Why almost half of us are on prescription drugs and another ‘benefit‘ for statins

As it is often said that what America does today Britain will do tomorrow I worry when the latest statistics show that nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis and that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs. If you are over 50 then it is even more worrying as nine out of ten adults in the age group are on drugs. What concerns me more however is the fact that nearly a third use two or more drugs, and more than one in ten use five or more prescription drugs regularly.

That last statistic shows what can happen when you treat a condition on a symptom by symptom basis with the original need overlaying the subsequent responses and side-effects to each consequent drug. For example, if you need anti-migraine medication but it gives you severe stomach upsets then the second drug will help with that but unfortunately it may also have side-effects of its own for which you could easily be given yet a further drug.

The most commonly-used drugs were:

• Statin drugs for older people
• Asthma drugs for children
• Antidepressants for middle-aged people
• Amphetamine stimulants for children

Statins:
I have said my piece, probably all too often, on the widespread use of statins for what appears to be little perceived benefits and some serious side-effects but — as often happens when a drug is under attack — a perceived benefit has come to light. It appears that regular statin use is associated with a reduced risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. It reminds me of that other great drug HRT that always comes up with a new use for a specific condition when negative press appears linking it to a serious drawback for health.

I have no problem with people being given drugs that they need and will cure or alleviate their condition, but unfortunately this is just not always the case. Many of the drugs people take actually cause the very things they claim to prevent: osteoporosis drugs are linked to hip fractures, cancer drugs can cause cancer and antidepressants bizarrely enough have suicidal thoughts listed as a side-effect.

Now that the pharmaceutical industry is global, we are just as much at the mercy of the drug companies without any direct influence on them. We know that the drug companies have falsified research, distorted facts in studies and deliberately suppressed negative information about new drugs. You can’t blame your doctor, as they often as much in the dark as we are, but what you can do is get yourself the very best health insurance — by which I mean taking the very best pro active care of yourself through diet, exercise and stress management together with the all-important enthusiastic positive approach to life which will enhance your chances of an active and healthy life.

So before you rush off to the doctor for a prescription, ask yourself first whether you really need that drug or whether it is something that you can handle with the use of time and some sensible home treatment. In the winter most people get colds, some get flu, and many others are not affected at all so let’s try and make this the winter where your body is so healthy those infections just cannot take hold.

One way to do this is to increase the amount of “super foods” such as chlorella, spirulina and wheat grass in your diet and although I have to confess that none of these have a great taste I have found that adding chlorella and spirulina to a fruit or vegetable juice drink (though turning it an unattractive shade of green) does mean you get the benefit without the taste.

Wheat grass is now making a comeback as years ago (certainly here in Brighton) there were several wheatgrass juice bars with trays of the green stuff growing live and ready to be juiced. Happily — as again it is not top of the pops for taste — you can now buy it in supplement form from Natural Greens as capsules and you will also be helping the charity YES TO LIFE, which helps support people with cancer in the UK in accessing Complementary & Alternative Medicine as they are giving a percentage of the company’s profits to them.

One ‘prescription’ that could help treat emotional and physical pain – with no side-effects
Music is not only the food of love and the healer of the soul but now it seems from new research that it could benefit the treatment of depression and the management of physical pain.

Entirely Free – and Effective – Weight Loss Aid

One of the things I have found most aggravating about getting older is how often my mother has been proved right. It was never used as a weight loss aid in our house for as we were on a very low income indeed it was used to fill us up and make us less hungry. What is this magical weight loss ingredient that costs you nothing and has absolutely no side-effects?

Something that I hope you already have plenty of every day in your diet — plain, simple, water. It’s something that’s been around for a long time and suggested as a way of losing weight that you drink a large glass of water before each meal and now scientists have documented that it really is true. There has been a clinical trial of this amazing weight loss-promoting liquid and the results were reported at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston.

Previous studies had already shown that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water immediately before eating a meal consumed between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent 12 week study, dieters aged between 55 and 75 who drank water before every meal lost about 5 pounds more than those who did not increase their water intake.

