Features

Sexual harassment and sexual abuse occur frequently and can harm physical and mental health, according to two studies from the US and Europe published in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

In one study, roughly one in five Pittsburgh-area women said they had been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted. These women were two to three times more likely to have high blood pressure, high triglycerides, poor sleep, depression or anxiety. 

In the other study, 70 per cent of male and female physicians in Berlin, Germany, said they had experienced sexual harassment or misconduct at work. 

“Experiences of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, unfortunately, are not uncommon,” said Rebecca Thurston, director of the women’s behavioural health laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre. “And these experiences have implications for not only job performance and quality of life, but also for mental and physical health.” 

Among the 304 women aged 40 to 60 who participated in Thurston’s study, 19 per cent said they had been sexually harassed at work and 23 per cent said they had been sexually assaulted. 

These percentages are lower than what’s been reported nationally, possibly because some women in the study did not work outside the home, Thurston said. The women were originally recruited for a study of hot flashes and atherosclerosis. 

Thurston’s team found that compared to women who had not been sexually harassed, women who had were 2.36 times more likely to have high blood pressure and 89 per cent more likely to have poor sleep. In newer findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society in San Diego, Thurston and colleagues reported that the likelihood of having high triglycerides was three times higher in sexually harassed women. 

Thurston suspects that being harassed kicks off changes in stress hormone levels, which ultimately impact blood pressure, triglycerides and sleep patterns. 

Similar results were seen among women who said they had been sexually assaulted. They were 2.86 times more likely to have clinical depression, 2.26 times more likely to have clinical anxiety and 2.15 times more likely to have poor sleep. 

Dr Mayumi Okuda, a psychiatrist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Centre in New York City, is not surprised by the findings. Research in children “shows that adverse childhood experiences are connected to so many things, such as high blood pressure, cancer, obesity”, said Okuda. “This shows that even adults will experience negative health consequences.” 

The German survey of 737 physicians found 62 per cent of men and 76 per cent of women had experienced some sort of sexual harassment in the workplace. While the idea of men being harassed may be surprising, certain types of conversations can make men very uncomfortable, said senior researcher Dr Sabine Oertelt-Prigione, a professor and chair of Gender in Primary and Transmural Care at Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 

For men, “the vulgar talk has to be specifically addressed towards you or an immediate bystander”, Oertelt-Prigione said in an e-mail. “The question in the questionnaire explicitly addressed this directionality. We are not talking about somebody telling a general vulgar joke to a group of colleagues.” 

Sexual harassment “is an issue for anyone in the workplace”, Oertelt-Prigione said. It flourishes in workplaces where there is a strong formal hierarchy, “where orders are generally given top-down with little opportunity for participation from employees”, Oertelt-Prigione explained. 

Lori Post, who was not involved in either study, suspects that if the questionnaire had been worded differently, Oertelt-Prigione’s study would have found an even higher prevalence of sexual harassment. “I believe the rate is closer to 100 per cent,” said Post, who is director of the Buehler Centre for Health Policy and Economics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The difference is in how often and how bad it is.” 

Post also believes Thurston’s harassment numbers might have been higher if the Pittsburgh team had not excluded women with heart disease from the study, since heart disease could be correlated with harassment. 

The solution to health problems related to harassment and abuse is to prevent these behaviours from happening in the first place, Okuda said. “There has to be a cultural shift away from condoning this kind of behaviour.” 

By Sheela Sheth

Food Expert

In my home country India, Borage, an annual brilliant blue bloom also known as a starflower, is used as a tea. This herb grows all over the world as an ornamental plant that attracts beneficial insects to preserve precious gardens. Let me share with you some of the uses and benefits of Borage, which I have discovered over the years.

Borage has popularly entered the herbal classification due to its rich aroma and cosmetic and curative properties. In India, we use Borage for consumption as the leaves are less fuzzy and its flavour resembles thyme and oregano. We use it to protect, nurse and enhance flavours and texture in plants like legumes, spinach, strawberries and tomatoes. The plant grows to a height of 60 to 100 centimetres tall, and its flowers turn from pink to blue when fully grown.

Flavourful herb: traditionally Borage was cultivated for culinary and medicinal purpose but today, it is commercially grown as an oilseed. I use it is either as a fresh or a dry herb and it has the freshness of cucumber and aroma of oregano, sage, thyme and mint. I often use it in cocktails, desserts and salads to complement taste and presentation. The flowers are often used for infusing teas due to its minty flavour. The Indian Borage is sharper in taste and its aroma could be mistaken for thyme or oregano, which is used for flavouring meat and fish. In South East Asia, it is used as a soup condiment.

