The Health News United Kingdom August 22 2017

Overview

• Free visits to the doctor reach a record high, new Medicare statistics show. New Medicare statistics show in the 2016-17 financial year GP bulk billing numbers rose by 0.6 percent to 85.7 percent — the highest since Medicare began more than 30 years ago.
• Researchers may have discovered a new cause of miscarriage and complex birth defects and also found a potential way to prevent them occurring by using dietary supplement Vitamin B3.
  
• For young cancer survivors, the road to recovery can be full of unexpected hurdles. Being back in the safety of home often isn’t enough to stop cancer from dominating the psychology of a young survivor.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 21st of August 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/free-visits-to-the-doctor-reach-a-record-high-new-medicare-statistics-show/news-story/aefbd516d40921ab74946b3916c87f26

Free visits to the doctor reach a record high, according to new Medicare statistics. The number of Australian patients are seeing their doctor without paying a cent for it after GP bulk billing rates reached their highest levels on record. New Medicare statistics show in the two thousand sixteen-two thousand seventeen financial year GP bulk billing numbers rose by zero point six percent to eighty five point five percent — the highest since Medicare began more than thirty years ago. The rise in bulk billing numbers — where the doctor bills Medicare for a medical service directly — typically occurs at this time of year due to the flu season in the winter months. Already this year cases of the flu has reached more than seventy thousand Australians.

Medical experts have urged more people to get a flu shot if they have not already done so.

The latest stats also showed total GP attendances climbed by more than three point thirty six million visits in the past financial year — an increase of two point seven percent. During this time the cost of Medicare benefits paid out climbed by four point two percent to twenty two

billion dollars.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/pregnancy/claims-made-about-vitamin-b3-preventing-miscarriages-and-birth-defects-are-extraordinary/news-story/e0d6e5798ff5c0ef8d14f0adcd662b4e

Pregnant women have been advised against taking Vitamin B three just yet. Claims the vitamin found in meats, green leafy vegetables and even Vegemite could prevent millions of miscarriages and birth defects has been called into question by obstetricians and other experts.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says the “extraordinary” suggestions by researchers at the Victor Chang Institute were based on a small mouse study and have the potential to do more harm than good. An Australian study, led by Professor Sally Dunwoodie, discovered a new cause of miscarriage and complex birth defects and also found a potential way to prevent them occurring by using dietary supplement Vitamin B three.

Using advanced whole exome sequencing technology, the researchers found a deficiency in a vital molecule, known as NAD, prevents a baby’s organs developing correctly in the womb.
This deficiency was cured and miscarriages and birth defects prevented when niacin or Vitamin B three supplements were given to genetically-engineered mice. “This has the potential to significantly reduce the number of miscarriages and birth defects around the world,” Professor Dunwoodie said. Victor Chang Institute Professor Robert Graham hailed the finding as “one of our country’s greatest”.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2017-08-20/getting-back-to-normal-after-cancer/8790704

A person’s first response to a cancer diagnosis tends to be numbness and shock. “You can’t feel the full effect of what’s happening to you in that moment, because if you did you might die,” Serena Weatherall said who was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin lymphoma. She quickly shifted gears into a busy ‘coping’ mode. Serena spent months in hospital undergoing treatment.
Denial often gets a bad rap, but in the short-term, it can be an extraordinarily helpful form of self-protection for someone in Serena’s situation. But fast-forward to the end of treatment, and walking out that hospital door can lift the lid on a painful mess of unresolved thoughts and feelings. Emotions can bubble up to fill the space once occupied by endless doctor’s appointments and blood tests.

Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy take your whole body hostage, and their side-effects linger for months after treatment ends. As a survivor, Serena was not only reeling emotionally from what she’d been through, but also struggling with the physical aftermath of her treatment.
Her relationships with her friends and family also suffered.Often young cancer survivors won’t have met anyone else their age who’s had the same experience.

Being back in the safety of home often isn’t enough to stop cancer from dominating the psychology of a young survivor.A year after she got the all-clear, Serena joined an online psychological support group called Recapture Life. Together with other young survivors, she had video conversations with a psychologist to explore new ways of coping with life after cancer.