On top of this, the government had also offered to cover some out-of-pocket expenses resident doctors face, including exam fees, as well as increase the number of training posts to address what the BMA has described as a jobs shortage at the start of year three of their training.
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In addition to taking an emotional toll, childhood stress and hardships can also wreak havoc on the digestive system.
New research published in the journal Gastroenterology revealed that early experiences can rewire the body, leading to lifelong stomach issues.
Scientists at New York University focused on communication between the brain and the gut, finding that when a child experiences significant stress, this connection is disrupted.
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That disruption can manifest years later as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic stomach pain or motility issues like constipation and diarrhea.
“Our research shows that these stressors can have a real impact on a child’s development and may influence gut issues long-term,” study author Kara Margolis, a professor at NYU, said in a press release.
The presence of flagellin antibodies long before symptoms appear suggests the immune reaction may help trigger the disease rather than result from it. (iStock)
“When the brain is impacted, the gut is likely also impacted — the two systems communicate 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she added.
The study looked at both animal models and long-term data from over 40,000 children in Denmark and 12,000 in the U.S.
Researchers found that mice subjected to early-life stress showed higher levels of anxiety and gut pain. Mice symptoms varied by gender, as females were more prone to diarrhea and males were more prone to constipation.
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Children whose mothers had depression during or after pregnancy, or those who had more emotionally difficult childhoods, were more likely to develop digestive disorders as early as age 10, the researchers noted.
Children who had harder childhoods were more likely to develop digestive orders as early as age 10. (iStock)
Unlike the mouse studies, the human data showed no differences between males and females in digestive outcomes, which suggests that early stress may affect gut-brain health for both genders during key stages of development.
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The results show how symptoms are controlled by different “pathways” in the body, doctors said. For example, the nerves responsible for gut movement are separate from the pathways that control gut pain.
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This means there is no single cure for gut issues, the team stated. If a patient has pain but no motility issues, they would need a different treatment than someone who has constipation but no pain.
By identifying these specific biological triggers, scientists say they are moving toward more personalized treatments that target the root cause of a patient’s symptoms.
The team says these results are evidence that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to gut issues. (iStock)
“When patients come in with gut problems, we shouldn’t just be asking them if they are stressed right now; what happened in your childhood is also a really important question and something we need to consider,” said Margolis.
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“This developmental history could ultimately inform how we understand how some disorders of gut-brain interaction develop and treat them based on specific mechanisms.”
My 14-year-old daughter is pretty much glued to her phone, like every other teenager we know, so I’ve been taking in the news that Meta has been forced to pay out $375m (£279m) by a court in New Mexico for misleading users over the safety of its platforms for children with some interest – and some guilt, too.
A jury found that the tech giant – which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – endangered children, allegations its CEO Mark Zuckerberg denies (the company now plans to appeal).
As a parent of a child who uses all of these platforms (except Facebook, which I am told – with the kind of withering stare only a teenage girl can truly perfect – is for geriatrics like myself, only), my guilt centres around whether I’ve done enough to protect her from their addictive algorithms.
But it’s more than that: because I know, with a creeping sense of shame and dread, that I haven’t been leading by example at home, at all.
In fact, I’d say that until recently it was a pretty close tie for who used their phone to scroll more: me or my daughter, despite knowing of the potential harms (such as the fact that smartphone addiction can affect our sleep, our social interactions, our emotional wellbeing and even our memory). I’ve known of the risks for years, but the trouble was… I just didn’t seem to be able to stop.
At the tail end of last year, I’ll confess I was on a “daily usage” of somewhere around five hours – sometimes six. Until, that is, I discovered a secret weapon in January and cured my phone addiction overnight (and brought that daily screen time down to just two hours a day – much of which is calls, work emails and using the “notes” app to write on my commute).
And it was breathtakingly easy.
I tried Brick – a tiny, two-inch magnet at home (which allows you to choose which apps you “Brick”, then doesn’t let you go on them again until you physically touch your phone to the Brick device). And no, this isn’t an ad for them – I bought the £54 device out of my own pocket – but to say it has changed my life would be an understatement. It feels a bit like falling in love, because I can’t stop talking about it.
In just a few, short months, I’ve kicked my addiction to scrolling idly through Insta, as well as the strange desire at midnight to find out what happened to a girl I never even spoke to at school by trawling through Facebook, plus the short-lived dopamine hit of tapping one button then watching reel after reel and story after story of friends, friends of friends, and celebrities.
I now realise that I have wasted hours, even days, when I could have been reading an actual book – or getting some much-needed sleep.
Thanks to Brick, I’ve stopped scrolling, and I am now doing all the things I used to love doing, but hadn’t found “time” to do while being addicted to my phone. In fact, I’ve read about 12 actual, physical paper books since the start of the year alone – and I’ve saved so much money, too.