Curative property: The Indian Borage has a host of health benefits which are a little different in appearance and taste than its counterparts. The fuzzy flowering plant adorned with purple blue vibrant colour is often mistaken for weed and pulled out by most gardeners. Its rich medicinal property has been known to be helpful for respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders. It also aids in overcoming cramps, colic and diarrhoea. The pulp of the leaves is often used to cure sores, psoriasis, herpes, insect bites, nail fungus, eczema to relieve itching and skin irritation. It is known to be rich in Omega 6 fatty acids.

Borage oil in cosmetics: Borage seed oil is one of the richest sources of gamma linoleic acid and is used in high-end cosmetic formulation. It is known to nourish and hydrate the skin besides being perfect for mature skin where regeneration of new skin cells is required. Borage leaves are used for making soap and are added to nourishing creams. At home, the paste can be used externally for skin conditions and a rejuvenating bath.

 Borage oil is not recommended for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Be sure to consult your a doctor before attempting any herbal remedies.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Elsewhere, Home

Leila Aboulela

London, Telegram, 2018

Pp. 216

Sudanese-British writer Leila Aboulela’s prose is so compelling because she is able to convey strong emotions and decisive moments in a very subtle way, using small details to indicate much larger changes or themes. This collection of thirteen short stories shows that she has had this talent from the beginning of her writing, for it includes her very first stories as well as recent ones. Most revolve around themes of faith, cultural differences and cross-cultural identity, as do her four novels. In her rendition, addressing cultural differences does not seem intended to pull people apart, but to help them genuinely understand each other. 

The title of the book, “Elsewhere, Home”, is a good example of expressing a larger theme in a lowkey metaphor. Most of the main characters in the stories either straddle two societies or are living in a country not their original one. Some are happy to have “escaped” Sudan or Africa, while others are lost or homesick or bored in the UK. Some no longer know where home is.

In one story, the relationship between a mother and daughter shifts as they travel from London for their annual summer visit to Cairo. In the UK, Nadia is embarrassed by her mother’s poor English and Egyptian ways. “But she could also change the lens and see what her mother saw.” (p. 4)

Preconceptions shift when a Scottish convert to Islam falls in love with a Sudanese woman in Edinburgh. She is surprised by his conversion: “She associated Islam with dark skin, her African blood, her own weakness. She couldn’t really understand why anyone like him would want to join the wretched of the world.” (p. 29)

Yet, another story reflects the lingering aftereffects of colonialism in how African students struggle in higher education courses in the UK for which they have had no preparation. The main character in this story is a female Sudanese student who does not jump at the chance to marry a foreigner.

Some stories contrast the devotion of recent converts to Islam with that of those who are born Muslim. Others are about the disappointments of Arab-British marriages, and the effects on their children, some of whom are raised without religion, but rediscover Islam as young adults.

Some characters are double migrants, manoeuvring between three totally different environments, like Yasir who has a Scottish wife and daughter in Aberdeen, works two-week shifts on a North Sea oil rig, and visits his mother and siblings in Khartoum. Others live alone in order to pursue a job offer. “It seemed that the fate of our generation is separation, from our country or our family. We are ready to go anywhere in search of the work we cannot find at home.” (p. 149)

Thus, Aboulela comments on the irony that pursuing higher education may improve one’s standard of living but at the expense of family ties. 

Some stories zoom in on women’s situation, like “Farida’s Eyes” when a brilliant young student almost fails before her father listens to the teacher who told him long ago that she needs glasses. In another, very complex story, a Sudanese woman must deflect her husband’s over- admiration of the West which amounts to self-hate. Her point of view is quite different. She always finds it difficult to return from visiting her family because “in Khartoum I felt everything was real and our life in London a hibernation”. (p. 86)

She misses “the essence of my country… Those everyday miracles, the poise between normality and chaos. The awe and the breathtaking gratitude for simple things”. (p. 98)

Another story points to the options open to women who do not get married before it is considered “too late”. Yet, another shows the pro’s and con’s of being the daughter of a radical feminist.

