There are some great activities and useful information available at the official Healthy Bones website – www.healthybones.com.au

Simply visit the website to find:
– Online schools competition details (great prizes for winning schools!).
– Calcium Cowculator – just drag and drop different foods into the giant mouth to find out the calcium content in different foods.
– Fun recipes ideas to ensure more calcium in your daily diet.
– Information on kids, teens, adults and seniors.

Remember it’s what’s inside that counts!

National Healthy Bones Week

1800 242 141

www.healthybones.com.au

Read more…Osteoporosis Australia News

Read more…Is champix safe – Wheretofindpedia

CIGARETTE pack warnings that remind smokers of the fatal consequences of their habit may actually make them smoke more as a way to cope with the inevitability of death.

A small study by psychologists from the United States, Switzerland and Germany showed that warnings unrelated to death, such as “smoking makes you unattractive” or “smoking brings you and the people around you severe damage”, were more effective in changing smokers’ attitudes towards their habit.

This was especially the case in people who smoked to boost their self-esteem, such as youth who took up the habit to impress or fit in with their peers and others who thought smoking increased their social value, the researchers said.

“In general, when smokers are faced with death-related anti-smoking messages on cigarette packs, they produce active coping attempts as reflected in their willingness to continue the risky smoking behaviour,” the study said.

Read more…Cigarette pack warnings make stressed smokers light up | News.com.au

Stirring up images of 1930s’ prohibition in the US, the Iemma Government is using the total ban on alcohol in some Aboriginal communities as a blueprint.

Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as “restricted alcohol areas” for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of “chronic alcohol abuse” can be slapped with a range of restrictions.

“Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities,” the paper reads.

Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises – licensed or not.

Speaking with The Daily Telegraph, teetotaller Gaming Minister Graham West said the bans will only be implemented if requested by a broad section of the community and will not be government enforced.

Mr West said they would be decided on a case-by-case basis and developed specifically for the area.

“This is for communities that say ‘we have a specific issue and we want to try this as part of the solution’. It might be a restriction of types of alcohol, times of alcohol sales or (a ban on) alcohol being brought into the area,” he said.

“It could be that light beer only is allowed or it could be a restriction on all alcohol brought into the area – it is a full range of options that have been left pretty broad.

“It must be community initiated. It is not a big brother approach.”

Mr West said it was “new territory” and it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone.

He said the legislation was more likely to work in a rural town where it was more easily policed but did not rule out it being used in any Sydney metropolitan area.

“We’ve got to work all this out. It is new ground for us. We want to see what the community wants to do and then look at the regulations that go with that,” he said.

Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia’s Paul Dillon said it was a radical solution for a serious problem.

“This sort of thing drives things underground. No one who has any expertise in this area is saying we should ban alcohol,” he said.

Radical laws to ban drinking at home | NEWS.com.au

Canberra nephrologist Gavin Carney says permitting the organ trade would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in care for sick patients who have to wait up to 10 years for a donor kidney.

The practise of selling organs was also dangerously rife overseas, Dr Carney also told Fairfax newspapers today.

“Being forced to travel overseas and illegally buy an organ from someone who desperately needs the money, with no medical controls over the process and nobody checking whether the kidney is a good match, is what I call unethical,” Dr Carney says today.

Selling or buying organs is illegal in Australia, carrying a penalty of six months jail and or a fine of $4400.

Australia has one of the lowest organ donor rates in the world, and more than 1800 people are waiting for a kidney transplant while only 343 were donated last year.

“Weve tried everything to drum up support for organ donation and the rates have not risen in 10 years,” Dr Carney also says.

“People just dont seem to be willing to give their organs away for free … lets pay people some money for a new car or a house deposit and those waiting lists will be halved within about five years.”

Give young $50,000 for kidneys – doctor | NEWS.com.au

Alarmed skin cancer specialists are treating people in their late teens and early 20s displaying pre-cancer and cancerous spots usually associated with 60-year-olds.

The worrying trend is backed by research from the Cancer Council of Australia showing that almost a quarter of the countrys teens are getting burnt on any given weekend.

The Cancer Council said young people were heeding the message that it was dangerous to tan but were still getting sunburnt by accident.

Australasian College of Dermatologists secretary Stephen Schumack said yesterday doctors were seeing more young people present with multiple pre-cancer and cancerous spots.

“Usually theres a delay of two, three or four decades from the time skin is sun damaged to the onset of cancer,” he said. “But Ive seen someone as young as 14 with skin cancer so it certainly can happen earlier.”

Melanoma is the most common form of cancer in people aged 12 to 24 and Queensland has the worst rates of skin cancer in the world.

A national sun protection survey, jointly funded by the Cancer Council and Federal Government, found the number of teenagers deliberately tanning had dropped 45 per cent over the past three years. But 24 per cent of adolescents aged 12-17 397,000 were still getting sunburnt on an average summer weekend in 2006-07.

Adolescents are less likely to wear a hat 29 per cent compared with 38 per cent three years ago or long-sleeve clothes 9 per cent compared with 11 per cent when outside in the sun.

Cancer Council of Queensland sunsmart manager Lisa Naumann said the findings were disturbing.

