Health thread
- Thread starter Dox
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We in the UK live in a sick country (as if you didn't know)
UK employees took an average of 9.4 sick days in the last 12 months compared to 7.8 days in 2023 and 5.8 days pre-Covid, a CIPD and Simplyhealth report has revealed.
Poor mental health, including depression or anxiety (41%), musculoskeletal injuries such as back pain (31%) and long-term health conditions including cancer (30%) were the most common long-term ailments. Common short-term absences included minor illnesses, like colds/flu (78%), mental ill health (29%), and stress and caring responsibilities for children (both 26%).
With around 8.7 million people living with a work-limiting condition, the report also highlights the rising levels of long-term health conditions in working adults and the need for practical action to address increasing levels of absence. This includes understanding how ill mental and physical health affects people and creating supportive environments to allow people to manage their health at work.
The report revealed that despite most business leaders recognising the value good health and wellbeing can bring, many employers take a reactive approach to workforce health.
Rachel Suff, Senior Wellbeing Adviser at the CIPD, said it is “really important” employers are proactive and “create workplaces that are supportive and help staff manage their health. Changes, like flexible hours and adjustments to workload, can often make a big difference to help prevent ill health from worsening and absence.”
Targeted action in areas of greatest need, such as ill mental health, is crucial to helping employees deal with both work-related stress and personal challenges, she added.
UK employees took an average of 9.4 sick days in the last 12 months compared to 7.8 days in 2023 and 5.8 days pre-Covid, a CIPD and Simplyhealth report has revealed.
Poor mental health, including depression or anxiety (41%), musculoskeletal injuries such as back pain (31%) and long-term health conditions including cancer (30%) were the most common long-term ailments. Common short-term absences included minor illnesses, like colds/flu (78%), mental ill health (29%), and stress and caring responsibilities for children (both 26%).
With around 8.7 million people living with a work-limiting condition, the report also highlights the rising levels of long-term health conditions in working adults and the need for practical action to address increasing levels of absence. This includes understanding how ill mental and physical health affects people and creating supportive environments to allow people to manage their health at work.
The report revealed that despite most business leaders recognising the value good health and wellbeing can bring, many employers take a reactive approach to workforce health.
Rachel Suff, Senior Wellbeing Adviser at the CIPD, said it is “really important” employers are proactive and “create workplaces that are supportive and help staff manage their health. Changes, like flexible hours and adjustments to workload, can often make a big difference to help prevent ill health from worsening and absence.”
Targeted action in areas of greatest need, such as ill mental health, is crucial to helping employees deal with both work-related stress and personal challenges, she added.
“…the main drivers behind [mental health absences] are job insecurity, concerns around downsizing or restructuring for example, and the cost-of-living crisis.”
Sally`s boss at the NHS has been signed off for at least 6 weeks to grieve for his recently deceased mother. At least 6 weeks. He took months off when his father died . When he came back to work he apparently burst in to tears and took more time off.
Sally expects the same again.
Just heard on the news that 20% of people in Britain - a quarter of adults - are on weight loss medication, and the government is encouraging more people to take it. That's a shocking statistic.
This is lining up to be the next big-pharma scandal and a major health crisis since no one knows for certain the full effects of taking these drugs long-term.
I'm staggered by the level of ignorance in society about what really causes obesity. Even the health secretary, who could do with losing a stone or two himself, seems to think the secret to maintaining a healthy weight is synthetic drugs.
Apart from people who've been duped into taking statins, which make you fat (another looming health crisis) the cuase of obesity is malnutrition - ie. bad nutrition, a diseased diet. How have we got to the position where even the politicians who theoretically run the health service don't know that weight gain is related to blood sugar levels, not calories and animal fats?
If you eat real food - meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, diary products, nuts, pulses, herbs spices - you will not get fat. If you eat processed sugar, processed carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods you will destroy your gut biology and your gastric neurology and you will be malnourished, over-eat and become obese. And probably get cancer as well.
How have we got to this ridiculous state of affairs?
This is lining up to be the next big-pharma scandal and a major health crisis since no one knows for certain the full effects of taking these drugs long-term.
I'm staggered by the level of ignorance in society about what really causes obesity. Even the health secretary, who could do with losing a stone or two himself, seems to think the secret to maintaining a healthy weight is synthetic drugs.
