How being obese can cause a car crash

Being overweight to the point of obesity is obviously very bad for your health, but there is now an added complication for all road users, not just sufferers. The UK National Obesity Forum’s seventh annual conference took place last Monday and one of the highlights was the problem of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA), as the obesity epidemic increases.

Sleep Apnoea is sometimes regarded as a minor condition with irritating snoring; characterised by disruptive breathing during the night. It occurs when soft tissue in the back of the airway collapses and blocks it, causing interruption in breathing that lasts 10 seconds or more. In its moderate to severe forms, victims can suffer 20 to 30 such episodes per hour all night without realising their sleep is being disturbed. However, new research has now identified it as a fatal disease as at its worst the sufferer can ‘forget’ to breathe during the night with the resulting serious consequences.

We know being overweight is linked to sleep apnoea, but Dr Bertrand de Silva, Medical Director of American Sleep Medicine in California spoke about why it is a problem for road users. Dr de Silva is a world expert in sleep disorders he predicts that only 15% of sufferers have been diagnosed, so despite the dangers, the majority are oblivious that they even have the condition. Because of the disrupted sleep pattern, OSA causes daytime sleepiness and doubles the risk of road accidents

Dr da Silva believes that 25% of UK drivers should wake up to the dangers of being overweight and behind the wheel and his theory is backed up by organisations such as the AA whose Head of Road Safety agrees that the risk of death or serious injury from falling asleep at the wheel is great. Their own research tells them that one in 10 motorists admit to nodding off at the wheel and are in danger of becoming a statistic – one of the up to 3,000 killed or seriously injured each year as a result of falling asleep.

The Risks

Predictive forecasting indicates that by 2050 around 60% of adult men and 50% of adult women could be obese. They will therefore be at risk of OSA and putting themselves, and other road users at risk of an accident.

Being seriously overweight definitely puts you at greater risk of OSA, and that in turn is known to increase the risk of heart conditions by 30%, dramatically increases hypertension, affects 58% of diabetic patient (90% if obese), impacts glucose intolerance and insulin resistance and is the second leading cause of erectile dysfunction.”

If you still need another incentive to lose weight, it could also increase your insurance premiums as the research and scientific evidence grows about the effects of obesity.

Babies crawl away from danger

An interesting hypothesis has just come from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Do infants only start to crawl once they are physically able to see danger coming or because they are more mobile, they develop the ability to sense looming danger?

This study suggests that an infants’ ability to see whether an object is approaching on a direct collision course, and when it is likely to collide, develops around the time they become more mobile. So they are not heading for the cookie jar, or mother’s milk, but are establishing the important neural networks that enable them to see objects and how dangerous they might be.

Those neural networks are in the process of being established from birth and by the age of eight to nine months are fully able to register an impending collision. Coincidentally, this is also the average age at which infants start crawling.

Scientists just can’t take anything on trust and go ‘aah’ like the rest of us can they?

Diabetes can affect bone density

Diabetics can often experience low bone density, which is associated with increased risk of bone fractures and delayed fracture repair. A new study at Boston University School of Medicine suggests that the inflammatory molecule TNF-α may be a contributory factor.

This is an important breakthrough as diabetes affects at least 171 million people worldwide, and it is believed that figure will double by 2030. Long-term complications of diabetes are an expensive health budget item as they can include cardiovascular disease, chronic renal failure, retinal damage that may lead to blindness, nerve damage, and blood vessel damage, which may cause erectile dysfunction and poor wound healing.

Anything that helps identify a contributory factor that can lead to its elimination is a step forward and in the study it was observed that there were increased levels of inflammatory molecules, including TNF-α , during fracture healing in diabetic conditions. They saw a rapid loss of cartilage in the healing bones, which was due to increased numbers of osteoclasts, cells that remove bone and cartilage, and leave the bone vulnerable to breakage.

Knowing what reduces the healing of the bone is an important factor in helping to prevent it, perhaps by stimulating action by the osteoblasts, the cells that help build bone and which are dependent on progesterone for growth.

Moobies update!

The issue of man boobs, or moobies, that I mentioned a few weeks ago has resurfaced. This time with a suggested solution; cosmetic surgery.

This week at the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons annual meeting in Cardiff it was reported that a record-breaking number of men are having cosmetic surgery to reduce the size of their breasts. There has been a 44% rise in the number of men requesting the surgery, and this makes it the UK’s fifth most popular surgery for men.

Plastic Surgery Partners surgeon Dai Davies is the leading cosmetic surgeon in this area and he can assure any potential clients out there that old-fashioned standard liposuction has now moved on and they are now using Radio Frequency Assisted Liposuction (RFAL) machines that simultaneously destroy both fat cells and blood vessels, and this helps tighten and contract the access skin.

A present for Father’s Day or Christmas perhaps and certainly more novel than a pair of slippers and hopefully lasting a bit longer providing the main causes of poor diet and obesity are also tackled at the same time!

How footballers have helped cancer patients

It’s not a natural connection perhaps, despite the Bobby Moore Fund and its sterling work in raising funds for research into bowel cancer, but a new treatment has linked the two things.

It comes through hyperbaric oxygen therapy that is normally given to treat injured footballers to help them heal more quickly and to treat scuba divers who suffer the bends. It involves the patient sitting in a sealed chamber and breathing 100 per cent oxygen while the air pressure around them is gradually increased. The treatment lasts about 30 minutes and after it finishes the air in the chamber is slowly returned to normal pressure before the patient leaves.

A trial just beginning at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital aims to see if it could also help relieve the side-effects from radiotherapy that pelvic cancer patients often suffer.