To put things in perspective, not every story revolves around cultural differences as defined by country. One story revolves around the failure of a marriage where the husband and wife ostensibly have similar cultural backgrounds. Another focuses on grief, yet another in the difference between an author’s progressive writing and her real-life personality. 

Although all the stories have social or spiritual themes, they are first and foremost literary, making their point via imaginative plots and flowing prose. Aboulela’s characters are very well-drawn. Despite the brevity of short stories, none of them are mere symbols of cultural traits. It is also inspiring how the conflicts in the stories are seen from both sides by virtue of the way the author charts the plots. The multicultural world she creates in her fiction is neither the nightmare depicted by racists nor the paradise promised by idealists. Rather, it is close to real life.

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have pinpointed what appears to be the first moon detected outside our solar system, a large gaseous world the size of Neptune that is unlike any other known moon and orbits a gas planet much more massive than Jupiter.

The discovery, recently detailed by researchers, was a surprise and not because it showed that moons exist elsewhere — they felt it was only a matter of time for one to be found in another star system. They were amazed instead by how different this moon was from the roughly 180 known in our solar system.

“It’s big and weird by solar system standards,” Columbia University Astronomy Professor David Kipping said of the moon, known as an exomoon because it is outside our solar system. 

Our solar system’s moons all are rocky or icy objects. The newly discovered exomoon and the planet it orbits, estimated to be several times the mass of our solar system’s largest planet Jupiter, are both gaseous, an unexpected pairing. They are located 8,000 light years from Earth.

Kipping and study co-author Alex Teachey, a Columbia graduate student, said their observations using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler Space Telescope provided the first clear evidence of an exomoon, but further Hubble observations next May must be used to confirm the finding.

The exomoon is exponentially larger than our solar system’s biggest moon. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede has a diameter of about 5,260km. The exomoon is estimated to be roughly the size of Neptune, the smallest of our solar system’s four gas planets, with a diameter of about 49,000km.

The exomoon and its planet orbit Kepler-1625, a star similar in temperature to our sun but about 70 per cent larger. The exomoon orbits roughly 3 million kilometres from its planet. The exomoon’s mass is about 1.5 per cent that of its planet.

Kipping and Teachey relied on the “transit” method already used by researchers to discover nearly 4,000 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets. They observed a dip in Kepler-1625b’s brightness when the planet and then the exomoon passed in front of it.

The size and gaseous composition of the exomoon challenge current moon formation theories.

“You could argue that because larger objects are easier to detect than smaller ones, this is really the lowest-hanging fruit, so it might not be wholly unexpected that the first exomoon detection would be among the largest possible,” Teachey said.

The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.

Vitamin D supplementation may not improve bone density or prevent fractures and falls in adults, a large new analysis suggests. 

After combining data from 81 randomised controlled trials, researchers found no bone benefits from supplementing the vitamin, according to the report in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. 

“Our results show that there is little reason for adults to take vitamin D supplements for their bones to protect against fractures, except people from high risk groups, such as those who have a prolonged lack of exposure to sunshine,” said study co-author Alison Avenell of the University of Aberdeen in the UK. “For example, older people in institutions who never go outside.” 

Vitamin D supplements have long been recommended to seniors for treating and preventing the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis. Avenell and her colleagues would like to see guideline changes that steer people away from the supplements. 

For the new study, Avenell and her colleagues scoured the medical literature for studies that examined the impact of vitamin D supplementation on bone health. Ultimately they settled on 81 trials with a total of 53,537 participants. The length of time participants were studied varied widely, ranging from four weeks to as long as five years. More than three quarters of the trials included women over age 65. 

Although most of the trials lasted a year or less, “25 trials had follow-up longer than one year”, Avenell said in an e-mail. “There were eight trials with over 33,000 participants that followed people up for three to five years. So the majority of the data comes from large, long-term trials.” 

The researchers did not calculate a median or average age for participants in the studies, but most were 65 or older, Avenell noted. 

Most of the trials did not focus on participants with bone issues. But, Avenell said, “one trial recruited people with low bone density, one with osteoporosis, six with people who had previous fractures — including one of the biggest with over 5,000 participants — 17 others were in older people from falls clinics, nursing homes or hospitals where increased risk of fracture was likely. Very few trials were in healthy younger populations”. 

When the researchers pooled the data from all 81 trials, they found that vitamin D supplementation had no effect on the number of fractures and falls. Nor did the dosage of vitamin D seem to make any difference. Supplements also did not appear to increase bone density. 

