A digital detox sounds great. But using the internet mindfully is better | Emily Reynolds

Last week, in a largely futile attempt to actually do some work, I installed a browser extension that blocked pretty much any website I could possibly distract myself with. Twitter: gone. Facebook: gone. Even my emails, which I obsessively tend to in order to feel moderately productive, were off limits for an hour.

Having found new and imaginative ways to waste my own time, what surprised me most was not how much more work I did, but the sheer frequency with which I attempted to access the internet. I’d incessantly tap “twitter.com” into the address bar, somehow immediately forgetting it was blocked. I’d click on my still-open Facebook tab to check my feed before remembering there was no point. Every time I finished a sentence I’d flit away from my work again, trying to exchange 10 seconds of productivity for 10 minutes of distraction. I knew I spent a lot of time online – but not this much.

Related: Five ways to curb your internet use and get your life back | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

It turns out I’m not the only one who has what could probably be regarded as a mild internet addiction. A new study from Ofcom has found that on average, UK adults spend 25 hours a week online – a pretty sharp increase from the nine hours we spent on the internet back in 2005. Since then, the lines between “real life” and “online” have become increasingly blurred, and IRL (in real life) has started to sound as much of an outdated relic as ASL?, AFK or ROFLMAO.

This ubiquity is getting to us. According to the study, 59% of people feel they’re “hooked” to their devices. 48% said they neglected housework because they spent too much time online; 47% missed out on sleep. Around 30% said their friendships and relationships had suffered because of their internet use. This has led to an increase in what Ofcom have termed “digital detoxes”, with 15 million people seeking “a period of time offline” in order to break their habit.

This isn’t just a social issue: internet addiction can have an impact on our brains and mental health as well as our relationships and our sleep patterns. Some studies have suggested that the same neurobiological processes present in gambling and drug addiction may also be linked to internet addiction; pilot studies have been run to identify the role of dopamine in internet addiction; and in 2009 a study claimed that internet addiction is associated with “structural and functional changes in brain regions involving emotional processing, executive attention, decision making and cognitive control”. The American writer Nicholas Carr has even said that the internet impacts our creative capacities.

I know from my own experience how overuse of the internet affects mental health. When I’m having a major episode of depression I spend hours online, scrolling blankly through articles and newsfeeds and timelines as a way of distracting myself, using Twitter as a shield to avoid face-to-face interaction. Everything I need is online. I can order food rather than leaving the house, I can talk to strangers instead of seeing friends to fulfil my severely diminished social drive. It may seem like the perfect solution, but can often serve to isolate one even further.

Related: Turning off technology is about mental wellbeing – not being a hermit

It is a problem of which the mental health charity Mind is aware. Triggering websites or damaging online relationships can exacerbate or perpetuate existing problems. The charity, like Ofcom, also recommend that users take a break from the internet when it has “stopped being a positive thing” or is fostering unhealthy feelings, thoughts or behaviours.

If you take all this at face value, logging off seems like a good idea. Scaremongering would be easy, the nebulous spectre of ill-health being used as a tool to undermine those who spend a lot of time online (namely young people). But the internet is also an extremely powerful tool for good, especially for the mind. Though I can often get sucked in, it can also act as a lifeline in times of severe distress, providing comfort, distraction and sometimes even emergency support.

The problem is that the internet is so omnipresent that we forget or even preclude ourselves from experiencing these positive elements. Like many young people, my online life is tightly intertwined with my offline one: I met most of my friends online, I use Twitter to promote my work, I consume almost all of my media, including books, via a smartphone or tablet. It’s so normal that I barely register the fact that there’s a difference between the two.

In some cases, though, there is. Texting someone when I’m feeling depressed just doesn’t have the same impact as a real-life conversation, and shutting myself inside a wall entirely made of snarky tweets actively prevents me from seeking genuine help.

It might sound boring, but in the end, it’s a matter of balance. It’s not a matter of giving up Facebook for weeks at a time or ignoring rafts of emails. Rather, being mindful of the way we use the internet, and the negative impact that it can have on us, may provide a better solution than switching off completely.

