Jack Raymond 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8476781/The-brain-really-can-be-half-asleep-claims-research.html

Moments of absent mindedness such as losing your keys could be the result of tiny parts of the brain taking "naps" to recharge, a study finds. 

Researchers discovered that contrary to popular opinion the brain is not always entirely asleep or awake but parts of it can go "offline".

This they claim accounts for the feeling of being "half asleep" which causes forgetfulness and small errors such as misplacing keys or putting the milk in the cupboard or the cereal in the fridge.

The team at the University of Wisconsin, who measured electrical waves in the brain, discovered that some nerve cells in tired yet awake individuals can briefly go "offline".

The study only involved the motor cortex in rats, in other words brain cells to do with movement, but the same processes may hold true for humans, and in many other areas of the brain. This may also be relevant to aspects of hypnotic phenomena, many of which are to do with switching off areas of a brain's functioning for a short time, for example, temporary forgetfulness and catalepsy (physical rigidity and inability to move) and negative hallucination (not seeing things which are there). Hypnosis can produce positive hallucination as well, so obviously there must be other processes at work as well.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8360923/One-in-ten-Britons-taking-pills-to-get-to-sleep.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12646090

From questioning 40,000 families, which must have been pretty tiring in itself, it appears that one in eight people sleeps less than six hours a night.

Women are more likely to have problems getting to sleep within half an hour than men—24% compared to 18%.

But more men than women said that snoring or coughing disturbs their sleep—30% compared to 20%.

Thirty-three per cent of the most dissatisfied employees reported that they slept poorly, compared to just 18% of the most satisfied employees.

Those who were unemployed were over 40% more likely to have difficulty staying asleep than those in employment.

Not too difficult to take a guess at the reasons for those figures. The slant on the story in The Telegraph is more to do with taking medication to induce sleep. The people they quote point out that taking pills isn't a long-term solution and doesn't induce natural sleep and the attendant health risks in not sleeping enough.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12674976

People living in England enjoy better health than Americans, despite less investment in healthcare, research published in the US has revealed.

Across all ages, US residents tend to fare worse in terms of diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease markers, data on over 100,000 people show.

The reason remains a mystery, says the US team, and challenges the idea that resources necessarily improve health.

It may be due to the UK's bigger drive on disease prevention, they say.

The article goes on to muse about various possible causes, and ask the usual experts what they think. On the face of it, it's a mystery, so some deeper digging was required. The obvious possibilities were obesity and economic factors, but looking at other articles which mention the survey, these were not relevant. The researchers say that the two countries 'share much in terms of history and culture', and another article I saw said that we were basically 'cut from the same cloth'. Ahem. This gave me a starting point. You'll find a slightly more insightful and in-depth description of the research here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6969298.stm

This is infuriating, for reasons I shall explain shortly.

200 women due to receive operations for breast cancer at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine were either given 15 minutes of hypnosis or a conversation with a psychologist before the surgery. The conclusion was that those getting hypnosis required less anaesthetic, and said they had 'less pain, nausea, fatigue and emotional distress' after the operation. 

Of course, it's arguable that a conversation with a psychologist just before an operation is precisely what you don't need to reduce pain, nausea, fatigue and emotional distress, and so may have skewed the results, but let's let that one go. The usual stuff about further study being required and 'UK experts said more research was needed' was of course trotted out. 

So why is this infuriating? Well, you may have heard of the (world-famous) Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, (though there are now branches in Arizona and Florida as well). The Mayo Clinic became famous for a reason, namely that whereas in most hospitals and clinics 1 in 400 people died from the anaesthetic they were given, patients were sure that wouldn't happen while they were in the hands of the Mayo brothers. They performed 17,000 operations without a single death from anaesthetic. That was because the Mayo brothers had learned to use hypnosis from a doctor called Henry Munro, who had performed numerous operations using hypnosis to reduce the amount of anaesthetic required. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/06/half-german-doctors-prescribe-placebos?INTCMP=SRCH

This was a study for the German Medical Association, which showed that half of all German doctors, and up to 88% in Bavaria, have prescribed placebos.

'The report says placebos...can prove highly effective in various treatments.'

Christoph Fuchs, the managing director of the BÄK (German Medical Association), says that "Placebos have a stronger impact and are more complex than we realised. They are hugely important in medicine today".

"Placebos can maximise the effect of medication," says Robert Jütte, author of the study and a BÄK board member.

"They can reduce undesirable side-effects and are a more efficient usage of our healthcare budget."

