An essential part of any health check-up is getting a blood pressure reading. But when the doctor inflates that cuff around your arm and then releases it, what exactly is being measured? A feature of mine in the Daily Mail today sets out a radical new picture of hypertension. It explains why some people on blood […]
Benzos: Beware the baddest drugs in a doctor’s armoury.
August 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Benzodiazepines are the serial offenders of the drugs’ cabinet with a cluster of pharmaceuticals ASBOs to their name. They’ve been around since the 1960s and are generally given if you are complaining of the likes of insomnia or anxiety – family names include temazepam (for sleep) and the tranquillizer valium. They have a charge sheet that […]
Manflu: a new twist to the debate
August 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Manflu is one of the not so hardy perennials of domestic debate. Are men justified in claiming unlimited sympathy when they retire to bed with flu on the grounds that they actually suffer more than their wives or partners or is this self-serving myth? The dispute has even popped up as part of the ongoing […]
The Alzheimer’s charities are in a hole but they keep digging
July 13, 2013 by 11 Comments
Earlier this week I won freelance consumer journalist of the year at the Medical Journalists’ Association awards which was fantastic. You had to send in three features to enter and two of mine each focused on a different non-drug treatment that might help with Alzheimer’s. I mention this because looking at them again I was freshly shocked […]
Why hounding homeopaths is both batty and arrogant.
June 27, 2013 by
There is no shortage of villains in the world. Psychopaths – domestic and national – whalers, toxic waste dumpers, global eavesdroppers, billionaire tax avoiders and their army of accountants – all well worth campaigning against with the aim of getting them banged up or forced to cough up. There is also an infinite supply of […]
Hidden dangers of diabetic drugs exposed – yet again
June 10, 2013 by 3 Comments
Incretins are the newest and most expensive class of blockbuster diabetes drug but according to a remarkably through investigation just published by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) the risk that they could cause pancreatic cancer is much greater than patients and doctors have been told. The biggest sellers in the UK are Byetta (exenatide), Victoza […]
Alzheimer’s: we want a cure but please don’t mention B vitamins
May 21, 2013 by 54 Comments
The article in today’s Daily Mail about B vitamins and Alzheimer’s is the story of the triumph of dogged scientific persistence – do read it first if you can because this blog would become impossibly long if I repeated all the details. But behind it is another story of indifference and prejudice that is preventing […]
What is wrong with randomised trials Part 2
May 5, 2013 by 4 Comments
Could alcohol get a licence as a drug for depression? How do you test for the safety of a drug that causes the same side effects as the disease it is used to treat? These are just two of the points I didn’t have room for in my post last week on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) […]
Why randomised controlled trials don’t tell you what you want to know
April 28, 2013 by 11 Comments
Earlier this week the Daily Mail published my feature on side-effects and how patients aren’t properly warned about them. Antidepressants, for instance, can cause compulsive heavy drinking but you wouldn’t know it from the drug information leaflet. The article is about campaigning psychiatrist Dr David Healy, who believes patients need a more truthful account of […]
We know how to cut diabetes deaths. So why aren’t we doing it?
April 10, 2013 by 6 Comments
Who’s responsible for our diabetes/obesity epidemic? Is it those fat lazy bastards who eat crap food and sit on the couch all day or is it the drug companies that spend billions researching and marketing drugs of limited effectiveness or dubious safety or is the government that allows commercial interest to create a food supply […]
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