Spring
is the big time for gardeners and DIY enthusiasts, but new research from the
Department of Health (DoH) warns of possible health risks. At this time of
year, hospital Accident and Emergency departments are filled up with patients
who injure themselves at home or in the garden.
The DoH says that last year there were thousands of injuries involving power tools in this country as well as over 2,000 injures after people fell out of trees. Powered lawnmowers landed 369 people in hospital, another 190 people were hospitalised after coming into contact with thorns, spines and sharp leaves and over 2,700 needed medical treatment after unplanned striking against sports equipment. Pets and insects were responsible for hundreds of injuries and a record 22 people needed treatment after being bitten by a rat, the DoH research revealed. It seems most serious injuries do not happen on the roads or at work but in people’s homes and gardens.
Safety at home, visit: www.bbc.co.uk/home/DIY
‘Your teeth are for life’ |
‘The older we get the madder we’ll become’Two pieces of research have come out this month that may concern the increasing ageing population of people living with HIV. The journal Aids presents data suggesting that over 50s with HIV are at increased risk of cognitive impairment even if they are on an effective HAART (highly active antiretroviral) regime. The investigators point to a synergistic relationship between HIV-related dementia and other ageing brain deterioration as well vascular disease, immune dysfunction in older age and increasing rates of depression in people living long term with the virus. Perhaps even more worrying is the research from Yours magazine which
found that older people are being driven to ‘wrap rage’ by
impenetrable food and drug packaging. |
A healthy gut and a healthy mind...
|
Sweat and CO2 attracts mosquitoes Latest research from Yale University has found that the biting female mosquitoes which carry the malaria parasite home in on increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from breath exhalations as well as a chemical, called 4-methylphenol, which is present in human sweat. Genetic engineering experiments on insects have shown that a whiff of human sweat is enough to trigger nerve cells in the mosquito’s antenna. The UK’s Health Protection Agency is launching a campaign this summer to remind travellers to make sure they take anti-malarial pills before, during and after their holidays - if they are visiting countries where malaria in endemic - such as most of Africa, Asia and parts of Latin America. Antimalarial tablets are available through your local GP, travel clinics
and even your corner pharmacy. |
Sixty times more gay men now die from smoking than die of Aids. Fact. Russell Fleet, volunteer at GMFA, introduces their stop smoking course
Edited by Rose De Freitas
I wasn’t always a smoker, not one of those who started at 12 behind
the bike sheds. Like many others, I started because I was stressed, but it
wasn’t the stress of my HIV diagnosis that put me on the path to puffing;
I only started smoking later, when I became a teacher in 1990. Enough to make
anyone light up.
When I told my HIV doc that I’d started he wasn’t best pleased, obviously. But as I said at the time, “I’ve already got the cat flu, love, what difference is this going to make? I should be so lucky to get to 70 and have heart disease or cancer.”
He soon set me straight about that. It’s not an ‘either...or’ situation, you see; the smoking makes the HIV-related illness worse than it normally would be.
And that’s the problem. What little research there is indicates that smoking prevalence among gay men is nearly twice that of men in general, while nearer two-thirds of HIV positive gay men smoke.
One piece of research in Switzerland a few years back looking at atherosclerosis (fatty arteries) found that the vast majority of the gay male positive trial participants were affected by it. It concluded that protease inhibitors were the cause. Then someone realised that nearly 70 per cent of this group smoked and this was the real cause of the atherosclerosis.
I finally realised that I wasn’t actually getting anything out of it any more, and it was time to quit. It didn’t taste nice; the cost was ruinous; you’re always wondering if you have enough to last or have to drive round to the all night garage.
Then there’s the uniquely gay problem of where to put the fag packet when you go to a boots-only bar...
I was lucky in that I was working for GMFA at the time and we were in the
process of developing a smoking cessation course. I was assigned to the project
and
part of that was because I was looking to stop smoking. I was sent away to
Oxford for a two-day training course on how to run a stop-smoking group.
The irony wasn’t lost on the professor leading the course. After many years in the business he could spot a smoker at 30 yards and he told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way I could run a stop smoking course while continuing to smoke, and of course he was - and still is - right.
So I stopped, on a staff training weekend.
GMFA went into this with the clear notion that in a group setting, gay men were unlikely to want to spill their guts about how they go out, get trashed, pull some bloke, have uproarious sex and then light up the post-coital ciggie, all in front of a group of late middle-aged straights. So the course is a gay safe space, in other words.
Also, the group bonding thing makes it fun. You have a whole room full of people wishing you well and supporting you as you make possibly the biggest life change you are likely to make, short of moving to the other side of the world or going straight!
It’s a seven-week programme and the best bit is that you carry on smoking for the first two weeks. Third week is quit week and there is a ceremonial last fag outside at the start of the session. There is a lot of advice given on how to use nicotine replacement therapy to help overcome the withdrawal symptoms and Zyban is discussed at great length.
The course provides you with the opportunity to get this stuff on prescription from your GP, so in all it shouldn’t even cost you to stop.
But the most important thing that you have to remember, however, is that this course only works if you actually want to stop smoking. If you go on it because your boyfriend/mother/doctor/boss has told you to, then it’s a waste of time.
Bottom line, you know the health risks and they’re not somewhere out there in the indeterminate future, they’re here, now and they have to be faced.
So if you’re a poz guy who puts a lot of effort into his adherence, why blow it all up in smoke?
GMFA Stop Smoking courses: please call to register interest on 020 7738
3712
See also ‘To smoke or not
to smoke’
The British Dental Health Foundation is using the slogan ‘Your
teeth are for life’ to highlight the benefits of better oral health
for National Smile Week this May (16-22 May). 
Research from California and Israel has found that ‘dead’ yoghurt
is just as beneficial to digestion and for people with bowel problems
as ‘live’ yoghurt. The boom in probiotic foods led the researchers
to investigate claims by yoghurt manufacturers that products containing ‘live’ bacteria
gave increased protection against gut inflammation. The journal Gastroenterology
reported that all yoghurts, ‘live’ or ‘dead’,
had beneficial effects.
With global warming and more international travel to tropical countries,
doctors are concerned about increasing risks of malaria.