all kinds of coughs, but it also boosts your immune system to speed up the recovery time.

Ingredients:

• A pinch of cinnamon


• Honey – 100g


• Coconut oil – 100ml

Directions:

Pour the coconut oil into a bowl and whip it for a while, then add the honey, keep whipping to get a thick paste.

Add the cinnamon and mix them well.

Put the mixture in a glass mason jar and save in fridge. It will last for more than 2 months.

Use this cough drops 2-3 times daily when you’re coughing.

Coconut oil has great antibacterial, antifungal and anti-viral properties, which will help you recover from the infections quickly.  Both of coconut oil and honey are good agents to soothe a cough and sore throat, and honey has been proven to be able to relieve a night-time cough in kids more effectively than some commercial cough syrups.

The antioxidants in cinnamon have excellent anti-inflammatory effects, which may help to relieve the sore throat and cough. The add of cinnamon also enhance the antifungal and antibacterial properties of this syrup, which will reduce infections caused by the bacteria and viruses efficiently.

(Top 9 Health Benefits of Cinnamon)

What’s more, these ingredients also reduce the inflammation in the respiratory system, thus helping you ease the coughing during a cold or flu.

There are more home remedies for a cough that may help you get relief:

Licorice root tea helps soothe the airway and loosen the mucus, thus easing the cough. This herb also has great anti-inflammatory properties to calm any inflammation that irritated your throat.

Put some ginger slices into boiled water and drink a cup of this tea. This tea is a good natural cure for cough. It works efficiently for a sore throat, congestion, and permanent coughing.

Mullein tea is also a good cure for a cough and sore throat, as it helps draw out the trapped mucous.

A cup of thyme tea also helps. Thyme opens up airways and increases comfort during a non-stop coughing. Honey and lemon juice can be added in a cup of thyme tea for a better result.

It’s said that 1 TB of Apple Cider Vinegar A Day – Will Keep The Doctor Away, apple cider vinegar benefits to you in many ways, including easing a cough. Mix a teaspoon of raw apple cider vinegar in 8 ounces of water and drink it every some hours in a day.

Additional Sources:

https://authoritynutrition.com/10-proven-benefits-of-cinnamon/

http://www.dietoflife.com/make-diy-cough-drops-will-save-trip-doctors/

Homemade Cough Drops to Soothe Your Sore Throat

THIS is What Happens to Your Lungs When You Add 3 drops of Oregano Oil to Water

THIS is What Happens to Your Lungs When You Add 3 drops of Oregano Oil to Water

Number of mental health nurses in NHS drops a sixth under Tories

The number of mental health nurses working in the NHS has dropped by almost a sixth since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, new figures show.

The revelation has sparked fresh doubt that government pledges to improve mental health services are being matched by progress at the NHS frontline.

Philip Dunne, the health minister, has admitted in a written parliamentary answer that while there were 45,384 mental health nurses working in England in 2010, there were just 38,774 in July this year. That fall of 6,610 nurses represents the loss of about 1,000 such specialists a year, or almost 15% of the entire workforce providing that sort of vital care to patients over the last six and a half years.

“This is a very worrying downward trend that shows no sign of turning around, despite all the government’s pronouncements and pledges about equality for mental health care compared to physical health care,” said Labour MP Luciana Berger, the ex-shadow health minister who obtained the answer.

The loss of so many posts meant that patients are at risk of receiving lesser-quality care than before and their recovery is being jeopardised by having less contact time with nurses, who were likely to be busier than ever, Berger warned.

The Royal College of Nursing claimed the figures proved that patients were being let down and ministerial pledges of recent years were not being delivered.

“These numbers make it very clear why so many mental health patients are simply not getting the care they need,” said Janet Davies, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary. “The government has committed to equal treatment of mental and physical illness, but these figures show how far the health system still is from achieving that. Without the right number of nurses, people cannot get the care and treatment they need.”

