Croydon Council recently launched a health and well-being website called JustBe. This website aims to get local people to adopt a healthier lifestyle by offering a number of recommendations and pointing Croydon residents to local services. To get their messages across they use a variety of tools such as apps, podcasts, expert advice, videos, diet plans and exercise routes.

The JustBe online health programme focuses on six key health and well-being areas which include: eating a healthy diet, being more active, drinking less alcohol, improving mental health, cutting out smoking and maintaining healthy sexual relationships. By focusing on these areas it is hoped that  local inequalities will be addressed and improved.

Croydon residents can start by completing a health MoT which is a quick online assessment which provides a short report with some suggestions on how to improve your health and well-being. Following this, residents can explore the website which is divided into the six health and well-being areas under the headings:

• Be happy
• Be active
• Be alcohol aware
• Be sex safe
• Be food smart
• Be smoke free

You can also register to receive weekly tips and advice by email from Croydon Council’s leading health guru and explore a range of health tools which include apps, podcasts, expert advice, videos, diet plans and exercise routes.

The Council will continue to expand the services available in the JustBe programme and next year one-to-one support from experts will be available. These sessions will last for up to 52 weeks and will be based on current best practice around behaviour change.

Councillor Louisa Woodley, cabinet minister for families, health and social care said:

“The new JustBe Croydon website means residents are just a click away to self-help and encouragement to lead happier and healthier lives”

The Lake Foundation encourages all Croydon residents to get online and visit JustBe for some useful health information.  You can find JustBe here , follow them on Twitter (@JustBeCroydon) and ‘like’ them on Facebook (JustBeCroydon).

This week, a new analysis by Public Health England has revealed a troubling conclusion: 40 to 60 year olds in the UK are facing a health crisis. This health crisis has been attributed to modern lifestyles, particularly “the car, the desk job and the computer”, which means that people are not as physically active as 20 years ago.

“People are busy with work, with families, with the daily grind and sometimes their own health is the least of their priorities.” – Professor Kevin Fenton, Director of Health and Wellbeing, Public Health England

Public Health England’s analysis explored how the behaviour and health of people aged 40 to 60 has changed over the past 20 years. They found that 83% of 40-60 year olds either drink too much,  are inactive or are overweight or obese.

When we looked at their data on obesity, their report states that 77% of men and 63% of women within the 40 to 60 age group are overweight or obese compared to 67% of men and 55% of women 20 years ago. Public Health England also noted that many middle aged people couldn’t identify what a healthy body looks like and they suggest that it is possible that obesity is now becoming the new normal. This is worrying as many people may not realise they are at an unhealthy weight.

Another important area the analysis looked at was diabetes. They found that the diabetes rate in 40 to 60 year olds has doubled – 3% of middle aged people had diabetes 20 years ago and today that has increased to 7%.  Apart from diabetes they found that the rate of heart conditions in men has increased, rising from 8.5% to 11.4% and mental health conditions had trebled (2% to 6%.) Although, with regards to mental health, it was felt that the increase could be due to a better understanding and recognition of mental health conditions.

Solutions

In order to address this health crisis Public Health England’s One You campaign will be reaching out to 40 to 60 year olds to help people assess their lifestyle and then provides tools on how to adopt a healthy lifestyle. These tools include apps like Couch to 5K, Alcohol Checker and Easy Meals.

Other similar solutions include Croydon Council’s online health programme, JustBe, which aims to get local people to adopt a healthier lifestyle by offering a number of recommendations and pointing Croydon residents to local services. To get their messages across they use a variety of tools such as apps, podcasts, expert advice, videos, diet plans and exercise routes.

At the Lake Foundation, we’re aiming to get people active through our free cycling club which is open to everyone. A limited number of bikes and helmets are available. For more information email us

Conclusions

Public Health England’s analysis concluded that compared to 20 years ago:

“Men aged 40 to 60 are:

• more likely to be obese
• less likely to smoke and less likely to drink alcohol (although most do)
• more likely to suffer from a heart condition
• more likely to be diabetic
• more likely to report suffering from a mental health disorder

Women aged 40 to 60 are:

• more likely to be obese;
• less likely to smoke and less likely to drink alcohol
• more likely to be diabetic
• more likely to report suffering from a mental health disorder”

Although the health of middle aged people seems to be declining, there is hope. We can turn things around if everyone makes simple changes to their lifestyle.

It’s just a couple of days until Christmas and we’d like to take a few moments to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and as the year draws to an end it’s the perfect opportunity to reflect on the work that we’re doing.

As a result of all your support and encouragement we have been very productive and have made significant progress in working towards our mission of improving the health and well-being of the black community. Thank you for all your support, we really appreciate it.

