Health Policy InsightHealthcare management online analysis and intelligence
Health Policy InsightThe condition is more excruciating than childbirth or gunshot wounds, but little understood. An online community of ‘clusterheads’ are self-experimenting with psilocybin – with promising results
Peter was working late, watching two roulette tables in play at a London casino, when he felt something stir behind his right eye. It was just a shadow of sensation, a horribly familiar tickle. But on that summer night in 2018, as chips hit the tables and gamblers’ conversation swelled, panic set in. He knew he only had a few minutes.
Peter found his boss, muttered that he had to leave, now, and ran outside. By then, the tickle had escalated; it felt like a red-hot poker was being shoved through his right pupil. Tears flowed from that eye, which was nearly swollen shut, and mucus from his right nostril. Half-blinded, gripping at his face, he stumbled along the street, eventually escaping into a company car that whisked him home, where he blacked out.
Continue reading...American Lung Association’s study says almost 156 million people live in areas with unhealthy levels of soot or smog
Almost half of Americans are breathing in dangerous levels of air pollutants, a new report shows, a rise compared with a year ago and likely to further increase in coming years thanks to the climate crisis and the Trump administration’s sweeping environmental rollbacks.
Just over 156 million people live in neighborhoods with unhealthy levels of soot or smog – a 16% rise compared with last year and the highest number in a decade, according to the American Lung Association (ALA) annual state of the air report.
Continue reading...Is it possible to make a country healthier one slice of rye bread at a time? If the rocketing wholegrain consumption of the Danes is anything to go by, absolutely
Lunchtime in Copenhagen, Denmark. The place is packed and staff are talking customers through the menu. Would we like the slow-roasted pork with pearl barley and mushrooms? How about the rye pancakes with salmon, cream cheese and avocado? I decide on the beetroot tartare with horseradish and rye toasts, and a spelt side salad.
This isn’t a fancy new Nordic restaurant – it’s a work canteen. These chefs feed 900 workers from DSB (Danish State Railways) every weekday. As well as looking and tasting great, each dish served here contains fuldkorn (wholegrains), from breakfast smoothies with oats to afternoon treats such as today’s wholemeal scones. There’s a good reason for this: DSB recently signed up to a national programme that aims to get more wholegrains into employees.
Continue reading...Wines produced after 2010 showed steep rise in contamination of trifluoroacetic acid, analysis finds
Levels of a little-known forever chemical known as TFA in European wines have risen “alarmingly” in recent decades, according to analysis, prompting fears that contamination will breach a planetary boundary.
Researchers from Pesticide Action Network Europe tested 49 bottles of commercial wine to see how TFA contamination in food and drink had progressed. They found levels of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a breakdown product of long-lasting Pfas chemicals that carries possible fertility risks, far above those previously measured in water.
Continue reading...As the UK Pandemic Sciences Network conference kicks off in Glasgow, virus expert Prof Emma Thomson says new technologies are boosting science’s ability to fight novel strains of infectious diseases
Prof Emma Thomson is someone who knows a thing or two about pandemics. As the recently appointed director of the Medical Research Council, University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (CVR) and a World Heath Organization consultant, Thomson is one of the country’s leading virus experts.
“We used to think that pandemics would occur maybe once in our lifetimes. Now, it’s definitely within the next few years. It could even be tomorrow,” she says.
Continue reading...Mohammed Mustafa, who worked at al-Ahli Arab hospital before it was bombed, says ministers are wrong to say Australia is ‘not a major player’
When Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza last month and resumed its large-scale bombardment, the British-Australian doctor Mohammed Mustafa had just clocked off at the emergency department of what was the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City.
“It was so intense that the windows blew off their hinges and I had fallen out of my bed,” he tells Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast.
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Continue reading...Small increase amounts to 3.6 million births and an increase in the women aged 40-44 giving birth
The number of births in the US increased slightly in 2024 to roughly 3.6 million, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The small increase of 1% in the number of births comes amid a long-term decline that began during the Great Recession, in about 2008. The provisional data was released on Wednesday.
