Public health minister takes health warnings with pinch of salt

DutchNews, April 13, 2018 

Photo: Health Ministry 

If every excess glass of wine shortens your time on earth by 30 minutes, is the sum total a joyless life? 

Dutch public health minister Hugo de Jonge suggested on Friday that he was taking new reports on the damaging effects of alcohol and sunbeds with a pinch of salt. 

Speaking to reporters on the way to a cabinet meeting, he said that health secretary Paul Blokhuis was best placed to comment on a new report in The Lancet suggesting that 12.5 units of alcohol a week – or five glasses of wine – is the upper safe limit. 

‘It’s his area, and I am always glad of that when I read reports that say something else is bad for your health,’ he reportedly told NOS. ‘That’s often the case with the joys of life.’ 

He added that he was not planning to stop using sunbeds himself, despite safety warnings earlier this week from the KWF cancer charity. ‘I have become a minister, not a monk, which means that I have my foibles,’ he said. ‘I like to use a sunbed every now and then. Otherwise you lot will tell me I look bad.’ 

His own maxim was: all things in moderation, he added. ‘With all of these things, be aware and be moderate. That is the best advice you can give anyone.’ 

The Lancet story, widely reported in the international and Dutch press, suggested excess drinking was more damaging than previously thought, at lower levels. 

But the Dutch health council has already, for the past three years, recommended that people do not drink alcohol at all or limit themselves to a glass a day.

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Cutting social welfare in UK could cost lives, experts warn

Daily Mail, By DAILY MAIL REPORTER, 25th June 2010

Recent cuts to social welfare spending could cost lives, British experts warned today.

Researchers from Oxford University analysed levels of social spending throughout Europe and its impact on risks of death.

They found that just a £70 reduction in welfare spending per person is associated with a 2.8 per cent rise in alcohol-related deaths and 1.2 per cent rise in deaths from heart disease.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the UK researchers argue that, although the Government may think they are protecting health by safeguarding healthcare budgets, social welfare is just as important to population health.

A study in the BMJ has revealed that a £70 reduction in welfare spending per person is linked with a 2.8 per cent rise in alcohol-related death

The researchers wrote: 'This report reveals that ordinary people may be paying the ultimate price for budget cuts - potentially costing them their lives.'

The study comes after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced sweeping budget cuts, including reductions in tax credits for families, housing benefit and maternity grants.

The researchers evaluated data on social welfare spending in 15 European countries, including the UK, from 1980 to 2005. They found that when social spending was high, mortality rates fell, but when they were low, mortality rates rose substantially.

They found that even modest budget cuts had an effect. For every £70 drop in spending per person there was a 1.19 per cent rise in overall deaths.

However, they discovered that reducing spending on non-welfare sources such as on prisons, had no such negative impact on public health.

'This result indicates that some aspects of population health are sensitive to spending on social support,' the authors said.

'If we want to promote a sustainable recovery in Britain, we must first ensure that we have taken care of people's most basic health needs.'

Drinkers who down half a bottle of wine daily are HEALTHIER than teetotallers

Daily Mail, By DAILY MAIL REPORTERS, 10:12 AM on 19th May 2010

Alcohol intake was strongly associated with increased concentrations of 'good cholesterol' in both men and women

People who drink up to half a bottle of wine a day are healthier than teetotallers, according to a surprising new study.

This is because those who enjoyed three glasses of wine a day tended to take more exercise, have a higher social status and suffer from less stress, according to researchers.

A Team from the Public Assistance Hospitals of Paris studied almost 150,000 people and found those who enjoyed low or moderate intake of alcohol were fitter than those who never touched a drop or drank to excess.

The participants - 97,406 men and 52,367 women - were split into five groups including no alcohol consumption, low alcohol consumption (less than one glass a day), moderate drinkers (between one and three glasses a day), heavy drinkers (more than three glasses) and former drinkers who now abstained.

The analysis showed those who drank moderately were more likely to have lower cardiovascular disease risk, heart rate, stress, depression and body mass index.

