Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sameer Jauhar, Clinical Associate Professor, Imperial College London

For decades, psychiatrists have treated psychosis as if it were separate conditions. People experiencing hallucinations and delusions might be diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression and related diagnoses, and receive completely different treatments based on diagnosis. But new research suggests this approach may be fundamentally flawed.

Our latest study, published in Jama Psychiatry, reveals that the brain changes driving psychotic symptoms are remarkably similar across these supposedly distinct mental health conditions. The findings could change how doctors choose treatments for the millions of people worldwide who experience psychosis.

Psychosis itself is not a disease, but rather a collection of generally deeply distressing symptoms, where people may struggle to distinguish reality from normal perception. They might hear voices that are not there, hold false beliefs with unshakeable conviction, or find their thoughts becoming jumbled and incoherent. These symptoms are new in onset, and terrifying – regardless of whether they occur alongside depression, mania, or without these mood symptoms.

We studied 38 people experiencing their first episode of psychosis with mood symptoms, comparing them with healthy volunteers. Using sophisticated brain scanning technology, we measured the synthesis of dopamine – a brain chemical tied to motivation and reward – in different regions of the brain.

We found that while most people with manic episodes showed higher dopamine synthesis in emotion-processing areas of the brain compared to those with depression, there was a common pattern across all participants: higher dopamine synthesis in thinking and planning regions were consistently linked to more severe psychosis symptoms (hallucinations and delusions), regardless of their official diagnosis.

This discovery challenges some aspects of modern psychiatric practice. Currently, treatment decisions rely heavily on diagnostic categories that may not reflect what is actually happening in people’s brains. Two people with identical symptoms might receive entirely different drugs simply because one was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and another with depression.

Our study shows dopamine dysfunction is not uniform in psychosis. Moving beyond trial-and-error prescribing requires matching treatments to underlying biology rather than diagnostic categories alone.

Towards precision psychiatry

The implications could be profound. Rather than basing treatment solely on psychiatric categories, doctors might soon use biological markers to identify which drugs will work best for individual people. This approach, known as precision psychiatry, mirrors how oncologists already tailor cancer treatments to the genetic makeup of specific tumours.

For people with psychosis, this could mean faster recovery and fewer side-effects, by switching from drugs that do not work. Finding the right treatment often involves months of trying different drugs while people continue to suffer from debilitating symptoms.

Our research suggests people whose psychosis involves strong mood symptoms might benefit from drugs that target emotion-processing brain circuits, while those without mood disorders might need drugs that work differently on thinking and planning regions. Some people might even benefit from treatments that address cognitive problems alongside hallucinations and delusions.

This does not mean psychiatric diagnoses are worthless. They remain crucial for organising healthcare services, facilitating communication between professionals, and determining access to treatment. But they may no longer be the best guide for choosing medications.

The study involved a relatively small number of people, and the findings need to be replicated in larger groups before changing clinical practice. Still, this research represents a significant step towards a more scientific, biology-based approach to treating one of psychiatry’s most challenging symptoms.

As our understanding of the brain advances, the rigid categories that have dominated psychiatry for decades are beginning to blur. If the brain (and mother nature) does not respect diagnostic boundaries, neither should our treatments.

Dr Jauhar reported personal fees from Recordati, LB Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Wellcome Trust, Lundbeck, Janssen, and Sunovion and nonfinancial support from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, British Association for Psychopharmacology, and Royal College of Psychiatrists outside the submitted work.

Robert McCutcheon receives personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Janssen, Karuna, Lundbeck, Newron, Otsuka, and Viatris outside the submitted work.

– ref. Brain chemistry reveals psychiatry’s false divisions – new study – https://theconversation.com/brain-chemistry-reveals-psychiatrys-false-divisions-new-study-263319

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aurora Moxon, Postdoctoral Fellow, University College Cork

High in the Aspromonte mountains in the toe of Italy’s boot lies the ancient Calabrian village of Bova. Over the last two millennia, a series of invaders and settlers have left their mark on the Aspromonte, including the ancient Greeks – influencing a way of life from farming to language.

Protected by the absence of roads until the mid-20th century, remnants of this Greek culture survive in Bova. The Greco-Calabro language, spoken day-to-day only by local goatherders and the elderly, includes words and phrases from ancient Greek. And for centuries, locals have created “Persephoni” – woven symbols of Persephone, the Greek goddess of spring, to celebrate the season’s arrival and invoke an abundant agricultural year.

Made from olive leaves woven onto canes and decorated with local wildflowers, fruit and goat’s cheese, these figures represent an important ritual to mountain people whose lives have depended on the land for centuries. Gradually, as Christianity was adopted by the Romans, these figures were absorbed into Catholic rituals by these local people.

From the 1990s, the Persephoni figures attracted attention as interest in the Greek cultural influences of the area grew. Then, in 2013, the local bishop refused to allow Persephoni to enter Bova’s cathedral after being informed these structures were folkloric puppets (pupazze) – a move that threatened this longstanding tradition with pre-Christian roots.

Challenging ideas of what is ‘modern’

As well as researching food, farming and ecotourism in the Aspromonte mountains, I investigate the negative effects of stereotypes of this area – and how contemporary local practices challenge ideas of what is “modern”. As part of this study, I visited Bova and spoke to villagers about their way of life.

Some told me how, in 2014, they successfully put pressure on the church to restore their cherished Persephoni tradition. They explained to the bishop the importance of the Persephoni, and the church’s blessing for this ancient tradition – which prompted him to relent and allow the figures back into Bova’s cathedral.

