Jo Waters

It’s been a tough few years, but here community practitioners offer their advice on finding job fulfilment and preserving personal wellness in a time of crisis. By journalist Jo Waters.
Cutbacks in community staffing levels in some areas, rising workloads, plus the pandemic and its resulting social problems have meant it’s not exactly been an easy time to work as a health visitor, school nurse, district nurse or community nursery nurse.
The latest NHS staff survey in England gave a snapshot o...

Some 20 months after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK, the damage to the population’s health is already becoming apparent – and it’s looking rather unequal. Journalist Jo Waters explores the impact and way forward.
With some of the world’s higher rates of obesity in adults and children (World Obesity Federation, 2021), rising levels of type 2 diabetes, a growing mental health epidemic – particularly among young people – and widening social inequalities, the UK population was not ideally place...

When most of us think about the risk factors for a heart attack, it’s probably smoking, high blood pressure and being overweight that first spring to mind. But there’s another hidden and universal threat to our cardiovascular health: the polluted air that nine out of 10 people in the world are currently breathing. Air pollution is estimated to kill seven million people each year, affecting every organ of the body. The risk of respiratory diseases is well understood, but the connection between...

The NHS is about to undergo more big changes, shifting care away from hospitals, investing more powers in the Secretary of State for Health and replacing clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) with new, larger integrated care boards (ICBs) as part of wider changes to the function of integrated care systems (ICSs).

Lying awake with the constant urge to move your legs may sound like a trivial problem to non-sufferers but, as Jo Waters discovers, restless legs syndrome is no joke for the millions troubled by it.
A proper night’s sleep is a distant dream for 60-year-old Leigh Humpage. The former social worker is one of an estimated two million people who suffer from restless legs syndrome (RLS), the irresistible desire to move your legs.
‘I have these odd, creepy-crawly sensations; it can feel like my legs...

It's not just physical symptoms. Menopause can bring about psychological symptoms that have long reaching effects.
The Feelgood Menopause is a Noon editorial project, edited by Eleanor Mills, written by award-winning health journalist Jo Waters and brought to you by LYMA, a company which is redefining the wellness industry with a unique combination of science, nature and technology. The LYMA Supplement includes nine peer-reviewed ingredients in one formula. (Find out more about LYMA supplemen...

There are a range of HRT treatments available, delivered in different ways. Find out which one is best for you.
The Feelgood Menopause is a Noon editorial project, edited by Eleanor Mills, written by award-winning health journalist Jo Waters and brought to you by LYMA, a company which is redefining the wellness industry with a unique combination of science, nature and technology. The LYMA Supplement includes nine peer-reviewed ingredients in one formula. (Find out more about LYMA supplements ...

Wondering about HRT, how to ask for it and the risks? Get answers with Noon.
The Feelgood Menopause is a Noon editorial project, edited by Eleanor Mills, written by award-winning health journalist Jo Waters and brought to you by LYMA, a company which is redefining the wellness industry with a unique combination of science, nature and technology. The LYMA Supplement includes nine peer-reviewed ingredients in one formula. (Find out more about LYMA supplements and what they can do for you.)
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Menopause is not well understood or managed for many women. Do you know the basic facts about when it occurs, symptoms and whether you'll get fat.
For something that happens to every woman, menopause is still a life event shrouded in myths and mystery. The symptoms are often not recognised by women (or their doctors) and therefore are undertreated and, until recently, have been something of a taboo subject.
The Feelgood Menopause is a Noon editorial project, edited by Eleanor Mills, written b...

The past century has been one of enormous progress in the understanding of human pathology and treatment of disease. We are now looking at a future in which technology and state-of-the-art treatments offer previously unimaginable potential for health care that is specifically targeted to individual patient requirements.
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 ben...

Dropping to the bathroom floor with crushing pains in her chest, Irene Birtwhistle was convinced she was having a heart attack.
‘I was in agony,’ recalls Irene, 53, who lives in Turriff, Aberdeenshire, with husband Simon, a retired council road worker and their children, Christopher, 18, and Sophie, 13.
‘The stabbing pains in my chest had woken me early at 6am, my skin was clammy and sweaty, and I was breathless and nauseous. I rushed to the bathroom and vomited, and then I shouted to Simon t...

As a hotel chef often on his feet for ten hours a day, and a keen rugby player, Gareth Dwyer put the constant ache in his buttocks down to his work and lifestyle.
‘I played rugby as a prop — pushing against the full weight of the opposing team’s scrum — so I thought the pain was just wear and tear from being very active,’ says Gareth, 42.
‘When I was walking, though, I was hunching over like a turtle and the pain could radiate into my hips — the only way I’d get any relief was to put my hands...

The idea of ‘ageing’ overnight after a traumatic event sounds like a figure of speech — it was famously expressed in relation to Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France.
Her hair allegedly went white the night before she was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, aged 38.
Yet research has now shown that going white overnight and other forms of rapid ageing are a biological fact.
A U.S. study found that new mothers who had less than seven hours’ sleep a night in their baby’s f...

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...