Three in 10 elite footballers may be affected by exercise-induced asthma, a study has found.

University student Averil Hart’s family say she starved herself to death in 10 weeks.

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South Africa currently has about 175 active, registered cardiologists practising in the country, of which only about 35 are in public service or working in training centres.

This alarming figure was revealed recently by experts at the Cardiovascular Imbizo held in Sandton earlier this month.

“We have a massive shortage of cardiologists, especially in the public sector,” said Professor Andrew Sarkin, head of the University of Pretoria’s department of cardiology, adding that not enough new cardiologists were being trained.

A major epidemic

He said cardiovascular disease – including ischaemic heart disease, strokes, hypertension, heart failure and the complications of diabetes – was a major epidemic facing the country.

“If we don’t deal with this crisis and see this as an emergency, we are going to have a massive problem on our hands like we did in infectious epidemics,” he said.

In order for the country to overcome the cardiologist shortage, Sarkin said South Africa needs a well targeted, comprehensive plan to boost the number of trainees that will eventually provide for the country.

“We need to find a strategy to maintain our trainees within the public sector,” he said, adding that if this was not done quickly, the country could slide back to the crisis levels experience at the start of the HIV epidemic.

Long training

Prof Richard Nethononda, Wits University’s head of cardiology, said there were no cardiologists in public service in five of South Africa’s nine provinces.

“All those provinces send their patients to Gauteng, KZN and the Western Cape,” he said.

According to Nethononda, one of the possible causes was the many years of training needed to become a qualified cardiologist.

“To qualify as a cardiologist, you need 16 years of studying, which is really too long,” he said, suggesting that this alone was discouraging medical doctors from undertaking the rigorous and extensive training.

Not enough posts

He added that once qualified, cardiologists found that there were simply not enough training posts in the public sector. 

“The training environment in the public sector is getting less and less attractive,” he said, adding that this was compounded by a significant lack of infrastructure and equipment.

“Younger people these days are concerned about the public service facilities which are outdated, coupled with a lack of transparent management. They are not prepared to struggle when they know that there is so much wastage,” said Nethononda.

According to Nethononda, poor patients who could not afford the costs of heart surgery were not being properly accommodated for within the public health system.

“Why is it easy for the government to bailout SAA with billions every year, but it is difficult to support public hospitals?” he asked.

The Imbizo focused on the challenges of cardiovascular diseases in the country, and the need for targets based on international best-practice.

“We need government to put into place proper mechanisms to achieve the correct cardiovascular physician to population ratio to address the needs of our people,” said Professor Liesl Zuhlke, President of the South African Heart Association and convenor of the meeting. – Health-e News.

Thabo Molelekwa

Labour accuses the government of “a waste of taxpayers’ money” over plans to consult on a cap.

You’ve probably been there – there is a commercial break during your favourite nightly TV series. You have just finished dinner, but you’re desperately craving something sweet. An advertisement for an ice-cream from your favourite fast-food franchise comes on.

Onslaught of tempting aromas

Before you know it, you are either hopping into your car and speeding off to your nearest fast-food joint, or you are grabbing your phone and calling for a delivery service.

Before heading out to shop this holiday season, steel yourself for an onslaught of tempting aromas that might lure you into a fast-food restaurant.

Food-related cues, like the smell of burgers or eye-catching menu displays, stimulate brain activity. This tempts people to eat more, a new study finds.

In a similar vein, another earlier study found that individuals with obesity had a stronger response to words associated with high-calorie foods such as chocolate spread and chicken wings in multiple areas of the brain.

Dangers of food advertisements

University of Michigan researchers conducted lab experiments with 112 college students. The investigators found that food cues made people feel hungrier and led to the consumption of 220 more calories compared with non-cue environments.

The findings were published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science

“Food-related cues can make people want or crave food more, but don’t have as much of an impact on their liking, or the pleasure they get from eating the food,” said study lead author Michelle Joyner, a psychology graduate student.

The results show that people need to be aware that food cues can increase how much they eat, the researchers said.

“It is hard to avoid food cues in our current environment, but people can try some strategies to minimise their exposure by not going into restaurants and using technology to skip food advertisements in TV shows,” Joyner said in a university news release.

A recent Michigan State University Extension article concludes that by recognizing food cues and making small changes to your food environment, you may have a greater success with weight loss, weight maintenance and the adoption of overall healthier behaviours.

