Rich Americans live up to 15 years longer than poor peers, studies find

You can’t buy time – except, it seems, in America.

Increasing inequality means wealthy Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, reports in the British medical journal the Lancet have found.

Researchers said these disparities appear to be worsened by the American health system itself, which relies on for-profit insurance companies, and is the most expensive in the world.

Their conclusion? Treat healthcare as a human right.

“Healthcare is not a commodity,” wrote US Senator Bernie Sanders in an opinion article introducing the issue of the journal, whichis devoted to inequality in American healthcare.“The goal of a healthcare system should be to keep people well, not to make stockholders rich. The USA has the most expensive, bureaucratic, wasteful, and ineffective healthcare system in the world.”

Sanders, like authors of the lead report, called for single-payer health insurance or what Americans might know as “Medicare for all”, a reference to an existing public health program for older Americans.

“Making sure that every citizen has the right to childcare, healthcare, a college education, and secure retirement is not a radical idea. It is as American as apple pie,” he said.

The Lancet studies looked at how the American health system affects inequality and structural racism, and how mass incarceration and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, have changed public health.

Among the studies’ key findings: the richest 1% live up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%; the same gap in life expectancy widened in recent decades, making poverty a powerful indicator for death; more than one-third of low-income Americans avoid medical care because of costs (compared to 7% in Canada and 1% in the UK); the poorest fifth of Americans pay twice as much for healthcare as a share of income (6% for the poor, versus 3.2% for the rich); and life expectancy would have grown 51.1% more from 1983 to 2005had mass incarceration not accelerated in the mid-1980s.

The poorest Americans have suffered in particular, with life expectancies falling in some groups even while medicine has advanced. For example, researchers reported that the poorest fifth of women born between 1930 and 1960 statistically lived four years less than Americans in the top fifth of the socioeconomic spectrum.

All of these health outcomes arrive in the context of widening general inequality. The share of total income going to the top 1% of earners has more than doubled since 1970,making the US more unequal than all but three developed countries: Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

At the same time, the ACA brought relief to many. The number of Americans without insurance dropped from 48.6 million in 2010 to 28.6 million in 2015. The number of Americans who struggle with medical bills dropped from 41% to 35% in 2014.

Further, accounting for current public health insurance programs, military healthcare, the portion of local and state budgets used to purchase private health insurance for workers, and subsidies to employers to buy workers health insurance, researchers believe as much as 65% of health insurance nationally is already paid for by taxpayers.

The conclusions come at a tumultuous time for American healthcare.

Donald Trump’s election threw his predecessor’s market-based health laws into question. Trump promised multiple times on the campaign trail to repeal the ACA and replace it with “something terrific”.

Though Barack Obama’s signature health law insured more Americans than ever before, problems remain.

Insurance companies have increasingly passed costs on to consumers through “cost-sharing”, or asking Americans to pay more for doctor’s visits, prescription drugs and procedures before insurance kicks in. Sky-high prescription drug prices have prompted public outrage. And a requirement that Americans purchase insurance, even with government subsidies, was politically toxic.

Though Republicans promised for more than seven years to repeal the ACA – if they could only gain control of the federal government – once Trump took office, they offered a plan not conservative enough for conservatives, and not moderate enough for moderates. With an abysmal public approval rating of just 17%, the plan combusted weeks after it was introduced. Failure to pass the bill became a major loss for the Trump administration.

That has left a vacuum of ideas. Republicans tried and failed to resurrect a version of the hated plan this week. Progressives have expressed hope that single-payer reform could move into the forefront.

“I, like many others, was deeply concerned with Republican proposals that went down in flames,” said Dr David Himmelstein, a New York City doctor and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that lobbies for single-payer health reform. Himmelstein was also the author of one Lancet report, America: Equity and Equality in Health.

“It would have been tremendously damaging to large numbers of people in our country. So the defeat of that proposal was encouraging,” he said.

“It’s opened up much more room for debate about what there should be, so in that way, I think it’s an encouraging time that has perils but also opportunities.”

However, single-payer healthcare remains unpopular with American conservatives, who still control the government.

Robert Moffit, a researcher at the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, argued that Americans would use healthcare willy-nilly if it were provided by the government.

“I mean look – you can save money with a single-payer system, don’t misunderstand me, but the quality and supply of medical services is going to be determined by government officials,” he said.

“You’re going to have inequalities in any state,” he said, calling it it “naive” to believe a “government-run system that is going to ultimately be highly politicized” would be better than a private one.

Rich Americans live up to 15 years longer than poor peers, studies find

EU nurses no longer want to work in Britain. Brexit is poisoning the NHS | Suzanne Moore

How will Brexit impact the NHS? It already has. Nurses from the EU are much less keen to come and work here. Today the Times reported that in the last four months of 2015, an average of 797 EU nurses per month signed up to work in the UK; over the same period last year, that number fell to 194 a month. We currently have a huge shortage of nurses, with 24,000 jobs unfilled in England alone.

You can see this shortfall any time you go into a hospital. There is pressure on beds, on doctors and on nurses. Often there just aren’t enough of them, and they are overstretched. Some A&E departments that used to have 20 nurses are now down to half that number, and staff feel at breaking point. The five Cs that nurses are taught in their training – commitment, conscience, competence, compassion and confidence – are impossible to practise properly in the circumstances many are working in.

There have long been warnings of these shortages but a complete lack of long-term planning, now combined with Brexit, is bringing the situation to a head. We have an ageing population with complex needs. One in three nurses is set to retire in the next decade. The introduction of loans instead of bursaries for training means a 23% drop in applications for nursing and midwifery. Anyone could have predicted that taking away bursaries would prompt this result. No one goes into nursing for the money, so why did George Osborne decide to make it even harder? Why, when we need more nurses, are we not reinvesting in training?

This shortage had been plugged by about 7% of our nurses coming from the EU. If we fail to train nurses that’s how it has to be. This is where so much Brexit rhetoric falls apart. While Theresa May talks tough, refusing to guarantee EU nationals a right to stay, these nurses feel neither wanted nor welcome and will understandably go elsewhere. As Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has said: “The government is turning off the supply of qualified nurses from around the world at the very moment the health service is in a staffing crisis like never before.”

When in hospital we are at our most dependent. There may be those who complain about immigration but most people have experience of being cared for by someone who has come here to work. Our NHS could not function otherwise. Is May going to further exacerbate the nursing shortage by making the UK so hostile and unwelcoming to EU nurses they will go elsewhere? Well, this is already happening; people won’t take jobs here in such uncertain times. Yet we continue not to train enough nurses and have made it more financially difficult for them. Where is the joined-up thinking on this? The toxic discourse about “foreigners” stealing jobs may not have been intended for the nurse who washes you after your operation, but that’s how it pans out. We can choose to make people feel welcome or not, but it turns out we need them more than they need us.

EU nurses no longer want to work in Britain. Brexit is poisoning the NHS | Suzanne Moore

Parenthood can help you live longer in older age, research suggests

Parenthood could boost your chances of living longer in your later years, according researchers who believe the effect could be down to children helping with care and support.

While previous research has shown that adults with children live longer than those without, the new study unpicks how the effect plays out in older age.

“We started first at the age of 60 and we looked all the way up to the age of 100,” said Karin Modig, a co-author of the research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

Modig and colleagues used national registry data to follow almost 1.5 million Swedes born between 1911 and 1925 as they aged. The team found that while the risk of death increased with age for all adults, having children was linked to greater longevity. The results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

At the age of 60, men who had children had almost two years more on their remaining life expectancy than those without, at 20.2 and 18.4 years respectively. A similar trend was seen for women aged 60, with life expectancies of 23.1 years for those without children and 24.6 years for mothers.

By contrast at the age of 80, parents had a life expectancy of 7.7 years for men and 9.5 years for women, compared to 7 years for men without children and 8.9 years for women without children.

The team also looked at the risk of dying within a year for each age, taking into account factors such as education and marital status.

The findings reveal that the benefits of having children became more pronounced with age – an effect that was greater for men than women. Furthermore, the team found that having children had a stronger impact on the longevity of men who were not married than those with a spouse.

The researchers suggest that could be because unmarried men are more dependant on their children for support than men who are married, adding that previous research has suggested that men benefit more from marriage when it comes to survival than women do, possibly explaining why the effect is not seen for women.

Unlike some previous research, the authors found that the sex of the child had no influence on their parent’s longevity – however the finding was based only on families with one child. “Perhaps being the only child is related to a greater responsibility of parents, reducing the difference in the amount of help given by sons and daughters,” they write.

While it is not clear why having children is linked to a longer life, the researchers suggest it might be down to children helping to look after their ageing parents, be it through physical care, emotional support or even arguing for better treatment.

However there are other explanations, including that adults with children might have healthier lifestyles, or that there are other factors that could decrease an individual’s chances of having children and raise their risk of death.

But while having children might boost the years left on your clock, Modig says it is far from the only factor influencing longevity.

“In terms of all other causes that would affect your death risk in these old ages, having a child is not among the greatest ones,” she said. “But it is still a 1.5% difference [for 90-year-old men] which is still substantial.”

