Donald Trump ditched his ear bandage for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. The former president’s right ear returned to public life after being injured during the assassination attempt on the former president on July 13.
The former president’s large bandage became an impromptu fashion statement during the Republican National Convention with some attendees donning DIY wound dressings. Following the convention, Trump swapped out his bulky white gauze for a thin nude bandage.
Photos from Trump’s sit down with Netanyahu appear to show the former president’s ear intact without major scabbing or scarring. In one image, the former president points out the site of injury to the Israeli prime minister.
According to former White House physician Ronny Jackson, a bullet took the top of Trump’s ear off. On Wednesday, however, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that investigators did not know if the former president was grazed by a bullet or shrapnel during the shooting.
Jackson slammed the FBI Director in a letter posted on Truth Social in which he doubled down on his claim that Trump was struck by a bullet and said Wray was “wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
The former president’s campaign spokesperson also responded to Wray’s comments, calling his sworn testimony “conspiracy bullshit.”
Drinking alcohol isn’t good for you, but it is often a sociable activity
Violeta Stoimenova/Getty Images
Drinking even small amounts of alcohol reduces your life expectancy, rigorous studies show. Only those with serious flaws suggest that moderate drinking is beneficial. That’s the conclusion of a review of 107 studies looking at how drinking alcohol affects people’s risk of dying from any cause at a particular age.
“People need to be sceptical of the claims that the industry has fuelled over the years,” says Tim Stockwell at the University of Victoria in Canada. “They obviously have a great stake in promoting their product as something that’s going to make you live longer as opposed to one that will give you cancer.”
While the risks of moderate drinking are small, people should be told that it isn’t beneficial, says Stockwell. “It’s maybe not as risky as lots of other things you do, but it’s important that consumers are aware,” he says. “I think it’s also important that the producers are made to inform consumers of the risks through warning labels.”
The best way to assess the effects of alcohol would be to randomly assign people to drink it or not in childhood and then monitor their health and drinking over the rest of their lives. Since such studies cannot be done, researchers instead have to ask people about their drinking habits and follow them over much shorter periods of time.
By the 2000s, numerous studies of this kind had suggested that the relationship between drinking and the risk of dying at a particular age made a J-shaped curve. That is, if people drank a little then their risk of dying of any cause went down a bit compared with non-drinkers, but drinking more led to a sharp increase in the risk.
Stockwell says he was convinced the science was settled at the time. But since then, he and others have shown that there are major flaws in such studies.
The main problem is that they often don’t compare people who have never drunk alcohol with those who have. Many studies instead compare people who no longer drink with those that still do. People who give up drinking, especially later in life, often do so because they have health problems, says Stockwell, so moderate drinkers appear healthier in comparison.
Some studies claim to compare current drinkers with “never drinkers”, but their definitions of the latter group often actually include occasional drinkers, says Stockwell. For instance, one study defined people as lifetime abstainers even if they drank on up to 11 occasions every year.
“The great majority of studies do not, in our opinion, deal with this potential source of bias,” says Stockwell. “To be clear, people have attempted to deal with this. We don’t think that they’ve dealt with it appropriately.”
In fact, his team found that just six of the 107 studies they reviewed adequately dealt with these sources of bias – and none of these six found any reduction in risk with moderate drinking.
“The [high-quality] studies suggest a linear relationship,” says Stockwell. “The more you drink, the higher your risk of heart disease, which is obviously the main issue even though our studies look at all-cause mortality.”
The review shows very clearly that poorer quality studies are more likely to suggest a beneficial effect, says Duane Mellor at the British Dietetic Association.
But he points out that it doesn’t consider the social aspects of moderate drinking. “It is healthier to socialise without the need for alcohol, but the benefits of spending time with others is still likely to be greater than the risk from the consumption of one to two units of alcohol,” he says. “The challenge being perhaps limiting alcohol intake in this way.”
Billy Joel ended his historic Madison Square Garden residency on a high note.
The Piano Man entertained a sold-out crowd of fans who scored the hottest ticket in New York City on Thursday night with a 2.5-hour set featuring surprise cameos by Jimmy Fallon, Axl Rose, and his two younger daughters.
“It’s time,” Joel told a spirited crowd toward the beginning of the night. “None of us knew we were gonna be able to do this for so long. This has been the most amazing gig we’ve ever done.”
