J and I live in a house that was built during the 1930s. It is a quaint house that has large, tall rooms downstairs and small, cosy rooms upstairs. We have been slowly making it our own since we bought the house in 2019. It is a slow job, partly because of funds, but also because Covid came, and when it went for a while, finding a builder was near impossible. However, we have made progress. Log fires have been fitted (and enjoyed over three winters), a new kitchen-come-dining room has emerged as a central space in the house, and one of the two bathrooms has been modernised. We are now in the midst of planning to do the second bathroom, an ensuite to our recently remodelled bedroom.
So, perhaps somewhat predictably, we have ordered a new bath. Thankfully it’s a ¾ size rolltop bath. I say thankfully as research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) last week showed that taking a hot bath every day can help folk avoid heart disease and strokes and thus live longer. With today’s already high energy prices set to rise yet again, filling a full size bath every day might need very deep pockets indeed. Either that or a friendly bank manager.
And talking about ensuite
bathrooms, I was also mildly surprised to read of the research again published
last week, this time in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, that having an
extra hour’s sleep each night could help you lose weight. Now as well as occasionally
taking a bath, J occasionally thinks she needs to lose weight. I disagree, but
it is her body. She also like sleeping. A daily bath, an extra hour’s sleep
each day could be a win-win recipe for happiness.
Coincidently, food was the other
study that caught my eye last week. Research undertaken by colleagues at the
University of Bergen and published in Plos Medicine journal, reported that if
we switch from typical Western style food to heathier diets that contain less
red meat, but more legumes, nuts and fruit we will live longer. Not really a surprise,
but when you do this appears to be important. For example, make the switch aged
20, and you can expect to live an extra 10 years. Make the change aged 60 and
you can expect to enjoy an extra 8 years of life. Even delaying making the
switch until you are 80 could mean you gain a extra 3.4 years of life compared
to those who continue to eat over-processed and convenience foods.
So, there you have it. I could
end this week’s blog post right here. Take a daily bath, sleep an hour longer
each day and stop eating Big Macs* and you will live a healthier and longer
life, and enjoy a better wellbeing experience. But the blog is not finished. I
wanted to write about mental health and wellbeing from a slightly different
perspective. Last week was Children’s Mental Health Week. In fact, the last day
of the awareness raising week is today. Children’s Mental Health Week was launched
back in 2015 by Place2Be – and goodness, hasn’t the world changed since then. If
it were important to consider the mental health of children and young people in
2015, it is even more so today.
In 2021, NHS Digital estimated
that one in six children and young people will be living with a mental health issue.
Given how the Covid pandemic has impacted upon children and young people in
particular, I would imagine that the number is probably a lot higher. The theme
for this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is ‘Growing Together’. The
theme provides a focus on how we grow emotionally, and in so doing, perhaps find
ways to help others grow and manage the challenges they face.
These challenges have been numerous.
Regular schooling disrupted, lockdowns, not being able to see members of their family
who were ‘outside their bubble’, not being able to socialise with
friends. In many ways these are some of the benign challenges. As children and young
people became less visible to teachers and other adults, so their vulnerability
to abuse increased. The well respected and highly experienced professor of child
health and behaviour, and president of the Association for Child and Adolescent
Mental Health, Stephen Scott, recently noted that even in pre-covid times, 16% of children
(five in a class of 30) have a serious, diagnosable mental illness, with
anxiety and depression being the most common problem. Often these disorders are
cloaked in shame and so can remain hidden to the most vigilant of adults outside
of a family setting. Again, this a problem that has been exacerbated by the
pandemic.
The wonderful organisation Young
Minds captured the experience of many children and young people in their last
annual survey undertaken in January 2021, during a very difficult lockdown
period. The outcome of the survey came in the form of recommendations to Government
– you can read these here, but prioritising wellbeing in schools, increasing the
number of community-based early intervention hubs offering open-access mental
health support in a non-medicalised setting were two that struck me as being particularly
important. Some of these are already available, like 42ndStreet here in my
place of work, Greater Manchester. However, many more such services are
required across the whole of the UK.
Choosing to have a bath or not is
clearly a first-world problem. Finding ways to better support and nurture the
mental health and wellbeing of our children and young people is an
international problem. It is a challenge we all need to recognise and respond
to. Children and young people are our future, but they all deserve to have the
best future we can help them achieve.
* McDonald’s announced last week that that it will no longer be selling the chicken version of its iconic double decker burger because of an over whelming demand for the new Chicken Big Mac. If they bring them back, why not save an innocent chicken’s life and order a McPlant instead. You know it could help you live longer.
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