New Obama birth control fixes for religious groups

New Obama Birth Control Fixes For Religious Groups

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Seeking to quell a politically charged controversy, the Obama administration announced new measures Friday to allow religious nonprofits and some companies to opt out of paying for birth control for female employees while still ensuring those employees have access to contraception. Even so, the accommodations may not fully satisfy religious groups who oppose any system that makes them complicit in providing coverage they believe is immoral. Effective immediately, the U.S. will start allowing faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals to notify the government, rather than their insurers, that they object to birth control on religious grounds.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/obama-offers-accommodations-birth-control-172442035--finance.html

WHO: Senegal Ebola case 'a top priority emergency'

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Source : http://news.yahoo.com/senegal-ebola-case-top-priority-emergency-111739589.html

Porn film moratorium lifted after HIV result proves false positive

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Source : http://news.yahoo.com/porn-productions-suspended-performer-tests-positive-hiv-220234264.html

Health workers death toll mounts in W.Africa as Ebola spreads

The front view of teh Samstel Clinic and Maternity centre owned by Dr Ikyke Samuel Enuemo, who has died of the Ebola virus, in Port Harcout on August 29, 2014 (AFP Photo/)

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/widow-nigerias-sixth-ebola-victim-virus-135345158.html

Celebration in Liberia slum as Ebola quarantine lifted

By James Harding Giahyue and Saliou Samb

MONROVIA/CONAKRY Sat Aug 30, 2014 1:05pm EDT

MONROVIA/CONAKRY (Reuters) - Crowds sang and danced in the streets of a seaside neighborhood in Liberia on Saturday as the government lifted quarantine measures designed to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Faced with the worst Ebola outbreak in history, West African governments have struggled to find an effective response. More than 1,550 people have died from the hemorrhagic fever since it was first detected in the forests of Guinea in March.

Residents of the impoverished seaside district of West Point in Monrovia were forcibly cut off from the rest of the capital in mid-August after a crowd attacked an Ebola center there, allowing the sick to flee.

The quarantine sparked protests and security forces responded with tear gas and bullets, killing a teenaged boy.

But at dawn on Saturday, the community woke up to find the soldiers and barricades gone.

"I tell God thank you. I tell everyone thank you," said Koffa, a female resident of West Point. Others danced in the streets chanting slogans like "we are free" while others rolled about on the asphalt pavement in celebration.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a U.S.-educated Nobel Peace Prize winner, has sought to quell criticism of the government's response by issuing orders threatening officials with dismissal for failing to report for work or for fleeing the country, and has ordered an investigation into the West Point shooting.

Liberia, where infection rates are highest, plans to build five new Ebola treatment centers each with capacity for 100 beds, government and health officials said on Saturday.

In neighboring Sierra Leone, President Ernest Bai Koromo dismissed his health minister Miatta Kargbo on Friday over her handling of the epidemic which has killed more than 400 people there.

Her replacement Abubakarr Fofana on Saturday confirmed that a third doctor in the county had died from Ebola, further hampering its ability to respond to the outbreak.

"It is with a deep sense of sadness that we have lost one of our finest physicians in the line of duty at a time like when we need a lot of them to help in out fight against Ebola," he said.

Physician Dr. Sahr Rogers caught the disease while treating outpatients in the same hospital where a doctor died last month and where British nurse William Pooley was also infected.

SPREAD TO SENEGAL

Transmitted through the vomit, blood and sweat of the sick, Ebola has also spread to Nigeria and Senegal, which reported its first confirmed case on Friday - a Guinean student who was lost to authorities in his own country while under surveillance.

"His brother came from Sierra Leone where he was infected and has died. Shortly afterwards, this student left for Senegal," said Dr. Rafi Diallo, spokesman for the Guinean health ministry.

Two other members of his family - his sister and mother - have died from Ebola, Guinean health ministry sources said.

A resident in the suburb of the Senegalese capital Dakar where the student resided said on Saturday that a team of health ministry officials wearing white protective suits and masks came to spray disinfectant at his home and a local grocer's shop.

Many Dakar residents worry that the student could have spread the highly contagious virus in the three weeks since he was last reported in Guinea.

In Nigeria, where an infected traveler collapsed after arriving the Lagos airport, there have so far been 19 suspected, probable and confirmed cases and seven deaths.

"To avoid a situation like Nigeria, they need to be able to follow hundreds of contacts," said epidemiologist Jorge Castilla of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department in Dakar. "Whatever they do, there will probably be a second set of sick people as this guy has been here for some time."

Senegal has since closed its land border with Guinea and halted flights to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, defying advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) that there is no need for travel restrictions.

A note from the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization sent to health ministries on Aug. 29 said: "Lives are being unnecessarily lost because health care workers cannot travel to the affected countries, and delivery of life saving equipment and supplies is being delayed."

The World Food Programme said it needs to raise $70 million to feed 1.3 million people at risk from shortages in the Ebola-quarantined areas in West Africa, with the agency's resources already stretched by several major humanitarian crises.

(Additional reporting by Umaru Fofana, Diadie Ba and Emma Farge; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/healthNews/~3/pXlz9VlqCBs/story01.htm

Porn film moratorium lifted after HIV result proves false positive

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:32pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A porn industry trade group has placed a moratorium on U.S. productions of adult sex films after one performer received a preliminary positive test for infection by the virus that causes AIDS.

The suspension, which began on Thursday, marks at least the third consecutive summer that porn productions have been shut down because of performers who tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease.

The online notice posted by the Los Angeles-based Free Speech Coalition did not identify the latest performer in question and said results from a confirmatory HIV test had yet to be completed.

The group said its next steps would be to establish a timeline for possible exposure, identify any of the performer's recent partners and conduct additional tests.

Under the group's own health screening procedures, a moratorium is deemed to be warranted if any performer who tests positive has worked with anyone else from two weeks prior to his or her last negative HIV test to the date the positive result came back.

Filming cannot resume before all such partners have been notified and tested.

The industry group was expected to have an update on the situation Friday, according to spokeswoman and membership director Joanne Cachapero.

The coalition also imposed a moratorium in August 2013 after an actress was found to be infected with HIV and renewed the suspension the following month after another performer tested positive.