They also scored higher on health measures such as respiratory function and physical activity.

Among women, similar trends were seen in moderate drinkers who had lower blood pressure and waist circumference, according to the findings published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Study author Dr Boris Hansel, said: 'Importantly, the findings showed moderate alcohol consumption is a powerful general indicator of optimal social status and this could be a key reason for improved health in these subjects.'

They said the low and moderate groups of both males and females displayed 'a more favourable health status than the groups that never drunk or drunk large amounts.'

For both genders, alcohol intake was strongly associated with increased concentrations of 'good cholesterol' known as HDL (high density lipoprotein) in the blood.

But it could not be shown that the influence of alcohol on HDL had a cardio-protective effect and the researchers warned these results cannot yet be taken as evidence of alcohol staving off heart disease.

The researchers said:'In our study, the BMI (body mass index) and percentage of obese subjects in both men and women, as well as the waist circumference in women, were lowest in moderate drinkers. Our findings show that moderate alcohol consumption is a powerful general indicator of optimal social status.'

Commenting on the report, June Davison, cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: 'This French study adds to previous research which suggests that a small amount of alcohol drunk regularly can offer some protection against coronary heart disease.

'However, drinking more than sensible amounts of alcohol does not offer any protection and can cause high blood pressure, stroke, some cancers and damage to your heart.

'If you don't drink already there is no reason to start now as there are much healthier ways to look after your heart.'

Alcohol 'only protects non-smokers against stroke'

BBC News,

The cigarette cancels out the protective effect of alcohol

Sensible drinking can substantially reduce your risk of a stroke, but only if you don't enjoy a cigarette at the same time, research suggests.

A study of over 20,000 people in the UK found non-smokers who drank moderate amounts were nearly 40% less likely to have a stroke than non-drinkers.

But once cigarettes were added, this protective effect vanished.

The findings are being presented at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Toronto.

The study, led by Cambridge University, looked at 22,254 people over 12 years. There were nearly 900 strokes.

People who stayed within moderate drinking guidelines - one or two small glasses of wine a day for a woman and slightly more for a man - saw a 37% decrease in their risk of stroke.

But this was only true if they did not smoke, with smoking drinkers and smoking non-drinkers seeing similar levels of risk.

"Our findings could have public health implications in that we appear to have a clearer understand of the dangers of combing smoking and moderate drinking on overall stroke risk," according to lead researcher Yangmei Li.

Smoking trouble

Large quantities of alcohol are known to increase the chance of a stroke by raising blood pressure, a key risk factor.

The links between smoking and stroke are clear - 10% of stroke deaths and a quarter of all strokes are linked to smoking

Stroke Association

But alcohol does thin the blood, so can prevent clots forming. It may also affect the way cholesterol is carried in the bloodstream, reducing the risk of the build-up of fatty deposits in the blood vessel walls.

Smoking, however, causes the arteries to fur up, making the blood more likely to clot. This increases the risk of a stroke.

The study suggests that alcohol does not prevent this process that smoking kicks off.

"The links between smoking and stroke are clear - 10% of stroke deaths and a quarter of all strokes are linked to smoking. So giving up smoking is a vital step in reducing your risk of stroke," says Joe Korner of The Stroke Association.

"It is also important to note that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol does not protect against haemorrhagic strokes - those caused by a bleed, and in some cases it may in fact increase the risk. And we know that drinking more than the recommended alcohol limit increases your risk of all types of stroke."

Alcohol 'protects men's hearts'

BBC News

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Wine, beer, vodka - the type of drink did not appear to change the results

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

The study was conducted in Spain, a country with relatively high rates of alcohol consumption and low rates of coronary heart disease.

The research involved men and women aged between 29 and 69, who were asked to document their lifetime drinking habits and followed for 10 years.

Crucially the research team claim to have eliminated the "sick abstainers" risk by differentiating between those who had never drunk and those whom ill-health had forced to quit. This has been used in the past to explain fewer heart-related deaths among drinkers on the basis that those who are unhealthy to start with are less likely to drink.

