The McMigraine meal hack: Does it actually work?
Epidemiologist Dr Fiona Imlach has lived with migraines for many years.
Now, as co-founder of Migraine Foundation Aotearoa New Zealand, she has also spent many years researching them.
Imlach told RNZ's Jim Mora that a TikTok video suggesting a 'McMigraine Meal' (a bottle of
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RNZ News
4 hours ago
- RNZ News
Feature interview: Why is Gen Z having less sex?
health life and society 3:10 pm today While that might not sound bad, the reason why and the fallout can be. One in four adult Gen Zers hasn't had sex, and Carter Sherman says the loss of intimacy is fueling loneliness, anxiety, and porn addiction. She's a reproductive health and justice reporter at The Guardian. Gen Z experiences intimacy mostly online, through platforms like TikTok and dating apps. Sherman has spent the past several years talking to hundreds of teens and young adults. She says porn, online isolation and political pressure have come together to change the way young people experience sex and intimacy. Her book is called The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over its Future. She spoke to Jesse.
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
Wellington Hospital birthing suite short-staffed 70% of time
Staffing for 69 percent of shifts in Wellington Hospital's birthing suite "below target" between January and June. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER Nearly 70 percent of shifts in Wellington Hospital's birthing suite were understaffed in the first half of the year, which midwives say is putting pressure on services, and making it a constant juggle to provide safe care to women and babies . Information obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act, shows 69 percent of shifts in the birthing suite were "below target" between January and June. Ward 4 North Maternity (which includes antenatal and postnatal beds) was under-staffed 40 percent of the time, while other maternity services, including the community team, were down for 20 percent of shifts. A Wellington midwife, whom RNZ has agreed not to name, said it was "scary" having gaps in the birthing suite rosters for most shifts. "Lead maternity carer midwives are most days contacted via a group text to come in to work in the birthing suite, mostly with community midwifery team labour and births, sometimes to work on the floor as part of the team on shift." The birthing suite - which has space for 12 women - was often in Code Red due to lack of staff, which meant clients booked for inductions (usually because of some risk to them or their babies) were frequently bumped for emergencies coming in, she said. "I get the acuity issue in a very dynamic environment, but if there was more capacity/meat in the system, then postponement/rescheduling would be a rarity, not the norm that it is now." As of earlier this month, Wellington's maternity service had 43 vacancies for midwives. Co-leader of the midwives union, MERAS, Caroline Conroy, said between 30-40 percent of positions were vacant. "So you're not going to run a 'business as usual' service when you've got that level of vacancy. It's going to impact somewhere." In a written response to RNZ, Health NZ said "understaffing relates directly to recruitment challenges, which is an international phenomenon". "While staffing in some units isn't as high as we'd like, it is important to note that there are mitigations in place to ensure high quality clinical care for all patients." That included pulling in casual midwives, senior midwives and non-frontline staff like midwifery educators and clinical coaches to "backfill shifts". Night shifts were more challenging because those senior staff were not available to fill in, Conroy said. "So they do try and make sure the night shifts are staffed better, which often leaves the the day shifts 'light'." When those shifts got too busy, management must utilise what Health NZ referred to as "the variance response management tool and escalation standard operating procedures". Conroy said that sometimes meant postponing inductions and non-emergency caesareans, or discharging mothers and babies early. "Often the number of staff they have on the shift is not sufficient for the workload, which then pushes them into Code Red, which means workload exceeds appropriate staffing." That could happen even when a shift was fully staffed because demand could be "unpredictable". But it was less likely to happen when services were properly staffed, she said. Last month, hospital managers were forced to back down on a plan to "reallocate" maternity and gynaecology beds to make room for medical patients coming from the emergency department. Midwives and obstetricians said the maternity service was often at more than 100 percent capacity. However, in a written response to RNZ, Health NZ deputy chief executive Robyn Shearer, who heads the central region, said those particular maternity beds were still "routinely unoccupied". "As we have enough resourced maternity beds to meet demand, there are no current plans to recruit additional staff to resource these unused beds." Health NZ deputy chief executive Robyn Shearer. Photo: RNZ Insight/Karen Brown Health NZ continued to "actively recruit" to vacant midwifery roles and a small number of specialists (3.7 full-time positions) in women's health services, she said. "Rostering is dynamic and continuously adjusted to meet the demands of patient care. "While schedules may evolve in the lead-up to a shift due to staff illness or changes in circumstances, patient safety is always our highest priority, and we have effective measures in place to ensure patient safety is always maintained." Health NZ confirmed six new recruits were set to join the Wellington service by the end of the year, and it was also hoping to recruit some of the first tranche of 22 graduates from Victoria University's midwifery programme. Conroy said that promised to relieve pressure on the existing team. "As long as they can get to the end of this year, next year should be quite different for them. There's definitely light at the end of the tunnel." Conroy said one immediate way to relieve pressure on the birthing suite would be to turn those "unoccupied" beds in Ward 4 into an observation facility for pregnant women who come in with bleeding or reduced foetal movements and need to be under constant watch. Currently, they end up taking up rooms in the birthing suite, but if Wellington had an observation ward (like other tertiary hospitals), one midwife could easily manage three or four women, Conroy said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
17 hours ago
- RNZ News
Our Changing World: New Zealand's youth vaping rates
