A recent analysis of the impact of falls has revealed some pretty scary statistics. According to the review, 5% of people who break their hip in a fall die when in hospital, and 25% die within a year as a result of the disability it causes.
Further to this, more than 10% go on to be admitted to aged care facilities. And you don’t need to be old to suffer these effects; the study found that more than a third of people aged 50 never regain their full mobility. One quote …

The answer is probably yes! According to a recent article on the Sydney Morning Herald website, “Millions of Australians are taking too many painkillers”. And some of these medications have quite serious side effects. Here are a few key quotes from the article:

“taking higher doses of something like ibuprofen or aspirin, you’re at a higher risk of gastric bleeds, stomach ulcers and bad indigestion”
“Paracetamol is actually really toxic once you get to certain doses, affecting people’s livers in ways that are not easily reversible, and people can die.”
“Ibuprofen-codeine tablets, such as Nurofen …

You probably heard the reports last week that are being described as the biggest breakthrough for pregnancy nutrition since folate. I found a very informative summary of the latest news on the ABC health website which I thought I would share. Here are the key findings and a link to the article:
What defects does the study propose can be avoided by boosting your B3 intake?
The study found that multiple miscarriages, heart, kidney and spinal defects could be avoided by boosting vitamin B3.
Does this mean older women may be able to fall pregnant …

Happy Monday everyone, I just read this super interesting article on the website Science Daily which summarises the findings of a recent study on meditation and yoga. There were some pretty incredible results which I thought I would share. Check out some of the key points of the article below and click here to read the full article.
The most incredible finding was not just that meditation or yoga can help you feel relaxed, they can actually reverse changes to your DNA which are linked to depression and poor health.
Key points:

Stress causes inflammation …

A new study suggests that it might be! According to an article on the New York Times website this week, “People who regularly run or walk briskly appear to have healthier discs in their spines than people who do not exercise”.
The article cites a study performed in Australia where researchers recorded the weekly mileage of runners and compared that to MRI images of their lower backs.
They found that “the runners’ discs were larger and contained more fluid than the discs of the men and women who did not exercise.” These are both …

In this first article of a series on how sugar impacts your health, I’m going to start by looking at the role a high sugar diet plays in inflammation. I first developed an interest in this link when patients would mention in passing that they had noticed an improvement in their pain levels after doing a sugar detox. They were doing the sugar detox for other reasons, but found this added benefit occurred as well.
After hearing this a bunch of times, I started looking into it, and it didn’t take …

There are few things I enjoy more than meeting another Dr Google. And I must confess to getting amongst it myself from time to time, checking to see if that bruise on my toe could potentially be a rare form of untreatable cancer. Heck, the sooner I know, the sooner I can book my one way ticket to the bahamas!
The increase in information available on the net is proving to be a wonderful resource for a lot of people, but, and this might come as a shock to some of you, …

The New York Times posted a really interesting article this week (click here if you want to read it), about the effectiveness (or otherwise), of common surgical procedures. We kind of assume that a doctor won’t recommend surgery for us unless we really need it, and unless it’s going to fix us. After all, there are significant risks and costs involved in surgery, so there must be compelling reasons for them to recommend it, right? Turns out that may not be the case.
As they noted, surgery is not regulated in the …

There has been a lot of research over the years on the best way to warm up. Athletes want to know the right way to do it so that they can do their best performance when it counts. But it’s equally important to be able to reduce the risk of injury so you can run hard without hurting yourself. Is there a way to warm up that achieves both goals – optimal performance and minimal risk of injury? Should you do static stretching or dynamic stretching? Should you jog and …

As you’ve no doubt recently heard, there are calls to make codeine a prescription drug. It is currently an over the counter pain reliever and something that a lot of people routinely use. Chances are you have used it yourself and if so, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. A new report published in The Medical Observer says that for the decade 2000-2009 the number of deaths from taking codeine in Australia more than doubled. Here are some of the key points from the article:

Almost half of these …