However, as I witnessed earlier this year, the current priest’s message reiterated the church’s distance from what it calls “folklore” – despite the thousands of visitors the Persephoni attract to Bova, a village that is losing its young people every year to other towns and cities. Journalists and anthropologists continue use the term “puppets” to describe the Persephoni, which puts emphasis on a more pagan intepretation.

In nearby Locri, archaeologists have unearthed terracotta reliefs called pinakes (depicting the goddess of spring and the agricultural seasons) at the site of a shrine to Persephone. Referred to as the “flower-faced maiden” in the Homeric Hymns – a collection of 34 Greek poems addressed to the ancient gods – it’s not hard to understand why locals believe their celebration of Persephone has Ancient Greek origins.

Carrying their Persephoni around Bova on Palm Sunday and receiving the priest’s blessing before taking them into mass is one of the most important moments of the religious year for locals here. It’s the culmination of a month of long evenings spent plaiting pairs of olive leaves from local trees and attaching them to cane skeletons. Two metres tall, the largest Persephone is carried by Bova’s mayor.

On the eve of Palm Sunday, people decorate their Persephoni with fruits and flowers picked from local hillsides, and the following morning, goat’s cheeses called musulupu are added on. Some of these cheeses take the form of men and women, others are circular with “teats”. Like Persephone, they symbolise fertility and new birth.

Every year, thousands of people visit Bova to watch the procession, after which the local people hand out chunks of musulupu and ’nguta (a biscuity cake with hard-boiled eggs baked into the mix) in the town’s main square.

Population decline, cultural loss

Like much of Italy’s south, especially its mountainous areas, Bova has long suffered the effects of emigration. Today, inhabitants are attracted to jobs and the lifestyle in towns along Calabria’s built-up coast. In the 1970s, Bova’s population numbered 1,401; today it hovers around just 400.

Young Bovese feel compelled to leave the region once they have finished school. Agropastoralism, a form of subsistence farming involving the cultivation of crops and raising livestock, does not appeal to many youngsters, and yet a number of villagers continue to work as goatherders and small-scale farmers. Once landless, they now find themselves in a position to buy up abandoned land.

Goatherders milk their capre Aspromontane, an indigenous breed of goat, to make the cheeses attached to the Persephoni, pressing them into intricately carved wooden moulds. These goatherders use words from Greco-Calabro to describe their goats: zzarì means “grey coat”, for example, and zzerògasto means “hard to milk”.

While the Greco-Calabro language is a source of pride, the historic association of this language with herders and landless peasants has contributed to its decline.

Today’s grandparents discouraged their children from speaking it, as the language had become a marker of shame and perceived backwardness. This is part of a wider problem that sees the denigration of southerners in Italy – particularly in rural areas – as backward terroni, meaning “people who are the dirt beneath our feet”.

But herders and small-scale farmers in the mountains are also often called backward by middle-class Calabrians in cities and coastal towns. The relentless association of Calabria – and the Aspromonte in particular – with organised crime exacerbates the marginalisation of this area.

Through their symbolic figures of Persephone, inhabitants of Bova assert the value of their deeply rooted rural identity and ancient agropastoral spirituality, insisting the Catholic church recognises this hybrid religious practice. The determination to preserve it speaks of resistance in the face of population decline and cultural loss.

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Aurora Moxon receives funding from the Irish Research Council. Aurora Moxon previously received funding from the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

– ref. How a church row over a pre-Christian ritual reflects an ancient Italian village’s battle for survival – https://theconversation.com/how-a-church-row-over-a-pre-christian-ritual-reflects-an-ancient-italian-villages-battle-for-survival-258852

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tony Kushner, James Parkes Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

This article contains details of antisemitism and violence that some readers may find upsetting.

It’s evening at a remote Sussex pub in 1734 and a vicious triple murder has just taken place. Jacob Harris – a Jewish pedlar, smuggler and possible highwayman – stands accused of slitting the throats of the publican, his ill wife and a female servant.

I’ve studied the case for my latest book, The Jewish Pedlar: An Untold Criminal History. The point of interest for me was not whether Harris was guilty (he probably was). Or even whether – despite the seriousness of the crime – he was a victim of English antisemitism in everything from the newspaper coverage to the way he was later remembered. I was more interested in a series of questions about Harris’s background and motivations.

Harris had many aliases including Hirshal Hirsh and James Daves, reflecting both his criminal tendencies and complex identity that was both continental Jewish and very local. How on earth did someone of German-Jewish origin manage to integrate himself into the close-knit smuggling fraternity of Sussex?

What was Harris even doing in Ditchling Common, many decades before there was anything approximating to a Jewish community in Sussex? And what motivated him to commit the murders?

Despite the potential for prejudice against Jewish people at the time, I concluded that in the criminal world, as long as someone was trusted and useful, their background did not matter. It was only when Harris fell out with a fellow smuggler leading to a fatal fight that his life fell apart. The quandary for me as a social and cultural historian was how to write anything like a biography of Harris when there are no direct quotes from him in the surviving archive.

Completing my 340-page study therefore felt like somewhat of an achievement. To do so required intricate detective work (and indeed the advice of a real retired detective) to interrogate every piece of contemporary evidence.

This included the sparse legal record of the murders, the first Sussex assizes (court) record to be kept in the National Archives at Kew; a contemporary diary from a local landholder; and copious reports in British newspapers which “borrowed” heavily from one another.

There was also a bill sent to the Treasury by the county of Sussex for the catching, imprisonment, trial, hanging and gibbeting of Harris (gibbeting involves placing a hanged body in a specially constructed iron cage at the scene of the crime). And there was a ballad which would have been written and sold at the gibbeting and has survived in various forms ever since.

