Month: January 2025

Dr Jeremy London explained he has a straightforward method which can allow you to find out whether the major organ is working as it should.

The best part is, you can do it from the comfort of your own home and it should only take a short amount of time – so really, there’s no excuse not to give it a go.

Dr London explained you don’t always need to faff around having a blood test, X-ray or electrocardiogram (ECG) to get a sense of your heart health.

The expert, from the US, claims his trick can check on the sufficiency of your arteries and indicate whether there might be a blockage.

In a recent video shared to his YouTube channel (@drjeremylondon), he shared the details of his health hack.

He said: “How can you tell that you may have important blockages of the heart arteries without a single blood test, X-ray, or ECG?

“Well, not surprisingly, you have to listen to your body.”

Listing off some ‘red flags’ to look out for, Dr London warned that chest tightness, chest pain and shortness of breath, could be a worrying sign.

As well as this, if you are suffering from pain which radiates to the jaw or arm with exertion that is relieved with rest, this might also be a sign that your ticker might be in bad shape.

Dr London then explained why these symptoms might suggest the arteries in your heart might be a bit clogged.

“Let’s assume for a minute that you have a blockage in the artery of the front of the heart,” he said. “When you exert yourself, that area below the blockage is blood starved and you start to have these symptoms.

“When you rest, the demand on this area of the heart goes down and the pain goes away.”

This experience is often associated with angina, which is a usually non-life threatening chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscles, according to the NHS.

“But it’s a warning sign that you could be at risk of a heart attack or stroke,” the NHS explains.

It is also a common symptom of coronary heart disease (CHD), which is caused when your coronary arteries become narrowed by fatty material within their walls.

The British Heart Foundation explains: “Over time, a fatty material called atheroma (sometimes known as plaque) can build up inside your coronary arteries. This process is called atherosclerosis.

“Eventually, your arteries may become so narrow that they cannot get enough blood to your heart.”

According to the cardiovascular research charity, a lot of people with blocked arteries or atherosclerosis are unaware of it ‘until they develop symptoms, such as angina or claudication’.

Dr London added: “Now clearly, not having this situation doesn’t mean that you don’t have blockages in the heart arteries, but if they are occurring you need to see a qualified healthcare professional.”

Like he said – run through the test and you can then check in with your GP if you’ve got any concerns.

On 22 October 2023, Joseph David Emerson attempted to crash Alaska Airlines Flight 2059 while in the cockpit.

The pilot has since been arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder, as well as one count of endangering an aircraft. He is currently awaiting trial.

Flight 2059 was heading to San Francisco, California, from Everett, Washington in the USA.

Just last year, a year on from the horrific event, Emerson spoke to ABC News about what he was thinking at the time.

Two days prior to the flight’s departure, the Alaska Airlines pilot admitted that he, along with some friends, took psychedelic mushrooms.

Also known as shrooms, the Class A drug can cause hallucinations and distort reality. Emerson said that they did it in memory of his friend’s death, who had passed six years earlier.

However, he said that the effects lasted days after taking them, and he didn’t feel right when travelling to the airport for his flight.

The pilot said he could only think about being at home with his family, with fears setting in that he would never make it back as he took his seat in the cockpit of the jet.

He said to ABC News: “There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?’,” Emerson told ABC News, in an interview near his home in California.

He claims he started to believe that what he was seeing wasn’t real, convincing himself that he was not actually going home, as his friend sent him a text saying to do some breathing exercises to calm down.

He said his phone read the text in his ear, pushing him off the edge: “That’s kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn’t real and I’m not going home.

“And then, as the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn’t real. I need to wake up,” he claimed.

The next 30 seconds were where the problems began.

The off-duty pilot recalled: “There are two red handles in front of my face.

“And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.”

It turned out that these were the engine shut-off controls, which would have put everyone onboard at danger of death.

“What I thought is, ‘This is going to wake me up’,” he said.

“I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”

Luckily, the pilots pulled his hands away, bewildered by his behaviour, while Emerson said that ‘the pilot’s physical touch’ snapped him out of it, as he became aware that it was all real.

Speaking of luck, his actions didn’t cause any danger, and the engines continued to operate normally. The pilots booted him out of the cockpit, and he drank directly from a coffee pot and sat in the flight attendant’s jump seat.

Shortly after though, he then went back to hallucinating, revealing: “At some point I thought maybe this isn’t real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have.”

