10. HEALTH - YEAR 2012
10.1 Tax and regulate sugar like alcohol and tobacco
10.2 Action needed to reduce health impact of harmful
alcohol use
10.3 The U.S. does not have a debt problem .. it has a
health care cost problem
10.4 Exposure to dirt in childhood promotes immunity
10.5 Is sugar toxic?
10.6 Ministry warns of new health care challenges
10.7 The obesity epidemic
10.8 Cell phone safety
10.9 Multimorbidity
10.10 Get green time to promote health
10.11 Exercise doesn't help fight depression
10.12 Mental health sufferers account for HALF of all illnesss
10.13 Daily caffine hit hurting elementary school kids
10.14 Parents will outlive their children
10.15 Can Athletes Perform Well on a Vegan Diet?
10.16 On the posture of perpetual girlishness
10.17 Lifestyles to blame for health care costs
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10.4 Exposure to dirt in childhood promotes immunity
10.5 Is sugar toxic?
10.6 Ministry warns of new health care challenges
10.7 The obesity epidemic
10.8 Cell phone safety
10.9 Multimorbidity
10.10 Get green time to promote health
10.11 Exercise doesn't help fight depression
10.12 Mental health sufferers account for HALF of all illnesss
10.13 Daily caffine hit hurting elementary school kids
10.14 Parents will outlive their children
10.15 Can Athletes Perform Well on a Vegan Diet?
10.16 On the posture of perpetual girlishness
10.17 Lifestyles to blame for health care costs
10.18 Health is wealth, for the hospitals
10.19 Chemical in many antibacterial soaps linked with impaired muscle function
10.20 Medical education
10.21 China's chaotic health care drives patient attacks
10.22 Vitamin B12 deficiency (Potentially a big problem for India)
10.23 Therapy for the heart
10.24 Mental health care scores F for failure in first report card
10.25 U.S. Judge Orders Tobacco Companies to Admit Deception and Tell the Truth
10.26 One soft drink a day can up risk of prostate cancer by 40%
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10.1 Tax and regulate sugar like alcohol and tobacco (2/2/2012)
Sugar should be regulated in the same way as alcohol and tobacco because its increasing use in processed foods poses a significant danger to public health, according to a group of scientists. They advocate controlling sales to children under 17 and taxing sugary foods.
.. For the first time in human history, long-term diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations, contributing to 35m deaths annually. "There are now 30% more people who are obese than who are undernourished," said the UCSF scientists. "Economic development means that the populations of low- and middle-income countries are living longer, and therefore are more susceptible to non-communicable diseases; 80% of deaths attributable to them occur in these countries."
.. Dr Tim Lobstein, director of policy and programmes at the International Obesity Task Force, said sugar consumption was a major battleground for public health. "The large food manufacturers are very reluctant to see any restrictions on the use of cheap, bulk ingredients like sugars and starches. In the UK we have seen a gradual decline in sugar purchases, but this has been amply made up by an increase in sugar added to manufactured products, including ready meals, soups, snack foods and alcoholic drinks, and the last decade has seen record purchases of confectionery and soft drinks, despite endless health education campaigns.
... Sugar induces many of the diseases associated with "metabolic syndrome", including high blood pressure, diabetes and accelerated ageing. "It can also be argued that fructose exerts toxic effects on the liver that are similar to those of alcohol," said the UCSF scientists. "This is no surprise, because alcohol is derived from the fermentation of sugar."
.. One of the main reasons sugar has become such a problem is that it is impossible to avoid in modern society, argued the UCSF scientists. "Evolutionarily, sugar was available to our ancestors as fruit for only a few months a year (at harvest time), or as honey, which was guarded by bees. But in recent years, sugar has been added to nearly all processed foods, limiting consumer choice. Nature made sugar hard to get; man made it easy."
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Can we justify the huge acreage devoted to the production of sugar in India? Will even one person die if sugar is not available?
Selvaraj
10.2 Action needed to reduce health impact of harmful alcohol use (7/2/2012)
A 2011 report by the World Health Organization states that 2.5 million deaths per year are caused by alcohol. "Almost 4% of all deaths worldwide," the report says, "are attributed to alcohol, greater than deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, violence or tuberculosis."
Health implications
Harmful use of alcohol has many implications on public health.- Nearly 4% of all deaths are related to alcohol. Most alcohol-related deaths are caused by alcohol result from injuries, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and liver cirrhosis.
