Viewing all items in Resource Category: Looking at You

This month thousands of young people will be preparing themselves for the exciting prospect of going off to what they all call ‘Uni’ in the autumn. Parents, grandparents and godparents will enjoy a mixture of pride and apprehension. This is a major step in life: leaving home, making new friends, study without compulsion and the...

Lend your key to a neighbour and spend half an hour explaining the knack of locking the front door which entails pulling, turning, and pushing at the same time. Worry about your hanging baskets and runner beans. Worry about your cat. Spend an hour looking for window lock keys which you have not seen since...

A handful of walnuts may help reduce your feelings of hunger. Walnuts are unique among nuts in that they are mainly comprised of polyunsaturated fats, which help decrease ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger.  They also seem to increase peptide YY (PYY), a hormone that increases fullness or satiety. As appetite hormones play an important...

Adults sleep better together than they do alone. Of course, that may be hard to believe if your partner snores, sleepwalks or likes a different level of darkness and coolness in the bedroom. But a recent study at the University of Arizona has found that working-age adults who sleep with a partner fall asleep faster...

When the sun is sizzling overhead, many of us fling wide our windows and even doors, in an effort to get a draught of air through our homes. But an NHS sleep consultant advises that, instead, people should keep their windows shut and their curtains drawn all day. “It’s all due to temperature differentials. As...

Margaret Thatcher famously thrived on four hours a night. These days, 40 per cent of us struggle to nod off at all, while the hoped for ‘ideal’ is eight hours a night. But how much do we really need?  Recent research at the University of Cambridge and Shanghai’s Fudan University looked in depth at sleeping...

A daily serving of wholegrains can help slow down your middle-aged spread. Recent research has found that the wholegrains found in oats, as well as brown bread and brown rice, are the key to midlife weight control and loss. Wholegrains are usually low in fat, rich in fibre and starchy carbohydrate and often have a low glycaemic...

One of the latest trends in fun home decorating is to ‘dress’ your fireplace. Known as ‘mantelscaping’, it can range from simply rearranging your favourite things among seasonal flowers, to creating a huge and dramatic floral display with the help of bunched chicken wire that waterfalls down your mantelpiece in a grand sweep to the...

Those careless words Day surgery Good grief? Watch less TV, and live longer Next time you take a selfie, don’t worry about your nose Worried more about money  ** Editor:  David Pickup, a solicitor, considers dangerous things to say. Those careless words With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we...

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. …My brothers and sisters, this should not be. (James 3:9-10) Wise words from St James. He knew that it is easy to say the wrong thing and do a lot of damage....

Wearing my own dressing gown over the hospital regulation smock and with my belongings in a bag by my side, I was waiting my turn for a four-hour operation, to be preceded by a general anaesthetic. If all went well, I would be discharged and allowed home that day. Time went by. Gazing round the anteroom I...

We are never fully prepared for the death of someone really close to us. Even if they have been thoughtful enough to leave a Will and instructions for their funeral, and although we may have anticipated the outcome of a long period of terminal illness, death itself is raw and affects us in unexpected ways. It takes...