Children struggling to concentrate at school due to lack of sleep, MPs told

Sleep deprivation is a growing problem in schools, with pupils struggling to concentrate in lessons due to lack of sleep, MPs have been told.

Edward Timpson, minister for children and families, highlighted the issue while being questioned by MPs who are investigating the role of education in preventing mental health problems in children and young people.

Lack of sleep has been linked to children’s use of mobile phones and tablets late into the night, MPs sitting on the joint inquiry by the Commons health and education committees were told at Wednesday’s hearing.

Timpson said: “A big issue in schools now is around sleep deprivation. Children are not getting enough sleep and that causes problems concentrating.”

Doctors have previously reported a dramatic increase in children with sleep disorders; NHS data shows hospital attendances in England for under-14s have risen from almost 3,000 in 2005-06 to more than 8,000 in 2015-16.

MPs also raised concerns about the impact of social media on children’s mental health, with reports of widespread cyberbullying, and parents’ inability to protect their children.

Former government mental health champion Natasha Devon said neither teachers nor parents could keep up with the fast-moving technology and suggested schools needed IT experts to help children use social media safely.

“There is a gap in understanding between young people and their parents and teachers and the technology is developing faster than we can measure the psychological impact.

“Last year an extensive report on the impact Facebook had on self-esteem was published but teenagers aren’t on Facebook anymore. They’ve moved on to Instagram and Snapchat.”

The MPs heard that some schools try to tackle the problem by confiscating mobile phones for the duration of the day, but Devon – who founded the Self-Esteem Team – said children and young people were able to get round safety measures adults try to impose.

“I went into a boarding school where they removed their phones at the beginning of the day and handed them back at the end for a few hours – they all have two or three phones to circumnavigate that problem.

“There was an example where they gave a teenage boy the Fort Knox of laptops with every single parental control on it and challenged him to find some pornography. He did it in 30 seconds by Googling the Spanish word for pornography. They find ways around the safety measures that we put in.

“What schools need, I think, are experts in this field who are really up to date with the technology.”

Lady Tyler of Enfield, who chairs the Values-Based Child and Adolescent Mental Health System Commission agreed: “The technology is moving on at such a pace that many people, many parents, really don’t feel very well equipped to know what’s going on and how best to support their children.

“If there was that more specialist expertise in schools, I think schools would be very well advised to pass some of that on to parents in simple ways – tips on how to help manage their child’s use of social media and what the pitfalls are.”

She added: “For me what is particularly important to get across is a balance between screen time, physical activity, sleep and all sorts of things that contribute to overall wellbeing.”

Also giving evidence was Lord Layard, emeritus professor of economics at LSE, who is advising the government on a trial of weekly mindfulness classes in 26 schools.

Asked about the effectiveness of mindfulness, he said he believed in it and tried to practise it himself but added: “It’s only a part of the answer to this problem.”

He called for a “radical initiative” to support children with mild to moderate mental health disorders in a school-based setting, so they are seen early on before they become so seriously ill they reach the high thresholds required to be seen by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

“It’s important to realise just how bad a place we are in. We are in a situation where only 25% of children in psychological need are receiving any kind of psychological help. That has to to be changed.”

Children struggling to concentrate at school due to lack of sleep, MPs told

The NHS is struggling. Labour must offer a credible health policy

Labour’s attempt to terrify the voters of Copeland with talk of dead babies has failed. Now it needs to get serious about developing a credible health policy.

In north Cumbria the NHS faces difficult choices on maternity care. It has been struggling to maintain the support services and staffing necessary for consultant-led maternity care of acceptable quality in both Whitehaven and Carlisle. This means Whitehaven may lose its maternity service. Both staff and public are anxious about the risks.

Labour’s take during the Copeland byelection was “mothers will die, babies will die, babies will be brain-damaged”, and of course “only a vote for Labour will save our hospital”. Meanwhile, at prime minister’s questions this week, Theresa May easily swatted away Jeremy Corbyn’s latest riff on the theme of Tory NHS cuts.

The manner of Labour’s defeat in Copeland is instructive. It took the most emotionally charged line possible, on an issue of great local sensitivity, on its signature issue of the National Health Service, and lost to the government.

Yet the defeat came as evidence mounts that all three of the drivers of current NHS policy – quality and efficiency improvements under the Five Year Forward View, reconfiguration of local health systems under the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) process, and devolution, are in difficulty.

An analysis of Forward View progress by Kingsley Manning, former chair of what is now NHS Digital, has concluded that “the acceptance of sub-optimal productivity is the default position for the NHS”. The STP plans will not change that, he says, because they do not see productivity as a priority.

This week’s report by the King’s Fund on STP progress highlighted the chasm between aspirations and credible delivery plans. Its authors do not believe that proposed cuts in beds will happen and see the delivery timetable for STP changes as unrealistic.

Crucially, from a Labour party perspective, the King’s Fund provides evidence that some of the current problems can be blamed on the 2012 health reforms. It points out the obsession with market forces is undermining the development of new ways of delivering services, and highlights the obvious but little discussed fact that STPs do not legally exist, so they have no authority to implement the changes they are recommending. They have been stitched together to overcome the structural chaos ushered in by Andrew Lansley.

Meanwhile, a report on health devolution by the Institute for Public Policy Research out next week will highlight the changes in accountability, commissioning, financing and regulation needed to unlock the potential of the devolution strategy.

Labour has to build a credible response to these problems. The Copeland defeat shows “save our NHS” will not be enough to save the Labour party. If it is going to demonstrate it is ready for government it will have to stop writing its health policy on a placard.

It will obviously promise more funding, but to do what? Will it have the courage to stop “saving” services and instead build community-based systems which in the long term will need fewer acute hospital beds? Will it push the NHS to face up to weaknesses in clinical productivity and back-office efficiency?

It needs to construct a proper role for the private sector in providing healthcare, rather than endlessly repeating “public sector good, private sector bad”. Companies, notably SMEs, have a critical role to play if the NHS is ever going to exploit the potential of digital to drive efficiency and quality and improve the lives of patients with long-term conditions.