Parenthood can help you live longer in older age, research suggests

Quitting EU regulator "would leave UK waiting longer" for new drugs

Ministers are coming under growing pressure to scrap plans to quit Europe’s medicines regulator as part of Brexit, with drug firms saying doing so could force Britons to wait a year longer than patients in the EU to access new drugs.

Labour and leaders of the UK’s pharmaceutical industry fear that patients and the NHS will lose out if Britain gives up its membership of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told MPs last week that he did not expect the UK to continue as a member once it left the EU.

Several EU states, including the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland, have already expressed interest in hosting the EMA’s headquarters if and when it relocates from London with its 890 medical, scientific and managerial staff. Hunt said it was likely the EMA would move as a result of Brexit.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, has written to Hunt branding departure from the EMA “reckless and unbelievable” and highlighting the “damaging loss of jobs and wealth from our shores” it would involve.

He said that British people would face “longer waiting periods to access life-saving treatments”. He added: “If we leave the EMA we could, like Canada and Australia, have to wait for many months before being able to buy drugs already available in bigger markets like the EU and the United States.”

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which represents drug firms employing about 220,000 people in the UK, voiced similar concerns. Dr Virginia Acha, its executive director for research, medical and innovation, said that Britain being outside the EMA could lead to patients waiting six to 12 months longer than the rest of Europe to receive newly developed medicines because the UK would be a small market rather than part of a large EU-wide one.

“While there is opportunity in creating a bespoke regulatory framework for the UK, if this operates outside of the EMA, the added time, cost and burden of having to seek additional regulatory approval in a separate system is likely to mean British patients’ access to medicines will face even greater delay,” Acha said.

The EMA currently licenses all medicines that manufacturers want to sell in the 28 EU states and some other countries in the European Economic Area. Its resident population of 500 million people represents 25% of the world’s total drug market. If Britain left the EMA and made its own arrangements to regulate drugs, it would be of much less priority to pharmaceutical firms because it would be as little as 3% of the global market, Acha added.

The prime minister, Theresa May, was non-committal on how drugs regulation would work after Brexit when Philippa Whitford, the Scottish Nationalist MP and an NHS doctor, raised it at last week’s prime minister’s questions.

“Leaving the EMA would be bad for patients and bad for the NHS. We should be doing our damnedest to stay inside the EMA, maybe through some form of associate membership,” Whitford said.

The ABPI is lobbying several Whitehall ministries, including Hunt’s Department of Health and David Davis’s Department of Exiting the European Union, to try to ensure the UK retains some form of membership of the EMA. Britain already has its own drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulator Agency (MHRA), which is part of an EMA-led pan-European network of 36,000 national regulators and scientists.

The MHRA already plays a disproportionately large role in the EMA’s work, assessing about 20% of all the drugs the EMA evaluates every year. But it would have to increase hugely in size if it became responsible for approving all new drugs aimed at the British market.

Ashworth has asked Hunt to spell out how much it would cost Britain to have a dedicated national drugs regulator and also said that “regulatory divergence between a post-Brexit Britain and the EU” could lead to job losses in the life sciences industry, a sector May has highlighted as central to the UK’s economic prospects after departure form the EU.

Quitting EU regulator "would leave UK waiting longer" for new drugs

The NHS no longer has the resources to care for our sick population | Zara Aziz

Hospitals and GP surgeries have always had a symbiotic relationship and the hospital crisis this winter has had a significant impact on the way that we are able to offer care to patients in the community.

In our practice, demand has not changed significantly as far as minor illnesses are concerned. We had an expectation of winter pressures and planned for more urgent appointments across all days of the week (including a Saturday shared rota with a hub of other local practices). But what we have seen is a significant rise in the complexity of cases – even when compared with a year ago.

Patients often turn up for their 10- to 15-minute appointment with several complex problems or secondary care related queries. Some practices advise patients to discuss one problem per appointment, and this has come under criticism from the Patients Association for potentially preventing people from raising health worries.

With many practices struggling to recruit GPs and nurses, and running on skeleton staff in the face of escalating demand and threats of closure, it is unhelpful for patients to see us repeatedly for a few minor complaints when a single appointment could sort all the issues.

At our surgery, we offer 15-minute appointments for routine problems that are booked in advance and 10 minutes for the on the day urgent problems. It is unusual to finish consultations within these times. Most days I will admit one or two sick patients into hospital – sometimes the decision to admit is clear cut, on other occasions it’s more complicated. Ultimately, it comes down to the patient’s best interests and their wishes, and the hospital being able to offer assessments and treatments that we cannot in the community. But increasingly, I am having to factor in long waits at hospital and the scarcity of beds in my decision. This week it took over 24 hours for my patient to be admitted from a care home to the hospital. Another patient, Dorothy, is in her 80s and usually well and independent in her warden-controlled flat. Then she became acutely confused, unable to walk and began hallucinating – there was also the possibility of a head injury from a fall but we were not able to corroborate this. I discussed her case with a hospital specialist and an assessment and a CT scan of the head was recommended via A&E. I called for an urgent ambulance. They too were inundated with emergencies and unable to hand over patients promptly through bottlenecks in A&E, medical admissions units and the wards. It was nine hours before Dorothy arrived in A&E. Her head scan was normal but it was another 12 hours before she was moved to a surgical ward as an “outlying” medical patient. Both she and her daughter who accompanied her were exhausted and upset.

Faced with worryingly high occupancy rates, many hospitals are admitting patients to non-specialty wards. In our area there are more than 100 patients on non-medical wards. This poses its own risks, with overstretched staff caring for more patients than safe thresholds allow.

Dorothy was discharged three days later, still confused, frail and unable to manage in her own home. There were no step-down or intermediate care beds to speak of and her daughter struggled to care for her. I had few options – she needed more help but I did not feel that she would be any better in hospital given current pressures. But a social care assessment would take days to arrange. I asked the rapid response team to support her until things improved. They too were working well above their capacity but agreed to take her on their caseload for a few days.

There are daily pressures to discharge patients like Dorothy to make way for new admissions. It is not surprising that with an ageing, frail population there are often no quick fixes. I am now seeing more failed discharges, with patients ending up in a crisis at home and unable to cope. Some hospital discharge summaries have clear instructions to offer supportive or end-of-life care, and not to readmit. For some patients this is appropriate – for others less soso as there are no new avenues being offered as an alternatives to admission. With overstretched GPs and community nursing as well as social care in disarray, the government is abandoning the most vulnerable in our society.

Last week, Theresa May blamed GPs for this “non-crisis”, claiming that NHS funding has been more than adequate – an assertion vehemently disputed by the head of NHS England, Sir Simon Stevens.

Despite the government’s misinformation on so many fronts, it is clear that today’s NHS is no longer resourced properly to adequately care for our sick population. And there is also another crisis unfolding – one of poor morale and retention of NHS staff, who are forced by chronic underfunding to either work in an environment where patient care is compromised within primary and secondary care, or to leave the profession. But it would seem that like the other “human crisis”, the government is in denial about this. too.

The NHS no longer has the resources to care for our sick population | Zara Aziz

GPs working longer hours won’t ease the pressure on the NHS | Letters

Re your readers’ stories of the NHS (‘He stayed on that trolley in A&E for the next 12 hours’, 14 January), the government is putting out a spew of misinformation to cover the 2% reduction, as a percentage of GDP, it has imposed on funding of the NHS since 2010. The people on trolleys waiting for a bed are not the worried well who are accused of blocking up A&E departments. They are people who have already been assessed as needing beds. These beds are full not just because people cannot be moved out of hospital but because the number of hospital beds has been steadily reduced over the last 20 or more years, so that the UK now has 2.8 beds per 1,000 of population, compared with 8.6 in Germany and 6.2 in France. The forthcoming sustainability and transformation plans propose further cuts.

The government prefers to blame “bed blocking” because people are remaining in hospital “unnecessarily”. But people who are fit for medical discharge are waiting for social care packages and there has been a £4.6bn cut in social care funding since 2010. What is happening is an inevitable result of the deliberate and cavalier reductions in local government funding since 2010. The motion in parliament last Thursday, calling for extra funding for social care now and a new funding settlement for health and social care in the March budget, was rejected. Conservative MPs who have deplored the situation in their local press voted with the government. How do these MPs justify their refusal to vote to fund social care properly?

Care costs money. Whenever we in Save Our Hospital Services ask if people will pay more income tax to ensure the NHS is properly funded, there is an overwhelming “yes” in response. There is also huge anger among the public at what is being done to health and social care. The government will reap what it sows.
Ruth Funnell
Save Our Hospital Services

• The illogicality of the prime minister’s response is breathtaking (Stay open seven days a week, May tells GPs, 14 January). Anyone who has been responsible for helping someone in their 80s or 90s get to the doctor will know that what is needed is a decent choice of appointments between about 10am and 5pm. Spreading appointments over extended hours will make these much harder to get, so leading to increasing numbers presenting at A&E.

