Feeling frisky in the morning? Act on it. New U.K. research found that the best time to have sex is at 07:30, or about 45 minutes after you wake up.

The study from Forza Supplements, which surveyed 1 000 people about the best times of day they liked to do various activities, notes that the waking hours are when your energy levels are highest. And, the endorphins stimulated by sexy time set off a feel-good effect the rest of the day. (Your coworkers may even wonder why you’re extra peppy today.)

Read more: This is the age you’ll have the best sex of your life, according to research

Past studies confirm that mornings definitely win out over evenings when it comes to getting it on. Earlier this year, a survey of 2 000 people determined 09:00 on Sundays is peak time for passion.

And many (s)experts agree that that a romp first thing in the a.m. is ideal. “Having sex in the morning releases the feel-good chemical oxytocin, which makes couples feel loving and bonded all day long,” Dr. Debby Herbenick, author of Because It Feels Good previously told Women’s Health.

If you want to do the deed at the start of your day, WH recommends setting your alarm clock to play soft music, then slipping out of your pjs. Start rubbing his thighs in a slow, circular motion to get the blood flowing where it needs to go. Having sex while spooning is another perfect morning pick-me-up.

But if you find yourself caught up on certain hangups (like the whole morning breath thing), experts suggest skipping kissing and going straight for a cowgirl position or standing up and letting him take you from behind.

Read more: The 5 best sex positions for when you’re feeling stressed

More good news: If you’re getting frisky with a guy, he’ll no doubt be ready, since men are primed to have morning wood. Why not take advantage of it? Who knows, turning off your alarm clock may end up being a new turn on for both of you.

But if you’re not into the rise in bang thing, there are six more “best” times to get it done, too.

This article originally appeared on www.womenshealthsa.co.za.

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One in three “sick notes” issued by GPs are for mental health problems, a new NHS report shows.

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It’s one the longest drives of Candy’s* life, not because of the distance, but because it’s the first time she’s going to open up to a stranger, about being a childhood victim of sexual abuse and assault.

A thousand times she’s thought about turning back, and a thousand more tears have fallen, but finding her voice to speak up, even anonymously, is the path that seems right to her. She wants to speak as a survivor, not a victim.

‘I’d hide in a cupboard’

“When I told my mother I was going to do this interview, she said ‘what are your uncles going to say?’ and my father is still in denial about my abuse. Even my husband asked me why I wanted to put myself through this. He knew I had been abused, but he didn’t know the details. I kept so much from him,” says 39-year-old Candy, who is a mother to two boys, aged 15 and 12.

A few more tears fall as she struggles through the first few sentences. Her fingers seek out the warmth of the coffee cup on the cool winter day. She only reconciled with her parents three years ago, choosing not to have anything to do with them because they never believed her when, as a 10-year-old growing up in the Free State, she told them about being abused by their neighbours’ son.

Her abuser was a teenager at time, about 15 or 16-years old, she recalls. He was friends with her older brother. She’s estranged from her brother, who accused her of just “looking for attention” when she first spoke about what this teen, called Renier, did to her for about two years.

“Every time my mom went to the shops I would hide in the cupboards because I knew he’d watch her leave the house then come looking for me. I would look out for his shadow passing the frosted glass at our front door and I’d go hide.

“He used to hold me down with one hand and used his other hand to penetrate me,” she says, her hand moving to her throat to show the vice-grip of her abuser. She battles to say his name. She also only found out his surname and identity when she reconciled with her parents.

No support from her parents

When Candy’s family moved up to Joburg she eventually blocked out memories of what had happened to her. That was until, as a teenager, she started to suffer from nightmares of being in cupboards, and depression and anxiety set in. Eventually she tried to commit suicide.

Psychological help followed but she found no support from her parents or brother. “They were like this doesn’t happen to a decent family like ours,” says Candy of her “very conservative” family’s response. Their retreat into denial was betrayal.

Psychological help through the years has been hit and miss and Candy is on anti-depressants today. Meeting her husband came as an unexpected healing, and having her two boys has been a source of profound joy. But there’s no magic wand to undo the damage of her abuse. She calls it a “black spot on her soul” that no amount of love can remove.

“I envy women who enjoy sex while I can’t enjoy my own femininity – that’s what he took from me. I even battle to hug people. When my youngest had a sleepover recently he was so stressed out we had to go and fetch in the middle of the night, and I know it was because I project my fears and anxiety on him.

