the times | Monday December 6 2021 2GMK1 17
News
Depressed or diabetic women seeking
help from GPs are set to be prescribed
fitness classes.
This Girl Can classes, designed by
Sport England and based on its
successful campaign by the same name,
will be launched across the country
early next year.
Drawing on disciplines including
dancing, boxing and yoga, they are
designed to be non-judgmental
sessions where attendees are encour-
aged to “do your worst”.
Doctors will be encouraged to send
patients to the classes as a form of
“social prescribing”, in which
they try to address an individual’s non-
medical needs — some of which may
contribute to conditions such as
diabetes, depression or obesity — in
conjunction with a link worker.
An estimated one fifth of patients
consult their GPs for something that is
primarily a social problem. The team
behind the exercise programme hope
that it can also address lower physical
activity levels in women than men.
Tim Hollingsworth, the chief exec-
utive of Sport England, said: “Despite
the enormous progress we have made
with supporting more women to get ac-
tive in recent years, the gender gap for
activity stubbornly persists.
“It’s never been more important.
Getting active boosts mental and
physical health, helps manage anxiety
and stress and creates social ties but
millions of women are missing out on
these benefits.” He said that the
pandemic had not helped, with a recent
survey finding that women were taking
longer than men to return to their
pre-pandemic exercise habits.
Gina Johnson, 46, and Morgan Kelly,
25, are friends studying at the
University of Canterbury and attended
a This Girl Can class in Beckenham,
one of the first sites offering them.
“It’s different from any class I’ve done
before,” said Johnson. “It feels like a
modern version of an old-school
Patients could be treated for obesity
with a procedure that takes less than an
hour and turns off their “hungry
hormone”.
The treatment, which is much cheap-
er than standard weight-loss surgery
and is said to be “minimally invasive”,
reduces the production of the appetite-
controlling hormone ghrelin.
A trial supported by £1.2 million from
the National Institute for Health Re-
search will test whether the procedure
is more effective in reducing weight
than receiving diet and exercise advice.
The procedure, called left gastric
artery embolisation (LGAE) and
performed under local anaesthetic,
involves making a small cut in the groin
or wrist and passing a catheter up
through blood vessels. Microscopic
beads are then injected to block blood
Obesity trial turns off ‘hungry hormone’
supply to an area at the top of the stom-
ach. Previous research has suggested
that patients having the procedure for
bleeding stomach ulcers in the top of
the stomach lost more weight than
patients having embolisation to other
organs or other areas of the stomach.
A team at Imperial College London
will recruit 76 obese patients, with half
having the LGAE procedure and the
other half a placebo procedure, at St
Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London.
Ahmed R Ahmed, the trial leader and
clinical senior lecturer in bariatric sur-
gery at Imperial College London, told
The Mail on Sunday that the procedure
would cost the NHS £1,500, a quarter of
the price of normal fat-loss surgery.
“You could go in hungry and come
out not hungry,” he said, adding the trial
was needed as “we really need to know
it’s the intervention itself having the ef-
fect, and it’s not just a placebo effect”.About 25 patients have had LGAE in
the US, where it was developed by
Dr Clifford Weiss of Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine in
Baltimore, Maryland. They included
Kirsten Kerfoot, 32, a nurse who has
since lost six and a half stone.
The mother of one, who is 5ft 11in and
now weighs 15 stone, said: “I can’t re-
member a time in my life when I haven’t
been overweight or obese. I used to see
an advert for Chinese food on the TV
and think, ‘I want it!’ The thought
would stay on my mind for days. That
was my experience my entire life.
“Thanks to the procedure, I don’t fix-
ate on food like that any more.”
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity
Forum, welcomed the trial and said the
NHS had to look at cheaper, quicker
alternatives to bariatric surgery, add-
ing: “Obesity is now such a big problem,
we’ve got to think outside the box.”Ben Webster
I’m a not-for-profit actor,
says Sheen in charity vow
Michael Sheen has said he has turned
himself into a “not-for-profit actor”
through his charitable work on home-
lessness.
The Welsh star, who is known for
playing Tony Blair, David Frost and
Brian Clough, said that he was organis-
ing the 2019 Homeless World Cup in
Cardiff when “suddenly, with not long
to go, there was no money”.
He said: “I had to make a decision: I
could walk away from it and it wouldn’t
happen. I thought, I’m not going to let
that happen, so I put all my money into
keeping it going. I had a house in Amer-
ica and a house here and I put those up
and just did whatever it took. It was
scary and incredibly stressful.”
