Recent Posts

“I see letters in colour”

“For as long as I can remember I have seen letters and numbers in colour. ‘A’ has always been red, ‘O’ is white, ‘K’ is blue, and ‘L’ and ‘R’ are green, as are three and seven. The colours I see never change for any given letter or number. Some ...

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Warning for serial desk-eaters

Bad news for those who regularly eat lunch glued to their computers: you have twice the chance of developing deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), a potentially fatal blood clot. A recent New Zealand study done on 400 workers found that deskbound eaters had a 2.2-fold increased risk of blood clots. Earlier research ...

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Online diagnosis: are you a cyberchondriac?

We’ve all done it: had a health query and jumped online to find out more. But when Charlotte MacNeil, 36, did it she managed to persuade herself she had “mad cow” disease. “I moved to the UK in the 1990s, when hysteria surrounding Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the human strain of ...

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A breakthrough for arthritic knees

Figures from the National Joint Replacement Registry show that the number of knee replacement surgeries since 2003 has soared by almost 55 per cent. The spike in surgeries is largely a result of an increase in those affected by osteoarthritis – the most common form of arthritis that represents more ...

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What is cancer of unknown primary?

Ribbon days, pin days, moustache months – cancer awareness in Australia has never been higher. But imagine being diagnosed with the sixth most deadly cancer in the nation, only to discover there are no “days” for it, no specialists dedicated to its treatment, no support groups or networks. In short, ...

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Pollen counts are on the rise

Around the globe, pollen counts are increasing and Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests it could be affecting our health: 17.1 per cent of the Australian population reported hay fever symptoms in 2008, compared with 10.3 per cent in 1990. Meanwhile, the number ofasthma-related deaths among children more than doubled ...

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Household chemical health risk

Yet another report has linked some everyday chemicals with increases incancers, diabetes, obesity, falling male fertility and a number of neurological problems in both humans and animals. In May, the European Environment Agency (EEA) released a review which made a direct connection between endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and health problems. EDCs ...

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