Not one of these sources is straightforward, and this is also true of most of the authors and major players in contemporary responses to the murders.

The complexities of the case

Harris was not the only person in the case who had multiple names. There was also his first victim, the publican Richard Miles. His many names strongly suggest that he was on the wrong side of the law and almost certainly a fellow smuggler.

The lead justice of peace in the case, who later became an MP and major landowner, had also changed his name. As did the newspaper entrepreneur who was the only one who made explicit Harris’s Jewishness when reporting in his new title, Walker’s Weekly Post.

Even Sir Robert Eyre, the judge from London who sentenced Harris to be hanged and gibbeted, had a reputation for corruption, though I’m not saying it affected the decision in this case. I don’t doubt that Harris was guilty of the horrendous crimes he was charged with.

The gibbeted body

Having been found guilty in the county assizes at Horsham and hanged in that town, Harris’ body was then carted to the scene of the crime a good 15 miles away to be placed in the gibbet cage.

A history of a local Sussex family compiled over many generations suggests that his skull remained in the cage some decades later. The post from which the gibbet cage was hung remained in position for much longer and soon became known as “Jacob’s Post”. Despite his crimes and his Jewish origins, he became a local folk hero.

To this day there is a heritage display on Ditchling Common to mark this momentous event in the district’s history.

Later Jewish criminals who were hanged became prized for their body parts by surgeons such as William Hunter (of the Hunterian museum in London) for racialised display. I didn’t want to treat Harris as this kind of object of study, but as a human being with family and friends (and no doubt enemies).

To discover more about Harris, his occupations and identity, I covered the period up to the second world war and followed Jewish pedlars and criminals in many different places from China to South America, from Sierra Leone to the Hebrides and from South Africa to the Caribbean. I also charted how the memory of Harris altered through time, from the Victorians who saw him as racially different and “naturally” criminal, through to a growing sensitivity towards his Jewishness in a post-Holocaust world.

It might be argued that at a time of growing hostility towards those of migrant origin and increasing racism, including antisemitism, what we don’t need now is a book on a Jewish criminal. I would argue that by trying to understand the individuality of these often remarkable – if often controversial – figures, it emphasises their fundamental humanity.

We cannot – and must not – expect any group of people to be perfect. As an asylum seeker (a former professional in Yemen) in an Essex hotel which has been subject to constant demonstrations in summer 2025 told The Guardian: “Yes, there are some refugees who do not behave respectfully or who do not follow the rules of the host society.” He added that this should not mean that all are regarded as such and that “every refugee has a story, and every human deserves dignity”.

In this respect in my book I certainly do not glorify Harris or downplay his crimes. I do, however, insist that he is not demonised as a “Jew murderer” as the Victorians would have it, and that see him instead as part and parcel of 18th century English rural life – a world far more diverse than we often assume.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Tony Kushner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why I had to become a murder detective for my book about an 18th-century Jewish pedlar – https://theconversation.com/why-i-had-to-become-a-murder-detective-for-my-book-about-an-18th-century-jewish-pedlar-262671

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

The ocean is heating up – in some places, faster than scientists once thought possible. For the fish, crustaceans and plankton that underpin life in the sea, this means habitats will shift, food supplies will change, and predators may suddenly find their prey has vanished. This isn’t a simple story of loss, but of winners and losers in a lottery weighted by climate change.

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Fish are already threatened by polluted seas and overfishing by humans. Climate change adds another threat by reshaping the very waters they depend on – testing their ability to adapt.

Sevrine Sailley, a marine ecosystem modeller at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, explains:

“As the ocean heats up, fish try to stay in the conditions they’re best suited to. Some species will move, but others can’t relocate so easily – for example, if they need to live in a certain habitat at a particular life-stage, such as in kelp that offers shelter for breeding fish.”

Sailley and her colleagues used a computer programme to simulate the oceans around the UK over the rest of this century. They looked at 17 key commercial species and identified some winners and losers:

“While sardines may thrive, with a 10% boost in Atlantic abundance, our model suggests mackerel could decline by 10% in the Atlantic and 20% in the North Sea.”

Warm-water species like bluefin tuna could do well, she writes, but “bottom-dwelling species like cod and saithe (pollock) face a tougher future. These fish prefer colder, deeper waters and have fewer options to escape warming seas due to depth limitations.”

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Read more:
How climate change is making Europe’s fish move to new waters

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Sudden changes

Those fish are typically responding to what’s happening below them in the food web. And these shifts don’t just play out slowly. They can unfold dramatically during events such as marine heatwaves, when the sea itself becomes layered in ways that choke the food web.

Ocean scientist Tom Rippeth of Bangor University described this process during an “unprecedented” heatwave in the seas around the UK two years ago. That summer, the already-warm surface was heating up faster than ever.

“Those stratified seas”, Rippeth writes, “on the continental shelf around Britain and Ireland are some of the most biologically productive on the planet. They have long been an important area for fishing cod, haddock, mackerel and other species. Those fish eat smaller fish and crustaceans, which in turn feed on microscopic plants known as plankton.”

Those plankton depend on nutrients mixed up from the deep water into the surface layer. However, during the marine heatwave, Rippeth feared the high surface temperatures would mean stronger stratification, less mixing, and a diminished supply of nutrients.

Bad news for the plankton. And bad news that will ripple up the food web.

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Read more:
An ‘extreme’ heatwave has hit the seas around the UK and Ireland – here’s what’s going on

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What the jellyfish tell us

Few creatures illustrate these shifts more clearly than jellyfish. Marine conservation expert Abigail McQuatters-Gollop of the University of Plymouth says jellyfish numbers are increasing in certain regions, including the UK. For her, this is a signal of dramatic changes in the ocean food web.

