The Health News Australia July 13 2017

Overview

• Elderly people in regional Australia are on-selling prescription drugs to help pay their bills, the Rural Doctors Association has warned. Around 800 Australians die each year from prescription drug overdoses. The death toll is highest in rural and regional areas
• Research suggests that people who think positively have a better chance of recovering from serious illness than those who don’t.  A University of Sydney study indicates optimistic thinking has the power to speed up the recovery of sick people, including cancer patients.
• Fat women experience fat stigma through many avenues in their lives, and perhaps the most dangerous is the impact fat stigma has on their experiences with health care.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 12th of July 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http:www.abc.net.aunews2017-07-13elderly-people-rural-towns-forced-to-sell-prescription-drugs8702098

Elderly people in regional Australia are on-selling prescription drugs to help pay their bills  the Rural Doctors Association has warned.  Around eight hundred Australians die each year from prescription drug overdoses.  The death toll is highest in rural and regional areas.

Health professionals say some do it to make enough money to get by,  while others are being bullied into it by drug dealers.  Ewen McPhee,  president of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia did not know how widespread the problem was,  but said misuse of prescribed opioid-based painkillers such as OxyContin and Endone was rife in rural areas.  He also states that people living in sometimes very expensive communities where things like rental and just the cost of daily living are high.  They can use these drugs as a way of making ends meet.

From next year painkillers containing codeine will no longer be available over the counter,  but Doctor McPhee has called on the Federal Government to go further.  He said real time drug monitoring is needed.  It would mean that when a person has a prescription,  there is a real time database that the prescription goes onto,  so that doctors know exactly what that person is taking as would pharmacists.

http:www.9news.com.auhealth201707111731positive-people-heal-faster-research

Research suggests that people who think positively have a better chance of recovering from serious illness than those who don’t.  A University of Sydney study indicates optimistic thinking has the power to speed up the recovery of sick people, including cancer patients.

Professor Donnel Briley said that people who are more optimistic about their recovery when they are ill are more likely to recover.  While patients’ health outcomes weren’t tracked, Professor Briley said the research focused on finding attributes in people which had been linked to faster recovery in other studies.  He also stated that people who were optimistic were actually stronger.

The study which included research from Stanford University and the University of Houston,  found a person’s cultural background would determine how they were able to optimistically perceive their future.  

Professor Briley said people from an Asian background were more optimistic if they thought about responding to specific situations which they may encounter in the future  and people with an Anglo background found it easier to think positively when envisaging a more broad, abstract future rather than specific situations.

The more clear this was the more optimistic they became about their futures.

Positive thinking was not just linked to faster physical recovery,  but also better decision making in times of traumatic experience.  

http:www.abc.net.aunews2017-07-11fat-stigma-australia-discrimination-laws-and-health-campaigns8697572

Fat women experience fat stigma through many avenues in their lives,  and perhaps the most dangerous is the impact fat stigma has on their experiences with health care.  

Fat women delay engaging with health care and are often faced with anti-fat attitudes by their providers. The internet is awash with stories from fat people about their experiences of receiving substandard care from those in the healthcare profession.

Discrimination against fat people, almost across the world, is legal.

Physical size is not a protected class whereas gender, disability, or religious affiliation often are in Western cultures.  People can and are fired for being fat, lose promotions for being fat, and denied housing for being fat.  The structural discrimination against fat people makes it particularly difficult for them to navigate the world and live full lives.

This, in combination with fat stigma perpetuated through micro-aggressions, prejudice, and everyday sizeism,  means fat people face an array of social, cultural, economic and political challenges.

There are also negative psychological effects.  Experiencing fat stigma lowers body image satisfaction, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and feelings of belonging.

It contributes to depression and suicidal ideation in young people.  Fat stigma can also demotivate fat people to engage in exercise, especially in public.  

Fat people of colour have different experiences than fat people with white privilege.

Fat men (both cisgender and transgender) experience their fatness and subsequent fat stigma and discrimination, differently from fat women.

Shifting how public health approaches fatness and providing legal protection for physical size under the law,  are necessary to remove the structural barriers to fat people living full and meaningful lives.