Good cholesterol

The researchers from centres across Spain placed the participants into six categories - from never having drunk to drinking more than 90g of alcohol each day. This would be the equivalent of consuming about eight bottles of wine a week, or 28 pints of lager.

For those drinking little - less than a shot of vodka a day for instance - the risk was reduced by 35%. And for those who drank anything from three shots to more than 11 shots each day, the risk worked out an average of 50% less.

The same benefits were not seen in women, who suffer fewer heart problems than men to start with. Researchers speculated this difference could be down to the fact that women process alcohol differently, and that female hormones protect against the disease in younger age groups.

The type of alcohol drunk did not seem to make a difference, but protection was greater for those drinking moderate to high amounts of varied drinks.

The exact mechanisms are as yet unclear, but it is known that alcohol helps to raise high-density lipoproteins, sometimes known as good cholesterol, which helps stop so-called bad cholesterol from building up in the arteries.

'Binge-drinking'

UK experts said the findings should be treated with caution because they do not take into account ill-health from a range of other diseases caused by excess drinking.

"Whilst moderate alcohol intake can lower the risk of having a heart attack, coronary heart disease is just one type of heart disease. Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, is associated with high alcohol intake and can lead to a poor quality of life and premature death," said the British Heart Foundation's senior cardiac nurse, Cathy Ross.

"The heart is just one of many organs in the body. While alcohol could offer limited protection to one organ, abuse of it can damage the heart and other organs such as the liver, pancreas and brain."

The Stroke Association meanwhile noted that overall, evidence indicated that people who regularly consumed a large amount of alcohol had a three-fold increased risk of stroke.

"Six units within six hours is considered 'binge-drinking' and anyone indulging in regular 'binge-drinking' increases their risk of stroke greatly," said research officer Joanne Murphy.

Public health specialists warned no-one should be encouraged to drink more as a result of this study.

"The relationship between alcohol and heart disease remains controversial," said Professor Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

"While there is good evidence that moderate consumption is protective in people who are at substantial risk of heart disease - which excludes most people under the age of 40 - we also know that most people underestimate how much they drink. This paper adds to the existing literature but should not be considered as definitive. "

In the UK, the recommendation is no more than two to three units of alcohol a day for women - the equivalent of one standard glass of wine - and three to four units for men.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, agreed that the message from this study was not clear: "At the end of the day, you're juggling different risks and benefits, maybe helping your heart or maybe damaging your brain and liver.

"The simple message is moderation.

"Stick to the guidelines, and you won't go far wrong."

Muslim Woman Attacks Husband After Being Forced to Eat Pork and Wear Short Skirts

The Jakarta Globe

New York. A devout Muslim woman told police she slashed her husband's neck with a kitchen knife as he slept because he forced her to eat pork, wear short skirts and drink alcohol in violation of her religious beliefs.

Rabia Sarwar, 37, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and was freed on $25,000 bail. She told police in a written statement that she was emotionally abused by her husband, Seikh Naseem.

"He made me do so many things that are against Islam," she wrote in a statement to police.

"I did all that just to make him happy but inside me there was a war," she continued.

Naseem suffered cuts to his neck, cheek and hand early Wednesday before fighting Sarwar off and dialing 911 from his Staten Island home, authorities said.

"I did my best to cut his throat," Rabia Sarwar wrote. "But the next moment he jumped on me and grabbed me."

Sarwar's attorney, Joe Licitra, said she had previously been treated for depression. Her husband told the New York Post that Sarwar, a native of Pakistan, was having a hard time adjusting to American culture.

"There was no gun pointed to her head to do these things," Naseem told the Post.

Calls to Naseem by The Associated Press went unanswered.

Sarwar's statement to police paints a picture of a frustrated, confused woman angry that her husband of five months was not what he appeared to be during their brief courtship. Naseem went to her family to ask for a bride and she agreed to marry him, she said in her statement.