Jellyfish tend to feed directly on plankton, so they’re pretty low in the food web. In fact, since they drift rather than swim, they’re technically plankton themselves. Yet they’re big enough (and scary enough, in some eyes) for humans to notice when their numbers rise, which makes them an eye-catching indicator that waters are warming.

“Warmer sea temperatures”, McQuatters-Gollop writes, “mean that jellyfish can now inhabit a wider range of habitats, with some species moving polewards into waters that were once too cold for them.”

This has changed how energy moves through the food web:

“The warmer-water zooplankton species which now dominate northern European waters are generally smaller and less nutritious than the cold-water species they have replaced.”

It also contributes to what scientists call a predator-prey mismatch.

“While the seasonal cycle of phytoplankton [tiny plants] is driven by sunlight and so hasn’t changed, the point in the year when some zooplankton species [tiny animals] are most abundant now arrives earlier, as shorter and warmer winters cause the eggs of some species to hatch sooner. This has meant a mismatch between the spring phytoplankton bloom and the annual peak abundance of the zooplankton that gorge on it.”

These shifts cascade upwards through the food web – one reason why those warm-water bluefin tuna are likely to prosper in UK waters, while cold-water cod and herring are set to struggle.

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Read more:
Jellyfish alert: increased sightings signal dramatic changes in ocean food web due to climate change

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Post-carbon

Last week, we asked if severe heatwaves have affected your holiday plans. Several readers said they had given up on summer holidays in hot countries entirely.

For instance Andrew Strong said: “We are not holidaying in Europe between June and September, not even in the UK! It’s too much.”

Next week, we’d like your thoughts on air conditioning at home. Do you have it? Do you want it? Do you see it as an unnecessary and frivolous waste of energy, or an inevitable response to increasing summer heat? (If you’re American or Australian, do you laugh at us backwards Europeans for even having this debate?).

– ref. Winners and losers in a hotter ocean – https://theconversation.com/winners-and-losers-in-a-hotter-ocean-263556

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

Cloves have long been a staple in kitchens and traditional medicine cabinets. Known for their warm, spicy flavour, they’re typically found whole or ground, and as clove oil or extract. But beyond their culinary charm, cloves are gaining scientific attention from researchers and clinicians for their potent analgesic (painkiller) properties. But could this humble spice rival ibuprofen or other commonly used painkillers?

Cloves, the aromatic flower buds of the Syzygium aromaticum tree, are native to Indonesia and widely used in global cuisines, especially in spice blends and festive dishes. Medicinally, they’re most commonly used in the form of clove oil. It contains eugenol, a compound with well-documented anaesthetic and anti-inflammatory effects.

Eugenol, the main active compound in cloves, is a naturally occurring plant chemical that works in multiple ways. It blocks certain chemicals and nerve responses that cause pain, including histamine – a chemical involved in immune responses, inflammation and allergic reactions – and noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter and hormone that can heighten pain sensitivity during stress.

Eugenol also inhibits the production of prostaglandins – substances that trigger inflammation and contribute to pain and swelling. This is the same biological pathway targeted by anti-inflammatory painkillers like ibuprofen. Because of these anti-inflammatory effects, eugenol could, in theory, be useful for conditions such as arthritis, although human evidence is limited. In an animal study, eugenol improved limb function in rats with osteoarthritis.

While research into its use for joint pain is still in early stages, most of the solid human evidence for cloves comes from dentistry.

Clove extracts are used in balms or diluted oils for muscle aches, brewed into teas for headaches, and applied as oil for toothache. Cloves have been a go-to dental remedy since at least the 13th century. Clove oil remains available in pharmacies for temporary toothache relief in adults and children over two years.

Studies suggest cloves may provide pain relief comparable to some conventional painkillers and topical anaesthetics. In dentistry, topical anaesthetics such as lidocaine or benzocaine are applied to the surface of the gums or skin to numb an area before treatment. They work by blocking pain signals from nerves near the surface – a mechanism thought to be similar to that of eugenol.

In paediatric dentistry, researchers compared clove oil, lidocaine gel and ice cones applied to injection sites in the mouth. Clove oil emerged as the most effective in reducing pain and anxiety among children, suggesting it could be a natural, cost-effective and well-accepted option to improve dental experiences. Another clinical trial in adults found clove gel to be as effective as benzocaine gel in minimising pain from dental injections, with no significant difference in pain scores.

These findings are supported by broader reviews, which show that topical clove preparations consistently outperform placebo treatments. In dental procedures, clove oil and gels not only reduce pain but also offer antiseptic and anti-inflammatory effects.

Beyond dentistry

There’s also evidence for using cloves in other types of pain relief. In one clinical trial, combining topical clove oil with lidocaine significantly reduced pain at episiotomy sites (the small surgical cuts made between the vagina and anus during childbirth to help deliver the baby) compared with lidocaine alone. These results suggest that clove oil may enhance the effectiveness of standard anaesthetics.

Cloves may also offer a range of other potential health benefits. Laboratory and animal studies indicate that eugenol and isoeugenol – a closely related plant compound with similar aroma and antimicrobial effects – have anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, inhibiting bacteria such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus.

Animal models suggest cloves may help protect the liver from damage and support its detoxification processes. Certain compounds, including nigricin (a naturally occurring clove constituent that appears to influence how cells handle sugar), have been linked to improved insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, raising the possibility of better blood sugar control.

Eugenol has also shown cytotoxic effects (meaning it can kill or damage certain cells) against specific cancer cell lines in laboratory studies. However, these are early-stage findings, and no clinical trials in humans have yet confirmed its effectiveness or safety as a cancer treatment.