It is blindingly obvious that taking the same number of doctors’ appointments and spreading them more thinly is no solution. Appointments at 7.45pm on Saturday or 8am on Sunday may suit those in work but they are not, by and large, the people arriving at A&E departments.
Jenny Boehm
London

• The GPs have quite rightly pointed out that seven-day appointments will not work. However, it may be time for some patients to make more of an effort. To avoid an appointment interfering with my working day I can join the queue for our practice’s open access 8am surgery Monday to Friday. If I get there for 7.40am, I can be back on the street by 8.15am and get on with the rest of the day. If patients reckon that GP appointments clash with going to work, then going sick or booking half a day’s holiday may be appropriate options. If your healthcare matters to you, you have no need to slide into consumer mode.
Geoff Reid
Bradford

• Is the Jeremy Hunt who stated that “We need to have an honest discussion about the purpose of A&E departments” (Hunt ditches target as A&E crisis deepens, 10 January) the same Jeremy Hunt who took his own child to A&E with a minor illness because he didn’t want to wait for a GP appointment?
Dr Clive Richards
Bristol

• I am pleased that Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt are challenging the entitled approach of the medical profession. Our GPs earn double what their French counterparts do. If the BMA had not ruthlessly exploited the public esteem for doctors to access salaries and pensions beyond the dreams of other citizens, there could be many more GPs with the same personnel budget. The NHS cannot just consume our entire public expenditure – we do need to do other things with these resources.

Medical professionals need to understand that in the 21st century they are not the only people with education and skills, and that they must adjust their expectations to allow the NHS to live within its means. The public need to take the stars from their eyes and look hard at value for money in NHS spending. Aneurin Bevan said he had to stuff the mouths of doctors with gold to form the NHS – this is still true today. At last we have a government prepared to argue for realism and fairness, to allow our national spending priorities to come more into balance.
Name and address supplied

• Amid all the debate about the current crises in NHS A&E departments, the role of employer policies has attracted little attention. The growth of zero-hours contracts and the so-called gig economy means many workers have uncertain working hours. In such circumstances, committing to GP appointments is potentially problematic. Walk-in A&E departments offer an obvious way of avoiding this difficulty.

Meanwhile, a significant proportion of the workforce faces the prospect of losing pay when absent for medical reasons as a consequence of the poor nature and coverage of occupational sick pay schemes. Once again, the 24-hour nature of A&E offers a means of avoiding this problem.
Professor Phil James
Middlesex University

• Tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of page 4 (Rates pain for hospitals, 12 January) is news that astonishes me. I had no idea that the NHS has to pay business rates. The estimated annual sum is £377m. More disturbing, however, is the news that private providers such as Nuffield Health enjoy an 80% rebate because they are registered as charities. Private providers enjoy a rebate as charities, while the NHS is classed as a business. Verily, “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath” (Mark 4:25).
Joseph Cocker
Leominster, Herefordshire

• I volunteer at a nursery school. This term the theme is “people who help us”, and in a corner a hospital has been created, complete with pictures of bones, a reception desk, waiting area and bed. The children have tiny uniforms and medical equipment. The staff and I decided that for complete authenticity we need a “waiting time approximately 5 hours” sign, and make all the children wait outside in the corridor.
Jean Austin
Crawley, West Sussex

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GPs working longer hours won’t ease the pressure on the NHS | Letters

NHS financial problems endemic and no longer sustainable, say auditors

The financial problems of the NHS are now “endemic” and have worsened so significantly in the past year that the situation is no longer sustainable, Whitehall’s official auditor has warned.

Two-thirds of health trusts in England are now in deficit, the National Audit Office has discovered, while their total debt has almost trebled since 2015 to £2.45bn. Auditors were particular alarmed by the decision to transfer £950m from the NHS’s budget for buildings and IT to pay staff’s wages.

MPs say the report amounts to one of the the most critical assessments of NHS finances by official auditors, as their reports usually err on the side of caution. The report will add to pressure on Theresa May and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to set aside extra money in the autumn statement on Wednesday to plug the funding gap in the health service.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the public accounts committee, said the Department of Health was making “pie in the sky assumptions” about closing that gap.

She added: “I call on the prime minister to address [in the autumn statement] the realities of increasing deficits in NHS trusts, long-term workforce problems, unrealistic efficiency targets and the impact these financial stresses are having on the quality of services.”

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: “With more than two-thirds of trusts in deficit in 2015-16 and an increasing number of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) unable to keep their spending within budget, we repeat our view that financial problems are endemic and this is not sustainable.”

The NHS overall entered the current financial year with a “worse than expected starting point”, which could hamper plans to close the estimated £22bn gap between patients’ needs and resources by 2020/21, auditors said.

To close this gap, the Department of Health, NHS England and NHS Improvement estimate they can make £6.7bn of efficiency savings through measures including capping public sector pay and renegotiating contracts, the NAO reported.

The bodies estimate that trusts and CCGs can make a further £14.9bn of savings by “moderating the growth in demand for healthcare services” and by making 2% productivity and efficiency improvements.

Auditors examined these estimations and warned they had not been properly tested, which “raises concerns about whether planned savings can be achieved”.

The report highlighted the DoH’s decision in February to transfer £950m of its £4.6bn budget for capital projects, such as building works and IT, to revenue budgets which cover staff wages.

“The department did not assess the long-term effects of transferring this funding to cover day-to-day spending. This means it does not know what risks trusts may face in future as a result of addressing immediate funding needs,” it said.

The government’s five-year plan to increase the NHS budget by £8bn a year by 2020 was only set out last year, but hospital executives said this week that the money was not enough. Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, said the settlement needed to be redrawn.

Commenting on the report, Prof Jane Dacre, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said not only was the NHS struggling to balance today’s books, but it was unable to invest in new plans.

“We need an NHS budget that meets the demand for health services now and in the future,” she said.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said the report was clear that the government’s “aggressive efficiency targets” had exacerbated NHS deficits.

“The government cannot turn away from the situation any longer. This cannot go on,” he said.

The Liberal Democrats’ health spokesman, Norman Lamb, said the report was a “nail in the coffin” for the government’s claims to be adequately funding the NHS.

“The National Audit Office seems to have no confidence whatsoever that the NHS can make the heroic savings the government is relying on. Crisis management has taken over from rational planning, while preventive care is being undermined,” he said.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We know finances are challenging for some parts of the NHS, which is why we have a strong plan to get back on track.
We are already seeing progress, with 40 fewer trusts in deficit compared [with] this time last year.

“We are also investing an extra £4bn in the NHS this year to transform services and improve standards of care, which will rise to an extra £10bn per year by 2020/21.”

NHS financial problems endemic and no longer sustainable, say auditors

Zika virus is no longer a global health emergency, UN health agency says

The United Nations health agency has declared that the Zika virus and related neurological complications no longer constitute an international emergency and said it is preparing a longer-term response to the mosquito-borne virus that can result in severe neurological defects in newborns whose mothers were infected.

World Health Organization officials were quick to note that the move does not mean the agency is downgrading the threat of the virus that has spread across Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Nearly 30 countries have reported birth defects linked to Zika, with 2,100 cases of nervous-system malformations reported in Brazil alone.

The officials also emphasized that the now-lifted “public health emergency of international concern” was declared in February, when Zika clusters were appearing and a sharp increase in research was needed and with the looming Rio Olympics in mind.

WHO said the emergency measures had led the world to an “urgent and coordinated response”, but the virus had continued to spread. It acknowledged that “many aspects of this disease and associated consequences still remain to be understood, but this can best be done through sustained research”.

“It is a significant and enduring public health challenge, but it no longer represents an emergency,” Dr David Heymann, who heads the WHO emergency committee on Zika, said after the panel met for the fifth time this year. “There was no downgrading of this.”

Heymann said recommendations made in recent months were now being “internalized” at the Geneva-based agency.

“If anything, this has been escalated in importance by becoming activities that will be continued in the long-term in the World Health Organization,” he said.

Zika is mainly spread by mosquitoes but also can be spread through sex. Most infected people don’t get sick. It can cause a mild illness, with fever, rash and joint pain.

It also causes microcephaly, or shrunken heads, in newborn children whose mothers were infected, leading to severe developmental problems and sowing grave concerns of would-be parents in countries hit by the virus.

Responding to the WHO announcement, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated its position that pregnant women should avoid traveling to areas with local transmission of Zika.

Dr Peter Salama, WHO’s director of emergencies, said the new phase of fighting the virus requires development donors “to step up to the plate and see this for what it is, which is a long-term problem that the world will have to deal with for many years to come”.

“We are sending the message that Zika is here to stay, and WHO’s response is here to stay in a very robust manner,” Salama said.

Zika virus is no longer a global health emergency, UN health agency says

Longer Telomeres May Help Deter Diseases And Increase Life Expectancy

Scientists and many alternative health advocates and practitioners have long been interested in factors influencing telomere length in the body, and how it affects health and life expectancy.

What are telomeres? 

Telomeres are caps that protect our chromosomes, consists of short segments of DNA at the  end of each strand of DNA. They affect gene expression and how our cells age.

Made of proteins, they have a vital role in keeping the end of the chromosome in stable condition and act as a buffer for wear and tear.

