Doctors are warning about the risks of relying on smartphone mindfulness apps, offering meditation and breathing exercises, for your mental health.

The apps have become some of the most popular downloads, offering everything from improved creativity to pain relief.

“We noticed that apps are promising consumers quick, easy, effortless and often instant solutions, to what they’re framing as their health issues,” said Dr Quinn Grundy, a postdoctoral researcher with the Univer- sity of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre.

She said that such quick-fix pledges could be damaging to those seeking help. “If your app has promised that you’ll get better really easily and really quickly and you don’t, consumers shouldn’t feel like there’s something wrong with them,” Dr Grundy said. “Or that their mental health can’t be treated.”

While the apps tout their healing credentials, only a small percentage of them have been created by universities or healthcare professionals.

“There was a couple from the government that we looked at, the Department of Defence for example, and a few from some prominent mental health organisations — and I would say that we had the most confidence in those.”

Many of the apps offer a small amount of content for free, after that users are asked to subscribe. While this has become common to many types of apps, Dr Grundy said those downloading mental health apps were already vulnerable.

“We would argue that mental health consumers are perhaps in a more vulnerable position to things like targeted advertising, or in-app purchases or a subscription model,” she said.

She said app creators, as well as moderators of online stores, needed to face increased regulation.

“Although developers are often the target of regulation, the big players like Apple and Google are really the de facto gate- keepers at the moment,” she said.

One PHD student said she started using a mindfulness app last year to help her with some ‘bouts of anxiety and stress’.

She decided to download an app that was highly-rated in the app store, however it soon began increasing her anxiety.

“The app would ask you to rate on a scale how you felt you’d done in certain areas of the day,” she said. “For example, had you exercised, eaten healthy, had you done any relaxation techniques.”

“If I missed out on a few activities in a day, the app would actually rate my day and it would sort of tell me that I hadn’t had a good day.”

The student said she no longer used a mindfulness app, and recommended using any of these programs in conjunction with professional advice.

(Source: abc.net.au)

Australia’s largest ever fruit and vegetable survey has found that four out of five Australian adults are not eating enough fruit and vegetables in order to meet the Aus- tralian Dietary Guidelines.

The Fruit, Vegetables and Diet Score Report released recently, found one in two (51 per cent) adults are not eating the rec- ommended intake of fruit, while two out of three adults (66 per cent) are not eating enough vegetables.

The report, produced by the CSIRO and commissioned by Horticulture Innovation Australia, compiled the dietary habits of adults across Australia over an 18-month period.

With 145,975 participants nationwide, the survey was the largest of its kind ever conducted in Australia.

The overwhelming message is that most Australians are not as healthy as they think, and need to eat higher quantities and a greater variety of fruit and vegetables every day to meet the minimum Australian benchmark.

To help meet the benchmark, CSIRO sug- gests adults eat at least three serves of dif- ferent vegetables every dinner time.

One of the key findings in the research is that a focus on variety could be the solution to boosting consumption.

People across Australia, in all occupa- tions and weight ranges, were invited to participate in the online survey between May 2015 and October 2016.

Women reported slightly better fruit and vegetable consumption with 24 per cent meeting both guidelines, compared with only 15 per cent of men surveyed.

When comparing the figures by occupation, construction workers and those in the science and programming sector recorded the poorest fruit and vegetable eating habits.

On the other hand, retirees and health industry workers were more likely to meet the recommended dietary guidelines.

To find out how your diet stacks up and if you’re eating enough fruit and vegetables, take a few minutes to complete the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score survey – a free online questionnaire which evaluates diet quality and identifies individual areas of improve- ment, as well as providing a personal diet score out of 100.

To take the free CSIRO Healthy Diet Score please visit www.csirodietscore. com