Lifelines this week looks at neat feet, preventing suicide, poverty and bacteria, the benefits of chamomile, stressful smoking and sexual risks
• NEAT FEET: Looking after your feet and nails is just as important as brushing your teeth, according to the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists in Ireland. Paying attention to problems with the feet is important because certain conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and some circulatory and neurological conditions appear in the feet first. Neat Feet is a new leaflet on the importance of healthy feet. See also wwwpodiatryireland.com
• PREVENTING SUICIDE: "What You Can Do to Stop the Rise in Suicide" is the provocative title of Dr Paul Moran's free public lecture tonight at
8 p.m. in St John of God Hospital, Stillorgan, Dublin. The lecture is the second in the series, Minding the Mind, held in association with the Alliance for Mental Health. Forthcoming lectures in the same venue on Tuesday nights will address attention problems in children, managing dementia at home, early detection of schizophrenia and improving your coping skills.
• CHAMOMILE BENEFITS: Drinking chamomile tea has been found to relieve cold symptoms and menstrual cramps. Elaine Holmes, a chemist with the Imperial College London, used German chamomile (also called manzanilla) in a study in which 14 volunteers drank five cups of the tea daily for two weeks. Urine samples showed presence of compounds associated with increased antibacterial activity and muscle relaxants. The study was published last week in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.
• STRESSFUL SMOKING: A study has found a link between work stress and smoking. When Finnish researchers surveyed 46,000 workers they found those with lower rewards and those who worked very hard for insufficient reward were more likely to be smokers. Those who smoked most intensely had higher job strain and a greater imbalance between stress and reward.
• POVERTY AND BACTERIA: Helicobacter pylori is the most common chronic bacterial infection in humans. Glasgow researchers reviewed children who underwent testing for the bacteria between 1995 and 2002 and found there was a very high association between children testing positive for the infection and poverty.
• SEXUAL RISKS: The rates of premature death and disability attributable to sexual behaviour in the US are triple those of other wealthy nations, according to a US study. The research showed that sexual behaviour accounted for around 20 million adverse health consequences in 1998. These included infections, infertility and abortions. And it accounted for almost 30,000 deaths; just over 1 per cent of the total for that year. Cervical cancer and HIV infection were the leading causes of death among women while HIV was the single most important cause of death among men.