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Get set to Change4Life in Great Yarmouth!

Children and young families in Great Yarmouth and other towns across the East of England are to be targeted in a brand new Change4Life initiative to make the region fitter, healthier and more active.

Now, the NHS in the East of England is staging a series of local events aimed at bringing the healthy lifestyle message to young families in a way that is fun and accessible.

Recent figures, taken from the 2008/9 National Child Measurement Programme, have indicated that obesity among young children in the East of England has not improved over the past 4 years, with wide variations across the region. Results of the programme can be found in notes to editors.

Key findings show that:

• 24.7 per cent of four and five year olds in Great Yarmouth were classed as either overweight or obese, compared to a regional figure of 21.8 per cent
• 33.6 per cent of ten and 11 year olds in Great Yarmouth were classed as either overweight or obese, compared to a regional figure of 30.7 per cent

Predictions from a Government based think tank, Foresight, concluded in a recent report that if national obesity trends continue, by 2050, 60 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women could be clinically obese at a cost to the NHS and the wider economy of £50 billion.

Director of public health for NHS East of England, Dr Paul Cosford said: “Levels of obesity among children in the East of England are actually lower than the national average, but that is no reason for complacency and we are extremely keen to get across the message to families that Change4Life really can do exactly that – change your life.

“There are so many simple steps that families with young children can take to adopt a more healthy lifestyle, and we aim to give them some fun ideas at the roadshows. It’s important that parents act now to avoid their children risking serious health problems later in life.”

NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney public health consultant, Dr Shamsher Diu, added: “Levels of obesity among young children in Great Yarmouth are higher than the regional average. We are therefore working hard with our partners at local level through a range of initiatives to address the challenge that we face in the area.

 “The more of our residents that get to know about Change4Life now, the better the long-term health of will be. We are extremely keen to get across the message to families that Change4Life can do exactly that – change your life.”

The launch event at the Market Gates Shopping Centre in Great Yarmouth will feature a special “Keepy Uppy” football demonstration with former Norwich City star Craig Fleming who will take on ten-year-old soccer whiz kid Josh Clancy. Even at his tender age, Josh can perform more than 4000 kick ups, as well as a range of freestyle football tricks. Former Canaries’ captain Craig on the other hand is a self-confessed “stopper”.

“As a central defender I never was all that hot on showing off football skills, so I should think Josh will put me to shame,” said Craig. “But it’s a bit of fun and it’s great if it persuades some youngsters, boys and girls, to take up the game and work at their fitness levels. Change4Life is a fantastic way to sign up to a healthier lifestyle.”

Craig, who played more than 380 times for Norwich City and was inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame in 2003, was once described by Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson as “the best man-to-man marker in the country.”

In addition to Craig and Josh, children from Great Yarmouth’s Kuk Sool Won martial arts team, the town’s Phoenix Karate Club and Stars and Funky Feet Schools of Dance will be providing displays throughout the day to give children a taster of just some ways to keep fit.

This event will be followed by similar events to be held at shopping centres in Luton, King’s Lynn, Peterborough, Basildon and Harlow. These have been specially selected to host exhibitions where families can learn more about healthy living, including how to eat more healthily and taking exercise.

Visit www.change4liferoadshow.com for further information about locations.

Oliver’s story – Great Yarmouth

Parents Lorraine and Andrew Underwood knew they had to act to change their family’s lifestyle when their son Oliver drew a picture of himself with the heading: “All my friends are winners and I’m a loser”.

The family, who live in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth, signed up to the Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT’s MEND programme (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition..Do it!), which according to mum Lorraine was: “The best thing we have ever done.”

Before, Oliver (who was nine in January) attended the programme he was self conscious about his body and completely lacking in confidence, said Lorraine. “His self esteem was really, really low,” she said. “Whatever we did we couldn’t persuade him to feel good about himself and he was being bullied.

“Since he’s been on the programme he’s a different boy. He went shopping with his birthday money, picked himself a fashionable shirt and jacket and for the first time said he felt really cool.”

The MEND programme meant Oliver and his family – including sister Amy, 14 – attending twice weekly classes for ten weeks between October and Christmas to learn about how to make informed choices about food and exercise.

The family now goes swimming, does more walking and plans to go cycling in the summer. “Oliver hated PE, now he loves doing exercise,” said Lorraine.

Oliver’s eating habits have also changed. “He now has fresh carrots, peppers, cucumber, apples – everything he wouldn’t eat before,” she said. “He doesn’t want crisps any more and he only has sweets once a week as a treat on a Saturday.

“The thing is, we’ve done it as a family, which is what Change4Life is all about”.

MEND is a ten week, twice-a-week programme run by Great Yarmouth and Waveney PCT, that addresses both the theory of adopting a healthy lifestyle and practical exercises in a fun and accessible way. Contact programme manager Steph Edrich on 01493 852207, or e-mail steph.edrich@nhs.net for more details.