In August 2012 a moratorium was put into effect following several cases of syphilis among adult film actors were reported.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a group that has pushed for a state law requiring porn actors to wear condoms during sex scenes, says adult film performers are 10 times more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease than the general public.

The Free Speech Coalition insists there is no evidence to suggest on-set transmission of HIV, as opposed to transmission from off-camera sexual contact.

Voters in Los Angeles County, which had long been the center of the U.S. porn film industry, last year approved a ballot initiative to require porn actors to wear condoms on the set.

Proponents complain the measure has largely gone unenforced, even as a majority of adult film production is believed to have moved out of the county since the measure's passage.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/lifestyle/~3/D6RI1jPn7ds/story01.htm

Rosa Parks artifacts sold for $4.5 million to Buffett son: lawyer

Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:41pm EDT

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Rosa Parks in a 1988 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/File

(Reuters) - A foundation controlled by the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett has paid $4.5 million for hundreds of artifacts belonging to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, a lawyer for Parks' heirs said on Friday.

The artifacts, which include Parks' Presidential Medal of Freedom and a postcard signed by Martin Luther King Jr., were purchased by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation on Aug. 20, said Detroit-area attorney Lawrence Pepper.

Personal papers, notes, letters from presidents, and various awards and honorary doctorates were also among the articles, said Pepper.

"For lack of a better term, she was a pack rat," said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's auction house in New York, where most of the material was stored. "She had retained many things from her long and rich life."

The foundation was not immediately available for comment. Ettinger said Buffett was not interested in acquiring the collection for himself, but wants to find an appropriate home for it.

Parks, who died in 2005, became a symbol of the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. She later moved to Detroit and worked for Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago and Angela Moore in New York; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/lifestyle/~3/NcYQAc3u2UY/story01.htm

Ebola outbreak reaches Senegal, riots break out in Guinea

By Stephanie Nebehay and Tim Cocks

GENEVA/LAGOS Thu Aug 28, 2014 11:20pm EDT

1 of 2. Volunteers prepare to remove the bodies of people who were suspected of contracting Ebola and died in the community in the village of Pendebu, north of Kenema July 18, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/WHO/Tarik Jasarevic

GENEVA/LAGOS (Reuters) - The Ebola epidemic in West Africa could infect over 20,000 people and spread to more countries, the U.N. health agency said on Thursday, warning that an international effort costing almost half a billion dollars is needed to overcome the outbreak.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a $490 million strategic plan to contain the epidemic over the next nine months, saying it was based on a projection that the virus could spread to 10 further countries beyond the four now affected - Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

With the IMF warning of economic damage from the outbreak, Nigeria reported that a doctor indirectly linked to the Liberian-American who brought the disease to the country had died of Ebola in Port Harcourt, Africa's largest energy hub.

In Britain, drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said an experimental Ebola vaccine is being fast-tracked into human studies and it plans to produce up to 10,000 doses for emergency deployment if the results are good.

So far 3,069 cases have been reported in the outbreak but the WHO said the actual number could already be two to four times higher. "This is not a West African issue or an African issue. This is a global health security issue," WHO's Assistant Director-General Dr Bruce Aylward told reporters in Geneva.

With a fatality rate of 52 percent, the death toll stood at 1,552 as of Aug. 26. That is nearly as high as the total from all recorded outbreaks since Ebola was discovered in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976.

The figures do not include 13 deaths from a separate Ebola outbreak announced at the weekend in Congo, which has been identified as a different strain of the virus.

Aylward said tackling the epidemic would need thousands of local staff and 750 international experts. "It is a big operation. We are talking (about) well over 12,000 people operating over multiple geographies and high-risk circumstances. It is an expensive operation," he said.

The operation marks a major raising of the response by the WHO, which had been accused by some aid agencies of reacting too slowly to the outbreak.

Medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) welcomed the WHO plan but said the important thing was now to act upon it.

"Huge questions remain about who will implement the elements in the plan," said MSF operations director Brice de le Vingne. "None of the organizations in the most-affected countries ... currently have the right set-up to respond on the scale necessary to make a serious impact."

EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS

Early this month, the WHO classified the Ebola outbreak as an international health emergency. Concerns that the disease could spread beyond West Africa have led to the use of drugs still under development for the treatment of a handful of cases.

Two American health workers, who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Liberia, received an experimental therapy called ZMapp, a cocktail of antibodies made by tiny California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical. They recovered and were released from hospital last week.

The virus has already killed an unprecedented number of health workers and is still being spread in a many places, the WHO said. About 40 percent of the cases have occurred within the past 21 days, its statistics showed.

Previous Ebola outbreaks have mainly occurred in isolated areas of Central Africa. However the current epidemic has spread to three West African capitals and Lagos, Africa's biggest city. The WHO said special attention would need to be given to stopping transmission in capital cities and major ports.

"This epidemic is a challenge. Challenging to Liberia and challenging to all of those who are friends and partners of Liberia," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Wednesday, receiving a donation of ambulances from the Indian community.

"We can only return to our normal business ... if together we beat this demon that is amongst us." 

Authorities in Nigeria announced the doctor's death in Port Harcourt, the main oil industry terminal of Africa's largest crude exporter. The doctor had treated a patient who evaded quarantine after coming into contact with Patrick Sawyer - a U.S. citizen who died in Lagos after flying in from Liberia last month.

Health Ministry spokesman Dan Nwomeh wrote in his Twitter feed that 70 people were now under surveillance in Port Harcourt, which is home to foreigners working for international oil companies.

A spokesman for leading operator Royal Dutch Shell said in London that the firm was "liaising with health authorities on the steps being taken to contain the disease".

Oil traders in Europe said insurance premiums for Nigerian cargoes had gone up slightly, but otherwise business was continuing as normal.

Analysts urged caution. "While major disruption to oil production appears unlikely, any further spread of Ebola ... is likely to cause serious operational challenges," said Roddy Barclay of the Control Risks consultancy.

According to new figures released on Thursday, Nigeria has recorded 17 cases, including six deaths, from Ebola, since Sawyer collapsed upon arrival at Lagos airport in late July.

While Nigeria has yet to suffer any major economic disruption, the International Monetary Fund said the smaller, poorer nations at the heart of the epidemic were being badly hurt. "The Ebola outbreak is having an acute macroeconomic and social impact on three already fragile countries in West Africa," IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington.

