Healthy balanced diet is best first defence against bowel problems
TO keep up these days with the huge proliferation of acronyms is challenging. Even the intended meanings of some commonly used ones ...
Wednesday, 10 September 2025
Delivering the news from Henley on Thames and South Oxfordshire for over 100 years
New ‘cold’ vaccine is exciting but prevention is still best medicine
IN the last fortnight, radiators have been dusted off, the fans have gone back into storage and I’ve broken out the work jumpers once ...
Whether you study or play sport, rest is best for your elbow if it hurts
THE Singing Detective was a 1986 TV drama. In it, the main character Philip Marlowe, played by Michael Gambon, at one point describes ...
How and why we bruise easily (and sometimes it’s our own fault)
EVERY four years we have the pleasure of watching some of the world’s finest athletes perform. This year in Paris the image of the ...
How to reduce effects of seasonal rhino-conjunctivitis (hay fever)
HAY fever can seem like a fairly trivial ailment at first and in some respects it is — certainly if one compares it to some of the ...
Whatever you call it, some fat is good for us — provided it’s right type
WE received an email at the surgery recently from a patient who was querying our use of the phrase “weight management” in some of our ...
Stay out of sun to keep your looks for longer and lower cancer risk
THE UK skin care industry is said to be worth around $4.14billion. That is a lot of money and it reflects a preoccupation with our ...
Don’t be like Winnie the Pooh and eat sensibly for vital vitamin
I WAS down an internet rabbit hole recently when I stumbled across a list of amusing research paper titles. Among several that caught ...
Unpleasant and contagious ‘pink eye’ looks worse than it usually is
IN October, something happened in Pakistan that prompted the closure of 56,000 schools for four days. It wasn’t covid nor was it ...
Tinnitus has existed for centuries but is still not fully understood
NOT so long ago I went to the cinema to watch the Christopher Nolan headscratcher Tenet. Aside from the confusing storyline, what ...
With another spike in cases of whooping cough, vaccination is key
IT is somewhat ironic that the word pronunciation is itself often mispronounced. Although there is a degree of debate over the correct ...
Despite being the size of a pea, the pituitary truly is ‘master gland’
ROBERT Wadlow was born in 1918 weighing in at an unremarkable 8.7lb (3.85kg). His parents were not unusual in size or shape and, to ...
Fasciitis is as unpleasant as it sounds (it means inflamed tissue)
FASCIITIS is not a particularly nice word. Aside from the fact that it is rather awkward to type, it just doesn’t sound very pleasant. ...
Strange infectious disease that shows importance of vaccinations
WHAT does measles have in common with electronica? By measles, of course, I mean the viral illness characterised by fever, ...
There’s no such thing as a perfect smile... even if you’re a pop star
FOR decades there has been a multitude of studies focused on the act of smiling and its benefits to our health. This simple facial ...
If you can feel your heartbeat, it’s probably nothing to worry about
ABOUT half of Britons (47 per cent) sleep in their pyjamas while one in five prefers to dispense with wearing anything in bed. That’s ...
Time to consider downsides of all those goodies
THE average recommended daily calorie intake is 2,500 for a man and 2,000 for a woman. An achievable goal, one might think, at least ...
’Kissing disease’ is not much fun to have but we have to live with it
HUMANS have at least 600 lymph nodes throughout the body and about a third of these are in the neck. When they swell up therefore, we ...
When cough ‘goes to your chest’ it doesn’t mean you need a doctor
WHEN I was on a hospital respiratory ward earlier in my career I worked briefly with a respiratory consultant who had developed a ...
‘Romantic disease’ is anything but, so good job we have antibiotics
A FRIEND of mine once admitted that he had always assumed that historical figures who succumbed to the ailment known as “consumption” ...