You have to love scientists as they are incapable of taking anything at face value and so here we now have the scientific proof from a randomized, controlled clinical trial that drinking water before you eat will make you feel fuller, so you will eat less. Also research from Columbia University School of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health had previously found that when overweight teenagers substituted water for sweetened drinks such as squashes and colas they could eliminate an average of 235 excess calories per day.

The trick here of course is to actually get teenagers to switch from their favourite caffeine and sweetener laden soft drinks to plain water but the free report mentioned below might just help.

Free Reports

For a useful free factsheet on weight loss please cut and paste this link into your browser: http://www.naturalhydrationcouncil.org.uk/content/cmsGoAssets/Documents/Stored/30/Water%20and%20Weight%20Management%20factsheet.pdf

And if you want to do more to help children and their water consumption there is also an excellent free downloadable factsheet ‘Hydration for Children – Back to School’ which explains the importance of adequate hydration for children both from a health perspective and from an educational perspective in terms of maximizing cognitive performance in the classroom.

It contains many helpful facts, tips, and information that will be very helpful for anyone wanting to improve the health and alertness of children. You can download it from this website www.naturalhydrationcouncil.org.uk and then click on the link to Hydration for Children – Back to School.

Antibiotics Are Now Wholly Ineffective –So What Can You Do?

If you’re lucky, your doctor will not prescribe you antibiotics unless they are absolutely vital in tackling your health problem. Why do I say lucky? Because over the past few years the evidence against the too free use of antibiotics has been growing and recently in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases was confirmation that they are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection.

You may think well what has this to do with me, I never take antibiotics? Sadly you may never knowingly take them but you are certainly ingesting them on a regular basis as they are frequently used in feed for both animals and fish to prevent infection and once you eat them you are getting a dose too.

According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful “super” bacteria. Professor Tim Walsh from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine’s Department of Infection, Immunity and Biochemistry investigated how common the NDM-1 producing antibiotic resistant bacteria are in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan and the importation of these bacteria into the UK via patients returning from these countries.

Professor Walsh has outlined how this new gene is changing the way infectious bacteria survive. The NDM 1 gene passes among bacteria like E. Coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to antibiotics so that even carbapenems, the most powerful antibiotics available, are no match for these new bacteria.

Our reliance since the 1950s on the “magic bullet” school of medicine has led to massive overprescribing of antibiotics to treat infection and we have now reached the end of the road. The problem is that the bacteria evolved during the same period and have become resistant to most of the antibiotics. This means that in some cases more than double the amount of antibiotics is needed to fight a bacterial infection.

According to Professor Walsh there are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae and he posits that we have a bleak window of maybe ten years where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with.

If you are still wondering how important this could be then according to Dr. Livermore, director of the antibiotic resistance monitoring and reference laboratory at the U.K. Health Protection Agency, the entirety of modern medicine could collapse as a result of antibiotics becoming useless. “A lot of modern medicine would become impossible if we lost our ability to treat infections,” he stated.

Natural Solutions:

The simplest solution is to ensure that you never need to take antibiotics for infection and that means doing everything you can to support your body to fight infection naturally. This starts by supporting your immune system with a healthy diet, regular exercise and stress management and by boosting your immunity when needed with supplements including vitamins C and B, Zinc and Echinacea and maintaining a healthy gut with probiotics if necessary.

Our skin naturally produces bacterial fighting proteins but we disturb the natural balance. of microorganisms on the skin through the use of antibiotic creams. These affect the body’s ability to fight the bacteria and can even lead to more skin infections, but in most cases, you only need to wash the wound with an anti-bacterial soap.

We already have natural antibiotics in your body in the form of the live bacteria in our intestines to help with digestion and keep us healthy. These bacteria also fight invading bacteria, but they are destroyed when we take antibiotics so all we have to do is provide the optimum conditions for our body to fight infection and heal itself.