And just like that, Emerson grabbed the cabin door lever, attempting to pull it open, before a flight attendant stopped him by putting her hand on his, again waking him out of the trip and making him aware that it was all real.

He texted his wife during the flight, declaring: “I made a big mistake.”

His wife, Sarah Emerson, replied: “What’s up? Are you ok?”

“I’m not,” Emerson responded.

He quickly asked the flight attendant to handcuff him before he did any more harm, hoping to get help when the plane landed.

Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed, spending 45 days behind bars before being granted bond. It took a full four days from the day he took mushrooms to fully recover and return to normal.

The jail physician told him that he had suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause a first-time user of psychedelics to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.

Though he is no longer facing murder charges, Emerson is now facing over 80 state and federal charges, which include 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.

The pilot is currently awaiting trial, which was originally meant to be in the autumn of 2024.

Having just broken his silence on revealing the reason behind his split from Molly Mae Hague, the Love Island star also recently spoke out on the now meme-ified clip.

Let’s be honest, the internet had an absolute field day in making jokes and just generally being baffled by the sheer speed of the boxer.

In case you’ve somehow not seen the viral clip, despite it being edited into all kinds of TikTok videos, it shows Fury absolutely sprinting to the finish line of a local 10k run on 4 January.

But, while most people just poked fun at the 25-year-old bombing it past the other runners, others slammed him for apparently nearly knocking over a woman.

Users mocked his initial video as they said he ‘almost wiped out someone’s nan’ and added: “That video of Tommy Fury sprinting past the senior citizens in a marathon is actually one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”

Others compared him to ‘that one kid in school who would run in between classes for no reason’.

And Darren Till even got in on it, writing on X: “I only said I’d kick him in the head and he’s still running.”

Fury initially shared the photo to Instagram Stories himself, saying: “Very big sprint finish,” with a laughing-face emoji.

Then, after doing a 10k in Lake Como yesterday (14 January), he made a little joke about that ‘sprint finish’.

“Right guys straight off the plane, straight on the road, 10k done,” Fury said. “In this beautiful scenery, Lake Como you are beautiful.

“And just to warn everybody, no grannies were hurt in the process at the finish line.”

A new interview released today (15 January) also saw Fury speaking out on his split from Hague, admitting an ‘alcohol problem’ was the reason behind it.

Rumours of him cheating on the influencer had circulated at the time, but he’s slammed this as ‘complete and utter b*****ks’.

“We broke up because I had a problem with alcohol and I couldn’t be the partner that I wanted to be anymore. It kills me to say it, but I couldn’t. I loved a pint of beer, loved to drink,” he told Men’s Health.

“People go through different things in life. I’m 25 years old. I went through a lot and my breakup was in front of the whole world. It was talked about on Good Morning Britain and I’ve received so much hate for it.”

After she graduated with a business degree, Elizabeth G travelled to Sydney and began working in an erotic massage parlour.

Aged 29 at the time, she returned to the UK to start a Masters degree, and the student went and worked in a full service escort agency to help pay for her tuition fees.

Elizabeth, 41, has now opened up about the life of a sex worker in her book Unashamed: Why do people pay for sex?.

However, over that 20-year period, there was ‘just one hairy moment’.

“It was when myself and actually a colleague, went to a booking and it was these three men, they looked so high, it’s like they hadn’t slept for two or three days”, Elizabeth told Fabulous.

“When I was with one of the clients, I saw just out the corner of my eye, they had two massive machetes next to him.

“And when I had the opportunity, I went and told my colleague, and she confronted him about it, and said, ‘Why do you have two machetes?’

“And he just said, ‘For protection’. So I think they must have been drug dealers, but they didn’t threaten us with them, but it was one of those moments that was very uncomfortable and not a situation I would want to be in again.”

The most difficult part of sex work, she says, was ‘allowing clients to pursue my heart, which happened quite a lot’.

“I think the appeal with dating a client would mean that I wouldn’t have the anxiety of worrying about telling a prospective partner about my job and face abuse and shame,” she explained.

“So sometimes I would date clients, and it ended in disaster every single time, because then I’d find they’d go and book somebody else behind my back, or it just, it just didn’t work.

But while she was working, Elizabeth felt like she ‘was really helping people’ through their problems.

“I almost felt like a sex therapist in a sense. There were a lot of people that I saw who were struggling and who were going through mental health problems,” she said.

“Obviously, sex is a part of sex work, and I was able to build up lots of lovely clients and loyal regulars, and we would explore things with each other.

