Looking deeper… I have a patient with that particular mixture of determination and exhaustion I’ve come to recognise in people who have been in pain for too long. Her GP, she explained, had declared her symptoms to be “just osteoarthritis” and to keep taking NSAIDS. This seemed to be the totality of any help offered. But my patient’s symptom pattern; painful fingers, toes, knees, shoulders, but not hips – is not the pattern […]
13
Mar
Mar
Why would you? Try removing bread for a week and something curious happens. It is not hunger that people notice first. It is confusion. What do you eat when there is nothing to put things on? Bread occupies such a quiet central place in modern eating that we rarely notice it. It carries food, contains food, and turns loose ingredients […]
06
Mar
Mar
Three presentations and how to approach them We talk about hay fever as though it is a single, uniform condition. Clinically, it isn’t. What we call hay fever (seasonal allergic rhinitis) tends to fall into three recognisable presentations. Not three different diseases, but three dominant patterns of immune response. When you understand which pattern you are looking at, it will change how […]
27
Feb
Feb
Working with leaf buds. In a welcome bout of sunshine this week I have been picking the emerging buds of hawthorn leaves and submersing them in alcohol. The photo shows just 10g that I had picked so far; I am aiming for 50g – it is time consuming… I will also collect birch buds soon, but they are not quite ready yet. In a […]
20
Feb
Feb
Follow this man…. One of the things I like about this GP is that he credits his current position as an expert on diabetes on an angry woman; a patient who felt that he had failed her. When she enters his consulting room months after he had last seen her, he initially thinks she has […]
13
Feb
Feb
Or are we judging by the wrong standards? One of the quiet absurdities in contemporary medical discourse is the claim that medicinal herbs are ‘not proven to be safe’. This is usually said with a straight face by the same system that routinely prescribes substances known to cause liver injury, anhedonia, B12 depletion, suicidality, metabolic syndrome, withdrawal syndromes, and cognitive decline. The […]
06
Feb
Feb
And the rise of Wegovy et al… Wegovy [other drugs are available] has transformed the conversation around obesity. For many people, it offers real hope after years of struggling with weight. But they are not suitable for everyone. Some people experience intolerable or serious side effects; others have medical contraindications, cannot access them, or simply do not wish to use long-term injectable medication. I was […]
30
Jan
Jan
What would I have done….? I want to say from the get-go that I am not having a dig at overworked, or stressed GPs who are doing their best for the patients within the 10 minutes framework the NHS allows. It’s not them, it’s the system. Last week I saw a middle-aged woman presenting with […]
23
Jan
Jan
Why Calories Don’t Decide Your Weight — Hormones Do For years, anyone who struggled with their weight was told the same simple story: eat less, move more. Calories in, calories out. If the scales did not move, the implication was obvious — you must be cheating, miscounting, or lacking willpower. But is this really true? People were eating […]
16
Jan
Jan
What Science Reveals About Paper Cups As a herbalist, I’m always mindful of what we put into our bodies, especially when it comes to daily rituals like enjoying a hot cup of coffee. Unfortunately, a snatched coffee on your way to work might be silently introducing microplastics and harmful chemicals into your morning brew? There are problems when hot coffee meets a disposable paper […]