Posts tagged with 'lifestyle'
NICE guidelines – Promoting physical activity in the workplace
17th June 2008
I described the work of UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in an earlier blog. At the end of May they issued a helpful guideline on "Promoting physical activity in the workplace". NICE point out that "Increasing physical activity levels will help prevent and manage over 20 …
Healthy and unhealthy behaviours can be 'infectious'
15th June 2008
There was an interesting study of over 12,000 people published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently (Christakis and Fowler, 2008) looking at the way that stopping smoking seems to help those around us stop smoking as well. So if I stop, the chances of my spouse smoking decrease …
Eat 5 to 9 portions of fruit & veg daily
10th February 2008
There's a helpful editorial in last month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) - "Fruit and vegetables: think variety, go ahead, eat!" As with many journals, one doesn't have to pay anything to look at the full text of AJCN editorials. It's a good read. It comments on a paper …
Drink lots of water: an urban myth
20th January 2008
The Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal usually has a series of light-hearted articles in it. Last month's copy was no exception. In one of the articles, entitled "Medical myths" (Vreeman & Carroll 2007), the authors wrote "We generated a list of common medical or medicine related beliefs espoused …
“The demon drink” – social costs and social responses
18th January 2008
Modest alcohol intake seems pretty harmless and maybe even does a bit of good healthwise. However last month's editorial (Gilmore and Sheron 2007) in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal drummed in points it's important to remember. Ian Gilmore is President of the Royal College of Physicians and …
Does healthy lifestyle really make much difference?
8th January 2008
In an earlier post (January 3, 08), I looked at how common sense isn’t common, at least for healthy behaviours. Only about 3% of the population are ticking all the right boxes for non-smoking, alcohol use, exercise, weight and diet. This is interesting and maybe surprising, but does it really …
Common sense isn’t common
3rd January 2008
Common sense isn’t common, at least with healthy behaviours. The vast majority of us know that we should eat sensibly, be a reasonable weight, exercise regularly, not abuse alcohol, and avoid smoking. Do you know what percentage of people actually follow all this obvious advice? A survey (Reeves and Rafferty …