Each time cells divide, telomeres get shorter.  When their length becomes too short, the protection effects on chromosomes ceases, causing cells to malfunction and the body to age.

Short telomeres are implicated in the development of a broad range of age-related diseases, including many forms of cancer, obesity, stroke, osteoporosis, vascular dementia, diabetes type 2, and heart disease.

Telomeres are not only shortened by chronological aging, but also by obesity, stress, smoking, sedentary life, and poor diet. Telomere length is arguably the best marker of biological aging to date.

The followings are lifestyle changes proven to positively affect telomere length.

Lifestyle

A small pilot study carried by scientists of the University of California at San Francisco found that subjects of intervention group who adhered to a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes, which include diet, activity, stress management, and social support experienced a significant increase in relative telomere length.

The more they adhered to the recommended lifestyle program, the longer their telomeres had become. On the other hand, subjects in the controlled group who not asked to change their lifestyle experienced shorter telomeres by 3 percents over the course of 5 years.

The diet used in the study consisted of whole foods, plant- based proteins, fruits, vegetables, and low in refined carbohydrates and fat. Some plant-based diet advocates highlight this research as proof that the diet is the healthiest due to its overall ‘alkaline based’ and high in antioxidants.

Perhaps they are not aware that other studies such involving Mediterranean diet, which consists of meat, rich in vegetables and olive oil was also found to increase telomere length as well!

Stress 

A 2004 study found that telomeres of women exposed to the greatest stress by caring for chronically ill children were 10 years shorter compare to that of women experienced low stress. A recent study suggested that job-related stress is associated with the acceleration of the rate of  biological aging, which is determined as decreased length of telomeres.

A 2011 study demonstrated that women working part-time or were retired had longer telomeres. The result of the study suggests that telomeres may be able to recover from chronic stress.

Relaxation techniques have been shown to help. In a recent study of people who were highly stressed from caring for a loved one with dementia, calming yoga and meditation boosted telomerase activity by 43%

Exercise

A less strenuous exercise and short-lived, also known as acute exercise found to upregulate telomere-associated genes, which is responsible for telomere maintenance, and regulates several types of microRNA expression. Both are believed as an important mechanistic link between physical activity, telomeres, and improved health.

Antioxidants

A study showed a positive association between dietary antioxidants and longer telomeres.

Vegetable consumption

Vegetables are known to contain various types of antioxidants, including carotenoids, bioflavonoids, and phytosterols, all of which known to have many beneficial physiological effects. A study demonstrated that vegetable intake is associated with longer telomeres and reduced risk of hypertension.

Fats Intake

A study found small to medium chain saturated fatty acids (SMFAs), except lauric acid, to shorten telomere length. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats had no effect.

Shorter telomere length in participants taking SMFAs might due to their high alcohol consumption. In the result section of the article, authors stated ‘Participants with shorter TL tended to be white, older, and consumed more alcohol.’

In the body, ethanol from alcohol is converted to ethanal (acetyldehyde) in the body. Therefore, authors’ assumption of increased oxidative stress and inflammation could be one of the underlying causes linking SFA intake to TL is questionable. Saturated fat is inert, whereas ethanal is very reactive. So, it is ethanal that should be pointed out as the culprit!

Longer Telomeres May Help Deter Diseases And Increase Life Expectancy

Failure to meet cancer targets shows the NHS can no longer cope

Everywhere is struggling to cope. The increasing failure to hit the waiting time targets for cancer patients reflects systems that are struggling to meet workloads. Hospitals are struggling to get people’s tests done in time, to get their diagnosis for them as soon as possible and to be able to make plans for their treatment.

Three years ago, hospitals were managing to respond to the needs of people by generally meeting NHS waiting time targets for the growing number of those being referred with suspected cancer. The fact that we were hitting the targets didn’t mean that everything was perfect, but it did indicate that the way the system was organised meant that we were coping and working to meet demand. It doesn’t feel like we are coping any more.

Patients are waiting longer for scans, biopsies, pathology results and for treatment plans to be finalised. We are largely meeting the 14-day target and the target for 31 days from diagnosis to treatment. But we are largely failing to meet the 62-day target. That’s the time between someone being referred by their GP and them having their first definitive treatment. Delays are occurring mainly between a suspected cancer patient seeing a specialist and having a definite plan for their treatment drawn up. Myself and colleagues come across this all the time; people who have waited two, three or four weeks for a CT scan or biopsy.

That matters for individual patients because they have a prolonged period of uncertainty. Do I have cancer or do I not? And if I do have cancer, will it be curable? If it was a private hospital or one of the great hospitals in the US or Europe the consultant could expect to have the answers from the tests within a week. But here it can be as long as a month.

There will be some people who get worse while they are waiting for tests to take place or for the results to come back. Their cancers will grow. In a small proportion of them their cancer may spread. If you look after people with cancer it’s a desperate situation to be asking them to wait for their tests and to be planning to see them after a month because they won’t have their results until then, and we know that’s going to be a month of terrible worry for them.

This failure to meet targets, to keep up with the growing demand for cancer care, was a foreseeable problem – and it’s getting worse. Previously we planned for what we knew was going to be the growing number of people needing tests and treatment. Now we need a lot more radiologists and endoscopists, for example, to keep up with what we know is going to be the even greater numbers of people needing cancer care in the years to come. But now it’s not just the tens of thousands of people who have not been treated within 62 days over the last two and a half years since the NHS nationally began missing that target. It’s the fact that we now have a system that’s failing, and that can’t be acceptable.

• Peter Johnson is professor of medical oncology at Southampton University and Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician

Failure to meet cancer targets shows the NHS can no longer cope

The pill is linked to depression – and doctors can no longer ignore it | Holly Grigg-Spall

A newly published study from the University of Copenhagen has confirmed a link between hormonal contraceptives and depression. The largest of its kind, with one million Danish women between the ages of 15 and 34 tracked for a total of 13 years, it’s the kind of study that women such as me, who have experienced the side-effects of birth control-induced depression first hand, have been waiting for.

Researchers found that women taking the combined oral contraceptive were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression and those using progestin-only pills (also known as “the mini-pill”) were 34% more likely. Teens were at the greatest risk of depression, with an 80% increase when taking the combined pill, and that risk is two-fold with the progestin-only pill. In addition, other hormone-based methods commonly offered to women seeking an alternative to the pill – such as the hormonal IUS/coil, the patch and the ring – were shown to increase depression at a rate much higher than either kind of oral contraceptives.

In recent years we’ve seen efforts from the NHS and family planning organisations to encourage teens to use these so-called LARCs (long-acting reversible contraceptives), primarily because they eliminate the need to remember to take a pill every day, but also due to the fact they’re commonly believed to have less severe potential side-effects than the pill. The new research suggests this practice is misguided. We already know that those with pre-existing depression may find the pill worsens their symptoms, and if teens were at greater risk of depression, then continuing this practice would be negligent.

The researchers note that, because GPs are less likely to prescribe the pill to women who already have depression and because women who do experience depression on the pill are more likely to stop taking it, this study probably underestimates the potential negative affect that hormonal contraceptives can have on mental health. They speculate, in view of the rate at which hormonal contraceptives are prescribed (there are 3.5 million users in the UK alone), that these medications might be responsible for a fifth of all cases of depression.

Having spent the past eight years researching and writing on the emotional and psychological side-effects of hormonal birth control, I initially felt elated to read this study. Not just for myself, but for the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed over the years. Mood changes are one of the top reasons many women discontinue using the pill within the first year. Finally, here was the kind of large-scale, long-term study I’d been told was necessary before we could seriously talk about this issue or make a change in how we prescribe hormonal contraceptives.

Sweetening the pill: could some birth-control methods kill you?

However, I was naive, because it seems that no study will ever be good enough for the medical community to take women’s experiences seriously. As soon as this research dropped, the experts lined up to deliver their usual mix of gaslighting and paternalistic platitudes. We’re told not to be alarmed, concerned, or deterred from continuing to use our hormonal contraceptives, mostly by men who have never and will never take them themselves (partly because the long-term, large-scale study undertaken by WHO on the “acceptability” of the male pill revealed it would negatively impact their emotional wellbeing).

This “pillsplaining” is specific to discussions of research into the side-effects of hormonal birth control. Usually, when the research is on the pill alone, we’re quickly informed there are many other hormone-based methods to choose from, but unfortunately this new study says those alternatives are even worse. One expert even tried to dismiss the link with depression in pill-taking teens as more likely the result of “teen heartbreak”.

So, why is it that we’re not supposed to take this study seriously? Considering that women are fertile just six days per menstrual cycle and men are fertile every single day, that the burden of avoiding unwanted pregnancy falls to us, regardless of the burden that might have on our health and wellbeing, is nothing short of sexism. After all, there are certainly effective alternatives to hormonal contraceptives –the copper coil, diaphragm, condoms and new technology that’s making it simple for women to practice the fertility awareness method, not to mention, of course, vasectomy and the promise of Vasalgel, a contraceptive injection for men.