We are delighted to share our achievements for 2016 with you. Over the past year:

1. Our African Caribbean Cancer Support Group which met monthly continued but came to end as our grant came to an end. We’d like to thank the facilitator of the group Hazel Williams who did a excellent job in providing support to group members and we’d like to thank Macmillan Cancer Support and Croydon Council for funding this project.

2. We continued to offer support to women affected by fibroids through our Fibroids Ask the Expert which provides women with questions or concerns with access to experts in the field who can provide them with accurate reliable information.

3. We organised our first annual fibroid focus conference which was very well attended.

4. We once again teamed up with Black History Walks, Amanda Epe and Dr Sydney Dillard to run a fibroids awareness event with over 200 women attending.

5. We received a grant from Sport England to run our cycling club for a year. Our club began in February 2016. We have 20 members with a core group that have attended regularly come rain or shine. This project is part of our ‘Keep Active’ work which aims to get the black community active.

6. We delivered a range of health awareness presentations to the community.

7. We were featured on Croydon Radio

8. We developed relationships with a number of organisations including Noire Wellness, Voices for Autism, Kinetic Root Services, Diabetes UK, Croydon CCG and the Eve and Grace Wellness Centre

9. We were offered a grant from Croydon Council to run a 12 month diabetes community champion programme in collaboration with Diabetes UK which will start in 2017.

10. We were selected as Noire Wellness’ charity of the year and they will be raising £2000 which will go towards our fibroids education and support programme.

11. On World Mental Health Day we teamed up with film makers and mental health professionals to provide advice on how we can all support someone with a mental health condition.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed 2016 and look forward to continuing our work in 2017. See you next year!

This week the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) published the results of their research exploring cancer deaths in the Caribbean. This was an interesting piece of work revealing what the common causes of cancer deaths are in the region.

This piece of research looked at 23 Caribbean islands and looked at the most recent five years of mortality data during the period from 2003 to 2013. When they looked at all cancers combined the number of cancer deaths ranged from 32 deaths in the Turks and Caicos Islands to 26,135 in Puerto Rico. They converted the deaths into an age-standardised rate which allows a better comparison because this rate takes into account the size of the population and the age of the people in that population. This is important because a larger country will have more deaths simply because they have a larger population and a region with an older population will have more deaths because cancer is more common in older people. By taking these two factors into account we can get an idea of other underlying factors that may be causing cancer deaths which could be prevented, or in countries where cancer deaths rates are low we can explore what factors are contributing to this so other countries can learn from this.

When cancer deaths were converted into an age-standardised rate it was found that the lowest  cancer death rate was found in the Turks and Caicos Islands at  46.1 cancer deaths per 100,000 people and the highest rate was in St Kitts and Nevis at  139.3 per 100,000 people.

The researchers then looked at specific cancers and they found that across 20 of the Caribbean islands prostate cancer was the most common cause of cancer deaths amongst men accounting for 18.4% to 47.4% of cancer deaths.  This was followed by lung cancer which accounted for 5.6% to 24.4% of cancer deaths.

When they looked at women, breast cancer was the most common cause of cancer deaths in 16 of the Caribbean islands accounting for 14% to 29.7% of cancer deaths.  Cervical cancer was found to be the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women with 4.5% to 18.2% of cancer deaths being attributed to cervical cancer.

The researchers also found that bowel cancer was the third most common cause of cancer deaths in men and women and that overall cancer was second leading cause of death in all islands.

When the deaths rates in the Caribbean were compared to those in the US, it was found that death rates for cervical cancer were  2 – 9 times higher in the Caribbean, prostate cancer death rates were 2 -8 times higher in the Caribbean and lung cancer death rates were lower in the Caribbean.

It was explained, in the publication of the research, that there could be an under or overestimation of the data in the Caribbean for several different reasons such as missing, unknown, invalid and non-specific information. Despite this, important conclusions can be made from this work with researchers concluding that:

“Lung and cervical cancers are important preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in most of the Caribbean countries. Lung cancers can be prevented through primary prevention of exposure to risk factors such as smoking, and cervical cancers can be prevented through human papillomavirus vaccination.

The leading causes of cancer deaths in the Caribbean region for both males and females also can be reduced through screening, early detection, and effective treatment for cervical, breast, and colorectal cancers. Although prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality among men in the Caribbean, effective screening strategies that result in reduced mortality have not yet emerged globally, highlighting the need for strengthening referral and treatment strategies.”

The Lake Foundation welcomed this research which provides some good insight into areas that require attention in order to improve cancer outcomes in the Caribbean.