Side effects

While cloves are generally safe in culinary doses, concentrated forms such as clove oil should be used with caution.

In the mouth, clove oil may cause blistering, swelling, or lip irritation, and on the skin it can trigger burning sensations or rashes. Eugenol can be toxic in high amounts, and allergic reactions, though rare, are possible. Swallowing clove oil should be avoided, though small amounts used for toothache are generally harmless. Ingesting larger amounts of clove oil or high-dose extracts can cause serious side effects such as seizures and liver damage. High doses may also interfere with blood clotting, so anyone taking anticoagulants like warfarin should exercise caution. Animal studies have shown eugenol can lower blood sugar, so people with diabetes on insulin should monitor their levels closely.

Cloves may never replace ibuprofen across the board, but their proven effectiveness for topical and dental pain, combined with a suite of other possible health benefits, makes them a compelling natural option. For now, they remain best suited as a complementary remedy – but one with a long history, promising science and a rightful place in both the spice rack and the medicine cabinet.

Dipa Kamdar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How cloves might help relieve pain and inflammation – https://theconversation.com/how-cloves-might-help-relieve-pain-and-inflammation-262767

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kirsty Vant, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London

We all know how much better we feel after a good night’s sleep. Science backs this up: high-quality sleep boosts cardiovascular health, immune function, brain health and emotional wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, many people are keen to improve their sleep – and “sleep hygiene” has become a go-to strategy.

Sleep hygiene refers to the habits and environmental factors that promote good sleep, such as keeping a regular bedtime, avoiding screens before bed, and cutting back on caffeine. These are sensible tips for healthy sleepers. But for people with insomnia, some sleep hygiene practices can backfire – reinforcing sleeplessness rather than resolving it.

As a sleep therapist, I’ve seen how good intentions can sometimes make things worse. Here are five common sleep hygiene strategies that may do more harm than good for people struggling with insomnia.

1. Spending more time in bed

When sleep isn’t coming easily, it’s tempting to go to bed earlier or lie in later, hoping to “catch up”. But this strategy often backfires. The more time you spend in bed awake, the more you weaken the mental association between bed and sleep – and strengthen the link between bed and frustration.

Instead, try restricting your time in bed. Go to bed a little later and wake up at the same time each morning. This strengthens sleep pressure – your body’s natural drive to sleep – and helps restore the bed as a cue for sleep, not wakefulness.

2. Strictly avoiding screens

We’re often told to ditch screens before bed because the blue light they emit suppresses melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep. But this advice may be overly simplistic.

In reality, people with insomnia may reach for their phones because they can’t sleep – not the other way around. Lying in the dark with nothing to occupy your mind can create the perfect storm for anxiety and overthinking, both of which fuel insomnia.

Rather than banning screens entirely, consider using them strategically. Choose calming, non-stimulating content, use night-mode settings, and avoid scrolling mindlessly. A quiet podcast or gentle documentary can be just the right distraction to help you relax.

3. Cutting out caffeine completely

Caffeine blocks adenosine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel sleepy. But not everyone processes caffeine the same way – genetics play a role in how quickly we metabolise it.

Some people may find a morning coffee helps them shake off sleep inertia (the grogginess you feel upon waking) and get active, which can support a healthy sleep-wake rhythm. If you’re sensitive to caffeine, it’s wise to avoid it later in the day – but cutting it out altogether isn’t always necessary. Understanding your individual response is key.

4. Trying too hard to ‘optimise’ sleep

The global “sleep economy” – encompassing everything from wearable trackers to specialised mattresses and “sleep-promoting” sprays – is worth over £400 billion. While many of these products may be well-meaning, they can contribute to a modern condition known as orthosomnia: anxiety driven by trying to perfect your sleep.

It’s important to remember that sleep is an autonomic function, like digestion or blood pressure. While we can influence sleep through healthy habits, we can’t force it to happen. Becoming obsessed with sleep quality can paradoxically make it worse. Sometimes, the best approach is to care less about sleep – and let your body do what it’s designed to do.

5. Expecting the same amount of sleep each night

Healthy sleep isn’t a fixed number of hours – it’s dynamic and responsive to our lives. Factors like stress, physical health, age, environment, and even parenting responsibilities all affect sleep. For example, human infants need to feed every few hours, and adult sleep patterns adapt to meet that need. Flexibility in our sleep has always been a survival trait.

Expecting rigid consistency from your sleep sets up unrealistic expectations. Some nights will be better than others – and that’s normal.

In my years as a sleep therapist, I’ve noticed how sleep privilege – the ability and opportunity to sleep well – can distort conversations around sleep. Telling someone with insomnia to “just switch off” is like telling someone with an eating disorder to “just eat healthy”. It oversimplifies a complex issue.

Perhaps the most damaging belief baked into sleep hygiene culture is the idea that sleep is entirely within our control – and that poor sleepers must be doing something wrong.

If you’re struggling with sleep, there are evidence-based treatments beyond sleep hygiene. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is the gold standard psychological intervention. New medications are also available, such as orexin receptor antagonists (suvorexant, lemborexant and daridorexant, for example) – drugs that block the brain’s wake-promoting orexin system to help you fall and stay asleep .

Insomnia is common and treatable – and no, it’s not your fault.

Kirsty Vant undertook consultancy work in 2024 from AGB Pharma who manufacture melatonin for use in children with ADHD.

