'health' - tagged features

According to a recent report, aeroplane noise may be driving people who live near airports into an early grave, by increasing their blood pressure. Even while they’re asleep. 

People in industrialized nations are getting taller ... and fatter. But no one really knows how bodies are changing. In Germany, the last time anyone surveyed people’s body sizes was back in 1956. You might wonder why we need to survey bodies at all. Well, think about clothes, or getting in and out of car or bus seats. Germans will soon know how big they really are. The ‘Size Germany’ project is touring the country, using high-tech 3D body scanners to measure 12-thousand Germans. 

And for those of you who used that minute break to light up, you may be aware that 2007 saw a smoking ban come into effect in England. Since the first of July, it's been forbidden to puff away in virtually all enclosed public spaces and workplaces. Deutsche Welle's Carol Allen checked up on Londoners after the first nerve-wracking month 

Sweden has been a member of the EU since 1995. But did you know that one of the most contentious issues for the Swedes during the negotiations aside from the country's much vaunted neutrality - was whether or not Swedes would be allowed to keep their peculiar habit of snus - or oral tobacco. Now a decade on and smoking definitely out of favor - Snus is being marketed as smokeless tobacco and the question is whether it should be sold in other European Union member states. As Azariah Kiros explains, the Snus Empire wants to strike back... 

It’s now been a bit over a month since a smoking ban came into effect in England - and there’s been a rather stoic reaction to the ban. As the country moves into its second smoke free month, we look at some of the anomalies and unexpected effects the ban has had on Londoners and London life. 

Next time you get sick how would you like to recuperate in a Spanish health spa, all expenses paid? Well as if Scandinavia wasn’t Eutopian enough already, Norway does exactly this, if your condition requires it. The Norwegian public health system now sends the sick, elderly and disabled on holidays to Spain as part of their medical treatment. Thousands of Norwegians are visiting rehabilitation centres run by Norwegian health associations along Spain’s Mediterranean coast. 

Russia, like all nations, is famous for certain things: great literature, epic battles, ballet and drinking. The late former President Boris Yeltsin did much to make sure we remember the drinking part. And as if Mr Yeltsin’s incapacitations weren’t warning enough, there’s new evidence that the dark side of the booze habit is crippling Russia's population. Alcohol abuse, particularly among men, is having a disastrous effect on the nation’s health. A recent study revealed that just under 50 percent of men in a typical provincial town in Russia die as a result of smoking and heavy alcohol consumption. RNW’s sober Moscow correspondent Geert Groot Koerkamp reports for Network Europe. 

In the Netherlands, virtual reality is used to train emergency services, either to prepare police officers or fire brigades deal with a crisis situation, or treat officers who suffer from post- traumatic disorder. 

Placing a bet on the Web is easy. You don't even have to pick up the dice or flip a card. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can win – or what’s more likely – lose a lot of money. The Internet is bringing gambling into every living room, every school, and every place of work. It’s a 12 billion euro industry. The poker and slot machines are virtual, but the money lost and the damage are real…to the extent that compulsive betting on the Net has caused people to lose their homes and families. In France, a new Website – adictel.com – is helping people to overcome their addiction. 

The Netherlands hit the international headlines on April Fools day five years ago - not because of a spectacular practical joke, but because on April 1 2002 it became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia. The new law legalised the practice of "mercy killings" within strict boundaries - and there was considerable international criticism of the legislation. Radio Netherlands' Louise Dunne examines how the euthanisia law is working five years on. 5 years since the Dutch legalised euthanasia, what has changed for doctors and patients? 

Religious leaders talking tough on abortion and threatening to use their political clout? It doesn't sound like liberal Sweden. But eyebrows are raised in Stockholm as abortion is suddenly back on the political agenda. A plan to allow foreign women to come to Sweden for abortions has infuriated some church leaders. Religious leaders talking politics in Sweden is highly unusual in a country that's usually considered to be at the vanguard of liberal reform. But as Radio Sweden’s Azariah Kiros found out, the Catholic Church and the evangelical Pentecostal Movement in Sweden are advising Swedes not to support one of the coalition partners in the government, the Christian Democrats, in the next election if the Party supports the proposal. 

