At one point, scientists believed that the fact that more men than women suffer from heart disease might have something to do with risk factors associated with the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is male – men carry XY chromosomes, whereas women carry XX – and so scientists began looking closely at the Y chromosome to see if there was some variation on it that might explain why so many men (compared to women) developed the disease.

The research that led from that supposition looked at over three thousand men and considered links between their genetic type (having one of several possible variations on the Y chromosome, called haplogroup I) and their risk of developing heart disease. The research found that men with one particular variation on their Y chromosome were 56% more likely to develop heart disease than men with other types of variation. This was regardless of other factors like weight, lifestyle and socio-economic factors.

So it seems from the research that Y chromosome genes might significantly increase a man’s risk of developing heart disease. However, lifestyle and socio-economic factors do still play a part – just because a man is genetically predisposed to developing a certain disease it doesn’t mean he will do so, because he can take steps to improve his general health (e.g. stopping smoking, losing weight, taking more exercise) and take steps to avoid this largely preventable disease.

The research has been carried out by the Universities in Leeds, Glasgow, Leicester and Cambridge and at King’s College London, and further universities across the globe. The researchers made it clear that being part of this haplogroup I is not a predictor of developing heart disease on its own – there are many factors that make it more or less likely that a person will develop the disease. The key is to take care of yourself and your heart – eating healthily, stopping smoking, drinking in moderation, taking regular exercise. If you have any concerns, speak to your GP.

There have also been recent claims that drinking even a glass of milk a day could improve your brain, boosting memory and preventing dementia. These claims are based on findings that people who drank milk or ate yoghurt performed better on memory and brain-function tests than did people without that level of dairy products in their diets.

However, those findings are merely correlational, not causal. In other words, they may show that the two things happen together (i.e. that people who drink milk do better in the tests) but not that it they did better in the tests because they drink milk. There could be lots of other factors that made those people do better in their tests – they could have been from better socio-economic backgrounds, for example.

The findings were made by the University of Maine and the University of South Australia. They were released to the press by the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board, which promotes milk consumption in the US on behalf of their government.

The researchers actually say that their research provides an association between consuming dairy and having improved cognitive function. They say that it might help because it has a ‘favourable effect’ on things like obesity.

The research certainly doesn’t prove that drinking milk improves brain power or reduces the risk of dementia. Dairy products are good for keeping your bones and teeth strong and healthy, but they as an animal product they are also high in saturated fat that can lead to heart disease and obesity.

The right treatment generally depends on the stage of the illness. But it is never too late to stop smoking. If you are in the early stages of COPD and have only mild symptoms then if you stop smoking you won’t need any other treatment. Take note that stopping smoking often causes a troublesome cough that will last for several days and sometimes weeks. That is your lungs healing and should not make you think ‘I may as well start smoking again just to ease this cough!’

If stopping smoking doesn’t ease your symptoms, or if you are at a more advanced stage of COPD, you may need other treatments. These will only ease your symptoms or prevent ‘exacerbations’ (flare-ups) and will not cure the condition. Treatments are generally tried for 4 – 12 weeks to see if they are having an effect before trying an alternative, so give the treatment chance to take effect.

Treatment for stable COPD (i.e. COPD itself rather than the exacerbations) is generally by way of inhaler, often used with a spacer to make it easier to inhale the medication efficiently. These can be reliever-inhalers, to dilate the airways, similar to blue inhalers given to people with asthma. There are inhalers that last for 12 hours per dose.

If your COPD is more severe, you may need a steroid (‘preventer’) inhaler, which reduces inflammation of the airways, and are used to reduce the incidence of exacerbations.

An alternative to inhalers is tablet medication that does the same job as the inhalers, and/or mucolyitic medication which makes the mucus in your lungs less ‘sticky’ and easier to cough up.

Exacerbations are normally treated with steroid tablets and/or antibiotics, which reduce the inflammation that causes the flare-up. Taking these too often can lead to side-effects including reduced bone-density (making broken bones a distinct possibility), stomach bleeds, reduced immunity, and weight-gain. If you need to take them often, therefore, you will probably also be prescribed medications to counteract those side-effects.

If your exacerbations are particularly severe you may have to go to hospital and given more medications in higher doses, and perhaps physiotherapy too. The hospital may give you oxygen to help you breathe. If it severe enough for you to need hospital treatment, between 2 – 4% of patients admitted to hospital for this will die; approximately 10 – 25% of people taken to the ICU will die.