Carrie’s story - Norwich

Mother of four Carrie Murphy signed up for a Norfolk PCT Joy of Food course because she wanted to learn to cook Shepherd’s Pie “the way grandma used to make it”.

The four week programme celebrates the benefits of simple, healthy home cooking, with everyday, fresh ingredients that will not break the bank at the supermarket.

For someone like Carrie, 27, who lives in West Earlham, Norwich, it proved an eye opener which means her children are now eating better, with less fat and less sugar in their diet. The ready meals have been banished, and the whole family feels happier for it.

“I never cooked before, and I wanted to be able to cook for my kids the way my grandmother cooked for us,” Carrie said. “Things like Shepherd’s Pie – now my kids love it.”

The Joy of Food course runs out of the Bowthorpe Children’s Centre in Norwich and covers the Bowthorpe, West Earlham and Costessey areas. As well as teaching parents to prepare healthy, home made meals, it provides tips and guidance on hygiene, portion sizes, shopping wisely and cooking in bulk for the freezer.

“People thinking about the course don’t need to feel frightened. The instructors are so friendly,” said Carrie. “A lot of people my age never really learned how to cook, and now we have learned things we didn’t think we could do.

“We have been shown how to cook everything fresh from scratch, based on a £5 budget to feed a family of four. It’s really brought out my confidence too.”

Carrie said the course had also changed the way she and her children – Tyler, 8, Bailey, 7, Jack, 2 and baby Mia, one – went shopping. “The children always go for the healthy option these days – they’ll pick a nice apple instead of a chocolate bar.”

Parents interested in joining the next Joy of Food course in Norwich should contact project worker Jean Hall on 01603-594030.

Anti Stigma Campaign gets the thumbs up

Mental health trusts throughout the region have taken up the challenge of working with the Strategic Health Authority on its innovative hairdresser and barber campaign. Working closely with local voluntary organisations and colleagues throughout the NHS, great progress is already being made with both organisations and individuals cracking on with making contact with their local hairdressers and barbers. Working together it is just possible that we can begin to see an end to this last taboo. It's easy to take part, contact us to find out who is leading the campaign in your area and we'll put you in touch. Gavin Mackenzie 01223 597679 or Diana Jakubowska 01223 726760 or click on the links at the botom of the page.

End Mental Health Stigma Campaign launched

Three thousand local hairdressers and barbers across the east of England are being urged to back a regional campaign to end mental health stigma and discrimination. The campaign, being led by the NHS in East of England, is part of the national Time to Change programme and brings together all organisations and people interested in removing the stigma and isolation faced by people who have experience of mental health problems by helping to remove this last taboo.

Enlisting the help of hairdressers and barbers throughout the six neighbouring counties which form NHS East England, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, campaigners will take Time to Change messages to people on the streets through talking and raising awareness.

Hairdressers and barbers will be contacted by local NHS staff, and voluntary organisations and invited to join the fight against mental health discrimination by displaying Time to Change promotional material, helping to convey real facts not myths surrounding mental health while chatting to customers about illnesses like depression as readily as they might discuss cancer or heart disease.

Karen Bell, Chief Executive of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation NHS Trust, (CPFT) said: "Hairdressers and their clients often talk about home, work and health issues and this campaign aims to back those conversations with hard facts to help end the discrimination faced by people who experience mental health problems."

Become involved...read more here

Workers who have control over their working hours enjoy better health beacuse they are less stressed and get more rest, according to the review of ten research studies involving more than 16,000 people.

The review, conducted by researchers at the Wolfson Research Institute based at Durham University, and published by the Cochrane Library, found mental health, blood pressure, and sleep patterns were better among people who could determine their own working hours.

In one of the studies police officers who were able to change their starting times at work also showed significant improvements in psychological wellbeing compared to police officers who started work at a fixed time.

By contrast, fixed-term contracts and other situations were working conditions were determined by the employer had no benefits for health. One study even showed fixed working hours had a negative effect on mental wellbeing, the report said.

In Britain, all parents with children under 16 now have the right to request flexible working although the change, brought in last year, was controversial. Previously only parents of children under the age of six or who were disabled had a right to request flexible working.

Lord Mandelson had warned against bringing in flexible working during a recession saying it would damage business. However, he lost the argument to Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, who had championed flexible working.

Flexible working can include scheduling hours around school times, working from home, job sharing or averaging hours out over a year.

Last month a survey for the group, Family Friendly Working, found a third of parents who had left work after having children said it was because of a lack of flexible working arrangements and three in ten said the cost of childcare forced them to give up working.

Clare Bambra, the lead reviewer in today's research, said: “Flexible working seems to be more beneficial for health and wellbeing where the individuals control their own work patterns, rather than where employers are in control.

