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Asked by anon-180745 to Sam, Amy, Viren, Noel, Abby on 12 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-180741.
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Abby Hunter answered on 12 Jun 2018:
A study I have just started will involve exploring what healthcare professionals think about the use of electronic cigarettes in pregnancy. We will be interviewing GPs, midwives, health visitors, and stop smoking practitioners to find out what their current practice is with a pregnant smoker, what is their knowledge of electronic cigarettes, what are their attitudes towards electronic cigarettes and are they aware/do they follow current guidelines and policies.
No research has explored the topic of EC in pregnancy from the perspective of health professionals. EC are controversial because of the limited research available, however Public Health England state that they are 95% safer than cigarettes and where someone has failed to quit using other means, EC should be recommended, including to pregnant smokers.
We do not advocate that someone who is not a smoker should try vaping because they are not without their risks, but compared to cigarettes the risk is minimal.
The findings from our research will help us to understand the current context, what level of training is received and when training in smoking cessation is best offered. Ultimately, the findings will inform national policy and guidelines towards educating and training health professionals to advise pregnant women about the use of EC. This understanding is important if we are to train HCP in England to effectively support women who smoke in pregnancy or postpartum and are considering using or currently using EC to aid cessation.
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Sam Burton answered on 12 Jun 2018:
The plan of my next couple of studies is to see what makes people’s suddenly become worse at controlling their behaviour around alcohol. My last study examined if when people are told they can win money are they better at not drinking or approaching alcohol related stimuli. I’m now planning to do a looks at people’s self control using mobile phones, and monitoring their behaviour across a longer period of time and how much alcohol they consume. it’ll allow lot more detailed data to be collected, and see how people behave in their natural environment.
This can potentially go on to help better inform treatment plans for those wishing to cut down on the amount of alcohol they consume.If we know what sorts of environments, emotions, or motivations can trigger poorer self control, we can try to treat them.Alcohol addiction is a massive burden on the NHS and the other conditions that can stem from it, liver conditions and cancer. So it can potentially help a lot of individuals.
It has been discussed in research there is an overlap in the mechanism of substance use disorders, so a treatment for alcohol addiction might also work, for heroin addicts for example as well.
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Noel Brick answered on 12 Jun 2018:
This is such a great question!
For me, it to help people get more exercise. If we can understand more about our thoughts, for example, and how these might influence exercise behaviours, then that is really important. We know that people don’t get enough exercise, but as scientists, we don’t know as much as we would like to about how we can change this. We know some things, but we have so much more we need to study and find out!
My next studies are going to look at things like can what people focus their attention on, or how they think during exercise, and how this influences their decisions to keep exercising or to stop/quit. The question is can we learn from this? Can we use psychological strategies to help people cope with the demands of exercise a little better? Can these strategies help to reduce the number of people who quit exercise programmes. We know, for example, that a few months after starting an exercise programme, 50% of people will have dropped out. So anything we can do to reduce the number of people dropping out of exercise programmes is really positive for the health of the population -
Amy Warnock answered on 15 Jun 2018:
I’m interested in obesity and all the different factors that can change what and how much we eat. We already know quite a lot about how negative moods such as stress and anxiety can change our feeding behaviour but we still know very little about how being happy can change what we eat – so that’s what my PhD has been focusing on! Obesity is a huge problem in society and we still know very little about exactly what causes it, and there are also very few effective treatments (the only treatment that is truly effective in the long term is gastric band/bypass surgery). So it’s really important that we learn about all the different factors and mechanisms that can alter feeding behaviour and perhaps lead to obesity. In the past lots of drugs have been trialled for obesity and most of them have been withdrawn because they have lots of mood related side effects, so we know that there are links between the brain circuits that control our mood and what we eat. I’m hoping that by studying how happiness can change our food choices we might be able to learn more about these brain circuits and perhaps develop more effective treatments for obesity!
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