“So yes, there is a sexual side to it, of course. I suppose with a sex worker, compared to an actual therapist, you can, you get that physical contact, you get that skin-on-skin connection and energy that you don’t get from a therapist.”

Julie McFadden has witnessed over a hundred people die in her line of work, which focuses on making patients feel as comfortable as possible before they die.

Over on her YouTube channel Hospice Nurse Julie, she has explained what the ‘worst thing to die of is’, as well as the noise someone makes when they have less than 24 hours left to live.

In an interview with podcaster Rob Moore, Julie also shared the sad reality of what’s usually on people’s minds.

Julie told Disruptors: “The main thing people say, that I don’t hear a lot of people mention, is ‘I wish I would have appreciated my health’.”

In order to practice what they preach, Julie writes a ‘gratitude list’ each night, including things that everyone takes for granted, such as sight, the ability to walk and other things she is grateful for.

“I like the fact that I can breathe, I’m walking around, I can feel the sunshine – little things like that,” she shared.

“I think the biggest thing I hear from people [who are] dying is that they wish they would have appreciated how well they how well they felt before.”

You may have felt like this after a period of being sick and being able to smell or taste again, but being grateful for it everyday makes it that much sweeter, according to Julie.

Before specialising as a hospice nurse, she worked in an Intensive Care Unit, meaning that she has been around death for a lot of her career – which she opens up on in her book.

The nurse further added: “I believe that people should know about the dying process before they’re actually going through it with a loved one or themselves.”

The American health expert admitted that she too takes life for granted sometimes, explaining: “I think because of my job it’s easier for me to see how how uh once in a lifetime this is fact that everything works together in our bodies to make us live and grow um and I see that in depth too I see how our bodies are biologically built to die.”

Dying is a natural process with nothing to be scared about, and Julie says we all have to accept that, but opened up about how certain US citizens will undergo a cruel death.

“Generally speaking, it helps to have money to die well which I think is really unfortunate,” she admits.

Unfortunately, in the US, hospice care isn’t free, so working class senior citizens will often be cared for at home in their final days.

Julie highlighted that family can take care of you 24/7, but they won’t be qualified to do so, and people working to make enough to survive will financially struggle to support someone in end-of-life care.

“Only people with pretty extreme wealth can do that, which I think is really unfortunate. So I don’t think money does make you happy, but it helps it certainly takes stress off of the situation,” Julie stated.

Alexis Saya, 23, was on the verge of marrying her ex-partner but left on the morning of their wedding in Indiana, US on 16 April 2023.

The former couple – who share a four-year-old child – were forced to abandon their expensive celebrations, which Alexis’ mum paid for.

Over on TikTok, the student nurse went and shared a photo of their wedding day, captioned: “The day I left my fiance on our wedding day.”

Despite the heartbreak, Alexis said it was the ‘best decision’ she made.

“I don’t think that I’ve genuinely ever done anything harder. I felt like it was a decision I had just made but almost I didn’t have a say in it. I didn’t have control over it,” Alexis said.

“It was about 6.00am. I said ‘I’m sorry, we can’t get married today’. He kind of looked at me and went back to sleep.

“I went into another room and called my mum. My sister was on the phone with other family telling them that I wasn’t going to go through with it.

“I wanted him to go grab our daughter so that I could leave because I didn’t really want to be there when everyone woke up and realised that I wasn’t going to get married.

“I woke him up again and said ‘I need you to go get her’. He was super confused and I said ‘we’re not getting married today’.”

The mum-of-one decided to take daughter straight to her mum’s house before moving back into her old apartment.

But leaving the relationship was tough because the couple first met when they were 16, before getting engaged in 2020.

“I was a stay-at-home mum at the time so I had nothing. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have money of my own. Everything was his,” she continued.

“Right after I had wished that I’d gone through with it. I remember thinking, it was about 3.00pm, ‘I’d already be married now’. I got into a really bad place after the wedding.

“I just couldn’t believe that I’d actually made the decision. I regretted it so badly for probably a while. Then it came to a point that I was really happy that I did it.”

Although Alexis said she loved her former partner, she went through a phase of ‘pretending’ she was happy.

With all the challenges ahead, the American still believes it was ‘absolutely the best decision for me and my daughter.’

“[My daughter] was probably the biggest reason I left. It came to a point where if I couldn’t do it for her, then it just isn’t fair. This is her only childhood and I’m in charge of it. That’s the best decision I’ve ever made even if it’s hard to accept,” she added.