A digital detox sounds great. But using the internet mindfully is better | Emily Reynolds

NHS sounds compensation alarm right after £120,000 attorney bill for £5,000 claim

A third of the £1.1bn paid out by the NHS in compensation final year was handed to attorneys, with one company submitting a £121,700 bill following a £5,000 declare.

The value to the taxpayer is expected to rise to £1.4bn next year, with the NHS conceding that it faced an “increasingly hard task” in managing the degree of payouts.

In its annual report, the NHS Litigation Authority (NHS LA) added that the behaviour of numerous law companies was leading to concern, with massive bills getting submitted and a large quantity of unjustified claims becoming created.

Ian Dilks, the chair of the NHS LA, said: “The fees of litigation are placing a burden on NHS finances of a magnitude that was never ever imagined when the NHS LA was established.”

Associated: Clampdown on lawyers overcharging NHS in clinical negligence situations

The NHS LA also raised worries about the coalition government’s overhaul of legal help, saying it had “influenced the behaviour of some claimant lawyers” and led to growing legal costs in numerous situations.

The authority highlighted one case the place an NHS trust agreed to pay out £5,000 for the failure to diagnose a patient’s tumour on the kidney. Even so, right after the provide of £5,000 was accepted, the patient’s solicitors claimed expenses of £121,700.

More evaluation of the bill revealed that the company was claiming a price of £400 an hour, despite the fact that a important sum of the operate was carried out by unqualified staff. The company then claimed a one hundred% achievement charge on leading of this, raising the hourly charge to £800.

The NHS ultimately had the declare struck out.

In yet another situation, the NHS agreed to spend £2,000 to settle a declare. The claimant’s solicitors then presented a bill for £53,529.60 – even though the ultimate amount paid by the NHS was reduced.

The report explained that it was “impossible to justify” the increasing quantity of situations exactly where substantially much more funds was billed by claimant solicitors for legal expenses than was paid in compensation.

Due to law firms’ actions, the legal charges of smaller claims have risen substantially. Where sufferers get damages of up to £100,000, the typical claimant’s legal expenses are now much more than 50% of the total payment.

By tough charges, expenses have been reduced by an average of 33%. The Department of Health is currently thinking about programs to cap the fees charged by attorneys in clinical negligence claims.

Connected: Legal support overhaul – what the adjustments will indicate for you

After the introduction of the legal support legislation, the NHS LA anticipated to see a fall in the quantity of circumstances. Alternatively, it discovered that solicitors had been finding other ways to enhance costs.

“We are seeing an escalating variety of plainly excessive and disproportionate costs expenses, the presentation of which coincides with the banning of success charges and the reduction of the recoverability of the full value of following-the-occasion (ATE) insurance coverage against the defendant,” mentioned the report.

The NHS LA additional that it continued to obtain a significant amount of unjustified claims, generating no payments at all for far more than 46% of clinical claims.

The NHS LA’s chief executive, Helen Vernon, warned that it was turning out to be more difficult to make sure that patients acquired fair compensation even though reducing the inappropriate claims produced on the NHS.

“The emergence of non-expert attorneys coupled with extreme claims for legal charges by some firms has essential a modify in approach,” she mentioned in the report.

In order to end unjustified claims, the NHS LA is tough far more claims for expenses and contesting far more situations in court. The quantity of instances in which no compensation is paid has nearly doubled in five years, from two,533 instances to 4,909.

In 2014-15, the authority mentioned that it had saved much more than £1.2bn for the NHS by rejecting claims that had no merit.

NHS sounds compensation alarm right after £120,000 attorney bill for £5,000 claim

What the planet sounds like with a cochlear implant

Cochlear implants can help people who are deaf or hearing-impaired and cannot benefit from a standard hearing aid.

The implants have become increasingly sophisticated and there are around 200,000 users worldwide today.