Health devolution is difficult territory for Labour. Andy Burnham personifies Labour’s conflicting views, having moved from attacking the government’s devolution plans to being Labour’s candidate for Greater Manchester mayor. The party needs to decide how balance the benefits of services built around, and accountable to, local populations with its desire for equitable access across the country.

These are all big questions which the NHS is struggling to answer. Labour needs to offer its solutions.

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The NHS is struggling. Labour must offer a credible health policy

Abortion in Pakistan: struggling to support a woman"s right to choose

Sonia woke up in dingy room with searing pain in her stomach. All she remembered was being accompanied by her husband to a clinic for an ultrasound. She’d recently found out she was pregnant; her husband had often been abusive and didn’t react well to the news. Today was supposed to be different: he insisted on going to the clinic so he could see the scan and Sonia hoped that reflected a change of heart.

However, slowly Sonia realised she had been drugged and given an abortion without her consent at a private clinic. It took years for her to come to terms with the violence she suffered.

Islamic scholars permit an abortion within 120 days of pregnancy in Pakistan. But despite this framework for permitting abortions, health professionals are reluctant to carry out the procedure. Many women resort to ingesting drugs, using sharp objects, or physically abusing their body resulting in long-term health complications. In 2012, an estimated 623,000 Pakistani women were treated for complications resulting from induced abortions. In Sonia’s case, her ex-husband was able to pay an unqualified provider to conduct a procedure she hadn’t not consented to. Her story highlights the danger to women’s health when the only option for is an unhygienic facility clinic with untrained staff.

In such dangerous circumstances, who is filling the gap? Saba Ismail, co-founder of the Pakistani women’s group Aware Girls, launched an abortion hotline in June 2010.

Aware Girls has received US Aid funding in the past but now will have to depend on grants from European foundations after President Trump reinstated the global gag rule which prohibits US funding to NGOs which provide information about abortions.

“We have not heard any donor withdrawing our funding on this basis yet, but we will become automatically ineligible for US Aid and other state department grants on this basis, and that’s the challenge,” says Ismail. “We fear that Trump’s decision will affect Pakistan because any organisation, hospital or clinic working on abortion will not be able to get any US funding.”

A woman told us to stop talking about abortions or contraceptives and instead educate women on how to be better wives

Saba Ismail, co-founder of Aware Girls

US Aid spent $ 54.1m dollars funding family planning and reproductive health in Pakistan in 2015 and Marie Stopes International, the family planning NGO which receives funding from US Aid says that its work in Pakistan over the past decade has “averted 4.6 million unintended pregnancies, 1.9 million unsafe abortions and 6,000 maternal deaths”.

Aware Girls provides an anonymous toll-free service called “Saheli” (Urdu for “friend”) to educate on abortions and contraceptives: “When we first launched the helpline we were told that we were promoting murder; that abortion wasn’t about choice but about murder. This stigma and taboo is what bothered us the most.”

Over the course of six years Ismail and her colleagues have faced harsh criticism and threats. “In the beginning we started with 30 calls a month and now we average about 180 calls,” she says. “This is because we went into the communities and spoke to women about their health informing them about the helpline. At one of the events a woman approached me, identified herself as a representative of the Taliban, and told us to stop talking about abortions or contraceptives and instead educate women on how to be better wives to their husbands.” This didn’t stop her, although threats forced them to temporarily close down for six months in 2014.

Ismail’s helpline follows the World Health Organisation’s guidelines on safe methods of abortions that can be performed at home for women under nine weeks pregnant. Misoprostol, a drug used to induce abortions, is available over the counter in many countries including Pakistan because it is also used to prevent stomach ulcers. Ismail’s staff asks women to provide details about their health and verify the length of the pregnancy, and takes them through the process of abortion.

“People think that most women that call us are sex workers or unmarried women. While we do not judge and only ask reasons for abortion for our research purposes, I can tell you that the we get a large diversity of calls. From women aged 17 to 50, women that are married, who have recently given birth, who already have a lot of children and even women who have been raped by their own family members,” Ismail recalls the story of 21-year-old Sameena who was raped by her own cousin and was refused help at a hospital.

An extensive women’s health report conducted in 2012 found that of the 9 million pregnancies in 2012, 4.2 million were unintended; 54% of these unintended pregnancies resulted in induced abortions and 34% in unplanned births.

I attend to calls even when I am in a family gathering, in a funeral or anywhere, I never miss a single call

Tahira Khan, helpline counsellor

The vast majority of the helpline’s calls are about abortions, only 4% of the callers ask about contraceptives. Nonetheless, each caller receives information on the use of contraception. The contraceptive prevalence rate is low in Pakistan – out of a population of more than 190 million, only 35% of women aged 15–49 use it. The reasons for this range from lack of sex education and awareness, and the fact that contraception is still considered a taboo and, in some places, seen as a western concept. Last year, Pakistan banned advertising for contraceptives.

The counsellors on the helplines are young women with no medical background who are trained with the WHO’s clinical handbook [pdf] on safe abortions. Tahira Khan says the helpline has now become more than just a job: “This hotline is a part of my life now, I attend to calls even when I am in a family gathering, in a funeral or anywhere, I never miss a single call, I always call back. When I help women, I feel satisfaction and happiness. Before starting counselling, I thought I could never do it, but with the passage of time, I am now an expert.”

The hotline has received over 25,000 calls so far and this is increasing by the day. Ismail’s organisation can only help women who are under nine weeks pregnant, but in some cases they have to provide referrals for surgical abortions at selective clinics that conduct these procedures under hygienic and medically approved conditions.

Ismail is determined to continue her work but she knows she is treating a symptom rather than a root cause. “My fight is against the taboos that tell women that their bodies aren’t theirs,” she says. “Unless women are seen as human beings who have a choice and right to their own body nothing will change.”

Some names have been changed.

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Abortion in Pakistan: struggling to support a woman"s right to choose

Children"s mental health services are struggling. Can teachers help?

When you train as a teacher, one thing you rarely consider is what you’d do if you were confronted with say a confused teenager convinced they were a religious prophet, or being on a school trip and finding a student carving the word DIE into their forearm. Any job that exposes you to the great stream of humanity will force you into proximity with the misery that runs through it. And the problem is, as a teacher you’re expected to do something about it. Few, in my experience, do.