Because I have “Bricked” Amazon and Vinted, any online shopping I do has to come from physically going to, often independent, shops. It’s better for my wallet, for the future of our high streets – and for the environment. And I feel better for no longer lining the bloated pockets of controversial tech giants like Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos.
Sure, there will be those who say, “just stop using the apps!” and who will scoff at the idea that we don’t have enough willpower to do it alone; they’ll ask why I didn’t “just delete them” (spoiler: tried that, but I just ended up downloading them again), or “just turn off your phone” (when you have young children, the “what if” worry about missing calls from school makes this impossible). Yes, I could have left my phone upstairs – or downstairs when I was upstairs and I did that all of that too; but just like the tell-tale heart throbbing beneath the floorboards in the Edgar Allan Poe short story, I knew it was there.
They say the first step of recovery is admitting you’ve got a problem, and thanks to the false intimacy of having Insta so readily available as an app on my phone screen, I was left asking myself some pretty uncomfortable questions. Did I really just say “shush” to my nine-year-old son in the kitchen, because I was halfway through discovering “the truth” about Nicole Kidman’s “beauty secrets”?
Had I seriously justified being late for the school run because I simply had to find out what Lily Allen had said about her twatty ex (David Harbour), when I don’t know them “IRL”, at all? And how is it that I know Lena Dunham’s birthday (13 May) and star sign (Taurus) off the top of my head, when I’m not even sure I could say the same about my cousin?
I’m now a born-again Brick zealot who’s seen the light (and who wishes her friends would stop taking pictures of our food to post them on socials, before we are allowed to eat it). Now, with the news of Meta’s fall from grace and social media bans for under-16s being seriously considered by governments across the world, I’m even more grateful that I’ve kicked the habit. You only need one Brick per household – so now my teenager is on it, too.
Today, I can happily report that my current “Bricked” streak is 195 hours, which would revert to 0 if I ever unbrick my phone. Before that, it was 300 hours (I had to unbrick to reply to someone on Vinted). What is curious now is how anxious I feel when I’m not “Bricked” – there’s a kind of tetchy, irritable panic that I could be sucked back into scrolling at any time. I don’t like that feeling, so I’m staying “Bricked” for the foreseeable. I’d rather be addicted to not scrolling, than scrolling.
To paraphrase Mary Oliver (whose poetry collection, “Devotions”, I’ve had time to read again), what is it you want from your “one, wild and precious life”? I’d hazard that for most of us, the answer would be “time” – and Brick has bought me lots of it.
Or, to be more accurate, it’s given it back.
NEW YORK — Using the oldest dog genes studied so far, scientists are finding more evidence that our furry friends have been our companions for thousands of years.
Scientists think dogs descended from an ancient population of gray wolves somewhere in Europe or Asia. Tens of thousands of years ago, those wolves got used to living with people and became less aggressive. As they became domesticated, their genes shifted along with their behavior, giving rise to the pups we know today.
But exactly when and where this happened remains a mystery. Scientists are studying bits of DNA found in ancient dog and wolf remains to figure out what the earliest dogs may have looked like and where they came from.
In two separate studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers pushed the timeline back. They established a new way to study ancient canine DNA — which is often contaminated and tough to extract — by isolating just the doggy bits.
They examined ancient genes from the remains of over 200 dogs and wolves. The oldest dated back to about 15,800 years ago, moving the origin of dogs back by at least 5,000 years.
“This unique relationship between people and dogs has existed for such a long time and is continuing on today,” said University of Michigan dog genomics expert Jeffrey Kidd, who was not involved with the new research.
The genes showed that dogs were already spread out across Western Europe and Asia 14,200 years ago, at a time before agriculture and farming. These dogs lived with hunter-gatherer humans who were constantly on the move.
The dawn of agriculture — a major shift in human history — brought new people to Europe from southwest Asia. They mixed and mingled with Europeans, leaving a lasting and varied imprint on their genes.
But the dog genes studied by the scientists, stretching from the United Kingdom all the way to Turkey, stayed more consistent. They were less impacted by the arrival of new humans during the development of agriculture, and more by interactions between different hunter-gatherer groups and their dogs thousands of years before.
That’s different from dogs in Asia and the Americas, whose genes more closely reflect the movement patterns of their owners.
Scientists don’t know exactly what the first dogs looked like, but they have some ideas.
“We’re suspecting they would have resembled smaller wolves,” said study co-author Lachie Scarsbrook with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
It’s also not clear how these ancient dogs lived alongside their humans. They could have stood guard or helped them hunt, but probably also played with young children.
There’s still more work to go to pinpoint exactly when dogs emerged — the first few pages of a storied relationship that’s still going strong.
