A round-up of other health news in brief
Too little sleep can trigger fatal heart attacks
Getting too little sleep can dramatically increase the risk of potentially fatal heart conditions in people with high blood pressure, a study has found.
Scientists in Japan studied 1,255 patients with high blood pressure, participants were aged 33-97, with an average age of 70.
Getting under 7.5 hours of sleep was associated with a 27 per cent increase in risk for patients whose blood pressure did not rise at night.
But for the minority of patients who did experience overnight blood pressure increases, their likelihood of experiencing a heart attack or stroke, or dying suddenly because of a fatally irregular heart rhythm more than quadrupled when they slept less than 7.5 hours.
'False hope' in internet cures
Patients should not place "false hope" in promises made by untested internet miracle cures, medical experts warned yesterday.
The British independent medical charity, Sense About Science, said many vulnerable patients were being duped by "surreptitious promotion and misleading stories" online and spending thousands of pounds on drugs that might be nothing more than snake oil.
The charity has published a guide called I've Got Nothing to Lose by Trying It that explains how to tell the beneficial drugs from the bogus.
Rutland Centre
An article in last week's Healthplus about the dangers of social networking sites to some recovering addicts inadvertently called the head of treatment services at the Rutland Centre Dublin Austin Clarke. He is, in fact, Austin Prior.