Helen Jaques

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 [...]

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that children who were obese were almost twice as likely to die before 55 years of age than those who were not obese. Moreover, children whose weight was in the top 25% out of nearly 5,000 kids were 2.3 times more likely to [...]

Hot on the heels of Valentine’s day, the British Heart Foundation has announced the winners of their images competition “Reflections of Research,” in which UK scientists funded by the foundation were asked to submit the most striking still and video images of their research. Winners of the video category are Dr Michael Markl of University [...]

A Californian population based study has found that if everyone in the US reduced their daily salt intake by 3 grams – half a teaspoon – the annual number of deaths could be slashed by up to 92,000. In addition, the number of new people who get cardiovascular disease each year could drop by up [...]

A study of nearly 9,000 Australian adults has reported that people who watched 4 hours of TV a day or more were 46% more likely to die within the next six and a half years than those who watched less than 2 hours a day.  Each one hour increase in daily television viewing increased the [...]

Err, well, maybe.  IQ does seem to account for some of the well-documented relationship between socioeconomic status and cardiovascular risk, according to new research in European Heart Journal.  Simply put, being more intelligent could be one reason why people from a high socioeconomic background are less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than those who [...]

OK, so it seems pretty obvious that cycling or walking to work is better for you than taking the car. New research published in Archives of Internal Medicine has clarified the beneficial effects in terms of fitness and cardiovascular health of walking or cycling to work – but they’re largely only seen in men. This [...]

The British Heart Foundation has launched a new advertising campaign that features an amazing real-time simulation of a beating heart. The campaign confronts viewers with the perhaps gory but nevertheless fascinating reality of the most vital of vital organs, and challenges them to think about heart and circulatory disease – Britain’s biggest killer. British Heart [...]

A recent study by Bryson et al. has found that moderate to severe alcohol misuse increases the likelihood that patients won’t take their medication properly. Many patients do not take their medications as often as they should – i.e. on at least 80% of the days they are supposed to.  In fact, a recent study [...]

The British Heart Foundation has launched a petition to ban the sale of cigarettes from vending machines in the UK. The charity hopes that banishing cigarette vending machines will reduce the number of under 18s who take up smoking. In the UK you need to be at least 18 years old to buy cigarettes from [...]