“They are humanity’s best friend, alongside our societies for the last 16,000 years and will continue to in the future,” Scarsbrook said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Rocky Carroll, who has played the role of Director Leon Vance on “NCIS” for nearly two decades, joins to discuss the show’s 500th episode, which aired Tuesday.
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For every $10 rise in oil prices, motorists face paying roughly 7p per litre more in the UK.
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Betty Mukherjee talks to Naga Munchetty about living with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome.
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Long before he was winning National Awards, filmmaker Aditya Dhar was just another Delhi kid with a cricket bat and a dream that had nothing to do with cinema. His story is a powerful reminder that sometimes, life has a better plan for you for which it breaks your “Plan A” into pieces.
Now, with his film ‘Dhurandhar’ breaking records, lets look back at Aditya Dhar’s extraordinary success.
FedEx said Tuesday that it will offer same-day delivery in partnership with logistics company OneRail, with the announcement following a recent move by Amazon to offer expedited deliveries across the U.S.
The new shipping option will allow retailers that work with FedEx to offer same-day shipping. Shoppers can then choose two-hour or end-of-day delivery when completing the checkout process for a package on that retailer’s website. The company said it will then match the order with other delivery providers in its network and provide near-real time tracking updates.
A FedEx spokesperson told CBS News that the service is being offered to retailers and other customers, not directly to individuals shipping on FedEx.com or from a FedEx Office location.
OneRail did not respond to a request for comment. On its website, the Orlando, Florida-based company said it uses artificial intelligence to streamline deliveries. Other OneRail customers in Lowe’s and PepsiCo.
FedEx is moving to speed its deliveries as retail giants Amazon and Walmart also roll out same-day delivery. Amazon last week introduced one-hour and three-hour delivery options, with the latter available in thousands of cities across the U.S.
Walmart has also expanded its delivery services over the years to include faster shipping services throughout the day, including early morning hours and late evening.
One of the most refreshing additions to summer meals is cucumbers. They can be added to a salad or even blended into a raita for a cooling effect. There is one major problem associated with using cucumbers in meals: when a cucumber is cut open and its taste is checked, it is usually bitter.Many people believe that there is no way to check if a cucumber is bitter before tasting it. This is not true; with a little attention to detail, a bad cucumber can be avoided before slicing it.
Before we get to the tricks, let’s get a brief understanding of what makes cucumbers taste bitter. In most cases, the bitterness in cucumbers comes from a group of compounds known as cucurbitacins. This mostly comes as a result of environmental stress, improper watering, excessive heat, or poor soil quality. In most cases, the cucurbitacins are found in the ends of the cucumber or may be distributed unevenly in the cucumber. This explains why two cucumbers may look similar but taste quite differently.
The first and most reliable sign is the appearance of the cucumber. A good cucumber should have a uniform dark green colour and a firm outer skin. If there are yellow patches, dullness, or a faded colour, it is a sign that the cucumber is overripe or spoiled.Soft spots or wrinkled skin are also good warning signs. A good cucumber should be tight and crisp to the touch. According to lifestyle reports, a soft or yellow cucumber is likely to have a bitter taste.
Shape is more important than most people think. Cucumbers that are thick, too big, or irregular in shape are likely to have more developed seeds, which in turn make them more bitter.Rather, you should opt for cucumbers that are medium in size and straight in shape. Slender cucumbers are likely to be fresh and less bitter in taste. Thicker and bulkier cucumbers may be overripe, and that is not a good thing in any case.
This might sound a little strange, but this can actually be quite useful. A fresh cucumber has a mild scent that is clean and almost watery in its quality. If the cucumber has a strong smell that is sour or off in any way, it’s best to avoid using it.This method isn’t foolproof, but it can still be useful in keeping you away from cucumbers that are already spoiled or are on the verge of getting spoiled.
Gently press the cucumber using your fingers. The cucumber should be firm but not hard as a rock. If the cucumber is too soft, this might mean that the cucumber has gone bad. However, if the cucumber feels too hard and rigid, this might mean that the cucumber has become old and bitter.The cucumber needs to be firm but crisp.
If you have a cucumber which you have already purchased but which you wish to inspect before slicing, there’s a trick you can use. Simply remove a small piece from one end of the cucumber and rub it against the exposed surface. If you see a white foam-like substance, this indicates that there may be bitterness-causing agents present. This does not necessarily mean that the whole cucumber is inedible.
Despite all precautions, there are chances that your cucumber may turn out to be bitter. In this case, do not panic. You may remove the skin and trim the ends to reduce the bitterness. You may also rub the ends or sprinkle salt to remove some of the bitter taste.But in case the cucumber has turned out to be bitter, it would be best not to eat it, as it may cause mild stomach problems.