Bulgaria has become a haven for tourists who come to enjoy the beautiful seaside and the pleasant climate. But now, they also come for relatively cheap and good quality dental care. Radio Bulgaria's Veneta Nikolova reports on the teeth-tourists. 

Abortion is taboo for many people all over the world. But what if you have a prenatal test, and find out your unborn child has a serious birth defect? The decision to end a pregnancy can be fraught with feelings of guilt, doubt and failure. A major study recently released in Holland examined those feelings. Radio Netherlands' Barry Thorne investigates the trauma of the medical abortion of a much-wanted child. 

The Swedish temperance movement has been increasingly concerned, with Western liquor companies and their clever PR advertisements, aiming at new markets in developing countries -- the growing middle class and especially women. In Sweden a new campaign called "Freedom Spirits" aims at reaching both Swedes and consumers abroad, about the dangers of alcohol consumption. ragic observations in many developing countries have noted those armies of poverty-stricken men in the sprawling city slums and in the countryside - spending all of their meagre wages on the local alcoholic brew - instead of on food for the family, badly-needed medicine or school books. But a more recent spotlight has focused on those Western-influenced ad campaigns on highway billboards and in magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America - designed to capture new consumers with luxury scenes of the rising middle class enjoying expensive, imported spirits -- ads often for the first time including women. As a counter measure, the Swedish temperance movement has been using sophisticated-looking leaflets, brochures and even exhibitions offering free drinks from glamorous bottles of a brand called "Freedom Spirits" - containing no alcohol at all. 

LSD is usually associated with the hippy "flower power" era in the West in the late 1960s. But few people know that thousands of tests involving the psychedelic drug were carried out in Czechoslovakia, from the mid 1950s until the mid 70s. Canadian journalist R.M. Crockford is currently in Prague researching this country's LSD testing program, which he says was perhaps the biggest conducted anywhere in the world. 

It's come from nowhere to being one of the world's most devastating diseases in just a quarter of a century. It's an extraordinary statistic, but 6 million people die from HIV/AIDS every year. The first case of HIV was in 1981. Network Europe spoke to Dutch AIDS ambassador Paul Beckers who's been analysing the UN's new statistics on HIV/AIDS for 2006. He told us there's good and bad news in the figures. 

Ever since scientists identified HIV, fear, denial and stigma have accompanied the AIDS epidemic. In many countries around the world the disease is closely associated with discrimination. Individuals affected by HIV have been rejected by their families, their friends and their communities. In Cyprus the official number of HIV positive persons is around 500, but AIDS support groups estimate the figure is four times higher. A significant figure for an island of less than one million people where everybody knows each other. Cypriot society believes AIDS is not a problem, but prejudice is killing HIV sufferers. Deutsche Welle reporter Barbara Gruber traveled to the Mediterranean island to investigate. 

People will certainly be shouting "skål" as they wine and dine in royal company during the Nobel ceremony in December in Stockholm but in the Czech Republic doctors are sounding the alarm. Women there are raising their glasses with a "Na zdravi!" far too often. In fact, in 2005, the number of women who entered Czech clinics with an alcohol abuse problem was twice as high one decade earlier. Radio Prague's Daniela Lazarova reports. 

Growing numbers of Britons and Germans take advantage of Poland's expanding private health sector to have their teeth fixed cheaply, or to perform cosmetic surgery. 'This medical tourism has taken off in a big way in the historic city of Krakow, which is a destination of many low cost airlines. Radio Polonia's John Beauchamp reports from Krakow. This report is by John Beauchamp. 

After Ireland, Italy, Sweden or Spain, France could become the next country to introduce a blanket ban on smoking in public areas. That’s what a parliamentary committee recommended this week, after five months of consultations with doctors, tobacconists, and trade unions. According to government figures, some thirty five per cent of the French population uses tobacco, and sixty six thousand die of smoke related illnesses every year. The measure would be enforced from September next year at the latest, though the committee held open a possible delay till summer 2008 for some establishments, including night clubs and restaurants. The tobacco lobby reacted with outrage. But Radio France International’s Nick Champeaux says smokers in Paris are already making the mental adjustments.