But after they were wed, she discovered he had previously dated mostly "white" women, had been married before and liked to go out to drink, she wrote. He said he was Pakistani and a devout Muslim, but in New York he claimed he was half-Pakistani and half-Norwegian, as well as a Unitarian Christian, she said.

He often yelled and cursed her family, she said, and one of his favorite writers was Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," which caused violent protests by Muslims in several countries because the book was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

"He hates Pakistan and he hates Pakistanis then why did he marry a Pakistani girl?" she wrote.

They fought about her leaving, and he threatened to hurt her family, saying they would have to pay him $30,000 or he would sue them and leave them penniless and homeless, she wrote. Her family is in Pakistan.

She lay in bed that evening thinking her only way out was to kill him, she wrote.

Police said they had never visited the house on any domestic dispute calls.

Sarwar also pleaded not guilty Thursday to second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

According to Sarwar's statement, Naseem was working on getting her green card, but her parents had apparently started the citizenship process for her a few years before. She is not a U.S. citizen and could face deportation, depending on the outcome of the case.

Her next court date is Monday.

Associated Press

One in five men at risk of drinking problem

By Julie Steenhuysen, Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:32pm EST 

 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - At least one in five men in developed countries are at risk of abusing or becoming dependent on alcohol during their lifetimes, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

 

The risk is about half that for women, who have an 8 to 10 percent chance of becoming dependent on alcohol.

 

And despite the popular belief that nothing works, there is help in the form of several effective treatments, they said.

 

"This is a serious problem," Dr. Marc Schuckit of the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and the University of California said in a telephone interview.

 

He said men have roughly a 15 percent lifetime risk for alcohol abuse, and a 10 percent risk for alcohol dependence.

 

"Once you carry one of these diagnoses regularly, you tend to cut your life short by 10 to 15 years," he said.

 

His findings, published in the journal Lancet, are meant to guide doctors on how to spot and treat their patients for alcohol dependence disorder.

 

This includes a range of problem drinking behaviors such as spending too much time drinking, having trouble stopping once started, skipping important life events to drink or recover from a binge, and setting and exceeding a self-imposed limit on the number of drinks a person plans to consume.

 

The definition also includes more classic signs of alcohol addiction such as withdrawal.

 

They said repeated heavy drinking increases the risk of a temporary bout of depression by 40 percent. And 80 percent of people who are dependent on alcohol are regular smokers.

 

Some 40 to 60 percent of the risk of problem drinking can be explained by genes, and the rest by environmental factors, Schuckit said.

 

That may explain why women have a lower lifetime risk.

 

"This is a cultural issue. More women than men are lifelong abstainers. A higher proportion of women than men never open themselves to the possibility of alcoholism because they never or very rarely drink," Schuckit said.

 

He said heavy drinking raises the risk of heart disease and cancer, even in those who do not smoke.

 

And despite perceptions that treatments do not work, he said most patients with alcohol use disorders do well after treatment.

 

About 50 to 60 percent of men and women with alcohol dependence abstain or show substantial improvement in a year after treatment, which can include drugs such as Forest Laboratories Inc's Campral or acamprosate, naltrexone, also known as Revia and Depade, and disulfiramacamprosate or Antabuse.

 

Schuckit said these should be used in combination with therapy aimed at helping people change their behaviors.

 

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

Malaysian police arrest 26 at New Year `sex party`

Kuala Lumpur (ANTARA News/afp) - Malaysian police arrested a female newsreader, an actress and 24 other revellers at a New Year's Eve "sex and drugs" party at a Kuala Lumpur hotel, reports said Friday.   

The two high-profile women and seven others tested positive for drugs, police said, according to The New Straits Times, which reported that condoms, beer cans and half-eaten pizza were found strewn around the hotel room.   

"When police arrived, many of the party goers were already high on drugs," The Star newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying, adding that various illegal substances, including cocaine, ketamine and amphetamines were seized.

 

It said that the party was organised through the social networking website Friendster.

   

Police acting on a tip-off raided the gathering at a downtown Kuala Lumpur hotel in the early hours of New Year's Day.