– ref. Five pieces of sleep advice that could be making your insomnia worse – a sleep therapist explains – https://theconversation.com/five-pieces-of-sleep-advice-that-could-be-making-your-insomnia-worse-a-sleep-therapist-explains-261682

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation

It’s been almost a decade since the #MeToo movement promised to bring abusers in Hollywood to account. I’ve watched with interest as films have interrogated the moment in the years since. In 2020, there was Promising Young Woman, in which Carey Mulligan played a woman hellbent on punishing those who get away with abuse. And in 2023, Women Talking focused on a group of American Mennonite women who meet to discuss their future after discovering a history of rape in the colony.

Sorry Baby, which won awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, joins this decade of conversation. The film follows Agnes (played by the film’s writer-director Eva Victor), an English professor at a small American college, in the aftermath of a sexual assault.

The story, based on Victor’s own experiences, is structured in non-linear chapters that encompass the time after, before and during the abuse. This makes for an unflinching yet nuanced depiction of trauma’s aftermath. As our reviewer argues: “Victor portrays her female characters in a broad light, not allowing them to be solely defined by trauma, and in doing so allows something truly authentic to emerge.”

Sorry Baby is in select cinemas now

Another film experimenting with non-linear storytelling this week is The Life of Chuck. It’s an adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. When I told our resident King expert, international affairs editor Jonathan Este, about the film, he was puzzled – surely, he asked, the structure of that story is unfilmable? But somehow, director Mike Flanagan makes it work.

Starring Tom Hiddleston, The Life of Chuck explores the formative moments of Charles “Chuck” Krantz, chronicled in reverse chronological order. But this is no Benjamin Button story. It’s a joyful adaptation that honours the King novella while bringing in nice touches of its own.

As Hiddleston – who gets to show off his dancing skills in the film – told the audience at a recent screening: “I think the most important word in the title of the film is the word ‘life’. This is a film about life.”

The Life of Chuck is in cinemas now

Now open at the Bowhouse in Fife, Making Waves; Breaking Ground brings together the work of 11 artists to explore the natural environments of our modern world. Spanning painting, photography and film, these artists share a commitment to pursuing a more compassionate way of looking and being in a place.

And the works are stunning. Photographs of flowers frozen in time in extreme close-up by Kathrin Linkersdorff. A painting by Susan Derges that at first appears to be the Moon surrounded by clouds, but soon morphs before your eyes to be its shimmering reflection in a scummy river, and then something stranger – the perspective of a creature below the surface. A trout’s-eye view of the night sky.

As our reviewer, art historian Alistair Rider explains, these artists “don’t see themselves as separate from the worlds they depict. Our seeing eyes, they suggest, are made of the same physical substances as the things they see.”

Making Waves; Breaking Ground is a free exhibition running until August 31 at the Bowhouse, St Monans, Fife

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that every arts and culture editor has a secret taste for terrible TV. Mine? Love is Blind. I’ve binged the American show – all eight seasons of it – but my real soft spot is for Love is Blind UK. The couples are a little older, a little less media-savvy and all the more entertaining for it.

What I love about this show is the central premise – testing the idea that two people can fall in love without seeing each other in the flesh. Or, as the show cloyingly puts it, fall in love “sight unseen”. With the second season streaming now, we asked a psychologist to tell us what the research says – is love truly blind?

Love is Blind UK is streaming on Netflix now

While I’m in a confessional mood, here’s another guilty pleasure of mine. In moments of overwhelm, I have been known to turn off my phone, curl up under a blanket and fire up my laptop for a marathon game of The Sims. In that life simulation game, I create mini avatars who decorate their houses, fall in love, make friends and steadily work their way up the career ladder.

Turns out I’m not alone. More and more gamers are spending their time playing virtual jobs over fantasy adventures. The latest offering is Tiny Bookshop, where players spend hours organising shelves, recommending novels and chatting with customers.

Is it a little dystopian to finish work and log straight in for a virtual shift in your favourite video game? Perhaps. But as creative industries expert Owen Brierley argues: “The next time someone questions why you’re wasting time managing a virtual bookshop, remind them you’re not escaping work. You’re experiencing what work could be. Voluntary. Meaningful. Genuinely productive.”

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– ref. #MeToo in the movies – what to watch, see and play this week – https://theconversation.com/metoo-in-the-movies-what-to-watch-see-and-play-this-week-263659

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel Kashi, Post-Doctoral Research Officer, Liverpool John Moores University

Most people know they should drink more water, but our new research reveals an unexpected consequence of falling short: it could be making everyday stress significantly harder to handle.

Our study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, found that people who drank less than 1.5 litres daily showed dramatically higher levels of cortisol – the body’s primary stress hormone – when faced with stressful situations. The finding suggests that chronic mild dehydration may amplify stress responses in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

We tested healthy young adults by dividing them into two groups based on their usual fluid intake. One group drank less than 1.5 litres daily, while the other exceeded standard recommendations of roughly two litres for women and 2.5 litres for men. After maintaining these patterns for a week, participants faced a laboratory stress test involving public speaking and mental arithmetic.

Both groups felt equally nervous and showed similar heart rate increases. But the low-fluid group experienced a much more pronounced cortisol surge – a response that could prove problematic if repeated daily over months or years. Chronic elevation of cortisol has been linked to increased risks of heart disease, kidney problems and diabetes.

Surprisingly, the under-hydrated participants didn’t report feeling thirstier than their well-hydrated counterparts. Their bodies, however, told a different story. Darker, more concentrated urine revealed their dehydration, demonstrating that thirst isn’t always a reliable indicator of fluid needs.

The mechanism behind this stress amplification involves the body’s sophisticated water management system. When dehydration is detected, the brain releases vasopressin, a hormone that instructs the kidneys to conserve water and maintain blood volume. But vasopressin doesn’t work in isolation, it also influences the brain’s stress-response system, potentially heightening cortisol release during difficult moments.