Yet, we’re reminded with one medical professional’s response to this new research that “an unwanted pregnancy far outweighs all the other side effects that could occur from a contraceptive.” If that’s true, why bother researching the side-effects at all?

It is important to remember that women are twice as likely to experience depression as men

It is important to remember that women are twice as likely to experience depression as men, reportedly due to “the fluctuation of progesterone and oestrogen levels”, in other words our biological femaleness. It’s apparently acceptable to blame women’s depression on the fact that they’re women, but it’s not OK to claim a powerful medication formulated from synthetic hormones could be at fault.

To me, and many other women, these Danish researchers are heroes and criticism of their methods (such as, they should have tracked those women using condoms or the copper IUD as well – even though these options were not available to them; or that women were likely depressed because of menstrual cramps – which the pill is supposed to prevent), only highlights the incredible knots the medical establishment will twist itself into in order to deny there’s a problem with the pill.

One of the study’s authors, Øjvind Lidegaard, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, also brought attention in 2011 to the increased risk of blood clots associated with newer, and supposedly “improved”, hormonal contraceptives such as the ring, the patch and drospirenone-containing pills. Lidegaard plans to focus next on researching the possible “association between taking hormonal birth control and attempting or committing suicide”. Researchers originally flagged up this potential link back in 1970 at the Nelson Pill Hearings, but the topic has not been touched since.

Depression and anxiety from hormonal contraceptives may not be the experience of every woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the experience of your friend, your daughter or your partner, and of many women out there, who, in reading about this could have their lives changed for the better.

The pill is linked to depression – and doctors can no longer ignore it | Holly Grigg-Spall

GP appointments should be five minutes longer, says BMA

GP appointments should be extended to 15 minutes because an ageing and increasingly overweight population means that many patients need extra time at the doctors’ surgery, according to the British Medical Association (BMA).

The standard slot currently stands at 10 minutes but the BMA GPs committee (GPC) believes that increasing the length of appointments by 50% would allow for improved decision-making and service, as well as reducing the administrative burden for doctors outside clinic hours.

In order to lengthen the contact time, the BMA says, in a report published on Monday, there should be a reduction in the number of patients each GP has to see every day. Dr Brian Balmer, who is on the GPC’s executive team, said: “In a climate of staff shortages and limited budgets, GP practices are struggling to cope with rising patient demand, especially from an ageing population with complicated, multiple health needs that cannot be properly treated within the current 10-minute recommended consultation. Many GPs are being forced to truncate care into an inadequate timeframe and deliver an unsafe number of consultations, seeing in some cases 40-60 patients a day.”

He said this was well above the 25 consultations a day recommended in many other EU countries. “We need a new approach that shakes up the way patients get their care from their local GP practice,” he said.

Until April 2014, GP appointments in England were fixed at 10 minutes. The requirement was dropped following a negotiation with doctors’ leaders. The length can be varied but it remains the standard: the NHS Choices website tells patients they should expect doctors to spend an average of 8-10 minutes with them.

Based on a widely accepted formula of 72 appointments per 1,000 patients each week and an average list size of 1,600 patients, the report, Safe Working in General Practice, proposes that GPs should be offering 115 appointments a week – an average of 23 a day over five days.

The committee is not suggesting doctors suddenly slash the number of appointments but said the health service should be aiming for this target to enable patients to get proper care. Its members did say more government money would be needed to fund longer appointments but did not say how much – although the likely expense will make the idea of longer appointments difficult to achieve.

Dr Zoe Norris, a GP locum, said the current 10-minute appointment might be just enough for a fit and healthy patient with a single condition but even then the time taken for them to enter the room, talk about their problem and then be examined added up. “As soon as you throw anything unusual into the mix you’re scuppered,” she said. “That might be you have got a complex patient, you might have a patient who needs help getting undressed. There’s no time to do the preventative things you need to do. It’s heartbreaking. I feel as though I’m doing half a job.”

Nevertheless, she said there was a reluctance to cut patients short, which led to GPs working 14-hour days.

The GPs committee said it would be possible to achieve greater efficiencies, helping fund longer appointments by linking together several surgeries into hubs, allowing them to work together to manage demand.

A report by the NHS Alliance and Primary Care Foundation published last year estimated that 27% of GP appointments could be avoided through greater integration, use of a wider primary care team and improved administration.

But Balmer is adamant that increased government funding will still be necessary. “More GPs must be put in front of patients so that the number of consultations per GP a day falls to a sustainable level,” he said. “General practice cannot be allowed to continue being run into the ground: it’s time for positive change that gives patients the care they deserve.”

An NHS England spokesman emphasised it no longer required appointments of a fixed length: “How long to allocate to individual patient appointments is at the discretion of individual GP practices, based on patient need, and there are no national limits suggesting 10 minutes should be the norm,” he said.

GP appointments should be five minutes longer, says BMA

Love Reading? Science Proves Bookworms Live Longer

Here’s one the bookworms will definitely celebrate. Not that you’re looking for more reasons to curl up with a good book, but just in case you’re looking for one, you’ll definitely want to hear this one.

All you book lovers out there may actually be living longer lives than your non-reading counterparts. Hard to believe? Ask the experts. Science actually shows reading at least three and a half hours a day can help you live longer than the average person who prefers to watch videos on YouTube on a long commute or crush it on Candy Crush before heading off to la-la land.

That’s right. Even while you’re thinking of putting in a thousand steps on your pedometer every day or taking in your daily dose of leafy greens and lean proteins, you shouldn’t forget to nourish your mind (and dare I say, soul) as well. All the most hard-core readers don’t even need an empirical, unbiased, and systematic study to prove it, but it’s nice to have science on your side, isn’t it?

A study published in Social Science & Medicine journal shows how researchers followed the lives of more than 3,500 people to study how their reading habits affected the length of their lives.

The result? After factoring in things such as age, sex, race, marital status, education, perceived health, and wealth, the researchers found out that people who read a book for around half an hour every day were 17 percent less likely to die than their non-reading counterparts.

People who read more than that had even higher chances – 23% — of living than people who did read a book at all. All in all, book readers were found to live almost two years longer than people who did not read a book.

Keep in mind that this is for people who read books specifically. If you’re more of a newspaper or magazine person, it’s likely you’ll still live a longer life, but not as long as the book readers. What the study showed was people who preferred newspapers or magazines or even blogs also enjoyed some longevity benefits, but not as much as the book readers.

Still, a benefit is a benefit is a benefit, and it’s definitely NOT the time to quit your reading habit now. In fact, I say this is the perfect time to jumpstart this perfectly advantageous habit. Read everything you can – from books to magazines and blogs and even food labels. (Reading food labels is an extremely helpful habit that I think will improve your quality of life even more, as it makes you aware of what you’re actually putting inside your body.)

As to why reading is good for your health is not actually clear (at least, not scientifically, yet). The study did not focus on why reading books can help someone live a longer life. And to be very clear about it, the research doesn’t say that reading books every day causes you to live longer. It just says people who read books every day live longer than people who don’t.

Of course, we’re free to make a few science-based inferences. A number of other scientific studies have proven that a person’s literacy level has a lot of impact on other aspects of their life.

For instance, children who read books early on are more likely to enjoy better socio-economic status when they grow up. This gives them better access to resources that can help them take care of their physical, mental, and emotional well-being as well as that of their loved ones.

Also, British research shows that a large portion of prisoners have a reading level that is way below that of other people. It doesn’t say that not reading causes people to commit crime. It just says people who don’t read books or read less are more likely to commit crime than people who read more books. There is an obvious link there, but exactly what it is, we still haven’t established.

So there you go. If living a longer life isn’t enough motivation for you to pick up a good book, I don’t know what it. Although in my case, I’d say living another life in another world, even if just for the moment, is motivation enough for me.

Just keep in mind that reading is just as sedentary as sitting in front of your computer at work or lounging on the couch to watch Netflix on a rainy day. It’s probably safe to say that you shouldn’t go expecting to live a hundred years if you’re literally always slipping away to a quiet corner to curl up with the book of the month.

There is no fountain of youth. There is no magic bullet. There is no single answer. The key to living a happy and healthy life to your 90s and even 100s is still a good mix of a lot of things. These include eating good, healthy food, getting as much physical movement as you can, and giving your mind a good level of stimulation (from books, people and other things). Remember, becoming healthy and staying healthy is not a one-shot deal. It’s a lifelong endeavor that you have to work at in the beginning but becomes a part of you in the end.

Andy Atari is a fitness blogger, researcher, and enthusiast. She writes for the every guy and every girl, the average Joes and Janes of the world who aren’t training to win a competition tomorrow or run a marathon in a week. She believes that everyone can have a fit and strong body, a goal that is not impossible to achieve if you set your mind to it. For more information, check out Andy’s blog at FitnessAtrium.com.

Love Reading? Science Proves Bookworms Live Longer

Functioning longer hours ‘increases stroke risk’

The very likely toll of extended operating hours is uncovered in a significant new study which demonstrates that workers nevertheless at their desks into the evening run an increased risk of stroke – and the longer the hours they put in, the larger the threat.

