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BBC Strictly Come Dancing's Amy Dowden supported over 'exciting' announcement linked to 'invisible illness'

BBC Strictly Come Dancing's Amy Dowden supported over 'exciting' announcement linked to 'invisible illness'

Yahoo19-05-2025
Amy Dowden has been flooded with messages of praise and support as she made an announcement linked to suffering from an 'invisible illness'.
The Strictly Come Dancing star has been living with Crohn's Disease since she was a teenager, and earlier this year, she was formally made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her work as a Crohn's & Colitis UK ambassador.
Now, Amy teamed up with Crohn's & Colitis UK to launch a range of merchandise raising awareness of Inflammatory Bowel Disease which affects more than half a million people in the UK.
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The Amy Dowden X Crohn's & Colitis UK: It Takes Courage range of t-shirts and tote bags is on sale from today, May 19th, which is World IBD Day.
Amy's design features one of her favourite flowers, the sweet pea, surrounded by purple hearts, which are symbols of the Crohn's and Colitis community worldwide. Every item will be printed to order by Everpress Ltd and a minimum of 20% of the sales (excluding VAT) during the campaign will be donated to Crohn's & Colitis UK.
"Raising awareness is vital and it takes real courage to live with Crohn's or Colitis every day, so I wanted to celebrate that with this design," Amy said in a statement.
"I'm so proud to be an ambassador for Crohn's & Colitis UK. I'd say to anyone else with Inflammatory Bowel Disease that you might feel overwhelmed sometimes, but you're not alone. There's so much strength in the Crohn's & Colitis UK community and it's such an amazing charity."
She also shared a message in a post shared by Crohn's & Colitis UK as she modelled the T-shirt range on Monday (May 19): "As it's World IBD Day, there's no better time to share some exciting news.
"I'm so proud to have been invited to collaborate with @crohnsandcolitisUK to design their mfirst ever merchandise drop! This artwork means a lot to me, as I know all to well that it takes courage to live with IBD."I want to help Crohn's & Colitis UK spread the message, and now you can too! Our collaboration pieces are now live and available for pre-order. A minimum of 20% of the sales (excluding VAT) of the campaign will be donated by Everpress Limited to Crohn's & Colitis UK."Order your own by going to the link in the @crohnsandcolitisuk bio, under 'World IBD day' click 'Amy Dowden x Crohn's & Colitis UK' or visit www.everpress.com/profile/crohn-s-colitis-uk. I hope you love it as much as I do!"
And the messages of support came flooding in. @angelinaballerina1607 said: "So proud of you, can't wait to get my hands on some." @tracey.lewis2018 commented: "Brilliant partnership @crohnsandcolitisuk Well done Looks fab and wearable while raising positive awareness
@ibdsucks.withina wrote: "Oh I love it." @countrylifewith__jo replied: "Beautiful @amy_dowden and fab attire." @amysdowdenn added: "Love these so cute."
The Amy Dowden X Crohn's & Colitis UK: It Takes Courage range is available to buy online at https://everpress.com/amy-dowden-x-crohns-and-colitis-uk and via the Crohn's & Colitis UK website www.crohnsandcolitis.org.uk.
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Dapper puppets in a fantasy forest? Step inside this SoCal spot filled with handmade wonder
Dapper puppets in a fantasy forest? Step inside this SoCal spot filled with handmade wonder

Los Angeles Times

time2 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

Dapper puppets in a fantasy forest? Step inside this SoCal spot filled with handmade wonder