“Given the limited evidence base, we wouldn’t want to make any hard and fast recommendations, but these findings certainly give employers and employees something to think about.”

Kerry Joyce, co-author, said: “We need to know more about how the health effects of flexible working are experienced by different types of workers, for instance, comparing women to men, old to young and skilled to unskilled.

This is important as some forms of flexible working might only be available to employees with higher status occupations and this may serve to increase existing differences in health between social groups.”

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “We’ve put family-friendly support at the heart of our reforms because we know that both individuals and businesses have a lot to gain from flexible working.

“Many employers already routinely offer far more flexible work than they did ten years ago – recent figures show that 92 per cent are now prepared to accept a request from any employee.

“But we want to do more, which is why we have established the Family Friendly Working Hours taskforce and are working with employers to look at the options around flexible work.”

Sport Relief Mile

By far the best way to take part in Sport Relief 2010 is to do the Sport Relief Mile on Sunday 21 March.

It's your chance to join thousands of people as you rise to the challenge, raise cash to change lives, and have a great time too!

NHS Stressline tackles New Year money blues

People who are worried about debt, housing and employment will get practical and emotional support from a new NHS helpline launched by Phil Hope, Care Services Minister.

NHS Stressline callers will receive practical information and advice from trained health advisors. If they are suffering from stress, anxiety or depression, they will be directed to a wider package of financial and mental health support. The Stressline number is 0300 123 2000 and it is open daily from 8am-10pm.

The helpline, which has been successfully piloted, is linked to the Government's flagship Talking Therapies programme.

The facts show:

• Debt can be a cause and a consequence of mental health problems, such as stress, anxiety and depression, but often people do not know where to seek help;
• Nearly half the UK population worried about money and debt in 2009;

Phil Hope, Care Services Minister, said,

"After the festive season many of us take a long hard look at our finances. Tightening our belts and getting out of debt always features high on the list of New Year's resolutions. But debt can have a serious impact on a person's mental wellbeing, causing stress, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

"The NHS Stressline is there to help improve people's mental and financial wellbeing. Whether it's practical advice, emotional support or the first step in getting treatment for depression, it will give people real help to tackle their money worries."

Jacqui Jedrzejewski, NHS Direct Mental Health Lead, said:

"We know the credit crunch hits people in many different ways, and job insecurity, redundancy, debt and money problems can all cause feelings of distress and helplessness.

"Throughout this pilot stage we've seen some very poignant examples of how the NHS Stressline has already helped people. Like the 49-year-old man who had just lost his job and felt unable to tell his wife, so continued to act as if he was going to work every day whilst secretly contemplating suicide. Or the 28-year-old woman who was stressed and anxious about her mounting debt due to a cut in her hours at work and felt she didn't have anywhere to turn.

"In these cases, our trained health advisors listened and offered sympathetic, relevant support and advice that helped them both take control of their situation. Additionally, the lady was pointed to a service which could provide specific help with her finances and in the gentleman's case, as with anyone feeling extremely distressed or suicidal, an NHS Direct nurse advisor was available for a further assessment."

Mind's Chief Executive Paul Farmer said:

"Money worries and fears about job security have the potential to trigger mental health problems like depression and anxiety. When people are faced with piles of bills and deep emotional despair the future can seem bleak and it can be difficult to know where to turn for advice. We would encourage anyone experiencing these difficulties to contact the NHS Stressline for support and advice."

RSPH Launches Public Health Manifesto

Smoking ban in cars, Chlamydia screenings for university freshers and eliminating transfats from food: All political parties called to introduce robust public health policies to improve the nation’s health.

All major political parties are today urged to take 12 practical steps to tackle serious public health concerns from obesity and heart disease to alcohol and sexually transmitted infections.

With the general election approaching, the Faculty of Public Health, which represents 3,000 leading public health specialists in the UK and around the world, and the Royal Society for Public Health, representing over 6,000 members from a wide range of health-related professions, have published a package of 12 practical recommendations that, if adopted by the next government, will improve the UK’s health and well-being for the new decade.

The joint public health manifesto calls for:

1.  A minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol sold
2. No junk food advertising in pre-watershed television
3. Ban smoking in cars with children
4. Chlamydia screening for university and college freshers
5. 20 mph limit in built up areas
6. A dedicated school nurse for every secondary school
7. 25% increase in cycle lanes and cycle racks by 2015
8. Compulsory and standardised front-of-pack labelling for all pre-packaged food
9. Olympic legacy to include commitment to expand and upgrade school sports facilities and playing fields across the UK
10. Introduce presumed consent for organ donation
11. Free school meals for all children under 16
12. Stop the use of transfats

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, President of the UK Faculty of Public Health, says:
“Each of these sensible, practical steps could have a significant impact on people’s health. Together they amount to a package of measures that could save many lives and relieve pressure on the NHS. Preventing ill-health with firm policies such as the smoking ban in cars has got to be right up there at the top of the next government's agenda. Any party that claims to be the party of the NHS has to commit to promoting and protecting health as well as healthcare - all the more so with such lean times ahead.”

Professor Richard Parish, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Public Health, says:
“We are facing unprecedented challenges to public health ranging from climate change to a catastrophic diet and accidents to alcohol abuse. The time to act is now, not wait until it is too late to do anything meaningful. Many of the actions needed require political will, rather than resources. This manifesto represents a start upon which the next Government can build a healthier and more prosperous future"

Research by The California Environmental Protection Agency shows that being exposed to cigarette smoke particles in a closed car is equivalent to the exposure of fighting a California wildfire for over four to eight hours. 77% of respondents to a 2008 YouGov poll in England supported a smoking ban in cars with children.

There has been a staggering 150% rise in Chlamydia cases between 1998 and 2007. The most vulnerable group seems to be young people under 25 who make up 65% of all new Chlamydia cases.

Alcohol-related harm and obesity rates in Britain are nearing epidemic proportions. In England, alcohol-related hospital admissions went up by 69% between 2002 and 2007. The cost of drinking to the NHS England is estimated to be £2.7 billion. In Scotland, the death rates are double compared to the UK as a whole and the country has the highest death rate due to alcoholic liver disease in Western Europe .

Almost one in four adults in England were classed as obese in 2007, as were 17% of boys aged two to fifteen and 16% of girls.

Morgan Fichter is a 10-year-old from New Jersey in the US. Her father, Bill, is a police officer on duty until 3am. Her mother, Heather, works part-time, ­devoting herself to taking Morgan and her brother to their many activities.

Morgan plays football, but her first love is competitive swimming. She is also a violinist in the school orchestra, with two practices and a private lesson each week, on top of the five nights she practises alone. Every night, Heather and Morgan sit down to her homework, then watch the Learning channel.

Morgan has always appeared to be an enthusiastic, well-balanced child. But once she spent a year in the classroom of a very critical teacher, she could no longer unwind at night. ­Despite a ­reasonable bedtime of 9.30pm, she would lie awake in frustration until 11.30pm, sometimes midnight.

During the day, she was crabby and prone to crying easily. Occasionally, she fell asleep in class. Heather began to worry why her daughter couldn't sleep. Was it stress, or hormones?

Concerned about Morgan's well­being, Heather asked the paediatrician about her daughter's sleeping habits. "He didn't seem interested," she ­recalls. "He said, 'So, she gets tired once in a while. She'll outgrow it.'"

The opinion of the ­paediatrician is typical. According to surveys by the National Sleep Foundation, 90% of American parents think their child is getting enough sleep.

The kids themselves say otherwise: 60% of children in high school report extreme daytime sleepiness. A quarter admit that their grades have dropped because of it. Depending on which study you look at, anywhere from a fifth to a third are falling asleep in class at least once a week.

There are as many causes for this lost hour of sleep as there are types of family. Overscheduling of activities, homework, lax bedtimes, television sets and mobile phones in the bedroom all contribute. So does guilt; home from work after dark, ­parents want time with the children and are ­reluctant to order them to bed. All these reasons converge on the fact that until now, we could ignore the lost hour because we didn't know the true cost to children.

However, sleep scientists have been able to isolate and measure the ­impact of this single lost hour. Because ­children's brains are a work in progress until the age of 21, and because much of that work is done while a child is asleep, this lost hour appears to have an exponential impact on children that it simply doesn't have on adults.

The surprise is not merely that sleep matters – but how much it ­matters, ­demonstrably, not just to academic performance and emotional stability, but to phenomena assumed to be entirely unrelated, such as the ­international obesity ­epidemic and the rise of attention deficit ­hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Some scientists theorise that sleep problems during formative years can cause permanent changes in a the brain structure – damage that a child can't sleep off. It's even ­possible that many of the hallmark characteristics of ­adolescence – moodiness, depression, and even binge-eating – are symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

Dr Avi Sadeh, of Tel Aviv ­University, is a clinical psychologist. A couple of years ago, he sent 77 nine and 11-year-olds home with randomly drawn ­instructions to either go to bed ­earlier or stay up later, for three nights. ­Sadeh's team found that the first group managed to get 30 minutes more true sleep a night. The latter group got 31 minutes less of true sleep.

After the third night's sleep, a ­researcher went to the school in the morning to give the children a test of neurobiological functioning. The ­effect was sizeable. The performance gap caused by an hour's difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a ­normal nine-year-old and a normal 11-year-old. Which is another way of saying that a slightly sleepy 11-year-old will perform in class like a nine-year-old. "A loss of one hour of sleep is equivalent to [the loss of] two years of cognitive maturation and development," Sadeh explains.

