women's body sizes, then and now

sixty years ago, our bodies were a little different to now. See how average sizes compare with then and now:
                                     THEN                            NOW
Height                              5ft 2                              5ft 4
Weight                             9st 10                            10st 3
Waist                               27inches                        34inches
Breasts                             37B                               38c
Hips                                 39 in                               40in
Feet                                  3                                    6
Life expectancy                70.9                                81.5

So we're 2 inches taler, half a stone heavier and our shoe size is three times bigger!
Height's not a problem, nor footsize, but our weight associated with less exercise could well be - associated problems with joints, diabetes are telling warning signs, which we all need to heed, as these will not only burden our health and well being, but also be added strain to the health service.

As the statistics have changes we've moved from an hour glass figure to a straighter wider figure, we will need to watch with care.

Infections may lead to faster memory loss in Alzheimer's disease

Image by M@rg via Flickr

This was a fairly small study of 222 people with Alzheimers (with an average age of 83), who were studied 3 times over 6 months. The study found that people who had respiratory, gastrointestinal or other infections or even bumps and bruises from a fall were more likely to have high blood levels of tumor necrosis factor-α, a protein involved in the inflammatory process.
Of these participants a total of 110 people experienced an infection or injury that led to inflammation during the study. Those people experienced memory loss that was at twice the rate of those who did not have infections or injuries.
Importantly there was no evidence to suggest that there was an increase incidence in infection due to having Alzheimers.
Whilst these results are very important and statistically significant, as the study is only small, it will be necessary to repeat/carry out further research that replicates the finding of this study. The implications are that finding a means tocontrol and reduce tumor necrosis factor-α levels which help to preserve memory for longer and provide suffers & their families with a better quality of life, which is to be highly welcomed.

Alzheimers Disease- key genes found

Cover of Aspirin

key genes could point to new treatments

Click edit above to add content to this empty capsule.

Considered as the 'biggest break-through in 15 years' the UK discovery of 3 potential key genes could help cut the number of people developing Alzheimers by up to a fifth, claim the Alzheimer's Research Trust.
This is very exciting news, as it is said that between 60-80 per cent of a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's is genetic. This could lead to further breakthroughs in treatment.
The research has also found that inflammation appears to be the primary cause of the disease not secondary as initially considered. This means that anti-inflammatory medicines such as Aspirin could be a simple and cheap way of fighting the onset of this terrible disease. In fact adults over 50 are now regularly advised to take Aspirin to reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke, so possibly some retrospective studies to look at incidence of disease development in people who have been prescribed Aspirin, with a family history of Alzheimers maybe a helpful study.
Further a Cancer drug has also been associated with restoring short term memory. As this drug is already approved this coud allow patient trials to begin within the next couple of years, which is very encouraging news indeed.

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• Infections may lead to faster memory loss in Alzheimer's disease (scienceblog.com)

Hospital Blunders Double since 2006

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The latest Nationa Patient Safety Agency report (NPSA) has indicated that the number of reported incidents and near misses has risen by 96%. Of the 86,085 medication incidents only 100 resulted in serious harm and of which 37 resulted in a patient death.

Now the papers would jump up and down and consider that this increase a grave cause of concern. I differ. Given the millions of people that access healthcare it is only natural that there will be some human error. This makes the percentage of risk lower than the 0.04% risk of death from an incident reflected above.

What most of these incidents will be what are referred to as near misses, i.e a mistake picked up and detected through normal process. The rise in figures? Quite simply I see this as better reporting and this is something to be celebrated. It reflects more honest and transparent working by healthcare staff. This allows for discussion,  focused individual and improved staff training programmes. Moreover, due to something referred to as clincial governance, each department will generally review each incident that occurs per month. From this any learning that needs to be taken to reduce future risk of recurrence is acted upon. My prediction is that we won't see continuous rises in these figures

Big thighs might be in!!

Having just returned from holidays and a little over indulgence, I was rather pleased to learn that maybe there was hope for my thighs after all! It transpires that a study published in the BMJ has linked upper thigh size as an indicator of risk of heart disease and premature death. What it suggests is that those with thighs less 60cm diameter are at a greater risk of heart disease than somebody with large thighs. But before you get too excited, those with thighs much wider than 60 cms (23.5 inches) didn't fair much better either. So the parameters seem quite limited.

It would seem that smaller thighs have less muscle mass, which can put you at risk of developing type-2 diabetes. As with all research, what is normally required is more research to see if the results can consistently be reproduced preferrably in a larger cohort of people. But this is no small research study taking over 12 years following 2811 men and women. Indeed it is likely that GP's will adopt this as another indicator for risk. This because it is simple and easy to measure in a practice setting. This means it will be 1 contributary factor taken along side other factors such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure and familt history again, to establish a risk profile for the patient.

The underlying message coming through to me is another reinforcement that we do need to ensure we exercise regularly to preserve health, so I'm just going to dig out my trainers and work off my holiday excess as a priority.