A leap of faith

Candy apologises for more tears falling. She’s also perspiring as her body’s involuntary reactions defy whatever composure she may have wanted to present. Then again, she didn’t come to the meeting to apologise or to put things into easy, tidy compartments for others to be spared discomfort. She came because she wants her public record to be testimony to the reality of abuse and its evil twin of enduring trauma.

She wants her speaking out to be a commitment to no secrets from her husband and two boys. She wants them to understand all of her, even the part that she says is fractured in so many places. She wants cycles of violence and child abuse to be crushed with “no more sweeping things under the carpet”.

“If just one child can find the courage to speak out, to tell someone and to keep telling till they find that person who believes them. Or if just one child reads this and knows they’re not alone or not going mad, then I’ll know that this process was worth it,” she says.

Candy prepares to leave as the interview ends; she will go back to work where no one knows the silent screams of the 10-year-old from nearly 30 years go. She’s drained, she says, with a little laugh. She’s not really surprised, though, at the effort it’s taken to speak up, the leap of faith it’s taken to allow her story to be reflected in words for anyone to read. She dries one more tear and even offers a hug – because this day she spoke up and she was heard. – Health-e News.

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Retirement can tempt you to be less active and watch more TV. But if grandpa is more into movies than, say, taking a walk, it’s time to start thinking about his health.

Couch potatoes, take note: A new study admonishes older adults to get up from watching the TV or risk losing their mobility.

Excessive sitting dangerous

Excessive sitting, especially while watching TV, poses a significant health hazard to older Americans, researchers warn.

“There’s something about TV watching that is really damaging,” said study lead author Loretta DiPietro. “Perhaps because people usually settle in for the night on a recliner and don’t move and start binge-watching, without breaks.”

DiPietro is chair of exercise and nutrition sciences at George Washington University School of Public Health in Washington, D.C.

Her team studied the activity patterns of 134 000 adults, aged 50 to 71. Watching more than five hours of TV daily and getting three or fewer hours of physical activity a week more than tripled the study participants’ risk of disability over eight-plus years, the investigators found.

“The message is move more, and sit less,” said DiPietro. “That doesn’t mean working out. It means breaking up sitting time. Go for short walks. Climb some stairs. Walk around the house. Walk around the office. If you’re watching TV, get up and walk around during commercials.”

Physical activity important

Most modern-day Americans, not just older people, sit about 14 hours a day, DiPietro said. And many older Americans spend 60 to 70% of their 10 to 11 non-sleeping hours a day either seated or reclining.

There are no figures available for South Africa, but the fact that fewer South Africans have cars suggests that on average they walk more than Americans.

“What we did is consider the role of sitting within the context of physical activity,” explained DiPietro.

The question, she said, is how much physical activity do you need to offset the damage of long periods of daily sitting?

“By activity we don’t mean going to the gym. We mean mostly light moderate activity, with maybe a bit of vigorous activity,” DiPietro said.

The most active group – people who reported more than seven hours a week of physical activity – could sit up to six hours a day and have no excess risk for losing mobility, she noted.

To explore how excessive sitting might affect long-term disability risk, the researchers analysed 1995-2005 data from the US National Institutes of Health’s AARP Diet and Health Study.

Participants were characterised as healthy when the study began, with an average age of 61. More than nine out of 10 were white.

Daily sedentary time was reported in terms of sitting, watching TV, computer time and napping. Low-intensity activities (such as housework, walking or shopping), and moderate-to-vigorous activities (such as jogging or yard work) were also tracked.

Heightened disability risk

At the study’s end, 29% of participants were either unable to walk or had difficulty doing so. Women, smokers, and those with less education and/or relatively worse health at the study launch were more likely to end up disabled.

The study doesn’t prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Still, the most active and the least sedentary fared best in terms of disability risk, the researchers reported.

Investigators pegged TV as the biggest mobility culprit.

Regardless of activity levels, disability risk rose 25% and 65%, respectively, among those who watched TV three to four hours daily or five hours or more a day, compared with those who watched less than two hours daily. The risk posed by TV was not affected by race, educational background, smoking, and/or weight changes.

Jennifer Temple is an associate professor with the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, New York.

The ‘mechanism’ of TV

“The surprising thing about these findings was that television watching was more harmful than sedentary behaviour in general,” she said.

“The authors speculate that this is because people may be better able to accurately report the amount of time spent watching television, or that other types of sedentary activity may be interspersed with bouts of activity,” Temple noted.

