Pain series from The Conversation

The Conversation has recently published a series of articles by academics, scientists and other experts about various aspects of pain. They are clearly explained with lots of links back to the evidence.  

The right words matter when talking about pain from Michael Vagg (Barwon Health) explains how to talk to people about pain and how sometimes the use of cliches can make their pain worse.  

What dictates how much pain you feel after injury? by Malcolm Hogg (University of Melbourne) explains how education levels and other social factors can effect how much pain people feel and how long it lasts.  

 

Not helping a partner with chronic pain may be the quickest road to recovery is from Toby Newton-John (University of Technology Sydney), who writes that partners who do everything for the chronic pain sufferer may actually be hindering their recovery. 

Pain drain: the economic and social costs of chronic pain by Christopher Williams (University of Newcastle) discusses our neglect of effective pain management and how this leads to an increased economic and social burden. 

Antibiotic resistance: are we all doomed?

This is the title of a recent article in Internal Medicine Journal by Peter Collignon from the Australian National University and Canberra Hospital.  It clearly summarises this important issue, which "is associated with increased deaths and suffering for people", and offers some solutions. Antimicrobials can be controlled by improved infection prevention, more diligent surveillance of usage and resistance patterns (and acting on that surveillance), ensuring that resistant microorganisms are not spread through food and water, and diligent antimicrobial stewardship.

Collignon P. Antibiotic resistance: are we all doomed?  Internal Medicine Journal. 2015;45(11):1109-15.

Women, mental health, and hormones

If you're interested in the brain, both neurologically and psychologically, ABC Radio National's program All in the Mind is worth podcasting.  Recent programs have included narcissism and domestic abuse, the use and addictive qualities of benzodiazepines, music for dementia sufferers and the science of self.

In the program, Women, mental health and hormones, guest psychiatrists, endocrinologists and women's health experts discuss why women experience twice as much depression and four times as much anxiety as men.  Biological, social and psychological factors mean that men and women experience mental illness differently and a new hormonal therapy is described as one way gender issues can be more targeted.

Mental health and human emotions - TED talks

The TED radio hour is made up of excerpts from various TED talks, including interviews with the speakers.  A recent program was called Headspace, and it examined various aspects of mental health.

Writer and psychologist, Andrew Solomon, talked about his own episodes of depression, then Alix Generous talked about how she was misdiagnosed (and mis-medicated) at a very young age with bipolar disorder. Neurobiologist David Anderson explained why psychiatric drugs don't always work and and how his own experiments with fruit flies offer a more targeted approach. Finally, psychologist Guy Winch talks about the importance of emotional hygiene and how we need to take care of our emotional wellbeing.

Listen to the program on the website, or download a podcast.  There are links to each speaker's complete talk as well.

National Health Survey: First Results, 2014-15

The 2014-15 National Health Survey is the most recent in a series of Australia-wide health surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The survey was designed to collect a range of information about the health of Australians, including:

• prevalence of long-term health conditions;
• health risk factors such as smoking, overweight and obesity, alcohol consumption and exercise;
• use of health services such as consultations with health practitioners and actions people have recently taken for their health; and
• demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. 

4364.0.55.001 - National Health Survey: First Results, 2014-15 

Domestic and family violence and homelessness 2011-12 to 2013-14

This report from AIHW releases early findings on the interaction between domestic and family violence and homelessness. Nearly 200,000 adults and children sought help from homelessness services due to domestic and family violence between 2011-12 and 2013-14.  Nine in 10 adult clients (aged 18 and over) seeking assistance for domestic and family violence were female, and over one-quarter of all clients were children under the age of 15.

Domestic and family violence and homelessness 2011-12 to 2013-14  AIHWcatalogue number WEB 112         

Asthma Primer: Current Concepts in the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma

This special free issue from the journal International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology would be useful for practitioners who diagnose and treat patients with asthma. Subjects covered include epidemiology, risk factors, comorbidities, diagnosis, and treatment of asthma. 
  

Special Issue: Asthma Primer: Current Concepts in the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma. September 2015, Volume 5, Issue S1, Pages S1–S81

Australia's Health Workforce

This detailed workforce data published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare allows you to select the location and FTE for for each registered health profession in Australia for the years 2011-14, and to customise how the results are displayed. Results can be easily exported to other formats.

