Jo Waters

An inflammation of the lungs that’s usually caused by an infection, severe pneumonia kills 25,000 people a year in the UK. Milder types, such as the so-called “walking pneumonia”, however, can sometimes go undiagnosed.
For most healthy people, a bout of pneumonia is no more than a nasty chest infection that passes in a couple of weeks or so, sometimes needing antibiotics if it’s caused by a bacterial infection.
“The less severe your symptoms are then the less likely you are to be diagnosed wi...

Whether coughs are tickly, hacking, dry, or chesty ones that bring up phlegm, they can have a big impact – disrupting sleep at night, causing social embarrassment, exacerbating incontinence and spreading infection. But when do they become something to worry about?
Persistent coughs lasting more than eight weeks affect an estimated five to 10 per cent of the UK’s adult population, according to some estimates.
“Coughs are one of the most common medical complaints that patients see a doctor for,...

Cholesterol-lowering statins don’t cause the vast majority of possible side effects listed in pill package leaflets after all, according to a landmark new study.
The findings compared side effects reported in people who took statins with those who took a placebo (dummy pills) in 19 large randomised controlled trials and found only four out of 66 possible adverse effects had higher rates in patients who took statins.
The team led by Oxford Population Health found that for the vast majority of ...

As a lecturer at a university, my husband admits he sometimes struggles to hear his students at the back of the class, but like me he doesn’t want to wear a hearing aid for fear of being labelled “past it”, so he walks around the room when he doesn’t quite catch the question the first time.
He’s blaming ear wax and paying £70 every six months to get them irrigated – as no syringing is available on the NHS locally. If your family is shocked at how loud you turn the TV up and exasperated by you...

Moments That Count is a disease awareness campaign initiated, created, developed and fully funded by Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd. This article was created and funded by Novartis.
Patients living with incurable advanced breast cancer are the focus of a campaign to bust myths about what it’s like to live with a terminal diagnosis of the disease.
Just over one in five people diagnosed with breast cancer will experience a recurrence of it¹, and around 61,000 people in the UK – mostly women – ...

Vitamin D is crucial for good health, including building strong bones and muscles, as well as maintaining a robust immune system. But surveys suggest that one in 10 people over the age of 65 in the UK are vitamin D deficient.
“We don't have enough sunlight in the UK during the winter months for our bodies to make enough vitamin D,” says Susan Lanham-New, professor of human nutrition at the University of Surrey, and a leading authority on the vitamin.
In the six months between October and Marc...

Three million people aged 80 and above will now be able to get the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine for the first time, after the Department of Health and Social Care finally changed its mind this week.
All older people living in care homes will also become eligible for RSV jabs when the spring vaccination campaign kicks off on 1 April in England. Details of the expansion roll-out in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are expected to be announced very soon.
There will be no upper a...

1. Ditch fizzy drinks to avoid bloating
(and why spirits are better than beer)
Canapes and glasses of fizz are hard to resist in party season, but too many seasonal treats can upset your gut, causing acid reflux and heartburn, bloating, constipation and diarrhoea.
Add in stress, alcohol and over-indulgence, and you have a perfect storm for gut problems when you least need them, says Professor Peter Whorwell, consultant gastroenterologist at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, and author of Take...

Childhood and adolescent vaccination uptake rates are mostly declining in the UK, but what’s really behind the drop, and what can be done to truly get back on track? Journalist Jo Waters reports.
It was reported in autumn 2025 that almost one in five (18.6%) children starting school in England had missed their 4-in-1 preschool booster vaccination (for polio, whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria) (UKHSA, 2025a). This is the lowest uptake since 2010/11. Although uptake was slightly higher in ...

Ignore chronic inflammation at your peril. Recognised as a contributor to many deaths globally, half of these are partly attributable to inflammation-related diseases including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.
“Whilst helpful in the short term – as part of the body’s healing process in response to injury or an infection – inflammation becomes harmful if it becomes chronic,” says Dr Sammie Gill, a dietitian and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) specialist.
Diet can have a huge ...

If you’re one of the estimated 1.4 million people in the UK who have been paying privately every month for Mounjaro and other GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) jabs that suppress appetite by blocking hunger hormones, the sky-high price rises may mean you’ll soon be having to rely on old-fashioned dieting/healthy eating to maintain and lose weight.
Coming off GLP-1 drugs – what to expect?
“The evidence is that 70% of people gain 70% of the weight they’ve lost on GLP-1s within a year if they haven’...

Dementia symptoms don’t always include memory loss, particularly in the early stages, at least with some of the rarer types.
Nick Fox, professor of clinical neurology at Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College, London, and director of the Dementia Research Centre, says there are multiple symptoms of different types of dementia that are not always related to memory, depending on which part of the brain is affected.
“People think of dementia as typically something that affects p...

After almost 40 years in nursing, much of it spent in cardiology, using a defibrillator machine was second nature to Fran Murt.

But suddenly, on a training day, the deputy matron who had joined the NHS at 17 found herself struggling to use it.

‘I just couldn’t remember how it worked and burst into tears,’ recalls Fran, now 70. ‘My colleagues tried to reassure me I was just stressed after a busy time at work, but I knew something more was wrong.’

The defibrillator incident was just one of a st...

Eighteen months after surgery to remove his cancerous prostate gland, Mark Roberts, 52, a former soldier, is ‘incredibly grateful’ that the disease was picked up by a private wellness screening offered by his employer.
Although his cancer was caught early – it was stage two, meaning it hadn’t spread beyond the prostate – it was affecting the whole of the right side of the gland.
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Most nights as he lies down to sleep, Matt Ridout is overwhelmed by distracting noises – all of them inside his head.
These include the whooshing sound of his heartbeat, a pulse in his ears, a high-pitched ringing noise – and the bizarre sound of his eyeballs moving side to side, or up and down.
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