What? New guidance from NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) suggests that your waist size should be kept below half that of your height to reduce the risk to health of carrying a few extra pounds. NICE encourages those with a BMI of less than 35 to measure their waistlines […]
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What? In a landmark decision from NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), all patients in the UK with Type 1 Diabetes who are using insulin are to be offered continuous real-time glucose monitoring devices to check their blood sugar (blood glucose) levels. Additionally, flash monitoring will be offered to all such patients, […]
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What? Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the Western world. This is only worsened by globally increasing obesity rates. The heart pumps blood around the body, beating roughly 60 times a minute every single hour of every day for your whole life – that’s about 2.5 billion times in a […]
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This week, Dr Yakup Kilic provides an extremely important insight into the effects of the war in Ukraine on its healthcare system, and provides some useful ideas on how readers in the UK can help from afar. What? War has a drastic impact not only on physical health but also psychological and mental […]
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This week, a guest blog curated by our very own Dr Yakup Kilic! Read on to find out more about this new and exciting technology. What? Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs for short, are rapidly gaining popularity online, and have wide-reaching potential for everything from art collecting to healthcare. But what are they, and how […]
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What? A woman with HIV has become the third person ever to be cured of the disease using a novel umbilical cord blood treatment. The patient in question was diagnosed with HIV in June 2013, and was being treated with antiretroviral therapy. Later, in March 2017, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), a […]
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On the 17th of February, researchers from Pittsburgh in the USA published a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials observing the effects of aerobic exercise on episodic memory in late adult life. Why? One of the earliest memory systems to decline with increasing age is episodic memory, or remembering past personal events and experiences. Given a […]
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What? A group of local GPs from Northwick Park Hospital and Harrow Health — a not-for-profit organisation based in Harrow – have been trialing a scheme that places medical professionals outside of an A&E department. From December 2021, a GP and a nurse have been placed outside Northwick Park Hospital A&E (in North West London) […]
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Why does it matter? All sorts of things make us sick, like bacteria (pneumonia, meningitis), fungi (athlete’s foot) and viruses (most coughs, colds, flu and .. COVID-19, heard of that!?). Antibiotics are needed for some bacteria but have no effect on viruses and fungi. Tonsillitis is not helped by antibiotics, for example – as […]
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What? Sajid Javid, the UK Health Secretary, has recently announced he is considering nationalising General Practitioners (GPs), so they are fully part of the NHS. The ultimate aim is to reduce patients being admitted to hospital. Mr Javid reportedly thinks the current system of how GPs work is outdated and has considerable drawbacks for patients […]
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