“More research should be done to determine the mechanism by which television watching is having this effect,” Temple added. The findings were published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.

Get moving

Health24 has plenty of advice on how to keep active:

• Start walking with an easy-to-follow plan to maintain fitness.
• Minimise your screen time by incorporating a hobby in your life.
• Improve your flexibility by doing daily stretching exercises.

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Patients should be able to compare the performance of private hospitals and doctors before making their choice, according to the Competition Commission’s Health Market Inquiry (HMI).

The HMI proposed this week that an independent organisation, the Outcomes Measurement and Reporting Organisation (OMRO), be set up to report on the health outcomes of private healthcare providers.

It defines outcomes as “the results achieved for a patient after a given set of interventions”.

Improving choice processes

For much of last year, the HMI held public hearings into the private healthcare sector. One of its finding is that the public lacks information about how private health providers perform. It believes that public access to this information would stimulate competition.

The kind of information they want us to have include clinical outcomes (e.g. cure rates), how long it takes for patients to get treated at facilities, the infection rate in facilities and the rate of “avoidable adverse events”.

It says that the new organisation would be different from the Office of Health Standards Compliance (OHSC), as the office’s role is to “ensure that the provision of healthcare complies with necessary healthcare standards”. In contrast, the new organisation will be responsible for “transparency of healthcare outcomes across the full spectrum of healthcare”.

Its aim will be “primarily to empower the patients” and secondly “to improve choice processes and incentivise providers and funders to compete on the right parameters of care”.

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Kerry Cullinan

Are you worried that Cruella’s smoking habit, however much part of her character in 101 Dalmations, could give your children the idea that it is cool to light up?

A group of America’s leading health organisations is now demanding that any movie that depicts smoking or tobacco use should come with an “R” (restricted) rating.

In South Africa, the Film and Publications Board (FPB) is responsible for the ratings assigned to movies. And in February 2016 it was reported that South Africa is ahead of the pack where it comes to anti-tobacco ratings.

According to a previous Health24 article, the number of smoking scenes in movies rated PG-13 – suitable for teens – surged, from 564 in 2010 to 809 in 2016.

No progress in US

The demand is in response to a recent report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found there has been no progress in reducing the number of tobacco scenes in youth-rated movies.

In 2012, the US Surgeon General established a cause-and-effect link between smoking in movies and the likelihood kids would pick up the deadly habit.

Children are likely to imitate

“As physicians and advocates, we are speaking with a unified voice: Filmmakers must stop enabling the tobacco industry to target our children,” Dr Fernando Stein, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement.

“The evidence is clear that when children see movie characters smoking, they are more likely to smoke,” Stein added. “90% of smokers start smoking in their teen years, and many of them will battle a tobacco addiction that will eventually kill them. By rating movies appropriately, filmmakers can help protect the next generation from tobacco-related disease and death.”

Movies will entice many children

According to the CDC, movies with scenes of smoking will entice more than 6 million US children to smoke – and 2 million of them will die prematurely from tobacco-related cancer, heart disease, lung disease or stroke.

“By voluntarily implementing policies that require R ratings for smoking, the film industry can avert 1 million tobacco deaths among today’s children, according to estimates from the CDC,” the coalition of health groups said in the statement.

A letter of demand

The coalition, which includes 17 public health and medical groups, sent a letter to film industry leaders in response to the CDC report. The report stated that progress in eliminating smoking in movies labelled PG-13 slowed dramatically after 2010.

The letter demands that the film industry meet a 1 June 2018, deadline to stop depicting smoking in movies rated acceptable for children.

An R-rated movie requires children under 17 to be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

Smoking the leading cause of death

Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and it’s to blame for nearly 500 000 deaths a year.

“Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of cancer mortality, responsible for approximately 30% of all cancer deaths in America,” said Gary Reedy, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. “Most smokers are enticed into nicotine addiction as children, and the American film industry must take assertive action now to ensure that our kids are not lured into using this uniquely lethal product by depictions of smoking in major motion pictures.”

The coalition represents more than 630 000 doctors, and includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association.

Other members include the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the American Public Health Association.

The revised R rating guidelines spelled out in the letter would apply to all movies with smoking except those that “exclusively portray actual people who used tobacco [as in documentaries or biographical dramas] or that depict the serious health consequences of tobacco use,” the coalition said.

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