   

The raid came after rumours that a New Year's Eve sex party was being planned on a remote beach in southern Malaysia.

   

Tourism Minister Azalina Othman condemned the beach party as "against our culture and religion" and potentially damaging to the reputation of majority-Muslim Malaysia.

   

Police warned that the "no-underwear" event for the under-40s, advertised through a website that asked for 250 ringgit (72 dollars) as an entrance fee, could be a money-making scam.

Party organisers had reportedly said that male guest were banned from wearing briefs to the event, while women were permitted to wear only G-string underwear which had to be removed after midnight.    

Binge-drinkers 'risking dementia'

BBC

Urgent action is needed to prevent Britain heading for a dementia epidemic caused by the nation's binge-drinking culture, experts have warned.

Research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry links excessive drinking and a loss of brain tissue.

Dr Susham Gupta and Dr James Warner said people are drinking almost double what they were in the 1960s and claimed cheaper alcohol could be a cause.

They said the problem might only be curbed by introducing tough laws.

Binge-drinking is associated with a higher risk of dementia.

While Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of the disease, alcohol is said to account for around a tenth of all cases, while heavy drinking to believed to contribute to almost a quarter.

The report writers pointed out the price of alcohol relative to average UK income has halved since the 1960s.

Between the early part of that decade and 2000, alcohol consumption per head was said to have nearly doubled from less than six litres a year to more than 11.5 litres.

The pair said that if trends continued, within 10 years, the UK population would be drinking more alcohol than any other country in Europe.

They wrote: "Given the neurotoxic effects of alcohol and the inexorable increase in per capita consumption, future generations may see a disproportionate increase in alcohol-related dementia."

'Brain damage'

They said the association of "moderate drinking" with health benefits, binge-drinking was potentially "highly destructive".

At high intake levels, the benefits of alcohol were reversed leading to high blood pressure, raised levels of harmful blood fats, and brain damage.

They admitted any "public health initiatives" warning people about the risk could be "unpopular and ineffective" but felt legislation could be an option.

The issue was also discussed in September by psychiatrists at a conference hosted by Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Stirling.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said that one in three people over 65 die with dementia.

She said: "Binge drinkers hitting the town on a Saturday night are becoming a familiar sight, but we don't yet understand how it will affect the numbers of people with dementia."

She said previous research had focused on alcoholics who had an increased risk of dementia because they did not eat enough for long time-periods.

She said: "In contrast, binge drinkers drink heavily at certain times but may still eat well and therefore do not have the same type of risk.

"As drinking habits change, it is vital we understand more about the relationship between alcohol and this devastating condition."

Study: $90 wine tastes better than the same wine at $10

Cnet News, Posted by Stephen Shankland

In a study that could make marketing managers and salespeople rub their hands with glee, scientists have used brain-scanning technology to shed new light on the old adage, "You get what you pay for."

This graph shows the activity in the brain's pleasure center; there's more activity
with wine subjects think costs $90 a bottle (top line) than the same wine priced at $10.
The arrow shows the moment when the subjects started tasting the wine.

(Credit: CalTech, Stanford)

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford's business school have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.

Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure. Brain scanning using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed evidence for the researchers' hypothesis that "changes in the price of a product can influence neural computations associated with experienced pleasantness," they said.

The study, by Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel, was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This chart shows that people ranked taste of a $45 wine higher
than the same wine priced at $5, and the same for a different wine marked $90 and $10.

(Credit: CalTech, Stanford)

The research, along with other studies the authors allude to, are putting a serious dent in economists' notions that experienced pleasantness of a product is based on its intrinsic qualities.

"Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer's ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality," the researchers said. "Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles."

Aboard the 'Booze Bus'

A "drunks-only" ambulance is mobilised on occasions of widespread drunkenness in central London. What's it like aboard the "Booze Bus" on one of the busiest party nights of the year?

By Alexis Akwagyiram, BBC News

"I love the job - I like being able to make a difference. No two days are ever the same," says paramedic Brian Hayes with a jovial grin as he describes his job.

