In this week’s article, we provide a roundup of some of the most recent health and nutrition related articles in the news, five items comprising:
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- Majority of parents don’t know how much exercise children need
- Long working hours ‘linked to stroke risk’
- Too much cleanliness not bad for health, report on hygiene says
- Calls for supplement uptake drive as vit D deficiency highest in adults aged 50+
- Night owls: Simple sleep tweaks boost wellbeing
Majority of parents don’t know how much exercise children need
More than two thirds of parents don’t know how much exercise their child needs to do to stay healthy, new research has revealed.
Official NHS guidance states that children aged five to 18 should do an hour of exercise every day, but 68% of UK adults didn’t know this or thought the target was lower.
The survey of 2,000 adults, from YouGov for the Youth Sport Trust (YST), found that only a quarter knew the recommended exercise time for young people, and on average people thought it was 46 minutes.
Read the full article here.
Related Cytoplan blog
Exercise – can there be too much of a good thing?
Long working hours ‘linked to stroke risk’
Working long hours is linked to an increased risk of stroke, researchers say. Long hours were defined in the French study as more than 10 hours on at least 50 days per year.
People who did long hours for more than a decade were at the greatest risk of stroke, they suggest.
But the UK’s Stroke Association said there were lots of things people could do to counteract the effects of long hours, like exercising and eating well.
The researchers, from Angers University and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, looked at data on age, smoking and working hours from a population study of more than 143,000 adults.
Read the full article here.
Related Cytoplan blogs
Too much cleanliness not bad for health, report on hygiene says
The notion that too much cleanliness can be bad for your health and that children need to be exposed to germs is a dangerous myth, according to a public health body.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) said the hygiene hypothesis – that allergies are caused by too much cleanliness, by killing off the bugs we need to challenge our immune systems – has entered the public imagination and is being misinterpreted.
Playing outside in the dirt will certainly do children good by exposing them to good bacteria, the RSPH stressed, but it was vital that they washed their hands before eating and after going to the toilet.
Read the full article here.
Related Cytoplan blog
Food allergies – symptoms, mechanisms & nutritional interventions
Calls for supplement uptake drive as vit D deficiency highest in adults over aged 50+
More than a quarter of adults aged 50 and over are vitamin D deficient, say researchers, who urge supplement uptake and a mandatory food fortification policy as most effective in tackling deficiencies.
The team said the high numbers of vitamin D deficiency meant more awareness and better public health strategies are needed to achieve optimum vitamin D levels to support healthy ageing.
“Our study identified factors associated with vitamin D deficiency, including being aged 80+ years, obesity and sedentary lifestyles; all of which are increasing traits in western populations,” said associate professor in Nutrition at Trinity College Dublin, Maria O’Sullivan.
Read the full article here.
Related Cytoplan blog
Vitamin D – functions, forms and latest research
Night owls: Simple sleep tweaks boost wellbeing
Tweaking sleeping habits can shift people’s body clocks and improve their wellbeing, say scientists in the UK and Australia.
They focused on “night owls”, whose bodies drive them to stay up late into the night. Techniques used included consistent bedtimes, avoiding caffeine and getting plenty of morning sunshine.
The researchers say their approach may seem obvious, but could make an important difference to people’s lives.
Read the full article here.
Related Cytoplan blog
Breaking the vicious cycle of poor sleep and Alzheimer’s disease
If you have questions regarding the topics that have been raised, or any other health matters, please do contact me (Clare) by phone or email at any time.
clare@cytoplan.co.uk, 01684 310099
Clare Daley and the Cytoplan Editorial Team
Last updated on 3rd November 2022 by cytoffice