One big issue in studying vitamin D is there is no consensus on what a healthy level of the nutrient is, Avenell said. 

“There’s a lot of disagreement between different bodies producing guidelines around the world,” she added. “Our work would suggest that it’s a lot less than people have thought.” 

While the new findings may hold true for the average person, they may be wrong for people whose bones have already thinned, said Ethel Siris, director of the Toni Stabile Osteoporosis Centre at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Centre and a professor of medicine at Columbia University. 

“The main reason older women begin to lose bone mass and to have fractures is loss of oestrogen at menopause,” Siris said. “A risk factor for it getting worse is low levels of calcium or vitamin D. There’s an argument about how much is needed, but if there’s a bone problem already, you want to make sure you’re adequately covered with respect to calcium and vitamin D.” 

The risks associated with vitamin D are tiny, Siris said. “And while we’d rather people got their vitamin D through their diet, we will add a pill if necessary. My patients can’t afford to have a vitamin D deficiency.” 

The bottom line on the new study, Siris said, “is it’s not changing my point of view with respect to the types of people I take care of”. 

Siris said she’s concerned that news about the new research will convince people who already have brittle bones to stop taking their vitamin D supplements. “People read [news stories] about these things and assume what they read yesterday is the current truth,” she added. 

The commonly used painkiller diclofenac may be linked with an increased risk of heart problems, a large Danish study suggests. 

Diclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that is often used to treat arthritis and other painful joint conditions. In many countries, it is available without a prescription. 

Researchers found that the rate of first-time cardiovascular events was 20 to 30 per cent higher among people who started taking diclofenac than among people who started taking ibuprofen or naproxen, which are also NSAIDs, or paracetamol (acetaminophen). These events included heart attacks, development of an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation, or death from heart problems. 

The rate of new heart problems was 50 per cent higher for diclofenac users than for people who were not taking any painkillers. 

The researchers analysed data from the Danish national patient registry. Altogether, they had information on nearly 1.4 million diclofenac users, 3.9 million ibuprofen users, 292,000 naproxen users, 765,00 paracetamol users and 1.3 million people not on any of these painkillers. 

“It is important to note that the absolute risk for the individual patient is low,” Morten Schmidt, lead author of the study, told Reuters Health in an e-mail. 

For example, among every 400 study participants taking diclofenac, roughly one person per year had a cardiovascular event, his team calculated. 

Fewer people had cardiovascular events while taking other painkillers. 

Schmidt and his coauthors say there is little reason to use diclofenac before trying other NSAIDs first. The drug should not be available over the counter, they say, and when prescribed, should be accompanied by appropriate warnings about its potential risks. 

The increased risk was apparent even within 30 days of starting the drug and even with low doses, the researchers reported in The BMJ. 

Schmidt said diclofenac was also associated with an increased gastrointestinal bleeding risk compared with ibuprofen. 

“The real question is, do these different NSAIDs carry different risks... and the study showed that modestly diclofenac appears to be worse,” David Kaufman, director of the Slone Epidemiology Centre at Boston University, who was not involved with the study, told Reuters Health by phone. 

Because it was not a controlled experiment, the study cannot prove that diclofenac actually caused more cardiovascular events. Still, the authors say, their study included more people than most previous analyses and provides strong evidence to guide clinical decision making. 

“It is time to acknowledge the potential health risk of diclofenac and to reduce its use,” the research team concluded. 

While more and more transactions today take place online, in the virtual world, silently, the need to meet with and talk to real human beings not only has not died, but even seems on the rise. Is it the effect of too much social media recently, of excessive automation and remote networking? Are consumers looking for a new, more balanced way to use networks and to interact with each other?

One tangible proof of this unexpected trend is the upcoming GITEX annual technology exhibition that will open on October 14 in Dubai and will last for five days. Most people were thinking that such giant events were doomed and that online browsing, playing, testing, viewing and buying would eventually kill shows, however great or popular they have been so far, from GITEX to CeBit in Germany and the mega CES in the USA.

Major tech shows are not only surviving rather well, but everything this year seems to indicate that they are benefiting from increasing booking and almost certainly increased attendance, which constitutes a radical change from the last five years or so.

