Back in 2015, I first wrote about brain damage in athletes playing contact sports being linked to the early onset of dementia and Parkinson’s, particularly in American footballers. Then, in 2017, I followed up with the same brain disorders among football players, attributed … Read More
Patients most likely to miss Monday GP slot as 15 million appointments missed a year
When you’re trying to fix an appointment with your GP do you have a preference for a particular day? Or rather is there a day you’d prefer not to see your doctor? Monday? Well, yes, it turns out that few of us … Read More
Research into immune cell ‘donors’ could unlock a possible cure for ageing
Without our immune system we are nothing, and the more research we do the stronger this conviction becomes. Dr Alessio Lanna, Honorary Professor at UCL and lead author of a new study explains: “Immune cells are on constant high alert, … Read More
Help is finally here for diabetics prone to UTIs – and it’s not antibiotics
People with diabetes are prone to urinary tract infections partly due to a weakened immune system, but also by bladder damage making the bladder vulnerable to infection. It turns out that high blood sugar lowers levels of a protective protein … Read More
What you eat in pregnancy could make your baby fat and continue into childhood
A useful mantra for pregnant women is “your baby is what you eat”. And a study of mums and babies, led by researchers at the University of Oxford, really brings this home. It showed a mother’s fat metabolism – what … Read More
Clinical trials on computers cut costs and reduce need for human volunteers
The gold standard of medical research, which we heard a lot about during the development of Covid vaccines, is the clinical trial (CT). The upside of this approach is that a robust CT answers two simple questions: is the drug … Read More
Statins are a ‘modern effective therapy’ – and ‘not to blame for muscle aches and pains
People complaining of muscle aches and pains while taking statins became a bit of a “thing” but I always doubted it was due to the drugs themselves. So many people believed there was a link that a new word, “nocebo”, was coined … Read More
Taking antibiotics before going to the dentist could stop heart infections
Recently a fit 50-year-old son of a friend was admitted to hospital with heart failure. He couldn’t breathe or walk. He had infective endocarditis (IE), where bacteria were growing on one of his main heart valves, virtually crippling his heart. … Read More
You can take blood pressure pills any time of the day to improve your heart health
More than one billion people have high blood pressure worldwide, and it has become the leading global cause of early death. But there has been a big unresolved question about the timing of taking blood pressure medication. There have been claims that … Read More
Measuring blood pressure in BOTH arms will benefit at-risk patients
As with most doctors, I would always measure a person’s blood pressure in one arm, and one arm only. However, new research reveals that I’d be missing around one in 10 cases of high blood pressure by not measuring the … Read More