Justin Bieber lets UK doctors and nurses beat him to top of Christmas charts

LONDON | A choir of doctors and nurses beat Justin Bieber to the Christmas number one spot in Britain’s pop music chart Friday after the heartthrob urged his fans to buy their song.

The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir’s charity single, “A Bridge Over You”, outsold Bieber’s “Love Yourself” to snatch the coveted festive top spot.

That came after Bieber wrote on Twitter Wednesday: “So for 1 week it’s ok not to be #1. Let’s do the right thing & help them win. It’s Christmas. @Choir_NHS good luck”.


The southeast London-based choir is made up of staff who work for the state-funded National Health Service.

Their song is a mash-up of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel and Coldplay’s “Fix You”.

Other songs in this week’s top ten which it has beaten include two other hits by Bieber plus Adele’s “Hello” and One Direction’s “History”.

Harriet Nerva, a junior doctor in the choir, decided to start a social media campaign to get the song to number one after a particularly tough day at work.

“A patient with cancer that I had been looking after for quite a number of weeks died,” she told the Guardian newspaper.

“I was listening to the song and it dawned on me that a great way of translating how I was feeling and how proud I was to work for the NHS would be getting (the song) to number one”.

Britain’s NHS is the fifth largest employer in the world, providing health care which is largely free at the point of delivery.

It is widely respected, with pollsters YouGov rating it the institution which most people view positively, and Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to reform the service are highly politically sensitive.

source: interaksyon.com

Too much sitting not linked to increased death risk - study

LONDON -- Sitting for long periods is not associated with an increased risk of dying, according to a study recently released by the University of Exeter.

These findings challenge previous research suggesting that the act of sitting itself causes harm even when people routinely walk a lot or do other exercise. The findings also contradict recommendations by Britain's National Health Service (NHS) that remaining seated for too long is bad for your health, regardless of how much exercise you do.

The study followed more than 5,000 participants for 16 years. The participants provided information on total sitting time and on four other specific types of sitting behavior: sitting at work, during leisure time, while watching TV, and sitting during leisure time excluding TV. They were also asked to provide details on daily walking and time spent engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity.

The study showed that over the 16-year follow-up period none of these sitting measures influenced mortality risk.

The findings overturned current thinking on the health risks of sitting and indicated that the problem lies in the absence of movement rather than the time spent sitting itself, researchers said.

Any stationary posture where energy expenditure is low may be detrimental to health, be it sitting or standing, according to the researchers.

"Our findings suggest that reducing sitting time might not be quite as important for mortality risk as previously publicized and that encouraging people to be more active should still be a public health priority," said lead author Dr. Richard Pulsford from the University of Exeter.

The study has been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

source: interaksyon.com