New Development: Get your rhythm back!

The Beacon Hospital has launched a ground-breaking procedure to treat Ireland’s most common cardiac rhythm disorder, atrial fibrillation. This is a serious cardiac condition that affects 3% of Irish adults by the time they are 60, increasing to over 10% at the age of 75.

With atrial fibrillation, the filling and contracting mechanism of the heart is affected so that patients may develop heart failure, with symptoms including shortness of breath, palpitation, dizziness, chest pain and tiredness.

In some cases, a clot may develop inside the heart chambers, usually in the left atrial appendage, that may dislodge to cause serious complications, most notably stroke.

Patients with this condition may be prescribed medications to help with the heart rate and rhythm, while blood thinners may be administered to reduce the risk of stroke. In some cases, a specialist cardiologist called an electrophysiologist may perform a procedure through the groin referred to as an ablation. This aims to eliminate the abnormal electrical activity inside the heart that causes atrial fibrillation, with a success rate of 60% in challenging cases.

Beacon Hospital’s Heart Rhythm Centre has become the first in Ireland to exclusively offer a hybrid staged procedure involving both an electrophysiologist and a thoracic surgeon, they say.

“We are delighted to be able to provide this pioneering convergent procedure at the Beacon Hospital,” Professor Karen Redmond states.

“This involves an ablation through a small skin incision treating the back wall of the heart. A clip is also applied to occlude the left atrial appendage at the same time, so that a blood clot cannot form. This helps reduce the need for blood thinners or anticoagulants that can be harmful in the long term due to bleeding episodes.”

Minding your wellbeing: adjusting to COVID-19

Want to learn more about key elements of mental well-being, such as mindfulness, gratitude, self-care and resilience?

If so, you’ll be glad to hear that the HSE Health & Wellbeing division and the Department of Health has now launched a new free online mental health and wellbeing programme at www.yourmentalhealth.ie to help us do just that.

This is part of the new national Keep Well resilience campaign launched earlier this month.

Minding Your Well-being is an evidenced-based programme for the public focusing on the promotion of mental well-being. It has been adapted from a face-to-face programme into a series of free-to-view online videos to make it more accessible to the public at this time.

You can check out the five video sessions available via yourmentalhealth.ie where the content focuses on:

1 Practising self-care: Invites participants to develop and think about their own “self-care toolkit”, which includes all the healthy habits we can adopt for our mental health and wellbeing.

2 Understanding our thoughts: Invites participants to reflect on their own thinking and how thinking patterns can affect wellbeing

3 Exploring emotions: Invites participants to notice their emotions and increase their positive emotions to improve their wellbeing.

4 Building positive relationships: Invites participants to nurture, value and foster positive relationships, which are so important for mental wellbeing.

5 Improving our resilience: Invites participants to build their resilience, learn about the building blocks of resilience including the importance of focusing on strengths.

Cigarettes and e-cig liquid not dear enough

The Irish Heart Foundation welcomed the 50c budget increase in the price of a packet of cigarettes from, on average, €13.70 to €14.20, but warned more must be done to put tobacco and e-cigarettes out of the purchasing reach of young people.

The charity had called for the phased introduction of a €20 charge for a packet of cigarettes by 2025 and a new excise tax of 6c/ml of e-cigarette liquid to prevent youngsters becoming addicted to nicotine.

“We are disappointed that there is no taxation on e-cigarette liquid,” said Irish Heart Foundation head of advocacy, Chris Macey.

“Tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in Ireland, with almost 6,000 smokers dying each year from tobacco-related diseases. A healthier future is contingent on discouraging smoking and taking bold action.

“The Health Research Board found a three- to five-fold increased likelihood between e-cigarette use and initiating smoking cigarettes in adolescents. The smoking rate among 15-16-year-olds has been cut from 41% to 12% over a 20-year period. We cannot give up these hard-won health gains by allowing a new generation of children to become addicted to nicotine through an e-cigarette industry that is largely controlled by big tobacco”.

Special socks this Christmas

Thomas Barry is giving it socks for mental health awareness

A very special entrepreneur is giving it socks for mental health awareness. Thomas Barry, owner of Thomas’s Trendy Socks, now has his own sock business supported by his dad Finbar, his nephew Shane and his family from Tallaght. Thomas, who has Down’s syndrome as well as a host of serious illnesses including a heart murmur and under-active thyroid, has also had a hip replacement operation at the age of 28.

Thomas has now launched “It’s Okay Not To Be Okay” socks and for every pair sold, he is donating €2 to Pieta House to directly support the battle against mental health issues.

“I looked at options over the years to provide some way for Thomas to feel like he can have a job just like everybody else (bearing in mind his disabilities) and the answer was staring me in the face,” said Finbar.

“Thomas never played much with toys in his early childhood but would go nowhere without his socks, so we launched Thomas’s Trendy Socks for selling socks – the things he loves most.”

See www.thomp2.com

Self-harm- 50% don’t seek help

Around half of people who self-harm do not seek any form of help, according to a survey from Samaritans Ireland. More needs to be done to improve services to better support people who self-harm, they say.

24-hour helpline – Ring 116 123 and 24-hour email helpline – jo@samaritans.org

Free pneumococcal vaccine for Over 65s

Approximately 60,003 people turn 65 in Ireland in 2020 and will be eligible to get the pneumococcal vaccine for free as part of the national immunisation programme to protect them from pneumococcal disease. As part of the National Immunisation Programme, the poneumococcal vaccine is recommended to those over the age of 65 and those at increased risk due to existing conditions such as diabetes, asthma, chronic heart disease, a weakened immune system and patients receiving chemotherapy. See www.pneumo.ie or follow #KnowPneumo online.

New product: Mariko tea

Ready to drink sparkling teas are now being marketed by a company in Co Mayo.

Ready-to-drink sparkling teas are being marketed by a company in Mayo. Christine McAndrew came up with the business idea following a trip to the US where she noticed the increasing popularity of iced teas.

Mariko Sparkling Green Tea is brewed in the west of Ireland from Japanese Sencha green tea leaves. It is lightly carbonated.“With no sugars, no sweeteners and no calories, Mariko is 100% natural with the added benefits of the high level of EGCG antioxidants, which are extracted from the green tea leaves,” Christine says.

Mariko teas are available in the original brewed tea, mixed berry infusions and lemon and lime infusions.

The drinks are available in SuperValu online and in store and from the online shop www.mariko.ie

Did you know?

  • A nasal flu vaccine is available free to all children aged two to 12 years.
  • Under the Drugs Payment Scheme (DPS) an individual or family will now pay no more than €114 each month for approved prescribed drugs and medicines, rental costs for a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine or rental costs for oxygen.
  • The Med 1 form is no longer available for claiming tax relief on health expenses. Health expenses are now claimed through your tax return. You can claim relief on health expenses after the year has ended. You can only claim for expenses you have receipts for. You can claim relief on the last four year’s expenses. If you have private health insurance you can claim tax relief on the portion of those expenses not covered by your insurer. See revenue.ie
  • Only 40% of women discuss symptoms of menopause with their healthcare professional while 37% of women don’t discuss their symptoms with anyone, new research conducted by Besins Healthcare UK Ltd has found.
  • Smoking has declined from 23% in 2015 to 17% in 2019.
  • The results of the first-ever National Maternity Experience Survey show that 85% of participants had either a good or a very good experience of maternity care in Ireland.
  • Irish Hospice Foundation run a free national Bereavement Support Line 1800 80 70 77, Monday-Friday 10 am-1pm.
  • Foster parents are being sought by Tusla - the Child and Family Agency. For more information call freephone 1800 226 771 or email tusla.fostering@tusla.ie
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