Fallon joined Joel onstage to raise a blue-and-white banner reading “Billy Joel: Most Lifetime Performances By Any Artist” into the MSG rafters.
Joel’s 8-year-old daughter, Della Rose, then sang and danced from the front of the stage for “My Life” as 6-year-old Remy Anne sat atop the piano.
Rose arrived to sing a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” with Joel before they broke into a duet of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” At the end of the night, the Guns N’ Roses frontman returned for “You May Be Right.”
Billy Joel performs Thursday during the last show of his residency at Madison Square Garden. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
The Garden floor shook as the capacity crowd danced to “Only the Good Die Young.” Fans sang in unison throughout the night, but never more than to “Piano Man,” which was Joel’s fitting final song before he returned for a nearly half-hour encore featuring five more hits.
Much of the audience never sat.
“I spent the first four, five, six songs, like, super emotional,” said Bill Klingbeil, 60, who traveled from Pittsburgh with his fiancée. “I’m trying to sing along and I’ve got tears running in my eyes.”
The emotional night arrived after a year of anticipation that began when Joel announced in June 2023 that his residency would end just over a year from then.
Tickets were in extreme demand, with the get-in prices on resale websites such as StubHub and SeatGeek exceeding $600 in the hours before Thursday’s concert.
“It wasn’t just like, ‘Let me drop in to see Billy Joel.’ You had to really want to come,” said Simmi Degnemark, 55, of Carroll Gardens. “I think it brought in real fans.
“What I really loved is the fact you could actually sing and nobody’s gonna look at you. Everybody stood up. Everybody was singing. I was singing with other people, strangers I didn’t know. We were all just singing together. It was so cool. Experience of a lifetime.”
Jessy and Lindsay Weinberg at the final concert of Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden residency. (Photo by Peter Sblendorio)
Many of the diehards in attendance were part of a regular crowd that had shuffled in for plenty of previous concerts. Jessy Weinberg, 31, of Albertson on Long Island attended her 10th Joel concert and brought with her a sign asking Joel to sing at her wedding next year.
“I love his music,” said Weinberg, who attended with her sister Lindsay, 27, and their dad. “I love him. He puts on such an amazing show. Interactive. Fun. He knows what the crowd wants.”
While Thursday marked the end of an era at the Garden, Joel is set to continue performing. His next concert is scheduled for Aug. 9 in Cardiff, Wales.
The ground cinnamon, sold as El Servidor and distributed by an Elmhurst, New York, company of the same name, joins a growing list of cinnamon products identified by the FDA to contain high levels of lead.
El Servidor Corp. ground cinnamon.FDA
Through testing, the cinnamon was found to have elevated lead levels at 20 parts per million. While the FDA does not have limits for lead levels in spices, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has a proposed international safety standard of 2.5 parts per million of lead for bark spices like cinnamon.
The FDA asked the distributor to voluntarily recall the product.
In March, the FDA warned about lead in cinnamon sold at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar and other stores. Those products had levels of lead ranging from 2.03 to 3.4 parts per million.
The cinnamon identified in the new alert was sold at a supermarket in New York City, although it’s unclear whether it was distributed more widely. The FDA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Leigh Frame, director of integrative medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, called the new recall “alarming.”
“We sort of assume things are safe until proven otherwise,” Frame said. “It’s not until people get sick do we actually have these recalls. Often it’s too late; people have already consumed the products.”
In a perfect world, she added, the FDA would be able to get ahead of recalls by testing food products for dangerous contaminants before people get exposed.
“It’s a little scary to think about all the things that potentially could be lurking in our food system because we don’t have the resources,” Frame said.
No illnesses were reported in the FDA warning. The agency advised consumers to stop using the product and throw it away.
Lead is toxic, especially for children
Elevated levels of lead can be extremely toxic to the body, particularly for young children, who are more at risk because of their smaller body size and the fact that they are still growing. High levels of lead exposure in this age group can cause long-term neurologic and developmental problems such as learning disabilities and lowered IQ.
Frame doesn’t think consumers should completely cut out cinnamon, but recommends limiting exposure, particularly for young kids.
“If you have cinnamon oatmeal every morning, maybe switch to a different variety for a while until we figure things out, just to reduce the exposure,” she said.
