Personal Risk
Risk of added sugar 0

Food / Health / Lifestyle

What is the risk of eating too much sugar?

Almost everyone loves something sweet to eat.   For some of us it is a treat and for others it has become a way of life.   However, what does it do to your body?   Yes it can quickly provide a boost of energy, but there is a subsequent crash afterwards.  It has no nutritional value.  What happens to our bodies if we are eating more than the recommended 100 calories of sugar a day (6 teaspoons) for women and children, or 150 calories a day (9 teaspoons) for men? Obesity There are a number of causes of obesity such as eating...

Sedentary lifestyle 0

Health / Lifestyle

What risk to health does a sedentary lifestyle pose?

Sedentary lifestyles have accelerated during the pandemic.  Lockdowns, restrictions on social interactions and the normalisation of working from home have impacted the amount of movement most people do on a daily basis.   It has slowed everyone down.  What is sedentary behaviour and what risk does a sedentary lifestyle pose to your health? Sedentary behaviour means any form of sitting or lying down while awake which expends 1.5 METs or less.  METs means metabolic equivalent of task and is a measure of the energy expenditure when performing a task. Across the world 4 to 5 million deaths a year are attributed...

Smart Motorway risk 0

Transport / Travel

Smart Motorways – smart or dumb?

Money makes the world go around.   Money also impacts your safety.   The UK may have some of the safest roads in the world, but this should not detract from the fact that replacing a key safety feature of motorways, namely, the hard shoulder with an emergency refuge area (ERA) on Smart Motorways up to one and a half miles from you must be considered one of the dumbest ideas which has been given the green light by Government. Smart motorways have had a lot of press coverage as the penny drops on the horror you could face if your car...

dangerous cow limousin 0

Activities / Wildlife and Animals

How Dangerous Are Cows?

What risks do cows pose? So I am writing this blog post for a friend’s mother, Susan, who like me, has issues with walking through fields of cows.   We just don’t trust them.   Where does this mistrust come from?   I don’t have an answer for Susan.   However, for me, it first started with the BBC TV programme 999.  This programme ran during the 1990s and showed reconstructions of real life rescues by the British police, ambulance, fire service, mountain rescue and life boats and included those rescued.   In this particular episode, a dog walker was trampled by a herd of...

hotel balcony pool 0

Holiday Risks / Risky Behaviour

What are the Risks of Balconing?

Balconing is the act of jumping from a balcony or roof of a building into a swimming pool in order to impress people with your daring and risk taking. It also includes climbing from one balcony to another balcony and, in some cases, falling as a result of misadventure. Balconing emerged around 2010 and rapidly became “the new craze” where friends video each other in the act of “balconing” and post them online. Who does this? There is no data on the number of balconing acts undertaken each year. The figures only relate to the cases where the jumper ended...