“Reality TV encourages children to drink and smoke, experts warn,” The Guardian reports. A new study measured the amount of smoking and alcohol shown in the complete series of 5 reality TV programmes aired last year: Celebrity Big Brother, Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex, Geordie Shore and Love Island. Alcohol drinking was
The Guardian gives us the bad news that “red and processed meat can shorten life”, while The Daily Telegraph provides the good news that “swapping one portion of red meat a day for fish or nuts could cut risk of early death by almost a fifth”. Both headlines are prompted by a major new study
“Music festival lighting ‘can trigger epileptic fits’,” reports BBC News. Dutch researchers used records from a company providing medical services to music festivals to investigate the number of festival goers treated for epileptic seizures (fits). They looked at 28 electronic dance music festivals held in the Netherlands in 2015. They compared the number of seizures
“Falling asleep in front of the TV could increase the risk of obesity,” The Daily Telegraph reports, while the Daily Mirror suggests it’s specifically women who sleep with a light who are more likely to gain weight. Both headlines are reporting a study aiming to see whether light exposure at night could be linked with
“Drinking tomato juice can reduce your risk of heart disease,” is the overenthusiastic headline in the Daily Mirror. Japanese researchers offered people free tomato juice for a year, to see if it made a difference to their blood pressure or cholesterol levels. While it made no difference to the 481 people in the study overall,
“Self-harm in girls and young women rising at ‘alarming’ rate,” reports Sky News. A study based on 3 surveys of people in England aged 16 to 74 found a worrying rise in people who say they have ever self-harmed. The overall numbers rose from 2.4% in 2000 to 6.4% in 2014. The increase in reported
“A hormone most commonly produced during pregnancy could be used to treat a painful joint condition according to new research,” the Mail Online reports. The research involved rats who’d undergone surgery to replicate what’s commonly called frozen shoulder in humans. This is where scar tissue builds up around the ball and socket joint, causing pain
“Heavily processed food like ready meals and ice-cream linked to early death,” reports The Guardian. The headline comes from 2 large observational studies, which found people who ate the most “ultra-processed” food were more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, or to die sooner, compared with those who ate the least ultra-processed food.
“Night shifts do not increase breast cancer risk, study concludes,” reports The Guardian. This reassuring headline follows analysis of information about more than 100,000 women in the UK over a 10-year period. A link between night shift work and breast cancer risk was first proposed 30 years ago. This was because of fears that working
“Honey is ‘just as effective at treating cold sores as anti-viral creams’,” the Mail Online reports. Cold sores are skin infections around the mouth caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV). You catch the virus through direct skin contact with another person who has the virus. Once you have it, HSV lies dormant in the
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