However, rural walks yielded a 16 per cent increase in attention and working memory compared to urban walks and mood was improved to a significant degree by both types of walk, the study found.

The study also tested theories developed in a cognitive science field known as Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which propose that people concentrate better after spending time in rural nature or looking at natural scenes.

According to ART, those in peaceful settings are not bombarded with external distractions, which tax their working memory and attention systems.

As a result, the brain can relax and enter a state of contemplation, which helps restore cognitive capacities.

In its latest study, 20 people with clinical depression, 12 women and eight men, with an average age of 26, took part in the experiment that involved walking in a quiet nature countryside setting and in a noisy urban setting.

Prior to their walks, participants completed testing to determine their cognitive and mood status, and were asked to think about an unresolved, painful memory.

They were then told to go for an hour-long walk in a rural woodland park, or stroll along an urban busy street.

The routes were mapped out and participants wore a GPS watch to ensure they went to the right place.

After their walk was completed, they took part in a series of mental tests to measure their attention, and short-term and working memory. A week later, the participants repeated the study but went for a walk in the location they had not visited in the first experiment.

The result yielded a 16 per cent increase in attention and working memory improvement compared to urban walks.

Dr. Marc Berman, of the Rotman Research Institute, Canada, who led the research, said: ‘Our study showed that participants with clinical depression demonstrated improved memory performance after a walk in nature, compared with a walk in a busy urban environment.

In 2008, another study by Dr Berman showed that adults, who had not been diagnosed with any illness, received a mental boost after an hour-long walk in a woodland park.

Evidence also shows that rumination is linked to general anxiety, post traumatic stress, binge drinking, eating disorders, and self-injurious behavior.

People who are pessimistic, neurotic, and who have negative attributional styles tend to ruminate that could lead to clinical depression.

Not only are habitual ruminators more likely to become depressed, but experimental studies have demonstrated that people who are induced to ruminate experience greater depressed mood.

Although he would say it is ‘a myth’ that nurses are ‘too qualified to care’, because many patients require a high level of clinical skill, he is expected to advise, ‘universities and employers need to do more work to make sure that current and future staff, not only have the relevant academic qualifications, but also the ‘compassionate values’ needed to provide patient centered, dignified care.’

Nurses need to understand that the profession is now more about caring than curing and should be recruited for their ‘compassion’.

They should be hired for their personal ‘values’ to stop ‘unacceptable instances’ of poor care where vulnerable patients are left in a distressing state, Pearson would tell the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Pearson, who will become chair of the new organization Health Education England next month, cites some examples of poor care are ‘cropping up far too often’ and should not be dismissed as ‘isolated incidents’.

He would highlight the case of a Bolton man, diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer, who was unable to ask for help to go to the lavatory ‘because he was so dehydrated he could not speak properly’, and was discharged with insufficient painkillers, which in any case ‘he was not unable to swallow’.

On other hand, Ed Miliband, the Labor leader, praised nurses at the organization’s annual conference in Harrogate, saying poor nursing ‘offends you more than anybody’.

‘The vast majority of nurses do a phenomenal job,’ he said.

He followed Andrew Lansley, the UK Health Secretary, who told them they delivered excellent care ’999 out of 1,000′ times.

Last year, Pearson set up a ‘Dignity Commission’ with Age UK and the Local Government Association, to understand why poor care happened and make practical suggestions.

An interim report it published in March recommended that staff who failed to treat patients with dignity should be sacked.

The mineral can be found in shellfish, meat, egg yolks and seeds, supports a wide range of functions in the body and is vital to the immune system.

Scientists studied 352 children with severe pneumonia who were all being treated with antibiotics. Half the children were given additional therapy in the form of 10 milligram or 20 milligram zinc supplements, depending on age.

The researchers found no difference between the two groups in the time it took to recover from infection. But the risk of dying was very different. Just 4 percent of children taking zinc died compared with 12 percent of those not taking zinc.

The research, involving young children aged six months to five years, was conducted in Uganda where zinc deficiency is rife.

The findings are published in the online journal BMC Medicine.

‘In Uganda, where this study was performed, zinc deficiency in some areas can be as high as 70 percent,’ said study leader Professor James Tumwine, from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

‘Zinc is known to bolster the immune system and zinc deficiency is rife all over the developed, and developing, world,’ he said.

Researchers of Yale University School of Medicine found changes in bacteria in the mouth preceded the development of pneumonia.

Poor oral health has been associated with respiratory diseases, as bacterial chest infections are thought to be caused by breathing in fine droplets from the throat and mouth into the lungs.

The Dental Health Foundation has warned that poor oral hygiene could cause the respiratory infection after research found a link between bacteria in the mouth and the lung disease.