Gymnast Levi Jung-Ruivivar, a former U.S. national team member who now represents the Philippines, said she suffered a “severe allergic reaction” in the Olympic Village on Monday.
Jung-Ruivivar, 18, has a tree nut allergy, but said in an Instagram post that she does not believe she ingested the allergen.
“On the way to the treatment center, my allergy symptoms escalated rapidly and my breathing became significantly labored, my throat began to constrict, my chest was itching, and I had severe swelling,” she said.
She had her EpiPen with her and was self-injected as she attempted to locate the Village’s emergency medical clinic and eventually called an ambulance.
Jung-Ruivivar said that this was only her second anaphylactic reaction, but she received medical attention and has been cleared to compete in Sunday’s qualification round.
“I just want to let everyone know that I am 100% safe and healthy,” she said. “My muscles are fatigued and it definitely took a toll on my body, but I am doing everything I can to recover and perform at my best possible level.”
Jung-Ruivivar is an incoming freshman at Stanford University, where she will compete in NCAA gymnastics. After obtaining her dual citizenship via her Filipina heritage in 2022, she qualified to compete as an individual competitor for the Philippines at the Paris Olympics through the World Cup series earlier this year.
She trains at WOGA Gymnastics in Plano, Texas, alongside Hezly Rivera, who is the youngest member of the U.S. delegation.
Levi Jung-Ruivivar stands and stares ahead (Kyle Terada / USA Today Network file)
After competing in Thursday’s podium training, Jung-Ruivivar told reporters that the reaction took a toll on her body. The last time it happened, she had to take a two-week break from training.
“I’m trying to recover from it and it’s really hard because there’s not a lot I can do about it,” Jung-Ruivivar said in the mixed zone, according to gymnastics podcast “GymCastic.” “I’m just trying to push through and do as much as I can.”
Two other former U.S. national team members, Aleah Finnegan and Emma Malabuyo, will also represent the Philippines in gymnastics – a route to the Olympics that is growing increasingly common as a deep field of American gymnasts competes for just five Olympic spots.
“It was really scary because I was having a really hard time breathing,” she said in an Instagram video. “I guess you could say I had an Olympic experience like no other.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
The latest shingles vaccine may delay or possibly even prevent the onset of dementia more effectively than an older version.
Being vaccinated against shingles has been linked to dementia protection before. Now, it seems that a vaccine called Shingrix, which has been available since 2017, reduces the risk of developing the condition in the next six years by 17 per cent more than an older vaccine called Zostavax.
Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and stays in the body, becomes reactivated at a time when the immune system is weakened, such as when someone is stressed or having chemotherapy. This results in a painful rash, which can sometimes get infected or scar.
With the risk of shingles increasing with age, physicians generally recommend that older people – aged 50 in the US and 65 in the UK – receive a vaccination against the virus and a booster about six months later.
Recently, multiple countries have been phasing out Zostavax in favour of the more effective Shingrix. This is a recombinant vaccine, where a small piece of DNA is taken from the pathogen and inserted into bacterial or yeast cells, which then produce its proteins. These then trigger an immune response in the body.
Wanting to know how this vaccine might affect dementia risks, Maxime Taquet at the University of Oxford and his colleagues collected the medical records of 103,837 individuals in the US who were immunised after the launch of the recombinant vaccine in November 2017 and another 103,837 who were immunised prior to that.
They then selected 100,532 people in each group, average age 71, who received a shingles vaccine during each time period and excluded anyone who received both types.
When looking at the medical records following the first shingles vaccination, the team found that those immunised after November 2017 were 17 per cent less likely to develop dementia over the next six years than those who were vaccinated before. The reduced risk may have extended beyond the six years, but a fall in the number of participants meant the researchers didn’t study that.
Women seem to particularly benefit from the newer vaccine, despite both sexes going on to have a similar rate of shingles.
The reasons for the risk reduction are unclear, although it is possible that herpes zoster infections contribute to dementia, so the vaccine that more effectively protects against the virus also better wards off dementia, says Taquet.
The study is thorough and well carried out, even though it is based on medical records that do not provide other important information, such as people’s physical activities and diets, says Pascal Geldsetzer at Stanford University in California. People who lead healthy lifestyles, which may reduce the risk of dementia, could have also waited for the more effective vaccine to come out, he says.