The biggest study ever conducted on the problem, carried out in 3 continents and led by scientists at University University London, discovered that these who perform far more than fifty five hrs a week have a 33% increased threat of stroke compared with those who operate a 35- to forty-hour week. They also have a 13% increased risk of coronary heart ailment.

The findings will confirm the assumptions of numerous that a prolonged-hrs culture, in which men and women function from early in the morning until finally effectively into the evening, with function also intruding into weekends, is possibly dangerous to well being.

The researchers, publishing their findings in the Lancet health-related journal, say they are not able to state categorically that long hours result in folks to have strokes – but their research demonstrates that there is a hyperlink, and it gets more powerful as thehours people place in get longer.

“Sudden death from overwork is often induced by stroke and is believed to outcome from a repetitive triggering of the anxiety response,” they write. “Behavioural mechanisms, this kind of as physical inactivity, may well also link prolonged doing work hours and stroke a hypothesis supported by evidence of an enhanced risk of incident stroke in men and women who sit for extended intervals at function.

“Physical inactivity can boost the threat of stroke by means of numerous biological mechanisms and hefty alcohol consumption – a threat factor for all sorts of stroke – might be a contributing element simply because staff working lengthy hours appear to be somewhat more prone to risky drinking than are people who operate normal hours.”

Folks who operate long hrs are also far more probably to ignore the warning indicators, they say – leading to delays in obtaining treatment.

Mika Kivimäki, professor of epidemiology at UCL, and colleagues looked individually at heart condition and at stroke. For coronary heart illness, they pulled together 25 studies involving far more than 600,000 males and girls from Europe, the USA, and Australia who have been followed for an common of 8.five many years.

They then pooled and analysed the information that had been collected. This developed the locating of a 13% boost in the possibilities of a new diagnosis of heart condition or hospitalisation or death.

For stroke, they analysed data from 17 research involving virtually 530,000 males and ladies who were followed up for an typical of seven.two years. They located a 1.3 times larger chance of stroke in people working fifty five hours or more, in contrast with individuals doing work a regular 35- to forty-hour week.

Relevant: How to avert a stroke in middle age

This association remained even right after taking into account health behaviours such as smoking, alcohol consumption and bodily exercise, and normal cardiovascular threat aspects which includes large blood strain and large cholesterol.

The longer the functioning week, the larger was the danger of stroke. People working amongst 41 and 48 hrs had a 10% greater chance of stroke, and individuals working 49 to 54 hours had a 27% elevated risk.

Prof Kivimäki said the scale of the study had allowed the crew to be much more exact about the well being toll of long hours than ever just before. He suggested that doctors should get note of the achievable hazards to their difficult-working patients. “Health professionals should be conscious that operating extended hrs is connected with a considerably enhanced chance of stroke, and possibly also coronary heart ailment,” he explained.

In a commentary in the journal, Dr Urban Janlert from Umeå University in Sweden writes that the European Working Time Directive, meant to limit the day to 48 hrs, is not in result in all nations. “Long working hours are not a negligible occurrence. Amongst member nations of the OECD, Turkey has the highest proportion of people functioning far more than 50 hrs per week (43%), and the Netherlands the lowest (much less than 1%).

“Although some nations have legislation for doing work hours … it is not always implemented. For that reason, that the length of a operating day is an essential determinant mostly for strokes, but probably also for coronary heart disease, is an essential obtaining.”

Dr Tim Chico, reader in cardiovascular medication at the University of Sheffield, said the research did not demonstrate extended doing work hours can lead to stroke or heart disease. “It is practically undoubtedly impossible to show regardless of whether there is a direct website link as this would need 1000′s of men and women to be randomly allotted to function a lot more or less hrs and followed up for many years to see if this changes the chance of stroke, even though retaining all other behaviours the very same in between groups,” he said.

For a lot of folks, cutting down on working hours would be hard or extremely hard, he explained. “Most of us could lessen the amount of time we commit sitting down, enhance our physical exercise and increase our diet plan whilst doing work and this may well be much more crucial the far more time we commit at perform. We must all contemplate how the operating setting could be altered to advertise healthier behaviour that will lessen strokes, irrespective of how long we perform.”

Functioning longer hours ‘increases stroke risk’

Meet the guy who can help your brain dwell longer

From there he moved to Arizona in which he taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson, before obtaining a masters degree in overall health policy and administration and working the regional hospital. In 2002, President George W Bush nominated him to be Surgeon Standard of the US – “the greatest practice in the world”, he laughs, which genuinely crystallised his belief in “absolute science” as the reply to health care questions.

So how do these experiences translate into a thirty-day strategy to develop and safeguard our brains into previous age? “I worked with so several sufferers with head injuries, victims of stroke, or ageing seniors with dementia, and although I saw many medics trying to educate men and women how to stay physically match longer, no a single was addressing cognitive fitness.”

Soon after talking to scientists across the nation, Dr Carmona determined that improving the well being of your brain was “realistic and viable”, and that if you adhere to his programme, you can anticipate to see the “beginning of a transformation in a month”. This is not an absolute goal, he factors out, but the chance to “maximise the possibility for the brain to stay youthful – the start off of a journey”.

First, he explains, you have to understand the science, specifically the concept of neuroplasticity. “We utilized to think that nerve harm and decay in the brain had been irreversible but we now know that you can start studying the piano at 90. We can scan the brain and see new connections being manufactured. So there is no purpose – or excuse – not to try.”

The exact same is true of recollections, he explains. “We feel we are getting to be far more forgetful, but we really don’t shed recollections. Alternatively, we shed the capacity and pace essential for retrieving them.” By improving the communication network in the brain – the neurotransmitters, chemical messengers sent in between neurons – we can defend our memory and retain our capability to think obviously and rapidly.

So how can we create cognitive ability that will stay with us until finally the finish? Dr Carmona thinks we want to increase both brain framework and perform if we are to stave off decline. “It’s never ever too late or also early to heal the brain from harm inflicted by a bad diet program, bad wellness, or even bodily injury like concussion.”

The primary challenges are not surprising: our genes (the gene ApoE4 is most notably a threat element for Alzheimer’s) cholesterol, which can fur up the small arteries in the brain totally free radicals, which harm neurons and can trigger cell death higher blood pressure, which can lead to stroke or irritation – reduced levels are related with far better cognitive health.

Lastly, there is the Type two diabetes connection – doctors have located that insulin resistance is associated to poor performance on memory exams. Some medical doctors are even calling Alzheimer’s illness Type 3 diabetes.

The very first area of adjust, Dr Carmona suggests, is close to stress. “Learn to lessen stress and nervousness by altering behaviour. Resilience is an critical portion of brain wellness.”

Looking following the entire body is following: we need to reject toxic environments by limiting our publicity to air pollution, plastics, pesticides, hefty metals and chemical-primarily based house products this kind of as air freshener.

The programme also suggests steering clear of toxic food items – individuals that are commercially prepared or which include antibiotics and hormones (this kind of as non-organic meat). Meals need to be washed, and weekly saunas can assist you sweat out toxins by means of your skin.

And it is critical to eat positively, explains the doctor. Aim for foods higher in entire grains and lean proteins eat frequently but not in large amounts. Coffee is a must for its antioxidant properties, soup stops you overeating and incorporating cinnamon liberally to foods is excellent for stabilising blood sugar ranges.

Workout is just as essential, even though, and can reverse poor brain overall health, says the medical doctor, as it truly wakes up dormant cells and stimulates them to make new neurons and boost memory. He operates out “five or 6 times a week”. The prepare suggests a mixture of aerobics or cardiovascular exercise, muscle strength conditioning, versatility and stability perform.

Lastly, incorporate a spiritual component – no matter whether you decide on meditation, mindfulness or contemplation.

His very own physical overall health “age” is “mid-30s”, Dr Carmona estimates. “I have a resting heart price of 52 beats per minute, blood pressure of 112/68, weigh 185lb and have the very same minimal cholesterol as when I was 25. I get no medicines – just a multivitamin with additional omega three oil.

“I keep away from processed meals and consume a lot of veggies. Of course, I’ll eat a slice of birthday cake now and then, and I have to work out harder to sustain what I have, but generally, I practise what I preach.”

One particular day at a time: Dr Carmona’s 24-hour strategy for great brain overall health

7am Before you get up, be grateful – don’t forget there is one thing larger and broader in life than just you. Meditate for twenty minutes.

seven.30am Operate out for thirty minutes – decide on from cycling at 10mph, walking at 4mph or anything you take pleasure in like trampolining or callisthenics.

8am Breakfast. Decide on a high-protein and antioxidant-wealthy commence to the day this kind of as a spinach and tomato frittata, plus a handful of blueberries. Drink a cup of coffee, and brush teeth effectively. Make confident you have a bowel movement (for detoxifying) – drink lots of water during the day to support.

11am Take a brain health club-break for twenty minutes. Devote time understanding a new language or reading tough fiction.

twelve.30pm Consume a light lunch such as quinoa and white-bean soup, with plenty of vegetables. Keep in mind the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu – eat right up until you are 80 per cent full.