Rice said the IMF was assessing the impact and any extra financing needs with Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The Lagos case contributed to the decision by a number of airlines to halt services to Ebola-affected countries. Air France said on Wednesday it had suspended flights to Sierra Leone on the advice of the French government.

Aylward said it was vital to restore commercial airline routes to the region to help transport aid workers and supplies, but in the meantime the WHO plan includes an "air bridge" to be operated by the U.N.'s World Food Programme.

"We assume current airline limitations will stop within the next couple of weeks. This is absolutely vital," he said. "Right now the aid effort risks being choked off."

West African health ministers meeting in Ghana on Thursday echoed the WHO's concerns and called for the reopening of borders and an end to flight bans.

(Additional reporting by Kwasi Kpodo in Accra, Ben Hirschler and Julia Payne in London, Anna Yukhananov in Washington and Sharon Begley in New York; Writing by Joe Bavier and Daniel Flynn; Editing by David Stamp)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/healthNews/~3/-XFm4w6HRsQ/story01.htm

Porn film moratorium lifted after HIV result proves false positive

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:32pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A porn industry trade group has placed a moratorium on U.S. productions of adult sex films after one performer received a preliminary positive test for infection by the virus that causes AIDS.

The suspension, which began on Thursday, marks at least the third consecutive summer that porn productions have been shut down because of performers who tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease.

The online notice posted by the Los Angeles-based Free Speech Coalition did not identify the latest performer in question and said results from a confirmatory HIV test had yet to be completed.

The group said its next steps would be to establish a timeline for possible exposure, identify any of the performer's recent partners and conduct additional tests.

Under the group's own health screening procedures, a moratorium is deemed to be warranted if any performer who tests positive has worked with anyone else from two weeks prior to his or her last negative HIV test to the date the positive result came back.

Filming cannot resume before all such partners have been notified and tested.

The industry group was expected to have an update on the situation Friday, according to spokeswoman and membership director Joanne Cachapero.

The coalition also imposed a moratorium in August 2013 after an actress was found to be infected with HIV and renewed the suspension the following month after another performer tested positive.

In August 2012 a moratorium was put into effect following several cases of syphilis among adult film actors were reported.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a group that has pushed for a state law requiring porn actors to wear condoms during sex scenes, says adult film performers are 10 times more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease than the general public.

The Free Speech Coalition insists there is no evidence to suggest on-set transmission of HIV, as opposed to transmission from off-camera sexual contact.

Voters in Los Angeles County, which had long been the center of the U.S. porn film industry, last year approved a ballot initiative to require porn actors to wear condoms on the set.

Proponents complain the measure has largely gone unenforced, even as a majority of adult film production is believed to have moved out of the county since the measure's passage.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/healthNews/~3/OEDbOdacj1s/story01.htm

After Gaza bombs and heart surgery comes Hala's simple smile

"I prayed every day and night that we would be spared by the bombs. I lived in constant fear for my family." Mahdeya and her husband Majid, 32, have three other children: Saja, four, Mazen, six, and Waroud, 12.

Life in Gaza before the war began at the start of July had been tough by any standard. Majid does not work as he has health problems – he had heart surgery at 15 in Jordan (Hala's condition may be genetic, explains Mahdeya), and Waroud is disabled, too. The family survived on handouts, living in a two-room home made of corrugated iron. But the children went to school; an opportunity Mahdeya did not have.

Hala's heart condition was diagnosed about 20 days after she was born. "She was constantly tired, had difficulty eating, and sometimes breathing. Every time I left the room, she would cry. We were all frightened for her."

Mahdeya was told she would have to join a waiting list for charitable surgery in Israel or America. In the meantime, she was given an oxygen tank for Hala to use daily, and was told to bring her in for regular check-ups. Then war broke out. What was daily life like under bombardment? "There was no life. It was all tears and shouts and bombs, and being scared. At the beginning of August, we were advised to leave our homes, and we were offered a space at a UN school in Jabila. We left in just our clothes. Two days later, Majid went back home. He said: 'I'll either come back with some more children's clothes, or not at all.' When he returned, all he brought was news – our home had been destroyed by a bomb. We had lost everything."

Everyone was in the same boat, she says. "It was just constant fear, even when we moved to the school, the kids were shouting all the time, they weren't comfortable in the surroundings. We never relaxed, our guard was always up, waiting, praying to God that we and the children would be safe. Constant terror."

Mahdeya is remarkably calm – she is neither angry nor bitter. "So many people have died, both in Palestine and Israel," she says. "I couldn't see it would ever be resolved, that we would be a community ever again. I still can't imagine what life will be like from now on."

At the UN shelter, food (meat, cheese, milk) was rationed. Each family was assigned a part of a classroom and – that human need to feel normal – "the mother would try her best to clean and dust it. We'd take it in turns to clean the communal stairs".

The children were constantly frightened, she reiterates, but the adults would try to comfort them by playing down the danger: "We'd say, 'That's just a plane,' but they would say: 'No, it's a rocket, it will bomb us.' So all the parents tried to say that it was a game, and nothing was wrong, but the children were aware."

At night, the family slept on two mattresses side by side; one night, a rocket hit the classroom they were sleeping in. "The bomb hit the school and everyone jumped up and ran around, kids and adults shouting, dashing through the stairs to shelter. My first reaction was to grab my children, hug them and reassure them it was OK, but in my head, I thought: 'This is our time.'  " Not surprisingly, Mahdeya says she never really slept.

One of her greatest worries was the lack of oxygen for Hala; she wasn't allowed to leave the shelter to get the cylinder topped up, so Hala was becoming increasingly listless as it ran out. Medics locally knew she was in a critical condition, but any attempt to get her out of the war zone was deemed impossible.

Then the Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy was alerted to her problem and made an emotional broadcast from Gaza. Suddenly, there was international (and multi-faith) co-operation; the Israelis arranged safe passage to Jordan, where Hala and her mother were placed on a flight to London. The journey took three days. Hala nearly died on the flight.

"I was so glad to go," says Mahdeya, "but it was hard to leave the rest of the family behind." Never having been outside Gaza before, she was "really quite terrified here — it is so different".

One of the charity workers tells me that Mahdeya was shaking constantly in the early days, and that she was horrified when she heard a police siren go by.

