Condition that only gets worse in winter
An irritating skin condition is flaring up for a third of Australians trying to keep warm this winter, made worse by heaters, woollen jumpers and long, hot showers.
Eczema is a dry, itchy and inflammatory skin disease that usually begins in childhood and affects one in five children and one in 10 adults that suffer redness, scales, bumps, skin cracks, oozing fluid and crusts.
Children are more likely to experience eczema because their immune system has not matured. People with a family history or from East or South Asian countries or others who suffer from hay fever or food allergies are also affected.
The condition can be deadly when it is left uncontrolled and extremely inflamed, although rare. People can get serious infections from the disease, or the body can divert all of its blood away from vital organs to the skin. Dermatologist Deshan Sebaratnam says people are more prone to eczema during winter. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Dermatologist Deshan Sebaratnam told NewWire that a lot of people would notice eczema flare-ups due to the cold change in weather.
'When it is cold, there's often less humidity in the air, so your skin loses water to the air easily,' he said.
'There's also less sunlight, and sunlight dampens down the activity of the immune system in the skin and because it's cold, people aren't using their creams and moisturisers as much as they should.
'Wearing long clothes and things like wool can also be irritating on the skin, so now's a common time for eczema to flare up for a lot of Australians.' Eczema is a dry, itchy and inflammatory skin disease. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Dry air, heaters and long. hot showers that strip the body of natural oils can flare up eczema.
The best way to avoid the condition is to use thick and greasy moisturisers that contain glycerine and ceramides to trap water in the skin and avoid products with fragrances, perfumes or food.
'You shouldn't be spending lots of money on your moisturisers,' Dr Sebaratnam said.
'Products from the QV ceramide range are really good or QV intensive as well.
'Funnily enough, people can use a cream their whole life, or a moisturiser or make-up, then suddenly develop allergies to a product.
'No one really knows why, but one day your immune system just decides it doesn't like it, then every time you put it on you get eczema.
'That's called contact dermatitis, and that can also make eczema worse.' Dr Sebaratnam said the best way to avoid eczema was to use thick and greasy moisturisers that contained glycerine and ceramides. Supplied Credit: Supplied
Dr Sebaratnam said people with concerns about their skin should see a GP or dermatologist, a medical specialist in skin disease and health.
'No one understands your skin like a dermatologist, and they can help you know with eczema,' he said.
'It is a really itchy and uncomfortable condition that affects your sleep and has a cosmetic impact in terms of people's confidence if it is on their face.
'It can affect children's schooling, and even adults. If you're constantly scratching you can't focus at work, it affects every facet of your life.'
Dr Sebaratnam said there were lots of myths about eczema. He said food rarely caused problems with the condition and steroids were a safe treatment option when supervised by a doctor.
'Just keep care simple, it doesn't need to be complicated, a simple moisturiser or using medications when you need to on and off,' he said
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A University of Melbourne study published in March revealed once people reach the age of 15 to 20, a significant drop in dental visits occurred. Researchers tracked more than 11,000 people over several years and found many patients didn't return once they became independent, and often for years. The pattern seen here in Australia isn't isolated. A previous study from New Zealand reported a similar drop in regular dental visits among young working-age adults. These findings are consistent with patterns commonly seen in this age group, shaped by time pressures, financial stress and the false belief that you only need a dentist when something hurts. There's a belief that healthy-looking teeth don't need attention, which means too many people are missing the potential early signs of decay and gum disease. Changes in daily routines - moving out of the family home, taking on study and full-time work often marks the beginning of the decline in dental care. 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There's a belief that healthy-looking teeth don't need attention, which means too many people are missing the potential early signs of decay and gum disease. Changes in daily routines - moving out of the family home, taking on study and full-time work often marks the beginning of the decline in dental care. Once children are out on their own, and in charge of their own health insurance, the health safety net can disappear. If you're a young adult reading this, remember, your health isn't on hold just because life got busier. By the time pain shows up, treatment can be complex and more expensive. The solution? Reconnecting oral health with the broader wellness narrative Gen Z already embraces. We talk a lot about mental fitness, skin care, and gut health - teeth need to be part of that conversation.