Speaking to The Big Issue for its Let-
ter To My Younger Self feature, the 52-year-old actor said that it was at this
point that he realised: “I could do this
kind of thing and, if I can keep earning
money, it’s not going to ruin me.”
He said: “There was something quiteliberating about going, ‘All right, I’ll put
large amounts of money into this or
that, because I’ll be able to earn it back
again.’
“I’ve essentially turned myself into a
social enterprise, a not-for-profit actor.”Michael Sheen said
putting his money
into good causes
was “liberating”GPs to prescribe
‘judgment-free’
fitness classes
for women
Katie Gibbons, Kat Lay aerobics class. It’s well thought out and
there’s a real feel-good factor. It’s easy
to keep up, which means you can do all
the moves and end up exercising more.”
Kelly added: “I’ve been to other
classes where there are so many regu-
lars who all know the moves and you
can’t keep up. I’ve left feeling injured.
This class makes you feel really com-
fortable. There’s a real mix of people of
all ages and there’s no judgment.”
Frances Drury, head of activation at
Sport England, said: “We found that a
lot of women had had really powerfully
intense experiences of group exercise
classes, often feeling that they’ve been
judged or embarrassed by an instructor
focusing in on them. So with the in-
structor training we’ve focused on
those soft skills to create a warm and
welcoming environment where it feels
free of judgment.”
She added that many women
experienced sexual harassment in
gyms or while exercising outdoors,
making the provision of female-only
classes important.
Drury said that the focus of the class-
es was not on weight loss but “directly
talking about health”. “What we want to
convey is the joy of exercising in itself
and then trying to tackle the fear and
judgment barrier that we know women
are more likely to experience when it
comes to physical activity.”
EMD, the national governing body
for group exercise, is working with
Sport England on the campaign and
has an online searchable database
where instructors can list their sessions.
They are working to develop this into a
tool for social prescribing, so that GPs
can browse what is available in their
area and suggest it to patients.
Shelley Meyern, head of operations
at EMD, said: “Our expert knowledge
will help GPs to understand which
types of group fitness and exercise are
suitable in relation to prescribing
specific people for various issues or
ailments they might have.”
The wetlands making waves in mental
health, page 23
BRUCE ADAMS/DAILY MAIL/SOLO SYNDICATIONNews
CATIONF
or Simon George,
a train fanatic,
spending eight
years building
Britain’s biggest
model railway was a way
to indulge his passion.
But he made sure to
keep his girlfriend, whom
he met online, in the dark
about his epic 200ft
project, fearing his hobby
might scare her away.
George, 53, who gave
up his job to spend more
time on his ultra-realistic
creation, initially told her
that he was a wine seller.
“When I first met her
she didn’t know I was
building this,” he told the
BBC. “She knew I leased
a mill with a huge
basement but I kind of
led her to believe I was awine merchant because
that sounded cooler than
building a model railway.”
George has now
unveiled the scale model
of 1.5 miles of the Calder
Valley line as it looked in
1983 at Heaton Lodge
junction in Kirklees,
West Yorkshire. The train
set is so big it has to be
transported in three
lorries.
“It depicts the 1980s as
it used to be with lots of
coal trains before the
miners’ strikes.
“When we’re children
we have our own specialplaces, but for me I used
to come here as a child
and spend so much time
watching the freight
trains go past.”
The model was inspired
by his childhood, when
he spent golden moments
hanging over a fence and
watching the trains go by.
It features his 12-year-old
self hanging over a fence,
based on how he
appeared in a photograph
he found in 2014. He
used 400 photographs to
make a picture map of
the area, quickly
realising the work wasgoing to require a
substantial investment of
time and money.
George funded the
£250,000 project by
selling his share in a
supercar driving
experience company.
He met his girlfriend
last year but kept his
passion secret. When she
eventually decided to
surprise him at work and
turned up at the
basement she was
shocked, he said.
He said that railway
magazines had told him it
was Britain’s biggest
model railway but he
never intended to create
a model this size.
The track has gone on
display at Wakefield
Market, West Yorkshire,
until December 19 and
George hopes to take it on
a national tour next year.Girlfriend
kept in dark
over biggest
train set
Simon George has spent
£250,000 creating his
200ft scale model of the
Calder Valley line as it was
in the early 1980s, complete
with dilapidated buildings