Category Archives: Health & wellbeing

Our first Christmas as empty nesters

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The kids have left home, and we’re not really coping, so this seems like the perfect chance to lure them back

My husband and I don’t think we have the condition until, one day last month, hundreds of miles from home, we find ourselves outside our younger son’s university accommodation at 11.30 on a Sunday morning. I am clutching supplies in a little brown paper bag. Our son knows we’re in town, but isn’t expecting this rude awakening. It’s a surprise.

“Do you think we should have called first?” I say as we approach the entrance, the inappropriateness of what we’re doing dawning on me only now.

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‘Pilates-changed-my-life’ stories are annoying… but it did

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Over three years the exercise regime took Rachel Cooke from terrible back pain to new levels of fitness. But it was a lot harder than she expected

One morning almost five years ago, I awoke from uneasy dreams and, like Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s story, The Metamorphosis, found myself to be… well, not precisely an insect, but the effect was similar. Trying to get out of bed, I realised I could barely move. So excruciating was the pain in my back, my only option seemed to be to roll myself – thunk! – on to the floor.

Lying there on my stomach for a few moments, I took in the view (beneath the bed were old shoes and dust balls the size of planets) and then, screwing up my courage, I crawled on to the landing – which is where I stayed for the rest of the day, sobbing quietly and wondering how I would get to the loo; when, exactly, the NHS emergency doctor would arrive.

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A psychedelic retreat proves a healing trip

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Exploring the therapeutic benefits of magic mushrooms at a ceremony in Amsterdam

I’m at a weekend retreat in a converted church near Amsterdam. There is soft, celestial music playing and I’m sipping fresh herbal tea while discussing my hopes and fears for tomorrow’s “ceremony”, which is retreat parlance for a psychedelic trip. Consuming the truffle parts of magic mushrooms is permitted in the Netherlands and my nine fellow guests and I will be eating a variety called Dragon’s Dynamite. We’re not taking recreational drugs, but rather using psychedelics as self-exploratory and therapeutic “plant medicine”. Welcome to the age of the psychedelic retreat.

Synthesis opened its doors in April 2018. It was co-founded by Martijn Schirp, a former poker player who found salvation through psychedelics. “I had my first mushroom trip nine years ago and that changed my life,” he says. “I was walking through this forest and it was so peaceful, it was like a fairy tale. I felt this huge self-critical voice lift off me.” He believes he’d still be estranged from his father if it wasn’t for the perspective psychedelics have given him. His entrepreneurial mind saw that what was missing was a retreat with “medical supervision, private one-to-one coaching and professional standards in a modern context”.

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The female problem: how male bias in medical trials ruined women’s health

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Centuries of female exclusion has meant women’s diseases are often missed, misdiagnosed or remain a total mystery

From the earliest days of medicine, women have been considered inferior versions of men. In On the Generation of Animals, the Greek philosopher Aristotle characterised a female as a mutilated male, and this belief has persisted in western medical culture.

“For much of documented history, women have been excluded from medical and science knowledge production, so essentially we’ve ended up with a healthcare system, among other things in society, that has been made by men for men,” Dr Kate Young, a public health researcher at Monash University in Australia, tells me.

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‘I was an intruder’: what it’s like to be your parents’ least favourite child

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Many mothers and fathers admit to having a preferred child – and experts say that being a sidelined sibling can cause serious problems

Diya says she was never in any doubt her mother had a favourite child – and that it was not her. Now, with three young children of her own, the 27-year-old thinks it is because she looks like her father, who left when she and her sister were very young.

“I remember my dad coming to my defence once when I was about 12, telling my mum that she couldn’t choose to love one daughter more than the other. That was the last time my mum let him in the house,” she says.

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French MPs approve IVF draft law for single women and lesbians

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Bill is Emmanuel Macron’s biggest social reform since he was elected in 2017

France has taken a step towards allowing lesbian and single women to conceive children with medical help, setting the stage for a clash with the country’s religious conservatives.

To loud applause, France’s lower house of parliament approved a draft bioethics law in a move that has already sparked outrage from opponents, including some in President Emmanuel Macron’s own centrist party.

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When my husband died, mushroom foraging helped me out of the dark

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After losing all sense of hope and home, hunting in woodland with other mushroomers got me through my grief

I was a bright-eyed 18-year-old, just one month into an international study exchange in Stavanger in Norway when I met Eiolf. I stood next to him at a party and we spent the whole night talking. It helped that he was one of the few Norwegian students I met who could actually point to my home country of Malaysia on a map. After that night I’d hang around the library hoping to cross his path. Luckily, he had the same idea.