Continue reading...US health secretary says Americans should eat ‘zero’ sugar and announces plans to eliminate eight synthetic food dyes
The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr on Tuesday called sugar “poison” and recommended that Americans eat “zero” added sugar in their food, while acknowledging that the federal government was unlikely to be able to eliminate it from products.
Kennedy, however, said that better labeling was needed for foods and that new government guidelines on nutrition would recommend people avoid sugar completely.
Continue reading...Effective Monday, the agency suspends its proficiency testing program for grade ‘A’ raw milk and finished products
The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality-control program for testing fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food-safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, as part of Donald Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce.
Continue reading...Researchers surprised at impact that even small differences in sleep make to adolescents’ cognitive abilities
Teenagers who go to bed earlier and sleep for longer than their peers tend to have sharper mental skills and score better on cognitive tests, researchers have said.
A study of more than 3,000 adolescents showed that those who turned in earliest, slept the longest, and had the lowest sleeping heart rates outperformed others on reading, vocabulary, problem solving and other mental tests.
Continue reading...Research into myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome also reveals diagnosis ‘postcode lottery’
More than 150,000 more people in England are living with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) than was previously estimated, according to a study that highlights the “postcode lottery” of diagnosis.
The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Public Health, involved researchers from the University of Edinburgh analysing NHS data from more than 62 million people in England to identify people who had been diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome or post-viral fatigue syndrome.
Continue reading...The co-founder of the family-run frozen food maker says ethical practices pay dividends on top of financial returns for her business
Rosie Brown, the boss of Cook, never planned to be a chief executive. First, she trained as a nurse, then tried her hand at politics; then banking. But having struggled at first to find her niche, Brown now leads a ready-meal business ranked as the country’s best place to work in food and drink, and is looking to help others find their way in the world of work.
Last year, the co-CEO of the ethical frozen food business took over from shoe-mending-chain boss James Timpson as chair of the Employment Advisory Board network, a government-backed programme started by Timpson which works with more than 90 prisons.
Continue reading...A Mancunian in supported housing uses heroin to manage his intrusive thoughts in this well-researched but horribly violent examination of mental health issues
Gino Evans makes his feature debut with this painful and disturbing drama which has some unwatchably horrible and violent moments. It’s set in Manchester and tells the story of a heroin user fresh out of prison and struggling to sort himself out. That might sound like a pretty standard beginning for gritty British social-realism, but with maturity and what looks like solid research, Evans turns his film into an examination of mental health issues. It’s not for the faint-hearted though, with some scenes in which people hurt other people very realistically.
Ex-Emmerdale actor Joe Gill plays Danny, who is released from prison into supported living after a short stretch for theft. Danny starts using again immediately, and he says in voiceover that he takes heroin to feel normal; it manages his OCD and intrusive thoughts (“I feel fucked up for even thinking them”). We are shown the intrusive thoughts that pop into his head: sitting opposite the manager of his supported housing, out of nowhere Danny pictures himself punching her repeatedly in the face. It’s brutal, and there are more scenes like this – realistic-looking and photographed with cold intensity by cinematographer Sam Cronin. I watched it clenched and tense – which is presumably the point, to show what it feels like to live like Danny, uncomfortably alert with adrenaline.
Continue reading...Report analysed data from 8,500 doctors over 2015-21 and also found pressures on GPs were higher in deprived areas
GPs working in the most deprived areas in England are paid an average salary £5,525 less a year than their counterparts working in wealthier areas, according to a study.
The report, by researchers at the University of Manchester and published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, analysed data from more than 8,500 GPs between 2015 and 2021 in the GP work life survey.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Family doctors have switched to providing far fewer in-person appointments
Patients’ satisfaction with GP services has collapsed in recent years as family doctors have switched to providing far fewer face-to-face appointments, new research has revealed.
The proportion of patients seeing a GP in person has plummeted from more than four-fifths (80.7%) in 2019 to just under two-thirds (66.2%) last year.
Continue reading...State’s only clinic stopped operations in February after state laws sought to control licensing and requirements
Wyoming’s only abortion clinic is resuming abortions after a judge on Monday suspended two state laws.
One suspended law would require clinics providing surgical abortions to be licensed as outpatient surgical centers. The other would require patients to get an ultrasound before a medication abortion.
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