He quoted recent research showing that placebos had proved helpful in 59% of cases of upset stomach, and that they're as effective as antidepressants in about a third of cases. The study also says that placebos are more effective if the patient feels that the doctor understands their concerns and takes them seriously. Laid against this are the ethical dilemmas of prescribing placebos, and so the BÄK are seeking international guidelines.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cannabis-link-to-increased-risk-of-psychosis-2229810.html

A study published in the BMJ for over 1900 people aged 14-24 at the start of the study, followed up three and eight years later.

'Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at the Institute of Psychiatry, said: "This study adds incremental information to the already fairly solid evidence that continued use of cannabis increases risk of psychotic symptoms and psychotic illness. "The study is one of 10 prospective studies all pointing in this same direction." ' 

I'm not going into the details of the study, but there are two points of interest arising. Firstly, this certainly fits in with my experience as a hypnotherapist. Among the people who come to me with anxiety and phobias, for example, a fair number have used drugs extensively in the past, or else had a bad experience with them. Quite often, though not always, it takes longer working with them to dissolve the emotions than with people without the drugs background. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2011/02/happiness_work_sleep_and_bicyc.html

The government is trying to find out what makes us happier. I'm delighted the question is at least finally being asked in the UK, this bastion of gloom. Of course, there is plenty of room for cynicism, and there are plenty of people who are willing to provide it. Presumably they fall firmly into the category of people who would benefit from being happier.

According to the article: 'Basically, we have become a whole lot richer but no happier'. My understanding is that unhappiness decreases with wealth up to a certain point but then tails off. If you can't afford a loaf of bread, you're unlikely to be bouncing off the walls with happiness; at the other end of the scale, getting your fifth yacht is unlikely to make you much happier than your fourth did.

The article, which is brief, mentions three areas, as you can probably guess from the title. Unemployment is bad for happiness. No money, no structure to the day, no self-respect, no social interaction, no status. No surprise there. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12567103

Meta-analysis from Cardiff University reported in the BMJ (British Medical Journal). I can't that say I'm generally exhilarated by meta-analyses, in this case they looked at 14 previous studies and did all the number crunching to conclude that 'stress had no impact on whether a woman became pregnant or not, with women who were stressed becoming pregnant at the same rates as those who did not'.

The first line of the article says that 'The report...aims to dispel the myth that stress prevents women from becoming pregnant.' Actually it doesn't, it merely claims that stress preventing women from becoming pregnant is a myth. Since I can think of at least two examples from my practice in the last year where death of a family member or pet made the woman anovulatory (having no periods) or not far off, I beg to differ. What the report actually shows is that women who complete a cycle of IVF or other 'assisted reproduction techniques' and are more stressed than the others in the same group are equally (un)likely to become pregnant. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4493011.stm

This was a study done by UCL/University of Southampton jointly, published in the journal NeuroScience, using PET (positron emission tomography) scans to examine brain activity of arthritis sufferers undergoing acupuncture. 14 volunteers each had 3 kinds of treatment in random order: blunt needles, which didn't pierce the skin and which the volunteers realised wouldn't help them, collapsible trick needles which appeared to pierce the skin but didn't, and real acupuncture.

The 3 approaches produced 3 separate patterns of brain activity: the blunt needles just activated the sense of touch; the trick needles stimulated opiate (natural pain-killing activity), and so did the real acupuncture, which also activated a region of the brain known as the insular, thought to be involved in the modulation of pain.

So on the face of it, real acupuncture has a measurable effect on brain activity differing from needles which don't pierce the skin (even if the patient thinks they do). I'm not going into that here, as what interests me is the comment at the bottom of the article from Professor Henry McQuay, professor of pain relief at the University of Oxford: '...it is extremely difficult, technically, to study acupuncture and tease out the placebo effect." 
That makes perfect sense, as randomised controlled trials are an attempt (among other things) to remove or reduce individual variation in measuring the effectiveness of an outcome. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/health/26stutter.html

http://www.economist.com/node/18226793

Stuttering is coming under the spotlight at the moment, literally, with the release of the film "The King's Speech" and its possibility of success at the Oscars.

The current focus in science is on brain activity, and a genetic link in half of all stutterers.

“People who stutter have motor difficulties in producing fluent speech,” said Luc De Nil, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Toronto. “They don’t have difficulty developing words or syntax, although they may process language differently. They have difficulty with efficient coordination of motor movements, and speech is such a high-demand fine-motor skill that requires extremely fast sequencing and timing.”

"He has found that parts of the brain linked to the production of speech are more active in stutterers than non-stutterers, while those involved in perceiving sounds are less so. The two sorts of brain look different, too. Stutterers tend, for instance, to have more densely packed grey matter in the areas associated with processing and producing sounds."