Eiolf was knowledgeable and read a lot, but he also had a goofy sense of humour. He was very kind, too, the sort of person who children and animals gravitate towards. I had assumed that at the end of my exchange I’d go back to Malaysia, but instead I relocated to Norway to be with him; it just felt right. Norway was very different to my homeland, but I settled there and enjoyed a fulfilling career as an anthropologist, while Eiolf became an architect. We were together for 32 years, and I never lost that sense of joy in our relationship. He made me a better version of myself.

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Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

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C-section babies pick up more hospital bacteria than those born vaginally, research shows

Babies born by caesarean section have different gut bacteria to those delivered vaginally, the most comprehensive study to date on the baby microbiome has found.

The study showed that babies born vaginally pick up most of their initial dose of bacteria from their mother, while C-section babies have more bugs linked to hospital environments, including strains that demonstrate antimicrobial resistance. The findings could explain the higher prevalence of asthma, allergies and other immune conditions in babies born by caesarean.

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Experience: I nearly died of measles

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The doctors hadn’t seen such a bad case. But I don’t blame my mother for not having me vaccinated

I was watching a film with my boyfriend, Marty, one Saturday night last April when I felt an itchy rash on my neck. Then I started getting a dry cough, like a cat coughing up a furball. Marty Googled “dry cough” and “rash” and measles came up. But I didn’t have white spots in my mouth, which are common with measles, so we didn’t think anything of it. “You’ve got measles!” Marty joked. We laughed about it.

Mum is a nurse and, in the mid-80s, when I was due to have the measles vaccine, parents often didn’t take it up. This was before the MMR vaccine – and before the discredited doctor, Andrew Wakefield, wrongly linked it to autism – but even then, some parents worried about side-effects. The thalidomide scandal was still fresh in people’s minds. I was aware I hadn’t been vaccinated, but never thought in a million years I would catch measles; it wasn’t even on my radar.

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Experience: I was attacked by an alligator

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He twisted me like a corkscrew as he dragged me to the river bottom in a death roll

In April this year, I was diving for fossils in Peace river in Florida, not far from where I teach marine science at a private naval academy. At 24, I’d been diving in the area for six years without any problems, and was guiding the dive for two friends, including Jake Koehler, who films videos of his underwater finds for his YouTube channel, Dallmyd. Because of the danger from alligators, we’d usually drop anchor on a particular spot, and bang on the boat and throw rocks to disturb them, as they tend to avoid contact with humans. But we hadn’t got much on film that day, so we decided to take a chance and do something unusual: instead of staying in one area, we jumped in the river and drifted backwards with the current.

I drifted into a very narrow channel, about a quarter of a mile ahead of the others, wearing my usual scuba gear: an oxygen tank, a lifejacket and weight belt. I suddenly felt an intense pressure on my left ankle, and, for a split second, I thought it was Jake messing about. We’d been joking earlier that my black wetsuit made me look like bait – the other two were wearing camouflage wetsuits. But then the pressure became unbelievably intense, and I realised it was a gator.

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Ramble on: the fight to save forgotten footpaths

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After the Guardian article about lost rights of way, readers got in touch in their droves regarding routes they have been trying to rescue

Sam Thompson is standing at the end of the footpath that he is helping to save. There is no sign, just a gate and a post adorned with a few strands of barbed wire. “I started walking this route a few months ago. It connects to woods that otherwise I’d have to walk through a housing estate to reach.”

We are in the York suburb of Acomb, a former village now swamped by sprawling post-second-world-war housing developments. To outsiders, it can seem like an endless, stupefying maze of long bends and cul-de-sacs where car drivers are kept awake only by extraordinary numbers of crumbling speed bumps. “We’re in our 20s,” says Thompson. “It was what we could afford.” We climb the gate and start down a narrow path lined by tall grasses, soon dodging through a hedge to emerge in a wild meadow, beyond which lies a line of trees. The change from brick and asphalt to rural beauty is dramatic and totally unexpected.

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‘I don’t smell!’ Meet the people who have stopped washing

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A growing number of people are eschewing soap and trusting bacteria to do the job instead – and an entire industry has sprung up to accommodate them

David Whitlock has not showered or bathed for 15 years, yet he does not have body odour. “It was kind of strange for the first few months, but after that I stopped missing it,” he says. “If I get a specific part of my body dirty, then I’ll wash that specific part” – but never with soap. As well as germs, soap gets rid of the skin’s protective oils and alters its pH level. Although Whitlock appreciated gaining an extra 15 minutes a day from soap-dodging, his primary motivation was to encourage friendly microbes to live on him in symbiotic harmony. The bacteria get to feast on the ammonia from his sweat and he gets low-maintenance, balanced skin.