If you have COPD and have been told that it will kill you within the year, you have ‘end stage COPD’ and palliative care will be discussed with you. In end stage COPD you will have more frequent exacerbations and need to go to hospital more often. The doctors can discuss with you whether you would rather stay at home or be admitted to a hospice. The palliative care will aim to keep you as comfortable as possible – it will not offer a cure – and give you the best quality of life possible.

Surgery is an option (though not likely to be helpful in severe or end stage cases), cutting away the diseased parts of the lung, but it is only likely to succeed in very few cases.

To help yourself and ease your own symptoms, you should ensure that you get the annual flu vaccine and be immunised against pneumococcus (just once). Taking regular exercise will improve your breathing and ease your symptoms, as will losing weight.

COPD stands for Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and it is the term now used to cover emphysema, chronic bronchitis or both (it’s quit common to suffer both together). Both illnesses involve the airways in the lungs becoming obstructed (so that the airflow is reduced). The main symptoms are ‘productive’ coughing (over a long period, sometimes painfully, where phlegm is produced) and feeling breathless. Frequent chest infections and blood in the sputum are common in people with COPD. COPD can be fatal.

An estimated three million people in the UK suffer from COPD and a further 500,000 may have the condition but be unaware that they do. It’s most common amongst people over 40 and the risk of developing the disease increases with age.

The main cause of COPD is smoking – the smoke inflames the airways and damages them over time. Three out of every twenty smokers who have 20-a-day go on to develop COPD, whilst a quarter of smokers who smoke 40-a-day develop CPPD. But even if you don’t smoke heavily, there is a significant risk of developing COPD. Smoking doesn’t cause all cases – it can be through anything that irritates and damages the airways, such as breathing in heavily-polluted air, or it can be genetic (though this accounts for fewer than one percent of cases).

To test whether a person has COPD, a doctor would normally examine your chest with the stethoscope but this examination can appear normal in early or mild cases of COPD. Another test is a spirometry test, which measures your lung capacity by seeing how much air your can blow into a machine (a similar test is often used to diagnose asthma). Those results are compared with results that would be expected to be seen amongst other people of your age, gender and general level of health. It may also be necessary to have a chest x-ray to exclude other possible causes of the symptoms (like lung cancer).

Once a person begins to experience the symptoms of COPD it is vital that they stop smoking if they are to have any chance of survival. Damage that has already been done to the lungs cannot be repaired, but it will stop getting worse. If smoking continues, the symptoms gradually worsen over several years and eventually quality of life is impaired. Eventually, heart failure can occur, meaning that the heart no longer pumps blood efficiently. Ultimately, the lungs become so damaged that not enough oxygen is taken in and carbon dioxide (the gas you normally breathe out) builds up in the blood. This is known as ‘end-stage COPD’ and death follows.

Around 25,000 people in the UK die from COPD each year, usually following years of ill health and poor quality of life. If you do manage to stop smoking, you will probably notice a worsening of your cough at first – that is normal, it happens as your airways start to recover, so don’t resume smoking just to ease the cough, it will get better quickly.

Next week, we will look at treatments for COPD.

PTSD is believed to affect hundreds of thousands of people each year in the UK alone (approximately 1.5% of the population) – and whilst many people believe that PTSD is something that only soldiers get after being in a war-zone, it can occur whenever a person has felt that their life is in danger.

A leading psychiatrist in this field, Dr Jennifer Wild, who is based at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry says that PTSD is not being adequately recognised, addressed or treated despite its prevalence.

People with PTSD can suffer appalling symptoms (including flashbacks, irrational fears, loss of control of emotions, intense anger, inability to concentrate and being scared, like being in a state of threat all the time) for years without treatment. Many people don’t seek treatment, either because they’re ashamed (mental health problems still carry a huge stigma) or because they fear that they will be locked away or have their children removed if they admit to the problems they are suffering (neither of these things will typically happen, of course).

But those who do seek treatment often find that their GPs don’t recognise the symptoms for what they are and fail to provide adequate care. They may simply provide anti-depressants or drugs to aid sleep. That’s because many of the symptoms of PTSD overlap with those of depression (which often features sleep problems like insomnia).