You can also help keep yourself healthy with some essential ingredients from your kitchen such as garlic and Manuka honey, both of which are natural antibiotics that can kill bacteria. If you want to have something topical to apply to a skin infection then try grapefruit seed extract which tastes disgusting but is certainly an effective disinfectant for the skin and used internally kills bacteria such as Strep, Staph and Salmonella. Another old favourite is tea tree oil which contains antiseptic compounds that act as skin disinfectants and is used in the treatment of ringworm, fungal infections of the toenails, yeast infections, bad breath and acne.

A new product that I came across recently is a Natural Antiseptic Gel from Grandmas Vine that harnesses the powerful curative properties of antibacterial, antifungal, and antiseptic, cider vinegar. I have been using it to treat a persistent patch of dry eczema and it is proving effective at relieving the itching and clearing up the outbreak.

Vitamin C Supplementation Helps Slow Growth of Cancer Cells

If there are two people who got a wholly unjustified bad press from the medical profession then for my money Linus Pauling runs Dr John Lee a close second. Over fifty years ago Linus Pauling began his pioneering research into how vitamin C impacts health and his findings have been debated and challenged ever since. Pauling, who died in 1994, was an American chemist, peace activist, author, and educator and winner of two Nobel prizes. He was also one of the most influential figures in putting nutrition and supplementation to the forefront of the health debate.

He was revered in his lifetime by those who saw the benefits of his work on vitamin C, although he was always controversial. His best known quote on cancer research for example certainly made him plenty of enemies when he said “Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” Now, almost 25 years after his death, a new study not only confirms his contention that vitamin C has remarkable healing and protective benefits but has discovered how vitamin C may slow down the growth of cancer cells. Margreet Vissers is associate professor at the University of Otago’s Free Radical Research Group in New Zealand and the results of the study she headed has just been published in the journal Cancer Research. The problem with vitamin C, as with so many other ‘alternative’ treatments is that despite the many anecdotal accounts claiming vitamin C can help in both the prevention and treatment of cancer it has not been clinically proved to the medical establishments satisfaction.

In earlier studies conducted by Dr. Vissers, she demonstrated the vitamin’s importance in keeping cells healthy and results indicated that vitamin C might be able to limit diseases such as cancer as that involve cells that have unregulated growth.

Her research team decided to investigate whether vitamin C levels were lower in patients with endometrial tumors and also looked to see whether these low vitamin C levels correlated with the aggressiveness of a malignancy and the resistance of a tumor to medical therapy.

The results were impressive. Tumors were less able to accumulate vitamin C when compared with normal healthy tissue and a lack of vitamin C allowed tumors to survive and grow more easily. Tumors with low vitamin C levels were found to contain more of a protein dubbed HIF-1 which helps cancer thrive and spread, even under conditions of stress. The findings are important because they provide evidence for the first time of a relationship between HIF-1 and levels of vitamin C levels in cancerous tumours.

What is even more important, in my view, is this completely vindicates Linus Pauling as the research shows that treating cancer patients with adequate amounts of vitamin C might well reduce HIF-1, help limit the rate of tumor growth and increase the responsiveness to tumors to therapy. Dr. Vissers went even further in stating her belief that Vitamin C might even prevent the formation of solid tumors in the first place, and that is the best argument I know for ensuring adequate amounts in your diet and personally I supplement daily for its protective role in heart disease, as well as possible cancer prevention.

Research, Statistics and Who Paid Who?

I felt I really had to return to a topic that I had hoped was a very dead and buried and that is the controversial question of whether research can any longer be trusted. You may have seen a report in the Independent newspaper which stated that more than 90 percent of researchers who have published studies favourable to the controversial diabetes drug Avandia had a financial stake in the issue.

My first question when I an sent studies — as I frequently am– is to find out two questions: first how many participants and second who has funded the research. This latest revelation comes from a study conducted by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, one of the few research organizations in the United States that does not accept corporate funding.

Sales of GlaxoSmithKline’s bestselling drug Avandia plunged in 2007, after evidence emerged linking the drug to an increased risk of heart attack and death. These reports sparked a debate over the drug’s safety that continues to this day. In an analysis of more than 200 studies, articles, editorials and letters published in scientific journals since 2007, Mayo Clinic researchers have concluded that financial conflict of interest continues to play a major role in that debate.

