Category Archives: dementia
GPs to visit elderly in care homes under new contract plans
Doctors will be required to make regular visits to nursing homes to check on elderly patients, under plans for a sweeping overhaul of the way GPs work.
Ministers want to impose a new legal duty on doctors to take responsibility for their patients’ care at evenings and weekends, and are to push their case in talks with the medical profession over the next six months.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is said to be deeply concerned about poor standards of care for patients outside hospitals and is determined to enforce a return to the culture of family doctoring.
He is understood to be ready for a direct confrontation with the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, over reforms to GPs’ contracts if it is necessary to deliver more convenient and reliable services for patients.
Fluoride in tap water cuts fillings – but does it raise dementia risk?
Councils hail health findings as campaigners call for more research into long-term effects
- Many of the areas with the lowest rates of fillings have added the powerful enamel-protecting chemical to their tap water
- Campaigners claim the data should persuade more areas to sign up to mass fluoridisation scheme
- Critics insist that there is evidence it could be putting youngsters at risk of dementia in later life
By Mark Howarth
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Adding fluoride to tap water leaves fewer children needing fillings, according to NHS figures out yesterday
Adding fluoride to tap water leaves fewer children needing fillings, according to NHS figures out yesterday.
The statistics revealed that England’s ten million children required 3.5million fillings last year.
And many of the areas with the lowest rates of fillings are the ones that have added the powerful enamel-protecting chemical to their tap water.
Nevertheless, critics of the mass fluoridisation scheme insist that there is evidence it could be putting youngsters at risk of dementia in later life.
Youngsters in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire – where supplies have been treated since 1968 – had fewer cavities than children in any other region.
And the three medicated areas of Newcastle, Gateshead and North Tyneside had 32 per cent fewer fillings than neighbouring South Tyneside, which has chosen not to add fluoride to its water supplies.
Last night campaigners claimed the data should persuade more areas to sign up to the scheme.
A new project is giving voice to people with dementia and their carers
A new project is giving voice to people with dementia and their carers
Over the last two years, Tommy Whitelaw has received hundreds of love letters. Wives write pouring out their feelings for their husbands. Sons tell of their devotion to their mothers. Childhood rivalries are long forgotten as siblings affectionately put pen to paper.
Two years ago, Whitelaw began sharing his own love story. His experiences as a full-time carer to his mum, Joan, who had developed vascular dementia, had opened his eyes to the crushing blow the condition deals some families. Seeking comfort and support, he launched a campaign from his bedroom asking others to write to him about their experiences. He pledged to take their letters to the Scottish Parliament and pounded the streets of Scotland to collect many in person.
“Every letter I’ve received has the word love in it. Every letter. But in all those letters love is matched with loneliness and isolation – the exact same things that I was feeling.”
Many of the letters end with a declaration that the author just wanted to write to someone who wouldn’t judge them – a sentiment he was also all-too-familiar with.
“I felt judged at all times caring for my mum. And sometimes when you feel judged it stops you asking for help. When you feel judged, you think, ‘Well, I will try to do this myself.’ And you can’t do it yourself.”
chenrezig 
annie 
JaneJ 