But Richard Lathe at the University of Edinburgh in the UK points out that multiple kinds of vaccines are associated with reduced dementia rates. For example, the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which protects against tuberculosis and can be used to treat bladder cancer, has been linked to a 45 per cent reduced dementia risk.
The results could therefore be due to vaccines giving the body a general immune boost rather than protection from shingles specifically reducing our dementia risk, says Lathe.
The “stretch” in question has seen the Yankees go 15-25 since June 7. That’s 40 games, roughly a quarter of the season.
Only the abysmal White Sox, a 27-win team with no organizational direction, have been worse over that span.
With the Yankees playing so putridly for such a prolonged period, Boone was then asked, “At what point is it not a poor stretch?”
The follow-up resulted in a display of frustration that the Yankees’ play had yet to inspire at the postgame podium.
“I’m not defining it,” a fiery Boone shot back. “We gotta play better, OK? We have it right in front of us. We’re a really good team that has played shi–y of late. We need to be better. I’m not going to define stretch, this or that. We gotta go win. And we’re right there. We’re watching other teams struggle around us. We know we’ve got to be better. We’re pissed off in there. We’ve got a lot of pride in there. We have a lot of expectations in there.
“So stretch, slump, recent — I don’t give a s–t. It’s we’ve got to play better the rest of the way, and it’s right there. I’ve said it’s right in front of us. It is. It’s right in front of us. For as bad as it’s been, we’re also in a great position. We’ve gotta go play baseball the way we’re capable of playing, and it’s on all of us, starting with me, in that room to make sure we’re coming out with the right level of energy and getting after it.”
Boone’s common “it’s right in front of us” refrain has drawn criticism from fans over the last few weeks (and years), but his passionate response was a first for this ongoing slide.
After getting pantsed by the Mets, it felt appropriate, but also expected.
Boone was somewhat right in saying the Yankees are a good team in a good position, as they had baseball’s best record prior to June 7.
They also lead the American League’s wild card race and entered Thursday’s off day just 1.5 games back of the Orioles. Fortunately for the pinstripers, their division foe is also struggling.
“We don’t even worry about the Orioles,” Juan Soto said. “We worry about what we have in here. Yeah, it’s fine that they are right there, that they haven’t gone too far. But definitely, we worry about what we have in here. We don’t worry about them.”
The Bombers are lucky to still be in striking distance, though, as they’ve actually played sub-.500 ball since May 24. They’re 25-27 since then, matching the middling Angels.
So no, this is not just a stretch, especially when the Yankees have endured a lengthy summer swoon in each of the last three seasons.
“Our job is to flush it and not let the play of the last six weeks affect how we prepare for the next game,” Gerrit Cole said after getting bombed by the Mets for the second time in as many months. “It’s not like we’re not feeling it. At the same time, our job is to take it one game at a time.”
In the past, the Yankees have blamed injuries for their extended slumps. That was especially true last season, when the team failed to make the playoffs.
While Giancarlo Stanton is currently out — he could return to a scuffling offense soon — that’s not as valid an excuse for this year’s $300 million roster.
Asked why it’s taken the Yankees so long to snap out of it once again, Aaron Judge said “it’s tough to say.”
“It’s a variety of different things,” the captain continued. “But it honestly comes back down to that confidence level. You gotta go out there and you gotta be confident every single night and not worry about what happened the night before, what happened the series before, the outside noises going on. We got a mission. We gotta put your blinders on and go out there and play.”
Judge was then questioned about the Yankees’ confidence possibly being shaken. Once again, he said “it’s tough to say.”
“You can read body language sometimes,” he added, “and there’s some certain times where we’re hanging our head a little bit and you just need a little kick in the butt to get it going again.”
Boone said that he’s been happy with the Yankees’ energy, but perhaps his sizzling comments will provide the kick they require.
The team begins a road trip in Boston on Friday, and it will head to Philadelphia before the July 30 trade deadline. The Yankees are expected to make some upgrades, but they also have more holes than they can possibly fill in just a few days.
If they’re to make good on their goal of winning a World Series, they’ll need some incumbents to start performing better. They know this.
