The UK’s largest group of registered homeopaths should not be accredited, NHS bosses say.

What makes a hospital the best? Serving patients with excellent care involves the right mixture of multiple aspects. For digital healthcare provider Medbelle this basically comprises infrastructure, quality of care and access. 

Medbelle released a study revealing the 100 best hospital cities in the world, and within these three categories research covered aspects like the quality of medical education, the number of hospital beds, the number of nurses and cancer treatment efficiency. The cost of medicine and the prevalence of mental health specialists were also considered.

To start off, the cities hosting the best hospitals and medical schools were shortlisted. Then the determining factors were split into three basic categories: Infrastructure, Quality of Care, and Access

These data points were then utilised to score each city based on their overall hospital infrastructure to arrive at the top 100 hospital cities in the world.

Coming in at number one was Tokyo, Japan, which had the highest overall Quality of Care score in the index, with the highest Top-Ranking Hospitals score, and a very high Access score.

Boston, USA, ranked the second best hospital city in the world, with the highest overall Infrastructure score, including the best Top-Ranking Medical Universities, high Top-Ranking Hospitals score, and Mental Health Specialists score.

Taking third place was London, UK, while Paris, France, took 4th place, with France achieving the highest overall Access score of any nation.

In the Infrastructure category, the following countries made the highest ranking:

• Hospital beds/Capita: Heidelberg, Germany
• Nurses/Capita: Basel, Switzerland
• Surgeons/Capita: Hamburg, Germany
• Mental health specialists/Capita: Richmond, USA
• Top-ranking medical universities: Boston, USA
• Top-ranking hospital: Tokyo, Japan

Under Quality of Care, the following countries made the highest ranking:

• Satisfaction: Incheon, South Korea
• Adverse Events: A joint score between cities in Switzerland, Norway and Singapore
• Cancer Treatment Efficiency: Tokyo, Japan

For the Access category, the following countries made the highest ranking:

• Access: Oslo, Norway
• Cost of medicine: Canadian cities
• Discretionary healthcare spending: Beijing, China

The table below shows the results for the top 20 Best Hospital Cities in the world:

Source: sweetspotpr.com

African cities weren’t considered

After noting that no African cities made the list, Health24 contacted the research team about the reason behind this. They explained that African cities didn’t make it in the rankings because the city selection was primarily based on the World Health Organization (WHO) healthcare system ranking, and the rankings of top-performing hospitals. 

They further explained that all of the prospect countries in Africa lacked a lot of publicly available information that was mandatory for the research team in question to compare them to the rest of the world, hence the exclusion from the study.

More than just a ‘world-class’ hospital

While a city can boast a world-class hospital, if the overall medical framework does not offer easy access and high-quality care to all its citizens, then there is still room for improvement, notes the study. This is why Medbelle compiled a ranking of the best hospital cities, focusing on the overall hospital ecosystem in the area, rather than on individual institutions.

“There are several existing hospital rankings, but this is the first-ever comparison of top hospital cities which looks at the bigger picture and answers this very important question: Do the medical facilities in a given city cater to all of the patients, not just the wealthy or privileged ones?” said Daniel Kolb, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Medbelle.

Kolb added that Medbelle wanted the study to shine a light on the importance of healthcare infrastructure by looking at medical education, the deficit of surgeons and nurses, and accessibility. 

“Without these basic building blocks, a city cannot offer all of its citizens the medical care they need. Every city featured in this ranking is at the top of their game in terms of hospital infrastructure.

“While we want to congratulate excellence, we hope this study can also offer a springboard for cities to see how they can improve every aspect of the medical offerings in their region.”

You can find the complete list of results at Medbelle.com.

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Compiled by Zakiyah Ebrahim

The current 10-year limit is frustrating women who want to delay parenthood, experts say.

Researchers are looking at walking speed and outdoor rehabilitation to help younger stroke patients.

New research on concussions reports mixed news for kids playing high school sports.

The good news? Concussions are down during football practices. And the number of recurrent concussions is down in all sports.

Bad news for girls

The bad news? Concussions are on the rise during high school football games, and football continues to have the highest concussion rates in high school sports.

The study also reported bad news for girls playing comparable sports, such as soccer. Girls were more than twice as likely as boys to have a concussion. They were also more likely to have a recurrent concussion.

As to why concussion rates are going down in football practices, but not in games, it’s hard to pinpoint one reason, according to study author Avinash Chandran. He is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“There is heightened sensitivity to concussion, so we’re getting better at detection, but what we’re seeing is likely multidimensional,” he said.

“Coaches may be becoming more nuanced in concussion, and we might be seeing more athletic trainers in practice settings,” Chandran said. “The science has always been pretty clear that having clinical care on the sidelines contributes to the larger sports safety culture.”

More people attuned to concussion

Dr Victor Khabie is chief of sports medicine at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York, and a college football sideline physician. He pointed to several possible reasons for the increase in concussions during games.

“In games, there are more people attuned to concussion, and there are more people around to watch for concussion,” said Khabie, who wasn’t involved with the study. “You don’t have referees in practice. There isn’t always an athletic trainer in practice. Parents aren’t on the sidelines in practice.”