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When you front up at your GP, you don't automatically know whether you will be in the lucky group to be bulk billed. "You might be asking when you front up," he says. But it's the uncertainty, the possible embarrassment of signing up to pay money you don't have. He commends any government's attempt to get practices to be 100 per cent bulk-billing because then patients get 100 per cent certainty. And getting that 100 per cent certainty about your healthcare matters. Too many of us are not that lucky. News this week that Canberrans are now paying out an average of just over $62 in out-of-pocket fees to see their GPs is unnerving. If you don't have the sixty-odd bucks, you don't go. And that's extremely risky. British research shows us (and Australian research backs it up) that continuity of care is associated with higher life expectancy. If you don't get that care, you die. Well, we all die - but without regular contact with a regular GP, you have a shorter life expectancy. Good access, lower cost, the necessary number of GPs per head of population - these are all associated with longer lives. The cost of visiting the GP is putting many of us off from getting essential health care. Late last year, the ABS reported a rise in the number of people who reported not visiting the GP because of cost-of-living pressures. In the financial year ending June 22, 3.5 per cent of people either put off or didn't see a GP when they needed to because of the cost. Three years later, that number had risen to 8.8 per cent. In February, the gentle warming-up period of the election before everyone got stroppy and out of control, Labor pledged $8.5 billion for Medicare, so all of us would have access to bulk billing by 2030. The plan, according to Labor, would produce patient savings of up to $859 million a year by 2030. It's Medicare's 41st birthday and this investment, if the bulk billing strategy works, is a huge birthday gift to those of us who benefit from universal health care. That is, all of us. In 1984, the annual GP bulk-billing rate was 51 per cent. It hit a 40-year high of 94 per cent in April 2020, under a Coalition government. Of course, some of that was due to special COVID items. Don't want to go back there if COVID is what it takes. But what can we do to make sure our GPs are protected too? They need to be properly remunerated for what is often grinding work with long hours. Good thing I never ended up as a GP. Imagine having to be patient with patients for hours at a time. Having to be kind to the miserable. Just doing that with your own kids is quite enough, let alone with anyone else's. Now we also have to get to work on specialist fees. I've written elsewhere about the insanity of those fees. This week, the Grattan Institute revealed more than one in five Australians who saw a specialist in 2023 was charged an extreme fee at least once. It also said one in 10 Australians who saw a psychiatrist ended up paying $400 in out-of-pocket costs for their initial consultation alone. It also had a list of recommendations. My vengeful self enjoyed some of those, such as stripping Medicare rebates from specialists charging excessive fees, more than others. And I love the idea of the Medical Cost Finder website, designed so people can compare out-of-pocket fees doctors charge for specialist procedures. But last year it was revealed that five years after the site launched, just 20 doctors out of the 36,000 specialists nationwide provided their fees for listing. MORE JENNA PRICE: There are some useful bits, though. For example, your first specialist appointment will see you pay just under $200, and on average, $117 out of pocket. The rest is paid by Medicare. That's across the country. The most expensive is the ACT where the typical specialist fee is $285. Patients will find themselves two hundred bucks out of pocket. I am not entirely sure how the government will sort this out but we urgently need an overhaul of what we pay for our health. Jim Chalmers is talking tax reform and maybe we need some kind of a sliding scale for people whose super balances are above $3 million, more than he's proposing right now. Universities have a part to play too. Maybe they should let more students into medical schools. Maybe free tuition but then bond students to rural and regional areas for 10 years? Are specialist colleges acting in the best interests of Australians? Or in their own financial best interest? I dunno. But whatever we are doing isn't working. May the government's plans work - and once GPs are sorted, let's start working on the rest of the health industry. My GP bulk bills me. My status has been grandmothered. It's a bloody miracle and I'm grateful. I'd personally like to thank former prime minister Gough Whitlam. Medibank, the forerunner to Medicare, was his brainchild. It began in July 1975. But after the Whitlam government was dismissed, the Fraser government buggered it up. Levies on incomes unless you were privately insured. Nine years later, former prime minister Bob Hawke (the National Museum of Australia calls him Robert. Way too formal) established Medicare. He said: "With this historic initiative, all Australians now have a new, simpler and fairer health insurance system." Well, kind of. Stephen Duckett, the absolute full-bottle on Medicare over decades, tells me that bulk-billing is crucial. We had a peak five years ago and it's been downhill from there. "There are good grounds not to have out-of-pocket payments for GPs. And right now, it's a lottery," he says. Duckett's right. When you front up at your GP, you don't automatically know whether you will be in the lucky group to be bulk billed. "You might be asking when you front up," he