“Nobody has higher expectations than us in that frickin’ room,” Boone said. “And we understand that. We’re pissed off. We’ve got to play better. This has gone on long enough. It’s very frustrating to go through, but I also know we’re competing our asses off and we’ve just got to make sure we continue to walk out with the right level of edge and willingness to compete, because no one’s going to pull us out of this but us.
“Right now, we’re getting our teeth kicked in. We’ve got to change it.”
Covid rates are still rising across most of the country, fueled by the highly contagious newvariants of the virus — KP.2 and KP.3 and LB.1. As of July 18, the highest levels of Covid are in the Western states, although there are no areas of the U.S. where rates are noticeably dropping, according to CDC wastewater data.
“You have a very, very transmissible variant, probably one of the most transmissible we’ve had,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “We have a lot of population immunity, but it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of chaos.”
But people who test positive for Covid don’t need to isolate for five days, according to recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is the first major wave since the CDC updated its Covid guidance, said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who tracks illnesses on her website, Your Local Epidemiologist. She recommends isolating until an at-home Covid test turns negative, which could be anywhere from three to 15 days.
Yet, with fewer people testing for Covid, experts say it’s more important than ever to pay attention to symptoms. Since March, the CDC’s guidance has matched advice for flu and other respiratory illnesses: Stay home when you’re sick, but you can return to work or school once you’re feeling better and you’ve been without fever for 24 hours.
“The guidelines reflect a number of things, including the fact that we generally are overall shedding for less time now,” Bill Hanage, an associate director at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University, said. “And there’s more of a link between symptoms” and being contagious.
Because most Americans have already either had a version of the virus or have had several vaccines or boosters — or have had Covid and are also vaccinated — it’s hard to separate Covid symptoms from other respiratory illnesses without testing. Right now, chances are, if you have upper respiratory symptoms — sniffles or congestion — or a cough, it could be Covid.
According to the CDC, someone with Covid can go back to normal activities when symptoms have been getting better for at least 24 hours and no fever even without taking fever-reducing medication like acetaminophen or ibuprofen.
Then for the next five days, take precautions such as wearing a mask in crowded indoor situations.
The majority of viral spread happens when people are the sickest.
“As the days go on, less virus spreads,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview this year.
The CDC guidance is for the general public only, and does not include isolation guidelines in hospital settings, which is generally 10 days.
Covid symptoms
For people who have been through at least one Covid infection, or are up to date with the vaccines, symptoms often resemble a common cold or other respiratory illness.
There’s not really a major sign that indicates Covid, doctors say, so the only way to know for sure is to take a test.
When should I test for Covid? How often?
The original guidance from the CDC was to test approximately five days after exposure because it took that long before the virus became detectable in the body. Now, with high levels of prior exposure, some people could feel symptoms a day or two after exposure, not because the virus is growing more quickly but because the immune system recognizes the virus and responds symptomatically, Michael Mina, an epidemiologist and former professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said.
While many people aren’t bothering to test now — tests aren’t free anymore — Mina advises taking an at-home test on the third day after symptoms begin. If it’s negative, test again the next day.
“If I had only two tests, that’s where I’d stop testing,” Mina said. “If positive, you don’t need more tests. My best educated guess is, assume you’re infectious for five days after testing positive.”
In a prior study, Mina said that up to 50% of people were still infectious a week or eight days after symptoms begin and up to 20% were still contagious up to nine days later.
While people’s immunity is doing a better job than a year ago, Mina believes many people could still be contagious five days after symptoms begin.
The experts recognize that most people will be ready to get back to work or school quickly after they feel better. What’s most important is to be careful around people who may be immunocompromised or elderly.
“You don’t want people to be locking themselves in their bedrooms for five days,” said Hanage. That said, “there are some contexts where you really would want to be more careful, including giving it to somebody who’s vulnerable for whatever reason.”
A police officer has been filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the ground at Manchester Airport.
The uniformed male officer is seen holding a Taser over the man, who is lying face down, before striking him twice while other officers shout at onlookers to stay back in a video shared widely online.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said firearms officers had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone following a fight in the airport’s Terminal 2 on Tuesday. It said it had referred itself to the police watchdog.
Anger has grown over the video and a crowd of what appeared to be several hundred people protested outside the police station in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on Wednesday evening.
The Manchester Evening News reported that one of the protesters had told the crowd they were “no longer going to settle” for “police brutality”.