- Globally, 6.2% of all male deaths are related to alcohol, compared to 1.1% of female deaths. One-in-five men in the Russian Federation and neighbouring countries die due to alcohol-related causes.
- Globally, 320 000 young people aged 15-29 years die annually, from alcohol-related causes, resulting in 9% of all deaths in that age group.
http://www.who.int/
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I got knocked off the road by a drunk a couple of years back - escaped with minor injuries. A passerby took down the registration number of the car and I was able to lodge a police complaint. The motorist was brought to book after about 3 months; he had also bumped into an auto rickshaw further down the road.
Turned out that he had lost Rs 30 lakhs in a business venture, so he decided to get drunk and run amok. The motorist and an elderly gentleman who accompanied him (who seemed to know what to expect in such cases) were least concerned; not surprising, as the fine was only Rs 2000 (or Rs 2500), apparently the max that can be levied for such cases!
Driving under the influence of liquor is rife on Indian roads, if we wish to control it, the first step will be to increase the fine to some substantial fraction of a person's earnings.
Selvaraj
10.3 The U.S. does not have a debt problem .. it has a health care cost problem (10/2/2012)
That’s not my line, I took it from The Economist, but it’s a good one. If health care costs were under control, i.e. growing no faster than the economy, we could manage our debt. However, health care spending is growing at about 1.5x the rate of growth of GDP and is already close to 20% of the economy. In this post I will talk about the scary numbers. In the next post I will offer some thoughts on what we can do manage the situation.
If the trends of the last 20 years continue, health care spending will eat up U.S. GDP in our children’s lifetimes. See the first chart. The blue line is the federal government’s projection of health care spending. The red line projects spending at the trend growth rate of the last 20 years.
10.4 Exposure to dirt in childhood promotes immunity (27/3/2012)
Exposure to dirt in childhood promotes immunity
10.5 Is sugar toxic? (2/4/2012)
Is sugar toxic?
10.6 Ministry warns of new health care challenges (8/4/2012)
While longevity has increased over the past years, the number of healthy years remains low, with an average of 12 years spent living with a disease during a lifetime. A person suffers an average of 2.6 diseases and only six percent of elderly people are healthy, Long said.
He said a survey by the Health Ministry found 95 percent of the elderly (60 years old and above) having chronic disease(s). They were also facing a double-danger as they were living at the time of a shift from infectious diseases to lifestyle-based diseases and chronic diseases.
10.7 The obesity epidemic (5/5/2012) (7/5/12)
The similarities between the two public health challenges are compelling. Tobacco use is the nation's No. 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S., killing 467,000 people in 2005, according to a landmark study by Harvard University researchers. Being obese or overweight caused an estimated 216,000 deaths from heart disease, diabetes and other conditions, researchers estimated, while another 191,000 deaths resulted from being physically inactive — another key contributor to expanding waistlines.
.. In terms of health care costs, obesity is now the larger concern, accounting for $147 billion to $190 billion in yearly expenditures, compared with $96 billion for tobacco.
.. But there are many hurdles. The scope of the obesity problem is much larger than tobacco ever was: It touches on the food we eat, the beverages we drink, the amount of television we watch, how much we exercise, the way our cities are designed and more. While the variety of policy changes proposed are therefore broader, the political will to enact them has not materialized, in part because "people don't yet perceive a significant personal threat," said William Dietz, director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Beware. Your lifestyle can ruin your health
Of the 62 million Indians expected to have coronary heart disease by
2015, 23 million will be less than 40 years old. Currently, the
prevalence of coronary heart disease in urban India is four times higher
than in the US. “Roughly, one in two people, making it half of the
city, suffers from at least one of these lifestyle diseases, if not
more,” said Dr Aashish Contractor, head of the department of preventive
cardiology and rehabilitation, Asian Heart Institute, Bandra-Kurla
Complex. “All these diseases are linked and increase the chances of
heart disease and stroke. Exercise and a correct diet can help combat
these diseases.”
Lifestyle diseases are not restricted to adults. A study conducted by
the National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation in 2009
revealed that one in every three children in private schools in cities
such as Mumbai and New Delhi is obese. The study showed that since most
junk food is targeted at children, they are high-risk cases for obesity.
“When a child has a soft drink, he already exceeds his ideal sugar
intake for the day,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of
the foundation...
