The excellent UK Food Standards Agency  has recently launched a campaign (see the TV ad) to encourage people to cut down their intake of saturated fats.  As the FSA points out on their webpage about saturated fats most people in the UK eat about 20% more than the maximum recommended amount.  They list examples of foods that are high in saturated fats, including:

• fatty cuts of meat and meat products such as sausages and pies
• butter, ghee and lard
• cream, soured cream, crème fraîche and ice cream
• cheese, particularly hard cheese
• pastries
• cakes and biscuits
• some savoury snacks
• some sweet snacks and chocolate
• coconut oil, coconut cream and palm oil

The FSA recommend checking food labels for saturated fat content.  More than 5gm of saturated fat per 100gm of the food is a high level, while less than 1.5gm per 100gm is low.  Their ten tips to help reduce your saturated fat intake are:

Here are five papers on lifestyle and the benefits of making healthy choices.  The first by Cohen et al on sleep habits and susceptibility to the common cold, showed increased risk of developing a cold after infection for those with shorter sleep duration.  Interestingly the increased risk was even greater for those with poor sleep efficiency.  Sleep efficiency is calculated by dividing the time spent asleep by the time spent in bed trying to sleep.  The Good Knowledge section of this website contains useful information on assessing and treating sleep difficulties.

I'm a big fan of self-determination theory (SDT).  I've posted before on SDT.  See, for example, the September post from last year with its links to a lecture I've given and to a number of handouts.  See too Wellbeing, time management & self-determination in the website's Good Knowledge handouts section.

I have now added a series of three questionnaires - with relevant background information - to the Good Knowledge handouts.  The questionnaires are downloaded, and reformatted, from the excellent Self-Determination website at www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT .  They are:

Basic need satisfaction scale - this 21-item scale assesses how well the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence & relatedness are being met. 

Here are a couple of very interesting, helpful websites that I've been reminded of recently.  They illustrate in a fun way the diversity and possibilities of the internet.

Here are half a dozen papers with anxiety relevance.  The first couple are about the interaction between genetic vulnerability (or resilience) and childhood experience.  The Stevens et al paper is an update on the large body of research looking at psychological genetic vulnerability/resilience in macaque monkeys and how this interacts with parenting quality to lead, or not lead, to emotional and neurophysiological disturbances in adulthood.  The Battaglia paper particularises this gene/environment investigation by looking at the connections between early human childhood separation anxiety, loss of a parent, and panic disorder in adulthood.  

Over nearly 35 years of practice as a doctor and psychotherapist I've assembled a collection of 300 to 400 handouts and questionnaires that I use in my work.  I'm gradually uploading most of these handouts to this website so people can use any that they'd like to.  The collection is searchable in the Good Knowledge section of the site at Handouts, questionnaires and other leaflets.  Of the twenty two subsections on this part of the website, one of the more frequently visited areas is the Increasing access to psychological therapies (IAPT) outcomes toolkit.  This is a pretty full hand of cards for the recommended IAPT assessment measures.  I've recently updated the list of downloadable questionnaires available by including:

Last month's article in the British Medical Journal on the dangers posed by radon gas in buildings jogged my awareness of this important hazard (Gray, Read et al. 2009).  Quoting Wikipedia on radon "Radon is the invisible, radioactive mono-atomic gas that results from radioactive decay of some forms of uranium that may be found in rock formations beneath buildings or in certain building materials themselves. There are relatively simple tests for radon gas, but these tests are not commonly done, even in areas of known systematic hazards." and "According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, radon is reportedly the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking; and radon-induced lung cancer the 6th leading cause of cancer death overall." and "Some ... areas, including Cornwall and Aberdeenshire in the United Kingdom have high enough natural radiation levels that nuclear licensed sites cannot be built there - the sites would already exceed legal radiation limits before they opened, and the natural topsoil and rock would all have to be disposed of as low-level nuclear waste."

I seem to be making a habit this month of focusing on a specific journal when posting the weekly report on interesting recent research.  Last week it was the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology  .  This week it's the Journal of Positive Psychology .  To quote the Journal's website: "Positive psychology is about scientifically informed perspectives on what makes life worth living. It focuses on aspects of the human condition that lead to happiness, fulfillment, and flourishing."  First published in 2006, the journal initially came out quarterly.  Now, in 2009, it's increasing its publication frequency to six issues a year - a pleasing sign of the increasing interest in this field.

Here are a series of handouts,questionnaires and book suggestions for healthy sexuality, for sexual dysfunctions, and for abuse screening. 

Touch, sex & caring - this two page Word handout is rather dated now, but still makes a series of very valid points.

On 26^th January the BMJ reported on the new £18 million Time to Change campaign  " ... to tackle the discrimination and stigma that surrounds mental health ... The Time to Change initiative is funded by Comic Relief and the National Lottery. Its aim is to tell the public that it is no longer acceptable to discriminate against people with a mental illness ... The campaign's website gives details of what can be done to help people with a mental illness and how to run a local campaign to support national initiatives ... The campaign says that mental illness is one of the last taboos and that shame and stigma can stop people seeking help. It highlights the fact that mental illness is far more common than people realise with one in four people experiencing a mental health problem at some time in their life. And it promotes the message that it is possible to help people with a mental heath problem by being there for them and not cutting them out of your life ... The campaign is based on similar national initiatives in New Zealand and Scotland.