Hello dear SCH Health News reader, and welcome to your New Year’s edition of your favourite monthly news round-up! With the temperature yet to really drop, the ‘luke-warm’ conditions are no doubt contributing to the seasonal flu outbreak as highlighted in one of the four articles featured this month. Please enjoy!

11^th The Guardian – ‘Medical misogyny’ condemns women to years of genealogical pain, MPs told

Women and girls are enduring years of pain because their reproductive conditions are being dismissed due to “medical misogyny”, according to a damning parliamentary report, by the Women and Equalities Committee. The report found that gynaecologicalconditions such as endometriosis and adenomyosis are treated with inadequate care due to a “pervasive stigma”, a lack of education by healthcare professionals and “medical misogyny.”

The Commons Select Committee, which set out to examine the experiences of care women with reproductive conditions get in England, found that symptoms are often “normalised”, and it can take years for women to get a diagnosis and treatment. The substandard gynaecological care cited by the report also includes routine IUD contraceptive fittings, cervical screenings, and hysteroscopies.

The report said women were being left in pain and discomfort that “interferes with every aspect of their daily lives”, including their education, careers, relationships and fertility, while their conditions worsen. It also found there to be a “clear lack of awareness and understanding of women’s reproductive health conditions among primary healthcare practitioners” and concluded that gynaecological care is not being treated as a priority.

Pervasive stigma associated with gynaecological and urogynaecological health, a lack of education and “medical misogyny” has contributed to poor awareness of these conditions. The committee heard evidence from Naga Munchetty and Vicky Pattison, who detailed the poor care they received when being treated for adenomyosis and pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder respectively. The report calls for the government to allocate more funding for research into women’s reproductive health conditions, and for the government’s women’s health hub model to be allocated long-term and ringfenced funding.

Endometriosis affects one in ten women in the UK and is caused by tissue similar to the lining of the uterus growing elsewhere in the body, often resulting in chronic pelvic pain and painful periods. Adenomyosis causes the lining of the uterus to grow into its muscular wall, which again causes painful symptoms.

Zainab Kaleemullah, a 35-year-old civil servant, was diagnosed with endometriosis and adenomyosis in 2022, despite having experienced the painful symptoms such as heavy periods, nausea and chronic anaemia associated with the diseases for a decade. In the time before being officially diagnosed, Kaleemullah found her symptoms to be dismissed by healthcare professionals.    

“I would go to the GP constantly, however, was diagnosed with depression and irritable bowel syndrome. I was sort of given the impression that it was all in my head, and this was completely normal for women to be experiencing”, she said. “It made me feel completely isolated – I would constantly have to go to my GP, tell them my symptoms and them just turning me away and not taking me seriously.”

An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is developing a network of women’s health champions made up of senior leaders in every local care system to drive forward improvements in women’s health.”

12^th The Times – ‘Tidal wave of UK flu’ hits NHS as hospital cases soar

The NHS has warned it is being hit by a “tidal wave” of flu, after the number of patients in hospital with the virus increased by 70 per cent over the past week. Health leaders have said that the nation is on track for a particularly deadly flu season, with hospital admissions already four times higher than this time last year. This is contributing to long A&E and ambulance delays in England, with one in ten patients facing trolley waits of more than 12 hours in emergency departments.

NHS data published on Thursday morning showed an average of 1,861 flu patients were in hospitals in England each day last week, including 66 in critical care. This is up from 1,099 patients the previous week, when 39 were in critical care. On top of the threat of flu, there are rising levels of Covid, norovirus and RSV – which doctors said amounts to a “quad-demic” that is piling pressure on A&E units.

Sir Stephen Powis, the national medical director for NHS England, said: “While the NHS has plans in place to manage additional demand over the busy winter period, with one week left to book your vaccine, I cannot stress enough the importance of getting booked in to protect yourself against serious illness and to avoid ‘festive flu.’

During the past two winters, flu has killed 18,000 people. About 30 million people are eligible for flu jabs on the NHS, including all those older than 65, children and adults with underlying health conditions such as asthma, with nearly half having coming not yet come forward, however.

The ”quad-demic” hitting British hospitals is also being compounded by elevate levels of a condition commonly known as “walking pneumonia.” Mycoplasma pneumoniae, the official name for the infection, causes small white spots to form on the lungs. Initial symptoms of the infection are milder than other types of pneumonia, meaning that sufferers spread it while “walking” around.