10.8 Cell Phone Safety (13/5/2012)
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/2068947/157347384/name/Cell_phone_safety%2Epdf
10.9 Multimorbidity (14/5/2012)
Over the past decade, multimorbidity—the existence of several chronic health disorders in one individual—has generated increasing interest. In an Article, Barnett and colleagues add to the evidence that patients with multimorbidity are the norm rather than the exception. Management of patients with several chronic diseases is now the most important task facing health services in developed countries, which presents a fundamental challenge to the single-disease focus that pervades medicine. The findings are discussed further in a Comment.
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A radical health system overhaul is required so that the UK health system and those in other nations developed will be able to cope with the demand, as they were not designed to cater for these scenarios.
One of the key challenges for governments and health-care systems all over the world is to manage the increasing amount of long-term disorders.
At present, the main focus of the current healthcare system lies on individual diseases, delivery of health care and medical education, however, those with multimorbidities need a broader approach. It is burdensome and unsafe for patients having to use different services to manage several diseases in one person, as there is a risk of therapies being duplicated and inefficient due to poor coordination and integration.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.
10.10 Get green time to promote health (26/5/2012)
Less than 10% of children play in woodlands,
countryside and heaths, compared with 40% of adults when they were
young, reveals
a 2009 report by Natural England.
... Being shut away in urban/suburban sprawl is unhealthy.
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Towns
and Cities need to be designed in 1 Km x 0.5 Km grids, with vehicular
traffic restricted to peripheral roads. A core area of 0.2 Km x 0.2 Km
(an area of 0.04 sq Km, about 10% of the total area) can be left free
for a lake, garden and wooded area. Agricultural fields can also be made
part of the town design:
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
______________________________
Town (Side A, 2 Km wide)
******************************
Town (Side B, 2 Km wide)
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((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
(Agricultural fields within cycling distance from the town.
Organic waste from the town can be easily recycled in the fields.)
Selvaraj
The study, carried out by
teams from the Universities of Bristol, Exeter and the Peninsula College
of Medicine and Dentistry, is the first large-scale, randomized
controlled trial to analyse the effects of exercise on depression.
Earlier most of the evidence for the positive effect of physical activity in treating depression had originated from studies of small, non-clinical samples using interventions that would not be practicable in an NHS setting.
Earlier most of the evidence for the positive effect of physical activity in treating depression had originated from studies of small, non-clinical samples using interventions that would not be practicable in an NHS setting.
"Numerous studies have
reported the positive effects of physical activity for people suffering
from depression but our intervention was not an effective strategy for
reducing symptoms", said Melanie Chalder, of the University of Bristol's School of Social and Community Medicine.
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Hi Keith,
I was hoping that someone would comment on
this research report. I had typed out my own reaction to the report;
then decided to post the news in plain vanilla.
Queries I had typed out related to wondering how the
patients exercised. Did they exercise using exercising machines? Did
they go for walks early in the morning in a wooded park? Did they walk
down a crowded place where they would bump into other human beings? So
far as treating depression is concerned, I would expect the first method
to be less effective!? It is quite possible however that this
experiment was performed using exercising machines, so as to bring more
'control' to the scientific experiment.
I agree with you that somatic ways of exercising
would be the best. If the body is kept well balanced, the whole body
will get exercised with any activity. Without proper balance no system
of exercise will reach all the muscle groups.
Regards,
Selvaraj
10.12 Mental health sufferers account for HALF of all illness (18/6/2012)
'The under-treatment of people with crippling mental illness is the most glaring cause of health inequality in our country.'
One third of families have a member who is currently suffering from a mental illness, they say. It accounts for nearly half of absenteeism at work and mental illness accounts for nearly half of people on incapacity benefits.
The authors, who include doctors, psychologists, NHS managers and economists, condemn local health commissioners for inappropriately using allocated mental health funding and say that in some areas mental health provisions are being cut.
The authors also recommend better training of GPs and suggest that recruitment into psychiatry should be increased.
They also call for an “imperative” upgrade of specialist help to provide children with affective therapies, as there are 700,000 children in Britain with behavioural problems, anxiety or depression.
... 'Mental health is so central to the health of individuals and of society that it needs its own cabinet minister.'
The report concludes: 'Mentally ill people are particularly vulnerable.
'They are often afraid to seek help or even say they are unwell, and so are their relatives. But they represent nearly one half of all health-related suffering in this country.