Plus, he said, kids realise now that a concussion is serious.

“Kids used to hide concussions so they could keep playing – now, they realise it can affect them,” Khabie said. “They’re being more honest, because they realise there are long-term implications.”

Concussions have become a major health issue, particularly in high school sports where they can lead to significant short- and long-term consequences, according to background information in the study. All 50 US states and the District of Columbia now have laws related to concussion management, the researchers said.

20 sports included

For the study, Chandran and his colleagues looked at national high school sports data during five school years from 2013 to 2018.

The study included 20 sports: boys’ football, wrestling, soccer, basketball, baseball, cross country, ice hockey, lacrosse, swimming and diving, and track and field; girls’ volleyball, soccer, basketball, softball, cross country, field hockey, lacrosse, swimming and diving, track and field; and co-ed cheerleading.

Overall, more 9 500 concussions were reported during the five years studied. Slightly less than two-thirds occurred during competition.

The authors said future research should continue monitoring concussion rates and effects of concussion prevention programmes.

The findings were published in Pediatrics.

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HealthDay

Cooking food has a fundamental impact on what bacteria live in your gut, a new study finds.

“Our lab and others have studied how different kinds of diet – such as vegetarian versus meat-based diets – impact the microbiome [gut bacteria],” said senior study author Peter Turnbaugh, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Raw versus cooked

“We were surprised to discover that no one had studied the fundamental question of how cooking itself alters the composition of the microbial ecosystems in our guts,” he added in a university news release.

In mice, the researchers found that raw or cooked meat had no discernible effect on their gut bacteria. Raw and cooked sweet potatoes, however, had a significant effect on the animals’ microbiomes.

The researchers confirmed this finding by feeding the mice other raw and cooked vegetables.

The study authors attribute the differences they found to the small intestine’s ability to take in more cooked food, depriving bacteria further down in the gut.

Raw vegetables, however, have compounds that seem to damage certain microbes, the investigators found.

“We were surprised to see that the differences were not only due to changing carbohydrate metabolism but also may be driven by the chemicals found in plants,” Turnbaugh said. “To me, this really highlights the importance of considering the other components of our diet and how they impact gut bacteria.”

Impact of longer-term dietary changes

The researchers also found that raw diets caused mice to lose weight, but when they transplanted the microbes of these mice into other mice, those animals gained weight – a paradox that still needs explaining.

In a separate step, the researchers fed raw and cooked meals to a group of human volunteers. In humans, these diets each changed the participants’ microbiomes, the researchers found.

“It was exciting to see that the impact of cooking we see in rodents is also relevant to humans, although interestingly, the specifics of how the microbiome was affected differed between the two species,” Turnbaugh said. “We’re very interested in doing larger and longer intervention and observational studies in humans to understand the impact of longer-term dietary changes.”

Understanding how diet affects the microbiome has implications for how gut microbes influence weight gain and other areas of health, Turnbaugh said.

The study also raises questions about how human microbes have evolved, he said, and if this could have implications for overall health.

The report was published in the journal Nature Microbiology.

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HealthDay

Children whose moms had high levels of lead in their blood during pregnancy are more likely than others to carry excess weight by age eight, new research reveals.

The conclusion stems from a look at blood tests of more than 1 440 mothers within three days after delivery. Their lead levels were then compared to their offspring’s weight fluctuations during childhood.

Folic acid reduces risk

The study couldn’t prove cause and effect, but children whose moms had high levels of lead were four times more likely to be overweight or obese than those born to moms with low lead levels, researchers found.

However, folic acid, a supplement given to women to protect against neural tube birth defects, appeared to reduce that risk. The US Preventive Service Task Force recommends all women of reproductive age take 400 micrograms daily.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

Researchers noted in a journal news release that when high lead levels were coupled with “adequate” folate levels, the child had a smaller risk of excess weight.

It was led by Xiaobin Wang, a professor in children’s health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

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HealthDay

There’s a popular misconception that memory is like a file box in the brain—that we put away our recollections and then look them up when we need them. But that’s not actually how it works. Scientists suspect memories are stored in diffuse networks of neurons all over the brain; when you remember something, bits of the recollection, scattered around like puzzle pieces on the floor, are gathered up and put back together to make a complete picture. 

“I think of a memory as a particular firing pattern of brain nerve cells in a network,” says Ronald C. Petersen, MD, PhD, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “If you’re trying to remember a meaningful childhood event, for example, you refire the pattern in the brain that happened when the event took place.” 

RELATED: Frankie Muniz Isn't Bothered by His Intense Memory Loss: 'I Only Know What It's Like to Be Me'

The precise way that memories are created and then recalled, sometimes decades later, is one of the great mysteries of neuroscience. Researchers are just scratching the surface of the processes that allow us to hold on to information and experiences. What we do know, however, is that there are simple, science-backed ways to strengthen your ability to remember things (including where you left your sunglasses). 