In this video, Michael Dorman, a professor of Speech and Hearing Science at Arizona State University, shares recordings of how voices heard through the implants sound to users, and his efforts to make them more true to the original sound.

Cochlear implants are an electronic device that is inserted into the inner ear and wired up to the cochlea, the snail-shaped cavity that normally helps to transmit sounds to the brain.

Acting as a receiver, it picks up sounds from a microphone worn on the outer ear, converts the sounds to an electrical signal and then sends the signal to electrodes to stimulate the auditory nerve.

Source: ASU Research

What the planet sounds like with a cochlear implant

Sounds That Are The Most Disruptive To Sleep

What is trying to keep you up at evening? Harvard astrophysics grad pupil Jon Bittner surveyed more than one hundred respondents for apartment-sharing website SplitWise.com to establish the main offenders–and financial expenses–of nocturnal disturbances. Ratings are accomplished on a 1-to-5 scale 1 = beneficial for sleep three = neutral five = very disruptive for rest.

Sounds That Are The Most Disruptive To Sleep

Well being Care"s March Madness: Buzzer Sounds On Exchanges Deadline

The fourth anniversary of the signing of the Reasonably priced Care Act (ACA) passed on March 23 with out significantly notice or fanfare.

As an alternative, all eyes were on March 31, the final deadline for purchasing well being insurance by means of state and federal well being care exchanges – and the day that fines for non-participation kicked in.

Supporters and opponents of the ACA are on the edge of their seats, anxious to know the final result: Specifically how numerous individuals signed up, will they pay out their premiums and for how extended will they do so?

In contrast to March Madness, we won’t know how this dance ends for months to come. But like the NCAA tournament, the ACA has presently had its share of victories and significant upsets.

The Victories

As a end result of well being care reform, the number of uninsured or underneath-insured Americans will be decrease in 2014 than in the current previous.

By April one, the White Property estimated it was on track to attain seven million enrollees through the state and federal exchanges. An estimated 9 million more enrolled in Medicaid.

Open enrollment is above for 2014 whilst many inquiries stay open-ended. (Picture courtesy of HealthCare.gov)

The vast majority of the newly enrolled will receive subsidies to assist shell out for coverage. Their coverage will consist of totally free preventive screenings, which should boost their overall nicely-currently being and contribute to lower well being care charges in the long term.

In addition, health care reform allowed far more than three million otherwise uninsured young grownups to obtain entry to coverage underneath their parent’s policy right up until age 26.

One more victory in government’s eyes is that people with “pre-existing conditions” – these who had been unable to buy individual insurance in the previous – can no longer be denied coverage. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of ladies whose plans previously excluded maternity coverage can now receive the prenatal care and delivery solutions they require.

And lastly, individuals who after identified it tough to navigate the arcane personal overall health insurance coverage market place, and had been frustrated by their restricted alternatives, can now go to an on the web exchange and choose from a broad set of alternatives.  

The “Upsets”

For all the victories, other outcomes have left several ACA fans upset and disappointed.

In spite of the large push by supporters, it is estimated that only 15 percent of Americans eligible to enroll through the exchanges signed up.

In the 17 states that constructed their very own exchanges, 20 percent of eligible individuals enrolled on average. Vermont led the pack at 54 %. In contrast, the 27 states that defaulted to the federal exchange saw an typical enrollment of only 12 percent.

And a mere 25 percent of folks in between 18 and 34 many years of age decided to enroll, compared to the government’s target of 40 percent.

Well being Care"s March Madness: Buzzer Sounds On Exchanges Deadline

Age United kingdom sounds alarm more than cuts to care for older people

Age Uk laments the ‘distressing human cost’ of loneliness, isolation and upset. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy

About 168,000 older people have stopped acquiring help with vital duties this kind of as eating, washing and obtaining dressed as a outcome of deep and continuing cuts to social care below the coalition government, a report from Age Uk says.

Far more and much more vulnerable pensioners are getting denied assistance to help them proceed living at home, which also contain meals-on-wheels and visits to daycare centres, the charity says.

