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City wide programmes that promote cycling – such as London’s new bike hire scheme – seem a great way to get the public active and tackle the obesity epidemic. But new research published in the BMJ suggests that interventions to promote cycling don’t have much discernible effect after all. Public health programmes that specifically aimed [...]
Hosting an international sporting event like the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games is an expensive business. The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, for example, will cost a total of £9.35bn, equivalent to £150 for every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom. Such costs are generally justified in terms of collateral benefits [...]
Young people who smoke tobacco through a water pipe – also known as a hookah, shisha, or goza – are more likely to use illicit drugs than their non-smoking contemporaries, according to a study of young Canadians. Most notably, hookah smokers were much more likely to smoke marijuana: 74% of water-pipe users reported marijuana use, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Are smokers more likely to be obese? Is stroke more common in people with hypertension? Are old people more likely to have diabetes than young people? The prospect of trawling through the scientific literature to get the answers to these questions isn’t terribly appealing – reams of tables and risk ratios aren’t helpful if you [...]
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 [...]
I recently blogged about the alarming rates of obesity among children in England, with one in four 4-5 year old children and one in three 10-11 year olds in this country obese or overweight. The Foresight report, published in 2007, ominously predicts that by 2050 90% of British children will be overweight or obese. The [...]
The young people’s sexual health charity Brook has teamed up with the NHS and the laboratory testing company Preventx to offer free chlamydia testing kits through the post. By using the Freetest.me website, young people between the ages of 16 and 24 can order a postal home testing kit, return their urine sample or vaginal [...]
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 [...]