We are delighted to announce our fibroids Twitter chat on Wednesday 18^th January 2017 from 7pm-8pm. We will be joined by special guests Dr Sydney Dillard, CEO of Fighting Fibroids and Renee Brown Small Co-founder of The Fibroids Project with host, our own Abi Begho, founder of The Lake Foundation.

This Twitter chat has been organised to allow for an in-depth discussion on fibroids, what they are, why black women are more at risk, symptoms, treatment and more.

We’ll be putting questions to our expert panel and you can put your questions to them too. So if you have a burning question about fibroids or just want to get involved in the discussion then do join us on the day. To take part in the conversation please use the hashtag #FibroidsChat.

We look forward to tweeting with you!

This week several media outlets ran the story that women who are optimistic live longer. You may be asking: where did the media get this story from? This story was based on a research study, conducted at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, which was published in the Journal of Epidemiology on 7^th December 2016.  The study found that women who were optimistic were less likely to die from cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and infection.

The study involved 70,021 women and ran from 2004 – 2012.  Women’s levels of optimism were measured by asking women to rate how optimistic they thought they were on a scale of 0 to 24 and then researchers determined how optimism and other factors such as race, diet and physical activity affected a woman’s chance of dying from a particular condition.

They found that the most optimistic women were 30% less likely to die from any of the diseases explored in the study than the least optimistic women. Looking at individual diseases the most optimistic women were 52% less likely to die from infection, 39% less likely to die from stroke, 38% less likely to die from heart disease, 38% lower risk of dying from respiratory disease and 16% less likely to die from cancer.

They did find that some of this effect could be explained by health behaviours and health conditions. So, for example, the most optimistic women smoked less and were more physically active. Additionally,  more of the least optimistic women had  a history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, cancer and stroke. Despite this, health behaviours and conditions only partially explained the link between optimism and the lower risk of dying from various conditions which means that there is something about optimism in itself that is beneficial to our health.

The researchers suggested that optimism may have a biological and psychological effect on the body and they concluded that: “it [optimism] may provide a valuable target for new research on strategies to improve health.”

This study shows the power of the mind and demonstrates that if we have a positive outlook on life this can contribute to improving our health.

The researchers stated that the good news is:

“Previous studies have shown that optimism can be altered with relatively uncomplicated and low-cost interventions—even something as simple as having people write down and think about the best possible outcomes for various areas of their lives, such as careers or friendships. Encouraging use of these interventions could be an innovative way to enhance health in the future.”

So, if you struggle with having an optimistic view on situations, you can actually learn to be more optimistic and you may benefit from a mindfulness class. Mindfulness helps people change the way they think about stressful situations helping people respond in a positive way.

The UK government have recognised the benefit of mindfulness and formed the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group who described mindfulness as:

“Mindfulness means paying attention to what’s happening in the present moment in the mind, body and external environment, with an attitude of curiosity and kindness. It is typically cultivated by a range of simple meditation practices, which aim to bring a greater awareness of thinking, feeling and behaviour patterns, and to develop the capacity to manage these with greater skill and compassion. This is found to lead to an expansion of choice and capacity in how to meet and respond to life’s challenges, and therefore live with greater well-being, mental clarity and care for yourself and others.”

For further information you can read the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s report on mindfulness.

Finally, organisations like The Eve and Grace Wellness Centre in Battersea, the Mindfulness Project and SLaM offer mindfulness sessions. You can get in touch with them to try out this concept.

Yesterday, the UK government published its policy document, ‘Overview of Legislation in Draft’,  which outlines the changes to tax law which the government plans to introduce in its 2017 finance bill, in secondary legislation and in future finance bills.

This draft legislation includes information on the soft drinks industry levy (sugar tax) which will come info effect from April 2018.

With regards to the sugar tax the Overview of Legislation in Draft says:

“As announced at Budget 2016, and following consultation on the design and implementation of the levy over the summer, the government will legislate in Finance Bill 2017 for the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. This is a levy on importers and producers of beverages that contain added sugar to help tackle childhood obesity. The 2 thresholds, at 5g and 8g of sugar per 100ml have been designed so that, by taking reasonable steps to reduce sugar content, UK producers and importers of soft drinks can pay less or escape the charge altogether. The levy will take effect from April 2018.

There will be an exemption for the smallest operators and a credit against levy liability, subject to evidence, for liable drinks that are exported.”

The government expects the sugar tax to raise £520M in its first year and these funds will be used to double the funding available to primary schools for PE and sports programme. The government has estimated that the sugar levy will raise £320 million a year for primary schools to support healthier more active lifestyles in children. The funding will not only go towards expanding PE and sports programmes but to also expand breakfast clubs in primary schools ensuring that children have access to a healthy breakfast every week day.