Hala was getting more poorly every day, so the operation was brought forward and eventually took place 12 days ago. Her condition was diagnosed as Tetralogy of Fallot, one of the most common congenital heart defects in children. Hala was suffering from decreased blood flow to the lung; a hole between the two ventricles (or main chambers) in the heart; displacement of the aorta (the main artery); and increased thickness of the right ventricle.

Surgery took four hours as paediatric heart surgeon Prof Francois Lacour-Gayet closed the hole with a patch and enlarged the pulmonary artery.

Even as she came round from the anaesthetic, Hala began to look better. Her lips had been blue through lack of oxygen, but were now a healthy pink. "I was screaming with happiness, shouting and crying with joy," admits her mother.

But even as Mahdeya dared to believe her youngest child would survive – and doctors have confirmed the operation has been successful – she admits her joy was tempered with fear for the rest of the family.

So it was a huge relief to hear last week that a ceasefire had been agreed in Gaza, and is holding. Mother and daughter should be ready to leave Britain in a week's time, and soon Hala will be running around after her siblings – and getting into mischief – like any other child.

Perhaps it may be a surprise to some, especially as she is returning to so little, but Mahdeya is keen to go back home. "Of course I'm worried but I want to see all my children. I hope people will help rebuild our home, and I want to walk in the streets safely with my children. I want them to go back to school and get educated. I want to enjoy life again, to live without fear. Happiness for me would be peace in my country."

You can help children similar to Hala in need of urgent open-heart surgery by supporting chainofhope.org, via justgiving.com/chainofhope or by sending cheques to Chain of Hope, South Parade, Chelsea, London SW3 6NP

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3dfca30a/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Cmiddleeast0Cgaza0C110A638670CAfter0EGaza0Ebombs0Eand0Eheart0Esurgery0Ecomes0EHalas0Esimple0Esmile0Bhtml/story01.htm

Doctors escaping disciplinary hearings by taking early retirement

He called on the government to make "urgent amendments" to the Medical Act to close the loophole.

He said: "There is a systemic failure in the disciplinary process that applies to doctors which gives insufficient weight to patients and their families. Voluntary erasure enables GPs to play for time, delay disciplinary hearings and then to walk away before they have concluded.

"There is a culture of secrecy because names are routinely not made public. In other cases, where doctors have been named, they are able to call a halt to their own disciplinary case.

"It is a double tragedy for families. The tragedy of clinical incompetence is compounded by a failure of the disciplinary process. There is a wider point as the failure to reach a conclusion in these cases means nothing is proven, and therefore the wider lessons to be learnt are not being highlighted."

Rob Jones, an obstetrician who delivered David Cameron's daughter Florence, was allowed to stand down despite a 'surgical incident' and amid concerns he may have failed to spot cancerous tumours in patients.

Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, the consultant paediatrician who failed to diagnose Baby P's broken back, was also granted voluntary erasure on health grounds.

Erasure is granted if doctors are in the later stages of their careers, if there is a strong likelihood they would not return to practice in the UK or elsewhere and if it is in the interests of patient safety to remove them from the register.

They can no longer practice in the UK, and the GMC also alerts other authorities throughout the world.

In many cases, though, the GMC rules that it is in the public interest for doctors to appear before panels.

Niall Dickson, chief executive of the General Medical Council, said: "Let us be clear a doctor who takes voluntary erasure while under our procedures cannot practise medicine in the UK.

"There is no better way to protect the public than stopping them from practising as a doctor. If at any time they then tried to get back on the register the case against them would become active again and where there are serious concerns realistically it is highly unlikely they could ever practise again.

"However we have called for a further reform in this area. Where doctors want to leave the register while under investigation we would like to have power to give them the equivalent of a 'dishonourable discharge' – where they accept they were facing serious allegations, they want to leave and we want them to go.

"Unfortunately this reform like many others is currently stuck in a legislative logjam – we very much hope it will be taken up by the government in power after the next election."

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3dfaf834/sc/7/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Chealth0C110A650A940CDoctors0Eescaping0Edisciplinary0Ehearings0Eby0Etaking0Eearly0Eretirement0Bhtml/story01.htm

Depression therapy could help cancer patient fight illness

Most reported feeling more positive, having less pain or anxiety, and not feeling so tired.

"We're talking about people having a combination of two illnesses," said Prof Michael Sharpe, professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Oxford.

"They often feel hopeless and negative and have suicidal thoughts. You can see they have worse physical symptoms, and there is evidence they have poorer survival rates."

A study of 21,000 cancer patients attending clinics in Scotland found that major depression was far more common than in the general population. Nearly one in seven lung cancer patients was suffering from clinical depression compared with one in 50 across Britain.

Prof Sharpe said too much attention had been paid to helping people to live longer without addressing their quality of life.

"Major depression is really quite common and perhaps the surprising finding is that most goes untreated. The outcome with usual care is really poor," he said.

"If cancer services took as much care with treatment of depression as they take with physical care we could get a huge improvement in quality of life for those people with cancer who are unlucky to also have major depression."

A trial of 500 patients with a good prognosis found that 62 per cent of patients with severe depression saw their symptoms cut by at least half within six months. A second trial, of lung cancer patients, with poor prognosis, also found that therapy improved anxiety, pain and fatigue.

Study leader Dr Jane Walker, of the University of Oxford, said: "Patients with lung cancer often have poor prognosis.

"If they also have major depression it can blight the time that they have left to live. This trial shows that we can effectively treat depression in patients with poor prognosis cancers like lung cancer and really improve patient's lives."

Dr Stefan Symeonides, Clinical lecturer in Medical Oncology at the University of Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre added: "Depression is a major problem for people with cancer. We may just be noticing the tip of the iceberg. "

The research was published in The Lancet.

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3deb8193/sc/14/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Chealth0Chealthnews0C110A5890A80CDepression0Etherapy0Ecould0Ehelp0Ecancer0Epatient0Efight0Eillness0Bhtml/story01.htm

Dentist at center of hepatitis scare cedes license

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Source : http://news.yahoo.com/dentist-center-health-scare-cedes-license-144511070.html

Deadline to clear up health law eligibility near

MTV Video Music Awards: Most Memorable Looks Of All Time--Lady Gaga's Meat Dress, Lil Kim's Purple Pasty & More!

