In Scotland and Wales, social care workers earn at least the real living wage. With job vacancy rates running at about 10% and turnover almost double the average of other sectors, campaigners want all English care staff to have the same guarantees.
It is as though they don't care in England! Guess which country is run by the Tories?
🏋🏽♂️My strength class at the Malden Senior Center strength class is bursting with amazing energy!
🤩These incredible members (ages 65-95!) are proving that age is just a number. They're having a blast, staying strong, and building a wonderful community together.
"Childbirth is deadlier in the United States than in any other high-income nation...More than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable, but factors including a shortage of maternity care providers, limited access to after-birth home visits and lack of guaranteed paid parental leave have increased the risk of maternal mortality, especially for Black people..."
From the archives, 2022: ”We know now from decades of clinical practice, and now over the last couple of decades of research, that the earlier that we affirm someone, the better outcomes they have in terms of mental health and physical health.” https://www.texasobserver.org/healthcare-for-trans-kids-is-not-abuse/
"A federal advisory committee on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly against of the use of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The novel treatment has the potential to transform a field with significant need, but the committee had concerns about the integrity of the particular trials up for review."
What Nobody Tells You About Breast Cancer: The poet Anne Boyer lays bare the brutal realities in a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about her life with the disease that I write about in my latest story @medium.
My newest article for the #Canadian#Healthcare Network/ the #Medical Post. Why too much #salt in your diet is really bad.
Sorry the site is password protected, but free for doctors and pharmacists.
Here are the first few paragraphs:
JUNE 2024 --Too much of anything that’s good for you can be bad.
And if anything, Canadians consume far more sodium than is good for them. Indeed, in some cases, it’s killing them—which is why Health Canada announced that starting in early 2026, Canadians will see sodium warning labels on the front of packaged food.
The move is meant to help relieve the burden that excess sodium has on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality rates. About a third of hypertension cases are caused by excess dietary sodium, translating to about 2.5 million people in Canada.
Samples of what the warning labels will look like are on the Health Canada website.
Front-of-package nutrition labeling is widely recognized as an effective tool to help counteract rising rates of diet-related chronic disease, a Health Canada spokesperson told the Medical Post in an email. However, eating out can still consist of salt-filled meals.
“In general, most foods sold in restaurants and food service establishments, as well as foods ordered for take-out and delivery, are not considered to be prepackaged and are thus exempt from offering nutrition labels,” the email said. Some establishments provide nutrition information voluntarily.
The Global Burden of Disease study states that high blood pressure is the leading risk for death in the world, killing over 10 million people per year, according to Dr. Norman Campbell, professor emeritus of medicine, physiology and pharmacology at the University of Calgary. He has conducted multiple studies on sodium and health.
“Even if you throw COVID in there and all other infectious disease, high blood pressure kills more people and disables more than all the infectious diseases . . .. But if you look down the list, after high blood pressure, dietary risks are right there; and sodium is the top dietary risk,” he said.
An extreme example of too much salt was reported after a woman died after drinking a 1,000ml bottle of soy sauce—an intake of about 160 g of salt.
In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) produced a report showing that issues from consuming too much sodium is a global health problem. The agency also produced a sodium reduction score card ranking countries in terms of their efforts to reduce excessive sodium intake. Canada has a mix of voluntary reduction efforts with mandatory measures in the works, but could do better. There are also score cards for sugar and trans-fatty acids.
“The background of all this is reducing sodium in the diet is one of the most cost-effective things a government can do to improve the health of the population . . .. We saw the effects of COVID—how much it costs society to prevent COVID. The estimates are that reducing sodium in the diet saves the government $13 to $18 for every dollar it invests,” said Dr. Campbell.
Why is sodium so bad?
High sodium intake increases blood pressure, but over time it can damage blood vessels and lead to atherosclerosis, heart disease, strokes and kidney failure. Evidence also suggests excess sodium acts as an inflammatory agent and contributes to the severity of various inflammatory disorders, Dr. Campbell told the Medical Post in an interview....