Dr Paul Suratt, of the University of ­Virginia, studied the impact of sleep problems on vocabulary test scores taken by elementary school ­students. He also found a seven-point ­reduction in scores, a significant ­reduction. "Sleep disorders can ­impair children's IQ as much as lead ­exposure," says Suratt.

If these findings are accurate, then it should add up over the long term: we should expect to see a correlation ­between sleep and school grades. Indeed, every study done shows this connection.

These correlations really peak in high school, because that's when there's a steep drop-off in kids' sleep. Dr Kyla Wahlstrom, of the University of Minnesota, surveyed the sleeping habits and grades of more than 7,000 high-school pupils. Teenagers who got As averaged about 15 more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged 15 more minutes than the C students, and so on. Every 15 minutes counts.

With the benefit of magnetic ­resonance imaging scans, researchers are starting to understand exactly how sleep loss impairs a child's brain. Tired children can't remember what they have just learned, for instance, because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory.

A tired brain gets stuck on a wrong answer and can't come up with a more creative solution, repeatedly ­returning to the same answer it already knows is incorrect.

Both those mechanisms weaken a child's capacity to learn during the day. But even more important is what the brain is up to when a child is asleep at night. Dr Matthew Walker, of University of California, ­Berkeley explains that during sleep, the brain shifts what it has learned that day to more efficient ­storage regions of the brain. Each stage of sleep plays its own unique role in capturing memories. For example, studying a foreign language requires learning vocabulary, auditory memory of new sounds and motor skills to ­correctly enunciate the new word. The vocabulary is synthesised by the hippocampus early in the night during "slow-wave sleep", a deep slumber without dreams. The motor skills of enunciation are processed ­during stage two non-REM sleep, and the ­auditory memories are encoded across all stages. Memories that are emotionally laden get processed ­during REM sleep. In other words, the more you have learned during the day, the more you need to sleep at night.

To reconsolidate these memories, certain genes appear to be activated. One of these genes is essential for synaptic plasticity, the strengthening of neural connections. The brain does synthesise some memories during the day, but they are enhanced and ­concretised during the night – new inferences and associations are drawn, leading to insights the next day.

"We have an incendiary ­situation ­today," says Walker, "where the ­intensity of learning that kids are ­going through is so much greater, yet the amount of sleep they get to process that learning is so much less."

While all kids are affected by sleep loss, for teenagers, sleep is a special challenge.

Mary Carskadon, of Brown ­University, has demonstrated that during puberty, the circadian system – the biological clock – does a "phase shift" that keeps adolescents up later. In prepubescents and adults, when it gets dark outside the brain produces ­melatonin, which makes us sleepy. But adolescent brains don't release ­melatonin for another 90 minutes. So even if teenagers are in bed at 10pm, they lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

Edina, Minnesota, an affluent ­suburb of Minneapolis, changed its high-school starting times from 7.25am to 8.30am. The results were startling, and it affected the brightest kids most. Getting another hour of sleep boosted maths Sat test scores of Edina's best and brightest by 56 points, and their ­verbal Sat score a whopping 156 points. The students also reported higher ­levels of motivation and lower levels of ­depression. In short, an hour more of sleep improved the students' ­quality of life.

While the evidence is compelling, few districts have followed this lead. Conversely, 85% of America's public high schools start before 8.15am, and 35% start at or before 7.30am.

Obstacles against later start times are numerous and Dr Mark ­Mahowald has heard all those arguments. As ­director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Centre, he has been at the centre of many school start-time debates. But of all the arguments he has heard, no one is saying that children learn more at 7.15am than they do at 8.30am. "If schools are for education, we should promote learning ­instead of ­interfering with it," he says.

After his school started later, Kleinfeld couldn't believe it: "We got our kid back." Zack would bound downstairs in the morning with a smile and his Sat scores went up too.

Several scholars have noted that many hallmark traits of modern ­adolescence – moodiness, impulsiveness, disengagement – are also symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation. Might our culture-wide perception of what it means to be a teenager be ­unwittingly skewed by the fact that they don't get enough sleep?

Let's next consider the hidden role sleep has played in the obesity ­epidemic. It's often noted that in the last three decades, childhood obesity has tripled. Half of all kids are at least "at risk of being overweight". For a long time, there's been one ­culprit to blame for our failed efforts: ­television. Rather than running around the neighbourhood, today's kids sit in front of the television an average of 3.3 hours a day. The connection to obesity seemed so obvious and was so often repeated, that few people thought it even needed to be supported scientifically.

Dr Elizabeth Vandewater, of the ­University of Texas at Austin, got fed up with hearing fellow scholars blame it all on television with only weak data to support the claim. "It's treated as ­gospel without any evidence," she complains. "It's just bad science." Vandewater did her own analysis and found that obese kids watch no more television than kids who aren't obese. All the thin kids watch ­massive amounts of television too. There was no statistical correlation between ­obesity and media use.