“Every time I see him it’s a reminder of why I left. I always wonder sometimes when it’s late at night and I’m in bed and I’m lonely and I’m just like ‘oh I wish I just had my family back’.

“I think of only the good times and then I see him again and it just reminds me all over again all of the bad that outweighs all of the good. And that’s why I left.”

On the first day of trial at Liverpool Crown Court, Axel Rudakubana, 18, entered the guilty pleas.

He was charged with the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, who died in the attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class at The Hart Space shortly before midday on 29 July.

Rudakubana is accused of the attempted murders of eight other children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, class instructor Leanne Lucas, and businessman John Hayes in the same incident.

Cardiff-born Rudakubana was charged with 16 offences, including three counts of murder, and will be sentenced on Thursday.

As well as pleading guilty to possession of a knife, he also admitted production of a biological toxin, ricin, on or before 29 July, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism.

The terrorism offence relates to a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual which he possessed between August 29, 2021 and July 30, 2024.

However, the attack in Southport has not been declared a terrorist incident despite the discovery of the document, Merseyside Police has said.

This comes after Alice’s parents issued an emotional tribute at the funeral service and said: “A good girl, with strong values and kind nature.

“A lover of animals and an environmentalist in the making. You moved our world with your confidence and empathy. Playful, energetic, friendly and always so respectful.”

Bebe King’s mother and father said she had been ‘taken from us in an unimaginable act of violence that has left our hearts broken beyond repair’.

“Our beloved Bebe, only six years old, was full of joy, light and love, and she will always remain in our hearts as the sweet, kind and spirited girl we adore,” they said.

Their older daughter witnessed the attack but managed to escape.

“She has shown such incredible strength and courage, and we are so proud of her,” her parents said.

Elsie’s parents, Jenni and David, also issued a heartfelt tribute to their daughter, a ‘devoted Swiftie’ who ‘brought light, love and joy to so many lives’.

“Elsie spent every day just simply enjoying life with determination, persistence, love and kindness,” they said.

“Elsie was an amazing little girl. She had the ability to light up any room that she entered, she was truly unforgettable.”

Jade-Marie Clark, 32, originally began experiencing what she believed to be an ear infection while pregnant with her first child in March 2020.

The symptoms would subsides after she gave birth to her son in September, only to return three years later during her second pregnancy.

At the time, Jade-Marie had been studying to be a nursery school teacher and brushed the symptoms of as a combination of stress and hormones – however, she would be forced to make a GP appointment after she lost sensation in the corner of her lips.

Concerned about her symptoms, the doctor referred Jade-Marie to her local hospital where she was given the terrifying news that she had a brain tumour known as a acoustic neuroma.

Recalling the moment doctors informed her they’d found a growth, the mum-of-two said: “I burst into tears. Instantly when they said tumour, I just thought it was in my brain and I was going to die.

“I just felt like this couldn’t be happening. You always feel like this is something you hear far away but it’s not going to happen to you.”

Also known as a vestibular schwannoma, an acoustic neuroma is a rare, non-cancerous growth which grows in the nerve responsible for balance and hearing.

The NHS states that acoustic neuromas grow slowly and do not spread to other parts of the body, with symptoms including hearing loss which impacts one ear, headaches, numbness, pain or weakness on one side of the face and temporarily blurred or double vision.

Three months pregnant at the time, Jade-Marie would have to wait until she’d given birth to her second son before undergoing surgery to have the tumour removed.

“This is sick but I remember thinking I hope the tumour does grow so I can get it removed and go back to my life,” she recalled.

Jade-Marie would eventually undergo surgery in April 2024, only to develop facial palsy days later due to the tumour being attached to a nerve.

The complication had a devastating impact for the Glasgow mum, who is now unable to smile or close her right eye.

“I didn’t want to leave the house and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I was just so sad,” she said.

“As well as being anxious, I became really depressed with how I looked. I feel like I underestimated the mental impact of facial palsy.”

Jade-Marie will now undergo a nerve transfer to hopefully restore up to 80 per cent of sensation in her face later in the year, she says.

In the meantime, the mum-of-two has found comfort through social media after sharing her experience on TikTok.

“I found my support through a Facebook group and now I’ve started sharing on TikTok about my brain tumour,” she added.

“Giving someone something to talk to is good for people in my situation to have a support network.”

This isn’t just exclusive to married couples either, with long-term partners also worrying if discussions about household chores or paying the bills will have a negative impact on their sex lives.

Or it could be something more serious than that, especially with the huge access to every corner of the internet at our fingertips.