0:55

In the world of music awards shows, the MTV Video Music Awards are like the Met Gala. You're probably think, um, what? But hear us out. It's a fashionable affair, but really it's about making a cutting-edge statement. And with many attendees being musicians accustomed to outrageous music video outfits (think Ariana Grande's rocket boob ensemble), it's no surprise that some of the looks are downright wacky. Just before twerking history was made, Miley Cyrus stepped out at the 2013 VMAs in a funky Dolce & Gabbana ensemble. In a total fashion 180, Beyoncé created an iconic VMA moment when she stepped out in a bump-baring Lanvin gown back in 2011.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/deadline-clear-health-law-eligibility-near-162633361--politics.html

New Obama birth control fixes for religious groups

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Source : http://news.yahoo.com/obama-offers-accommodations-birth-control-172442035--finance.html

Ebola: Questions, answers about an unproven drug

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Source : http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-questions-answers-unproven-drug-203102763--politics.html

German woman hunts down father's ashes after DHL delivers to corner shop

BERLIN Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:30am EDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman has found her dead father's ashes behind a stack of boxes in a convenience store after courier company DHL was unable to deliver the urn to the church for his funeral, Bild newspaper reported on Monday.

When the courier could not find anyone at the Berlin church to take the box, he dropped it off at a local shop, the woman said. But the courier did not provide an address telling Silvia Hohaus where exactly she could find it later.

Hohaus spent a frantic few hours scouring shops in the neighbourhood.

A spokeswoman for DHL told Reuters the courier had done nothing wrong. "There was no mistake," Anke Blenn said. "He tried to deliver the package twice (to the church) but found nobody there."

Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/lifestyle/~3/SrudrWYbso8/story01.htm

British scientists create first complete working organ from cells

"By directly reprogramming cells we've managed to produce an artificial cell type that, when transplanted, can form a fully organised and functional organ. This is an important first step towards the goal of generating a clinically useful artificial thymus in the lab."

The thymus is the central hub of the immune system sending out infection fighting T-cells.

People with a defective thymus lack functioning T-cells and are highly vulnerable to infections. This is especially hazardous for bone marrow transplant patients, who need a working thymus to rebuild their immune systems after surgery.

Around one in 4,000 babies born each year in the UK have a malfunctioning or completely absent thymus, due to rare conditions such as DiGeorge syndrome.

Thymus disorders can be treated with infusions of extra immune cells or transplantation of a new organ soon after birth. However, such approaches are severely limited by a lack of donors and tissue rejection.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, raises the possibility of creating a whole new functioning thymus using cells manufactured in the laboratory.

While fragments of organs, including hearts, livers and even brains, have been grown from stem cells, no one before has succeeded in producing a fully intact organ from cells created outside the body.

Dr Rob Buckle, head of regenerative medicine at the MRC, said: "Growing 'replacement parts' for damaged tissue could remove the need to transplant whole organs from one person to another, which has many drawbacks – not least a critical lack of donors.

"This research is an exciting early step towards that goal, and a convincing demonstration of the potential power of direct reprogramming technology, by which once cell type is converted to another. However, much more work will be needed before this process can be reproduced in the lab environment, and in a safe and tightly controlled way suitable for use in humans."

Chris Mason, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at University College London, said: "Using living cells as therapies has the big advantage in that the functionality of cells is many orders of magnitude greater than that of conventional drugs. Nowhere is this level of functionality more needed than in curing disorders of the immune system.

"The time and resources required to turn this mouse proof-of-concept study into a safe and effective routine therapy for patients will be very significant – 10 years and tens of millions of pounds at a bare minimum. Even the starting point, the underpinning science, is far from complete: for example, not all the cells that are required can yet be made in the lab. However, the ... data strongly support the urgent need for more scientists, together with engineers and clinicians, to now get involved in order to evaluate and develop this new technology."

Dr Paolo de Coppi, consultant paediatric surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital and head of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at the Institute of Child Health, London, said: "Research such as this demonstrates that organ engineering could, in the future, be a substitute for transplantation, overcoming problems such as organ donor shortages and bypassing the need for immunosuppressive therapy.

"It remains to be seen whether, in the long term, cells generated using direct reprogramming will be able to maintain their specialised form and avoid problems such as tumour formation."

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3dcddacd/sc/10/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Chealth0Chealthnews0C110A536870CBritish0Escientists0Ecreate0Efirst0Ecomplete0Eworking0Eorgan0Efrom0Ecells0Bhtml/story01.htm

Briton tests positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone

On August 12 a Spanish missionary, 75-year-old Miguel Pajares, became the first European victim of the disease.

Since then there have been dozens of false alarms in Ireland, Austria, Spain and Germany. In Germany, about 600 people were quarantined for two hours in a Berlin jobcentre after a false alarm about a suspected case of Ebola.

Two American doctors who contracted the disease, Dr Kent Brantly, 33, and Nancy Writebol, 59, were released from hospital in Atlanta this week after three weeks of being cared for in the US hospital. The pair were treated with an untested serum, ZMapp, which had been trialled on monkeys but not approved for human use.

Since the "miraculous" recovery of the American medics, a small quantity of ZMapp has been sent to Liberia for use on patients there. There are only limited quantities of the drug - between 800 and 1,000 doses - however, as it has not yet been approved for mass production.

The Americans were working for Samaritan's Purse, a Christian aid organisation which has been working extensively in Liberia. However, a spokesman for the charity told The Telegraph that they did not work in Sierra Leone and the British victim was not working for them.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, which currently has 66 international and 610 national staff responding to the crisis in the three affected countries, said the victim was not working for them either.

The virus, which first emerged in the 1960s, has killed almost 1,500 people across West Africa in the worst-ever outbreak of the disease. The majority of cases have been registered in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – where this outbreak began on April 1.

But it has also spread to Nigeria – Africa's most populous country – and has infected people beyond the original victim and his carers.

Patrick Sawyer died in Lagos after travelling from Liberia, and was due to travel home to the United States.

In all, 213 people are now under surveillance in Nigeria - including six people, all "secondary contacts" like the caregivers' spouses, being monitored in the state of Enugu, more than 310 miles east of Lagos.