Double burden

This creates a physiological double burden. Although vasopressin helps preserve precious water, it simultaneously makes the body more reactive to stress. For someone navigating daily pressures – work deadlines, family responsibilities, financial concerns – this heightened reactivity could accumulate into significant health harms over time.

Our findings add hydration to the growing list of lifestyle factors that influence stress resilience. Sleep, exercise, nutrition and social connections all play roles in how we handle life’s challenges. Water now emerges as a potentially underappreciated ally in stress management.

The implications extend beyond individual physiology. In societies where chronic stress is increasingly recognised as a public health crisis, hydration emerges as a surprisingly accessible intervention. Unlike many stress-management strategies that require significant time or resources, drinking adequate water is straightforward and universally available.

However, our research doesn’t suggest that water is a cure-all for stress. The study involved healthy young adults in controlled laboratory conditions, which cannot fully replicate the complex psychological and social stressors people face in everyday life. Hydration alone cannot address all aspects of real-world stress. We need long-term studies to confirm whether maintaining optimal hydration genuinely reduces stress-related health problems over years or decades.

Individual water needs vary considerably based on age, body size, activity levels and climate. Guidelines provide useful targets, but tea, coffee, milk and water-rich foods also contribute to daily fluid intake. The key is consistency rather than perfection.

A simple check involves monitoring urine colour: pale yellow typically indicates adequate hydration, while darker shades suggest increased fluid needs. This practical approach removes guesswork from an essential daily habit.

Good health stems from accumulated daily choices rather than dramatic interventions. Although proper hydration won’t eliminate life’s pressures, it might help ensure your body is better equipped to handle them. In a world where stress feels inevitable, that physiological advantage could prove more valuable than we’ve previously recognised.

Water remains essential for life in ways that extend far beyond basic survival. Our research suggests it may also be essential for managing the psychological demands of modern life, offering a simple but powerful tool for supporting both physical and mental resilience.

Dr Daniel Kashi’s Post-Doctoral salary was paid by Danone Research & Innovation

Prof Neil Walsh received no honoraria for the completion of this work. Liverpool John Moores University received funding for this work from Danone Research & Innovation specifically to cover research staff salaries and costs associated with data collection.

– ref. Hydration may be your best defence against stress, new study shows – https://theconversation.com/hydration-may-be-your-best-defence-against-stress-new-study-shows-263361

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Karen Lander, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, University of Manchester

The way someone walks, talks, smiles, or gestures gives a clue to who they are. Whether through the flick of an eyebrow, the rhythm of our walk, or the tilt of a head, movement speaks volumes.

And my recent paper shows that people may have their own movement fingerprint. This is a style of movement that is characteristic of a person’s identity. So, someone who uses expressive facial gestures might also speak with animated hand movements or walk with a lively gait. These consistencies could form a motion fingerprint that is unique to the individual.

First, let’s explore how faces move and why this matters.

Everyone has their own style of moving their face, for example, how they raise an eyebrow, purse their lips, or squint when laughing. These patterns of movement help us recognise familiar people even when visual quality is poor – such as in low lighting or from a distance. And as a person becomes more familiar to us, we become tuned to the way they move, learning their unique patterns of motion, just like we remember their face or voice.

Human faces are constantly in motion; they blink, smile, grimace and talk, to name a few movements. Researchers categorise facial motion into rigid movements (such as turning or nodding the head) and non-rigid movements (like expressing emotion or speaking). It’s the non-rigid movements that tend to be most personally distinctive.

The way we gesture with our hands, shift our posture and tilt our heads all carry identity information. Gestures are often shaped by personal habits or cultural norms, for example, someone might habitually nod three times when agreeing, or use a distinctive hand wave common in their home country.

Facial movements are synchronised with the way we sound. When we talk our face plays a role in shaping the sound of our voice. For example, if you talk with a wide open mouth, your speech sounds deeper and richer. Studies show that people can match other people’s voices to moving faces more accurately than to static ones. This suggests that dynamic cues to identity are present in the movement of the face and the sound of the voice.

People with face recognition difficulties (those who are “face blind” or prosopagnosic) may be better at recognising moving faces than still ones. Typically, people who are face blind can see faces and the differences between them, but struggle to link the face to a specific person. Here, idiosyncratic information from movement can provide an additional clue to identity.

Gait, a person’s walking style, is one of the most studied body movements. Early research, such as a 2005 study, investigated participants’ recognition of identity from gait using point-light displays. In this case, bright spots (lights) were placed on key areas of a person’s body. All other visual cues were removed. Participants could only see bright spots against a dark background. The study found participants could tell fairly well who someone was from the way the spots moved.

Characteristics such as stride length, limb movement, posture and pace form a consistent motion pattern that is unique and surprisingly difficult to fake, making gait analysis a reliable clue for identifying people.

Movement fingerprints

My review brought together evidence from behavioural and brain imaging studies to consider if such consistencies between different types of motion exist and how we might explore this phenomenon further. The paper proposes that people have an overall style of movement.

More work needs to be done to find direct evidence of movement fingerprints. For example, we still aren’t sure what part of the brain processes these movement-based identity cues.

So far, research shows that the posterior temporal sulcus – an area of the brain located roughly above your ear on each side – responds not just to faces and bodies, but to how someone moves more generally. This area is active when we hear voices or see people speak, suggesting it may help link motion and sound. Also, this region plays a key role in allowing us to understand our social world, interpreting other people’s actions, determining where they are looking, and picking up on social cues such as gestures, facial expressions and changes in gaze direction.

