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Last week my colleague Sally Carter and I had a go at doing the news roundup for the BMJ podcast. First, Sally spoke about the passing of the health reform bill in the US and all the BMJ‘s coverage of the legislation itself and the bill’s rocky passage. Then I covered a remarkable news story [...]
Young people, especially Brits, famously head to Australia in their droves in search of travel, adventure, and, crucially, some hot weather. In 2009-09, 560,105 international backpackers visited Australia, representing 10.9% of all international visitors. It seems that backpackers in Oz aren’t just looking for fun and sun though – according to a new study they’re [...]
Cancer stories seem to make the news on a daily basis. For example, just today in the UK there are stories about a gene that could predispose non-smokers to lung cancer, how infertile men are at raised risk of prostate cancer, and how testing for the HPV virus during cervical screening doesn’t help pick up [...]
Do the long nights and shoddy weather over the winter months make you feel low? If so, you could also be at raised risk of cardiovascular disease and being overweight, according to new research in PLoS ONE. This study of 11,545 Norwegian adults found that people who were classified as having considerable variations in mood [...]
Being in good or excellent health increases the quality and quantity of sex for middle aged and older people, according to a big study that delved into the sex lives of 6,000 American adults aged 25-85. Plus being fit can keep you sexually active into a ripe old age, unlike your unhealthy peers. The study also [...]
The BMJ has just published an interesting feature about comics in medicine – the history, the approaches, and their use in medical and patient education. The authors Michael J Green and Kimberly R Myers call such comics “graphic pathographies”: illness narratives in graphic form. “These graphic pathographies can be helpful to patients wanting to learn [...]
A study has found that regular use of common painkillers – such aspirin, paracetamol, and ibuprofen – increases the risk of hearing loss in men aged 40-74 years. Using aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, or paracetamol twice a week or more over a 20 year period increased the risk of hearing loss by [...]
An analysis of studies into counseling therapies for depression – such as cognitive-behavioural therapy – has found that the effect of such approaches has been overestimated because studies that show a strong effect of the treatments are getting published over studies with more modest results. In 117 studies, “talking therapies” had an average effect of 0.67 [...]
Don’t leave your young kids unsupervised with your laundry. Not just because they might start mixing with your carefully separated piles of whites and darks, but because they might injure their eyes playing with the brightly coloured liquid detergent capsules. A letter to the BMJ, ophthalmologists at the Western Eye Hospital in London have highlighted [...]
A third of Chinese children experience high levels of school-related stress, and these kids are about five times more likely to have the physical symptoms of stress – that is, headache or abdominal pain – then their less frazzled peers. Thanks to the combination of China’s recent economic growth – with the increased opportunities for [...]