3pm Mindfulness physical exercise – taking 20 minutes out to refocus now can help re-energise for the rest of the day.

7pm Supper. Get pleasure from a protein-rich meal like sesame-crusted salmon teriyaki – sesame seeds are an essential supply of vitamin B, necessary for brain health.

8pm Flip off all electronics and unwind. Socialise with close friends. Try out one of the plan’s de-stressing suggestions like acquiring outside for a gentle walk just before bed.

11pm Clean teeth and practise a 5-minute deep breathing workout.

12pm Get at least seven hours of uninterrupted rest to reset your brain.

Canyon Ranch’s 30 Days to a Far better Brain by Dr Richard Carmona (Atria Books, $ 25) is available from Telegraph Books for £15.99, plus £1.95 p&ampp. Contact 0844 871 1514 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk

Meet the guy who can help your brain dwell longer

Meet the guy who can support your brain reside longer

From there he moved to Arizona exactly where he taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson, ahead of obtaining a masters degree in health policy and administration and running the nearby hospital. In 2002, President George W Bush nominated him to be Surgeon General of the US – “the most significant practice in the world”, he laughs, which genuinely crystallised his belief in “absolute science” as the response to health care questions.

So how do these experiences translate into a 30-day plan to create and defend our brains into old age? “I worked with so many individuals with head injuries, victims of stroke, or ageing seniors with dementia, and although I saw a lot of medics making an attempt to educate individuals how to remain physically match longer, no one particular was addressing cognitive fitness.”

Soon after speaking to scientists across the country, Dr Carmona made the decision that strengthening the health of your brain was “realistic and viable”, and that if you adhere to his programme, you can anticipate to see the “beginning of a transformation in a month”. This is not an absolute aim, he factors out, but the likelihood to “maximise the possibility for the brain to stay younger – the start off of a journey”.

First, he explains, you have to understand the science, specially the concept of neuroplasticity. “We used to think that nerve damage and decay in the brain had been irreversible but we now know that you can commence finding out the piano at 90. We can scan the brain and see new connections becoming made. So there is no purpose – or excuse – not to attempt.”

The very same is accurate of recollections, he explains. “We feel we are turning out to be much more forgetful, but we don’t shed recollections. Rather, we drop the capability and pace required for retrieving them.” By strengthening the communication network in the brain – the neurotransmitters, chemical messengers sent between neurons – we can shield our memory and retain our potential to believe clearly and rapidly.

So how can we build cognitive ability that will remain with us till the end? Dr Carmona thinks we need to boost both brain framework and function if we are to stave off decline. “It’s never too late or too early to heal the brain from harm inflicted by a poor diet regime, bad health, or even physical injury like concussion.”

The major difficulties are not surprising: our genes (the gene ApoE4 is most notably a risk element for Alzheimer’s) cholesterol, which can fur up the tiny arteries in the brain totally free radicals, which damage neurons and can result in cell death high blood strain, which can lead to stroke or inflammation – reduce amounts are associated with much better cognitive health.

Lastly, there is the Type two diabetes connection – medical professionals have found that insulin resistance is connected to poor overall performance on memory tests. Some physicians are even calling Alzheimer’s ailment Kind 3 diabetes.

The 1st region of adjust, Dr Carmona suggests, is about tension. “Learn to lessen stress and nervousness by altering behaviour. Resilience is an crucial portion of brain overall health.”

Seeking after the physique is up coming: we need to have to reject toxic environments by limiting our publicity to air pollution, plastics, pesticides, hefty metals and chemical-primarily based property products such as air freshener.

The programme also suggests avoiding toxic foods – those that are commercially prepared or which have antibiotics and hormones (such as non-organic meat). Meals ought to be washed, and weekly saunas can aid you sweat out harmful toxins by means of your skin.

And it is essential to eat positively, explains the physician. Aim for foods substantial in whole grains and lean proteins consume regularly but not in big quantities. Coffee is a should for its antioxidant properties, soup stops you overeating and including cinnamon liberally to meals is fantastic for stabilising blood sugar levels.

Exercise is just as critical, even though, and can reverse poor brain well being, says the doctor, as it truly wakes up dormant cells and stimulates them to make new neurons and improve memory. He operates out “five or 6 times a week”. The plan recommends a combination of aerobics or cardiovascular exercise, muscle power conditioning, versatility and stability perform.

Lastly, consist of a spiritual element – whether you decide on meditation, mindfulness or contemplation.

His own bodily health “age” is “mid-30s”, Dr Carmona estimates. “I have a resting heart rate of 52 beats per minute, blood pressure of 112/68, weigh 185lb and have the very same low cholesterol as when I was 25. I consider no medicines – just a multivitamin with additional omega 3 oil.

“I remain away from processed meals and consume a lot of veggies. Of course, I’ll consume a slice of birthday cake now and then, and I have to perform out more difficult to maintain what I have, but generally, I practise what I preach.”

A single day at a time: Dr Carmona’s 24-hour strategy for good brain well being

7am Prior to you get up, be grateful – keep in mind there is something bigger and broader in life than just you. Meditate for 20 minutes.

7.30am Perform out for thirty minutes – select from cycling at 10mph, walking at 4mph or one thing you appreciate like trampolining or callisthenics.

8am Breakfast. Pick a large-protein and antioxidant-wealthy begin to the day such as a spinach and tomato frittata, plus a handful of blueberries. Drink a cup of coffee, and brush teeth nicely. Make confident you have a bowel motion (for detoxifying) – drink plenty of water throughout the day to support.

11am Take a brain gymnasium-break for twenty minutes. Spend time learning a new language or studying difficult fiction.

12.30pm Consume a light lunch this kind of as quinoa and white-bean soup, with tons of veggies. Remember the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu – eat until finally you are 80 per cent complete.

3pm Mindfulness exercising – taking 20 minutes out to refocus now can support re-energise for the rest of the day.

7pm Supper. Enjoy a protein-wealthy meal like sesame-crusted salmon teriyaki – sesame seeds are an essential supply of vitamin B, required for brain health.

8pm Turn off all electronics and unwind. Socialise with pals. Consider one particular of the plan’s de-stressing suggestions like acquiring outdoors for a gentle walk ahead of bed.

11pm Clean teeth and practise a 5-minute deep breathing exercise.

12pm Get at least seven hours of uninterrupted sleep to reset your brain.

Canyon Ranch’s 30 Days to a Greater Brain by Dr Richard Carmona (Atria Books, $ 25) is offered from Telegraph Books for £15.99, plus £1.95 p&ampp. Get in touch with 0844 871 1514 or check out books.telegraph.co.united kingdom

Meet the guy who can support your brain reside longer

Meet the guy who can assist your brain reside longer

From there he moved to Arizona the place he taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson, just before acquiring a masters degree in overall health policy and administration and operating the neighborhood hospital. In 2002, President George W Bush nominated him to be Surgeon Common of the US – “the largest practice in the world”, he laughs, which actually crystallised his belief in “absolute science” as the solution to wellness care queries.

So how do these experiences translate into a 30-day program to develop and shield our brains into old age? “I worked with so several individuals with head injuries, victims of stroke, or ageing seniors with dementia, and although I saw many medics attempting to teach folks how to remain physically match longer, no one was addressing cognitive fitness.”

After talking to scientists across the country, Dr Carmona determined that enhancing the well being of your brain was “realistic and viable”, and that if you adhere to his programme, you can assume to see the “beginning of a transformation in a month”. This is not an absolute goal, he points out, but the chance to “maximise the chance for the brain to keep young – the start of a journey”.

1st, he explains, you have to recognize the science, particularly the notion of neuroplasticity. “We utilized to feel that nerve harm and decay in the brain had been irreversible but we now know that you can start learning the piano at 90. We can scan the brain and see new connections currently being made. So there is no reason – or excuse – not to try out.”

The identical is accurate of recollections, he explains. “We believe we are turning out to be more forgetful, but we really do not get rid of recollections. Instead, we shed the capability and velocity required for retrieving them.” By strengthening the communication network in the brain – the neurotransmitters, chemical messengers sent amongst neurons – we can safeguard our memory and retain our capacity to feel plainly and rapidly.

So how can we develop cognitive potential that will keep with us till the finish? Dr Carmona thinks we require to boost the two brain construction and perform if we are to stave off decline. “It’s never ever as well late or as well early to heal the brain from harm inflicted by a poor diet regime, poor wellness, or even bodily damage like concussion.”

The major difficulties are not surprising: our genes (the gene ApoE4 is most notably a threat factor for Alzheimer’s) cholesterol, which can fur up the tiny arteries in the brain totally free radicals, which harm neurons and can lead to cell death higher blood pressure, which can lead to stroke or inflammation – decrease amounts are associated with greater cognitive well being.

Lastly, there is the Type 2 diabetes connection – medical doctors have identified that insulin resistance is connected to bad functionality on memory tests. Some medical doctors are even calling Alzheimer’s disease Sort 3 diabetes.

The very first region of alter, Dr Carmona suggests, is around tension. “Learn to lessen tension and anxiety by modifying behaviour. Resilience is an crucial component of brain overall health.”

