Articles

Are multivitamin and mineral supplements just a waste of time and money? According to a recently published opinion medical journal that answer is yes. But don’t tip that bottle in the trash just yet. Writing in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine doctors from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Warwick and the American College […]

This week in the UK the RBS bank system crashed due – it is rumoured – to the online shopping activity of Cyber Monday. This followed Black Friday in the US where people stabbed, trampled, pepper-sprayed and punched each other in the pursuit of discounted goods. While this was happening, the news reported that, according […]

Rickets and scurvy. Just the mention of these diseases suggests we are talking about some point in history when things weren’t as good as they are now. And yet in the UK cases of rickets – a bone-softening disease due to too little vitamin D and calcium – have risen by 400%. Likewise cases of scurvy […]

It’s fair to say that our trust in healthy eating advice – whether from government or NGOs – has hit an all time low. Big Food has hijacked the world of nutrition advice both in the US (for an excellent précis see the report And Now a Word From our Sponsors) and in the UK (take a […]

Widely used pesticides are much more toxic to humans than previously thought, due to the combination of so-called ‘inactive ingredients they contain. That is the claim of French scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini and his colleagues in a new study due for publication in BioMed Research International. At heart the study questions how acceptable daily intakes (ADI) […]

It was with some dismay this week that I  read a report by the group Action on Additives that revealed that most children’s medicines on sale in the UK still contain additives known to provoke adverse effects. I was writing about this kind of thing 12 years ago and naively assumed that  things might have […]

The world is getting louder and louder – and it’s taking a toll on our health. Two studies this week found that living in close proximity to aircraft noises substantially raises your risk of both hospital admission and death from heart disease and stroke. This is not, unfortunately, news. For years the World Health Organization (WHO) […]

This week a Cambridge university academic has suggested that children as young as 7 should be routinely screened for mental health problems. In a letter published in the British Medical Journal, Simon Nicholas Williams, a visiting professor at the university’s Institute of Public Health, said three-quarters of adult mental disorders were “extensions of juvenile disorders” […]

Antibiotic-resistant infections cause two million infections and claim the lives of 23,000 people in the United States every year, according to a new landmark report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013, presents the first snapshot of the burden and threats posed […]

After a week of events throughout the UK aimed at highlighting the health risks of eating genetically modified foods, Pat Thomas highlights a key health message that many of us have missed… It’s easy to see why biotech companies are anxious to separate the pesticide issue from the GM debate We are continually told that […]