says. But it's the uncertainty, the possible embarrassment of signing up to pay money you don't have. He commends any government's attempt to get practices to be 100 per cent bulk-billing because then patients get 100 per cent certainty. And getting that 100 per cent certainty about your healthcare matters. Too many of us are not that lucky. News this week that Canberrans are now paying out an average of just over $62 in out-of-pocket fees to see their GPs is unnerving. If you don't have the sixty-odd bucks, you don't go. And that's extremely risky. British research shows us (and Australian research backs it up) that continuity of care is associated with higher life expectancy. If you don't get that care, you die. Well, we all die - but without regular contact with a regular GP, you have a shorter life expectancy. Good access, lower cost, the necessary number of GPs per head of population - these are all associated with longer lives. The cost of visiting the GP is putting many of us off from getting essential health care. Late last year, the ABS reported a rise in the number of people who reported not visiting the GP because of cost-of-living pressures. In the financial year ending June 22, 3.5 per cent of people either put off or didn't see a GP when they needed to because of the cost. Three years later, that number had risen to 8.8 per cent. In February, the gentle warming-up period of the election before everyone got stroppy and out of control, Labor pledged $8.5 billion for Medicare, so all of us would have access to bulk billing by 2030. The plan, according to Labor, would produce patient savings of up to $859 million a year by 2030. It's Medicare's 41st birthday and this investment, if the bulk billing strategy works, is a huge birthday gift to those of us who benefit from universal health care. That is, all of us. In 1984, the annual GP bulk-billing rate was 51 per cent. It hit a 40-year high of 94 per cent in April 2020, under a Coalition government. Of course, some of that was due to special COVID items. Don't want to go back there if COVID is what it takes. But what can we do to make sure our GPs are protected too? They need to be properly remunerated for what is often grinding work with long hours. Good thing I never ended up as a GP. Imagine having to be patient with patients for hours at a time. Having to be kind to the miserable. Just doing that with your own kids is quite enough, let alone with anyone else's. Now we also have to get to work on specialist fees. I've written elsewhere about the insanity of those fees. This week, the Grattan Institute revealed more than one in five Australians who saw a specialist in 2023 was charged an extreme fee at least once. It also said one in 10 Australians who saw a psychiatrist ended up paying $400 in out-of-pocket costs for their initial consultation alone. It also had a list of recommendations. My vengeful self enjoyed some of those, such as stripping Medicare rebates from specialists charging excessive fees, more than others. And I love the idea of the Medical Cost Finder website, designed so people can compare out-of-pocket fees doctors charge for specialist procedures. But last year it was revealed that five years after the site launched, just 20 doctors out of the 36,000 specialists nationwide provided their fees for listing. MORE JENNA PRICE: There are some useful bits, though. For example, your first specialist appointment will see you pay just under $200, and on average, $117 out of pocket. The rest is paid by Medicare. That's across the country. The most expensive is the ACT where the typical specialist fee is $285. Patients will find themselves two hundred bucks out of pocket. I am not entirely sure how the government will sort this out but we urgently need an overhaul of what we pay for our health. Jim Chalmers is talking tax reform and maybe we need some kind of a sliding scale for people whose super balances are above $3 million, more than he's proposing right now. Universities have a part to play too. Maybe they should let more students into medical schools. Maybe free tuition but then bond students to rural and regional areas for 10 years? Are specialist colleges acting in the best interests of Australians? Or in their own financial best interest? I dunno. But whatever we are doing isn't working. May the government's plans work - and once GPs are sorted, let's start working on the rest of the health industry. My GP bulk bills me. My status has been grandmothered. It's a bloody miracle and I'm grateful. I'd personally like to thank former prime minister Gough Whitlam. Medibank, the forerunner to Medicare, was his brainchild. It began in July 1975. But after the Whitlam government was dismissed, the Fraser government buggered it up. Levies on incomes unless you were privately insured. Nine years later, former prime minister Bob Hawke (the National Museum of Australia calls him Robert. Way too formal) established Medicare. He said: "With this historic initiative, all Australians now have a new, simpler and fairer health insurance system." Well, kind of. Stephen Duckett, the absolute full-bottle on Medicare over decades, tells me that bulk-billing is crucial. We had a peak five years ago and it's been downhill from there. "There are good grounds not to have out-of-pocket payments for GPs. And right now, it's a lottery," he says. Duckett's right. When you front up at your GP, you don't automatically know whether you will be in the lucky group to be bulk billed. "You might be asking when you front up," he says. But it's the uncertainty, the possible embarrassment of signing up to pay money you don't have. He commends any government's attempt to get practices to be 100 per cent bulk-billing because then patients get 100 per