Sierra Leone has been hit hard by the current outbreak, recording at least 910 cases and 392 deaths, according to figures released on Friday by the World Health Organization.

A total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded across West Africa.

Symptoms of Ebola appear as a sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. According to the WHO, this is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function and, in some cases, both internal and external bleeding.

The effects of the disease normally appear between two and 21 days after infection.

It is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through person-to-person transmission. Outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90 per cent.

The WHO says the disease can be passed between people by direct contact - through broken skin or mucous membranes - with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids.

The spread of the infection has been worsened by the fact that many in Sierra Leone fear Western medicine, and have taken their relatives away from care centres. As a result they die in the community unrecorded, leading to "shadow zones".

On Friday the Ivory Coast closed its borders with Liberia and Guinea. A day later the Philippines announced that they were withdrawing their UN peacekeeping troops from Liberia in response to the outbreak.

The World Health Organisation declared the outbreak an "international public health emergency" on August 8.

"Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously WHO is taking the current outbreak; but statements won't save lives," said Dr Bart Janssens, MSF Director of Operations.

"Now we need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground. For weeks, MSF has been repeating that a massive medical, epidemiological and public health response is desperately needed to saves lives and reverse the course of the epidemic. Lives are being lost because the response is too slow."

Dr Janssens said that there needed to be an urgent scaling-up of medical care, training of health staff, infection control, contact tracing, epidemiological surveillance, alert and referral systems, community mobilisation and education.

He added: "All our Ebola experts are mobilised, we simply cannot do more."

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3dc8e6bf/sc/6/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Cebola0C110A531220CBriton0Etests0Epositive0Efor0EEbola0Ein0ESierra0ELeone0Bhtml/story01.htm

Liberia police fire on protesters as West Africa's Ebola toll hits 1,350

MONROVIA Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:48am EDT

MONROVIA (Reuters) - Police in the Liberian capital Monrovia fired tear gas on Wednesday to disperse a stone-throwing crowd agitating to leave a neighborhood placed under quarantine because of the Ebola virus.

Witnesses said there were no injuries.

Liberian authorities introduced a nationwide curfew on Tuesday and put the neighborhood - West Point - under quarantine. The rundown area has been hit by Ebola, which has killed more than 1,200 people in four West African countries.

(Reporting by Alphonso Toweh and Clair MacDougall; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; editing by John Stonestreet)

Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/healthNews/~3/sXPxx2wCuYk/story01.htm

Amid Afghanistan's escalating war, a battle to beat polio

By Krista Mahr and Mirwais Harooni

KABUL Wed Aug 20, 2014 11:49pm EDT

1 of 5. A boy receives polio vaccination drops during an anti-polio campaign in Kabul, in this file picture taken August 18, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Omar Sobhani

KABUL (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of volunteers fanned out across Afghanistan this week, braving deteriorating security and distrusting parents to administer two chilled drops of the oral polio vaccine each to millions of children.

Keeping the highly infectious polio disease in check in any country is a daunting task. But in a nation where Taliban militants are fast gaining ground against government forces, it's also a dangerous one.

Afghanistan is one of only three nations where the polio virus is still endemic, along with Pakistan and Nigeria. For a nation at war, its anti-polio campaign has had remarkable success, bringing the number of cases down from 63 in 1999 to just 14 in 2013. Only eight new cases have been confirmed so far this year, compared to 108 in Pakistan.

But as fighting between Afghan forces and militants intensifies ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign troops this year, health workers risk losing precious access to the places - and children - they need to keep tabs on.

This week, in some restive areas of the east and southeast, health workers had yet to go door to door to deliver the vaccine, said Dr. Mohammad Wasim Sajad, a training officer in the Ministry of Public Health in Kabul.

"People are not willing to go out," he said, adding that negotiations with local groups to allow vaccinators to do their work safely were under way.

Vaccination is the only known way to prevent polio, an infectious disease that attacks the nervous system mainly in children under five and can lead to permanent paralysis and death. It has no cure.

"We don't see a big problem now, but if (major) fighting continues long term, then access will be difficult," said Abdul Majeed Siddiqi, the head of mission in Afghanistan for HealthNet TPO, an NGO that advises the Afghan government on polio.

People's attitudes toward the vaccine are another challenge.

In a dusty hillside neighborhood of Bagh Qazi, Freshta Faizi, a volunteer, trudged from house to house on Monday, asking residents if their children had been given their drops.

"Sometimes they just say no and shut the door," said Faizi. "They say it won't make any difference. I've had people tell me the vaccine is just American urine."

In August, Human Rights Watch reported that in parts of the southern province of Helmand, the Taliban had stopped health officials from sending out mobile vaccination teams.

That was an alarming development, because - unlike some militant factions in Pakistan, which have targeted and killed anti-polio campaigners - the Afghan Taliban have pledged support for vaccination.

A Taliban spokesman said the group had concerns that some polio vaccinators in Helmand were promoting government policy, not health. However, he told Reuters by phone that after the health ministry had organized talks on the issue, the group was satisfied. "There are no more problems," he said.

Though a win for the campaign, the scare underscores the fragility of Afghanistan's gains. Negotiations on allowing vaccinators to move freely throughout the country were conducted locally and on a "case-by-case" basis, said Sajad.

Ten years ago, Afghanistan was tantalizingly close to halting the circulation of the virus within its borders: only four cases were confirmed in 2004, according to the government.

But as security deteriorated, health workers couldn't travel to dangerous areas and were unable to make sure children were getting the vaccine. By 2012, the number of polio cases in Afghanistan rose to 37.

AN UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITY

Complicating matters, this summer over 150,000 refugees from North Waziristan, a tribal region of Pakistan where leaders banned the polio vaccine in 2012, poured over the border into Afghanistan, seeking refuge from a military offensive against insurgents.

The influx from an area that has generated most of Pakistan's polio cases this year immediately raised alarm.

Most of Afghanistan's new cases of polio this year are genetically linked to Pakistan, according to HealthNet TPO. But the government says that, so far, only one case has been identified as having coming from a North Waziristan refugee.

The flood of refugees yielded an unexpected opportunity, however: over 400,000 vaccine doses were given out in Pakistan along the routes residents used to flee their homes, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

That's good news for the global fight to exterminate polio and particularly for Afghanistan, where thousands of residents move across the Pakistan border every day.