If this perhaps sounds like a concern of yours (which is probably why you’ve clicked on this article in the first place), then fear not, as an intimacy expert is hear to soothe all of your romantic worries.

In charge of a website which discusses all things sex and relationships is Juli Slattery, as US-based clinical psychologist who often shares content related to intimacy.

In one of her videos – titled ‘How often should married couple have sex?’ – Slattery argues that partners should be aiming to cultivate deeper intimacy with each other rather than hitting an arbitrary number.

READ MORE:

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SEXPERT REVEALS HUGE BEDROOM TURN OFF FOR WOMEN THAT MEN OFTEN DO SIX MONTHS INTO RELATIONSHIPS

“I think it’s important to think about the quality of sexual intimacy within your marriage,” she said.

“Is it just a perpetual ‘hooking up’ because you’re supposed to? Or is it a journey of communication, sharing and fun.”

She then references numerous studies which point to the fact that most married couples tend to engage in sexual intercourse ‘at least once a week’, a figure which can be found in numerous studies regarding couples and their sexual habits.

But just because this is the average it doesn’t mean it’s a piece of advice which you have to follow to the letter.

“If you’re desires and your level of intimacy, fun and interaction is more than that… that’s your normal,” Slattery explained, adding that frequency can differ depending on other factors in a person’s life.

It should be noted that this advice isn’t solely applicable to those who are lawfully wedded and ignoring stories about how others’ life their relationships in favour of building a meaningful partnership isn’t exclusive to whether or not you’ve bothered to make a trip down the aisle because let’s be honest, weddings are extremely expensive.

“The most important thing is that you work towards being on the same page and you’re actually building intimacy together.” Slattery added.

Hopefully this soothes any concerns about your after-hours activities.

Ian Clifford was working for the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) when he was forced to take time off work due to his health in September 2008.

The 50-year-old claimed he was initially signed off on mental health grounds, before he was later diagnosed with stage four leukaemia in 2012.

On his LinkedIn profile, Clifford stated that he was ‘medically retired’ from 2013.

The same year, he raised a grievance with the tech giant as he claimed he had not received a pay rise or any holiday pay over the five-year period he had been out of work.

Clifford managed to reach a ‘compromise agreement’ with his employer and he was put onto its disability plan which prevented him from being dismissed, meaning that he remained an IBM employee, but he had ‘no obligation to work’.

Under this health plan, workers have the right to earn three-quarters of their agreed earnings and Clifford was supposed to receive an annual salary of £54,028 until he turned 65.

This would mean he would have earned about £1.5 million during his years on sick leave – but as IBM has not reviewed his wages since 2013, Clifford launched a legal battle against the firm in February 2022.

He took the US-based firm to an employment tribunal on claims of disability discrimination, with a grievance similar to his initial submission.

The senior IT worker said he had been treated ‘unfavourably’ as he’d received no salary increase since 2013 and complained that the ‘value of the payments would soon wither’ due to punishingly high levels of inflation.

He said: “The point of the plan was to give security to employees not able to work – that was not achieved if payments were forever frozen.”

But the employment tribunal in Reading dismissed his claim, telling the dad that he was getting a ‘very substantial benefit’ and receiving ‘favourable treatment’.

Speaking of his motivations for the legal dispute, Clifford previously said he reckons it’s ‘highly unlikely’ that he will live past the age of 65.

He had hoped that the funds from his employer would allow him to make sure his son was taken care of as he ‘used all his savings’ on the case.

Clifford told The Telegraph in 2023: “I am on chemotherapy and have been for many years and have been extremely unwell.

“Your salary affects your debt service, pension and everything else, it was more for my family.

“People may think, yes, it’s generous, but firstly those amounts are gross not taxed. I do pay national insurance on those amounts.

“I have a son [who is] off to university. Your mortgage doesn’t go down because you are sick.

“I had to use all my savings to bring this case and more and had to borrow money on a credit card… it’s left me financially very vulnerable.”

Clifford said he was aware people would ‘still think its greedy’, however, he believed he was entitled to more cash as ‘that was a benefit he got with the job’.

Despite launching a legal battle against IBM, he explained he had always considered himself as a ‘company man’.

Employment Judge Paul Housego, who dismissed the case, told Clifford ‘it is not disability discrimination that the plan is not even more generous’ than he wanted.

“Even if the value of the £50,000 a year halved over 30 years, it is still a very substantial benefit,” Judge Housego said.