Stress and pregnancy, CBT for insomnia, Cluster headache, Smoking and mental health
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2014
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr Mark Porter finds out why insomnia can often go untreated by the NHS despite there being a treatment that not only works but also doesn't involve drugs. There are nearly 11 million prescriptions for sleeping tablets in the UK every year but their effect isn't long lasting and people can find it hard to come off the tablets. Cognitive behavioural therapy has consistently been shown to be very effective at improving sleep in the long term but few people have access to it. Mark is joined by Colin Espie, professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford, and by professor Kevin Morgan, director of the Clinical Sleep Research Unit at Loughborough University, to discuss why insomnia is so neglected, and to talk about the success of methods to deliver CBT online using mobile and web technology.
Also in the programme, Mark talks to Peter Goadsby, professor of neurology at King's College Hospital London, to find out what cluster headaches are, why they're so painful and why they can occur when the clocks change. He also meets Ann McNeil, professor of tobacco addiction at the Institute of Psychiatry, to bust the myth that smoking helps bust stress.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Rihalina. I'm excited. You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Dr Mark Porter and thank you for downloading this edition of Inside Health. |
| 0:37.8 | I hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:39.0 | Coming up today, alternatives to sleeping pills. |
| 0:41.9 | I'll be speaking to the sleep expert behind a new online service offering cognitive |
| 0:46.8 | behavioural therapy, CBT, to people with insomnia. |
| 0:50.8 | Tobacco and stress. |
| 0:52.5 | We explode the myth that smoking helps your nerves and unusual headaches, |
| 0:58.1 | triggered by next weekend's changing of the clocks. You may never have heard of cluster headache, |
| 1:03.2 | but if you're unlucky enough to have ever had one, it's unlikely you will have forgotten the pain. |
| 1:08.2 | I see patients again and again with cluster headache, and they will tell you they just |
| 1:11.8 | haven't had a worse experience, and I'll get them to trot out all the delivery of a child or |
| 1:17.1 | appendicitis, anything you can think of these people have had. |
| 1:22.4 | In the generality, you think they're terrible pains, so you've got to give them something |
| 1:25.5 | for the pain. |
| 1:26.5 | More on cluster headache later. |
| 1:28.7 | But first, inside health resident skeptic, Dr Margaret McCartney, has been taking a closer look at some of the health stories making the headlines. |
| 1:35.8 | What's caught your eye, Margaret? |
| 1:37.0 | Well, there's two interesting stories, one in the last couple of days, basically claiming that meditation will improve your chances of becoming pregnant. |
| 1:43.8 | And the other story I thought was of interest was that sleep is supposedly now something that doctors should be prescribing far more of. |
| 1:50.5 | Well, tell us about the stress one. |
| 1:51.9 | Yes, so this one was a study, an American study, looking at 501 couples in America who were trying to get pregnant. |
| 1:57.6 | And the headlines were very much along the lines that yoga and meditation can boost |
... |
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