Just as awareness of the importance of the gut microbiome has led to a boom in probiotic and fermented foods and supplements, there is increasing interest in our skin microbiome: the trillions of microbes that protect us from pathogens and keep us healthy by making vitamins and other useful chemicals. In this unprecedentedly sanitised era, in which eczema, acne and problems associated with dry skin are rife, consumers are hungry for solutions. Even the mainstream brand Dove claims vaguely that its products are “microbiome-gentle”.

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Insomnia sufferers can benefit from therapy, new study shows

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Authors call for cognitive behavioural therapy to be offered through GPs

Forget counting sheep and drinking warm milk, an effective way to tackle chronic insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy, researchers have confirmed.

The authors of a new study say that although the therapy is effective, it is not being used widely enough, with doctors having limited knowledge about it and patients lacking access.

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‘It’s a superpower’: how walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier

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Neuroscientist Shane O’Mara believes that plenty of regular walking unlocks the cognitive powers of the brain like nothing else. He explains why you should exchange your gym kit for a pair of comfy shoes and get strolling

Taking a stroll with Shane O’Mara is a risky endeavour. The neuroscientist is so passionate about walking, and our collective right to go for walks, that he is determined not to let the slightest unfortunate aspect of urban design break his stride. So much so, that he has a habit of darting across busy roads as the lights change. “One of life’s great horrors as you’re walking is waiting for permission to cross the street,” he tells me, when we are forced to stop for traffic – a rude interruption when, as he says, “the experience of synchrony when walking together is one of life’s great pleasures”. He knows this not only through personal experience, but from cold, hard data – walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier.

We are wandering the streets of Dublin discussing O’Mara’s new book, In Praise of Walking, a backstage tour of what happens in our brains while we perambulate. Our jaunt begins at the grand old gates of his workplace, Trinity College, and takes in the Irish famine memorial at St Stephen’s Green, the Georgian mile, the birthplace of Francis Bacon, the site of Facebook’s new European mega-HQ and the salubrious seaside dwellings of Sandymount.

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Foreskin reclaimers: the ‘intactivists’ fighting infant male circumcision

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Emboldened by the body-positive movement and a sense of rage, a growing chorus is pushing back against a common custom

The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.

She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.

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Listen, bend and stretch: how Japan fell in love with exercise on the radio

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Millions join in a mass rajio taisō workout broadcast daily for nearly 70 years

“One, two, three, four … five, six, seven, eight …” That is the cue for half a dozen people braving a humid morning at Kamezuka park in Tokyo to bend, stretch, jump, and run on the spot. The group’s personal trainer is a portable radio perched on the top of a children’s slide. A male voice’s simple instructions, issued to a jaunty piano accompaniment, has become a staple of daily life in Japan since the broadcasts, known as rajio taisō (radio calisthenics), first hit the airwaves almost a century ago.

The three-minute routine is the perfect way to start the day, says Yukihide Maruyama, a 79-year-old retired businessman who has performed the routine nearly every day for a decade. “The exercises aren’t that difficult and afterwards you feel like your body has properly woken up.”

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Women as likely to be turned on by sexual images as men – study

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Neural analysis finds the brains of both sexes respond the same way to pornography

The belief that men are more likely to get turned on by sexual images than women may be something of a fantasy, according to a study suggesting brains respond to such images the same way regardless of biological sex.

The idea that, when it comes to sex, men are more “visual creatures” than women has often been used to explain why men appear to be so much keener on pornography.

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‘My mother-in-law called me Walter White’: how magic mushrooms rescued me from grief

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After our daughter’s death I was overwhelmed by pain and anxiety. Microdosing home-grown mushrooms helped me cope

It was spring when my wife’s waters broke, three months early. We rushed to hospital, terrified. If our daughter arrived now, she might not survive. If she did, she would probably be plagued by lifelong health problems. Jo spent the next four days in hospital, while we prayed labour wouldn’t begin. But the night after we returned home, Jo’s contractions started and we raced back to hospital. Straight away, a foetal monitor was placed on her tummy. The brisk heartbeat we had been following so closely in the previous days was gone. Our daughter had died.

The train of our life was shunted on to a parallel track. We could see the train we were meant to be on pulling away, passing the milestones – the due date, introducing the baby to our family, the first smiles. But ahead of us now lay despair, guilt, a funeral, photos of our precious girl that some family members could barely bring themselves to look at, and support groups where every story would be more heart-rending than the last. There is no right way to deal with losing a baby, but I would call my coping strategy unusual: I became obsessed with growing magic mushrooms.

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Government to issue ‘sleep hygiene’ guidance

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Leaked draft says less than seven hours’ sleep can damage mental and physical health

The government could give people guidance on how much sleep they need each night, according to reports.

A leaked draft of a public health green paper, due to be published by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, says the government will review the evidence on sleep and health. It suggests the minimum amount will vary depending on how old someone is, and the paper will give advice on “sleep hygiene”, according to the Times, which obtained the document.

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