Sarah is a practising GP and TV personality, appearing as an expert on a variety of programmes including BBC1’s ‘The One Show’ and GMTV
It’s hard not to know that eating fibre keeps you regular. But did you know that fibre really is the original ‘superfood’? Amazingly, Hippocrates – the ‘father of medicine’ – first recommended eating whole wheat as a way of keeping the bowels healthy almost 2,500 years ago. But the benefits of fibre extend way beyond your bowels.
Along with sunshine, ice creams and long days by the seaside, summer brings a much less welcome regular – insects! Fortunately, we don’t have malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the UK, but we certainly have our fair share of stinging and biting beasties. Read on to find out how to minimise the misery.
Dying matters – to everyone. Of the two ‘certainties in life – death and taxes’, we may not like taxes, but very few of us are foolish enough to ignore them. Yet a new study, commissioned by the Dying Matters Coalition to coincide with Dying Matters Awareness Week (14-20 May 2012), tells that although more than half of Britons have been bereaved in the last five years and a third think about dying and death weekly, discussing dying and making end of life plans remain a taboo for many people, including doctors.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has just approved the use of Botox® for treating some forms of migraine. What’s next, I hear you ask. Breast implants for indigestion? In fact, while most headlines in recent years have been about frown-line free celebrities, Botox® has been used for years to treat a wide variety of serious medical conditions. It’s widely used for arm muscle spasm after stroke; cerebral palsy in children; a painful neck muscle condition called cervical dystonia; and even excess sweating.
A new survey this week, commissioned by the charity Arthritis Care, reveals that 8.5 million people within the UK have osteoarthritis (OA). Of these, more than seven out of 10 are in some form of constant pain due to their OA.
Sitting on the front of our necks is a little bow tie – or at least, that’s what you would see if you looked beneath the skin. Most of us never give a thought to this gland, the thyroid – but the hormones it produces can influence every bit of your body. Here’s how to tell if it’s showing the strain.
The summer holidays are coming, which means many of us are dusting off our swimsuits and making lists of holiday essentials – passports, sunglasses, travel adaptor plugs. But all too many people put themselves at risk of a highly unwelcome holiday souvenir – coming back with an illness caught abroad. Read on to avoid being one of them.
Sitting down with a nice cup of tea or coffee has to be one of life’s great pleasures – yet these days the newspapers would have us believe that even this simple treat carries risks to our health.
Doctors have always been very good at coming up with long complicated names for medical conditions. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just to make ourselves feel more important. Deep vein thrombosis – often called DVT - is a classic example. Thrombosis just means clot. But the most serious complication of a DVT is another kind of clot, this time called a pulmonary embolus (PE). The difference is that an embolus is a clot that travels from somewhere else in your body. So a clot deep in the veins in your leg can get carried in your blood system to your lungs, where it gets stuck. The PE that results can be fatal.
A glorious sunny day may give you a spring in your step, but could there be a darker side to sunshine? We all know about the damage tanning booths can do, but the sun can also cause harm to our skin in various ways.
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