How Memories Form 

Remembering begins with your senses. This Thanksgiving, for instance, your brain might take note of how good the  turkey smells, how nice it feels to hug your mom, and how loud your aunt is when she’s had one too many. As your brain processes that sensory input, it creates neural connections, explains Dr. Petersen— and those connections will eventually become memories. 

RELATED: A Sudden Fall Caused a Triple Brain Hemorrhage That Completely Changed My Life

Your brain decides how important a memory is based on context cues, such as your level of emotion or stress at the time. The more important the recollection is, the stronger the neural connections will be, says Dr. Petersen. 

“Remembering highly emotionally charged events is an important survival tool,” he points out. “Say you’re in a certain area of the woods and all of a sudden there’s a dangerous animal chasing you—you’re going to want to remember that so you won’t go to that place again.” 

There are several areas of the brain that are involved in encoding and later retrieving memories, but one part—the hippocampus—is thought to play a key role in “binding together the different scattered components of memory,” says psychologist Daniel Schacter, PhD, who studies the cognitive neuroscience of memory at Harvard University. “It might function as a kind of index.”

RELATED: Teenager Keeps Thinking It's June 11th After Memory Resets Every 2 Hours Due to Head Injury

The hippocampus is a pair of wormlike structures nestled deep inside the midbrain. It’s believed to be especially important for processing long-term memories—like your last vacation, or what your email password is.

Short-term memory is the other main type of memory, and it refers to things you need to keep in your consciousness for no more than a few seconds. “That’s the kind of memory you’re taxing if you’re trying to hold a phone number in your head before putting it into your phone,” explains Schacter. It’s also the memory you use to recall the specials the server has just recited, or measure out the correct dose printed on the label of a medication. Those bits of information appear to be stored in the prefrontal cortex, the structure that sits at the very front of your brain.

RELATED: Can Alzheimer’s Be Stopped? Here’s What the Latest Research Says

Blips and Other Issues

As impressive as human memory is, we’re all aware it’s not perfect. One common foible is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, when you’re trying to remember a word but it hovers just beyond your reach (like the name of the actor who was in that movie about the thing…). Why this occurs is not well understood, but it’s normal to experience such a blockage (also known as lethologica) about once a week. It is more likely to happen when you’re tired or stressed, and also becomes more frequent with age.

Speaking of age, our brains start to shrink as early as age 30, which often results in a normal (if irritating) decline in “episodic” memory—the kind that helps us keep track of daily logistics, like whether we paid last month’s electricity bill yet, or what the heck it was we walked into a room to do.

RELATED: 8 Weird Things Linked to Memory Loss Later in Life

There’s a big difference between these types of normal lapses and the memory loss and confusion caused by Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. Normal forgetfulness is not being able to find your car keys—dementia is momentarily forgetting what they’re even for. About 5.8 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, including about 200,000 people under the age of 65. Researchers still aren’t entirely sure what causes the disease. Autopsies of people who have died from it show collections of plaques in between neurons, and tangles of errant threads of proteins within the nerve cells themselves—both of which disrupt messaging and connections.

But studies suggest that basic healthy habits—like exercise and a nutritious diet—may help protect the long-term health of your brain and boost your memory, too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, what’s good for your body is also good for your mind. 

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Teens who stay glued to screens, be it televisions or electronic devices, are not only getting less exercise – they’re more likely to down too many sugary, caffeinated drinks, according to a new study.

Researchers analysed data from more than 32 400 US students in grades eight and 10. They found that more than 27% exceeded recommended sugar intake and 21% exceeded recommended caffeine intake from soda and energy drinks.

Greater electronic device use

Males consumed more sodas and energy drinks than females, and grade eight students consumed more than grade 10 students.

Overall, there was a decline in soda and energy drink consumption between 2013 and 2016, but greater use of electronic devices, particularly TV, was associated with higher consumption of both.

“There is a trend towards reduced energy drink and soda consumption between 2013 and 2016 which is our latest data, but greater electronic device use, particularly TV, is linked to more consumption of added sugar and caffeine among adolescents,” said study co-leader Dr Katherine Morrison, a professor of paediatrics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

An additional hour per day of TV was linked with a 32% higher risk of exceeding World Health Organization recommendations for sugar, and with a 28% increased risk of exceeding WHO caffeine recommendations.

Each hour a day of talking on a cellphone or using social media was also associated with increased risk of exceeding both added sugar and caffeine recommendations, according to the study.

“Addressing this [higher sugar and caffeine consumption] through counselling or health promotion could potentially help,” Morrison said in a university news release.

Marketing campaigns

The researchers were surprised to find only a weak link between video game use and higher caffeine consumption.

“Given the marketing campaigns that target video gamers, we expected a particularly strong association between caffeine intake from energy drinks or sodas with video game use, but TV was linked more strongly,” Morrison said.

The researchers also found that using a computer for school was associated with a lower risk of exceeding recommended levels of sugar consumption.

The study findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks are connected with obesity, diabetes, dental cavities and poor sleep. Too much caffeine is associated with headaches, higher blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, chest pain and poor sleep.

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