Health (Page 106)

Millions of people across the world have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Countries are also now embarking on massive vaccination campaigns to control the virus and protect their most vulnerable citizens. One of the biggest questions remaining is whether vaccination and/or prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 offers lasting protection against this deadly virus. The good news is that immunology is at last revealing some clues. To understand whether immunity is possible – and why this has even been questioned – it is important to consider the nature of SARS-CoV-2. It is a betacoronavirus, and several betacoronaviruses already circulate widely in humans – they are most familiar to us as a cause of the common cold. However, immunityContinue Reading

Bon appétit. alex74/ Shutterstock Fad diets certainly aren’t a 21st-century obsession. In fact, they were also a popular way for people throughout the 20th century to slim down and improve their health. Though much has changed since then – including what we know about dieting and weight loss – many of the popular fad diets we follow today share similarities with those followed in the 20th century. The early 1900s Regulating body weight became a significant concern in the 1900s, thanks to emerging evidence about the links between obesity and mortality. Like many diets today, early 20th-century diets emphasised low-carb and no sugar. One of the most popular diets in the early 1900s was the Banting diet, invented by EnglishContinue Reading

It's thought that having a child specialise in a sport early will help them achieve elite levels of success. Master1305/ Shutterstock Given the profit top sportspeople can make from being successful, it’s no wonder significant time, research, and money continues to be invested in programmes that aim to identify and develop future elite athletes. These talent programmes seek to discover young people who have an aptitude for sport by having them complete a series of physical, technical and psychological tests. But the young age of people who start these programmes has raised concerns about the potential long-term impact they could have on the children’s psychological wellbeing. It’s thought by some coaches, parents and sports administrators that specialising in a specificContinue Reading

SwitchedDesign/Shutterstock During the first peak of the coronavirus pandemic, it became apparent that the processing of the standard COVID-19 test using nasal swab samples, while considered a gold standard, was slow, taking over 24 hours to give results in most cases. As demand for quicker test results increased with supplies running low, scientists and engineers rushed to fill the gap at scale for rapid diagnostic testing that would replace the standard real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rt-PCR) test. Such technologies included rapid antigen tests, antibody tests, as well as tests using the loop-mediated isothermal amplification method (LAMP) and mass spectrometry. The UK is currently deploying “lateral flow” antigen tests, which deliver results on the spot, are cheap and easilyContinue Reading

England has gone into a tough lockdown to halt spiralling COVID-19 hospitalisations and relieve pressure on its health system. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said the new lockdown will last at least seven weeks, but it’s safe to assume that, with many hospitals near capacity, it will stay in place as long as is needed to suppress the threat of the NHS being overwhelmed. In the meantime, the government is betting the house on ramping up its vaccination programme, aiming to offer a first COVID-19 vaccine dose to 13.8 million people by mid-February, including to all over-70s. Not everyone eligible will take one, but we can expect quite high levels of uptake given that the UK usually comes closeContinue Reading

Even short periods of physical activity can improve concentration throughout the day. Somkid Saowaros/ Shutterstock Whether it’s during the post-lunch slump or just one of those days, we all struggle to concentrate on what we’re doing sometimes, whether that’s at work, school, or home. Being able to concentrate on what we’re doing would inevitably make us more productive, but that’s often easier said than done. For people looking to improve their concentration, exercise is often recommended as the antidote – and for good reason, as research shows that physical activity can improve concentration in people of all ages. I’ll define “concentration” as our ability to focus on a task and ignore distractions. So in order to have good concentration, weContinue Reading

Freestocks/Unsplash, FAL My daughter was pregnant, and gave birth, in 2020. She attended every antenatal appointment and scan alone. Her partner sat on a chair on an empty hospital corridor while she was in early labour on the ward. Hers is now a normal experience for women. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged assumptions about the childbearing year. Some features of this change are very clear. Others will take much longer to see and to understand. In the UK, the first thing to be impacted in the spring lockdown was where women gave birth. In over a third of areas, home births were suspended at a time when women were looking at giving birth at home as a safer option thanContinue Reading

Replace two hours of sitting with standing Burlingham/ Shutterstock Though people with office jobs often sit for up to 80% of the working day, many still manage to get an average of 3,616 steps daily, largely thanks to many small opportunities for activity throughout the day. But with many of us now working from home during the pandemic, this means that any exercise we might have had during our day – whether cycling to work, or walking to get lunch – may no longer exist. While the way we work has changed, that doesn’t mean we can’t easily find ways to be more active during our work day if we look at how we managed to get active while workingContinue Reading

vasilis asvestas/Shutterstock The UK is facing an alarming escalation of the pandemic. Primarily, this seems to be due to a new, even more infectious variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. As of January 5, there are more patients in hospital in the UK than at the peak of the first wave in April 2020. Case numbers have started doubling about every two weeks, and the death rate is also increasing. It seems that the new variant managed to increase its spread even during the November lockdown, and it is still not certain that the new national lockdown measures will be sufficient by themselves to reverse the rapid increase in cases. The only sure approach to reduce illness, hospitalisationContinue Reading

By – https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/emotions/self.html , , Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1684469 Elaine and Arthur Shapiro/Wikimedia Commons Plato’s cure for headaches involved: a certain leaf, but there was a charm to go with the remedy; and if one uttered the charm at the moment of its application, the remedy made one perfectly well; but without the charm there was no efficacy in the leaf. We would now call Plato’s “charm” a placebo. Placebos have been around for thousands of years and are the most widely studied treatments in the history of medicine. Every time your doctor tells you that the drug you take has been proved to work, they mean that it has been proved to work better than a placebo. Every tax orContinue Reading