The survey found the only form of sun protection that teenagers participated in with any regularity was wearing sunglasses while outdoors.

“It is shocking when statistics of this type show that any group is not heeding the messages that we are sending out,” Mrs Naumann said.

Cancer Council chief executive Ian Olver said teenagers were simply not thinking about the everyday dangers of the sun.

“The bad news is one in four teenagers is still getting burnt not because they want to get a tan but because they are forgetting to protect themselves,” Professor Olver said.

“In contrast, adults are clearly putting sunsmart behaviour into practice with a 31 per cent fall in adults reporting they were sunburnt since the last survey in 2004.”

The Cancer Council research shows boys are more likely than girls to get sunburnt because they spend more time outside in peak UV times and are less likely to wear sunscreen.

“The trouble with boys is that they just dont think about it when they go outside,” Ms Naumann said.

“Girls are more likely to wear sunscreen and cover up because of fashion and the anti-ageing messages getting through.”

Source: Deadly skin cancer striking teenagers | NEWS.com.au

The figures on cannabis use are equally disturbing, with one in seven secondary school students using the drug within the past 12 months.

The problem has been allowed to reach such plague proportions because most Australians consider drinking and drug use by young people to be a normal activity and “often seen as a rite of passage to adulthood”, Australian National Council on Drugs chairman John Herron warns.

Numbers double

Releasing a paper today entitled Supporting Families of Young People with Problematic Drug Use, the Federal Governments principal advisory body on drugs policy said its estimates last May about the disturbing number of children exposed to adult binge-drinkers and cannabis users had proven to be significantly short of the mark.

That study found one in eight Australian children lived with a problem drinker or drug user, including more than 230,000 children in households at risk of exposure to a binge drinker and more than 40,000 living in a house where an adult uses cannabis daily.

A reassessment of the research finds almost double the numbers, estimating that 451,000 children are exposed to binge drinking and that 70,000 live with a daily cannabis user.

Overall among 12- to 17-year-olds, one in 10 168,000 report binge-drinking defined as seven or more standard drinks in a day for a male and five or more standard drinks for a female, in any given week.

For 16-year-olds, the figure is one in five 54,116, the same as for 17-year-olds 59,176. For young indigenous Australians, 27 per cent use alcohol and 12 per cent drink to excess.

Risky behaviour

“Of particular concern is the finding that approximately 13 per cent of young drinkers report drink-driving and 16 per cent report going to work or school under the influence of alcohol,” the report finds.

The growing army of young problem drinkers is placing enormous personal and financial stress on families, the report finds.

It finds most of the nations drug and alcohol treatment providers dont have the financial or manpower resources to deal with families wanting to be involved in the process when the research shows family members should be part of the solution.

“We are enormously concerned about the high rates of binge-drinking,” Dr Herron said.

“What this report clearly says is that drug and alcohol use by young people has become normalised and is often seen as a rite of passage into adulthood.

“Its clear from the report that parents have an important role in influencing what happens to their children. Adolescents are less likely to drink and engage in binge drinking if parents actively disapprove.”

Epidemic

Last week Kevin Rudd voiced concern about binge-drinking, saying he and Health Minister Nicola Roxon were developing strategies to combat the problem.

“I would describe it as an epidemic of binge-drinking across the country,” he said.

“It is not good for young peoples health and it is certainly not good in terms of coping with addictions in general.”

The report recommends parents keep their children away from alcohol, and says that condoning its use can be dangerous for a childs mental and physical development.

“Parents should delay the onset of alcohol use in young people as long as possible in order to avert the adverse impact of alcohol on adolescent body and brain development as well as to reduce the likelihood of high-risk alcohol use and abuse in adulthood,” it concludes.

If parents did want to take steps to help their child, they should go beyond friends and family and look to professional services, public health expert Margaret Hamilton said.

Source: One in 10 teenagers binge-drinking each week | NEWS.com.au

His death is the second in the UK to be linked to the newly-licensed drug.

Mr Marshall’s widow Emma said he was prescribed the drug by his GP last August to help him quit his 20-a-day habit, but quickly went downhill, cutting himself off from his family and friends.

Read full story…Click here 

“Then Jenna told me I’d tried to kill myself. She said her nine-year-old sister, Aynslie, had found me in the middle of the night hanging from the banisters with the pelmet from the curtains tied around my neck.”

Karen listened in horror as her daughter recalled how she had turned blue through lack of oxygen, and her heart stopped five times in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

Read the full story…Click here 

The study in New Zealand and the UK took a bite out of the nature versus nurture debate by showing that intellectual development is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors.

“There has been some criticism of earlier studies about breastfeeding and IQ that they didn’t control for socioeconomic status, or the mother’s IQ or other factors,” said study co-author Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Duke University and King’s College in London.

“Our findings take an end-run around those arguments by showing the physiological mechanism that accounts for the difference.”

Researchers examined more than 3000 breast-fed infants in Britain and New Zealand and found that the child’s IQ was an average of 6.8 points higher if the child had a particular version of a gene called FADS2.

Read the full story Breastfeeding makes baby smarter | NEWS.com.au