“A protest held last night outside Rochdale Police Station about our response at Manchester Airport has concluded safely, without incident,” Assistant Chief Constable Wasim Chaudhry said in a statement obtained early on Thursday by BBC News.
GMP earlier said one officer had been removed from operational duties over the events, and it had referred itself to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) over the events and one officer had been removed from operational duties.
In an earlier statement, Assistant Chief Constable Chaudhry said: “We know that a film of an incident at Manchester Airport that is circulating widely shows an event that is truly shocking, and that people are rightly extremely concerned about.
“The use of such force in an arrest is an unusual occurrence and one that we understand creates alarm.
“One male officer has been removed from operational duties and we are making a voluntary referral of our policing response to the Independent Office of Police Conduct.”
The IOPC said it would assess GMP’s referral “and decide what further action is required”.
Firearms officers had been called to the airport at about 20:25 BST on Tuesday after reports of an altercation by members of the public, a police spokesman said.
Three officers were “punched to the ground” in a “violent assault” when they attempted to arrest one of the suspects, he added.
“As the attending officers were firearms officers, there was a clear risk during this assault of their firearms being taken from them.”
Three officers were taken to hospital for treatment, with one female officer suffering a broken nose.
Two men were arrested on suspicion of assault, assault on an emergency worker, affray, and obstructing police, while two other men were also arrested on suspicion of affray and assault on an emergency worker, police confirmed.
‘Difficult to watch’
Amar Minhas from Leeds told the BBC he was coming through arrivals when he saw the scene unfold.
He said police officers had approached one of the men, in his early 20s, and told him he was a wanted man, before “they pinned him up against a wall”.
Another man then “started on the police” and a fight ensued, he said.
The man who was being pinned against the wall started “throwing punches, he was Tasered, and fell to the floor”, Mr Minhas said.
“That’s when the policeman kicked him.”
The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, described the video as “disturbing” and said he recognised “the widespread and deep concern” it had caused.
He said he had raised his concerns with GMP’s deputy chief constable.
Andy George, president of the National Black Police Association, described the video as “difficult to watch”.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he wrote: “Whilst policing is a really difficult job, we are trained to a higher standard and held to a higher standard.”
Home Office minister Dame Diana Johnson also posted on X: “I am aware of disturbing footage from an incident at Manchester Airport this afternoon and understand the public concern it has prompted.
“I have asked for a full update from Greater Manchester Police.”
Commenting on the protest in Rochdale, and noting the referral already made to the IOPC, ACC Chaudhry said: “We understand the immense feeling of concern and worry that people feel about our response and fully respect their right to demonstrate their views peacefully.”
He added: “We have spent the evening listening to community feedback and will continue to engage with communities and elected members to maintain strong partnership links and understand local views.”
As we prepare to settle down on our sofas to watch the latest generation of Olympians and Paralympians perform jaw-dropping feats of physical prowess, the irony won’t be lost on many of us – especially if we are watching with children.
In May, the World Health Organization once again made it clear that the majority of adolescents globally don’t get enough exercise, and children in England and Wales are among the most inactive in the world. As with many other issues, the finger of blame here is often pointed at screens. But the reality, as we explore in one part of our special issue on exercise, (see “How much exercise do children really need – and what type?”), is more complex.
It is true that time spent in front of TVs, iPads and other devices competes with opportunities for physical activity. We also know that there are many benefits to spending time outdoors, in nature and connecting with others that children miss out on when glued to screens. But there are lots of other reasons why children are inactive – and in many cases, these are issues that can be easily remedied.
Earlier this year, we reported that school uniforms may be contributing to the problem by being too restrictive, which could be addressed simply with a change in uniform policy. Meanwhile, the emphasis on competitive or elite sports in schools can strip the joy from physical activity, putting off many children.
This is especially true for girls, with disparities in physical activity by gender emerging at a very young age and widening dramatically when children enter senior school. The causes of this enjoyment gap include period problems and embarrassment about how they are performing in front of boys. Offering single-sex sports sessions and focusing more on activity and play, rather than competition, would go a long way to help.
So while events like the Olympics and Paralympics can be inspiring, we should shift the dialogue away from competitive sport and exercise in favour of activity, which is much easier to fit into daily life and can be fun and accessible for all.