One third of families have a member who is currently suffering from a mental illness, they say. It accounts for nearly half of absenteeism at work and mental illness accounts for nearly half of people on incapacity benefits.
The authors, who include doctors, psychologists, NHS managers and economists, condemn local health commissioners for inappropriately using allocated mental health funding and say that in some areas mental health provisions are being cut.
The authors also recommend better training of GPs and suggest that recruitment into psychiatry should be increased.
They also call for an “imperative” upgrade of specialist help to provide children with affective therapies, as there are 700,000 children in Britain with behavioural problems, anxiety or depression.
... 'Mental health is so central to the health of individuals and of society that it needs its own cabinet minister.'
The report concludes: 'Mentally ill people are particularly vulnerable.
'They are often afraid to seek help or even say they are unwell, and so are their relatives. But they represent nearly one half of all health-related suffering in this country.
10.13 Daily caffeine hit hurting elementary school kids (18/6/2012)
Daily caffeine hit hurting elementary school kids, study shows
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/
10.14 Parents will outlive their children (18/6/2012)
Last, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention stated that today over 8 million children have asthma, up 232% in he last 40 years. The American Lung Association reports that asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under the age of 1.
Mayor Bloomberg: Health Crusader or Nanny State
Despot?
NEW YORK, June 18, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ --
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to bar restaurants, movie
theaters, sports arenas, food carts and bodegas from selling sodas and
other sugary drinks in servings larger than 16 ounces; he believes that
this ban will signal an effective way to fight obesity in a city that
spends billions of dollars a year on weight-related health problems.
10.15 Can Athletes Perform Well on a Vegan Diet? (20/6/2012)
Q.. So is there any compelling reason for
those of us who are active but not necessarily running ultramarathons
to decide to become vegan?
A.. D. Enette Larson-Meyer:
In general, vegetarians are healthier, with less risk for heart disease
and obesity, although there are obese vegetarians. Many people tell me
after they start a vegetarian diet that they feel better, but then
again, many of them — and I believe this was the case with Scott Jurek —
were eating a pretty poor diet before, so of course they feel better.
They could have switched to a healthier meat-based diet and they would
probably have felt better.
I like to tell people that if we got
most Americans to eat one less serving of meat every day, there would be
far greater impact from that, in terms of improving overall public
health and the health of the planet, than convincing a tiny group of
endurance athletes to go full vegan.http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/
10.16 On the posture of perpetual girlishness (29/6/2012)
I t's not as if I were a cultural anthropologist or, even more unlikely, a sociologist. It's just that immersion in the American scene for eight decades has prepared me to spot some trends while also granting me the additional time to confirm them. In the present instance I've become painfully aware of a peculiar form of regressive behavior on the part of our womenfolk—or at least enough of them as to compel comment.
I refer here to the growing phenomenon of grown women sounding like prepubescent teenagers. This charge does not apply to the content of their utterances, but to their vocal timbre and speech pattern.
... Further social encouragement of adolescent behavior is found in the systematized veneration of youth and reciprocal disparagement of age. We are bombarded with images of men whose social and professional acceptability is imperiled by the graying of their hair, but who are able to revive their youth by the application of a hair-darkening elixir. The female rejection of aging is too ubiquitous to require examples. It is only necessary to note that this theme is sounded relentlessly throughout the media. To be young is to be desirable; to be judged otherwise is to be counted out of the game. Given all these factors, is it any wonder that we seize and hold on to the attributes of youth as long as possible? It is astonishing to discover the many ways by which natural maturation is systematically inhibited.
http://www.montereyherald.com/
10.17 Lifestyle to blame for health care costs (28/7/2012)
Knee replacements are a good example. In recent years, on average, about a million knee replacements a year are performed worldwide. And although the U.S. only makes up about 5% of the world population, more than 50% of the knee replacements were performed here. In the U.S. the number of knee replacements is about 200 per 100,000 persons. The average for the European Union and Canada is a little more than 100 per 100,000 persons.
And I will give you one guess which country has more breast augmentations, liposuctions and nose jobs than the rest of the world combined.
Another challenge for the U.S. with respect to overall health care costs is our cultural approach to end of life care.