cent certainty. And getting that 100 per cent certainty about your healthcare matters. Too many of us are not that lucky. News this week that Canberrans are now paying out an average of just over $62 in out-of-pocket fees to see their GPs is unnerving. If you don't have the sixty-odd bucks, you don't go. And that's extremely risky. British research shows us (and Australian research backs it up) that continuity of care is associated with higher life expectancy. If you don't get that care, you die. Well, we all die - but without regular contact with a regular GP, you have a shorter life expectancy. Good access, lower cost, the necessary number of GPs per head of population - these are all associated with longer lives. The cost of visiting the GP is putting many of us off from getting essential health care. Late last year, the ABS reported a rise in the number of people who reported not visiting the GP because of cost-of-living pressures. In the financial year ending June 22, 3.5 per cent of people either put off or didn't see a GP when they needed to because of the cost. Three years later, that number had risen to 8.8 per cent. In February, the gentle warming-up period of the election before everyone got stroppy and out of control, Labor pledged $8.5 billion for Medicare, so all of us would have access to bulk billing by 2030. The plan, according to Labor, would produce patient savings of up to $859 million a year by 2030. It's Medicare's 41st birthday and this investment, if the bulk billing strategy works, is a huge birthday gift to those of us who benefit from universal health care. That is, all of us. In 1984, the annual GP bulk-billing rate was 51 per cent. It hit a 40-year high of 94 per cent in April 2020, under a Coalition government. Of course, some of that was due to special COVID items. Don't want to go back there if COVID is what it takes. But what can we do to make sure our GPs are protected too? They need to be properly remunerated for what is often grinding work with long hours. Good thing I never ended up as a GP. Imagine having to be patient with patients for hours at a time. Having to be kind to the miserable. Just doing that with your own kids is quite enough, let alone with anyone else's. Now we also have to get to work on specialist fees. I've written elsewhere about the insanity of those fees. This week, the Grattan Institute revealed more than one in five Australians who saw a specialist in 2023 was charged an extreme fee at least once. It also said one in 10 Australians who saw a psychiatrist ended up paying $400 in out-of-pocket costs for their initial consultation alone. It also had a list of recommendations. My vengeful self enjoyed some of those, such as stripping Medicare rebates from specialists charging excessive fees, more than others. And I love the idea of the Medical Cost Finder website, designed so people can compare out-of-pocket fees doctors charge for specialist procedures. But last year it was revealed that five years after the site launched, just 20 doctors out of the 36,000 specialists nationwide provided their fees for listing. MORE JENNA PRICE: There are some useful bits, though. For example, your first specialist appointment will see you pay just under $200, and on average, $117 out of pocket. The rest is paid by Medicare. That's across the country. The most expensive is the ACT where the typical specialist fee is $285. Patients will find themselves two hundred bucks out of pocket. I am not entirely sure how the government will sort this out but we urgently need an overhaul of what we pay for our health. Jim Chalmers is talking tax reform and maybe we need some kind of a sliding scale for people whose super balances are above $3 million, more than he's proposing right now. Universities have a part to play too. Maybe they should let more students into medical schools. Maybe free tuition but then bond students to rural and regional areas for 10 years? Are specialist colleges acting in the best interests of Australians? Or in their own financial best interest? I dunno. But whatever we are doing isn't working. May the government's plans work - and once GPs are sorted, let's start working on the rest of the health industry. My GP bulk bills me. My status has been grandmothered. It's a bloody miracle and I'm grateful. I'd personally like to thank former prime minister Gough Whitlam. Medibank, the forerunner to Medicare, was his brainchild. It began in July 1975. But after the Whitlam government was dismissed, the Fraser government buggered it up. Levies on incomes unless you were privately insured. Nine years later, former prime minister Bob Hawke (the National Museum of Australia calls him Robert. Way too formal) established Medicare. He said: "With this historic initiative, all Australians now have a new, simpler and fairer health insurance system." Well, kind of. Stephen Duckett, the absolute full-bottle on Medicare over decades, tells me that bulk-billing is crucial. We had a peak five years ago and it's been downhill from there. "There are good grounds not to have out-of-pocket payments for GPs. And right now, it's a lottery," he says. Duckett's right. When you front up at your GP, you don't automatically know whether you will be in the lucky group to be bulk billed. "You might be asking when you front up," he says. But it's the uncertainty, the possible embarrassment of signing up to pay money you don't have. He commends any government's attempt to get practices to be 100 per cent bulk-billing because then patients get 100 per cent certainty. And getting that 100 per cent certainty about your healthcare matters. Too many of us are not that lucky. News this week that Canberrans are now paying out an average of just over $62 in out-of-pocket fees