HEALTH

Ice baths may help office workers better

HEALTH practitioners are using ice baths to help busy professionals manage stress
The technique has long been used by elite athletes for recovery, but now the breathing techniques are being taught to accountants and office workers to help them manage workplace and life stresses.
Ben Murphy has developed a program teaching people to tackle the stress of an ice bath by harnessing what he calls “the conscious breath”.
“People hop in and they breathe shallow and sharp, really high up into the chest,” he said.
“What we teach people and share with people is to use the ice bath as a trigger, to hop in and breathe calmly and fully to take control of other stressful environments.”
The program mirrors a similar technique developed by Dutch athlete Wim Hof, known as the “Iceman”, who currently holds dozens of world records for extreme challenges in the cold.
“For me, the breath was a little metaphor of one thing that I can control during a really turbulent time in my life where everything seemed to be out of control.
“When I could control my breath, I realised that there were other things that I could look after such as my water or my movement or my exercise or my relationships,” Mr Pene said.

Mr Murphy said his clients also felt a sense of achievement after conquering five minutes in the ice bath.
He said so far every client had lasted the entire time frame.
“People feel fully-alive, fully-energised, immense vitality and they feel like they can basically tackle anything,” he said.
“We’re trying to get our clients to fully breathe in, fully breathe oxygen in, fully breathe life into their body so they can then manage the hormones and the stress levels.”
However, Dr Roberts said there was a lack of evidence to show ice baths was the most effective method of challenging the body’s stress response.
“There is some research out there to show that people are able to get accustomed to this stressful exposure and this challenge.
“Potentially there are other ways of achieving a similar outcome,” he said.
Dr Vince Kelly from Queensland University of Technology studied fatigue and recovery in athletes and said while the research into the physical benefits of ice baths has been scrutinised, their impacts on mental and mindset training was not yet thoroughly researched.
“They become difficult to sit in, it’s not very comfortable and one of the responses that you might get from that is a stress response,” he said.
While these breathing workshops fill baths with more than 100 kilograms of ice, research shows athletes should instead focus on the duration of time spent in the bath, as opposed to the temperature.
“Get a total of 10 minutes immersion in the water, so that can be one lot of 10 minutes, two lots of five minutes, it might be five lots of two minutes and then the recommendation around temperature is somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees Celsius,” Dr Kelly said.
A joint study by the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology in 2015 showed that ice baths directly after strength training, could decrease an athlete’s ability to build muscle.
The research found that ice baths could dampen the natural responses of the body for athletes, if practiced too regularly. –ABC News

Baby born without a face

A PORTUGESE obstetrician has been suspended from practice and stands accused of negligence after a baby was born without a face, devastating his parents and shocking the country.
The baby, Rodrigo, was born on October 7 without a nose, eyes or part of his skull but the deformities were only discovered during his delivery at a hospital in Setubal, about 40 kilometres south of Lisbon.
Portugal’s Medical Council unanimously voted on Tuesday to suspend Dr Artur Carvalho from practising for six months.

The obstetrician has six other complaints against him, dating back to 2013.
The council opened an investigation after the parents of the deformed baby made a complaint and the birth made headlines.
“There is strong evidence” of the doctor’s negligence, which “may lead to a disciplinary sanction”, Alexandre Valentim Lourenco, medical council chief for the southern region told broadcaster RTP.
Given the impact of this case, which “has repercussions on the reputation of doctors” and “to reassure pregnant women”, he said the suspension was necessary to evaluate the complaints.
Dr Carvalho had followed the pregnancy of Rodrigo’s mother in a private clinic in Setubal where he performed three mandatory ultrasounds but did not report any issues of concern.
The parents were alerted to a possible anomaly of the foetus after they requested a further ultrasound test in the sixth month of the pregnancy but were reassured by the doctor.
“He explained that sometimes some parts of the face are not visible [on ultrasounds] when the baby’s face is glued to the belly of the mother,” Joana Simao, the mother’s sister, told broadcaster TVI 24.
The baby is still at the paediatric wing of the hospital where he was born.-AFP