High protein diet not as bad for you as smoking

“People who eat diets rich in animal protein carry similar cancer risk to those who smoke 20 cigarettes each day,” reports The Daily Telegraph.

We have decades of very good evidence that smoking kills and – fortunately for meat lovers – this latest unhelpful comparison with high protein diets largely appears to be a triumph of PR spin.

The warning was raised in a press release about a large study which found that for people aged 50-65, eating a lot of protein was associated with an increased risk of dying.

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Social media: how does it really affect our mental health and well-being?

In 1971, the first email was delivered. More than 40 years on, social media has taken the world by storm. Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are now used by 1 in 4 people worldwide. Such activity may seem harmless, but some researchers suggest social media may affect our mental health and well-being.

In 2012, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that Facebook use may feed anxiety and increase a person's feeling of inadequacy.

A more recent study, led by social psychiatrist Ethan Cross of the University of Michigan, found that using Facebook may even make us miserable.

"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection," says Kross. "But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result - it undermines it."

But are such claims exaggerated? Or should we be limiting our use of social media? Medical News Today looks at the evidence.

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