Vandewater examined the children's time diaries and realised why the earlier research was wrong. Kids don't trade television time for physical activity. "Children trade functionally equivalent things. If the television's off, they don't go and play sports," she says, "they do some other sedentary behaviour."

In fact, while obesity has increased rapidly since the 1970s, kids watch only seven minutes more of TV a day. While they do average 30 minutes of video games and internet surfing on top of TV viewing, the leap in obesity began in 1980, well before home video games and web browsers. This ­obviously doesn't mean it's good for the waistline to watch TV.

But it does mean that something other than television is making kids even heavier.

Five years ago, ^­already aware of an association between sleep apnoea and diabetes, Dr Eve Van Cauter ­discovered a "neuroendocrine cascade" that links sleep to obesity. Sleep loss increases the hormone ghrelin, which signals hunger, and decreases its metabolic ­opposite, leptin, which suppresses appetite. Sleep loss also elevates the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is lipogenic, meaning that it stimulates your body to make fat. Human growth hormone is also disrupted. Normally secreted as a single big pulse at the beginning of sleep, growth hormone is essential for the breakdown of fat.

It seems counter-intuitive to hear that a key to staying thin is to spend more time ­doing the most sedentary inactivity possible. Yet this is exactly what ­scientists are finding. All the studies point in the same direction: on average, children who sleep less are fatter than children who sleep more.

Van Cauter has gone on to discover that the stage of slow-wave sleep is especially critical to proper insulin ­sensitivity and glucose tolerance. When she lets subjects sleep, but ­interrupts them with gentle door knocks just loud enough to keep them from passing into the slow-wave stage (without actually waking the subjects), their hormone levels respond in a way that's akin to a weight gain of 20 to 30lb.

As ­previously noted, children spend over 40% of their asleep time in this slow-wave stage, while adults are in this stage only about 4% of the night. This could explain why the ­relationship ­between poor sleep and obesity is much stronger in children than in adults.

Despite how convincing all this evidence is, somehow it still feels like a huge leap of faith to consider giving back an hour of our children's lives to slumber. Statistical correlations are fine evidence for scientists, but for ­parents, we want more – we want control.

Long before children become ­overscheduled high schoolers ­gunning for college, parents – guardians of their children's slumber – start ­making trade-offs between their sleep and other needs.

This is especially true in the last hour of our child's day. During this time, children should be in bed, but there are so many priorities lobbying for ­attention. As a result, sleep is treated much like the national debt – what's another half-hour on the bill? We're surviving; kids can too.

Sleep is a biological imperative, but humans alone try to resist its pull. Instead, we see sleep not as a ­physical need but a statement of character. It's considered a sign of weakness to ­admit to feeling tired – and it's a sign of strength to refuse to succumb to ­slumber. Sleep is for wusses.

But perhaps we are blind to the toll it is taking on us. Dr David Dinges, of the University of Pennsylvania, did an experiment shortening adults' sleep to six hours a night. After two weeks, they reported that they were doing OK. Yet on a battery of tests, they proved to be just as impaired as someone who has stayed awake for 24 hours straight.

Dinges did the experiment to ­demonstrate how sleep loss is ­cumulative and how our judgment can be fooled by sleep deprivation.

Nevertheless, it's tempting to think, I would suffer, but not that bad. I would be the exception. We've coped on too little sleep for years, and ­managed to get by. We have some ­familiarity with this.

But when it comes to a child's ­developing brain, are we willing to keep taking the same brazen dare?

Extracted from Nurtureshock: Why ­Everything We Think About Raising Our Children is Wrong by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

It has never been easier to banish the blues. Drop in to see your friendly family doctor, tell him (or her) your tale of woe, exit clutching a prescription for Prozac (or similar) and within a few weeks you should feel much happier. But a lot of people don't feel happier – as confirmed by a study, reported in this paper last week suggesting that the drugs are ineffective in nearly half of the three million people to whom they are prescribed annually.

There are several reasons why this might be so. "A growing number of people diagnosed with depression are not really depressed at all," observes Alastair Santhouse, consultant in psychological medicine at Guy's Hospital, London. "More detailed questioning reveals a familiar pattern in which the patient lacks a sense of purpose in life with no higher aspiration." Their psychological malaise he attributes to the prevailing, scientifically sanctioned view that we humans are nothing but a "biological accident with no purpose or goals". In addition, it would seem the drug companies have engaged in a series of dubious practices to convey the impression that this class of drugs is much more effective than it really is. Prof Irving Kirsch of Hull University found the commonest of these is simply to "withhold" the results of those trials that fail to produce the correct answer. "My colleagues are led to the inescapable conclusion that for many they are little more than active placebos with very little therapeutic benefit," he writes in his recently published book The Emperor's New Drugs. Caveat.