If someone is expressing a positive view of a product you are entitled to ask if they are gaining any benefit from it — and no, I do not receive any payment or benefits on any of the products I mention in healthy news other than accepting a sample for trial purposes so I can report back from practical experience and not just rely on other people’s evidence.

What has emerged is that 87 percent of all authors who expressed positive views about Avandia had financial ties to GlaxoSmithKline, while another 7 percent had ties to other pharmaceutical companies involved with diabetes. Not surprisingly, among authors with financial conflicts of interest, only 30 percent “expressed unfavorable views” of the drug and authors who were critical of Avandia were “largely free of identifiable conflicts of interest,” the researchers said.

Sadly, this does not mean that they were all squeaky clean either as of the 29 authors who recommended the drug Actos as a safer alternative to Avandia, 25 had ties to that drug’s maker, Eli Lilly.

I think we have to accept that there is a large amount of financial and self interest going on in medical research, and if that is disclosed I can live with it. What I find more disturbing is that this research uncovered that while 47 percent of all authors surveyed had a financial stake in the diabetes drug debate, 23 percent failed to disclose these links. Most of these authors merely remained silent about their conflicts of interest, while three actually lied and said they had none.

Could it be time for some legislation, as we allegedly have with our MPs, to declare a conflict of interest so the least we are warned and can make up our own minds as to their impartiality? I would like to think so, but don’t hold your breath.

How to Treat Acne

Acne is something that worries most teenagers, and a condition that can linger right through life.  

But, how does acne occur and why?

The whole surface of our epidermis is covered by pores, which include glands. These glands create a  form of fat called sebum. When the glands produce the proper amount of sebum, every thing is okay. But once they become stimulated and begin to develop excessive sebum, the pores become clogged. This leads to an accumulation of sebum and bacteria in the pores and skin, which leads towards the formation of pimples.   The reason why acne most often occurs in puberty is mainly because at this age the sex hormones that stimulate the glands are most active, and also the reason why it can flare up in women around menopause.

Acne is not a major physical problem, though in serious cases can lead to scarring, but often causes a loss of self-confidence which is equally as damaging.  

Here are a few simple tips to help keep acne under control, and eradicate it: 

    * Wash your face 2 times per day with soap and warm water gently without rubbing hard or you can irritate the skin further and then dry it gently, but thoroughly with a clean dry towel each time.

    * Keep all chemical and synthetic products away from your skin including accidental transference from your hands from hair gels and sprays.

    * Avoid cosmetics that are oil based – mineral make up is usually the best. 

    * Resist the urge to touch infected areas, and never ‘op’ any pimples.  If you do the bacteria will penetrate deeper into the pores, resulting in a lot more pain, redness and possibly even scars.

    * identify any food allergies that may aggravate your skin – check after eating to see if any change is visible in your skin and then avoid that particular food or drink.  

 * Stress can aggravate acne so reduce it wherever possible in your life. 

* Sunlight is generally considered helpful in dealing with acne, due to increased vitamin D levels, but do it gently and carefully and never when the sun is at its hottest.  

These simple tips will help, and so will keeping your immune system strong and healthy.  Follow a natural wholefood diet, get plenty of exercise and fresh air and you should see some improvement and if it is persistent then consult a practitioner such as a homoeopath who may be able to offer more help.

Potential Benefits of Dark Chocolate for Liver Disease and Strokes

Now you know I never pass up an opportunity to extol the benefits of chocolate whether emotional or physical and here is some diverting news of two potential new medical benefits that could see your doctor reaching for the prescription pad and sending you off to the sweetshop rather than the pharmacy.

First, this is good news for anyone suffering from liver cirrhosis and from dangerously high blood pressure in their abdomen, according to new research presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Liver in Vienna, Austria. Cirrhosis is scarring of the liver as a result of long-term, continuous damage to the liver. In cirrhosis, circulation in the liver is damaged by oxidative stress and reduced antioxidant systems. After eating, blood pressure in the abdominal veins usually increases due to increased blood flow to the liver. This is particularly dangerous and damaging to cirrhotic patients as they already have increased blood pressure in the liver and elsewhere which, if severe, can cause blood vessel rupture.

