Jo Waters

Over the past six years, Home Office minister Rachel Maclean has had such devastating migraines that, at times, she's had to rush out of parliamentary debates to be sick.
'I'd often have to do things such as lock myself in a loo cubicle just to get five minutes' rest before I went back into a debate or a meeting,' says Rachel, 55, Conservative MP for Redditch who is married with four children.
The migraines would cause not just nausea and sickness, but also 'vice-like' pain in her head during...

Once taboo, the perimenopause is now a public health issue – with campaigners calling for free NHS prescriptions for HRT in England. Journalist Jo Waters asks why the perimenopause has turned political.
Suddenly, the rocky road women can travel in their perimenopause – the months and years running up to the menopause, when their periods stop – is being talked about in high places.
Fed up with suffering in silence, often soldiering on when they are plagued by heavy periods, concentration probl...

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Feature on Charle Bonnet syndrome for Saga magazine , reproduced with permission.

Do you enjoy an evening run in the park? Or perhaps you’ve joined the growing numbers encouraged by the lighter summer months and the pandemic to swap public transport for a cycle trip to work?
While exercise provides a huge range of benefits for mental and physical health, experts are now urgently warning of the potential risks that running and cycling in polluted areas can cause to heart health.
‘Cycling and running are indisputably good for your health. But at high intensity and in pollute...

Being super-vigilant is a way of life for Emelia Brain and her family after she was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening milk allergy as a baby.
So severe is her allergy that even walking past spilt milk is enough to trigger a serious reaction.
But they now know this vigilance has to extend beyond food, after Emelia, 13, who also has asthma, suffered a serious reaction earlier this year to a bath bomb that contained milk protein.
She had been given the bath bomb for Christmas and alt...

A drug that can safely aid rapid weight loss and keep it off sounds too good to be true. Yet apparently it exists.
Saxenda (generic name, liraglutide) was originally developed as a drug for diabetes but has been shown to reduce body weight by, on average, 7.5 per cent in under nine months.
And in a trial led by Copenhagen University, Denmark, involving 195 obese adults, those given the drug (administered as a daily injection) lost 16 per cent of their body weight in a year when combined with ...

As Matthew O’Toole sat sweating and nauseous on a bench, many passers-by simply walked straight past him.
But one woman felt she had to stop to help — and swiftly realised that Matthew was having a stroke. She called 999.
Now, Matthew, a 47-year-old father of two, from Farnham, Surrey, is making a good recovery.
As has been widely reported, his wife Georgina, 44, set about tracking down the Good Samaritan online, to thank her personally for what she did for Matthew that day last month — and t...

Survey after survey shows that dementia is the disease we fear more than any other, even cancer — and last week came the news that there is now a new treatment for it.
A drug called aducanumab has been given the go-ahead by U.S. regulatory authorities — making it the first new drug for the condition to be approved in 20 years.
Dementia is an umbrella term for several brain diseases that affect memory, thinking and cognition. Treatments such as donepezil (brand name Aricept), rivastigmine (Exe...

Every night for the past 15 years, Annette Ritchie has struggled to fall asleep. She is kept awake by sensations pulsing through her legs which give her a relentless urge to move them.
When she lies down or sits still for long, niggling sensations ‘like ants crawling in my blood’ develop in both limbs.
‘I have this irresistible urge to move my legs, as it’s the only thing that relieves the feelings,’ says Annette, 52, a former council worker who lives in Inverness with husband Andrew, 57, a s...

The pace of scientific research holds the promise of dramatically improving the lives of people living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Finding ways of extending the benefits of the most innovative treatments to all who need them will be the biggest challenge facing global health policymakers.
FORESIGHT Global Health asked five global health experts what the future of medicines for non-communicable disease (NCDs) looks like and what innovations we can expect to see.
THE RESEARCH VOICE
“...

For more than 17 years, James Lavers was assured by several doctors that the bloating and pain he experienced on and off from his early 20s was irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). His story is far from unique.
Gut complaints are extremely common, accounting for one in five GP consultations and millions of over-the counter sales of gastric relief products, for everything from acid reflux and bloating to diarrhoea. And IBS, thought to affect up to 14 million people in the UK, is a very common diagn...

Young families have been under tremendous pressure from all directions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Journalist Jo Waters investigates what new parents, babies and toddlers, and parents of young children have been experiencing and asks what support they will need.
The list of lockdown stressors for new parents has been endless: mothers giving birth in hospital with midwives in PPE, sometimes without their partners (Ostlere, 2020), and limited hands-on support from friends and grandparents due...

For five years, Sumia Hussain, 26, has worked as an agency carer, providing for the personal needs of her clients as well as preparing their meals, often feeding them and doing light housework.
Here, Sumia describes in heartbreaking detail a recent typical shift. As the Mail backs the Alzheimer’s Society’s call to end the social care scandal, Sumia’s account lays bare the shameful lack of support for some of the most vulnerable and lonely.
3pm: Ethel is tearful and asks me not to go
Today, I ...

Young people are emerging as the pandemic’s collateral damage. Their mental health and education are under strain, and their struggles include anxiety, isolation and poverty. Journalist Jo Waters asks what can be done to support them.
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted our children’s lives – emptying schools for the best part of a year, causing a spike in levels of child poverty and mental health problems and revealing a shocking digital divide in education. One commentator compared...