"If there is control in Pakistan, there will be control in Afghanistan," said Siddiqi. "If there is no control in Pakistan, the problems in Afghanistan will continue."

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Writing by Krista Mahr; Editing by John Chalmers and Nick Macfie)

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Source : http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/healthNews/~3/J9qRoVibA8M/story01.htm

Ebola: Questions, answers about an unproven drug

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Belgian infant contracts HIV via breast milk

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New York City council speaker reveals HPV diagnosis to raise awareness

Breaking News:

Official says US planes and drones made near-dozen airstrikes in Iraq since Tuesday

New York City councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito smiles as she speaks after being elected speaker of …

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/york-city-council-speaker-reveals-hpv-diagnosis-raise-171322410.html

Deadline to clear up health law eligibility near

Lessons Of Stigmas, Stereotypes In Williams' Death

0:44

Jamie Masada, the owner of the fabled Los Angeles-based comedy club the Laugh Factory, vividly remembers a warm exchange with comic Richard Jeni of the two sharing words of encouragement and gentle ribbing. "The next day I heard he put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off," recalled Masada of Jeni's 2007 suicide. "At that point I said, 'God, could I do something to somehow prevent that?'" A few years later, having watched his "family" continuously depleted, Masada did do something. Robin Williams, a frequent Laugh Factory performer who committed suicide Monday, marked only the latest comic genius to be plagued by demons of depression and addiction.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/deadline-clear-health-law-eligibility-near-162633361--politics.html

Sepsis is on the rise, warns medical expert

Working with the UK Sepsis Trust, the society is calling for better recording of sepsis cases by hospitals.

With sepsis on the rise, the society claims it is vital that medics improve their knowledge of the illness so they can recognise the early signs, which include a high temperature and a fast heartbeat, and administer appropriate treatment.

Prof Bellamy, who is based at the Leeds Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, said: "In time without new and effective antibiotics the problem will gradually escalate.

"For the first time in recent months I have seen in my own intensive care unit patients who are coming along who have infections which are pretty much resistant to all of the antibiotics, at least in normal doses.

"There is this spectre, if we don't develop new antibiotics and if we don't control the problem of antibiotic resistance effectively there is this spectre emerging of moving into a post antibiotic era, an era where simple surgical operations will become life threatening because there are no effective antibiotics available."

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3db16505/sc/14/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Chealth0C110A470A190CSepsis0Eis0Eon0Ethe0Erise0Ewarns0Emedical0Eexpert0Bhtml/story01.htm

Help! My husband has turned into a diet bore

And every morning there is either a shout of triumph or a groan of despair, depending on whether the digital display signals loss or gain.

My husband, Guy, hitherto a bon viveur who started every day with a fry-up, emptied half a mayonnaise jar into his lunchtime sandwich, punctuated the pauses between meals with hunks of white bread slathered in butter and considered half a bottle of wine one of his five a day, has become a diet bore.

Earlier this year he had to have a health check. Although his heart and liver were working well, the nurse warned him that his Body Mass Index (BMI) of 29 was classed as "overweight", nearly in the "very overweight" category – the healthy range for adults is 18.5-25.

She also told him that his cholesterol was far too high and that while he had got away with living (far too) well thus far, at 42 he needed to mend his ways and lose at least a stone, if not two, if he wanted to avoid heart problems and a host of other health troubles.

Although Guy was shocked, at first he remained in denial. He continued to wash down Brie with burgundy and to munch scotch eggs, sausage rolls and other waistband-busting treats, ignoring my eye-rolling and tut-tutting.

But then two months ago, perhaps prompted by the prospect of a holiday with friends, among them triathletes and rowers, and squeezing into swimming trunks bought when he was somewhat slimmer, Guy embarked on the 5:2 diet.

And so it began. On Mondays and Thursdays, his "starvation" days when he is only allowed 600 calories, we can't begin our meal until he has weighed every component of it and looked up its calorie content on the computer before allowing it anywhere near his plate. "Tomatoes only contain 18 calories per 100g!" he will exclaim excitedly.

The man who wooed me over supersized pizzas and steaks drowned in butter now regales me with such fascinating nuggets as "Did you know, strawberries contain only 32 calories per 100g, but raspberries have 52?" It's driving me nuts – which apparently contain masses of calories. He is becoming a crashing diet bore.

He adds up every calorie and enters it into a spreadsheet and graph. Even on the five "normal" eating days he is more health-conscious. If I cook, he'll cross-question me about whether the coconut milk I used was half-fat.

I sit across the table, watching him cast aside the chicken skin while he works out how many calories the next day's bike ride will burn. Summer suppers that used to be long and languorous, lubricated with rosé, are now brief and businesslike. I feel they are also less laughter-filled.

No longer do we retire to the sofa after supper with a bar of Toblerone. Although he insists there's nothing stopping me, I feel too chastened to sit there gobbling gluttonously after he has informed me how many calories each chunk contains.

Cake goes stale in the cake tin. Loaves of home-made bread, once joyfully devoured still warm with melting butter, go half-eaten and mouldy into the bin. He has thrown out several items of clothing because they are "unflattering".

He insists on weighing himself at the lightest time of the day, before breakfast, naked (even his watch is removed) to minimise the outcome. He then enters each day's data into a special app (Monitor Your Weight) on his smartphone that converts the stats into a graph, which he proudly shows to anyone who comments that he is "looking well".

And he does. There's no denying it. So far he has lost 10lb, although he still wants to lose another stone to get to his target weight of 12st 7lb, the weight he was when we first got together 15 years ago, before too many long lunches and indulgent dinners caught up with his waistline.

Now he is leaner, fitter, his jaw is more defined, his stomach flatter and his short buttons no longer pop off at inopportune moments. He even snores less and sleeps better since cutting down on wine (too much sugar).

In fact he is doing exactly what I've been trying to persuade him to do for years, not just for health reasons but on aesthetic grounds too: I too prefer a slim stomach to a spare tyre. I am – or was – somewhat fattist.

So why, after years of nagging him to lose weight, and gazing wistfully at the corrugated torsos of sportsmen and male models, aren't I thrilled by my handsome husband's svelte new silhouette?