With a playful spirit and a childlike sense of curiosity, it's perhaps no surprise that the whimsically named Museum of Make Believe appealed instantly to a young audience. The Laguna Beach space, a 1,000-square-foot love letter to fairy tales, is a fantastical, mystical wonderland, where fables of lost love, ghostly pets and irresistible avarice are told via miniature installations and ornate, storybook art. Its founders, however, had a different audience in mind. 'We built it for adults,' says Museum of Make Believe cofounder Amy Mitchell, who opened the space with her longtime partner, Geoff Mitchell, just over a year ago. 'The first week we were open, we were stunned that we had kids coming — hordes of kids.' Calming and handcrafted, to wander into the Museum of Make Believe feels akin to stepping into an antique playground, though its creations are modern. It's a fantasy forest sprung to life, complete with a centerpiece tree and felt and ceramic sculptures of dapperly dressed felines and canines. Only this dreamland is dedicated to timeless tales laced with life lessons. While designed to be family friendly, the narratives tap into the approach of fairy tales of yore — that is, they can be dark, and decidedly heartbreaking, despite a welcoming dragon with piercing emerald eyes among the first items guests encounter. As Amy and Geoff adjusted to a younger audience, they made some small tweaks. Up went minifences, as much of the art in the Museum of Make Believe is fragile. The majority of pieces were designed by Geoff, a fine artist who has exhibited at multiple galleries and museums, including the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim. Amy estimates the couple spends about two to three hours each evening repairing paint and foam. But it's worth it, she says. 'I don't want to lose the charm of the handmade-ness,' Amy says. The all-ages appeal of the museum is a testament to the everlasting approach of the couple's narratives, which handle difficult life moments with a fanciful nature, but never hold your hand. I teared up at one story, 'The Hourglass,' a tale of a decades-long love for another that went unanswered until life's final moments. It's not an entirely uncommon reaction to some of the stories within the Museum of Make Believe. There are moments, for instance, that touch on losing a pet. 'We had a lady who came in during our first few months of being open,' says Amy, whose stories tend melancholy. 'She sat in the back and cried for like 15 minutes. She came by herself, and said, 'I wasn't really prepared for this, but I needed it.' She needed the atmosphere and the environment, and sometimes it's a little cathartic.' Cathartic, but also emblematic of a simple story done well, and a reminder that fairy tales are not just hopeful yarns of a happily ever after. They're narratives that tap into life's universalities and help us make sense of the world around us. And the Museum of Make Believe is partly the result of a tension in Geoff's art — his love, for instance, of folklore and Disneyland, but a fear that giving into those tendencies will betray a desire to be a serious artist. 'I went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design,' Geoff says. 'It was very conceptual, and it was very strict. If you were going to make art that its intention was to be beautiful — that it was beauty for the sake of the beauty — you probably have a very good very reason that you're doing that, but entertainment was frowned upon. ... It took probably 15 years to decide, 'Oh, to hell with it, I'm just going to do what I want to do.'' Amy and Geoff, high school sweethearts who met in their teens in Gulfport, Miss., are today in their early 50s, and the Museum of Make Believe has become a labor of love. Run as a nonprofit, the two take no salary from the space, as each penny goes back into realizing their dreams for expansion. The pair have grand plans, hoping for a larger enchanted forest and even someday an old-fashioned soda fountain. That's also why Amy maintains her day job, a regional director of admission for Emerson College. The two recently left their longtime apartment in Anaheim — a mile from Disneyland, Amy stresses with regret — to be closer to the museum. Ultimately, they think of the Museum of Make Believe as something akin to an art gallery, a pocket-sized version of, say, what Meow Wolf attempts to do with its all-encompassing walk-around spaces. They're working hard to make each square inch explorable, creating, at the time of the interview, a sandcastle to be hidden in the restroom. Though cozy, one should expect to spend about 60 to 90 minutes inside the Museum of Make Believe. There's a quest, with a light puzzle to solve, that encourages guests to carefully read each of the five core fairy tales and look intently into its dioramas. Each installation is filled with details — mini-vintage radios, tiny artwork on the walls and cases full of scaled-down tools of spirituality. Some of the fables, such as 'The Locket,' are told in multiple parts, its story of a humble sea trader and the allure and dangers of wealth spread among multiple displays and a lighthouse. 'Fairy tales are kind of like poems,' Amy says. 'Both ghost stories and fairy tales also have a moral to them. I like that idea. I like that there's a little lesson, if you want to take it.' Geoff's art masks any sense of time or place. There's an obscure, borderline experimental streak to his work, one that he describes as marrying the Beatles' take on '60s psychedelia with Disneyland's vision of 'Alice in Wonderland.' Animal puppets, for instance, are joyful and yet oddly formal. 'I think that there's a nostalgia, and a sentimental-ness,' Geoff says when asked why humans are still drawn to fairy tales. 'Not in a silly way. But they are ghost stories.' They feel, he says, like part of a collective memory. And yet at the Museum of Make Believe's heart, there's an underlying belief that dreams come true. I left with a tiny rock, a 'tomorrow stone,' in which a scroll stated my 'fondest dream, greatest desire and strongest wish' would come to pass if I held the gem once daily. I reveal to Amy and Geoff that clutching the stone is now part of my morning routine. There's no laughter. Amy says the 'tomorrow stone' is an extension of what she called her 'dream box,' which she had acquired on a trip to the Grand Canyon with her father. Each day, she made a wish that the Museum of Make Believe would become a reality, and eventually the couple received a grant that allowed them to realize their vision. And thus, the pair behind the Museum of Make Believe leave me with a promise: 'Tell us when it comes true,' Amy says.