The government has also published a full policy document on the sugar tax which gives further information on the objectives of the tax, who it will affect and how it will be monitored.

The Lake Foundation is glad to see that the government is making progress on implementing the sugar tax and hope that it will go some way to tackling obesity in the UK.

Have you been diagnosed with fibroids? Are you considering treatment options, or have you recently received treatment for fibroids? Then the fibroids patient support group at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital may be of interest to you.

Living with fibroids and being asked to make a decision around surgical options can be emotional and difficult for both you and your loved ones. So, Transforming Outcomes and Health Economics Through Imaging (TOHETI) organise regular fibroids support sessions that  provide a safe, informal setting for  patients to meet other women and share their questions and concerns, both before and after surgery. All are welcome to attend, you do not need to be a patient of Guy’s and St Thomas’.

The next session will be on Monday 23rd January, 6:00 – 7:30pm at the  McNair Centre, Guy’s Hospital. Refreshments will be provided.

This next session will  include a presentation from Dr Irfan Ahmed, Consultant Interventional Radiologist, Guy’s and St Thomas’. Dr Ahmed will talk more about a minimally invasive procedure he performs called uterine artery embolization, and answer any questions you may have.

For more information and to book a place at this session please, email fibroids@kcl.ac.uk or just turn up on the evening!

Last Saturday, our cycling club decided to do something a bit different – combine cycling with another activity.  We opted for a visit to the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in Beckenham.

We started our session with a 30 minute ride from our starting point in Elmer’s End and took a very picturesque route to Monks Orchard Road in Beckenham, where the museum is located.

Upon arrival we were welcomed by very friendly staff who gave us a quick overview of the museum, the current exhibitions (The human influencing machine and the Art of Louis Wain), upcoming events and their collection of work, and we then proceeded upstairs to visit the main collection.

During our visit we learnt that the museum was formally opened in 2015. It explores the history of mental healthcare and treatment, looks at the use of art as therapy and provides insight into the former patients at the Bethlem Royal Hospital.

The Bethlem Royal Hospital first opened its doors in 1247 and is the UK’s first psychiatric institution. The museum takes visitors on a journey that explores the hospital’s history and the history of mental health in general. The museum covers how mental health is labelled, diagnosis, patient narratives, physical restraints, medical treatment and more. There is also an interesting collection of artwork from patients which, during their stay in hospital, would have provided them with the opportunity to address their battle with mental ill-health and express how they feel. This collection of artwork gave us an informative and touching look at how mental health conditions affect patients.

One set of artwork that stood out for us were the two pieces created by William Kurelek .  His first painting, ‘The Maze’, which he painted whilst in hospital, conveys how he felt in the lead-up to and during his battle with clinical depression and other emotional problems.  Whilst his second painting  reveals his state of mind after recovery (the paintings are shown below).

We found the museum to be very engaging with good use of a range of media to powerfully take us through the world of mental health. There were audio recordings of patient stories, paintings, hospital record books, samples from a padded room and a short film that allowed us to reflect on where we should draw the line between freedom and restraint.

Another interesting feature was the Human Influencing Machine exhibit. This was based on the paranoid delusions of James Tilly Matthews, a former patient of Bethlem Royal Hospital who believed that influencing machines were being used by those in power and that one of these machines had been placed in or near the hospital with bad intentions against him.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Bethlem Museum which ended with a nice stop at their cafe for a warm drink to prepare us for our ride back to Croydon. We highly recommended visiting the museum and will definitely be returning as they do organise a number of interesting events.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s Health is a cross-party group of MPs and Peers in the UK Parliament of Westminster. The group aims to empower women to ensure that they can make an informed choice about the best treatment for them and that they are treated with dignity and respect.

The group has launched an inquiry into whether women are given informed choice about the treatment options available for particular conditions. They aim to publish a report that will assess their findings around informed choice and provide recommendations on the improvements that need to be made.

Fibroids is a condition that they would like to shine the spotlight on and they would like to hear from women about their experience of living with and accessing treatment for fibroids. They are asking women with experience of fibroids to complete a survey which you can find here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/fibroids-informed-choice

If you’ve been affected by fibroids we strongly encourage you to complete the survey so that any issues that exist can be identified and addressed to ensure that the diagnosis and treatment pathway for all women is improved.

If you have any questions about the survey or about the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women’s Health please  email  appgwh@pbpoliticalconsulting.com or call 020 7735 6963

If you would like help completing the survey, please get in touch with The Lake Foundation by emailing us