The truth is that, much as I might have longed for him to become buff like Beckham, I didn't bank on him developing OCD-like compulsions and boring me senseless with stats.

Part of Guy's charm has always been his joie de vivre. When we first met nearly 20 years ago I loved his easy-going hedonism. He loathed sport, so I was never a Saturday afternoon sports widow.

He saw food as fun, not fuel, and embraced it with the same gusto with which he embraced life, cooking adventurous and delicious dishes, piling on second helpings, topping up wine glasses, his own and other people's, and consuming them with a rapidity that led one of my relatives to nickname him "E-vap" – because the wine was no sooner poured than it "evaporated" from his glass.

A friend whose husband recently lost 2st complains that since he gave up sugar and became a cycling fanatic, the one-time party animal has become Captain Sensible. She almost yearns for the times when he'd lurch in after last orders reeking of kebab.

I used to think people who claimed that those who lost lots of weight often lost their sense of humour too were merely excusing their own lack of willpower. Now I wonder if they might be right.

The truth is that while we women may salivate from afar over six-packs, there is nothing alluring about a man who self-righteously eschews second helpings or fails to finish what's on his plate. Those godlike creatures who adorn the cover of Men's Health are probably tedious diet-nerds. A man with expansive, devil-may-care habits is more fun to be with than a portion-watching puritan.

When Guy first embarked on his diet, a friend promised that if he lost 2st by the time we went on holiday he'd buy him a mankini, and Guy jokingly agreed that he would wear it. Now that he is on track to hit his target, I only hope he was joking.

I do admire his weight loss. I just wish he would lighten up about it.

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568612/s/3da27a87/sc/14/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cfoodanddrink0Chealthyeating0C110A343710CHelp0EMy0Ehusband0Ehas0Eturned0Einto0Ea0Ediet0Ebore0Bhtml/story01.htm

Ebola: Questions, answers about an unproven drug

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U.S. court revives challenge to New York City circumcision law

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Controversial circumcision technique likely route of herpes transmission

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Deadline to clear up health law eligibility near

Lessons Of Stigmas, Stereotypes In Williams' Death

0:44

Jamie Masada, the owner of the fabled Los Angeles-based comedy club the Laugh Factory, vividly remembers a warm exchange with comic Richard Jeni of the two sharing words of encouragement and gentle ribbing. "The next day I heard he put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off," recalled Masada of Jeni's 2007 suicide. "At that point I said, 'God, could I do something to somehow prevent that?'" A few years later, having watched his "family" continuously depleted, Masada did do something. Robin Williams, a frequent Laugh Factory performer who committed suicide Monday, marked only the latest comic genius to be plagued by demons of depression and addiction.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/deadline-clear-health-law-eligibility-near-162633361--politics.html

Best health and wellbeing websites

Including Deliciously Ella and Mercola.com, our top health and wellness websites for women cover fitness, nutrition and everything inbetween

BY Rachael Dove | 16 August 2014

Deliciously Ella

After being diagnosed with a rare illness that affected her nervous system, Ella Woodward became vegan and went gluten-, dairy- and sugar-free to ease her symptoms. She recorded her recipes online and now, as well as an archive of her creative dishes, her blog offers an insight into her healthy lifestyle with product and restaurant reviews and easy-to-follow video tutorials . READ - Deliciously Ella interview

Live The Process

Inspired by the improvements she noticed in managing her hectic lifestyle after taking up yoga and meditation, the New Yorker Robyn Berkley started Live The Process. Aimed at busy working people, the articles provide philosophical advice on topics such as decision-making and adapting to change , as well as organic gardening and natural medicine .

Content

An extension of the London organic- and natural-beauty boutique Being Content, this blog is a holistic guide to healthy skincare. Scroll through an archive of beautifully photographed skin-boosting recipes , profiles of Britain's leading experts on all things natural and organic, plus features on issues such as allergies and mindfulness. READ - 40 best natural beauty products

Spikes + Heels

According to its author, Muireann Carey-Campbell, this is a blog for women who think fitness is more than a "weight-loss tool". Conversational posts and video entries discuss new exercise products , race experiences and the role of women in sport. The interviews with women who incorporate training into their daily lives are particularly motivating.

Queen of Retreats

Booking a healthy getaway? Be sure to consult Queen of Retreats. Created and edited by the journalist Caroline Sylger Jones, it provides honest reviews of detox retreats, life-coaching breaks and everything in between. You'll find a section on every aspect of each holiday, from the training programme to fellow guests, so you know what you're letting yourself in for.

Well+Good

Stay abreast of the newest trends on the New York wellness scene with this online magazine, founded by the journalists Alexia Brue and Melisse Gelula . Their team sifts through fads to pick out what you need to know - from juicing to eating activated charcoal (yes, really). The website comes recommended by Gwyneth Paltrow. Need we say more? READ - 10 lesser known cookbooks we can't live without

Mercola

Founded by the American osteopath and physician Dr Joseph Mercola , this vast website spotlights integrative and natural methods of overcoming health concerns. Its articles analyse up-to-date medical reports on issues from sugar to cancer via nail-biting. Watch interviews with natural-health pioneers as well as video tips on easy lifestyle swaps to improve your health. mercola.com. READ - Top 10 lesser known literary heriones

Get The Gloss

The Wellness umbrella of the beauty website Get The Gloss, which covers fitness , nutrition and advice, is young, fun and motivational. Find interviews with the poster celebrities of current wellness trends, such as Karlie Kloss , as well as sportswear news, mini-workout videos from Britain's hottest fitness classes, and expert advice on health issues from bad posture to bunions.

HealthTalkOnline

This patient-experience site shares first-hand accounts of more than 75 mental-health and wellbeing issues via videos and profiles collated by Oxford University's Department of Primary Care . Interviews with sufferers of conditions such as breast cancer are supplemented by reports and tips for further reading, aiming to support those with a health condition.

Healthista

Started by the health journalist (and Stella contributor) Anna Magee , Healthista delivers a stream of well-researched news articles and features on a wealth of topics, including mental health , nutrition and fertility . Bloggers cover 30-day training and healthy eating programmes in depth, and the videos of exercise classes and celebrity interviews are not to be missed.

Follow Stella magazine on Facebook and Twitter

To read more articles from Stella, visit www.telegraph.co.uk/stella

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