Need another reason to eat healthily? New evidence bolsters the notion that nutritionally rich foods might help prevent or minimise asthma.

While the study couldn’t prove cause and effect, one asthma specialist said there’s certainly no downside to eating better.

According to a recent report by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), South Africa has the world’s fourth highest asthma death rate among five to 35 year olds.

Additional motivation

“The health benefits of a diet rich in plant foods and unprocessed foods are already well-known,” said Dr Ann Tilley, a pulmonologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

She wasn’t involved in the new study, but said it “should provide additional motivation for lung doctors to discuss diet choices with their patients, and for asthma patients to choose more fruits and vegetables and fewer processed foods”.

The new French research was led by Roland Andrianasolo, part of the... Read More

Drinking tea has played a central role in the lives of women across the globe for centuries. It’s hard to imagine a world without tea, but like much of written history, the tale of women’s roles and how instrumental they were in shaping tea commerce as we know it today, has not been well-told.

Women like Mary Tuke, who was born in England, was among the first tea merchants to build a chain of tea stores- the equivalent of Starbucks back in the day- and did so amid many jail threats and fines, since many (mainly men) were vehemently opposed to a woman running a business.

Oura Kei from Japan, was pivotal in creating the Japanese tea export market, while Catherine Cranston from Scotland built a renowned chain of tea rooms in Glasgow, which led to hotels setting aside space for afternoon tea.

The list of female tea innovators and influencers, such as Elizabeth Petrovna (Russian), Penelope Barker and Alva Belmont (both American) goes on and on.

To the powerhouse activists of t... Read More

If you would like someone to defend you in a court case, would you keep switching lawyers? If you would like a stable, nurturing marriage, would you repeatedly get divorced and re-married? If you would like a winning team or company, would you hire only interim coaches or CEOs?

If you answered “no” to any of the above, then you can see why the findings from a recently published study in BMJ Open are not surprising. Researchers from St Leonard’s Practice (Denis J. Pereira Gray, Kate Sidaway-Lee, and Eleanor White), University of Exeter (Angus Thorne), and the University of Manchester (Philip H Evans) in the United Kingdom conducted a systematic review of studies that measured the association between continuity of medical care and the risk of death. In other words, are people who stick with the same doctor more or less likely to die earlier? They found 22 studies in the MEDLINE, Embase and the Web of Science databases from 1996 to 2017 that matched their search criteria. According to the authors, the studie... Read More