Preterm Birth Predicts Adult Health Problems
Preterm Birth Predicts Adult Health Problems

Medscape

time5 hours ago

  • Medscape

Preterm Birth Predicts Adult Health Problems

Adults born preterm were significantly more likely to have cardiometabolic risk factors and internalized mental health issues than full-term peers, according to an ongoing preterm birth cohort study in the US. 'This study addresses a significant gap in understanding the long-term health effects of preterm birth in the US,' said lead author Amy D'Agata, PhD, of the College of Nursing, The University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, in an interview. Although the annual preterm birth rate in the US has held at a relatively stable 10%-12% for decades, since the 1970s, more preterm infants are surviving because of advances in neonatal intensive care, D'Agata said. Millions of individuals born preterm are aging into adulthood, but few data are available on their long-term health outcomes, she noted. In the new study, published in JAMA Network Open , D'Agata and colleagues reviewed data from a cohort of individuals who received level III neonatal intensive care at a single center between 1985 and 1989. The study population included 158 preterm-born and 55 full-term born adult control individuals. Preterm was defined as weighing under 1850 g at birth with various neonatal diagnoses; critically ill infants and those with major congenital abnormalities were excluded. The mean age across the groups was 35 years; 50% were women. The researchers used latent growth curve models to show changes over time. Overall, the preterm individuals who had higher medical risk in early life were significantly more likely to have a range of health problems at 35 years of age, notably, higher triglycerides than control individuals (beta value, 53.97; P = .03). Measures of systolic blood pressure and central adiposity also were significantly higher in the preterm birth group (beta values of 7.15 and 0.22, respectively), whereas bone density and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol were lower (beta values of -1.14 and -13.07, respectively). In addition, internalizing mental health problems were significantly more common in the preterm cohort than in the control individuals (beta value, 0.85; P = .01) but no difference in externalizing mental health problems was noted between the groups. The researchers also reviewed the impact of social protection and childhood socioeconomic status and found no association between these and physical or psychological health risks in adults born preterm. The Long View of Preterm Birth The population of adults born preterm remains largely invisible to the US healthcare system and its clinicians, highlighting critical issues of health equity and quality of care, D'Agata told Medscape Medical News . 'Much of the existing research in this area has focused on international, homogeneous populations, creating a need for rigorous, US-based longitudinal data to guide healthcare policy and clinical practice,' she added. 'These findings generally confirmed what has been observed internationally, that there is a link between higher early life medical risk and increased likelihood of mental health issues, elevated systolic blood pressure, unfavorable cholesterol and triglyceride levels, body fat distribution, and lower bone density among adults born preterm, and it was notable to see these clear and consistent associations replicated in a US cohort using a prospective, longitudinal design,' said D'Agata. The study findings emphasized the need to inquire about birth history in adult care settings and suggest that those born preterm and their families must be their own health advocates, if necessary, said D'Agata. 'Even if a patient isn't asked about their birth history, they should share it,' she noted. Clinicians work hard to provide the best care, but it takes time for evidence-based research to inform clinical practice, she said. 'Although our birth cohort is small and comes from a single geographic region, the results generally align with international findings,' D'Agata told Medscape Medical News . However, future studies should include more racially and ethnically diverse cohorts from multiple clinical settings, she said. Research is needed not only to examine which subgroups of preterm individuals are most at risk but also to differentiate between those with varying degrees of early life complications, she added. Long Follow-Up Strengthens Findings The 35-year duration of the preterm birth cohort study was impressive and valuable, said Tim Joos, MD, a clinician with a combination internal medicine/pediatrics practice at Neighborcare Health in Seattle. 'We don't often have the long game in mind, in healthcare as well as in other parts of our society,' said Joos, who was not involved in the study. 'We don't tend to follow pediatric conditions into adulthood,' he noted. The current study findings demonstrated a long-term psychological and physical impact of prematurity on adult health that was humbling, Joos told Medscape Medical News . Looking ahead, the results highlight not only the need to continue to prevent preterm birth but also to the importance of asking older patients about preterm birth as part of their health history, he said.

