Category Archive

Would you like to know if your child or grandchild is ­vulnerable to taking drugs? As a mother and granny, I know I would. Well, a new drug programme has found that a child’s susceptibility to drug taking is high in … Read More

I can remember well the first time reconstruction operations were offered to women who had had a mastectomy. It was revolutionary and motivated by the best intentions – to restore a “normal” anatomy to women who felt disfigured by the … Read More

Stonewall, a charity I admire and support, has come up with some startling stats reflecting the health inequalities in the LGBT community – highlighted recently in The British Medical Journal. They reveal lesbian and gay youths are more likely than … Read More

Life-threatening ailments such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and type 2 diabetes most often afflict adults. But they are often ­consequences of childhood obesity. The fuse was lit way back. So as a matter of urgency, we must try to prevent … Read More

A very dangerous hare was set running last year when it was suggested Alzheimer’s could be “caught” from blood ­transfusions. It can’t, but the alarm was sounded when researchers at University College London warned that some patients who had contracted CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob … Read More

For several years doctors have been concerned about the side effects of CT scans which use a much higher dose of radiation than your common or garden X-ray. The pay-off is CT scans give much finer results of what’s going … Read More

Aspirin is a very simple substance. Its chemical structure is so tiny that, compared to molecular monsters like proteins and carbohydrates, it can cross the “blood-brain barrier” – an obstacle that has so far stopped cancer drugs reaching and attacking … Read More

Oh, I know people are sick of doctors and health experts changing their minds: first you should avoid eating foods high in cholesterol and suddenly they’re OK. Then you’re told butter is bad for you in the battle against obesity, then … Read More

Anything that does you good without doing you harm is good medicine. That’s a saying I’ve always stood by. However, no treatment that’s effective can escape some side effects. Professor Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, … Read More

We never seem to escape the clutches of dieting, especially the yo-yoing kind where the body has a habit of fighting back to regain lost weight. Dieting even affects the weight you gain in oregnancy. Women who have a history … Read More