Although further research is required, it said the latest study is not the first to associate poor oral health with respiratory diseases.

The team followed 37 subjects over a month. They found patients who developed pneumonia had experienced a significant shift in the ‘bacterial composition’ in their mouths beforehand.

The research was presented at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual meeting in Boston.

Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, said the latest research backed their findings that looking after your teeth boosts your overall health.

‘What people must remember, particularly those highlighted as vulnerable, is that prevention can be very basic. Systemic links between gum disease and overall health have been well documented, and at this time of year keeping up good oral health can really help stave off illness,’ Dr. Carter said.

It is thought pneumonia affects over 620,000 people in the UK and claims the lives of 25,073 people in England in 2009, compared to 34,271 in 1999.

The outbreaks at hospitals have more than doubled with 35 reported in the past two weeks, according to new figures.

It is predominantly a winter bug, with cases usually beginning to escalate in November and drop during the following spring.

The bug is highly contagious meaning it is easily passed around in hospital settings where wards contain large numbers of patients, many of whom have weakened immune systems.

It can be transmitted by physical contact with an infected person, by eating or drinking contaminated food or water, or by contact with surfaces or objects housing the virus such as bed frames.

In healthy people the symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, and possible high temperature, headache and stomach cramps, usually pass in a day or two with no long-term effects but in patients who are elderly, very young or extremely ill it can be fatal.

There is no treatment other than letting the illness run its course, although people who are sick should drink regularly to replace lost fluids, doctors said.

Health officials said 35 outbreaks of the winter vomiting bug in hospitals have been reported in the last two weeks, resulting in the closure of 27 wards as a precaution to prevent the spread of infection.

The total number of confirmed cases in England both in and outside hospitals since July is 1,607, an increase of 19 per cent on 2010.

Officials said the total reflects a fraction of the overall number of cases because many patients will not go to the trouble of sending samples to a lab for analysis.

The Royal College of GPs say the virus has not been a major problem so far this year – although outbreaks can occur very quickly, as the complaint is extremely infectious.

A statement from the Health Protection Agency said: “Norovirus is highly contagious and can be transmitted by contact with an infected person; by consuming contaminated food or water or by contact with contaminated surfaces or objects.”

The virus spreads rapidly in closed environments such as hospitals, schools, nursing and residential homes.

Her own tears bring her out in a painful rash and it takes her two hours to recover after every quick shower.

It means that she can’t have long soaks in the bath, go swimming, or cry without triggering a burning rash on her skin.

Katie Dell, 26, is one of only about 35 people in the world diagnosed with the rare allergy aquagenic urticaria.

Katie avoids going out when it’s raining as it brings her out in itchy hives, her condition often leaves her too scared to leave her home in case it rains.

Katie, from Flint, North Wales, has even had to give up her job as a dance teacher because sweat also causes a reaction.

But she can’t get upset and cry, because her tears also cause a painful reaction on her face.

What she remember symptoms began after she had her tonsils removed when she was about 16.
After the operation she had penicillin that she later discovered she was allergic to. Doctors think this may have altered the histamine levels in her body.

Katie said she soon noticed that she developed a rash every time she came into contact with water.

Her new GP thought it was Aquagenic urticaria and referred her to a specialist. She was diagnosed by a dermatology specialist at Glan Clwyd Hospital in October this year.

Lindsey McManus, allergy expert for Allergy UK, said the condition can be triggered by a number of different reasons, from water temperature to chemicals in water.

She said, ‘Aquagenic urticaria is a relatively rare condition. Urticaria is notoriously difficult to diagnose and symptoms include an itchy nettlerash (hives).

‘However, not all forms of urticaria have an allergic component, it could be caused by a physical reaction to things like heat or exercise. It is usually treated by a course of anti-histamines.

There is currently no cure for aquagenic urticaria and Katie says she has accepted that she is likely to have the condition for the rest of her life.

Part of the reason for the high mortality rate is that symptoms often do not appear until cancer is advanced and harder to treat.

The screening program aims to catch the tumors earlier, meaning more patients can be cured.

A bowel cancer screening program in England is on course to cut deaths by a sixth, say researchers studying results from the first million people tested.

However, the work, published in the journal Gut, has raised concerns that the program, launched in 2006, misses tumors in certain parts of the colon.

Testers checked a feces sample for signs of abnormal bleeding.

The researcher who analyzed the results said money should be spent on bringing in more sensitive tests.

Several million people aged 69 and over have now been screened, with approximately half of those invited taking part.

When results from the first 1.08 million taking part were collated, it was found that 2.5 percent of men and 1.5 percent of women had received an abnormal result, and were sent for further tests, usually colonoscopy, in which a tube with a camera on the end is passed into the colon.