Are mental health problems among the young getting worse? In 2014 the Commons health committee reported that data was so out of date that those planning and operating child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) were operating in a fog. Some indicators, like 2016 reports by NHS Digital of self-harm rates among 16- to 24-year-olds increasing between 2007 and 2014, might suggest things are getting worse. Others, like UK suicide rates, which have been decreasing for the last 30 years especially in the young [pdf], might suggest things are getting better.

Maybe, as Dr Stanley Kutcher, an expert in adolescent mental health and leader in mental health research in Canada, puts it, “we’re tending to confuse mental distress … with mental illness”.

As a lone teacher, your personal experience will vary from your colleagues. I worked with mental health services three times in one year, while the teacher next door didn’t. Whenever I’ve needed them, they’ve been fantastic, but because funding is so scarce at a local level for this kind of provision it usually takes something dramatic before a school will lift the phone. And in many ways who can blame them? Identifying, assessing and treating mental illnesses are some of the most specialised, highly trained professions imaginable. This isn’t an area for amateurs, however well-meaning. We only usually notice when students have gone beyond struggling. Even then, it isn’t easy to tell.

As a teacher you can feel so helpless; what pupils need is so much more than just a teacher who cares. They need specialist help, and there are very few ways we can spot and help students in advance of the chronic phase of a mental illness. One of the best, sweetest students I’d ever taught, sank into a depression. He was rational, and good as ever, but the world had no colour for him, and watching him drift out of his studies when he had been so alert, nerdy and fascinated by everything broke my heart, mainly because I could do nothing.

What can schools do? There are no simple solutions to a complex, society-wide problem. We find it just as hard to spot mental health problems in school as we do in society at large. Teacher training is often cited as good place to start, but from experience I know how packed that is. Certainly, some basic awareness of early signs, strategies and procedures would be useful. Schools usually funnel these issues through their child-protection officer, a designated and trained adult responsible for communicating with external agencies. Any training needs to be focused on that role.

Sadly, I’ve never seen a school intervention based on wellbeing, positive thinking and self-esteem demonstrably improve matters for staff, long-term. That’s because the pressures on teachers are real, not a matter of self-belief. The Scylla and Charybdis are workload and behaviour management. Crazy in-school policies on book marking have made things even harder for teachers. But one of the ways we could reboot this battlefield of bruised ghosts would be through a report I’m working on right now with the DfE: finding and sharing best practice on how leaders create calm, civil school cultures. Many schools do amazing work to protect the dignity and safety of all of their members. And when children are less anonymous, subtle warning cues can be caught rather than missed.

Schools could use more robust research into this field, commissioned by the NHS to better understand the real needs of the school community, and a requirement that only trained professionals be allowed to work with pupils and staff in this misunderstood field. Few schools retain a nurse anymore, but perhaps we should look into mental health visitors as an intermediary device to facilitate better communication between providers and need.

Changing societies is a long game. But real change for the better takes time.

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Children"s mental health services are struggling. Can teachers help?

NHS "struggling to cope" with increase in people undergoing cancer tests

NHS pathology services cannot keep up with the increasing number of samples being taken from the growing number of people being tested for cancer, raising fears that some will be diagnosed late.

That is the conclusion of a report published on Wednesday by Cancer Research UK, which warns that units are “struggling to cope” with the number of biopsies and blood samples being taken as the ageing and growing population produces more cases of suspected cancer.

Experts fear the lack of capacity and shortages of pathologists could hamper the NHS-wide drive to improve Britain’s poor record in early identification of cancer.

“Diagnostic services, including pathology, urgently need support and investment to ensure that diagnoses aren’t delayed and patients benefit from the latest treatment,” said Emma Greenwood, Cancer Research UK’s director of policy.

“The UK’s cancer survival is lagging behind other European countries and improving early diagnosis through diagnostic services is one of the ways to address this. The diagnostic bottleneck will only get worse without action now and this involves addressing staff shortages in imaging, endoscopy and pathology.”

The research found that the number of NHS pathologists is failing to keep pace with rising demand, leaving pathology services under growing pressure.

“Pathologists are the medical specialists who diagnose cancer. They also play a vital role in the prevention, treatment and monitoring of cancer and are at the forefront of research to improve the length and quality of life of people with the disease,”said Dr Suzy Lishman, president of the Royal College of Pathologists.

Meanwhile, women with ovarian cancer – the deadliest female cancer – are being “left stranded without vital support at every turn”, from diagnostic tests to access to nurses, according to a report by the charity Target Ovarian Cancer.

Its Pathfinder 2016 study found that only one in five UK women (20%) could identify bloating as a major symptom of the disease.

Two in five women (41%) visited their GP at least three times or more before they were referred for ovarian cancer tests, risking a delayed diagnosis.

And 80% of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer said they had encountered mental health problems since being diagnosed.

“Women with ovarian cancer are being failed at diagnosis, in access to trials and effective drugs, and they lack support,” said Annwen Jones, the charity’s chief executive.

NHS "struggling to cope" with increase in people undergoing cancer tests

Struggling With Self-Worth? Great Tips for Boosting Your Belief in Yourself

Struggling With Self-Worth? Great Tips for Boosting Your Belief in Yourself

Struggling to sleep? Five tips for insomniacs

Build your own bedtime routine

In the same way routines like bath, book and bedtime can help children get to sleep, night-time rituals can help adults nod off, too. Clinical psychologist Dr Courtney Bancroft suggests creating a “buffer zone” for bedtime. “Get your head and body in a space where the brain is signalling it’s OK to go to sleep and rest,” she says.

Worrying about falling to sleep can make it even harder to nod off

Dr Annemarie Luik, a researcher at the University of Oxford, specialising in solutions for insomnia, agrees that it helps to wind down at least an hour before bed, doing relaxing activities like reading, knitting or listening to music. Exercise and screens before bed should be avoided as they wake you up, she says.

