This is disgusting!

As i was seraching the BBC website to bring you more interesting health blogs : ) I found this article on how more than one in four commuters have bacteria faeces on their hands, and apprantly the more Northern the worse it got! In Newcastle and Liverpool, men were more likely than women to show contamination (53% of men with 30% of women in Newcastle and 36% of men and 31% of women in Liverpool), however in London, Cardiff and Birmingham - women were worse.
"People who had used the bus had higher rates of hand contamination than those who had used the train."
It also showed that manual workers had cleaner hands than other professionals, e.g, students, and retired people.
Personally I think this is disgusting and i always make sure that I wash my hands when i get home, especially after travelling on a bus because they are filthy!
Professor Mike Catchpole, director of the Health Protection Agency's Centre for Infections said;
"It is well known that hand washing is one of the most important ways of controlling the spread of infection, especially those that cause diarrhoea and vomiting, colds and flu." To read the article click this link -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7667499.stm

Honey

As I was searching through the Lancashire Evening Post website I found an article, that was reported by the Daily Mail, which has found that Honey has been found to help aid burn recovery in mild to moderate burns. Apparantly when honey was applied to the burns they took less time to heal than some widely used dressings. These review was carried out by the Cochrane Collaboration, however the researchers say that these findings should "be treated with caution." I just thought this quite an interesting article.

Obesity

According to a headline from the Daily Telegraph weight gain is linked to a switch in the brain. I found this article very interesting because it was not quick to just presme that people who suffer from obesity are just gready. Apparantly if this "switch" is faulty then the body will not recognise that it is full, and the brain will send out more signals to eat. The article suggests "drugs could be used to suppress this switch and help people get back to a healthy weight."
It is based on a study with mice, however the problems with this is that mice and humans have very different metabolisms , so the results will need to be confirmed in humans. If this is found I think this will help alot of obese people, it will also prevent a lot of painful and sometimes unnecessary procedures that people go through to loose weight. Check this article out on http://www.lep.co.uk/nhshealth/Obesity-switch.4559048.jp

Help for depression

I have always preferred to use alternative medicine than orthodox treatments, so Im always keeping my eyes open for herbal treatments and i found this on the Lancashire Evening Posts website about how studies have been found that St John's wort can help with people who suffer from mild to moderate depression. It is apparantly superior to placebo and as effective as standard anti depressents, they are also found to have fewer side effects. However it has not yet been found to help severe major depression. I think that anyone suffering from depression should try this out, first check with your doctor, because it can have serious interactions with a large number of commonly used medications, but it does not need to be prescribed by a general practitioner. If you would like to read the article i used then check it out on http://www.lep.co.uk/nhshealth/St-John39s-wort-for-depression.4574562.jp

smear tests

I have recently found out that women do not get called up for a smear test to detect cervical cancer until the age of 25! Personally i think this is ridiculous, so i decided to find out more about this by going to my GP and talking to my nurse, she informed me that this is correct but it is due to the fact that women at the age of 25 and below have cells that are immature, so a lot of smear tests can come back abnormal even when they dont have cervical cancer. To understand why it has come back abnormal women are then sent to get a biopsie, which is a very invasive procedure and has been known to leave damage in the cervix and can possibly leave women infertile.
I do understand why the NHS has changed the age limit, however I do believe that women should still be able to request a smear test if they want one, even if they are not experiencing any symptons!

welcome to my blog

My blog is going to be about health in the North West of England. This is for my presentation for the digital Newsroom workshop.