Latest news with #illness
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
DEAR CAROLINE: My friend is tight with money, notoriously late, always asks for favours but never returns them, and exaggerates being ill. Should I give up on her?
Q I have always had a difficult relationship with a friend who now seems to be seriously ill. However, she has claimed to be ill before so often and I can't help feeling that this was exaggerated. On one occasion, she said she had had a serious fall and arrived at our pilates class on crutches – but when she saw someone she wanted to talk to she walked across the room without them. We became friends through our husbands more than 25 years ago. We had similar interests, got on well and took up dance and pilates together. However, after a while I noticed she was competitive. She has alienated several people through being tight with money and notoriously late. Her husband left her many years ago.
Telegraph
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Some people on benefits are faking it. There, I've said it
It is time to start saying the unsayable: a lot of people in this country are pretending to be sick in order to claim benefits. The official story is that Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of ill health. Many are indeed suffering from real ailments, of course, but few politicians or commentators dare to point to the rising evidence that a proportion may be faking it. We urgently need to confront what is driving millions to choose a life on welfare: fake compassion, the medicalisation of everyday anguish, and the state crushing incentives to work. Unless we confront this uncomfortable reality, our economy will continue to stagnate while still remaining dependent on mass migration. Despite Labour's planned welfare cuts feeling ever less credible this week following the PM's winter fuel U-turn, Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is feigning business as usual, vowing not to 'resile' from her proposed £5 billion reduction in disability benefits. Yet the party's hard Left, emboldened after winning their first concession from the PM, is organising behind the scenes to derail Kendall. They may get their way. The central problem is that Labour doesn't have the appetite to openly go to war with benefits scroungers. Even Blue Labourites on the party's Right who admit privately that there are 'bits of the system that are outright dodgy' and that the country is suffering from a kind of 'cultural lethargy' are hesitant to make their views public. Starmer allies fear that this cowardice will cost them dear. As one veteran adviser told me: 'The hardest thing in politics is when you can't explain why you're doing something. If you believe some are not deserving, you should have the courage to defend that position.' It is perplexing that our politicians are so reluctant to call out benefits cheats. There is evidence that the system is rotten. As other benefits have been tightened since 2010, disability claims have surged, exactly the same thing that followed previous reforms in the 1980s. The subjectivity of many conditions should ring alarm bells. More than half of the rise in disability claims since the pandemic is attributable to mental health. The most common physical ailments of those signing on are musculoskeletal, such as back pain. The latter is notoriously difficult for clinicians to verify. This is not to say that we are dealing with a completely pretend problem. Britain is a sickly country, a reality exacerbated by the NHS backlog. Diagnoses for mental conditions have soared in part because people have become more willing to seek help when they are struggling – a welcome breakthrough. There is something in the idea that modern mass neuroses, not least phone addiction, are chipping away at our collective mental state. Still, it is hard to believe that a quarter of Britons are disabled and that a fifth of adults are too ill to work at all. Can it really be plausible that the proportion of incapacitated citizens in a wealthy, medically advanced country like ours is averaging 10 per cent higher than in developing countries like Congo, racked by poverty and low childhood vaccination rates? We must be open to the possibility that something has gone so wrong with this country that large numbers convince themselves that they are ill – or, indeed, engage in outright deceit. The medicalisation of mundane suffering is not healthy. Some psychiatrists worry that it has become easier than ever to be diagnosed as mentally ill, as the thresholds for diagnosis have been lowered. According to Prof Frances Allen, chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University, there has been a 'progressive shift' in the fuzzy boundary between mental illness and normality, with the range of mental conditions widening to include new disorders like generalised anxiety. In the UK, a smattering of doctors have also started to speak out. Our welfare state disincentivises people to get up in the morning and go to work. Scroungers are not an anomaly, but the logical product of a warped system; those who play the bureaucracy are not deviant but rational. Everything from the shape of universal credit to the earning cut-off for free school meals nudges people to stay on benefits. High taxes are also proving destructive. I spoke to one benefits support worker who lamented the vicious cycle of people who find work and come off the dole, only to discover that the state, which once gave them free cash, is 'now taking money off them' and that they are being 'hit in the face' by HMRC. It is not enough to merely scale back the state. The entire welfare system needs to be blown up and rebuilt from scratch. Any policy that constitute a possible disincentive to work should be scrapped. This can't just be a job for the Department for Work and Pensions. Ending worklessness should be a goal of all departments. Our unwillingness to confront the benefits crisis must be tackled. The annual cost of working-age ill health is higher than the yearly NHS budget. By 2030 we will be spending as much on disability benefits each year as we do on education. Mass worklessness leaves the country reliant on mass immigration – a phenomenon that threatens a populist backlash that will make the Brexit revolt look like a tea party. Nor should we gloss over the fact that it is wicked that we are crippling millions of people with kindness and indulging their fantasies that they are incapable of making their way in the world. It is not humane to indulge other human beings in self-sabotaging fantasies about their own lack of agency. It is not compassionate for the state to write off millions of people as broken goods. And it is not moral to extract labour from poor countries on an industrial scale to fill the gaps in a wealthy Western nation, depriving them of health and care workers. It is time that we wake up: the disability benefits sham is throttling the economy – and is a moral stain on our country.