While it may seem counterintuitive, insomniacs should try going to bed a bit later, says cognitive neuroscientist Dr Simon Durrant. “In the first part of the night you get most of your deepest sleep and once you’ve had sufficient deep sleep, you are much more likely to wake up,” he says.

Keep your room dark and cool, invest in a good-quality mattress and pillows and avoid eating and diuretic drinks such as coffee, tea and alcohol before bed. While a night cap might help you nod off it is “almost guaranteed to wake you up in the small hours,” he adds.

Don’t try to sleep on your worries

Worrying about failing to fall asleep makes it even harder to nod off. “Sleep is a natural biological process that can’t be controlled and battling against it could be likened to an endless game of tug of war, which only wakes you up more,” says Dr Guy Meadows, founder of the Sleep School.

There are various techniques for getting any worries, stresses and anxieties that hamper sleep under control. Bancroft tells his patients to write a worry log and schedule a time to deal with them. “We are much better equipped to problem solve during the day when our minds are at peak performance than in the middle of the night when our brains are sleepy. Reminding yourself of this can be extremely helpful and can put your mind at ease,” he says.

Luik recommends keeping a pen and notebook next to the bed to write down any worries. “Say to yourself you can deal with it tomorrow. One bonus of writing it down is that you can’t forget it anymore either, it is on your list,” she says.

Try mindfulness techniques

Simple mindfulness exercises, like focusing on breathing can help with insomnia, says Kat Dunn, a writer and editor at Mind. “Keep your focus on the present moment and relax ready to sleep again in the night,” she says.

Meadows agrees: “Noticing things objectively and without judgment in the present moment – like the touch of your duvet on your toes or the gentle movement of air in and out your nose – can actually promote sleep,” he says.

Rest is the best bridge to sleep, so meditation, which helps the body rest, is worth trying, says Charlie Morley, Hay House author and teacher of mindfulness meditation. He recommends the 4-7-8 Breath technique, which involves inhaling through the nose for the count of four, holding your breath for seven seconds and exhaling through the mouth for eight seconds.

Get out of bed

Contrary to popular belief, lying in bed is not always conducive to sleeping. “Most insomniacs aren’t resting. They are lying there in total torture or mental agitation,” says Morley. When this happens, “get out of bed and cool down your mind”, he suggests.

Luik recommends the 15-min rule. This involves getting out of bed if you have been awake for about 15 minutes and doing something relaxing in dimmed light in a different room. “Just guess the 15 minutes, don’t start looking at the clock,” she adds.

However, Meadows says staying in bed is fine if you practise a bit of mindfulness. “Giving yourself permission to be awake allows natural sleep to emerge.”

Seek professional help

“If you are experiencing severe sleep problems for a long time do seek treatment,” says Luik. Since the effects of medication are often temporary, cognitive behavioural therapy is the recommended treatment for insomnia. A GP may be able to recommend a local therapist, but there are limited numbers in the UK, she adds.

Professionals can also help with tackling the route causes of insomnia, says Dunn. “If worrying and anxiety is getting in the way of you living life as you’d like, you can always talk to your doctor about what support and treatment might be available,” she says.

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Struggling to sleep? Five tips for insomniacs

Struggling students are not "lacking resilience" – they need more support

Resilience has been a buzzword in education for years now. Advocates say that young people need to develop the ability to cope with difficulties themselves, rather than expect others to solve their problems. But critics argue that it is used as a catch-all term that removes responsibility from institutions and fails to address the problem of worsening mental health in students.

Related: Tuition fees ‘have led to surge in students seeking counselling’

I have been working as a welfare officer for the past year, and I have rarely seen the term used to encourage self-improvement in an effective way. I have seen students told by their tutors, counsellors and other support staff that they just need to become more resilient. Yet there is little advice on how to do this, or why it will help.

Students often see the word as a synonym for strength, and therefore feel that lacking resilience is a sign of weakness. A professor could be saying “be more resilient” and mean that a student shouldn’t take critical comments on their work personally. But what a student hears is something like, you aren’t strong enough, or you need to man-up, or you lack backbone.

It’s too ambiguous

The word resilience is used too frequently and applied to vastly different situations.

A first-year student at the University of Edinburgh told me she would always ask her professors for feedback about a bad grade, wanting to know how to improve for the future. In response she was told to become more resilient and stop asking for feedback after every assignment. Surely it takes resilience to embrace negative feedback and address mistakes?

Students need to be equipped to bounce back from tough situations or those where they didn’t achieve perfection.

I’ve heard an employer complain that they were being asked for feedback about applications more often, because students “weren’t resilient”.

Times have changed

Problems are often discussed with an “it was different back in my day” attitude. So if students are accessing university counselling services more, it’s because the entire student population is losing its resilience. If disability services are overstretched, the same reason is given. And when tutors are asked to provide pastoral support – historically always a part of the personal tutor role – they feel it’s because these “modern students” need extra help.

Students might be asking for help earlier and for problems that they once might have kept to themselves. But to dismiss an entire generation isn’t fair.

Students are coping with all sorts of factors that make their lives a challenge: the worry about tuition fee debt, an intensely competitive graduate jobs market and the pressure of social media. By recognising this, university staff can start to support their students to become more resilient.

Impact on mental health

The most worrying aspect of this trend is the frequency with which resilience is referenced in discussions about mental health. It is not appropriate to tell anyone suffering with mental illness – be it anxiety, depression, an eating disorder or something else – that you can recover by becoming more resilient.

Doing so strengthens the notion that mental ill-health equals weakness, and can make people feel that they would not be ill if they had only been tougher. A runner with a severe ankle sprain would not be told to fight through the pain and continue training, so why would we tell someone who has panic attacks the same thing?

Related: No one sees how hard it is for students with an invisible illness

How to make it work

Resilience is a great concept. Learning not to be discouraged by past failings and recognising shortcomings is an extremely useful skill. Students need to be equipped to spring back from tough situations, or times when they didn’t achieve perfection – this is vitally important in universities.

As support staff we need to enable students to learn the skills of resilience. We need to standardise what we mean by it. And we should never use the term when discussing mental health.

