HEALTH NOTES: Pub boosts male friendship, shows new research
The factors that determine if a friendship will survive is dependent on our gender, according to new research.
Women are likely to remain friends with someone who they speak to regularly. For men, how often they talk to someone has ‘absolutely no effect’ on the likelihood of the friendship surviving.
Instead, men remain close with people they ‘do stuff’ with, for example going to the pub or playing sports.
The study also found people have a 40 per cent turnover of ‘best friends’ every 18 months.
For men, how often they talk to someone has ‘absolutely no effect’ on the likelihood of the friendship surviving, according to new research
The Covid crisis could lead to a generation of short-sighted children, because they’ve been forced to spend extended periods of time indoors which can in turn damage vision, experts have warned.
Short-sightedness, also known as myopia, is often linked in children to a lack of stimulation.
Studies prior to the pandemic found short-sightedness was more common the more time children spent indoors. In July, a study of more than 120,000 six-to-eight-year-olds in China saw three times more myopia cases in 2020 than compared to the previous five years. It’s not fully understand why, but experts think it is because children are only observing things near to them.
Stub it out for mental health
Giving up smoking isn’t just good for your body, it’s also good for your brain.
According to evidence published in the medical journal Cochrane Library, smokers who quit for at least six weeks saw a noticeable improvement in their mental health.
While smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death, with one in every two smokers likely to die of a smoking-related disease, many do not quit because they believe smoking helps reduce stress or other mental health issues.
According to evidence published in the medical journal Cochrane Library, smokers who quit for at least six weeks saw a noticeable improvement in their mental health (file photo)
But a review of 160,000 people who quit smoking, found mental health improved rather than declined.
Dr Gemma Taylor, at the University of Bath, who led the study, said: ‘The evidence shows stress is reduced in people who stop smoking and there are longer-term benefits for mental health.’
Fewer than one in ten Britons are walking the recommended 10,000 steps a day. While 10,000 has long been seen as a ‘healthy’ target – fitness trackers like Fitbits challenge users to reach 10,000 steps a day as its most basic achievement – Britons are falling far short.
A study of 2,000 adults in the UK, run by Censuswide, found that one in five Britons walked less than 2,000 steps each day, while only nine per cent were achieving the celebrated 10,000 steps.
Walking has become one of the few pastimes still allowed during lockdown, but 63 per cent said they were waiting until lockdown ended to take up more exercise.