However, it’s probably just one part of a larger brain network involved in recognising others through motion.

Real-world applications

Motion-based identity traits aren’t as stable or specific as fingerprints or DNA. They’re what researchers call soft biometrics: useful but not always accurate.

But as we better understand the link between motion and identity, exciting real-world applications are emerging.

Motion analysis could support contactless identity verification from gait-based authentication at airports to gesture-based identification in smart environments, such as homes that respond to a user’s unique movement patterns. In clinical settings, movement analysis might help support people with social cognition impairments, face recognition or movement issues. For example, helping a doctor identify changes in the way a patient produces non-verbal cues.

But many questions remain. We still aren’t sure how consistent motion fingerprints are as someone gets older and in different contexts. Individual differences in people and environmental factors like lighting, clothing or stress could affect them.

Researchers also aren’t sure how exactly we manage to understand all this movement in everyday life without even thinking about it.

Figuring this out could not only help improve technologies like social robots and develop tools for people with recognition and communication difficulties, but also tell us more about how we process and react to other people.

Karen Lander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Movement signatures: how we move, gesture and use facial expressions could be as unique as a fingerprint – https://theconversation.com/movement-signatures-how-we-move-gesture-and-use-facial-expressions-could-be-as-unique-as-a-fingerprint-262893

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Filmer, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, Aberystwyth University

The relaunching of Glasgow’s famous Citizens Theatre – known locally as the “Citz” – marks the end of a significant seven-year redevelopment project that has seen the people of the city go without a cherished cultural landmark. It also highlights wider trends in how historic theatres are being redeveloped to make them more accessible, socially connected and sustainable while also preserving their heritage.

Extensive work has been done to improve almost all areas of the theatre, from foyer spaces and audience access, to sightlines in the auditorium and technical facilities. The redevelopment makes a feature of the Citizens’ history by revealing previously hidden sandstone walls in the foyer, and restoring its beloved statues of William Shakespeare, Robert Burns and assorted Greek goddesses to their position above the front entrance.

Opened in 1878 as the Royal Princess’s Theatre, the building has been the home of the Citizens Theatre Company since 1945, known for its bold stage productions, its youth and community theatre and participatory arts programmes.

Like many theatres, the Citizens has been continuously adapted over its 147-year history. In 1977 its neoclassical facade was removed following an earlier fire, and in 1989 a new foyer space and studio theatre were added. The current redevelopment, which began in 2018, was undertaken to ensure the building continues to serve the needs of the company and its community in the working-class Gorbals area, south of the river Clyde.

Connection, accessibility, sustainability

The redevelopment and restoration of older theatres such as the Citizens has become important as their social value and anchoring presence in towns and cities has been recognised. And of course it makes better sense environmentally and economically to reimagine and modernise old buildings than construct new ones.

Recent trends in redevelopments such as the Citizens provide insights into our shifting cultural values. Theatres are being renovated and redeveloped to make them more accessible and inclusive, more energy efficient and more flexible, while also keeping their history and heritage at the heart of the project.

Accessibility is a key feature of the redeveloped Citizens, reflecting the importance of the theatre as a place for social connection, community and inclusion. Attention has been focused on connecting the theatre to its urban environment, and improving the physical accessibility of audience spaces through step-free entrances, better circulation and lifts. Audiences will also be able to glimpse views of backstage activities.

Theatres increasingly serve an expanded social role with cafes, bars and spaces for exhibitions, not to mention education and participation programmes. Redesigned foyers signal this spatially, reinvented as public spaces. The Bristol Old Vic, which reopened in 2021, has a substantial new foyer which connects the existing theatre to the street, serves as a social space and can house events and performances.

Energy efficiency measures and lower carbon emissions are another factor in recent redevelopments, reflecting the need to address the climate emergency. According to a 2008 report by the Greater London Authority, around 80% of carbon emissions produced by London’s theatres come from building operation. Lowering energy consumption through energy efficiency measures like insulation, passive ventilation, and lighting controls are increasingly common.

Even relatively modern civic theatres from the late 20th century are hugely inefficient compared with contemporary standards and technologies. Theatr Clwyd in Mold, first opened in 1976 and recently refurbished, has replaced gas heating with air-source heat pumps, solar panels and natural ventilation. The renovated theatre now has “green” walls and roofs and has avoided significant use of concrete in favour of more sustainable materials.

Another feature in redeveloping older theatres is the need to design in flexibility so venues can house multiple types of events and also be adaptable for new art forms and technologies. Regular schedules for maintenance and the gradual upgrade of electrical and mechanical systems are being introduced to avoid less frequent, and more costly, redevelopments.

In July 2022 the Sydney Opera House completed a ten-year renewal programme which has seen significant upgrade of its concert hall. New features including movable wooden acoustic panels, automated systems to change the stage level and sound dampening drapes enable it to better accommodate different musical performances and events.

Theatres play an important role in the social and cultural life of towns and cities. The mix of old and new features in the redeveloped Citizens’ Theatre is a final important aspect which is common to all redevelopment projects. Theatres anchor communities, serving as places of memory and sites for the stories which connect us to each other, to the past and to our possible futures.

The reopening of Glasgow’s most famous theatre reflects how we value accessibility, social connection and sustainability. Theatres are never just performance spaces, but rather places which support our shared cultural life. The decisions we are making in their renewal today reveal a positive vision of the cultural life we want to sustain in the years ahead.

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Andrew Filmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre reopens: what its seven-year transformation reveals about the future of historic venues – https://theconversation.com/glasgows-citizens-theatre-reopens-what-its-seven-year-transformation-reveals-about-the-future-of-historic-venues-263688