Being resilient doesn’t mean never asking for help or never being affected by difficult situations. We need to focus our discussion on boosting wellbeing, and teaching a set of skills that help students bounce back from setbacks in life and academia.

Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered. And if you have an idea for a story, please read our guidelines and email your pitch to us at highereducationnetwork@theguardian.com

Struggling students are not "lacking resilience" – they need more support

Struggling to understand killers | Daniel Glaser

After last week’s wave of tragic attacks in Germany, Boris Johnson was criticised for publicly speculating that Islamist extremism was behind the shooting in Munich.

While our new foreign secretary’s comments may have been inappropriate – and wrong – his brain, like most people’s, was subject to an overwhelming impulse to find a possible motivation for an action as soon as it occurs.

Our desire to understand the motivations of a killer involves a particular part of the brain called the ‘temporo-parietal junction’. Also known as the ‘mindreading’ area of the brain, it automatically ascribes possible incentives, beliefs and desires to others.

This reflex developed to help us socialise, but is so powerful that we also apply it to inanimate objects such as computers, shouting, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ as they crash yet again. Even a pair of triangles can appear to exhibit personal motivations, as proved by a psychological test called the Heider-Simmel animation.

However, while Boris’s brain is partly to blame for his speculations, unfortunately it couldn’t help him keep them to himself.

Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London

Struggling to understand killers | Daniel Glaser

Struggling With Cancer, Thyroid Condition, Persistent Fatigue, Cysts, or Weight Issues? Consider Iodine Deficiency!

It’s nearly impossible to throw a rock and not hit somebody that has dealt with or knows an individual dealing with cancer, thyroid difficulties, persistent fatigue, and weight problems. With the way the recent foods technique is set up and the lack of schooling and determination on the part of the buyer, these types of well being troubles are inevitably going to pop up.

But what if a good deal of these problems have been simply a symptom of a key mineral deficiency? And what if it could be straightforward to test by yourself, and even treatment? Have I got your attention now? If so, study on.

The many roles of iodine

Iodine is a essential mineral that is definitely imperative to have suitable amounts of in the physique. It is mainly identified for its position in thyroid hormones, but is also essential for regulating blood stress, moods, blood sugar, cardiac rhythms, and avoiding cancer in the breasts, ovaries, uterus, prostate, and thyroid gland.

Not only that but iodine is amazingly antibacterial, antiviral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic, which helps make it an exceptional preventative and treatment to a multitude of conditions brought on by rogue bacteria, viruses, fungus, and parasites.

Even although the thyroid gland does include the body’s highest concentration of iodine, the salivary glands, brain, cerebrospinal fluid, gastric mucosa, breasts, ovaries, and portion of the eye also concentrate iodine. So if you are to be turn into deficient, any one of these places could become diseased and generate all sorts of signs.

The indications of iodine deficiency

According to Dr. Brownstein, revered professional and author of the book Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can not Dwell Without It, 94.7% of 500 individuals he tested have been deficient in inorganic iodine. This amount alone need to put iodine deficiency on the map for you, but if that wasn’t ample, take into account the following indications of iodine deficiency and see if any of them resonate with you:

• Thyroid issues (hypothyroid and hyperthyroid)


• Breast condition


• Continual fatigue


• Extra mucous production


• Lowered metabolic process (issues shedding weight)


• Cancers of the breast, ovaries, thyroid, and prostate


• Infertility


• Anxiousness, depression, or irritability


• Headaches and migraines


• Fibrocystic breasts, ovarian cysts, and sebaceous cysts


• Hemorrhoids


• Cognitive impairments


• Stunted development


• Hair reduction

If you have had a reasonable to critical issues with any of these indicators, you may possibly want to contemplate consuming iodine wealthy meals, such as:

• Seaweed (kelp)


• Oysters


• Eggs


• Cranberries (or pure cranberry juice)


• Yogurt


• Navy beans


• Strawberries


• Fish (sardines, salmon, cod, tuna)


• Turkey breast


• Baked potato


• Salt (pink salt, not iodized salt)

Of program, clean versions of all these food items is really important. Preserve in thoughts that in some hyperthyroid patient situations, a sensitivity to iodine may preclude you from consuming iodine rich meals. Seek advice from a qualified well being skilled if this is you.

If you want to do an simple at residence test and discover supplemental dosages of inorganic iodine so you can possibly rectify an iodine deficiency, read through Dealing With Nervousness, Infertility, Hair Reduction, Fatigue, and Stubborn Bodyweight? You Could Be Iodine Deficient!

Sources for this article incorporate:

http://drsircus.com/medication/iodine/iodine-dosages
http://www.westonaprice.org/holistic-healthcare/thyroid-and-homeopathic-iodine/ 

http://healingthebody.ca/dealing-with-nervousness-infertility-hair-reduction-fatigue-and-stubborn-fat-you-might-be-iodine-deficient/
About the writer:

Derek Henry took a deadly well being challenge that typical medicine couldn’t fix and self-directed a one particular-in-a-million overall health journey that discovered him happier and healthier than he had been in his total life. As a outcome of this rewarding journey, he designed Healing the Entire body and became a nicely revered holistic well being coach who now spends his time creating, coaching, and educating 1000′s of people every single month who want to get pleasure from similar results.

His Wellness Transformation E-Manual and THRIVE On the internet Well being Program are two crucial assets for any individual who wishes to have the intelligence and answers to become genuinely properly.

Struggling With Cancer, Thyroid Condition, Persistent Fatigue, Cysts, or Weight Issues? Consider Iodine Deficiency!

Concern in excess of delays to therapy of babies struggling from tongue-tie

Tongue-tie can prevent babies from breastfeeding. Photograph: Andersen Ross

Babies born tongue-tied can wait up to three months before having the situation rectified, according to new figures that reveal a “postcode lottery” in the time it takes to acquire remedy.

A lot more than 15,000 infants were born in 2013 with the issue, in which the skin that connects their tongues to their mouths – the frenulum – is as well brief to enable them to breastfeed.

The NHS recommends that infants are exclusively breastfed for the initial six months of their lives to lessen a catalogue of ailments, such as the likelihood of early infections and obesity in later lifestyle. However responses to freedom of details requests made to hospital trusts across the nation reveal wide disparities in how prolonged it will take for infants with tongue-tie to have their problem resolved.

