Category Archive

When I read the Royal College of General ­Practitioners was backing calls to ­remove abortion from criminal law, I confess I was ­gobsmacked. Wasn’t it already legal? Wasn’t a law passed in 1967 legalising it? Have I been labouring under … Read More

Tessa Jowell, always a champion of worthy causes and who died last May, campaigned to the bitter end for patients to gain better access to new treatments. Her last campaign is already bearing fruit. Patients with the same deadly brain … Read More

We’re seeing a frightening ­upswing in depression among teenagers. There are several ­factors behind it, including social media use and post-traumatic stress ­disorder. But could cannabis use be part of the picture too? It seems so, according to the first … Read More

Do you remember when Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF)? I remember AF being described as a not very worrying heart condition where the upper left chamber, instead of beating regularly, has runs of … Read More

My old dad had a lot of back trouble, and when it “went”, he’d take to his bed lying on an old door under the mattress to keep his back in line. It took about six weeks to get better. … Read More

Should you be putting butter on your toast or margarine? Or, put another way, should you have saturated fat on your toast or not? The controversy has been ­raging for years, but we’re no nearer to a simple guideline. No … Read More

This is the era of the microbiome – your gut bacteria. It seems they affect many more systems than we thought. Now scientists in Belgium believe a wide range of gut bacteria can produce chemicals that significantly impact the brain, … Read More

Being overweight is one of the biggest avoidable causes of cancer. Nowhere is this mow more obvious than in the millennial ­generation where rates of cancer are rising quicker than in their ancestors because they are heavier. Cancers typically occur … Read More

Life expectancy is still increasing with the proportion of people aged over 80 years growing the fastest. But unfortunately, so is ­depression, with up to one in three older adults affected. Depression in older people is a more crippling condition than … Read More

Proton beam therapy is cutting-edge technology which will probably one day replace X-ray therapy for cancer. At the moment there’s only one ­centre in the UK using it, the Christie Cancer Hospital in Manchester. A ­second is planned for UCL Hospital … Read More