Over the course of a 12-hour shift on Friday night, he and his two colleagues on the Alternative Response Vehicle - or Booze Bus, as it's more commonly known - draw on their reserves of composure, ingenuity and stoicism to treat more than 20 dazed drunks.

At St Thomas' Hospital, where some of these patients are taken, a visibly-frustrated doctor speaks despairingly of dealing with a tide of alcohol-related problems, instead of people who are seriously ill.

"Everyone I've treated tonight has been drunk - this is ridiculous," he says.

At about 0200GMT, he predicts things are only going to get worse as the night goes on.

"I have no beds in my observation units as we're full already. This is the calm before the storm - it'll go ballistic."

One drunk patient had assaulted him, he says, and the waiting room was full of people being sick or aggressive.

"Twenty-four hour drinking has made a huge, huge difference. The problem is that staff are dealing with people who are drunk and don't know what they're doing," he says.

"Doctors are run off their feet and in the vast majority of cases it is just alcohol. It is binge drinking. We don't see people who've had just two drinks. People have had 20 shots of vodka.

"They're generally 18 to 25, but it's all sorts - including lawyers and people in their 60s."

An hour later the stench inside the ambulance is thick and overpowering after three patients have been picked up.

The smell of stomach bile, excrement and stale urine fills the enclosed space as the vehicle speeds through the West End streets.

Drink-drugs cocktail

A scantily-clad 21-year-old woman lies motionless with one arm attached to a saline drip. She was found lying unconscious near a West End club and taken inside by a doorman.

Her stockings sag limply around her ankles and she occasionally stirs to vomit into a tray, her eyes opening briefly and rolling towards the ceiling.

On a seat next to her a man in his early 30s is being attended to. He was found unconscious in a corner of the same nightclub suffering from the effects of a cocktail of drink and drugs.

Another seat is occupied by a 60-year-old man, found outside Holborn Tube station, whose silver hair is matted with a layer of thick, crimson blood. He is slumped, with a steady trickle of saliva dribbling down his chin. The man has soiled himself.

The Booze Bus - or Vomit Comet, as it has also been dubbed - was Mr Hayes's creation three years ago. The three paramedics take the alcohol ambulance out at times of heavy drinking, such as the World Cup, Gay Pride and the festive season. On a busy night it treats more than 20 people.

"The idea was to make everyone's life easier and make handling Christmas drinking more manageable," says Mr Hayes, 37.

"Normal ambulances are freed up to do work that matters and can save lives. It also means there's a hospital bed free."

Unlike other ambulances, it does not carry an ECG machine because it won't need to treat chest pains and the extra space can be filled by a patient.

Office parties

It can take up to five patients to hospital in one trip - if no-one is seriously injured - rather than sending multiple ambulances.

On a Friday night in mid-December, with Christmas office parties in full flow, Leicester Square and Soho are packed with revellers, increasing the demand on London Ambulance Service by 10 to 15% compared to a normal Friday.

Mark, a civil servant manager in his 40s who had been drinking since 12 noon, found himself slumped over his Chinese meal due to one such party - prompting his colleagues to tie him to a chair and carry him out of a restaurant.

And there was Sally, a 24-year-old accountant, who was struck by a glass which was either dropped or thrown at her firm's festive celebration and left a shard embedded in her forehead.

Meanwhile, Stephan, a Swedish special effects technician broke and dislocated his ankle after climbing over railings to get into Soho Square Gardens after drinking at least seven pints at his work party.

But 18-year-old James bucked the party trend and was instead a victim of pure violence. He was found wandering around Leicester Square shirtless, with one shoe and a bloodied face after being set upon by more than a dozen youths.

Throughout the night and early hours, the three crew members exchange rapid-fire banter and remain upbeat when faced with a procession of bleary-eye patients in all shapes, sizes and ages.

"It's about being tolerant. Most of the people we deal with have been vomiting on themselves," explains Mr Hayes.

But he adds: "It scares me that these young girls are getting into nightclubs. There is a massive problem with underage drinking.