Dynamic data display: Australia's registered health workforce by location. AIHW catalogue number WEB 080   

Myopia Virtual Issue

This collection of papers reflects the advances in our understanding of the conditions which can lead to the development of myopia and the advances made in slowing its development. Some corrective approaches appear to be partially successful in slowing myopia. 

Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics Volume 35, Issue 6, pages 637–642, November 2015. 

Principles of public health interventions to support injury recovery

This review examines the evidence for the effectiveness for public health interventions and identified principles and strategies which could be used in public health interventions for injured people.

Principles of public health interventions to support injury recovery and return to productivity: a rapid review by Sandra Jones, Julien Tran, Michael Matthias, Martin McDermott,  2015. Sax Institute.

Violence against immigrant and refugee women

With White Ribbon Day receiving good media coverage this week, one timely paper recently published is from Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) - Promoting community-led responses to violence against immigrant and refugee women in metropolitan and regional Australia. 

This paper presents the state of national and international knowledge about family violence against immigrant and refugee women. Some of the findings include the fact that although there are similar forms of family violence for these women as other women, there are differences where women depend on perpetrators for economic security and residency rights.  There is very little evidence that mandatory arrest and pro-prosecution approaches are helpful for these women, and they may even deter them from seeking help. 

OECD review of health care quality in Australia

The OECD has also published a series of reviews of health care quality in member countries, and OECD Reviews of Health Care Quality: Australia 2015: Raising Standards  notes that the Australian system is a generally high and performs at moderate cost, despite being very complex. 

The report describes many of the quality activities being undertaken and suggests how the system could be improved, such as an enhanced federal government role in steering policy, funding and priority setting. 

Health at a glance 2015 - OECD indicators

This year's summary report on health and health care in the OECD nations, Health at a Glance 2015: OECD indicators, reports that while life expectancy continues to rise, there are still widespread differences across countries and socioeconomic groups.

The report presents the most recent comparable data on the performance of health systems in each country and also in some instances data for partner countries (Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russian Federation and South Africa). This edition also includes a new set of dashboards of health indicators looking at the relative strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries on different key indicators of health and health system performance.  There is a special focus on the pharmaceutical sector and on health workforce migration.

Coffee consumption and mortality

A major study published in the journal Circulation has recently concluded that "Higher consumption of total coffee, caffeinated coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was associated with lower risk of total mortality."

The study, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health was based on data gathered from three large, ongoing surveys including around 300,000 nurses and other health professionals over a 30 year period. The results indicated that people who drank three to five cups of coffee a day (either caffeinated or decaffeinated) have a reduced risk of death from heart disease, diabetes, suicide and neurological diseases.

Ding, Ming et al. Association of coffee consumption with total and cause-specific mortality in three large prospective cohorts. Cirulation AHA.115.017341 Published online before print November 16, 2015, doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA

Why go gluten-free?

This week the ABC program, Catalyst, aired Gluten: a gut feeling, looking at why so many people who have not been diagnosed with coeliac disease are opting for a gluten-free diet. Many people say that giving up gluten in their diet has helped with gastrointestinal issues, but Professor Peter Gibson from Monash University says it could be something other than gluten that has been causing the problem. Fructans are also present in wheat and are part of a group of carbohydrates called FODMAPs. Giving up foods rich in FODMAPs would be a lot less restrictive than going gluten-free.

More information on this was published in an article recently in The Conversation: Why do people decide to go gluten- or wheat-free? by Sinead Golley from the CSIRO. She points out that "according to current Australian Dietary Guidelines, grain- and dairy-based foods are important components of a balanced diet".

Mentioned in this article was a study Golley co-authored, published earlier this year in the journal Public Health Nutrition, Motivations for avoiding wheat consumption in Australia: results from a population study.  Over 1000 randomly-selected adult Australians were surveyed and a significant number were avoiding the consumption of wheat, mainly without any medical diagnosis.

Public Health Nutr. 2015 Feb;18(3):490-9. doi: 10.1017/S1368980014000652..