It laments the “distressing human value” concerned, including loneliness, isolation and upset for individuals impacted and a higher caring burden for their households.

The dwindling availability of social care has been going on since 2005-06, when Labour was in electrical power, but has increased with deep coalition cuts to the budgets of England’s 152 nearby councils, Age Uk discovered in its Care in Crisis 2014 report, which is primarily based on official figures.

In 2010-eleven, a total of one,064,475 people aged 65 or over obtained some form of social care solutions in England. That quantity fell by 73,000 the following yr, and yet another 95,000 in 2012-13 to a complete of 896,000 – which is 168,000 (15.eight%) fewer than in 2010-11, a single in 6 of all these who were aided in that year. A complete of one.231 million folks received help from social care companies in 2005-06 – so that number has fallen by 335,000 in 7 many years.

The deterioration in social care has come regardless of the fact that the variety of pensioners rose by more than a million in between 2005-06 and 2012-13 and quantity of in excess of-85s by thirty% throughout that time.

“The figures we have uncovered in this report [going back to 2005-06] are catastrophic”, stated Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director. “Older folks who want help and who are now not receiving it are being positioned at considerable threat and families who care for loved ones are going through intolerable strain.”

NHS leaders complain that some of the increasing overcrowding in emergency departments and a important proportion of bedblocking are due to the inadequacy of local social care provision, simply because people in hospital are unable to reside semi-independently at home or be discharged there, regardless of getting medically fit to go.

“If older people do not receive the care they need and as a consequence end up in A&ampE units and hospital wards, we have simply shifted folks around the method at excellent economic price and developed distress and disruption for older men and women in the method. This make absolutely no moral or economic sense,” explained Abrahams.

Liz Kendall, shadow minister for care, and older individuals said: “Age UK’s devastating report demonstrates the accurate scale of the care crisis unfolding under this government. The failure to supply respectable care and assistance for elderly men and women is simply unacceptable in the 21st century in one particular of the richest nations in the planet.”

A lot of councils have pared back their provision of social care above current many years by tightening their eligibility criteria. Only three of the 152 councils nonetheless help individuals with “low” requirements and only 16 supply providers to people with “reasonable” requirements. The vast bulk – 130 councils – only give help for in excess of-65s with “substantial” or “crucial” wants, although 3 only do so to individuals in the latter class.

The Regional Government Association, which represents councils, explained: “Substantial cuts to council funding and a quickly developing ageing population have taken their toll on the system, but satisfaction charges for people obtaining care are nevertheless all around 90%. Except if social care funding is place on a sustainable footing, social care solutions will stay substantially underfunded and the great intentions of the fund and wider care and help reforms will endure as a consequence.”

The government programs to tackle the variability of social care via the care bill, letting the health secretary set national eligibility criteria for the very first time. These criteria are very likely to consequence in assist only for people with “substantial” or “reasonable” needs.

Norman Lamb, the care and support minister, said: “Social care is a priority for this government which is why we have currently allocated an added £1.1bn to councils from the NHS to protect services. But both our overall health and social care services require to operate in a different way to reply to the requirements of our ageing population – we require to concentrate on trying to keep individuals properly and living independently for as long as possible.”

The new, £3.8bn-a-yr, NHS-funded Better Care Fund, which commences in April 2015, would assist by funding joint local council and NHS care initiatives driving the integration of health and social care and help hold vulnerable individuals safely at residence, Lamb mentioned.

Age United kingdom sounds alarm more than cuts to care for older people

Sounds That Are The Most Disruptive To Sleep

What is keeping you up at evening? Harvard astrophysics grad student Jon Bittner surveyed above 100 respondents for apartment-sharing web site SplitWise.com to determine the primary offenders–and economic costs–of nocturnal disturbances. Ratings are carried out on a one-to-five scale 1 = valuable for rest three = neutral five = very disruptive for rest.

Sounds That Are The Most Disruptive To Sleep