Dubai’s Gitex is a world reference, and the biggest such exhibition in the entire Gulf and MENA region. This year, and in addition to the commanding presence of the two heavyweight sponsors, Hewlett-Packard and Intel, two long-time pillars of the industry, the strong, much publicised participation of Chinese Huawei is clear indication of the market penetration of the maker.

Huawei’s role as a strategic partner at GITEX 2018 is indeed a multiple indicator. It shows the importance of hardware devices and equipment (as opposed to networks, cloud, or the Internet), it puts forward the manufacturer’s range of impressive laptop computers, telling the population that Huawei is far from being limited to making smartphones, and it stresses the tough competition between the Chinese and South Korean market, mainly with Samsung.

Apart from Huawei’s strong presence, GITEX will also feature a wide array of virtual reality and augmented reality products, and the usual series of conferences, some presented by speakers from Amazon and Google. Linksys will present more smart home devices and systems, essentially based on WiFi, and featuring advanced yet easy to use remote surveillance cameras and home alarms — another significant IT trend.

Also very trendy, systems for easier and cheaper travel and hotel booking, will be presented. From the advertisements seen on almost all TV channels over the last few months, smart travel and hotel booking certainly constitute a significant trend and a big market segment.

An innovative system, definitely confirming and even underlying the above mentioned “human factor” will be “Be Your Eyes”, an original IT-based solution for the visually impaired visitors. It is presented at Gitex as “…the largest global online community for blind and visually impaired. It is currently used in more than 150 countries by more than 90,000 blind and visually impaired people…”

The resurging success of live tech shows perfectly illustrates what we all feel unconsciously. That one way of using technology does not necessarily exclude the others. It is all about common sense and balance. Meeting real people at computer shows and talking to them perfectly complements any only experience we may live by sitting alone behind our laptop and browsing the web.

PARIS — Nearly half of women and one in three men are at risk of developing stroke or degenerative neurological diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s during their lifetime, according to a study published on Monday.

Dutch researchers considered all three conditions “in order to grasp how big the problem of incurable brain diseases in late life really is”, said the study’s senior author Arfan Ikram.

“We grouped these diseases together not only because they are common but also because there are indications that these often co-occur and might share some overlapping causes,” Ikram, of the Erasmus MC University Medical Centre Rotterdam in the Netherlands, told AFP.

This could mean there are also overlapping ways to delay or avoid getting the diseases, and the research found that some preventative strategies may cut the risk by between 20 and 50 per cent.

For the study, published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, researchers tracked more than 12,000 healthy people over the age of 45 from 1990 to 2016.

Over the 26 years, 5,291 people died. Nearly 1,500 were diagnosed with dementia — 80 per cent with Alzheimer’s — while 1,285 had a stroke and 263 developed Parkinson’s.

The results indicated that the likelihood of women aged 45 years or older getting the diseases was 48 per cent, while it was 36 per cent for men.

The gender split is mostly due to the fact that men die earlier than women, Ikram said.

Two per cent of GDP

“Our study does not show some sort of protective effect for men,” he said. “Instead it is merely due to fewer men surviving to old age.”

Because they live longer, women have an increased risk of such diseases, and the study found women were twice as likely as men to develop both dementia and stroke.

While there are no cures for these diseases, a healthy lifestyle — a good diet, not smoking or having diabetes — can protect against stroke and help prevent the onset of dementia, Ikram said. 

There are also indications that a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of Parkinson’s, he added.

The cost of the three neurological diseases is believed to be more than two per cent of the world’s annual economic productivity (GDP), the researchers said in a statement.

However, while the dangers of other illnesses such as breast cancer and heart diseases are well known, “the same can’t be said of dementia, stroke and Parkinsonism”, the statement said.

The researchers noted that as the study only included people of European ancestry with a relatively long life expectancy, it “might not be applicable to other ethnicities/populations”.

Worldwide, about 7 per cent of people over 65 suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia, a percentage that rises to 40 per cent above the age of 85.

The number afflicted is expected to triple by 2050 to 152 million, according to the World Health Organisation, posing a huge challenge to healthcare systems.

I do not know about you, but I found myself glued to the American TV news channels last week. There was high drama being enacted right in front of the world stage and I did not even blink, for fear of missing some of the action. As discussions about Brett Kavanaugh — the American attorney and judge, who is currently a nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Christine Blassey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto university, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when she was in high school some 35 years ago — gathered steam, more skeletons came tumbling out of the closet.

