Making Best Practice, Every Day Practice
Excessive alcohol consumption has joined smoking and obesity as one of today’s major threats to public health. It is a major cause of liver disease, as well as a range of cancers, cardiovascular disease and mental illness. What’s the solution? We look at how primary care can identify patients who are drinking too much and what interventions can help.
Excessive alcohol consumption has joined smoking and obesity as one of today’s major threats to public health. It is a major cause of liver disease, as well as a range of cancers, cardiovascular disease and mental illness. What’s the solution? We look at how primary care can identify patients who are drinking too much and what interventions can help.
Chronic liver disease is a problem for all of us. It develops silently, often taking many years to cause sufficient damage to be detectable or cause signs or symptoms for which a patient would seek attention. Primary care has a central role in improving the prevention and early detection of chronic liver disease. This special issue of the British Journal of Primary Care Nursing (BJPCN) and Primary Care Cardiovascular Journal on chronic liver disease is full of step-by-step guides and informative articles to give you the key information and tools to get to grips with this important condition.
Fat is an important part of the diet, providing fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids, as well as a valuable source of energy or calories. Fat also increases the palatability and carries the flavour of many of our foods. The problem is, despite decades of public health campaigns, most of us still eat too much of the wrong fat. Understanding the different types of fat can help us to advise our patients on ways to optimise their diets.
Glycaemic index (GI) is a hot topic, often misunderstood by healthcare professionals and patients. This article fills the gaps by explaining the low-GI diet in detail, describing the benefits and barriers to using GI in practice, the benefits in patients with diabetes and the controversy that surrounds it. The aim is to help primary care professionals to make informed decisions on when and how to use GI in helping patients with diabetes to plan their diet.
If physical activity could be taken as a tablet, the dramatic benefits it achieves in reducing cardiovascular disease and diabetes as well as many other conditions mean all of us would be on it. But many people currently miss out because it takes more effort to increase physical activity than popping open a tablet bottle. This article sets out the evidence for physical inactivity as a major cardiovascular risk factor and how to put the evidence into practice and get patients moving.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), including coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, is the leading cause of mortality in the UK. In addition to the effect on quality of life, CHD imposes a huge annual burden with costs on healthcare relating to CHD estimated to be over £3.3 billion a year in the UK.1 Coupled with the obesity epidemic, costing the NHS an estimated £4.2 billion per year,2 this creates a huge burden upon healthcare resources. This article was sponsored by an educational grant from Alpro soya UK; however, the views expressed are the author’s own.
While salt is an essential part of a healthy diet excessive salt intake is now an important focus for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease in the UK. It is estimated that reducing everyone’s salt intake to the equivalent of one teaspoon per day would prevent 23,000 deaths from stroke and heart attack each year. Here are practical ideas for helping to achive this goal.
Most of the UK population – including the patients we see every day – are now more likely to have a weight problem than be of a healthy weight. Instead of focusing our efforts, and valuable resources, on managing the consequences of obesity, we should tackle its causes and appropriately manage patients motivated to address their unhealthy weight.
Diet and lifestyle strategies are essential in the treatment and possibly in the prevention of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Dietary modification plays a fundamental role in helping to control increased levels of blood electrolytes and metabolic waste productsthat are often seen as renal function declines. Dietary and lifestyle modification may not directly influence disease progression in CKD, but several lifestyle factors have been highlighted as important due to the significant influence they exert over associated factors such as diabetes and hypertension, which are two of the leading causes of CKD, and obesity.
The impact of smoking on all aspects of health – physical, psychological and socioeconomic – is so serious that helping people to quit is a key priority for anyone working to improve health outcomes. In this article, we look at the best way to encourage smokers to quit, how to increase the quit rate in smokers who have decided that the time is right for them to stop, and review the latest information on pharmacological options for smoking cessation.
In the UK about half of women of reproductive age are either overweight or obese. Obesity is known to adversely affect female fertility, as well as the health of mothers and their children. But even modest weight loss can restore fertility and improve a woman’s chances of a successful pregnancy.
A unique new e-platform for primary care
By continuing to this site you are confirming that you are a healthcare professional and are opting into the use of cookies.
