Prince William: suicide callout shed light on men"s mental health

The Duke of Cambridge has spoken of his shock at being called out to his first suicide as an air ambulance pilot in a joint interview with his brother, Prince Harry, on tackling masculinity and mental health issues.

Prince William said the “tipping point” for him in understanding how men struggle to deal with mental health problems came with his work with the East Anglian air ambulance.

“My first callout was to a male suicide and I was told there were five suicides or attempted suicides every day in East Anglia alone. When I looked into it I was shocked by how bad this situation is – suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK – which is absolutely appalling.”

He praised grime star Stormzy, sportsmen Rio Ferdinand and Freddie Flintoff, and rapper Professor Green for publicly talking about pressures on their mental health.

The interview with the princes is part of a campaign to encourage better communication about mental health issues. It follows Harry’s revelations that he sought counselling after coming close to a breakdown over the death of his mother and had two years of “total chaos” that led him to process his grief.

The interview, with CALMzine, published by the Campaign Against Living Miserably, is for a special edition before the London Marathon, during which the princes and the Duchess of Cambridge will cheer on runners taking part for their mental health campaign, Heads Together, which is the charity of the year for the marathon.

Talking about how men often feel it was a sign of weakness to discuss their mental health, William said: “There may be a time and a place for the stiff upper lip, but not at the expense of your health. The recent interview by Stormzy about his depression was incredibly powerful and will help young men feel that it’s a sign of strength to talk about and look after your mind as well as your body.

He said he hoped subsequent generations would find it more normal to talk about their emotions. “Catherine and I are clear that we want both George and Charlotte to grow up feeling able to talk about their emotions and feelings.”

Harry, who served two tours of Afghanistan with the army and who actively campaigned to raise awareness of mental health issues within the military, believed progress was being made.

“The military is a complex picture as on one hand there is an incredible sense of brotherhood and belonging between you and your mates,” he told the magazine. “You’ll do anything for each other – scrub each other’s boots, drag each other through the mud – anything.

Stormzy’s appearance on Channel 4 news to discuss his battle with depression has been described as ‘a game changer’. Photograph: Ian West/PA

“Yet, on the other hand, this support for each other hasn’t, up to now, included looking after how your buddy is feeling and thinking about things. When you’re serving you look after your physical health, your training, your equipment, but not your head.

“There’s definitely been a misplaced sense of pride has got in the way of the people in the military community talking about their mental health and getting help. It’s changing now and I’m proud that this is part of the Heads Together campaign.

“Hopefully, if men see soldiers talking about mental health, it will give them the confidence to do the same.”

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph published on Monday, the prince reflected on the impact of his mother’s death and the time it took him to process it. “[I thought] it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back,” he said. “So from an emotional side, I was like ‘right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything’. So I was a typical 20-, 25-, 28-year-old running around going ‘life is great’, or ‘life is fine’ and that was exactly it.

“And then [I] started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with.”

On 19 April, four days before the marathon, the duchess will host runners from Team Heads Together at Kensington Palace to talk about their reasons for running and wish them luck.

William will attend the screening of the BBC’s Mind Over Marathon documentary at the BBC Radio Theatre on 18 April, which follows 10 runners affected by mental health issues. The royal trio will open the Global Academy in support of Heads Together on 20 April.

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.
  

Prince William: suicide callout shed light on men"s mental health

Scientists: steer clear of fats, not carbs, if you want to shed bodyweight

Creating in the Cell Metabolism journal, scientists mentioned that cutting body fat resulted in a lot more entire body excess fat loss than cutting carbohydrates when measured by metabolic stability.

Nineteen adults with obesity have been put on the two a diet that prevented carbohydrates and a diet program that prevented fats for 6 days each. The researchers identified that both diet plans led to body unwanted fat loss, even though folks misplaced a lot more on the diet that reduced body fat intake.

Minimize out fatty foods to get rid of weight  Photograph: Alamy

Soon after six days on every single diet plan, the benefits showed that people on the diet regime that lowered carbohydrates had misplaced an average of 245g of body unwanted fat, even though people on the decreased fat intake diet program had lost 463g.

Lead researcher Dr Kevin Hall, from the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Condition, stated there was no metabolic cause for men and women to opt for a minimal-carb diet: “With carb reduction you do shed entire body body fat, but not as much as when you lower out the excess fat.”

Even so, Dr Hall concluded that folks ought to nevertheless try to stick to the diet program they really feel most relaxed with, as some individuals may possibly drop much more bodyweight by decreasing their carbohydrate consumption. He informed BBC News: “If it is less complicated to stick to one diet program than an additional, and to ideally do it completely, then you should decide on that diet program.