For PTSD to be properly tackled, though, a combination of the right type of anti-depressant (such as paroxetine, which can have side-effects and must be reduced gradually if a person wants to stop taking them) with talking therapy to address the original trauma and put it firmly in the past rather than have it affect the present to such a degree.

GPs should be trained to ask anyone suffering from depression-symptoms or insomnia whether they have been through any kind of traumatic event. They need to ask if they’re suffering any of the typical symptoms of PTSD including intrusive memories or flashbacks, nightmares, avoiding triggers that remind them of the event (e.g. many women are traumatised by the delivery of their child and may avoid pregnant friends or watching programmes on TV about pregnancy or birth).

If you are suffering from PTSD, you can ask your GP to refer you to the IAPT team (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) or you can refer yourself.

Its slow-growing nature can be bad news for some, though, since many men don’t experience any symptoms until the cancer is at an advanced stage. If it reaches an advanced state, spreading to other parts of the body, it is much harder to treat and more likely to be fatal. Such cancer cannot usually be treated, though it can be kept at bay for many years.

So if the symptoms are not often present until it reaches an advanced state, how can you tell if you have it and take steps to have it treated?

The prostate gland secretes a substance called PSA (prostate-specific antigen). If there are high levels of this PSA in the bloodstream, it could indicate prostate cancer, or it could indicate something else like prostatitis, or an enlarged prostate gland (neither of which are cancerous). A blood test can therefore give a good indication of whether there is a problem or not. A doctor who carries out such a test will also look at how quickly the PSA levels increase over what period of time, so further blood tests may be necessary if an initial result seems ominous.

It is important to remember that low levels of PSA will not always mean that there is no cancer – it is possible to have prostate cancer without elevated levels of PSA. As the test is normally combined with a rectal examination, though, they give a good chance of spotting anything developing.

In order to decide whether to test for PSA, doctors generally bear in mind different risk factors. These are:

Family history: you have almost double the risk of contracting the disease if a close male relative has had it.

Ethnicity: prostate cancer is much more common in black men, and in South Asian men who live in the UK.

Diet: obesity plays a role in the development of prostate cancer, so maintaining a controlled, balanced diet can reduce the risks of developing the disease. A high fat diet may contribute to the development of the cancer. Eating a diet rich in lycopenes (which are found in things like tomatoes, beans, blueberries, red oranges, spinach and watermelon) can reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer.

Sedentary lifestyle: it may be possible to reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer by taking regular exercise.

Age: the risk of prostate cancer increases year on year after the age of about 50.

At present, there isn’t a standard screening programme in the UK like there is for several other common diseases. Early detection equates to better prospects of successful treatment, though, so there is much pressure from organisations like Cancer Research UK for a routine screening programme to be undertaken. It is possible to request a PSA test on the NHS and you may want to ask for one if you have any of the above risk factors (from about age 50, or 40 if you are black or of South Asian heritage) or if you have a family history of prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer to affect men in the UK, with one in 14 developing it at some point in their lives. However, the survival rate is very good, with about 70% surviving for at least five years.

It’s cause is not known exactly, though it is thought to be related to genetics (it is more common for men with prostate cancer to die if they have a family history of the disease), and diet contributes to the risk of death from the disease: men who eat lots of fat (especially animal, saturated fat) are more likely to develop the disease to an advanced stage and/or die from it. The disease is more common in countries that typically consume meat and dairy staples than in countries that have a diet rich in vegetables, rice and soya beans. It’s also linked to age, with around 60% of cases being found in men over 70.

Your ethnicity is likely to influence the likelihood of whether or not you develop the disease: it is most common in black men of African and African-Caribbean heritage, and least common in Asian men.

It is probable that hormonal changes trigger the cancer, and that diet triggers the hormonal changes. This is because fats stimulate a greater production of testosterone, which in turn encourages the growth of prostate cancer. Further, if you eat meat that has been cooked at high temperatures, carcinogens present in the meat as a result of the cooking process can affect the prostate.

Another risk factor is exposure to a metal called cadmium seem to be abnormally vulnerable to prostate cancer.

Next week we will examine how prostate cancer is detected.

However, some exposure to UV light can be therapeutic. Research by the University of London has found that the chickenpox virus may be contained (less likely to spread) if it is exposed to UV light. They found that in areas with high UV levels, there was less occurrence of chickenpox compared to the level of outbreaks seen in places with lower levels of UV light.