10.18 Health is wealth, for the hospitals (8/8/2012)
God bless you if you don’t have insurance, and you land in hospital. You not only have to pay for the bed and breakfast, but also give your contribution for all the expenses that go into the making of a healthy facility — right from the Rs1 crore that goes into the creation of a doctor to the multi-crore land for the hospital, from the cut to the local politician for protection (yes, even hospitals need protection) to the local general practitioner’s cut for recommending patients. Last heard, wily GPs demand as much as 40% of the patient’s bill as kickbacks.
http://www.dnaindia.com/
http://www.dnaindia.com/
Health Affairs Study: One-Third of Doctors Won't Accept New Medicaid Patients
http://www.forbes.com/sites/.....................
MARKET ECONOMY
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MARKET ECONOMY
10.19 Chemicals in many antibacterial soaps linked with impaired muscle function (15/8/2012)
“We consider [triclosan] a high volume chemical,” Dr. Isaac Pessah, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biosciences in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, as well as the study’s lead author, told FoxNews.com. “Its production levels are quite high, and the levels in humans have been increasing since it was first used as an antibacterial agent in the early ‘70s. So the body levels in humans – including plasma, urine and breast milk – have been steadily increasing.”
“The levels in the environment have been increasing as well, because it can’t all be trapped in the treatment plants,” Pessah added about triclosan’s prevalence. “[Companies] try to prevent some chemicals getting out past the water treatment plants so they can dispose of them in a different way, but they can’t capture all of [triclosan] because there is so much of it.”
“The levels in the environment have been increasing as well, because it can’t all be trapped in the treatment plants,” Pessah added about triclosan’s prevalence. “[Companies] try to prevent some chemicals getting out past the water treatment plants so they can dispose of them in a different way, but they can’t capture all of [triclosan] because there is so much of it.”
... “When people ask me about this, I say that we’ve been taking great care to buy products without triclosan,” Pessah said. “Instead, buy disinfectant hand wash based in alcohol. There’s no literature that says it’s more useful than just soap and water. The risks definitely outweigh the benefits.”
GRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION TO UNDERGO REVIEW BY IOM COMMITTEE:
Worsening physician shortages, an aging baby boomer population and expanding health insurance coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act have prompted the nation’s health policy experts to explore possible changes to the graduate medical education system.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, is convening a new ad hoc committee to conduct an independent review of the system and make recommendations on how to better produce a medical workforce for the 21st century.http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/
10.21 China's chaotic health care drives patient attacks (26/8/2012)
Despite an injection of more than $240 billion in government funding into health care over the past three years, the doctor-patient relationship has continued to break down. Doctors are overworked and underpaid, and many push drug sales or charge extra for services such as deliveries to make more money. Patients are faced with high medical expenses, brief consultations and often poor quality care.
... The anger built up over years is now exploding into violence, with doctors, nurses and interns around the country stabbed, punched or otherwise assaulted by patients or their relatives over the past year. A few have died. Although official data is unavailable, state media reports say there were more than 17,000 "violent incidents" at health care facilities nationwide in 2010, a 70 percent increase from 2004.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/
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We need a change of paradigm in dealing with health issues.
Selvaraj
... The anger built up over years is now exploding into violence, with doctors, nurses and interns around the country stabbed, punched or otherwise assaulted by patients or their relatives over the past year. A few have died. Although official data is unavailable, state media reports say there were more than 17,000 "violent incidents" at health care facilities nationwide in 2010, a 70 percent increase from 2004.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/
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We need a change of paradigm in dealing with health issues.
Selvaraj
10.22 Vitamin B12 deficiency (Potentially a big problem for India) (18/9/2012)
Top 10 Foods Highest in Vitamin B12
Read more at http://www.healthaliciousness.Vitamin B12 is needed for cell division and blood formation. Neither plants nor animals make vitamin B12. Bacteria are responsible for producing vitamin B12. Animals get their vitamin B12 from eating foods contaminated with vitamin B12 and then the animal becomes a source of vitamin B12. Plant foods do not contain vitamin B12 except when they are contaminated by microorganisms or have vitamin B12 added to them. Thus, vegans need to look to fortified foods or supplements to get vitamin B12 in their diet. Although recommendations for vitamin B12 are very small, a vitamin B12 deficiency is a very serious problem leading ultimately to anemia and irreversible nerve damage. Prudent vegans will include sources of vitamin B12 in their diets. Vitamin B12 is especially important in pregnancy and lactation and for infants and children.
http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/
... One of the most common overlooked diagnoses for impairment of Proprioception that effects a person's walking, especially in people over 60, is Vitamin B12 deficiency. If a Vitamin B12 deficiency is left untreated it can result in permanent damage to nerves in the upper spinal cord called Subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord, resulting in the nerves from the feet not communicating properly with the cerebellum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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In the list referred to, the top eight food items are Non Veg.