The longest waits were at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Believe in, in which it took on regular 84 days for the procedures to be carried out. Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Believe in also initially explained its average wait was 84 days before subsequently adding that it did not think the figures it initially gave had been precise. Stockport NHS Basis Believe in carried out one,195 procedures in 2013, the most in the nation, but did not offer its average waiting time. The national regular wait was 21.six days, according to the responses to requests sent to the 160 trusts in the nation.

The figures further suggest that several mother and father are currently being forced to have the operation carried out privately. Of the 155,541 infants diagnosed with tongue-tie final yr, only 9,256 had NHS operations, even though not all of those concerned will have required treatment method. The value of the process with BUPA is around £1,530.

Luciana Berger, the shadow minister for public overall health who uncovered the figures, stated that the continued regional variation in the uptake of breastfeeding was being exacerbated by lengthy waiting times for surgical treatment.

She stated: “These worrying new figures show that thousands of mothers and babies are not receiving the care and remedy they require quick ample. “Also a lot of new mums who want to breastfeed their babies are not capable to since of extended waits for a easy tongue-tie method.

“For other mothers and fathers, the length of the waits is forcing them to go private and shell out for an costly operation. Neither of these possibilities is acceptable.

“The timely remedy of tongue-tie is vital to make certain that new mums who want to breastfeed their infants are capable to. The government need to tackle these delays and make certain that the process is accessible for all on the NHS.”

Infants with tongue-tie tend to have heart-shaped tongues because the middle is pulled in by the short frenulum, and they cannot stick out their tongue past their reduced lip.

Indications of the situation in newborns incorporate gulping and clicking while breastfeeding due to the fact they are not able to latch on appropriately.

Analysis published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Little one Health in 2005 discovered treating tongue-tie led to enhanced feeding in 95% of infants.

Belinda Phipps, chief executive of the Nationwide Childbirth Believe in, said: “Tongue-tie can result in mothers and fathers and babies much struggling. It often leaves babies hungry, unhappy and annoyed and parents sick with fear due to the fact their youngster isn’t putting on any bodyweight. Mothers could be sore, or even bleeding, because their infant isn’t in a position to feed effectively.

“To compound all this, it can take weeks or even months to get tongue-tie diagnosed and handled. Mothers and fathers frequently end up paying out for private therapy when the remedy might be a simple surgical process.”

Concern in excess of delays to therapy of babies struggling from tongue-tie

Price of dementia: the households struggling to get NHS support

Tenacious Ann Reid has fought hard to get Continuing Healthcare funding for her mother Peggy Belcher. Photograph: Sam Mellish/Age Uk

1000′s of relatives and carers of dementia sufferers are battling to obtain funding in direction of crippling care bills. Under the NHS Continuing Healthcare scheme, older men and women can qualify to have care and nursing property charges paid in total if they are judged to have persistent overall health wants. This funds can aid allieviate the burden for households who are otherwise forced to invest each and every penny and sell their home to meet the expense of care.

There is no ceiling on the quantity that can be paid out, no means test and it is not age related. However entry to this fund can be a specific struggle for people struggling from dementia.

Those acting on their behalf are typically forced through lengthy assessments and appeal processes.

“This is creating needless pressure and anxiousness for sufferers and their families, when all they want is access to healthcare,” says George McNamara, head of policy for the Alzeimer’s Society. “They shouldn’t be impacted by a program that isn’t working.”

As Dementia Awareness Week kicked off on Sunday, charities stated a lot more should be completed to enhance awareness of the troubles. “The care technique needs an overhaul to improve accessibility to funding,” says Ruthe Isden, overall health programme director at Age Uk. “It truly is extremely complicated, and folks struggle to know what they are entitled to.”

Peggy Belcher, 95, has suffered with dementia for 14 years. She is bedridden, unaware of her surroundings, struggles to communicate and receives round-the-clock care. Without having the tenacity of her daughter, Ann Reid, 68, she would not have acquired Continuing Healthcare funding.

Ann sold her mother’s two-bedroom property for £176,000 nine many years in the past to shell out for care home charges that have so far amounted to £222,000.

Peggy had some cost savings, but they had been swiftly employed to fund the £850 weekly price for the property in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex.

“She is now on finish-of-lifestyle care,” says Reid. “The degree of care is exceptional. But every single penny has been put towards this.”

Collectively with nurses at the house, Reid applied for funding on behalf of her mother in February 2013. Despite describing the evaluation as a “bureaucratic nightmare”, she managed to get her mother’s care and accommodation fees funded, with payments backdated to December 2012.

Access is assessed by regional authorities and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). “I had to invest 3 hrs answering inquiries,” says Reid. “It was a seemingly endless tick-box – but luckily I had a brilliant nurse to assist.”

She was asked about every little thing from her mother’s propensity to bed sores to no matter whether she could sit up or talk. “At the finish of it I would totally had enough. I burst into tears as the procedure was emotionally exhausting.”

The assessor told Reid she could appeal if the funding was turned down, but even then it wasn’t guaranteed. “I wouldn’t have taken no for answer – but I felt they have been attempting to put me off. I hear that a whole lot of individuals give up,” she says. “But you have to be prepared to challenge their decisions.”

Many people continue to be unaware of Continuing Healthcare. In accordance to charities this kind of as Age Uk and the Alzheimer’s Society, tens of 1000′s of individuals who may qualify are not applying. A single issue, they say, is that the NHS faces stringent financial targets. “It might be tempting for CCGs to prioritise their bottom line when the primary concern must be delivering seamless integrated care,” says McNamara.

There are all around 59,000 men and women acquiring Continuing Healthcare, according to the Division of Health. Nonetheless, the Alzeimer’s Society believes many far more could be eligible.

The possibility of good results depends significantly on in which you live. There is a “nationwide framework” which covers England and Wales, but it is relatively of a postcode lottery. Continuing Healthcare is accessible in Northern Ireland, but the eligibility criteria vary. Scotland is reforming its principles and funding may possibly be limited.