Apart from people who've been duped into taking statins, which make you fat (another looming health crisis) the cuase of obesity is malnutrition - ie. bad nutrition, a diseased diet. How have we got to the position where even the politicians who theoretically run the health service don't know that weight gain is related to blood sugar levels, not calories and animal fats?
If you eat real food - meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, diary products, nuts, pulses, herbs spices - you will not get fat. If you eat processed sugar, processed carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods you will destroy your gut biology and your gastric neurology and you will be malnourished, over-eat and become obese. And probably get cancer as well.
How have we got to this ridiculous state of affairs?
A cabal at the top of government which wants to kill off vast numbers of ordinary people?
Tell me where I am wrong.
Yes, the cabal is the hidden, topmost layer of government.
We vote for the public-facing aspect of government. These are the drones that people have access to through voting and via the media - they are not the people calling the shots.
Nay lad, thems wer RFID's
she's doing her bit to match Heidi, the Transport Secretary
The bairn looks like Damien the antichrist, born of jackal and hippo
Big pharma and big food, have unlimited funds to lobby (buy) governments.
Governments don’t actually perform any studies on the effects of the above products; they rely on studies done by the producers, and guess what? They say they are ‘safe and effective’ or ‘healthy and nutritious’.
Plus, these companies fund universities to produce studies, giving them certain criteria. If they don’t like the data coming through, the study gets buried.
And government bodies like the NHS parrot the studies and promote the products.
So big food has a population of people addicted to sugar and trans fats, which keep the hospitals and chemists (another one has just opened in Lancaster big enough to be a car showroom) busy.
I know someone who took one of the obesity drugs and made them so ill within a couple of weeks, they thought they were dying.
As the saying goes, if your doctor reaches for the prescription pad without first asking what you eat, your talking to a dealer, not a doctor.
When I wanted to lose some weight and control my blood sugar and blood pressure I read this book:
The Full Diet: The revolutionary guide to ditching ultr…
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERDiscover the revoluti…
It explains in great detail the science behind blood sugar levels and weight gain and the disastrous effects on the metabolism of simple (refined) carbs, refined sugar and ultra-processed foods.
The author is an NHS nutritionalist and weight loss expert at Imperial College, and yet her expertise does not seem to have filtered through the rest of the health service, with most clinicians and even the health secretary seemingly ignorant of their own in-house nutritional expert's advice.
I'm surprised big pharma and big food (which includes the supermarket chains who make a fortune from the mark-up on processed food) haven't tried to ban this book. If everyone read it the processed food industry would collapse and sales at proper butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers would soar.
When I wanted to lose some weight and control my blood sugar and blood pressure I read this book:
The Full Diet: The revolutionary guide to ditching ultr…
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERDiscover the revoluti…www.goodreads.com
It explains in great detail the science behind blood sugar levels and weight gain and the disastrous effects on the metabolism of simple (refined) carbs, refined sugar and ultra-processed foods.
The author is an NHS nutritionalist and weight loss expert at Imperial College, and yet her expertise does not seem to have filtered through the rest of the health service, with most clinicians and even the health secretary seemingly ignorant of their own in-house nutritional expert's advice.
I'm surprised big pharma and big food (which includes the supermarket chains who make a fortune from the mark-up on processed food) haven't tried to ban this book. If everyone read it the processed food industry would collapse and sales at proper butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers would soar.
If the book sold in big enough numbers, you can bet there would be a a smear campaign against it / her.
When it comes to fruit and veg - the carbs in them kept me sugar addicted all my life.
I’ve been a yo-yo dieter all my life; I’d put weight on, then lose it just eating meat and veg…but my sugar cravings never went away, so when I got ti a weight I was happy at, I’d go straight back to eating crap.
Like any addict, the longer the habit, the more you need to satiate your needs. So it was biscuits, chocolate and so on to get a big hit.
Only when I went full carnivore for 30 days without faltering, I broke the addiction. It was an amazing experience - I went from still craving sugary crap on day 29, to not caring one jot about them. You could’ve put me in a room with all my old favourites and I wouldn’t have given them any notice. In fact, giving my lad biscuits and things, I didn’t like the smell of them (I wish I could ween him off them).
If you can have veg and not crave sugary sweet stuff, that’s great - but it’s not for me. And I’ve proven that I thrive most without them anyway; all veg contain toxins to humans, just in varying quantities. Some will kill you within minutes, and some will lead to autoimmune diseases etc over many years.