The bottom two are Veg: Cheese and Eggs (if egg can be considered to be veg)
You would have to eat 180 gms of Swiss Cheese to obtain your daily requirements.
(Swiss cheese provides the most with 3.34μg (56% DV) per 100g serving)
You would have to eat 17 eggs to get your daily requirements!
(When it comes to chicken eggs the raw yellow has most of the vitamin B-12 with 1.95μg per 100g serving (33%), however, this equates to 0.33μg per yolk or just 6% of the DV. The eggs of other animals are higher with a goose egg providing 7.34μg (122% DV) of vitamin B-12 per 100g serving, and a duck egg providing 3.78μg (63% DV) )
Milk and milk products contain B12, but you would have to consume sufficient amount of it:
Yogurt (No Fat) : You would need to consume 1 lit
Yogurt (Whole) : 1.7 lit
Skim Milk : 1.1 lit
Whole Milk : 1.5 lit
Low fat Buttermilk : 2.5 lit
In states such as Punjab and Haryana where farming communities consume large amounts of milk, there should be no problems with a veg diet; elsewhere there could be problems. Would providing supplements be the only way out of this problem? Are children's midday meal schemes taking care of this issue? Apparently a person having NV diet can store 20 years supply in his body. It is possible to check the level of B12 in a person's body; should children in India be tested for B12 deficiency?
Selvaraj
10.23 Therapy for the heart (5/11/2012)
.. Moreover, they don’t make anyone any money in advocating for them. There are many industries that have a powerful stake in your not doing them, and in advertising round the clock to dupe you into yet another day lounging in front of the TV, scarfing down a second triple cheeseburger or guzzling a big gulp sugary soda. Ignore those messages. Losing weight, keeping away from cigarettes and staying fit are the proven ways to reduce risk.
The benefit of the treatment, known as chelation therapy, barely reached statistical significance, and there were questions about the reliability of the study. Even the investigators in the trial said the results were insufficient by themselves to justify recommending use of the treatment.
Still, the unexpected finding should provide some vindication to the National Institutes of Health for sponsoring the $30 million study, which was plagued by delays and problems.
10.24 Mental health care scores F for failure in first report card (27/11/2012)
MENTAL health services are in an ''appalling'' state, the chairman of the National Mental Health Commission said as the inaugural national report card on mental health was launched.
Allan Fels said on Tuesday that Australia had failed in its delivery of mental health services and called on the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to keep mental health as a priority.
''Every five years or so something is done about mental health and then it gets forgotten, but the government now needs to actually implement their policies,'' Professor Fels said.
"The statistics related to physical illness and early death among people with a mental health difficulty are appalling.
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''People with a severe mental illness have their life expectancy reduced by 25 years on average due to the increased likelihood of heart-related conditions, diabetes and obesity.''
The commission had been given the independence to ''tell it like it is'', he said, adding that the report had uncovered hard truths about mental health services in Australia.
... An estimated 3.2 million Australians live with mental health issues, at a cost of about $20 billion every year.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/
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Australia has a population of 23 million. So, 3.2 million people works out to 14%! If India has the same level of mental health problem, the number of people affected will be 168 million!!
The Silent Epidemic: http://indiatoday.
Selvaraj
10.25 U.S. Judge Orders Tobacco Companies to Admit Deception and Tell the Truth (28/11/2012)
A federal judge today ordered tobacco companies to admit that they have deliberately deceived the American public and finally tell the truth about their deadly and addictive products and fraudulent marketing. Today's ruling is a critical step toward ending decades of tobacco industry deception that has resulted in millions of premature deaths, untold suffering and billions in health care costs.Requiring the tobacco companies to finally tell the truth is a small price to pay for the devastating consequences of their wrongdoing.
10.26 One soft drink a day can up risk of prostate cancer by 40% (28/11/2012)
Just a single sugary soft drink per day may raise a man's risk of developing prostate cancer, a new 15-year study has claimed.
Just a single sugary soft drink per day may raise a man's risk of developing prostate cancer, a new 15-year study has claimed.
... Experts believe that sugar triggers the release of the hormone insulin, which feeds tumours.
The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is far from the first to link the sugary soft drinks to poor health.
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