According to new Spanish research, eating dark chocolate reduces damage to the blood vessels of cirrhotic patients and also lowers blood pressure in the liver. This can help to minimise the onset and impact of end stage liver disease and its associated mortality risks. Milk or white chocolate won’t do the trick as it is only dark chocolate that contains potent anti-oxidants which reduce the after-eating blood pressure in the liver that is associated with damaged liver blood vessels. Other forms of chocolate do not contain any of the beneficial phytochemicals and so can’t give you the same result.

I also applaud Professor Mark Thursz, MD FRCP, Professor of Hepatology, at Imperial College London who said when commenting on the new research: “As well as advanced technologies and high science, it is important to explore the potential of alternative sources which can contribute to the overall wellbeing of a patient.” A sentence that is music to the ears of all those who want to marry orthodox and alternative methods and you get to eat chocolate too.

Secondly, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that epicatechin, a compound in dark chocolate, may protect the brain after a stroke by increasing cellular signals already known to shield nerve cells from damage. The study suggests that epicatechin stimulates two previously well-established pathways known to shield nerve cells in the brain from damage. When the stroke hits, the brain is ready to protect itself because these pathways — Nrf2 and heme oxygenase 1 — are activated.

This research was carried out on mice, not humans, and while most treatments against stroke in humans have to be given within a two- to three-hour time window to be effective, epicatechin appeared to limit further neuronal damage when given to the animals 3.5 hours after a stroke.

I don’t have liver problems, or had a stroke, but have always believed in prevention rather than cure so will add a daily supplement of 85% minimum cocoa content chocolate to my current regime – just to be on the safe side – and you may want to do the same!

Antidepressants Can Affect Breast Feeding

If a woman is planning on breast feeding, and has been having treatment for anxiety or depression that involves taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs may find that it delays their ability to produce breast milk after their baby is born.

This study at the University of Cincinnati was just reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and its findings are significant.  Although this is only a small study, 87.5% of women on SSRI drugs had delayed milk delivery compared to 43.5% of those not taking the drugs.   Delayed milk production is an early breastfeeding difficulty faced by many women, particularly those who are first term time mothers, and defined as being over 72 hours after giving birth.  This difficulty also contributes to the mother ceasing to breastfeed before the recommended time. These women also are at risk of early cessation of breastfeeding.

SSRI drugs are the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants and are typically used to treat ‘baby blues’ depression.  A more natural solution would be to turn to natural medicine such as St John’s Wort, or more particularly natural progesterone as that is the hormone that drops most dramatically after giving birth and the one that could most help elevate mood without any ill effects for the baby.

Health Bite:

Smoking in Pregnancy can Permanently Affect a Baby’s Blood Pressure

A Swedish study has shown that babies born to women who smoked during pregnancy show evidence of persistent problems in blood pressure regulation that start at birth and get worse throughout their first year.

The study was reported in the journal of the American Heart Association and raises serious concerns that the seeds being sown in pregnancy will reap a lifetime of ill health for the baby. Normally, when a person stands, the heart rate increases and the blood vessels constrict to keep blood flow to the heart and brain and so there is a standard repositioning test to see how a baby’s blood pressure responds to tilting them upright during sleep. The results were dramatically different in those born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy compared to those who did not.

The non-smoking mothers (on average 15 cigarettes a day) saw only a 2% increase in blood pressure in their babies when they were tilted upright at one week of age and later a 10 percent increase in blood pressure at one year. But, the babies of smoking mothers saw the exact opposite with a 10% increase in blood pressure during a tilt at one week and only a 4 percent increase at one year. At three months and one year, the heart rate response to tilting in the tobacco-exposed infants was abnormal and highly exaggerated, researchers reported.