The ongoing reduction in nurse numbers is also counterproductive because it leads to greater pressure on other public services, Davies added. “Early intervention is the most effective way to tackle mental health problems, but at the moment patients often aren’t being treated until they reach breaking point and problems are escalating out of control. The pressures on mental health services are spilling out into social care, A&E and even police custody.”

Mental health hospitals have seen the biggest fall in nursing staff. A total of 24,581 nurses worked in such settings in 2010 but by July that had dropped to 19,170 – a loss of 5,411 posts (22%).

The number of specialist nurses working with patients with learning disabilities had also fallen by 538 from 2,508 to 1,970, while those in “other learning disabilities” has fallen 44% from 2,628 to 1,483.

The sharp decline shows the coalition government’s pledge in 2014 to bring about “parity of esteem” in NHS treatment of patients with mental and physical health conditions will not be honoured any time soon, Berger added. Urgent action was needed to stem the dwindling numbers before patient care deteriorated further and remaining staff had to cope with even bigger caseloads, she said.

NHS trusts are allowing the number of mental health nurses to shrink because they do not have enough money to employ as many as they need to provide proper care, Berger claimed. Recent freedom of information requests the Liverpool Wavertree MP undertook found that 57% of GP-led clinical commissioning groups, which hold NHS budgets locally in England, planned to cut their spending on mental health this year, despite ministerial pledges that CCGs should increase spending on such services by the same amount as their overall budget rises.

The only area of mental health care to have more nurses working in it than in 2010 is community psychiatry. Some 16,152 such nurses work there now, compared to 15,666 in 2010.

The overall fall in mental health nurses in recent years is even larger – 7,381 rather than 6,610 – if 2009-10, Labour’s last year in power, rather than 2010 is used as the starting point.

The Department of Health said the figures did not give the full picture of the mental health workforce and that the number of both junior doctors and consultants working in psychiatry has been going up.

“Since 2012, the number of trainee doctors working in mental health settings during their foundation programme has more than doubled, we have seen the highest-ever fill rate for core psychiatry training, and mental health nursing trainee places are growing at a faster rate than any other nursing specialty in the NHS.

“This government is determined to address for the first time some of the very deep inequalities that people with mental ill health face, and while we have more to do, progress is being made,” a spokesman said.

Number of mental health nurses in NHS drops a sixth under Tories

US teen pregnancy rate drops to record low due to "increased contraceptive use"

A precipitous drop in the US teenage pregnancy rate to record lows was driven by improved use of contraception, a new analysis from the Guttmacher Institute found.

“There was no significant change in adolescent sexual activity during this time period,” Dr Laura Lindberg, a principal research scientist with the Guttmacher Institute and the paper’s lead author, said in a statement. “Rather, our new data suggest that recent declines in teens’ risk of pregnancy – and in their pregnancy rates – are driven by increased contraceptive use.”

Linberg and her co-authors found that while teenage girls’ sexual activity remained constant from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of sexually active teens who used at least one type of birth control the last time they had sex increased significantly, rising from 78% to 86%.

The researchers found the use of all “highly effective methods”, like the birth control pill or IUD, increased from 2007 to 2009. There was a marginal significant increase in the use of the IUD or implant from 2007 to 2009 and in use of the pill overall. There were non-significant increases in condom use and withdrawal, while use of the ring or patch declined significantly over the 2007 to 2012 period.

The changes in contraceptive use resulted in a 28% decline in pregnancy risk index from 2007 to 2012. Not only did improvements in contraceptive use drive that entire decline, but they were also responsible for neutralizing a 6% rise in risk over the same period due to increased sexual activity among teens. The pregnancy risk index is a calculation that “summarizes the risk of pregnancy among all adolescent women, estimating the influence of both changes in the level of recent sexual activity and changes in the level of contraceptive risk”, according to the study.

