Health (Page 105)

Lightly-browned bacon has less carcinogens than well-cooked bacon. D. Pimborough/ Shutterstock Bacon is a much-loved, comforting breakfast item – during the global pandemic, sales have surged in the US and the UK. But while bacon may be delicious, experts recommend people eat little or no processed meats because of their cancer risk. But while the cancer risk from processed foods is certainly something to think about, that doesn’t mean bacon should be totally off the menu. In fact, you might be able to lower some of the cancer risk from eating bacon depending on how you cook it. Nitrites are perhaps the best-known cancer risk in bacon. Nitrites are used as a preservative, and are also converted in the stomachContinue Reading

Andrii Vodolazhskyi/Shutterstock A year after the first cases of COVID-19 were found in China, mass vaccination programmes are now offering a chance to end the pandemic. At the same time, new strains, some of which appear to be more infectious than the original one, are threatening to derail progress in fighting the disease. One way to capture the effectiveness of our effort to fight the virus is to consider the concept of “herd immunity”. During an epidemic, people become infected and those who survive usually become immune. Resistance to the disease can also be reached by vaccination, which complements the levels of natural immunity. Infected people increasingly come into contact with immune people rather than those who are still susceptible.Continue Reading

Shutterstock/Soloviova Liudmyla For many people, an essential part of any exercise regime is the music that accompanies it. Whether you’re a runner, a rower or a bodybuilder, there’s a good chance you have a favourite selection of tunes and some headphones to help you through. The right choice of music can inspire, energise and provide much needed distraction. Elite athletes of every discipline are often seen deep in thought, their ears covered by snazzy headphones, in the moments ahead of a big match or race. So what is it about music that helps us to push our bodies towards or through physical discomfort? We have been exploring this question using a variety of scientific methods. So far, most of ourContinue Reading

Were low-carb diets really better at achieving remission? Flotsam/ Shutterstock Whether restricting carbohydrate intake is an effective way to manage type 2 diabetes is a topic of some controversy in nutrition – largely because trial results have so far been pretty inconclusive. While multiple meta-analyses have reviewed the current body of research and found low-carbohydrate diets are able to lower blood glucose in the short-term, such diets don’t appear to be any better than higher carbohydrate diets in managing blood sugar levels in the long term. Now, a new meta-analysis (which combines the results of multiple scientific studies on a given topic) has looked at the use of low-carbohydrate diets in achieving type 2 diabetes remission. Remission means a personContinue Reading

A year ago, I wrote an article for The Conversation about a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which transpired to be the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of writing, very little was known about the disease and the virus causing it, but I warned of the concern around emerging coronaviruses, citing Sars, Mers and others as important examples. Since then – and every day since– we continue to learn so much about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, finding new ways to control the pandemic and undoubtedly keep us safer in the decades that will follow. Here is what we have learned since last January and what we still need to learn. Lessons learned Initially,Continue Reading

The pandemic is the UK’s worst ever health crisis and, tragically, its’s been getting worse and worse. A more infectious variant of the coronavirus together with insufficient restrictions in December 2020 have sent COVID-19 cases soaring. The National Health Service is teetering on the brink, with hospitals close to capacity, and daily deaths are now in the thousands, surpassing April 2020’s peak. The UK continues to have one of the worst COVID-19 death rates in the world. However, Britain has a solution in hand, having authorised three COVID-19 vaccines for use. It’s started rolling out two (those developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Oxford/AstraZeneca) and has delivered the first dose to more than 2.4 million people – well ahead of most otherContinue Reading

Nurses have been putting themselves in harm’s way every day since the pandemic began. But as coronavirus spreads rapidly in the UK, it has become clear that those in intensive care units are now under more pressure than others. Hospitals are nearing capacity in many parts of the country, and in some regions temporary mortuaries have been set up as hospital morgues begin to overflow. At the end of 2020, a leaked email revealed that the Royal London Hospital was operating in “disaster-medicine mode” and unable to provide high-standard critical care. Cases have only risen since then. OurWorldInData, CC BY This situation has been brewing for a while. When the pandemic struck the UK, the National Health Service in EnglandContinue Reading

Jenner BloodProcessing The pandemic is only a year old, but we already have multiple vaccines available to fight COVID-19 – including the vaccine developed by the team we’re part of at the University of Oxford. With our partner AstraZeneca, we have submitted both interim efficacy data and safety data for the vaccine to regulators across the world for independent scrutiny and approval. So far the vaccine has been approved for emergency use in the UK, India, Morocco, Argentina and El Salvador. As well as being great news for getting us back to normal, this represents a phenomenal scientific achievement. Typically, developing a vaccine takes decades – but we have several available for COVID-19 after just 12 months. Here’s how weContinue Reading

Sleep trackers use an algorithm to estimate how much time you spent asleep based on body movements. Andrey_Popov/ Shutterstock An estimated one in three people report regular sleep complaints. So it’s hardly surprising people are more concerned than ever about getting enough sleep. This blossoming interest has seen an explosion of sleep trackers which measure how many hours of sleep you get each night. But these devices may not be as accurate or useful as they claim. As we sleep, we go through cycles of “deep”, “light” and “rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep. The “deep” portion of our sleep is mainly what leaves us feeling refreshed the next day. Most sleep trackers are a watch worn on the wrist, andContinue Reading

Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide problem to the extent that there is a grave risk that common infections will soon become untreatable. Meanwhile, vaccines developed nearly a century ago still protect us from deadly diseases. What might explain this difference? Bacteria have evolved resistance to every antibiotic ever developed. Sometimes this happened very soon after an antibiotic was first introduced. It took just six years for resistance to penicillin, the first antibiotic, to become widespread in British hospitals. But resistance against vaccines has only happened rarely. And vaccines have helped us to eradicate smallpox and hopefully soon also polio. A previous study proposed two convincing arguments to explain this phenomenon, by highlighting crucial differences between the mechanisms of drugs andContinue Reading