to see their GPs is unnerving. If you don't have the sixty-odd bucks, you don't go. And that's extremely risky. British research shows us (and Australian research backs it up) that continuity of care is associated with higher life expectancy. If you don't get that care, you die. Well, we all die - but without regular contact with a regular GP, you have a shorter life expectancy. Good access, lower cost, the necessary number of GPs per head of population - these are all associated with longer lives. The cost of visiting the GP is putting many of us off from getting essential health care. Late last year, the ABS reported a rise in the number of people who reported not visiting the GP because of cost-of-living pressures. In the financial year ending June 22, 3.5 per cent of people either put off or didn't see a GP when they needed to because of the cost. Three years later, that number had risen to 8.8 per cent. In February, the gentle warming-up period of the election before everyone got stroppy and out of control, Labor pledged $8.5 billion for Medicare, so all of us would have access to bulk billing by 2030. The plan, according to Labor, would produce patient savings of up to $859 million a year by 2030. It's Medicare's 41st birthday and this investment, if the bulk billing strategy works, is a huge birthday gift to those of us who benefit from universal health care. That is, all of us. In 1984, the annual GP bulk-billing rate was 51 per cent. It hit a 40-year high of 94 per cent in April 2020, under a Coalition government. Of course, some of that was due to special COVID items. Don't want to go back there if COVID is what it takes. But what can we do to make sure our GPs are protected too? They need to be properly remunerated for what is often grinding work with long hours. Good thing I never ended up as a GP. Imagine having to be patient with patients for hours at a time. Having to be kind to the miserable. Just doing that with your own kids is quite enough, let alone with anyone else's. Now we also have to get to work on specialist fees. I've written elsewhere about the insanity of those fees. This week, the Grattan Institute revealed more than one in five Australians who saw a specialist in 2023 was charged an extreme fee at least once. It also said one in 10 Australians who saw a psychiatrist ended up paying $400 in out-of-pocket costs for their initial consultation alone. It also had a list of recommendations. My vengeful self enjoyed some of those, such as stripping Medicare rebates from specialists charging excessive fees, more than others. And I love the idea of the Medical Cost Finder website, designed so people can compare out-of-pocket fees doctors charge for specialist procedures. But last year it was revealed that five years after the site launched, just 20 doctors out of the 36,000 specialists nationwide provided their fees for listing. MORE JENNA PRICE: There are some useful bits, though. For example, your first specialist appointment will see you pay just under $200, and on average, $117 out of pocket. The rest is paid by Medicare. That's across the country. The most expensive is the ACT where the typical specialist fee is $285. Patients will find themselves two hundred bucks out of pocket. I am not entirely sure how the government will sort this out but we urgently need an overhaul of what we pay for our health. Jim Chalmers is talking tax reform and maybe we need some kind of a sliding scale for people whose super balances are above $3 million, more than he's proposing right now. Universities have a part to play too. Maybe they should let more students into medical schools. Maybe free tuition but then bond students to rural and regional areas for 10 years? Are specialist colleges acting in the best interests of Australians? Or in their own financial best interest? I dunno. But whatever we are doing isn't working. May the government's plans work - and once GPs are sorted, let's start working on the rest of the health industry.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
‘I thought my life would change': Overcoming an invisible disease to get back into sport
Two years ago, 15-year-old Sienna Warren was diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease. She has also had colitis, or inflammation of the large intestine. The diagnosis has meant months away from school and a slowing down of the active life she led before. 'I still get pretty bad brain fog that interferes with school, and fatigue which interferes with activities I want to do,' Sienna says. 'I love crafts, I love singing, I love dancing, I would love to do drama, but I just can't. And it's hard to do sport in school.' There are two main types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD): Crohn's disease and colitis. The main symptoms and complications include fatigue, abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting. An estimated 180,000 Australians live with IBD, about 5240 of whom are children and 21,590 are young adults aged 19 to 29. The disease can hinder or prevent people from doing things many of us take for granted, like dating or attending school or work. It can also make it difficult for people, like Sienna, to play sport. According to the latest State of the Nation Report, published by Crohn's & Colitis Australia earlier this year, 21 per cent of adults and 18 per cent of children with IBD had severe problems with, or were unable to participate in, sport. Invisible disease Sienna says IBD is an 'invisible disease', and that more education is needed to help the public better understand its impact. 'We're looking at disabilities in school, but all the disabilities they're looking at are visible disabilities and visible impairments. It's not enough,' she says.