The findings may suggest that you’re more likely to get chickenpox if you live in an area with a cooler climate, and also may suggest how the virus can be avoided – as could shingles.

Chickenpox is normally only contracted once in a lifetime (usually during childhood) but if a person who has had chickenpox is exposed to the virus again (and is run down or has low levels of immunity at the time) they can develop shingles. The virus that causes chickenpox and shingles is called the varicella zoster virus. Shingles is a very unpleasant illness and if the research into UV rays could lead to a way of preventing the spread of that infection then it could help many thousands of people every year.

The virus is very infectious and is dangerous to the foetus if contracted during pregnancy. It is normally caught through close contact (skin-to-skin) when the blisters caused by the virus are still ‘wet’.

One of the researchers, Dr Phil Rice, believes that UV light exposure could kill the virus whilst it is on the skin, preventing it from infecting others.

The findings are consistent with anecdotal evidence that chickenpox is less common in tropical regions, and is more common in cooler climates during the Autumn and Winter seasons, when UV levels are low.

Previously, it had been assumed that the lower incidence of chickenpox in tropical climates was due to lower population density and other sociological factors. Dr Rice said, “No one had considered UV as a factor before, but when I looked at the epidemiological studies they showed a good correlation between global latitude and the presence of the virus.”

Unless they’ve been living under a rock, everyone knows about the risks and dangers of smoking. The government has seemingly reduced the number of smokers in the UK (and for the first time, the number of young smokers has declined), by making it socially unacceptable to smoke in public. Smoking has become the social equivalent of passing wind.

If you want to stop smoking and are aiming to quit for New Year, here are some tips on how best to manage it:

1. Get motivated. A New Year’s Resolution isn’t going to help much in the long-run (you might have lit up on 1st January in a hung-over daze before you’ve even remembered that you’d promised to quit). You need something bigger to aim for: perhaps you want to make sure you’re there for your grandchild’s graduation. Or maybe you want to decorate the lounge but there’s no point doing so if you’re just going to turn it yellow again by February.

2. Get advice and support. You could go ‘cold-turkey’ but it doesn’t work for most people, the craving is just too hard. Cigarette addiction is a chemical addiction in your brain, it’s not something you can easily will-away. Look into nicotine-replacement therapy, which can help reduce the withdrawal symptoms of depression, anxiety and irritability. Gum, patches and lozenges are all available, as are fake cigarettes that also give you the sensation of smoking, and these can make you twice as likely to successfully quit as if you were trying on your own.

3. Tell people. Tell your friends, work colleagues, family, that you are trying to quit. They’ll be more understanding if you bite their head off for not holding a door open for you or breathing too loudly. Support groups are available if you need to vent or want to talk to others going through the same thing. Or you can try cognitive-behavioural therapy plus nicotine-replacement therapy, which will offer the best chance of success.

4. Avoid triggers. If you normally smoke when you have a drink, then give drinking a rest socially for a while, just until your cravings have gone. Or if you smoke when stressed, manage your stress-levels better.

5. When you’ve quit, decorate the house. You’ll be less likely to want to wreck your beautiful, clean-smelling walls, ceilings and soft furnishings if you’ve spent days working on them. Get rid of your smoking paraphernalia too (ashtrays and the like) so you have fewer reminders around the house of your habit.

Whatever motivates you, however many attempts it takes to kick the habit, you will manage it in the end and you will feel so much better for it.

The genuine cases, who really do need more sleep, have a variation on gene ABCC9. The variation is found in as many as one in five Europeans.

Researchers from Ludwig Maximilians University and Edinburgh University studied around 10,000 Europeans from various member states, and questioned them about how many hours’ sleep they got each night (on nights when they didn’t have something in particular to get up for the next day). They then took samples of their blood and analysed their DNA.

Those with the variation on ABCC9 needed more than the average, which is eight hours’ sleep per night.

A possible reason for the effect of the variation is that the normal function of gene ABCC9 is to detect energy levels in the body. Perhaps in the variation of the gene, it detects too little energy and makes the body want to sleep more to recover.

One of the researchers, Dr Jim Wilson from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Population Health Sciences said: “Humans sleep for approximately one-third of their lifetime. A tendency to sleep for longer or shorter periods often runs in families despite the fact that the amount of sleep people need can be influenced by age, latitude, season and circadian rhythms. These insights into the biology of sleep will be important in unravelling the health effects of sleep behaviour.”