In April, the Guttmacher Institute reported that the national pregnancy rate declined 23%from 2008 to 2011 for women aged 15 to 19, falling from a rate of 68.2 pregnancies per 1,000 women to 52.4. That means about 5% of teens became pregnant in 2011. It was the “lowest rate observed in the last four decades”, they said, with declines across all 50 states and racial and ethnic groups, though some disparities remained. In 2011, they found a rate of 31.3 births per 1,000 teen women, down from 40.2 in 2008, and 13.5 abortions per 1,000 teen women, down from 18.1 in 2008.

The new study used data from the National Survey of Family Growth, a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on sexual activity, contraceptive use and contraceptive failures to estimate the pregnancy risk index for the years 2007, 2009 and 2012.

The authors noted it was important to ensure teenagers’ “access to comprehensive sexuality education that provides medically accurate information about contraception”. They wrote that the percentage of adolescents “who report receiving formal instruction about birth control has declined, while the share receiving only abstinence instruction has increased”. The American Academy of Pediatricians recently urged doctors to fill in the gaps of sexual health education with their patients. They noted that abstinence-heavy education is a concern for doctors when it comes to reducing sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies, as those programs can exclude information about contraceptives.

The internet, the authors suggested, can offer new opportunities for teenagers looking for information on sexual health, and recommend further research to examine that hypothesis. A separate study from last year found a correlation between decline in transmission of sexually transmitted infections and access to high-speed internet.

“Policy discussions should focus on supporting teen contraceptive use generally, including ensuring access to a full range of contraceptive education, counseling and methods,” Heather Boonstra, the Guttmacher Institute’s director of public policy, said in the release.

The Guttmacher Institute’s study used data up until 2012, however, more recent data from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey “shows sharp declines in sexual activity among high school students from 2013 to 2015 – after a long plateau from 2001 to 2013”, the authors wrote. “At this point, it is unclear whether these new data represent a new trend or are the result of other factors,” the authors wrote.

Another analysis from earlier this month found that millennials are having less sex than those in previous generations.

US teen pregnancy rate drops to record low due to "increased contraceptive use"

DIY For Health: How to Make Your Own Cough Drops With Horehound

White horehound belongs to mint family, this bitter herb has many potential health benefits. One of the most remarkable uses of it is adding it in a cough remedy.

Herbal Cough Drops Made With Horehound

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup dried horehound


• 1 cup water


• 2 tablespoons raw honey


• 2 cups sugar

Directions:

Firstly, simmer the horehound in the water for half an hour. Strain and again put the infused water to the pot.

Then add honey and sugar to the water, bring to a boil and simmer.

Then clip on the candy thermometer and boil to 330 degree, keep stirring during this process.

Next, bite the little drops of syrup, if it’s sticking to your teeth, keep cooking until it cracks when you bite. Then turn off the heat. And if the syrup starts to crystalize, add a cup of water and a teaspoon of honey, scrape in the crystals and start again.

Line a baking sheet with parchment and pour the syrup in when you’re at the hard-crack stage. Let it cool and score it with a knife. Wrap each in parchment for in case they are sticking to each other. Store in fridge.

Horehound has been used long time for treating chronic cough, especially for wet coughs. This remedy made from horehound is effective in the treatment of wet coughs and other mucusy symptoms, including wheezing, bronchia asthma and whooping coughs.

As a relative of peppermint, horehound has similar medicinal uses with peppermint, some other benefits of using horehound are:

• Providing a pain relief


• Aiding in digestion


• Reducing bloating and gas


• Lowering blood pressure


• Improving the appetite


• Killing intestinal parasites


• Easing morning sickness


• Relieving vomiting


• Reducing spasms


• Healing the wounds and cut


• Treating colds and flu


• Curing asthma

Note: Consult your doctor before using the horehound remedy to treat a chronic cough. And keep in mind of that horehound remedy is effective in treating a wet cough, it should not be used to treat a dry cough.

Sources:
1)health-care-tips.org
2)naturalremediescenter.com
3)mindbodygreen.com

DIY For Health: How to Make Your Own Cough Drops With Horehound

Obesity price in preschool-aged kids drops to eight% in US, review demonstrates

A new study might be another signal of a nationwide decline in childhood obesity.