During his long testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, though Kavanaugh denied committing any sexual misdemeanour or ever blacking out as a result of over-drinking, he mentioned beer 28 to 30 times! As he put it, “I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. I don’t know if you do. Do you like beer, Senator, or not? What do you like to drink?”

So, why do so many people, including Kavanaugh, like beer? Considered as the third most popular beverage, after water and tea, it is supposed to be one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks. It contains ethanol, which has short and long-term inebriating effects on the user when consumed. Drinking it in moderation causes increased self-confidence, possible euphoria and decreased anxiety. But excess consumption leads to slurred speech, impaired fine muscle coordination, staggering, dizziness and vomiting.

Before 6000 BCE, beer was made from barley in Sumer and Babylonia. The basic techniques of brewing came to Europe from the Middle East where the monastic orders preserved brewing as a craft. Hops were in use in Germany in the 11th century, and in the 15th century they were introduced into Britain from Holland. In 1420, beer was made in Germany by a bottom-fermentation process, so called because the yeast tended to sink to the bottom of the brewing vessel; before that, the type of yeast used tended to rise to the top of the fermenting product and was allowed to overflow or was manually skimmed. 

Oktoberfest, the world’s largest beer festival is held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany since 1810 and has more than 6 million people from around the world attending the event every year.

Right! Drinking a can or two of beer is supposed to be a harmless sort of activity that at best, makes one jovial and at worst, gives one a protruding beer belly. Sticking to one or two cans of the draught is the key because over indulgence of this deceptively safe brew, gives rise to belligerence, aggression and hostile behaviour on the part of the drinker.

This was apparent when the interrogation progressed with Kavanaugh during the Senate judiciary examination. At some point, alcohol (particularly, how much Kavanaugh drank) turned out to be the centre of the hearing as his answers about drinking too much became evasive, vague and defensive. 

“You know what Brett Kavanaugh should do?” I asked my husband. 

He ignored my question and kept watching TV.

“He should forget about the Supreme Court of USA,” I said. 

“He must go to Germany instead,” I continued.

“And offer to become a mascot for Oktoberfest,” I suggested.  

“With the tagline — I like beer, do you?” my spouse laughed.

Women who drink extra water to avoid urinary tract infections (UTIs) may be on to something. A new experiment offers fresh evidence that drinking more water each day can make UTIs less frequent. 

For the study, researchers focused on 140 women with recurrent UTIs who typically drank fewer than 1.5 litres of fluid a day. For 12 months, researchers asked half of these women to continue their usual fluid intake and asked the other half to drink an additional 1.5 litres of water daily. 

Over the year, women who drank more water had an average of 1.7 UTIs, compared with 3.2 on average for women who did not add extra water to their diets, the experiment found. 

“The data strongly suggest that hydration status is associated with UTI risk,” said lead study author Dr Thomas M. Hooton, of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. 

 “If a woman has recurrent UTI, she should consider her daily fluid intake and try to increase it to at least two to three litres a day,” Hooton said by e-mail. 

Roughly half of women will experience at least one UTI at some point, researchers note in JAMA Internal Medicine. Once women do have that first UTI, 27 per cent of them will have another one within six months, and 44 per cent to 70 per cent will have another UTI within a year. 

Women have long been advised that staying hydrated can help minimize their risk of these infections. But until now, researchers did not have decisive proof that drinking more water can prevent UTIs, the study authors note. 

The women in the current study were generally healthy, but they had experienced at least three UTIs in the previous year, including at least one infection that had been confirmed by a clinician with urine tests. All of the participants also reported drinking less than 1.5 litres of fluid daily. 

Among women assigned to increase their water intake, participants drank an average of 1.7 litres more of fluids each day by the end of the study than they did at the start. Women in the control group that was not asked to boost water consumption did not experience a meaningful change in fluid intake over the course of the study. 

One limitation of the study is that it was done at a single location, making it possible that results could be different for patients elsewhere, the authors note. 

Results for these women at high risk for repeat UTIs also might differ from what would happen with women with a lower risk of UTIs, noted Dr Deborah Grady, author of an accompanying editorial and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. 

It is also hard to give women an exact amount of water to consume to prevent UTIs, Grady said by e-mail. 

“The theory is that drinking more water results in more urine production, which flushes out bacteria in the bladder and prevents infection,” Grady said. “More water usually isn’t harmful, but it can result in the need for frequent urination and having to get up at night to urinate.”