The Health News United Kingdom August 1 2017

Overview

• A dedicated mental health service to help people affected by the Manchester Arena attack has been launched. The Manchester Resilience Hub, run by the NHS, will focus solely on helping those directly affected including children and emergency responders
• Scientists fear that sleeping badly could be driving weight gain and after finding that people who slept just six hours a night had waist measurements an inch greater than those who get nine hours.
• Andrew Radford, chief executive of charity Beating Eating Disorders has warned that images of “infeasible” body physiques circulated on social media may be behind a seventy percent rise in the number of men treated in hospital for eating disorders.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 1st of August 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health New

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-40773540

A dedicated mental health service to help people affected by the Manchester Arena attack has been launched. Twenty-two people were killed when Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb at an Ariana Grande concert on May twenty two. The Manchester Resilience Hub, run by the NHS, will focus solely on helping those directly affected including children and emergency responders.

Clinical lead, Doctor Alan Barrett, said it would target anyone across the UK “still struggling to cope”. He said that the attack will have affected lots of people in some way or another but most will find they recover naturally and don’t require any professional support and reactions are likely to be strongest in those closest to the incident, who directly witnessed the aftermath and who were involved in the immediate care of victims.

The Hub will aim to provide a central point for mental health advice and support and will work with other agencies to develop packages of care. Six children were killed in the blast, including an eight-year-old girl, and a number of others were seriously injured. Sara Barnes, operational lead for children and young people said: “Over time the majority of children and young people will be back in normal routines and coping better.

Doctor Barrett stressed that it is a dedicated service for people who have been directly affected by the attack who are “experiencing high levels of distress”, but advised anyone struggling with a mental health issue to see their GP or call NHS one one one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/07/28/sleeping-badly-could-add-3-cm-waistline-study-suggests/

Sleeping badly could be driving weight gain, scientists fear, after finding that people who slept just six hours a night had waist measurements an inch greater than those who get nine hours.

The results strengthen the evidence that insufficient sleep could contribute to the development of metabolic diseases such as diabetes. The study by the University of Leeds involved one thousand six hundred fifteen adults who reported how long they slept and kept records of food intake. It also measured other indicators of overall metabolic health such as blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and thyroid function as well as weight and waist circumference recorded.

Those who slept for six hours or less a night had waists that were on average one point one inches or three centimeters larger than those who slept for nine hours. Shorter sleep was also linked to reduced levels of good cholesterol which helps remove fat from the body and protects against conditions like heart disease. Doctor Greg Potter, a researcher in metabolism at Leeds University, said: “The number of people with obesity worldwide has more than doubled since nineteen eighty.

“Obesity contributes to the development of many diseases, most notably type two diabetes. Understanding why people gain weight has crucial implications for public health.”

Crucially, the study did not find any relationship between shortened sleep and a less healthy diet – a fact that surprised the researchers. Other studies have suggested that shortened sleep can lead to poor dietary choices. But the new research suggests that it is the sleep itself which is driving the effect.

http://news.sky.com/story/fears-social-media-could-be-contributing-to-spike-in-male-eating-disorders-10968777

Images of “infeasible” body physiques circulated on social media may be behind a seventy percent rise in the number of men treated in hospital for eating disorders, an expert has warned.

NHS Digital data shows that in England, hospital diagnoses in men over the age of nineteen rose from four hundred eighty in two thousand ten and two thousand eleven to eight hundred eighteen in two thousand fifteen and two thousand and sixteen. Andrew Radford, chief executive of charity Beating Eating Disorders, told Sky News the significant increase could have been caused by images propagated on social media and in popular culture.He said: “If you look at the pressures on men, there is a reasonable chance that social media is having an effect on the rise of eating disorders.

The annual statistics show that the rate of increase was higher among older men – with a seventy percent spike in the forty one to sixty age group compared to sixty three percent for those aged between nineteen and twenty five. Over the same time period, there was also a seventy percent increase in the number of women admitted to hospital with eating disorders.