The week has flown by at talkhealth, so it’s time for our Friday health news round-up.
Allergy news makes the headlines
Perhaps the biggest health story of the past week or so has been about the sad death of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who suffered a cardiac arrest on a flight to France after buying a sandwich from a branch of Pret a Manger at Heathrow Airport in 2016. The BBC, who reported the story heavily this week, have said that Pret ‘will list all ingredients, including allergens, on its freshly made products’ following the death of the teenager.
talkhealth’s friends at charity Action against Allergy have been calling for changes to the food labelling regulations at food chains for some time. The charity believes that “individual product labelling is the most effective way of communicating vital information for people with food allergies”. You can read their statement, ‘Food labelling needs a new look’ and Allergy UK CEO Carla Jones’ letter to The Times online.
This tragic news has been shared around the world and inadvertently revealed other stories about allergies, and what people are doing about them. While not everybody can afford spending huge sums on reducing the risks of reaction, Born & Elinor Barikor have built a £500,000 allergy-free ‘haven’ in Richmond for their daughter and two sons. The boys have ‘severe, potentially life-threatening allergies to countless triggers’. You can read the family’s story on the Mail Online .
Our talkallergy forum gives you the opportunity to discuss and share your personal experiences as well as the chance to support others who are coping with the very real physical and emotional issues surrounding life with allergies.
Digital detox for children?
It’s well known that millions of people spend a lot of their time – whether at work, at home or on the go – looking at screens. Some of us work on laptops, use our smartphones to keep in touch with friends, and watch television or videos online for the majority of our 24 hours. But how much time is too much time? And how, if at all, is our addiction to screens affecting us? And how is it affecting children?
New research, reported on the BBC News, claims that ‘Limiting children’s recreational screen use has been linked with improved cognition.’ The study found that ‘children aged eight to 11 who used screens for fun for less than two hours a day performed better in tests of mental ability.’ More research is being done is this area.
Read the full report on the BBC.
News from talkhealth
We celebrated our 18th birthday this week, and we’d like to thank all our partners, experts, patients, caregivers, bloggers and the whole healthcare community for your support over the last 18 years! Read more about our anniversary on the talkhealth blog.
talkhealth
This is the talkhealth blog spot, where we post on a wide range of health conditions, topics, issues and concerns. We post when we see something that we believe is of interest to our vistiors. Our posts do not reflect any particular view or stand point of talkhealth, but are merely to raise attention and awareness.