The concern obviously is that early life exposure to tobacco can lead to long-lasting reprogramming of the baby’s blood pressure control mechanisms. The researchers found that such babies have a hyper-reactive system in the first weeks of life because the blood pressure increases too much when they are tilted up, but at one year they under-react and are less effective in adapting to an upright position. Despite any amount of health warnings some mothers still do smoke, and one argument I have heard is that it is better to smoke as it reduces the mother’s stress levels. A stressed mother is certainly not good for the baby, but this research shows the long-term implications are even more serious if she continues to smoke – or those around her do.

How Laser Eye Surgery Helped Me

I was a teenager when my eyesight started to go. There is so much you’re painfully conscious of at that age without adding glasses to the mix but by 18 I had to wear them full-time.

I hated glasses.

I didn’t feel like a glasses person. They didn’t suit me, even the coolest frames I could afford made me look like Corrie’s Reg Holdsworth (in my head at least) and with my prescription deteriorating every year or so, it cost me a fortune.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I tried to get contact lenses. I was partly sick of being speccy, but also worried that a baby would make short work of my wire frames just as soon as her tiny fingers could grab them.

The lady in the optician’s that day was very kind and patient as I sweated and had to put my head between my knees (which was rather difficult given I was five month’s pregnant).

I was so scared of fiddling with my eyes that the very idea of it made me faint. In the end, she put them in for me and I felt amazing. Until I had to try and take them out, and couldn’t do it without heaving.

She took them out for me and I decided against contacts.

I tried again a few years later. Again the optician’s assistant had to scrape the lenses out, that time with spangly acrylic fingernails. That day I did faint. And then I was sick.

I knew I’d never get my head around contacts, not with all the practise and patience in the world but I was desperately unhappy wearing specs.

When my husband and I got married, I refused to wear them, and lurched down the aisle holding onto my dad for dear life. The photographs from the day are beautiful, which is lucky, as at the time I didn’t really see the cake or my new husband looking smart and gorgeous.

I’d danced around the idea of laser eye surgery for years, but always talked myself out of it due to the cost, the grossness or the pain.

Eventually, with my 30th birthday looming I faced my fears.

The cost? Yes, it costs money, but I was spending about £200 every two years on glasses, never mind prescriptions sunglasses. So that one didn’t really stand up…

The grossness? The pain? I’ve given birth to three children.

All three births were a lot longer, more painful and icky than anything a laser could do. Yes, the idea of things happening to my eyes made me feel faint, but I kept telling myself it was a few minutes on either side for the benefit of no more specs.

I spoke to friends that had been treated, and every one of them raved about it. The  pain, they said, was more discomfort, and you were given plenty of drops.

There was nothing to lose. I went for a pre-surgery appointment at Optimax in Croydon. Realistically, it was little more than a normal eye test just with the chance to ask lots of questions (which I did).

Has anyone ever gone blind? No.
How soon can I drive? Soon after, maybe even the next day.
Will it hurt? A bit, but not for long.
What if I move? The laser shuts off instantly.

And so on… They were answered at length, with patience – I suspect they’re the same questions everyone asked.

The only person rolling their eyes was my daughter, brought along for moral support.

I was given bumf to read, terms and conditions to go through, and a date… the all important date. The surgery date.

It rolled around quickly, and several times I nearly cancelled. The truth was, for all my fear, there was never a reason to cancel that was more compelling than the idea of a glasses-free life.

On the day of surgery, I arrived with my husband and youngest child and started to go through the pile of paperwork detailing every possible – if very unlikely – side effect. I wanted to ignore them all, close my eyes and just scrawl my signature across the top but I had to go through and initial every point, to show I really had considered it.

I met the doctor, a softly spoken older gentleman who has been fixing eyes since way before I was born. He answered all my last minute (largely ridiculous) questions and I was given a cup of tea.

The ‘LASER IS ON’ sign pinged into life above an airlock-style door and I was called through.

Perhaps it was all the questions, or the slightly-green complexion, but despite my faux protestations, one of the receptionists came in and held my hand throughout the treatment. That human touch helped to hold me in my chair, and – slightly shaking- I followed all the instructions: be still, look up, look down, stare into the light.

