Health

It’s hard to understand what it must be like to have a high pitched screech ringing in your ears, every minute of every day. But that is exactly what life is like for 22-year old Clara Lilley, a fundraising campaign manager from London, who has tinnitus, the often debilitating hearing condition. Here, as part of Tinnitus Awareness Week (6-12 February), Clara explains how she has finally learnt to live with her diagnosis. “At about 14-years old I started going to...

Worrying new information has been released which will panic many people regarding their heart health. The British Heart Foundation believe that over 600,000 carry a faulty gene, which acts to increase the risk of sudden cardiac death. If this inherited heart condition can be deadly, currently twelve people a day tragically die from a sudden cardiac attack. Even more worryingly most people who have this faulty gene do not know that are at risk. The British Heart Foundation have released...

An SOS service for the elderly which turns any mobile phone into a personal alarm promises to save families and the NHS millions of pounds a year. My SOS Family allows pensioners to alert relatives by touching a single button on a mobile phone if they suffer a fall or health emergency. The system then auto-dials, texts and emails relatives, who can then respond accordingly. Families currently pay up to £500-a-year for a manned call centre-based monitoring systems which operate via...

By Simone Enefer-Doy - Chief Executive of Lifelites Technology is an essential part of our daily lives. For many of us, the idea of going a day without our phones or computers, or not being able to use any technology for work or at home would probably fill us with dread. Well, imagine being locked inside a body which prevented you from being able to walk, talk or perhaps even move your arms and legs. This is the everyday reality...

By Simon Brown I joined the Army when I was just 18 back in 1997. I trained as a mechanic and my role was to fix broken down vehicles. I served all over the world with the Army but it was during my second tour of Iraq that my life changed forever. In December 2006, I led a successful mission to rescue six soldiers who were stranded in a broken vehicle. We were about to leave the area but with...

In 2015, two former Paralympians launched Access Adventures - a charity created to improve the quality of life for people with physical disabilities by introducing them to adventure sports.   The charity has grown considerably since launch and continues to improve their service provision. Jane Sowerby and Tim Farr, both on the British Disabled Ski Team representing Great Britain at the Winter Paralympics in Vancouver 2010, know what a positive effect sport can have on people with disabilities. Teaming up with...

The reason why cold weather can cause a flu epidemic has finally been revealed. Each year, a national flu epidemic always follows a chilly dry week with average temperatures below 0C. Now, new research suggests that cold dry weather makes for the perfect conditions as it helps the virus stay airborne for longer. Scientists studied 20,000 virus samples taken from nasal swabs. They then compared the incidence of respiratory viruses with weather data from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute...

Heavy workloads and job insecurity are just two of the stress triggers which could increase your risk of heart disease and strokes. Scientists who analysed a series of high tech brain scans found heightened activity in the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in stress, is associated with a greater risk of heart disease and stroke. The study, published in The Lancet, provides new insights into the possible mechanism by which stress can lead to cardiovascular disease in humans. While...

The poor have got fatter and it is passed on from one generation to the next, a new British study found. The lower a person is on the social ladder, the higher their body mass index was likely to be. A new study which looked at class and weight since the Second World War found the rich and educated have been able to shield themselves against the obesity epidemic. And efforts to close this health inequality gap between the rich...