Post Archive by Year

The sad truth is fewer than half of babies in England are being breastfed at six to eight weeks. A new survey of 1,000 mothers reveals nearly two-thirds believe ­access to 24/7 breastfeeding support would help new mums to have … Read More

There’s cystitis and then there’s cystitis. The usual one-off ­attack leads to pain on passing urine, feeling a sense of urgency to empty your bladder, off colour, off food, sometimes a temperature. And it clears up by drinking a lot … Read More

Your daughters, sons and grandchildren are quite ­possibly in the throes of GCSEs and A-levels, ­labouring under the burden of trying to learn rafts of facts in a scarily short time. But to cope with this ­students are turning to … Read More

Medically speaking, I’ve ­noticed over the years that what’s going on in America sooner or later crosses the Atlantic to UK shores. We can be ­infected by US health problems. A case in point is opioid addiction, which affects 65,000 … Read More

I’ll keep writing about prostate ­cancer until our treatment and ­success rates rise to be comparable with other European countries. One of our stumbling blocks is speed and accuracy of diagnosis. So three cheers for a new test that could move us … Read More

Back in the 1970s, when I was in Japan picking up stories for documentaries, I came across a crazy motivational strategy for stressed-out businessmen. They were taken into the mountains where they stripped off to nothing but a loincloth. They … Read More

I’ve never seen any convincing evidence of the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating pain. Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor in Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, and the UK’s preeminent expert, goes further, saying: “Doctors should not recommend acupuncture for pain because … Read More

The desperation a woman suffers when she can’t conceive and longs for a baby is one I have felt. It was between the births of my two sons when conception of my second boy evaded me so painfully I became … Read More

On an afternoon I occasionally walk with my granddaughter in a ­London park where teens gather after school, and the smell of pot is unescapable. It’s more pungent than I remember and I presume stronger, possibly super skunk, which is flooding … Read More

A few weeks ago I went head to head with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain. I was there to ­discuss a contentious ­public health initiative that compels people who are obese or smoke to take six months to lose … Read More