So what can you do?

1. Skip the advertisements

Change the channel, get up and go to the bathroom, take a sip of water, do anything to rid yourself of the visual temptation of advertisements on TV.

2. Delete or hide your delivery apps

Food delivery apps and services have made it so much easier to get hold of unhealthy food. Prevent yourself from using these apps by taking them off your main phone screen or deleting them entirely.

3. Never go to the mall hungry

Christmas shopping means malls, and there is nothing more tempting than those yummy smells wafting from the food court. Make sure that you eat a nutritious, filling breakfast or snack before hitting the shops.

^{Image credits: iStock}

Basically, there’s a lot to get done. So when you see the word “rest” on your schedule, it’s easy to breeze over.

Why would you do nothing when there’s always something to cross off the list?

The answer is simple: Not running is just as important as fitting in that long run.

Rest days help strengthen your body, sharpen your focus and reinvigorate your spirit so that you actually want to keep training.

“Rest is not a four-letter word to be ignored,” says Kevin Vincent, doctor and director of the University of Florida Running Medicine Clinic.

“The big reason you need it is recovery and recuperation. Every time you run, your body has to adapt to get stronger.”

Read more: 10 signs that you need a rest day!

That’s because when you run, you aren’t just building stamina and strength. You’re also breaking your body down, causing a tiny amount of tissue damage.

Allowing yourself time to recover afterward is what makes it possible for you to come back better next week, next month, next race.

“As much as athletes focus on their volume of training and the speed at which they do workouts, what they do outside of running is equally important to becoming stronger and more resilient in the future,” says Adam Tenforde, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehab at Harvard University, and former distance runner.

Bonnie Marks, psychologist at the NYU Sports Performance Centre, agrees. “If you don’t have time to recharge, it can lead to staleness and general apathy about training.”

Read more: The overtraining matrix

In other words, rest right and you’ll run better and be healthier. Skip it, and you’ll slowly fall apart.

Follow these training tweaks and build a stronger – more rested – you.

Help your muscles recover from hard workouts with this foam rolling routine:

Whether you’re a recreational runner or regularly training, there’s value in taking at least one day off each week – even if you’re doing a run streak. That off day is when your body uses nutrients and undergoes biological processes and hormone cycles to rebuild itself, says Tenforde. Here, four more reasons to chill:

1. Your muscles bounce back

When you run (or do any exercise), you create microscopic tears in your muscle fibres, and your body likes those about as much as you like trying to open a sweaty GU packet.

So it responds by rebuilding your muscles stronger, in preparation for the next session.

The catch: That response only happens with time off. Dr Vincent says that, depending on the length and intensity of your workout, the body needs a minimum of 36 to 48 hours to reboot.

Without it, the body has no opportunity to rebuild and strengthen muscles; they just continue to break down. That negates all the hard work you put in.

2. You avoid stress fractures

If you’re trying to sidestep an injury (and, um, who isn’t?), rest is crucial. Running is great for your bones – the impact stresses the tissue and, just like a muscle, that increases cell turnover and forces the bone to remodel with stronger structures, says Dr Vincent.

“But if you run today, tomorrow and the next day, it never has time to fully repair.”

Eventually, you could be looking at a stress fracture – and a season on the sidelines.

Read more: 6 common injuries you should never train through

3. Tight tendons are protected

Tendons are connective tissues that hold the muscle to bone, so they work constantly as the body moves. But blood doesn’t get to them easily, so they take longer to repair than tissues that have higher vascularity (like muscles), explains Dr Vincent.

If they don’t get that time, the constant pounding can cause chronic damage, like tendinitis – which is inflammation from overuse.

4. Your brain has time to chill

Yes, running is a form of stress relief. But every time you lace up, it increases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in your body.

Why? “The body doesn’t know if you’re running away from danger or if you’re running for fun,” saysDr  Vincent.

That cortisol bump can cause mood issues, irritability, sleep problems and other health issues if stress levels are chronically high, says Marks.

Think of it like a scale: Overtrain, and you’ve tipped too far in one direction; schedule regular rest days, and you’re back in balance.

^{This article was originally publised on www.runnersworld.co.za}

^{Image credit: iStock}

Ted Spiker

Disgraced breast surgeon Ian Paterson carried out hundreds of botched operations on his patients.