“But if a low-unwanted fat diet is better for you, then you are not going to be at a metabolic disadvantage.”

Professor Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford, additional: “The investigators rightly conclude that the very best diet regime for weight reduction is the diet regime you can stick to.

“All diets ‘work’ if you stick to an eating strategy that cuts calories, no matter whether from fat or carbohydrate, but sticking to a diet plan is easier said than carried out, specifically provided the prolonged time it takes to shed bodyweight.”

Scientists: steer clear of fats, not carbs, if you want to shed bodyweight

If You Snus, You Shed: Examine Exhibits Positive aspects of Quitting Smokeless Tobacco

The adverse results of smoking are properly acknowledged and documented. The impact of smokeless tobacco is significantly less clear. Now a research from Sweden, published in Circulation, gives proof that quitting smokeless tobacco following a heart assault is about as helpful as quitting smoking. The benefits do not support the common see that smokeless tobacco is a risk-free different to smoking.

In their principal evaluation, the investigators analyzed the threat for death in Swedish heart attack (myocardial infarction) patients, 675 of whom had quit employing snus (the Swedish form of oral snuff) following MI and 1799 of whom continued to use snus. After 2.1 many years of stick to-up, the mortality charge was reduced in half amid those who quit relative to people who continued making use of snus, from 18.seven to 9.7 per 1000 particular person-years. Soon after adjustment for other chance elements, the hazard ratio for quitters was .57, similar to the .54 HR observed in a separate evaluation between those who quit smoking right after MI compared with these who continued to smoke.

“We didn’t anticipate to see this kind of a strong association between individuals men and women who stopped employing (smokeless tobacco),” explained lead writer Gabriel Arefalk, in an AHA press release. “After a heart attack, no doubt smoking cessation reduces the risk of death about a single third and is actually a cornerstone of cardiac rehabilitation around the world. For smokeless tobacco, we did not know.”

English: Skruf løs snus (Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

If You Snus, You Shed: Examine Exhibits Positive aspects of Quitting Smokeless Tobacco

If we cannot do it on our personal, then let"s shed excess weight collectively

If people were too excess fat, I mentioned, then that was because they were too darn greedy and if they wished to get thinner then they need to eat significantly less. Basic, I said. The much more we “medicalised” the dilemma, the much less men and women would get responsibility – and the fatter we would all turn into.

Effectively, I am afraid that in the past two button-busting decades, I have been proved right at least about the last point. We are now the second fattest nation in the globe, and I am alarmed to find out that Londoners are now even fatter than New Yorkers. We have weight problems levels of 67 per cent amongst guys and 57 per cent amongst girls. We are the official lard-arses of Europe.

Every single year we have to widen our cinema seats and reinforce the floors of our ambulances. As this paper reviews, more and more soldiers are manufactured to leave the army for getting, frankly, too excess fat to charge at the enemy. Our charter jets puff and groan and spew out unconscionable quantities of fossil fuels as they lug our biomass to the Mediterranean – and the fatter we get, the greater the chance to our health. The a lot more overweight we are, the a lot more likely we are to have cancer, heart illness, stroke: the large causers of early and preventable death. The national fatness issue charges the NHS at least £16 billion a yr in extra and needless cost.

If you are technically obese – as most of us now are – you are statistically reducing your existence expectancy by 3 or 4 many years. If you are morbidly obese, you are probably forsaking ten years of existence – 10 years of entertaining viewing your children and grandchildren develop up.

Practically nothing looks to end us consuming also significantly – neither my savage libertarian sermons in the Telegraph, nor the bossing and nannying of the state. We are akratic. We know what we ought to do, but we can’t look to make ourselves do it. We know what is in our interests – minimize out chips, cake, bread, cheese, crisps and so on and consume a lot more fruit – but we cannot summon up the steady willpower to adhere to the rules.

Brooding on this difficulty, I wondered if we could construct a diverse psychological framework. What if it wasn’t just about us: our selfishness, our weakness of will, our very own abusive relationships with meals. Probably folks might be much more ready to exercising discipline – to make a sacrifice – if it could be witnessed to be for everybody’s sake, for everybody’s wellness.

People are usually capable of remarkable acts of kindness and altruism. Seldom are men and women happier and a lot more energetic than when carrying out items for other people. So at City Hall we have all embarked – about 150 of us, I think – on a prepare to shed fat with each other.