Yes, at times, it was weird. My eyes were numbed but the skin around them wasn’t, so I could feel the outside of the contraption holding them open, but couldn’t feel it touching my eyes.

Because every detail of the surgery had been detailed to me, I knew when they were doing the ickiest bits – like making a tiny flap of cornea. That was the only time I nearly bolted.

About 15 minutes later it was over. I was led into a private room, brought a cup of tea and left to relax with my eyes closed. When I opened them, while stinging slightly, I could see. I could see better than before. I could see my husband and baby coming in to cuddle me.

I went home by taxi and slept for a couple of hours with eye shields on and that night I watched a film, without my glasses. It was breathtaking.
The next day I returned for my after care appointment and drove home, perfectly safely, with better than 20-20 vision.

A few months on and I can honestly say it has changed my life. Things that were completely out of bounds to me are feasible, sports, going out and being able to see my friends on a night out rather than staggering around, squinting; swimming with my kids.

But more than practical stuff, the effect on my confidence has blown me away. In fact, I feel pretty sad when I realise how ragged my self-image was before. Without glasses, I would feel vulnerable and stumbling; wearing glasses I would feel so out of place and frumpy. Either way, I wasn’t able to be myself, and throughout my twenties I missed out in ways I didn’t even realise before.

Since surgery, I have changed my wardrobe, wearing the clothes of a 29-year-old rather than a frumpy middle-aged woman.

I have gone out for dinner with my husband far more in the last three months than in the previous five years and I’ve even quit my job to set up my own business and work for myself. I’m not sure I would have done that six months ago.

It isn’t cheap, and it isn’t pain-free, but the discomfort and cost are minimal compared with the reawakening laser eye surgery helped me to find.  I’d recommend it to anyone.

Why 4 hours of TV is bad for your health and Exercise Helps The Brain

Tempting though it is in this cold weather, curling up with Cranford could be shortening your lifespan according to an Australian study. It’s not Cranford of course that is the problem, but how many hours you spend in front of the box.

The study was done by Melbourne university and found that Aussies who reported watching four or more hours of TV a day were 46% more likely to die during a 6.6-year period than those who watched less than two hours a day. That’s bad enough, but they also found that the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease during follow-up was 80% greater in the excessive viewers, although statistically, the result attained only borderline significance. Well that’s a relief, but the risk was the same whether the participants also had other risk factors such as low exercise, smoking, poor diet, high blood pressure, and abdominal obesity.

It’s not the TV that’s really to blame, but an increasing habit of living a much more sedentary life than our predecessors. The programmes are not to blame, but the habit of sitting for long periods in a chair is.

It could be time to get out of the chair and head for the hills – or at least for a brisk walk – to keep your metabolism from slowing down to unhealthy levels.

Health Bite: Exercise for Your Brain’s Health

If you need another reason to get up out of the chair, it seems that almost any amount of moderate physical activity in middle age and beyond can reduce the odds of mild cognitive impairment by 30% to 40%. As mild cognitive impairment is associated with a 5-10-fold increased risk of dementia it is worth paying attention. Previous observational studies have shown that physical activity may protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and some evidence suggests that exercise for individuals with mild cognitive impairment offers some protection, too, the authors wrote.

Research by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has found that the benefit applies equally to men and only when moderate exercise was undertaken — not light or vigorous physical activity. I have always been wary of vigorous activity and if this helps me solve more crossword puzzles then I am all for it. If you aren’t sure of the difference, here’s how the Mayo clinic categorised it:

• Light exercise: bowling, leisurely walking, stretching, slow dancing, and golfing using a cart.

• Moderate exercise: brisk walking, hiking, aerobics, strength training, swimming, tennis doubles, yoga, martial arts, weight lifting, moderate use of exercise machines, and golfing without use of a cart.

• Vigorous exercise: jogging, backpacking, bicycling uphill, tennis singles, racquetball, skiing, and intense or extended use of exercise machines.

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