These patients may be suffering from cancer of the cervix, ovary, prostate, testis, rectum, bladder and uterus and are left with unpleasant side-effects including diarrhoea, stomach cramps and frequent bowel movements.

Most patients return to normal within a few weeks of stopping radiotherapy treatment, but about 30 per cent develop long-term bowel problems that can interfere with their daily activities and certainly affect their quality of life.

At the moment there is no cure for these symptoms and, as more people are treated for pelvic cancer, an increasing number of people will experience such side effects. A recent small study found evidence that hyperbaric oxygen therapy may be able to improve this situation so a large trial is now underway at specialist centres in Cardiff, Chichester, Great Yarmouth, Hull, Plymouth, North London and the Wirral to properly test whether this therapy works in patients who have been suffering side-effects for at least a year.

Natural cold beaters

If you want some natural help to deal with colds this autumn then aromatherapy is always a reliable and safe way to do that. Primavera Cold Therapy products are made with Fair Trade and Certified Organic ingredients to help respiratory and sinus problems and contain Eucalyptus Essential Oil, which has natural antibacterial qualities to effectively relieve respiratory problems associated with cold symptoms; Thyme Essential Oil to purify air with a warming, invigorating scent; and Lavender Essential Oil to comfort the mind and support relaxation. Get ahead of the sniffles and have your emergency ‘cold kit’ ready now.

Natural stress beaters

When I was writing my book ‘How to Cope Successfully with Stress’, it was actually a stressful process in itself to meet the publisher’s deadline and so I put together a ‘stress kit’ for myself. I thought you might also find it useful, so here is what I used:

First of all a really good multivitamin to fill nutritional gaps and counteract the negative effects of unhealthy stress on the body and a separate B-complex as it helps balance mood and calm the nervous system. I have already mentioned the benefits of Omega-3 and a deficiency here is associated with increased anxiety and depression.

Stress can often prevent you getting off to sleep, and the herb Valerian is helpful here due to the essential oils that the root contains. Again to help you sleep, you need calcium and magnesium as they are involved in calming those thoughts running round your head, can relax your muscles and so help you sleep better.

Finally, a natural alternative to antidepressants in keeping your mood stable is St. John’s Wort as it helps boost mood and maintain a healthy emotional outlook.

Late night eating piles on the pounds

Regular mealtimes are not just something your mother insisted on, they could also be a good way to help you lose weight, and with currently more than 300 million obese adults worldwide every little can help.

A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times, especially late at night, does affect weight gain. Night time is when your body uses sleep to regulate many of your bodily functions and eating before bedtime puts an extra strain on that system. That means that digestion of your food gets put on hold, as it is not so important to the body as the maintenance and repair of more essential functions.

Our circadian clock, or biological timing system, governs our daily cycles of feeding, activity and sleep, with respect to external dark and light cycles. Recent studies have found the body’s internal clock also regulates energy use, suggesting the timing of meals may matter in the balance between caloric intake and expenditure.

Your body’s own circadian rhythm dictates those bodily functions so losing weight may not just be as simple as calories in and calories out. It could also be as simple as changing the time of your main meal.

Shift workers are particularly vulnerable to weight gain because their schedules force them to eat at times that conflict with their natural body rhythms, but all of us could benefit from moving that evening meal to no later than 8pm, and no late night snacks.

Bees can fight tumours

The poor old bees, they are already under threat as their habitat is destroyed and now science has found a new use for them there may be even fewer. It’s down to their sting, because they pump toxic venom into their victims which has been analysed and now harnessed to kill tumour cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees. Good to know scientists have a sense of humour, bless them, and they found that in mice the bee toxin melittin stopped tumours from growing or shrank them. Hopefully this means they will have a good incentive to also start working out a way to prevent the bees from dying out altogether.

Music therapy helps stroke patients

By now, you all know my feelings on the healing power of music and a new study from Italy gives you another tool to use for anyone who has had a stroke.

The researchers examined the effects that different types of opera and classical music have on cardiovascular measures and they saws distinct physical changes. A fast tempo prompted increased blood pressure and faster breathing and heart rates. Slower tempo lowered blood pressure and brought down heart and breathing rates.

Despite what you might assume, it seems that quiet, soothing music is actually not the best music for the heart. You want something that alternates tempo between slower and faster, as well as lower and higher volumes. They recommend Nessun Dorma as being ideas as it is beneficial for both heart rate and general circulation.

Specifically for stroke patients, Diana Greenman (who heads up a UK charity that brings live music to hospitals and hospices) has said that she hears time and again of stroke patients who suddenly are able to move in time to the music after previously being paralyzed. Sounds pretty amazing, and there is proof to back it up in a study from the University of Helsinki.

Researchers there recruited 60 stroke patients who were divided into three groups; some listened to whatever music they liked, some to audio books, and some had no specific listening plan. All the patients were also receiving standard treatment for stroke rehabilitation. After three months, testing showed that focused attention and mental operation abilities improved by 17 per cent in the music group, but didn’t improve at all in the other two groups. Verbal memory scores were even more impressive: Music group: 60 per cent improvement. Audio books group: 18 per cent. Non-listening group: 29 per cent. Subjects in the music group also tended to be less confused and less depressed than subjects in the other two groups.

One stroke expert has said that more research is needed before widespread use of music as therapy can be recommended for stroke victims. As there are no side effects and plenty of benefits you have to wonder how much more research is needed. If you are in contact with a stroke patient, music therapy is best started as soon as possible, so go out and get a copy of Nessum Dorma and it will lift everybody’s spirit.

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