The Health News Australia January 10 2018

• The federal government has announced a $110m package targeting youth anxiety and depression, including $46m in funding to a beyondblue program to teach students about good mental health in early learning, primary and secondary schools. Online and phone support services including Kids Helpline and ReachOut will share an extra $1.8m in funding over two years, while thirteen point five million dollars has been allocated to the Orygen National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health.
• New Australian research has found middle-aged people who are unfit can reduce or even reverse their risk of heart failure if they start exercising regularly. Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute researcher Dr. Erin Howden said after two years, participants who stuck to regular sessions of aerobic exercise had significant improvements in how their body utilised oxygen and reduced cardiac stiffness, both of which are markers of a healthier heart.
• A swallowable sensor that detects intestinal gases has been found to be safe to use in people, paving the way for new approaches in diagnosing gut problems. It was invented by Australian scientists has helped them discover new information about the gut that could help doctors revolutionise how they diagnose and treat digestive problems. The scientists from Melbourne’s RMIT University first unveiled their swallowable device early in 2015 in the hope it would it would help doctors work out what foods were problematic for their patients by detecting and measuring intestinal gases produced by gut bacteria.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 10th of January 2018. Read by Tabetha Moreto.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/08/government-tackles-youth-anxiety-and-depression-with-110m-package

The federal government has announced a one hundred ten million dollar package targeting youth anxiety and depression, including forty six million dollars in funding to a beyondblue program to teach students about good mental health in early learning, primary and secondary schools.

Online and phone support services including Kids Helpline and ReachOut will share an extra one point eight million dollars in funding over two years, while thirteen point five million dollars has been allocated to the Orygen National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health. The executive director of Orygen, psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, said the funding would help to maintain youth mental health services, including Headspace centres throughout Australia.

McGorry said: “The announcement shows that the health minister Greg Hunt has been listening to the sector and this funding will mean vital support services for young people can keep going.”
But he said only about sixty percent of young Australians had access to a Headspace centre. The funding announced on Monday would not provide for any new centres.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-09/baby-boomers-can-protect-heart-by-exercising/9312574

New Australian research has found middle-aged people who are unfit can reduce or even reverse their risk of heart failure if they start exercising regularly. Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute researcher Doctor Erin Howden said after two years, participants who stuck to regular sessions of aerobic exercise had significant improvements in how their body utilised oxygen and reduced cardiac stiffness, both of which are markers of a healthier heart.
….
In the study, published in the journal Circulation, a group of men and women aged forty five to sixty four were put on an exercise regime where frequency, duration and intensity increased over time. Researchers from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute found exercising at a high or moderate intensity for two years could reverse the effects of being sedentary on the heart.
The baby boomers did one hundred fifty minutes of exercise per week, plus sessions of high-intensity interval training, which has been shown to be good for burning fat.

https://healthtimes.com.au/hub/medical-technology/65/news/aap/an-electronic-capsule-has-been-found-to-be-safe-to-use-in-people/3104/

A swallowable sensor that detects intestinal gases has been found to be safe to use in people, paving the way for new approaches in diagnosing gut problems. An electronic capsule invented by Australian scientists has helped them discover new information about the gut that could help doctors revolutionise how they diagnose and treat digestive problems. The scientists from Melbourne’s RMIT University first unveiled their swallowable device early in two thousand fifteen in the hope it would help doctors work out what foods were problematic for their patients by detecting and measuring intestinal gases produced by gut bacteria. Now they have released results from the first human trials of the capsule, which collects information about the gases and transmits it to a hand-held device and mobile phone for doctors to read.

A group of twenty six people took part in the trials last year and proved the capsule was safe for use in humans, paving the way for more extensive tests in two thousand nineteen. As a bonus, the trials delivered a surprising batch of new information about the workings of the gut’s microbiome, the colony of trillions of bacteria that are believed to help keep us healthy.

The scientists are trying to raise up to eight million dollars for the next round of clinical trials of the device in three hundred patients with digestive issues including irritable bowel syndrome and intestinal bacterial overgrowth. All going well, they hope the capsule will be on sale by two thousand twenty for between one hundred and two thousand dollars.