The discovering comes from a government study regarded a gold-regular gauge of trends in the public’s wellness. The researchers discovered that weight problems among youngsters ages 2 to five dropped – to eight%, from 14% a decade ago.

It is not adequate to say the nation has clearly turned the corner. The only decline was observed in preschoolers, not in older children. Some specialists note that even the improvement in toddlers wasn’t a steady decline, and say it’s hard to know yet regardless of whether preschooler bodyweight figures are permanently curving down or just jumping around.

But it’s enough of a decline to be optimistic, explained Cynthia Ogden, 1 of the study’s authors.

“There’s a glimmer of hope,” explained Ogden, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Illness Management and Prevention.

The report was published on the internet Tuesday in the Journal of the American Health-related Association.

Well being officials have long been hoping for a lot more substantial proof that they’ve turned a corner in the battle against childhood weight problems.

Weight problems is noticed as a single of the nation’s foremost public health troubles – overall health officials get in touch with it a longstanding epidemic. A third of US youngsters and teens and much more than two-thirds of adults are obese or obese.

Officials are especially anxious about the problem in youthful children. Preschoolers who are overweight orobese are five instances much more probably than other youngsters to be heavy as adults, which implies higher risks of substantial cholesterol, large blood sugar, asthma and even psychological overall health difficulties.

Following decades on the rise, childhood weight problems rates just lately have been flat. But a few spots – like New York City and Mississippi – reported enhancements in the last couple of many years. Seattle joined that list final week, with a report of just lately declining weight problems in older school children in lower-cash flow school districts.

More broadly, well being officials last yr reported at least slight drops in obesity for minimal-revenue preschoolers in 18 states. But they mostly were kids enrolled in the federal Ladies, Infants and Kids (WIC) program, which provides meals vouchers and other solutions. Authorities attributed the improvement to WIC policy changes in 2009 that eradicated juice from infant food packages, offered significantly less saturated unwanted fat, and created it less difficult to get fruits and greens.

The new research is a nationwide survey of about 9,100 people – including virtually 600 infants and toddlers – in 2011-2012, in which participants were not only interviewed but weighed and measured. The benefits have been in contrast to 4 equivalent surveys that stretched back to 2003.

“I believe it is honest to say that [this examine] is probably the very best supply of information we have on no matter whether the prevalence of obesity is increasing with time,” mentioned Dr Robert C Whitaker, a Temple University expert of childhood obesity.

The major finding was that, all round, the two grownup and childhood weight problems rates have held flat in the past decade. And there were no substantial changes in most age groups.

But there had been two exceptions: For some reason professionals aren’t sure about, the weight problems fee in women age 60 and older rose from 31.five% to much more than 38%. And the preschool weight problems price dropped.

Some overall health leaders in Washington DC, and Atlanta celebrated the latter locating. They say it is an early signal of a pay out-off from campaigns to enhance breastfeeding rates and reduce consumption of sodas and other sugary drinks. Initial lady Michelle Obama issued a statement that her ‘Let’s Move!’ initiative – which promotes youth exercising and excellent nutrition – is triggering more healthy habits “to become the new norm”.

Some professionals were much more cautious about the benefits.

The preschooler obesity numbers fell from 14% in 2003-2004 to ten% in 2007-2008, then jumped to twelve in 2009-2010, then slipped to eight in the most recent survey.

So it looks to have been jumping about a tiny. “We’re going to want more” many years of data to see if the obvious trend is genuinely nosing downward, stated John Jakicic, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Physical Action and Bodyweight Management Study Center.

Some wondered whether or not it tends to make sense that preschoolers would be the ones top a downward trend in childhood obesity. For many years, most childhood anti-obesity initiatives were older-kid efforts getting rid of soda vending machines from schools and escalating bodily education.

Apart from the WIC policy change, there is been significantly less of a push relating to preschoolers. “Relative to older children, significantly less has been done” to fight weight problems in toddlers, Whitaker explained.

