Health New Year’s Resolutions

Hot flushes are temporary but recurring feeling of warmth that spreads over the body which often begins in the head and neck region and can be very troublesome. Hot flushes often occur during sleep, producing perspiration known as night sweats. As a result, hot flushes can have a big impact on your quality of life. Hot flushes are one of the most common symptoms women have when they go through the menopause. About 3 out of 4 women going through the menopause (75%) will have hot flushes.  If you've had one, there's no mistaking it: the sudden, intense, hot feeling on your face and upper body, perhaps preceded or accompanied by a rapid heartbeat and sweating, nausea, dizziness, anxiety, headache, weakness, or a feeling of suffocation. Researches recruited 209 women who experienced at least four hot flushes or night sweats every day.  All the patients received up to 20 acupuncture treatments within 6 months.  Nearly half the women saw a 47% reduction in hot flushes or night sweats, while almost 12% reported that their symptoms had stopped almost completely although 4% actually saw an increase in their problems. What is interesting is that most of the women how saw their hot flushes and night sweats decrease started seeing improvements after three sessions. Research http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2016/Acupuncture_Reduces_Hot_Flashes_for_Half_of_Women,_Study_Finds.htm  

Having explained what anxiety is, I want to look at how people can help themselves to reduce their anxiety levels. Whether you suffer from occasional anxious thoughts to a full blow anxiety disorder yoga can be helpful.  Once study found that women who practiced yoga twice a week for two months reduced their anxiety levels significantly. Another scientific study found that regular yoga was more effective than walking for improving the mood and anxiety levels in healthy people.  Current thinking is that Yoga may work by boosting the levels of the neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutryic acid) in the brain - which acts as an inhibitor in the brain reducing anxiety. References https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19341989 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20722471

People in the UK are low in vitamin D because of the weakness of the sunlight and the short summers.  In addition there is greater concern in the UK about getting skin cancer from sunbathing or being out in the sun.  Almost every rheumatoid arthritis sufferer has low levels of vitamin D and this is likely to be true for people with other inflammatory diseases too. Sunshine isn't the only source of vitamin D.  Some foods such as eggs, oily fish such as sardines and salmon are rich in vitamin D too.  Reserachers from the university of brimingham are the lastest to report in the importance of vitamin D.  In a series of tests, they discovered that the immune cells of rheumatoid arthritis pateients could still respond normally to vitamin D by supressing inflammatory signalling - if those cells were circulating in the blood,  but the same cell type when localisec to the fluid around the arthricitc joints, showned no anti-inflamatory reaction to vitamin D.  This is because arthritis leads to vitamin D insensitivity which means that cells no longer respond to it. The research suggest that vitmain D therapy could still work on patients if they are given very high doeses, although standard suplements amy not.  Prof Martin Hewison says that "almost everyone in the Uk has vitamin D deficiency".  High levels of vitamin D can help prevent inflamatory diseases including rheumatiod arthritis. Reference https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896841117304201