17^th The Guardian – Martha’s rule having ‘transformative effect’, NHS England data shows

Patients have been moved to intensive care or received potentially life-saving treatment such as oxygen as a direct result of hospitals adopting Marsha’s rule, NHS data shows. Marsha’s rule, named after Marsha Mills, who died in 2021, aged 13, gives patients and their loved ones the right to request an urgent review of the person in hospital’s treatment. That triggers their care being looked at urgently by a team of specialists, who offer a second opinion.

Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said: “The introduction of Martha’s rule represents one of the most important changes to patient care in recent years, and we are really encouraged to see the impact it is already having for patients in this first phase.”

The new patient safety procedure has led to 573 calls, across the 143 hospitals using it, in which someone has sought an urgent review. About half (286) have prompted an urgent review by critical care staff. About one in five of those reviews – 57 cases – has led to the person’s care being escalated, for example by being given potentially life-saving antibiotics or other drugs.

Powis said: “With one in five clinical reviews triggered by Martha’s rule so far leading to potentially life-saving changes in care, this early insight suggests the initiative is starting to have a transformative effect in improving patient safety further.

Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “These first successful statistics from Martha’s rule shows exactly why it needs to be rolled out across the entire NHS – because when we listen to patients and families and act on their concerns, lives can be saved.”

21^st IFL Science – Seasonal Affective Disorder: Here’s What To Know

Holiday festivities might be in full swing, but this time of year isn’t necessarily packed with cheer. For those with seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the changing of the seasons can bring significant shifts in their mood, sleep, and energy levels.

Rather than a standalone diagnosis, SAD is currently considered a subtype of recurrent major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder that has a seasonal pattern, meaning that symptoms of depression arise at particular seasons or times of year and last for about four to five months. Most commonly, symptoms  begin in the late fall or early winter – this is known as winter-pattern SAD.

Symptoms include: persistent low mood; low energy; difficulty concentrating; loss of interest and pleasure in things once enjoyed; feeling guilty or hopeless; and irritability. Oversleeping coupled with a higher appetite for carbohydrates are also common.

The exact cause of SAD isn’t known – the basis for mental health conditions is often complex, with no single root – bit its widely theorized that changes in sunlight exposure may play a role. For example, sunlight has a significant influence on our body clock, or circadian rhythm, which governs many functions within the body. Since there’s generally less exposure to sunlight in the winter months, it’s thought that this could disrupt the body clock and thus lead to symptoms of winter-pattern SAD.

It’s also been theorized that people with SAD may have altered levels of two key molecules within the body: serotonin and melatonin (which is synthesized in the body from serotonin). Both are involved in sleep, but serotonin also has an important role in regulating mood. The idea is that those with winter-pattern SAD may have decreased serotonin levels and/or produce more melatonin than usual, leading to disruption of the body’s normal daily rhythm and symptoms such as fatigue and low mood, with women thought to be more commonly affected than men, as well as occurring more frequently in people living far from the equator, where the daylight hours get much shorter in the fall and winter.

One of the most well-known approaches to treating SAD is light therapy. This can mean exposure to sunlight, or if that’s not possible, medically approved light boxes or “SAD lamps”, as they’re often advertised. However the UK’s National Health Service, though listing light therapy as a potential treatment, also says that there’s mixed evidence as to whether it’s actually effective.

For example, a recent meta-analysis of 19 randomised controlled trials found evidence suggesting that light therapy is effective in the short-term, but also that the quality of evidence wasn’t all that high; many of the studies had relatively small sample sizes and used different methodologies, making their findings somewhat unreliable. The authors call for larger clinical trials and also further investigation into the effectiveness of treating SAD in the long term.

Antidepressants may also be prescribed as a treatment, though it’s important to note that it can take up to 4 to 6 weeks for their effects to fully kick in, and for many people, it can require a bit of trial and error to find the medication that works best for them. In addition, or on its own, people with SAD may be offered psychotherapy, such as cognitive behavioural therapy.

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So until February, look after yourselves, remembering that as well as healthy eating, regular exercise is one of the best combatants of the body’s immune system running down at this time of year – Always more challenging in the colder, duller and drearier winter climate of course!

Yours sincerely

Daniel Donoghue

MD, Surrey Circle Health

Specialist ‘Whole of Market’ Private Medical Insurance Brokers