"I don't know what's happening to society as a whole. It's scary - it's not just the kids. It's also adults. People in their 40s and 50s who you would think know better.

"But then you get a job where you make a massive difference, and you feel much better."

Study: Monthly fasting may help heart

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer

Yahoo News

Mormons have less heart disease — something doctors have long chalked up to their religion's ban on smoking. New research suggests that another of their "clean living" habits also may be helping their hearts: fasting for one day each month.

A study in Utah, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is based, found that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.

People did not have to "get religion" to benefit: non-Mormons who regularly took breaks from food also were less likely to have clogged arteries, scientists found.

They concede that their study is far from proof that periodic fasting is good for anyone, but said the benefit they observed poses a theory that deserves further testing.

"It might suggest these are people who just control eating habits better," and that this discipline extends to other areas of their lives that improves their health, said Benjamin Horne, a heart disease researcher from Intermountain Medical Center and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

He led the study and reported results at a recent American Heart Association conference. The research was partly funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Roughly 70 percent of Utah residents are Mormons, whose religion advises abstaining from food on the first Sunday of each month, Horne said.

Researchers got the idea to study fasting after analyzing medical records of patients who had X-ray exams to check for blocked heart arteries between 1994 and 2002 in the Intermountain Health Collaborative Study, a health registry. Of these patients, 4,629 could be diagnosed as clearly having or lacking heart disease — an artery at least 70 percent clogged.

Researchers saw a typical pattern: only 61 percent of Mormons had heart disease compared to 66 percent of non-Mormons. They thought tobacco use probably accounted for the difference. But after taking smoking into account, they still saw a lower rate of heart disease among Mormons and designed a survey to explore why.

It asked about Mormons' religious practices: monthly fasting; avoiding tea, coffee and alcohol; taking a weekly day of rest; going to church, and donating time or money to charity.

Among the 515 people surveyed, only fasting made a significant difference in heart risks: 59 percent of periodic meal skippers were diagnosed with heart disease versus 67 percent of the others.

The difference persisted even when researchers took weight, age and conditions like diabetes or high cholesterol or blood pressure into account. About 8 percent of those surveyed were not Mormons, and those who regularly fasted had lower rates of heart disease, too.

Horne speculated that when people take a break from food, it forces the body to dip into fat reserves to burn calories. It also keeps the body from being constantly exposed to sugar and having to make insulin to metabolize it. When people develop diabetes, insulin-producing cells become less sensitive to cues from eating, so fasting may provide brief rests that resensitize these cells and make them work better, he said.

But he and other doctors cautioned that skipping meals is not advised for diabetics — it could cause dangerous swings in blood sugar.

Also for dieters, "the news is not as good as you might think" on fasting, said Dr. Raymond Gibbons of the Mayo Clinic, a former heart association president.

"Fasting resets the metabolic rate," slowing it down to adjust to less food and forcing the body to store calories as soon as people resume eating, Gibbons said.

On the Net:

Heart association: http://www.heart.org / Heart meeting: http://www.scientificsessions.org

Alcohol disease 'hits young hard'

By Branwen Jeffreys, Health correspondent, BBC News

Doctors are seeing rising numbers of patients in their late teens and early twenties with severe alcohol-related disease, many of them women.

Of 115 specialists who replied to a BBC questionnaire, 77 said they had treated at least one patient aged under 25.

Many said the social acceptability of heavy drinking was the most important influence on young people.

The warning comes as a new alliance calls for a rise in alcohol taxes, and a bar on TV advertising before 9pm.

Twenty-four organisations, representing doctors and charities, have joined together to form the Alcohol Health Alliance.

It wants the government to make alcohol misuse a higher priority.

Public health minister Dawn Primarolo said the government had already drawn up a plan for concerted action.

The drink industry says alcohol consumption is falling, and that increasing the cost would hit the majority of people who enjoy a drink in moderation.

Generational shift

The comments of the specialists who responded to the BBC reveal a generational shift on hospital wards around the UK.