Dr Lucy Hardie is concerned that New Zealand has the wrong approach to regulation of vaping products. Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ When Dr Lucy Hardie opens a brown cardboard box, the smell that wafts out is reminiscent of bubblegum and cola lollies. The brightly coloured vapes inside look like kids' toys. These vapes are disposable, now banned, and many of the flavours are now off the shelves too. But this collection tells the story of how New Zealand got to where we are now - with youth vaping rates among the highest in the world. Follow Our Changing World on Apple , Spotify , iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts When vaping products first showed up in New Zealand, regulators assumed they were covered by existing legislation - a section of the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act 2003. But in March 2018, the Ministry of Health took a case against Philip Morris International for selling 'Heets' - a heated tobacco product - and lost. This meant that existing tobacco regulations did not cover vaping products. Photo: Richard R. Schünemann / Unsplash "We just suddenly saw a sort of instant boom in the amount of retailers," says Lucy. "Every sort of small town in New Zealand suddenly has this shiny new retail outlet. You can buy them online , you can buy them at the counter of your local convenience store right next to the lollipops on the counter. There was just nothing in place to protect people." The first attempt at legislation came in 2020, which, among other things, banned sales to minors and use indoors. But youth vaping rates continued to rise . This prompted further legislation amendments in 2021, 2023 and 2025 with new rules to try and slow the uptake by young people . These included restrictions on flavouring and flavour names, laws that meant new vape shops couldn't open next to schools and community hubs, and a ban of the use of cartoons on packaging. The most recent regulations, which came into effect in June of this year, include a ban on disposable vapes; a restriction of vaping product visibility in stores and online; a ban on promotions, discounts and giveaways; and restrictions around advertising. Sign which reads No Smoking, No Vaping. Photo: Mike Mozart / CC-BY 2.0 For Lucy, we got the approach to regulation wrong. "In New Zealand, there was so much hope that it was going to be a silver bullet for smoking that we just weren't strong enough. And when you put in something that's too weak to start with, you kind of struggle to claw anything back," she says. From what we know to date, vaping is less harmful than smoking. But with research indicating that tobacco kills two in every three smokers , the bar, Lucy says, is really low. And she's concerned about the cohort of young people that have newly taken to vaping, as supposed to swapping from smoking. "Not only is it highly addictive, which causes a range of stresses … but we also just, we don't know what the long-term damage is," she says. Dr Kelly Burrowes studies the impact of vaping on the lungs. Photo: Chris Loufte At the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, associate professor Kelly Burrowes and her team have been trying to investigate the impact of vaping on people's lungs. One of the first things they did was investigate the different chemicals found in New Zealand-made vaping liquids, and in the vape aerosols produced when they are heated. The basic liquid is made of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, into which the different flavouring compounds and nicotine are dissolved. When the researchers analysed the aerosols they found heavy metals - which can cause organ dysfunction when they accumulate in our bodies - and small amounts of other known toxins - for example, formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent. These toxins appeared in lower concentrations than they would be in cigarette smoke. But Kelly is concerned that just one chemical that damages the lungs is enough to cause disease. Device used to test how cells respond to vape exposure. Photo: Supplied This was the case with the EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury) outbreak in the US that occurred just before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe. By the end of the outbreak, there had been well over 2,000 cases and 68 deaths . The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) eventually linked it to vitamin E acetate in cannabis or THC vapes, though a fifth of the cases did involve nicotine vapes. It's now banned from vaping liquids, but the concern remains that other chemicals in the aerosols might also be damaging lung cells - just at a slower pace than what happened in the EVALI outbreak. Marzieh Aghababaie, PhD candidate at Auckland Bioengineering Institute. Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ One of the PhD candidates in Kelly's lab, Marzieh Aghababaie, has been investigating the impact of vape aerosols on lung cells in a dish. After half an hour 'vaping' in her experimental set up, the cells showed increased signs of damage, stress, and inflammation. Other researchers have similarly reported increases in inflammatory and stress markers in response to vape aerosols. The tricky part is figuring out whether this means that vaping over decades will lead to similar diseases seen in smokers. "There haven't yet been people with lung cancer or COPD or emphysema from vaping. And that's not to say that it won't happen because those sorts of diseases happen in people sort of over 50 years old … I would say there's probably no one who's vaped yet from a teenager to 50. They just haven't been around long enough. So I just don't think we can answer that," Kelly says. Her next study will aim to help address this. She's recruiting vaping participants, taking CT scans of their lungs, and using these images - along with sputum (essentially spit from the lung) - to see whether they can detect early changes like those seen in smokers who get lung diseases. But physical health problems are not the only concern when it comes to youth vaping - there's also the issue of addiction. While the prevalence of daily smoking has declined among young people over the last decade or so, the prevalence of daily vaping has increased, according to data from the Ministry of Health. Photo: Ministry of Health "For some young people, they realise that they can't stop when they want to and that then creates other feelings about shame or embarrassment," says Lani Teddy. Lani works in the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago and is part of the ASPIRE Aotearoa group which does research aimed at helping achieve a tobacco-free future. She has worked on research with a qualitative focus: talking to young people about their lived experiences of vaping, and how it has affected their lives. She's also heard from teachers and principals about the disruption students' nicotine addiction is causing in schools. In a new project, Te Hau Hou , she and her colleagues hope to hear from rangatahi Māori about their experiences, and what their thoughts are on how policy should address the issue. For Lucy, we already have a starting playbook, and we should use it. "We've done this already with tobacco in New Zealand really effectively … the argument is always that we shouldn't be unduly regulating a product which isn't as harmful as smoking. But the real question is, who is it less harmful for? And if you're not a smoker and you start vaping, then that is much more harmful than breathing air." Sign up to the Our Changing World monthly newsletter for episode backstories, science analysis and more.
