Given this blog’s commitment to tackling chromic disease by helping people change their lifestyle, I was delighted to discover that the BBC 1 was devoting its prime time 9.00 slot to a three part series about passionate young GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, who goes to stay with patients and turns their unhealthy lifestyle around.

Just over two years ago […]

Much of the discussion around […]

The sugar tax is obviously a very sensible idea but it’s much more than that. It’s prophetic, it’s a sign of a major change, it’s the swallow that could be heralding a medical summer. The tax is shorthand for a long running battle around what is a healthy diet, which turns out to be about a lot more than just diet.

Generally we don’t trust utopias. If they don’t remain fantasies but emerge into the real world, we expect them either to rapidly descent into rigid authoritarian hells or to disintegrate into factions and unproductive chaos.

Calls to reform medical research […]

Just over a year ago Sophie Sabbage was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was a 48-years-old experienced personal development trainer, married with a young daughter. Her doctors agreed she didn’t have long to live but this week the book she only began writing just over a month ago, is being published.

A diagnosis of cancer drops […]

How much longer can the charity Diabetes UK continue to provide advice on diet to the UK’s 3.9 million people with type 2 diabetes that is based on the discredited Seven Countries Study carried out by Ancel Keys back in the 1940s? The urgency of this question cannot be overstated.

It’s generally agreed that the NHS is not in good health but there’s no clear diagnosis. There are plenty of suggestions – lack of funding, uncompassionate nurses or box-ticking managers. But I want to suggest another one: the crisis in evidence based medicine (EBM).