I eat very small amounts of veg absolutely no rice or pasta and if I fancy something with my steak or stir fried chicken i will have some green veg or butter fried baby potatoes i slice them and pan fry to make them go further.. im the leanest and the best shape of my life at 6 months off 50 ... I have trained for 35 years now continuously so i know what works .. no doctor will ever convince me what my body is telling me in the mirror.. I do stray a little on holiday but for the most part I still eat 95% meat or fish...
I had steak and chips for tea, I'm a fucking weapon I am
Grok says that vaccines cause autism.
I have zero sugar cravings. I don't eat any refined sugar or carbs, nor any fruits or veg that are high in sugar or carbs - bananas, pineapples, mangos, grapes, parsnips, potatos, sweet potatos etc.
I'm never remotely tempted by the bakery aisle. If somone offers me biscuits or cake, I decline and there is no will power involved. I just don't want them. It helps knowing that if I did eat them twenty minutes later I'd feel sluggish and lethargic with an elevated pulse, which is horrible, so that puts me off even more. When I see people tucking into massive cakes and desserts on TV ads I can feel the sugar spike symptoms just by watching.
I'm not convinced that fruit and veg stimulate sugar gravings. They certainly don't with me, but as I say, I don't eat high-sugar or high-starch fruit and veg, and no two people's tastes and metabolisms are exactly the same so what works for one may not work for someone else.
The book I linked covers exhaustively the effects of sugars, simple (refined) carbs on blood sugar levels and why they cause weight gain and why sugar is addictive. But it also goes into great detail on the neurological effects of artificial food additives.
She stops short of claiming, no doubt for legal reasons, that processed food manufacturers put synthetic chemicals into processed food to intentionally get consumers addicted so they buy more product, but she does make clear that addiction and food cravings are nevertheless the result and she explains why. UPFs and high sugar and refined starch foods kill you gut biology and disrupt the messaging between gut and brain that regulates appetite. Foods that switch off that messaging, after the initial dopamine hit from tasting nice, never satisfy so you rapidly become addicted to them. Food scientists who work for processed food manufacturers must know this but they put the additives in anyway so the author invites the reader to draw their own conclusions.
I make my own pickles and relishes from wild ingredients and stuff I've grown in the garden. I don't add anti-caking agents, emulsfiers, anti-gelling agents etc, and mine taste better than the shop bought ones because they're not overloaded with sugar and salt and they last in the cupboard for months. The chemicals are clearly not needed so why do manufacturers put them in? I think we know the answer to that.
She has been accused of peddling a "fad diet" which is extraordinary since all she's really advocating is a diet of real food: natural unprocessed meat, fish, dairy products and animal fats, unprocessed non-seed oils, unprocessed fruit and veg, nuts, herbs, pulses and spices. In other words, food. Real food that you prepare from scratch and that we've evolved to eat. How that constitutes a fad diet I've no idea. She's probably protected to some extent by being an NHS nutritionalist and weight loss expert at a univeristy hospital. I'm sure that if she was a privateer and not "in the system" the processed food industry would be lobbying government to silence her. But then if they did, they'd be proving her point.
What remains a mystery to me as why so many people have completely lost sight of how to feed themselves. I think supermarkets are to blame, food adverts and the complete absence nutritional teaching in schools. When i was in middle school we had domestic science lesson where we learned about the food groups and how to prepare and cook basic meals from scratch. Those lessons should be brought back, but I fear in state schools they'dbe hijacked by vegan propaganda.
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Haha, the old 'fad diet'...I hear that all the time. A diet that has sustained humans forever until the last 150 years when guess what....obesity and autoimmune diseases raised their heads.
As I've said, if you can eat veg with no effects, that's great - provides a range of tastes. But it doesn't work for me.
For 50+ years I never lost the cravings; when I dieted the only veg I'd eat was brocolli, cauliflower, peas, and the odd salad - always with meat or fish. I never lost the cravings, and always needed will power to abstain.
Only once I'd cut those out for 30 days did I lose the cravings. They're not for me.
Which is weird, because I used to go out at teh weekend and get smashed on all sort of substances, and not feel like touching them monday - friday. I used to drink a bottle of wine a night for years, but could stop when I wanted and not touch a drop for months while I was dieting. No cravings.
For me the worst things are refined sugars, shitty oils, and veg - probably in that order. I feel great without them...dull with them.