The Sun
13-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
‘I thought I was minutes away from lights out' – Rio Ferdinand breaks silence on horror bug that put him in hospital
RIO FERDINAND has opened up about the health issue that left him hospitalised last week, revealing he thought he was close to "lights out". The former Manchester United defender spent days in hospital and was forced to miss his punditry duties with TNT Sports. 2 2 Ferdinand, 46, was set to provide analysis of Arsenal 's visit to Paris Saint-Germain before acting as co-commentator as United reached the Europa League final. Instead he was forced to watch on from a hospital bed and updated fans on his condition by sharing a photo of himself with his thumbs up. That was the aftermath of a serious ordeal for the former England defender, who had been suffering from a horrific stomach bug. The "crazy" illness left Ferdinand vomiting while he also experienced migraines and vertigo, making him feel like the "lights were out". He said on his show, Rio Ferdinand Presents: "I had a mad virus. I thought lights were out at some point, I thought it was gonna happen. I thought I was minutes away from lights out, seriously. "I was in my house, I was in my bed like this [pained expression] and I couldn't even open my eyes. "Then, the headache I had… I don't get migraines or nothing else so I don't know what they're like. I thought my head was in a vice and my eyes were going to pop out. "Then, I was being sick, projectile vomiting in the toilet, I got back to bed and I was having vertigo. I was holding onto the sheets, I didn't know where I was. It was crazy." Ferdinand also revealed he went into a state of panic after doctors told him he would need a brain scan. He was even offered an ambulance, making the ex-England star even more nervous. Rio Ferdinand calls out Roy Keane and Gary Neville's takes on Man Utd vs Man City Ferdinand continued: "I had to go to hospital and the doctor even said to me, "Do you want an ambulance"? So that's when I knew. "He went, 'We're going to get your brain scanned'. I thought it was a virus or a flu or something so when he mentioned brain scan and the ambulance, the panic was nuts. "I went to hospital and I was in there for a few days. I couldn't even enjoy the hospital food. The soup and the ice cream normally does wonders."
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Why age is so important when doctors diagnose their patients
It is a commonplace that the probability of different types of illness changes over time. The childhood infections of measles and chickenpox are rarely seen in adult life when, if they do occur, they are usually unaccountably severe. The many conditions that tend to manifest in middle age – multiple sclerosis or Type 2 diabetes – are quite different again from the 'chronic degenerative' afflictions of later life: cataracts, arthritis, prostate problems and so on. This ranking of diagnostic probabilities by age is obviously useful in focussing doctors' attention on the most likely explanation for any particular symptom and arranging the necessary investigations that might confirm it. The problem, as can be imagined, is when people develop an illness inappropriate for their age group. This is a particular hazard for those in their 30s and 40s with some serious condition, heart disease or cancer, that more typically occurs in later life. Their chest pains are misinterpreted as being a result of heartburn or indigestion until suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, they have a heart attack at which point their true significance becomes clear. Similarly a recent change in bowel habit, whether constipation or diarrhoea, of two or three weeks duration which in the older person is readily recognisable as a potentially sinister indicator of a bowel tumour may seem less alarming in the (relatively) young. But it should be for, as recently reported in this paper, the prevalence of early onset colorectal cancer (EORC), as it is known, has risen dramatically – particularly those in their 20s – over the past three decades. The reason for this disturbing trend remains unclear but indicates the need for prompt and thorough investigation of bowel symptoms at any age. By contrast, the reverse of the situation may occur in the older age group where the attribution of symptoms to a 'chronic degenerative' disease is mistaken for one that is eminently treatable. Thus while breathlessness, wheezing and coughing in someone in their 60s or beyond is most likely caused by the damaged lungs of emphysema, it may in fact may be because of late onset asthma. The distinction is readily made by prescribing steroids at high dosage that not only markedly improves the breathlessness but also renders the airways more sensitive to bronchodilator drugs such as salbutamol that facilitate the passage of air in and out of the lungs. Or again, those afflicted by pain and stiffness of the hips or knees may reasonably attribute this to 'wear and tear' arthritis of the joints only modestly alleviated by painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs. They may however have the rheumatological condition elderly onset rheumatoid arthritis (EORA) that responds well to the potent drug methotrexate. While, as a general rule, the probability of diverse illnesses are indeed age determined, it is necessary to be aware that, as with all rules, this is not absolute. The causes of fainting People faint for many reasons. In quick succession the diameter of the major arteries dilates in size critically reducing the pressure pumping blood up to the brain – resulting in dizziness, sweating and 'blacking out'. Besides ensuring the victim is lying comfortably on the ground, the standard first aid procedure, as all know, is to elevate the legs countering the fall in pressure by increasing the volume of blood returning to the heart and thus available to be pumped up to the brain. Italian physician Dr Bruno Simini suggests the same principle can be deployed as a preventive measure. Anyone feeling they are about to faint, should, he advises, raise their hands above their head. This will cause the blood in the arms to drain back to the heart in the same manner as elevating the legs and with the same beneficial effect. He claims this to be 'a simple manoeuvre, hitherto not reported' though a fellow physician recalls being taught it back in the 60s. Either way, certainly useful to know.