Looking right after the body is up coming: we need to reject toxic environments by limiting our exposure to air pollution, plastics, pesticides, heavy metals and chemical-primarily based property goods such as air freshener.

The programme also suggests staying away from toxic meals – people that are commercially ready or which include antibiotics and hormones (such as non-natural meat). Food need to be washed, and weekly saunas can support you sweat out harmful toxins through your skin.

And it is essential to eat positively, explains the medical professional. Aim for foods large in entire grains and lean proteins eat often but not in huge amounts. Coffee is a should for its antioxidant properties, soup stops you overeating and including cinnamon liberally to meals is excellent for stabilising blood sugar amounts.

Exercising is just as essential, though, and can reverse poor brain health, says the doctor, as it in fact wakes up dormant cells and stimulates them to make new neurons and increase memory. He functions out “five or six instances a week”. The plan recommends a combination of aerobics or cardiovascular physical exercise, muscle strength conditioning, versatility and stability function.

Lastly, consist of a spiritual component – no matter whether you decide on meditation, mindfulness or contemplation.

His very own physical well being “age” is “mid-30s”, Dr Carmona estimates. “I have a resting heart charge of 52 beats per minute, blood strain of 112/68, weigh 185lb and have the very same lower cholesterol as when I was 25. I take no medicines – just a multivitamin with added omega three oil.

“I keep away from processed food and consume a lot of greens. Of course, I’ll consume a slice of birthday cake now and then, and I have to perform out more difficult to preserve what I have, but essentially, I practise what I preach.”

One day at a time: Dr Carmona’s 24-hour prepare for very good brain health

7am Just before you get up, be grateful – don’t forget there is one thing bigger and broader in lifestyle than just you. Meditate for twenty minutes.

7.30am Operate out for thirty minutes – select from cycling at 10mph, strolling at 4mph or one thing you take pleasure in like trampolining or callisthenics.

8am Breakfast. Pick a high-protein and antioxidant-rich begin to the day this kind of as a spinach and tomato frittata, plus a handful of blueberries. Drink a cup of coffee, and brush teeth well. Make certain you have a bowel motion (for detoxifying) – drink lots of water during the day to support.

11am Consider a brain fitness center-break for 20 minutes. Devote time learning a new language or reading demanding fiction.

12.30pm Eat a light lunch this kind of as quinoa and white-bean soup, with lots of greens. Don’t forget the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu – consume until you are 80 per cent total.

3pm Mindfulness exercise – taking 20 minutes out to refocus now can assist re-energise for the rest of the day.

7pm Supper. Appreciate a protein-wealthy meal like sesame-crusted salmon teriyaki – sesame seeds are an essential source of vitamin B, necessary for brain overall health.

8pm Flip off all electronics and unwind. Socialise with close friends. Attempt a single of the plan’s de-stressing tips like getting outside for a gentle walk ahead of bed.

11pm Clean teeth and practise a five-minute deep breathing physical exercise.

12pm Get at least seven hrs of uninterrupted rest to reset your brain.

Canyon Ranch’s thirty Days to a Better Brain by Dr Richard Carmona (Atria Books, $ 25) is accessible from Telegraph Books for £15.99, plus £1.95 p&ampp. Get in touch with 0844 871 1514 or pay a visit to books.telegraph.co.united kingdom

Meet the guy who can assist your brain reside longer

Meet the guy who can assist your brain dwell longer

From there he moved to Arizona in which he taught at the University of Arizona in Tucson, prior to obtaining a masters degree in well being policy and administration and working the nearby hospital. In 2002, President George W Bush nominated him to be Surgeon Common of the US – “the most significant practice in the world”, he laughs, which truly crystallised his belief in “absolute science” as the reply to wellness care inquiries.

So how do these experiences translate into a 30-day prepare to build and shield our brains into old age? “I worked with so many individuals with head injuries, victims of stroke, or ageing seniors with dementia, and despite the fact that I saw several medics striving to educate individuals how to stay physically fit longer, no one was addressing cognitive fitness.”

Soon after speaking to scientists across the nation, Dr Carmona made a decision that bettering the overall health of your brain was “realistic and viable”, and that if you adhere to his programme, you can assume to see the “beginning of a transformation in a month”. This isn’t an absolute aim, he points out, but the chance to “maximise the chance for the brain to remain youthful – the start of a journey”.

Initial, he explains, you have to comprehend the science, especially the concept of neuroplasticity. “We utilized to think that nerve injury and decay in the brain had been irreversible but we now know that you can start learning the piano at 90. We can scan the brain and see new connections getting manufactured. So there is no reason – or excuse – not to try out.”

The same is real of memories, he explains. “We feel we are becoming more forgetful, but we do not get rid of recollections. As an alternative, we get rid of the capability and pace necessary for retrieving them.” By strengthening the communication network in the brain – the neurotransmitters, chemical messengers sent among neurons – we can protect our memory and retain our ability to consider plainly and quickly.

So how can we develop cognitive capacity that will remain with us until finally the end? Dr Carmona thinks we need to increase each brain construction and function if we are to stave off decline. “It’s by no means too late or as well early to heal the brain from damage inflicted by a poor diet regime, poor overall health, or even bodily injury like concussion.”

The principal issues are not surprising: our genes (the gene ApoE4 is most notably a chance element for Alzheimer’s) cholesterol, which can fur up the tiny arteries in the brain cost-free radicals, which injury neurons and can cause cell death substantial blood pressure, which can lead to stroke or irritation – decrease amounts are related with far better cognitive health.

Lastly, there is the Type 2 diabetes connection – medical doctors have found that insulin resistance is relevant to poor functionality on memory tests. Some medical professionals are even calling Alzheimer’s illness Kind 3 diabetes.

The first spot of modify, Dr Carmona suggests, is about tension. “Learn to lessen pressure and anxiousness by shifting behaviour. Resilience is an critical component of brain well being.”

Looking soon after the physique is up coming: we need to reject toxic environments by limiting our exposure to air pollution, plastics, pesticides, hefty metals and chemical-based mostly property merchandise this kind of as air freshener.

The programme also suggests keeping away from toxic foods – those that are commercially prepared or which include antibiotics and hormones (such as non-organic meat). Meals ought to be washed, and weekly saunas can help you sweat out toxins through your skin.

And it is crucial to eat positively, explains the doctor. Aim for foods high in whole grains and lean proteins consume often but not in large quantities. Coffee is a must for its antioxidant properties, soup stops you overeating and incorporating cinnamon liberally to foods is wonderful for stabilising blood sugar ranges.

Exercising is just as essential, although, and can reverse poor brain wellness, says the medical professional, as it in fact wakes up dormant cells and stimulates them to make new neurons and improve memory. He performs out “five or six instances a week”. The strategy recommends a mixture of aerobics or cardiovascular exercise, muscle power conditioning, versatility and stability function.

Lastly, include a spiritual element – whether or not you choose meditation, mindfulness or contemplation.

His very own physical health “age” is “mid-30s”, Dr Carmona estimates. “I have a resting heart charge of 52 beats per minute, blood strain of 112/68, weigh 185lb and have the very same low cholesterol as when I was 25. I take no medicines – just a multivitamin with added omega 3 oil.

“I remain away from processed food and eat loads of vegetables. Of program, I’ll consume a slice of birthday cake now and then, and I have to operate out tougher to maintain what I have, but fundamentally, I practise what I preach.”

1 day at a time: Dr Carmona’s 24-hour prepare for great brain overall health

7am Before you get up, be grateful – don’t forget there is some thing bigger and broader in life than just you. Meditate for 20 minutes.

seven.30am Work out for 30 minutes – decide on from cycling at 10mph, strolling at 4mph or something you get pleasure from like trampolining or callisthenics.

8am Breakfast. Decide on a large-protein and antioxidant-wealthy begin to the day such as a spinach and tomato frittata, plus a handful of blueberries. Drink a cup of coffee, and brush teeth well. Make certain you have a bowel motion (for detoxifying) – drink tons of water throughout the day to support.

11am Consider a brain fitness center-break for 20 minutes. Invest time finding out a new language or studying difficult fiction.

12.30pm Eat a light lunch such as quinoa and white-bean soup, with lots of vegetables. Remember the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu – eat right up until you are 80 per cent full.

3pm Mindfulness exercise – taking 20 minutes out to refocus now can aid re-energise for the rest of the day.

7pm Supper. Take pleasure in a protein-rich meal like sesame-crusted salmon teriyaki – sesame seeds are an crucial source of vitamin B, required for brain overall health.

8pm Turn off all electronics and unwind. Socialise with buddies. Consider one of the plan’s de-stressing tips like getting outdoors for a gentle walk prior to bed.

11pm Clean teeth and practise a five-minute deep breathing exercising.

12pm Get at least seven hours of uninterrupted sleep to reset your brain.

Canyon Ranch’s 30 Days to a Greater Brain by Dr Richard Carmona (Atria Books, $ 25) is obtainable from Telegraph Books for £15.99, plus £1.95 p&ampp. Phone 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.united kingdom

Meet the guy who can assist your brain dwell longer