Whereas before most hospital consultants would have seen patients in their fifties or sixties in the past, they now describe seeing patients in their early twenties with alcohol-related hepatitis, and women whose livers are permanently damaged with the scarring known as cirrhosis by the time they are 30.

Dr Jonathan Mitchell, a consultant hepatologist in Plymouth, is one of the specialists who contacted the BBC.

He said many of his patients did not realise the permanent damage to their health caused by regular heavy drinking.

Until it reaches a critical stage most liver disease is virtually without symptoms.

Dr Mitchell said: "I've seen patients who've been admitted with pretty catastrophic bleeding from stomach and oesophagus with no prior warning of a problem of their liver.

"Others may present with jaundice or swelling of the abdomen because there's a lot of fluid in the abdomen.

"All these three things are signs of quite advanced liver disease and can come out of the blue."

Heavy drinking 'normal'

Fatty deposits gradually build up on the liver as alcohol interferes with the way it would normally be processed.

What follows is an inflammation within the liver which often leads to low grade hepatitis.

Although the liver has a remarkable capacity to regenerate the damage eventually reaches the stage where the scarring permanently alters the structure of the liver.

For some patients this will lead to an agonising wait on the liver transplant waiting list before they are forty.

He is not alone in his concerns that the normalisation of heavy drinking is putting a generation at risk from a silent killer.

Of the 115 consultants who contacted the BBC 101 said there had been an increase in the number of patients they were seeing for alcohol-related disease.

The shift in the age profile of their patients is also very marked, with 77 saying they had treated a patient under the age of 25.

Worrying snapshot

The doctor's responses are a depressing snapshot of the ages and condition of the patients they see:

• 24-year-old woman with advanced cirrhosis who died
• 25-year-old with advanced alcoholic cirrhosis
• 19-year-old female with end stage liver disease
• 21-year-old who died from acute alcohol poisoning.
  
  

While attention is often focused on the social disorder caused by binge drinking, many doctors say the serious health effects are not given enough attention.

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, is one of the leading figures in the new campaign.

He said: "If you look at the burden of damage to society, it's hugely greater for alcohol than for drugs, but the majority of money has always gone on drugs, partly because of the strong link to crime."

Government view

The government has recently beefed up its Home Office target for reducing harm from alcohol.

It has also introduced a cross-departmental Alcohol Strategy.

This includes a public information campaign to promote sensible drinking, an independent review of alcohol pricing and promotion, toughened enforcement of underage sales by retailers and plans to introduce more help for people who want to drink less.

Dawn Primarolo, the public health minister, said the government had introduced a comprehensive strategy to tackle problem drinking.

She said tax on alcohol in the UK was already the second highest in Europe, and only about 1% of pubs had extended opening hours since extended licensing laws were introduced.

A bigger problem was the discounting of prices by supermarkets and off licences.

She said: "We're looking at where it's available, who it's available to, how it's being marketed, what the targeting is and what we can do to give clear messages and to make those who are selling it responsible."

Hotels train staff for naked sleepwalkers

Telegraph.co.uk, Last Updated: 1:41am BST 25/10/2007

Workers at a leading chain of budget hotels are being given advice on how to deal with naked sleepwalkers after an increase in the number of guests found wandering around in the night with no clothes on.

A study by Travelodge found a seven-fold increase in sleepwalking customers in the past year, to more than 400 cases — almost all of them men.

Many sleepwalked naked into the reception area asking for a newspaper, or saying they wanted to check out. One naked guest was arrested after being locked out of the hotel.

Chris Idzikowski, of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said: "These figures are a surprise.

"Sleepwalking can be triggered by a stressful lifestyle, sleep deprivation, alcohol abuse or not breathing properly during the night."

Travelodge said it was sending a guide to its staff on how to deal with sleepwalkers, such as keeping a supply of towels in reception to help preserve a guest's dignity.

Leigh McCarron, Travelodge's sleep director, said: "We have seen an increased number of cases over the years so it is important that our staff know how to help sleepwalkers when it arises."