Among the men with abnormal results, 43 percent turned out to have either cancer or pre-cancerous growths in their colon. The figure for women was 11.6 percent.

Most of these were early-stage cancers, which are generally easier to treat.

Cancer statistics from millions of people diagnosed with the disease suggest that for every three cancers in the left side of the colon, there will be one in the right side.

However, of the thousands of cancers found by the screening test, only 14 percent were on the right side.

Prof. Richard Logan, of Nottingham University, who led the study, said it was not yet fully understood why cancers on the right-hand side were not showing up during screening.

Among the possibilities, he said, were that they grew faster, and were more likely to be diagnosed conventionally, or that they were less likely to bleed and trigger a positive test result.

However, he said that the current blood test was ‘old fashioned’, and should be replaced by a more modern alternative which might be more sensitive.

‘There is a much better test available, but it will cost money to introduce it, and that money is not currently there.’

Now scientists have found that dreaming, which is the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) phase of sleep is actually essential to help us cope with inner trouble.

Brain scans showed that after sleeping, the emotional center of the brain becomes less active while areas that govern rational thought take over, helping us to get over painful experiences from the previous day.

The study could explain why post-traumatic stress disorder victims, who typically suffer from disturbed sleep, have severe difficulty overcoming painful memories, experts said.

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found our brains process emotional experiences during dreams and this takes the painful edge off difficult memories.

MRI scans showed sleep caused a dramatic reduction in reactivity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions. This allowed the brain’s ‘rational’ prefrontal cortex to regain control of the participants’ emotional reactions.

In addition, overnight recordings of the participant’s electrical brain activity showed levels of stress neurochemicals reduced during sleep.

Matthew Walker, senior author of the study, said dreaming “provides us with a form of overnight therapy, a soothing balm that removes the sharp edges from the prior day’s emotional experiences.

Els van der Helm, a doctoral student who led the study, said: “During REM sleep, memories are being reactivated, put in perspective and connected and integrated, but in a state where stress neurochemicals (chemicals in the brain) are beneficially suppressed.”

The researchers said the study, published in the Current Biology journal, could explain why blood pressure drugs which suppress stress signals in the brain during sleep have proved effective in some post-traumatic stress disorder patients, and may lead to new treatments for sleep disorders and mental illness.

But when Asians move to Western countries, they are most likely to develop Alzheimer’s. A good example is that, Alzheimer’s is more common among Japanese living in Hawaii than those living in their home country, Japan.

Despite the advance of medical science, there is no cure yet for Alzheimer’s. The current ‘treatment’ is still through caregiving and make the remaining years of patient with Alzheimer’s comfortable.

Unlike in industrialized countries, nursing homes are not available in most parts of Asia, hence, the basic responsibility for caregiving and management of patient with Alzheimer’s rests with the family.

Among themselves in the family, they choose one of who would be responsible for the task of caregiving of the patient with Azheimer’s. However, as the disease advances to a child like behavior, the patient could be completely dependent on the caregiver in terms of being fed, bathed and dressed and this would certainly give a toll to the caregiver’s miserable routine and usually they get fed up.

In most cases, Alzheimers is more agonizing for the caregiver than for the patient. It is not only physically demanding but also emotionally draining.

In most instances, a caregiver experiences stress which usually manifests through denial, anger, social withdrawal, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, sleeplessness, irritability and lack of concentration.

Studies in the United States found that caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients, compared to other people their age, have 70 percent more physician visits, 50 percent more likely to suffer depression and 40 percent use more medications.

Professor Kua Ee Heok, a consultant psychiatrist from the National University of Singapore, suggests that caregivers should be given a break by taking over caregiving responsibilities for a few days and taking the patients with Azheimer’s to a day care center where trained nurses could take care of them.

Although the disease can occur at any age, even as young as 40 years old, it is more common on the elderly. Aside from advancing age, genes almost certainly play a role in the disease.

Charles Colton, British churchman and writer wrote: “Body and mind like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.” Such is the case of Alzheimer’s. Until today, science is still baffled why the brain dies before the body, leading to the mind snatching disease.

A doctor’s empathy can improve the care of their patients especially diabetics.

Patients whose doctors had high empathy scores were more likely to have good control of their blood sugar and low LDL cholesterol levels than patients whose doctors had low empathy scores.

In a study that includes 891 diabetic patients treated between July 2006 and June 2009 by 29 doctors at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.

The researchers assessed the doctors’ level of empathy for patients.
The results indicate that empathy on the part of doctors can contribute to patient satisfaction, trust and compliance with therapy.