Weekly Young and the Restless Spoilers July 28-August 1: Nate Reacts to Damian's Death
Weekly Young and the Restless Spoilers July 28-August 1: Nate Reacts to Damian's Death

Yahoo

time12 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Weekly Young and the Restless Spoilers July 28-August 1: Nate Reacts to Damian's Death

The Young and the Restless spoilers for July 28-August 1 reveal an emotional week ahead. Nate learns about Damian's death and then has to tell Amy. Jack makes a sacrifice for Billy. And, finally, Adam and Victoria call a truce. Will it last? Next Week on The Young and the Restless After spending so much time in the South of France, the murder mystery comes to a close next week. And more and more of the action actually takes place in Genoa City. But the biggest thing that happened in Nice — Damian's death and exactly why he was murdered — will have to be dealt with. In fact, expect Lily (Christel Khalil) to inform Nate (Sean Dominic) about Damian's passing. When she relays the tragic news, how will Nate react? He and Damian (Jermaine Rivers) were finally in a good place, and now this? It will undoubtedly be hard news for Nate to process. What's even harder is that after he learns about what happened to his half-brother, Nate has to share the bad news with Amy (Valarie Pettiford). And the brutal way Damian went out is something that will utterly devastate the woman who's already suffering from cancer. No mother should have to deal with something like this. READ THIS: Here's what's coming up next on Y&R. Meanwhile, Nice was not so nice for Jack (Peter Bergman) and Billy (Jason Thompson). Billy decided to unload all responsibility for Abbott Communication onto Sally (Courtney Hope) while he concentrates on teaming up with Cane (Billy Flynn) to go after Chancellor. Even though the two never talked about it until this last week. And even then, Cane said he would think about it. This whole business had Jack thinking about cutting the cord with Billy and letting him succeed or fail on his own. Maybe his presence in Billy's life is detrimental to the man. So look for Jack to make a sacrifice for Billy by the end of next week. It looks like Adam (Mark Grossman) and Victoria (Amelia Heinle) are about to solidify their latest detente. Yes, Victoria and Adam call a truce, which is great since lately they have been downright nice and empathetic towards each other. While Victor (Eric Braeden), Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott), and Nick (Josh Morrow) were in France, the two found that they were able to have civil conversations. And Adam had compassion for what Victoria was going through with Cole (J. Eddie Peck). Meanwhile, Victoria saw that Adam had their family's back as he took care of the company while the rest of the Newmans were walking through mazes. It had to help that he climbed up and down a mountain for the family as well, right? READ THIS: Y&R has apparently gone to the dogs. Find out how. Odds & Ends Obviously, things between Kyle (Michael Mealor) and Audra (Zuleyka Silver) are in a horrible place. It doesn't look like that's going to end any time soon. There may even be an escalation next week when Kyle and Audra's power struggle takes a dangerous turn. By dangerous, do they mean physically, or is this something more along the lines of psychologically or metaphorically? And why is it that Jack (Peter Bergman) and Diane (Susan Walters) need to worry about Kyle shortly after whatever this is happens? WATCH NOW: Stream the new episode of SoapHub Says today. Unsurprisingly, things get complicated for Nick and Sharon (Sharon Case). The two spent a ton of time together in Nice, including being locked up together against their will. So what does 'complicated' mean between these two? Could these two be inching closer to a reunion? Finally, Daniel (Michael Graziadei) is skeptical of Phyllis's (Michelle Stafford) latest plan. Presumably because it involves Cane Ashby. Daniel probably thinks that nothing could get worse than his mom working with Billy Abbott, and now she's trying to hitch her wagon to Cane. Did Phyllis's plans change based on what happened in France? What plan is she going with?

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