HEALTHY LIVING

Why you need to put your sleep app on snooze, any marriage plans on hold and prepare for a little shock.

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT! (BUT THERE SHOULDN’T BE)

Got an app to track your sleep patterns? Ditch it! Neurologist and sleep disorder specialist Dr Guy Leschziner says this constant obsessing about the quality and length of our sleep can make us so anxious that we develop insomnia.

‘If you wake up feeling tired and you’ve had an unrefreshing night’s sleep then you know you’ve got a problem,’ he said.

Constantly worrying about your caffeine intake or blue-light exposure is pointless (some people genetically don’t react to caffeine and can happily down several espressos just before nodding off, for instance), so just focus on how you feel. If you feel fine, you probably ARE fine.

THIS MAY SHOCK YOU

Scientists have developed a small machine about the size of a cellphone that can help with chronic anxiety, testing at Nottingham University has shown. The device delivers small shocks via your earlobes that increase alpha waves in the brain.

After 24 weeks, 48 percent of participants said they were in complete remission from generalised anxiety disorder, from which they all suffered, and many reported improvements in insomina and depression.

YOU GIVE ME FEVER

Thanks to climate change, dengue fever is on the increase worldwide – which is not good news. But it has taught us something brilliant: transmitted by female mosquitoes, what the virus does is change shape when it enters our bloodstream, thereby sneaking past our immune system attack dogs.

A team at Sheffield University has now copied the technique and successfully used it to attack the defence system of triple-negative breast cancer, the most aggressive and difficult form to treat.

‘Our in vitro experiments suggest anti-cancer drugs can be delivered into hard-to-treat cancer cells more selectively, with fewer side effects for neighbouring healthy cells… by tricking the cancer cells into thinking that our new nanoparticles are food,’ said Professor Steve Armes, who headed up the study.

PHRASE OF THE MONTH

The NOCEBO effect: if you expect to feel negative effects, you will feel worse than if you didn’t. ✤