Extract taken from Telegraph Newspaper

Over three hundred of the 1,500 babies likely to be born this New Year’s day could be overweight or obese by the time they start school unless action is taken. The revelation comes as Start4Life - a new campaign to support pregnant women and parents of babies to give their baby a healthier start in life – launches today.

• Mum's milk - why breast milk is better for both mum and baby
• Everyday counts – information about how each day of breastfeeding makes a difference to babies’ health 
• No rush to mush - the Start4Life banana challenge shows the 3 signs to look out for that together show babies are ready to start on solid foods - if your baby is able to sit up with their head steady, reach out, grab a finger-sized piece of peeled, ripe banana, and eat some of it all by themselves, they are ready! 
• Taste for life – advice on how giving babies a variety of food now, can stop them turning into a fussy eater later;
• Sweet as they are – tips on how to avoid giving babies a sweet tooth 
• Baby moves – guidance on why it's important for all little ones to be lively and active.
   
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• Read more here

 

In November 2008, Thetford successfully bid for £900k of funding from the Department of Health for healthy lifestyle projects in the town. As just one of nine towns in England to be awarded the Healthy Town status, Thetford has devised a programme of individual projects and schemes to make it easier for people to be more active and eat well for a healthier future. The programme is also part of the overall vision of 'Moving Thetford Forward' to regenrate the town through the provision of education, skills training, infrastructure and a healthy culture. Healthy Towns is also part of the national Change4Life movement.

 

Autumn can be wonderful: bright, crisp days with brilliant blue skies, leaves in colours that lift the spirit, hedges glistening with jewel-like hips and haws. For wild animals, food is plentiful. But danger lies ahead, and many won't make it through the winter. If they are to have even a chance of survival, they must adapt.

One way of dealing with colder weather is to alter one's behaviour: honey bees huddle together in their hives, and birds flock together to reduce heat loss. Almost half of the bird species that breed in Britain leave for the winter, sometimes travelling prodigious distances. The Arctic tern completes a round trip of 32,000km; swallows, which have already deserted us, will now be sunning themselves in the southern tip of Africa. But physiological changes are frequently involved. All the travellers need to store fat to fuel their journey, and many have other tricks: the bar-tailed godwit shrinks its internal organs (as the scientist who discovered this says, "Guts don't fly"), while other species allow their body temperature to fall by up to a third during the night in order to consume less energy.

The American wood frog undergoes an even more dramatic transformation. At first this amphibian deals with the cooler days by burying itself in the soil. Then, as the temperature continues to drop, the glycogen that is stored in its liver is converted to glucose, which floods the frog's cells, lowering the freezing point of the liquid in its body. This "supercooling" prevents ice crystals from forming and rupturing internal organs.

Meanwhile, mammals that are about to hibernate, such as bats and badgers, build up food reserves and store them as brown fat, which can generate prodigious amounts of heat rapidly. As they enter hibernation, their temperature drops but is carefully maintained, using their fat reserves, at just above the ambient temperature.

How do natural variations such as the changing day length make such profound alterations to physiology and behaviour? All organisms have to respond to and anticipate change, and the way they do this is by using their bodies' "circadian clock", which, in effect, allows everything from a bacterium to a bat to "know" what time of day it is. This clock governs when an animal eats, sleeps and reproduces: it is hard to overstate how important it is at helping animals adapt to changing conditions throughout the seasons. In humans, our clocks are responsible for the rise and fall of our core body temperature, and our sleep-wake cycle, as well as many physiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioural functions.

Circadian rhythms (the term comes from the Latin for "about a day") were first noticed in plants in 350BC by a centurion in Alexander the Great's army. He observed that, at night, a plant's leaves drooped next to the sides of the stem but in the morning they rose as if to worship the sun. In fact, this is an innate response, called the "sleep movement", that even occurs in the absence of sunlight.

In the early 1900s scientists found that animals have circadian rhythms, too: they also are capable of maintaining a 24-hour-long activity pattern in the absence of external cues such as light. In mammals the main "clock" is located in a part of the brain known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN. Its mechanism is so strong that you can remove the cells and keep them in a culture and they'll still maintain a 24-hour rhythm. In normal circumstances, however, the SCN reacts to the lengthening nights by instructing the brain's pineal gland to secrete more of the hormone called melatonin. It is melatonin that triggers many of the changes needed for animals to adapt to winter - and it also plays an important part in sleep.

We humans like to think of ourselves as somehow outside the natural world, but we have a circadian clock as well. In the 1970s scientists studied students housed in second world war bunkers in Leipzig, Germany. The students remained in the bunkers for between two and four weeks at constant light levels and were not allowed watches or to have naps. Most eventually settled into a regular routine just slightly longer than 24 hours. "This biological clock has a very powerful effect on us," says Professor Jim Horne, director of Loughborough University's sleep research centre. Shift workers, he says, "regularly have a tough time dealing with the period between 2am and 4am."

What is less clear is the relationship to seasonal affective disorder, or Sad. Those who suffer from Sad report feeling depressed and lethargic as the days grow darker; they have disrupted sleep patterns, crave sweets and go off sex. Horne is sceptical: "People tend to get more miserable, but this isn't necessarily because of circadian changes but because it's the end of summer and they feel a bit downhearted that winter is coming, with all the trials and tribulations that brings." Yet the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists Sad under mood disorders with seasonal patterns.

One theory about Sad is that sufferers do not get enough light in winter to halt melatonin production, and this disturbs their sleep and appetite. The standard treatment is to use bright light with a blue tinge to reset the body clock. Early studies suggested that light exposure for three hours at the beginning and end of the day was needed, but more recent research has shown that single, intense, daily pulses are as effective. Horne has his doubts about such treatment, citing a possible placebo effect. "The more expensive and arduous or bizarre the treatment is," he says, "the more there's a psychological element to it."

Other treatments that are less widely used but can be effective are taking the anti-depressant Prozac, which boosts serotonin levels, or, along with light pulses in the morning, doses of melatonin in the evening. But whether we have Sad or merely feel it, if migration is not an option, it seems that the best way to deal with winter is to try to get outside during daylight hours as much as possible.

Forget fancy diets and strict exercise regimes. 

The key to keeping trim could simply be eating lots of tomatoes. 

Eating the fruit leaves you feeling satisfied, suppressing the urge to snack, which is one of a slimmer's main pitfalls. 

It is thought tomatoes are rich in compounds that alter levels of appetite hormones, making them an easy - and cheap - way to keep hunger pangs at bay. 

The findings emerged from research into the benefits of enriching white bread with fruit and vegetables. 

A small group of normal weight women aged between 18 and 35 were offered cream cheese sandwiches that had been made with either white bread or bread that had been enriched with carrots or tomatoes. 

It was thought that the extra fibre provided by the carrot would make the carrot-bread lunches the most filling.

Instead, the tomato bread was the most satisfying, a nutritional conference in France heard. 

Researcher Dr Julie Lovegrove, of Reading University, said: 'They were given the sandwiches in a random order and we recorded how full they said they were. 

'It was a small study, and we can't yet say what the crucial tomato ingredient is, but the results were statistically significant.' 

Further research will focus on whether eating tomatoes alters levels of appetite-regulating hormones, including ghrelin.

A lower level of ghrelin makes us feel full.

Everyday Swim is about encouraging people to swim for leisure, fitness and fun.  Projects are underway across the country to look at new ways of making all pool activity more accessible and popular.  We are keeping track of what works well and why.  This website is one way of sharing the learning from Everyday Swim so across the country we can drive up the number of people who make swimming part of their everyday lives.  So come on in, the water is great - click here to read more......

NEW CLASSES Get Active at 50 Are you looking for a way to feel fitter and healthier but unsure where to start? Can you travel to Huntingdonshire? Then why not try RightStart classes today. RightStart 123 offer a range of group exercise classes from chair-based to circuit to cater for all abilities. All classes are suitable for people wanting to exercise for the first time or returning to exercise after a medical condition. Classes available in: Saxongate Community Centre, Huntingdon St Neots Leisure Centre Medway Centre, Huntingdon British Legion Hall, Yaxley Sawtry Leisure Centre St Ivo Leisure Centre Huntingdon Leisure Centre For more information: Click here to download programme Call the Rightstart Scheme on 01480 388860/388469 between 9am-1pm (weekdays) OR Email: activelifestyles@huntsdc.gov.uk OR                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                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It brings together the thoughts and ideas of a range of people who have personal or professional experience of mental health and well-being. We have some fabulous free resources (see below). Playing it Forward CD:  Introduction Vox pops                                                                  Why now How to use this cd Why we made this cd What is well-being? What are the principles The principles of  well-being How the principles work together Everyday People Conclusion     Free copies of this CD are available to order, simply: email shivaun.aveston@easterndc.org.uk or call 01206 287589 today. Whole Life Workbook This workbook is designed as a resource for those who have personal experience of mental health problems and those who support them, as family members, friends, 'official supporters or teams. It is not academically based, but fundamentally communicates an unwavering message of hope, as it does not exclude any individual or group of individuals in its message. This workbook was compiled and created by Tanya Kennard-Cambell as Whole Life Programme Manager (Eastern Development Centre) with thanks to all contributors. The workbook is available here to download, chapter by chapter or simply contact us for free copies. Contents Page Chapter 1 - Introduction Chapter 2 - Well-being Chapter 3 - Recovery Chapter 4 - Social Inclusion Chapter 5 -Exercises and Resources A Whole Life DVD is also available on request To order a copy of this DVD or request copies of the Workbook, posters and appendices, simply: email shivaun.aveston@easterndc.org.uk or call 01206 287589 today.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      <