Category: Health

Halfpoint/Shutterstock On a busy hospital ward, a nurse says “wonderful, wonderful” as a patient with dementia completes a task. It sounds simple, but moments like this can play an important role in how care gets done. Building on my doctoral research, a recent study I co-authored with colleagues examines how praise is used in the […]

Mai Groves/Shutterstock.com Rugby is a physical sport, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tackle. In amateur and school rugby union, tackles are responsible for well over half of all match injuries, making them the single biggest source of injury risk in the game. That reality has prompted growing efforts to make tackling […]

Pramata/Shutterstock.com What if protecting your brain from dementia was as simple as wiggling your little fingers a few seconds each day? That’s the promise behind “pinky time”, a viral TikTok trend that claims a simple finger exercise can lower your risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Videos promoting this supposed brain-health hack have attracted millions of views, […]

Nuva Frames/Shutterstock In a recent episode of British sitcom Amandaland, Anne Flynn turns to ChatGPT for help talking to her teenage son about sex. The episode frames this as “The Chat”: the awkward parent-child conversation many adults dread. What Anne is doing on screen is what many people are now doing in private: taking hard […]

During a heatwave, cooling you down becomes much more important than digesting and absorbing a big meal. AnikonaAnn/ Shutterstock When temperatures soar, many people find their appetite suddenly plummets. The idea of eating a hot meal becomes the last thing our minds when the heat becomes too much to bear. This doesn’t happen because the […]

Niranjan Acharya/Shutterstock.com For years, many people have taken calcium and vitamin D supplements to help keep their bones strong as they age. Walk into any pharmacy or supermarket and you’ll find shelves full of products promising to support bone health, prevent fractures and reduce the risk of falls. Calcium is an important building block of […]

Studio Nut/Shutterstock Heat is no longer a future climate risk. It is already here. Across continents, high temperatures are being pushed higher by forces acting at once: human-caused warming, very warm oceans, dry soils, slow-moving high-pressure weather systems and El Niño conditions that have now developed in the tropical Pacific. El Niño is a natural […]

People who regularly strength trained had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and dementia. PeopleImages/ Shutterstock Strength training has long been seen as something you mainly do to build muscle or look good. But a new study adds to a growing body of evidence that shows lifting weights does far more than change […]

Teacher Photo/Shutterstock Many of us would like to keep our brains sharp as we get older. That has helped create a growing market for “brain-health” supplements. These include fish-oil capsules and postbiotics, the beneficial, non-living compounds and byproducts produced by “good” gut bacteria (probiotics) when they digest dietary fibre or prebiotics. But assessing these products […]

Andrzej Kubik/Shutterstock Climate-induced crop failures, death of livestock and water shortages increase food insecurity and malnutrition. This makes it harder for families to maintain stable incomes and consistent supplies of food. Climate-induced drought and flooding make agriculturally dependant communities poorer and more desperate for income. In some countries such as Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan and Kenya, […]