“There are huge variations in the quantity of people getting this in diverse elements of the country,” says Isden. “Various regions have responded differently to the monetary pressures that they face. The framework is not often followed appropriately with various eligibility criteria across distinct neighborhood authorities.”

Dementia is too frequently seen as a organic component of ageing, with the needs of sufferers failing to be correctly assessed.

“The method is fraught with issues, and a lot of flip to us for aid,” says Stephanie Rose, director of Solicitors for the Elderly. “It truly is a minefield with all the administration and limited money accessible – we are seeing growing numbers of men and women obtaining to appeal, which is a prolonged-winded procedure.”

If you get this route, several solicitors will offer representation on a no-win, no-charge basis. Alternatively, charities offer cost-free tips. To support your situation proof can be located in the information of care properties, hospitals and GPs. You can also inquire to see these beneath the Access to Healthcare Records Act.

A spokesperson for the Division of Wellness says: “Eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare is based on an assessment of an individual’s all round needs. It is not issue particular. We are operating with NHS England, charities and other organisations, to make certain individuals who should get this are in a position to.”

■ Dementia Awareness Week 2014 runs from 18-24 May. Find out a lot more at alzheimers.org.united kingdom/daw2014 or call the helpline on 0300 222 eleven 22. The Alzeimer’s Society has set up a volunteer group to assist with the appeal method for NHS Continuing Healthcare. For much more suggestions, you can also check out ageuk.org or call on 0800 169 6565. Make contact with Solicitors for the Elderly on 0844 5676173 or at solicitorsfortheelderly.com

You can get in touch with your regional CCG and request for an assessment for Continuing Healthcare. Particulars of these are obtainable on the NHS web site. “Or an evaluation may possibly be accomplished by a dementia group in a care home, or following a discussion with a local authority or GP,” says Isden from Age United kingdom. “Ideally, specialists should be initiating this, so the funding support is not passively waiting for someone to request for it.”

The regular expense of nursing care in England is £750 a week, or £39,000 a 12 months, according to Laing and Buisson. Turning to regional authority funding, anybody with financial savings above £23,000 (£23,750 in Wales) has to spend for residential care, until finally their assets fall beneath that threshold. Even with cash flow below this, a contribution might even now have to be produced.The government is introducing a £72,000 cap on charges in April 2016, but experts warn that this does not cover accommodation or foods payments. “The scenario with regard to prolonged-term care charges is only going to get worse – the system is in disarray,” says Rose from Solicitors for the Elderly.

Price of dementia: the households struggling to get NHS support

NHS shakeup has created confusion, chaos and struggling, says Labour

Shadow care minister Liz Kendall has revealed major failings in Greater East Midlands commissioning support unit. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The government’s reorganisation of the NHS has led to major failings by “unaccountable bureaucrats” in the commissioning of care for highly vulnerable people, the shadow care minister Liz Kendall has said.

A new tier of commissioning groups, which were created under Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, employ 9,000 people and spend more than £700m, were commissioning complex care with little monitoring of quality, she claimed.

Kendall spoke out about the 18 NHS Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) in England after uncovering major failings in her own area of the east Midlands. The CSUs were created as a result of Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act because the GP-led clinical commissioning groups – the centrepiece of the reforms – were considered too small and inexperienced to commission all the healthcare.

The shadow care minister, who is MP for Leicester West, uncovered a catalogue of failings by the Greater East Midlands CSU (GEM), which has one part-time person monitoring quality standards in their domiciliary care providers even though they procure care from 84 providers.

The failings identified by Kendall included:

• An 89-year-old bed-bound man with Alzheimer’s in need of care throughout the night whose family were not told that the company appointed by the commissioning group initially did not have enough staff. When the carers did come in they failed to change the man’s incontinence pads overnight.

• A 21-year-old terminally ill man who was discharged after 10 weeks in hospital without the correct support. When Kendall spoke to the man’s caseworker she said she was not aware he had been discharged from hospital.

• A 74-year-old man with dementia who was given four days’ notice to leave his care home after his funding for NHS Continuing Care – available for those who need support in their own home or a care home – was withdrawn as part of an annual review on the grounds that he was no longer taking medication. The man’s daughter said he had stopped taking medication to assist his condition, which has worsened.

Kendall said: “The real culprit here is the government and their massive backroom NHS reorganisation. This has put unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of commissioning care for some of the most vulnerable people in this area. Labour warned the reorganisation would cause chaos and confusion and that patients would suffer – and that’s precisely what has happened.

“Ministers must apologise to families and get a grip of the mess they have created. GEM should be stripped of its role in commissioning NHS Continuing Healthcare and a single, accountable person with the right skills and experience put in charge so that these unacceptable failures can be prevented from happening again.”

NHS shakeup has created confusion, chaos and struggling, says Labour

Nonetheless Struggling: U.S. Obesity Rates Stalled More than The Last 10 Many years

The headlines have been all above the place on the new obesity review from the CDC, published in the Journal of the American Healthcare Association. Some have celebrated the situation, considering that  obesity costs in really youthful kids appear to have fallen more than the last decade. But other individuals have lamented the findings from the new report, considering that obesity prices for most grownup have largely stalled, or even improved, over the exact same time period. The truth is that most measures of weight problems just haven’t modified extremely a lot in current history. But if we ignore most people in the nation, and just concentrate on two-5 yr previous group, then it may possibly be honest to say the scenario is improving…somewhat.

Most groups that were analyzed in the study, which included 9,000 men and women, showed no significant variations from the years 2003-2004 and 2009-2010. Above thirty% of adults and 17% of children are nonetheless obese, which is about what it was ten years in the past.

But there had been two sub-groups that did adjust over the decade. A single was weight problems charges for older girls (above 60), which rose from 31.5% to 38%.

The other was weight problems in kids two-five many years previous, which decreased from 13.9% to eight%. This drop is the “43%” reduction in weight problems that some of the media refer to in grabbing headlines.

The CDC definitely appears encouraged about the drop in childhood weight problems: “We continue to see signs that, for some kids in this country, the scales are tipping,” stated CDC Director Tom Frieden. “This report comes on the heels of preceding CDC data that found a substantial decline in weight problems prevalence amid minimal-earnings kids aged two to 4 many years participating in federal nutrition plans.”