We all stood on a some giant business scales not individually, so that no one felt any individual embarrassment or stress, and we didn’t have the anxiousness of other folks seeing how considerably we weighed. We did it in groups of about 12 at a time. We recorded who was in the groups, and the total fat, and we agreed that in a couple of months we would attempt to drop five per cent.

There is no coercion, no bullying, and it goes with out saying that the entire factor is fully voluntary. It is a joint effort and a bit of a laugh. But the key factor is that I now know that unless of course I keep it up – and refuse the lascivious winks of the cheese and the cake – then I will not just be failing to do the appropriate thing by myself. I will be failing to do the correct point by the group.

I want to drop weight or I’ll let the side down. In a few months’ time we will all get back on the scales and see how we have completed. Will it perform? Every single psychological text book will almost certainly say that you only get outcomes by attractive to people’s naked self-interest. Properly, we have attempted that, and it is going nowhere. Let’s try staff spirit. It is really worth a shot.

If we cannot do it on our personal, then let"s shed excess weight collectively

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

Daniel Ubani was on his very first Uk shift when he accidentally gave David Gray an overdose of diamorphine. Photograph: Anthony Collins Solicitors/PA

The sons of a man accidentally killed by a German out-of-hrs physician on his 1st United kingdom shift have misplaced a claim at the European court of human rights that German authorities did not offer an effective investigation into their father’s death.

Rory and Stuart Gray had said their rights had been denied when the German justice system refused to enable the doctor’s extradition to face trial in open court in the United Kingdom. But seven judges at the Strasbourg court rejected their case, saying German authorities had acted in accordance to domestic law.

The court also dismissed the brothers’ assertion that their legitimate interests had been not respected. A single of the judges, Ann Electrical power-Forde, from Ireland, did however raise the query of regardless of whether the authorities ought to have informed Gray’s household that Daniel Ubani, the GP involved, had been convicted in his personal nation in March 2009 of having triggered David Gray’s death by negligence, sentenced to a nine-month suspended prison sentence and give a fine of €5,000, virtually £4,050.

She explained that although there had been no breach of the European convention on human rights, there may in potential need to have to be clarification as to whether subsequent-of-kin had a appropriate to know when criminal proceedings had been ended by a state’s authorities.

Criminal proceedings were opened against the doctor in the United Kingdom and the German choice to prosecute, primarily based on evidence from British police who investigated the death, shocked and angered Uk investigators as effectively as Gray’s loved ones. Ministers have been also concerned that Ubani’s conviction took place without having him appearing in an open court.

Ubani killed David Gray on sixteen February 2008 in his house in Cambridgeshire right after getting recruited by a private agency to operate as a locum medical doctor.

Treating Gray for acute soreness, the physician puzzled two medication and mistakenly injected a tenfold overdose of the painkiller diamorphine.

The brothers had complained that German authorities denied their father’s human rights by not conducting a correct investigation into his death and refusing to allow Ubani’s extradition to Britain.

They also stay furious at what they see as a cover-up by Eurojust, the EU’s judicial co-operation unit, and the United kingdom, as nicely as Germany, in excess of precisely what went on in the months foremost up to the German prosecution.

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

Elderly who shed curiosity in pastimes could be at danger of Alzheimer"s Condition

His researchers utilised brain volume as a measure of accelerated brain ageing. Neuron losses arise during typical ageing but greater ones could indicate brain ailments.

In the study 4,354 folks with out dementia and with an regular age of 76 underwent an MRI scan.

They had been also asked questions that measure apathy symptoms which incorporate lack of curiosity, lack of emotion, dropping actions and interests preferring to stay at property and having a lack of energy.

Individuals with two or much more signs and symptoms had 1.4 per cent significantly less grey matter and 1.six per cent less white matter in contrast to individuals who had fewer.

Grey matter is the place studying will take location and memories are stored in the brain. White matter acts as the communication cables that connect various elements of the brain.

Dr Launer mentioned: “If these findings are confirmed, identifying individuals with apathy earlier may be one particular way to target an at-chance group.”

The research is published on-line in Neurology – the health care journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Elderly who shed curiosity in pastimes could be at danger of Alzheimer"s Condition

Scientists shed light on origins of one,500-year-outdated plague - video

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the pathogen that triggered 1 of the most devastating plagues in human history, shedding light on exactly where the disease came from and how it spread. Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre and an investigator with the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Condition Study, talks via the analysis.

• Supply: McMaster University, Canada


• Length: 2min 11sec


• theguardian.com


• Monday 27 January 2014

Scientists shed light on origins of one,500-year-outdated plague - video