Health news

• Screen-based lifestyle harms children’s health | Letters

  25-12-2016 17:00
  
  A decade ago our first multiple-signatory “toxic childhood” press letter described how children’s health and wellbeing were being undermined by the decline of outdoor play, increasingly screen-based lifestyles, a hyper-competitive schooling system and the unremitting commercialisation of childhood.Despite widespread public concern, subsequent policymaking has been half-hearted, short-termist and disjointedly ineffective. The above factors continue to affect children adversely,
  
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• Experts call for official guidelines on child screen use

  25-12-2016 17:00
  
  Educationalists, psychologists and authors also call for a minister for children to try to address ‘toxic’ nature of childhood
  A group of leading authors, educationalists and child-development experts is calling on the government to introduce national guidelines on the use of screens, amid concern about the impact on children’s physical and mental health.It is one of a series of measures outlined in a letter to the Guardian, highlighting what it describes as the increasingly &l
  
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• Four doctors in China suspended over kickbacks - state media

  25-12-2016 16:15
  Three doctors in Shanghai and one in Hunan province have been suspended pending investigations over allegations they took kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies, Chinese state media reported. In an investigative report aired on Saturday, China Central Television showed pharmaceutical sales representatives paying sweeteners to doctors at six hospitals in Shanghai and Hunan. Anti-graft authorities in Shanghai are investigating and authorities in Hunan pledged to improve supervision of pharmaceuti
  
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• Bionic legs and smart slacks: exoskeletons that could enhance us all

  25-12-2016 16:00
  
  There are tantalising signs that as well as aiding rehabilitation, devices could soon help humans run faster and jump higherWearing an £80,000 exoskeleton, Sophie Morgan is half woman, half robot.Beneath her feet are two metal plates, and at her hand a digital display, a joystick and, somewhat alarmingly, a bright red emergency button.
  Making them look like second skins and behave like second skins is going to happen Continue reading...
  
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• Expert guide to help you recover as soon as possible from feeling stuffed

  25-12-2016 14:40 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Dr Megan Arroll, London-based psychologist and co-author of IBS: Navigating Your Way to Recovery, says resist the urge to glug gallons of water thinking it will help ease your discomfort.
  
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• Sugary drink taxes could be threatened by Trump administration, experts say

  25-12-2016 14:30
  
  Trump’s team, which includes head of biggest soda lobby, and a Republican Congress could side with beverage industry and undo progress, advocates warnTaxes on sugary drinks had a banner year in the US, with six new laws passed across the US. But advocates for the preventive health measures are warning that the Trump administration could threaten or even reverse momentum. “I think there is going to be some battles to be fought to maintain ground and not lose ground,” said David
  
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• China to levy new taxes in bid to strengthen pollution fight

  25-12-2016 09:37
  China's largely rubber-stamp parliament passed a law on Sunday that will levy specific environmental protection taxes on industry for the first time from 2018, as part of a renewed focus on fighting the country's pollution woes. Anger has risen in the world's second-largest economy at the government's repeated failure to tackle land, water and air pollution, with large parts of northern China enveloped in dangerous smog in recent days. "Tax revenue is an important economic means to promote envir
  
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• SARAH VINE: On asking hard questions about abortion

  25-12-2016 00:05 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  For a charity that undertakes 70,000 abortions a year — around one-third of all such procedures in England — a serious lapse is simply not good enough, writes SARAH VINE.
  
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