FREE REPORT. Your key pointers to a life-transforming diet

Find out the best diet for you in one of four free reports we'll give you when you join the WDDTY community. We'll also send you up-to-the-moment health news and advice twice a week, packed full of insights that may well transform your own health.

email to friend Printer friendly

Updates

Cold - not bugs - leads to high winter death rates

New evidence shows that being cold is responsible for more preventable (excess) deaths than the flu in winter.

Researchers from Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, recorded the number of deaths due to all causes and flu from 1970 to 1999 in southeast England. They found that death rates went up as the temperature went down from 18 degrees C.

There are around 50,000 preventable deaths every year in the UK during winter, and only 2.4 per cent of these are related to the flu.

The researchers noted that with a moderate wind, even at temperatures as high as 5 degrees C, a person’s blood undergoes major changes in composition in as little as 20-30 minutes. The blood thickens and becomes stickier, increasing the chances of heart attack, clot formation and respiratory infection.

Also, unlike places which are consistently cold, such as Siberia (which has no excess winter deaths), people who live in countries with fluctuating seasonal temperatures are often poorly prepared for cold weather.

The authors recommend that physicians advise their older, more vulnerable patients to bundle up well before going out into the cold, avoid prolonged exposure and seek protection from the wind (BMJ, 2002; 324: 89-90).

Hrt: new evidence shows link with endometrial cancer - The safety of unopposed low potency oestrogens, prescribed to treat urogenital symptoms in post menopausal women, is once again being questioned in n...

Colds and flu: keeping well in the winter season - Most of the magic bullets to treat colds and flu - from antibiotics to zinc lozenges - are shots in the dark and not as effective as tried-and-tested...

Elderly flu deaths misdiagnosed - Influenza may not be the great wintertime killer of the elderly as always believed. Instead, they are as likely to die from acute respiratory disease...

Summer colds and flu - There’s nothing worse than a summer cold, particularly when the weather is scorching. And although conventional medicine throws a load of mostly usele...

Mercury connection and alzheimer's: new evidence - Another study showing a possible link between mercury exposure and some forms of Alzheimer's disease has recently been published in the Journal of Neu...

Social audit's charles medawar, the uk's drugs watchdog, pieces together new evidence demonstrating that the new, so-called safer antidepressants like prozac could be habit-forming. - Over the past 200 years, doctors have prescribed an almost uninterrupted succession of 'addictive' drugs, always in the belief they would not cause de...

Avandia: It stays on the market despite new evidence of heart risk - Better safe than sorry is clearly not the motto of American’s drug ‘watchdog’, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), after it allowed the anti-diabe...

Avian flu: strictly for the birds - Avian flu (H5N1) is predicted to be the next pandemic, claiming up to 7.4 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. The virus was dis...

The British Institute for the Identification & Treatment of Allergic Disorders

How You Beat Asthma
How To Beat Your M.E.
How You Beat ADHD
How You Beat Arthritis
How You Beat Backpain
How You Beat Depression How You Beat Pain
How You Beat The Menopause
How You Beat Heart Problems
WDDTY Health Shop

Register for our health updates and free gifts.
First Name:
Email: