Health and Social Wellbeing Improvement

Mouth cancer awareness week begins on the 13 – 20 November. With this in mind the Public Health Agency (PHA) is urging everyone to be aware of the signs and symptoms of mouth cancer and is encouraging all smokers thinking about stopping smoking to make the decision to stop today.

In Northern Ireland 195 people were diagnosed withmouth cancer in 2009. The disease causes one death every five hours in the UK and yet it is one of the least well-known cancers.

Smoking and excess alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of developing mouth cancer, which can occur in or on any part of the mouth, tongue, lips, neck and throat. In its very early stages, mouth cancer can be easy to ignore.

Most people with mouth cancer have no early symptoms at all, but others may have:

• an ulcer in the mouth or on the lip that won’t heal;
• constant pain or soreness;
• red or white patches in the mouth;
• a lump on the lip, tongue or in the neck;
• bad breath;
• unexplained bleeding in the mouth;
• numbness in the mouth;
• loose teeth.

The logic of this approach is faultless. Small wonder it helps so many people.

Regular exercise is and essential part of any Weight Loss program. The standard advice (20 minutes a day) is misleading. To burn fat your heart rate has to be raised to a certain level and kept there for a period of time. So just walking for 20 minutes is unlikely to do the job.

It’s important to measure the calories you burn during exercise and make sure that you are doing enough exercise to actually lose weight.  A heart monitor which measures calorie burn is a real help here.  The set up instructions in the heart rate monitor will give the user heart rate level that they should be working at to improve their fitness.  Those not used to regular exercise should work towards this slowly.