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Have you ever popped an echinacea tablet at the first sign of a cold or dabbed a spot of aloe vera on a patch of irritated skin? Well, you are certainly not alone. The complementary and alternative medicine market has seen a dramatic growth over the last couple of decades and continues to climb, with

Now that UK lockdown restrictions are beginning to ease and private sector hospitals are starting to resume their pre-Coronavirus services, we are delighted to be back in our consulting rooms and able to welcome patients to our practice once more. The “new normal” has meant a number of noticeable changes to the way we work

It is hard to know where to begin or what to say when it comes to the Coronavirus. If truth be told, there is nothing we can say that has not already been said, and when it comes to the facts and the figures, the knows and the unknowns, there are many authorities out there

Whether we like it or not, at some point during our lives we will probably all be advised to take a medication for something, whether it is a painkiller for a headache, a course of antibiotics for a chest infection, or a daily tablet for a long term condition such as diabetes or heart disease.

From time to time we all hear stories about devoted couples who have spent their whole lives together and then go on to die just a week, day or even an hour apart. In such a situation many people might be inclined to say that the widow or widower in question died from a “broken

We all know how miserable it is to drag ourselves through the day when we’ve had a bad night’s sleep. Unrefreshing sleep can leave us lacking in energy, irritable and feeling generally under the weather, but can it also have more significant longer term effects? Researchers looked at over 385,000 people without documented cardiovascular disease

Now that “Dry January” has been and gone, many people are guilty of returning to their tipple of choice and enjoying a glass or two of wine of an evening. Aside from the well known and heavily publicised risks associated with alcohol intake – strain on the liver, disrupted sleep, reduced mental alertness, and so

Despite being the most prescribed drug in the UK, many people still worry that they are risking cognitive problems in later life every time they swallow their daily dose. Not only does the latest research demonstrate that statins are not associated with an increase in incidence of or speed of decline in dementia, but it

According to the British Heart Foundation, around 50% of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes are associated with high blood pressure (hypertension) and as many as 5 million adults in the UK have undiagnosed high blood pressure. Once someone has been found to have hypertension, it is important that they establish a regime

In this day and age driving becomes second nature to most of us from our late teens onwards, and many drivers would struggle to envisage a life without their car. When illness strikes often the furthest thing from a patient’s mind is whether or not they are fit to drive in the eyes of the

Have you ever looked at a tablet and thought it was too big to swallow whole and that cutting it in half would do no harm? Or crushed a pill and mixed it with something tasty to make it easier to swallow? This would seem like a very reasonable thing to do, and indeed a

Energy drinks were first developed by a pharmaceutical company in Japan in 1962 to keep their staff alert and thereby facilitate longer working hours. An Austrian businessman on a trip to Asia in the 1980s realised that there was a gap in the European market for similar products and promptly established the company Red Bull,