And the CDC quotes First Lady Michelle Obama, as saying, “I am thrilled at the progress we’ve manufactured above the last handful of years in weight problems charges between our youngest Americans.” She adds, “With the participation of children, dad and mom, and communities in Let’s Move! these last 4 years,  healthier routines are beginning to become the new norm.”

It is definitely attainable that issues are enhancing for very young children, as preschools are providing more healthy food, and sugary drinks are shedding recognition.

But for the rest of the nation, the scenario is not so encouraging. In fact, the study authors end their very own piece with this summary: “Overall, there have been no substantial changes in obesity prevalence in youth or grownups in between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012.”

So, the bottom line is that we still have a extremely extended way to go — hopefully items will change as we turn into much more mindful of the well being dangers of weight problems, and of the approaches in which we can adjust our conduct. But if we emphasis only on the quite younger — and, after all, they will be teenagers and adults in the not-also-distant long term — then it could be risk-free to say things are looking up, at least a little. 

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Nonetheless Struggling: U.S. Obesity Rates Stalled More than The Last 10 Many years

My personal wellness is struggling as I cover for a job-share colleague with MS

‘Help! Absolutely everyone comes to me to get items accomplished because they know my colleague won’t do it’. Photograph: Volker Moehrke/Corbis

Twice a week we publish the difficulties that will feature in a forthcoming Dear Jeremy suggestions column in the Saturday Guardian so that readers can offer their personal suggestions and recommendations. We then print the very best of your remarks alongside Jeremy’s very own insights. Right here is the most recent dilemma – what are your ideas?

I operate for the NHS and occupation share with a individual struggling from degenerative MS. I have been in the task for practically two years and in the course of that time we have taken on far more and far more perform, and our line manager is now out of the office for three out of four days.

My colleague refuses to admit she has a difficulty, but she is clearly unable to carry out even simple duties, is extremely slow and spends most of her day producing or acquiring personalized calls and browsing the world wide web, while I run close to making an attempt to hold almost everything going.

In my line manager’s absence I have to supervise my colleague, control reception and deal with everybody coming to me to get factors completed simply because they know my colleague cannot, or will not, support.

We are each the exact same grade and I have complained numerous times to my line manager. She agrees with every little thing I say but claims her hands are tied, as she has talked about the scenario with the manager above her and no support is forthcoming.

I have informed my line manager that I am going under with tension, but even now no action has been taken. I genuinely need to have to know if I have any rights in this matter or if all rights lie with my colleague, and the best way to proceed. This is affecting my psychological wellness.

Do you need advice on a perform problem? For Jeremy’s and readers’ help, send a brief electronic mail to dear.jeremy@theguardian.com. Please note that he is unable to solution inquiries of a legal nature or reply personally.

My personal wellness is struggling as I cover for a job-share colleague with MS

New Herbalife Convertible Struggling On Nasty Day: An Update

Some additional particulars on the large new Herbalife (NYSE:HLF) convertible I mentioned earlier today:

The convertible industry, which is nevertheless fairly hungry for new bargains even as stocks continue to get pounded, doesn’t especially care for the pricing. The deal is trading at a tiny price reduction to its greatest problem price tag in the “grey,” or “when-issued,” industry. The speak is a coupon of 1.five% to two%, with a conversion premium of 25% to 30%. Optically, as convertible bond experts like to say, the deal seems fairly attractive.  As minimal as that coupon variety may possibly sound, it’s in fact not negative in this day and age, and the conversion premium selection is on the lower side compared with most discounts. This is specially correct for a reasonably short-dated bond: five 1/two many years in this situation.

So why do not convertible pros like the deal? There are a number of motives.

1. Traders, not surprisingly, are not that comfortable with the credit. One firm cites the value quote on a Herbalife Herbalife two-year secured loan as rationale for grading the convertible, which is structurally subordinate (translation: it’s at the back of the creditor line in bankruptcy), rather harshly.


2. Potential purchasers concern that if Herbalife stock need to begin to plummet, the $ two billion in debt it will have soon after the convertible deal is done could turn out to be problematic.  While $ two billion is not an excessive volume for a company with a current market place capitalization of above $ 6 billion, it is large enough to fret traders, especially hedge money whose approach depends on the convertible bond’s ability to behave in creditworthy fashion even if the stock is acquiring pounded.  (In my guide Beating the Indexes: Investing in Convertible Bonds to Boost Efficiency and Minimize Chance, I advise convertible purchasers to focus on deals in which the market place capitalization is at least five times the the debt load, so that even if the stock falls by more than half the issuer can repay its debt by issuing new stock).


3. Traders also fear that quick sellers might try out to pile on if the stock trends lower, thus generating hedging the convertible even far more hard by raising the price of borrowing shares to promote short.

On that note, I was half-right, half-incorrect with some feedback this morning. Marketplace sources inform me Herbalife is in reality generating a “borrow facility” offered for half of the new convertible.  This suggests, as I guessed, that about half the deal will go to hedge money.  The hedge money will lower a side deal with the convertible’s underwriters, very likely aided by the business, by means of which the hedge money will get the financial equivalent of shorting Herbalife shares.  I was amazed by this, given that I had suspected that Herbalife would be even far more focused on possessing the influence of this deal be to make existence painful for brief sellers.  Evidently it would have been difficult to get the convertible issue accomplished with no this “enabling” side deal, which gives hedge funds a considerably less expensive hedge than the market would otherwise offer. A extensively-followed convertible observer warns that on the downside, convertible hedgers will become even much more dependent on this borrow facility (because only the bonds’ underwriters, rather of the complete convertible-dealer local community, will be ready to trade the bond with a hedge). This does not augur properly for how the bonds may behave if the stock does poorly.

Bottom line:  The Herbalife deal looks respectable to the naked eye, but beneath the surface, there is plenty of result in for concern.  It does not support that the deal was announced on a manic Monday on which both stocks and snow are falling.

New Herbalife Convertible Struggling On Nasty Day: An Update