Free newspapers, a takeaway menu, special offers from the supermarket and, in the pile of mail cascading on to the doormat, a glossy leaflet from a health clinic, advertising a special check-up service. “Put your mind at ease with a health check from Lifescan, the UK’s leading provider of private CT assessments,” it said, alongside […]
Continue Reading →Dealing with the fall-out
In the wake of the subprime crisis and the stock market slide, counselling and psychotherapy services have been quick with offers of help for those dealing with the fall-out. A generation or two ago, discussion of one’s personal problems was more commonly done in the public house, with a priest or parson, or with friends […]
Continue Reading →Walk while you work
There is pressure being placed on employers to make their workplaces “healthier”. NICE released documents on this earlier this year, and this week the Scottish Executive have published their take on matters. What is the good employer to do? The recommendations focus on employers increasing the amount of exercise that employees take in the course of their […]
Continue Reading →Pain and the Virgin Mary
There are lots of reports that “faith in God really can relieve pain” and such in the press at the moment. These reports are based on a study published in Pain (yep, medical journals have all the most exotic titles: Gut, Brain, Breast, Lung….) and the abstract is available here. Unsurprisingly, the research does not prove anything […]
Continue Reading →Column: Do the claims for neuro-linguistic programming stand up to scrutiny?
The first time I heard about neuro-linguistic programming, I was intrigued. By scrutinising and changing a person’s speech and body language, NLP promises to improve social and professional interactions. It has, we’re told, the power to “unlock your capabilities”. Negative psychological patterns are identified, and can be “reprogrammed”. Sensitivity to others’ behaviour is also heightened. […]
Continue Reading →Column: Is warming up before you exercise a waste of time?
Exercise is good for you. This is the gospel that we doctors are enjoined to preach to patients – we even have prescription pads to refer people to the gym. But there is a snag: the more you exercise, the more likely you are to pick up a sports-related injury. We are taught from an […]
Continue Reading →Column: Do infertility treatments work?
Many women suffer a great deal of heartache before reaching the thin blue line of a positive pregnancy test. There is a large number of infertility treatments and they do not work for everyone, by any means. Thousands of women take clomifene citrate, a drug that stimulates the ovaries, as part of their attempt to […]
Continue Reading →Painful conclusions
I was in central Glasgow last week. On my rainy travails down Buchanan Street, I came across a tent pitched just beside the statue of Donald Dewar. Beside that was a mat on the ground with pictures of hot coals on it, that invited people to try and experience the trial of “chronic pain”. The […]
Continue Reading →Inequality kills
The World Health Organisation are presenting their findings of a three year investigation into the ‘social determinants of health’ today. The report is available here. We are all used to hearing that the latest health news is ‘shocking’ and ‘appalling’, but this report is a rare exception – it does actually deserve these descriptions. Life expectancy in one […]
Continue Reading →Nurses at the door
It was reported today that East Lancashire Primary Care Trust have a plan to deal with overweight schoolchildren. When the children return to school after the summer holidays they are to be weighed, and, if overweight, apparently they and their families will be ‘cold-called’ by nurses, who will then encourage them to lose weight. But […]
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