Lingering concerns aside, Jakicic mentioned he was even now glad to see the numbers. “I consider we must be fired up it’s not obtaining worse,” he explained.

Obesity price in preschool-aged kids drops to eight% in US, review demonstrates

Study: US abortion price drops to lowest stage in decades

The US abortion fee hit its lowest level in decades in 2011, according to a report released on Monday.

The abortion fee declined steadily from 1990 to 2005, plateaued by means of 2008, then began a regular decline again by means of 2011, when the abortion rate was sixteen.9 per 1000 girls aged 15-44, according to a review by the Guttmacher Institute (pdf), a thinktank that supports abortion rights.

Researchers did not investigate the trigger of the decline, but said the increasing popularity of long-phrase birth manage techniques like IUDs and the latest recession could have been contributing factors. The review surveys a time period just prior to anti-abortion activists ramped up a state-by-state campaign to enshrine new restrictions on abortions into law.

“The circumstance we’re in now is we’re in flux we’re in really precarious legal limbo if court decisions go 1 way or the other and it could have an completely devastating impact on abortion accessibility,” mentioned Carole Joffe, a sociologist at the University of California San Francisco’s Bixby Center for International Reproductive Health.

From 2011 to 2013, states enacted 205 abortion restrictions. Some have worked tougher than other individuals to make it a lot more tough for clinics to operate or for females to actually have abortions, however. In Texas, at least twelve abortion clinics have closed considering that October because of a controversial new law, which attracted worldwide focus when state senator Wendy Davis staged an 11-hour filibuster in an try to block its passage. In Mississippi, Governor Phil Bryant said in January that his objective is “to end abortion” in the state, which has just one abortion clinic, a facility that the government attempted to close in 2012.

“In excess of the previous three many years, we have noticed an unparalleled assault on abortion rights at the state degree, and these new restrictions are creating it tougher for girls to entry providers and for companies to preserve clinic doors open,” Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at Guttmacher, mentioned in a statement.

The decline in the abortion fee corresponds with a 9% decline in the US birth price in between 2008 and 2011, suggesting that females are acquiring pregnant significantly less. One particular important element in this drop could be the latest economic downturn, as a lot of research tie unemployment trends to fertility costs.

Even though authorities have lengthy regarded the US to be a poor supplier of contraception in contrast to other Western industrialized nations, Joffe said these charges indicate the nation may be bettering on that score. “When Americans are actually, actually motivated simply because of hard financial occasions, they do handle to locate ways to be more competent contraceptors,” Joffe mentioned, noting that the reduce birth price during the economic downturn parallels decrease birth rates during the Great Depression.

Guttmacher researchers and specialists speculated that the improve in availability of long acting reversible contraception, or Larcs, aided reduced the abortion charge and could continue to do so as the Inexpensive Care Act expands coverage of birth handle.

“The report concludes that accessibility to a variety of birth control strategies is enjoying an essential function in lowering unintended pregnancy and decreasing the want for abortion,” said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards in a statement. “This report comes just as some politicians and companies are trying to make it harder for females to get birth management by chipping away at the historic advantage in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance ideas to cover birth control without having a copay.”

4 states increased the fee of abortions: Alaska, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Wyoming. Maryland and Montana had been the only states to present no modify.

Anti-abortion groups claimed the examine downplayed the position of “public debate” in contributing to the decline. “The legislative efforts of the correct-to-lifestyle movement, and significantly, the resulting national debate and educational campaigns surrounding professional-life legislation ought to not be minimized when discussing the decline in abortion numbers,” National Right to Existence president Carol Tobias explained in a statement.

To collect the information, Guttmacher surveyed all known abortion companies in the US. About 1,200 facilities responded, like some clinics that had shuttered and required contacting former administrators. The information was supplemented with with state well being company data, which can be incomplete due to the fact states have differing reporting laws.

Study: US abortion price drops to lowest stage in decades