MOSLEY

Like most of us, I suspect, I've enjoyed the unexpectedly warm start to October — but I'm really not looking forward to the colder, darker months ahead, which are among the most miserable and stressful of the year.I have a naturally…

The mounting obsession with our gut microbes shows no signs of peaking — with study after study looking at the impact that this community of bacteria, viruses and fungi has on our physical and mental health.Most recently, research has…

Do you like drinking tea or taking a stroll in the rain? Did you know that walking backwards can help your memory - or that stopping yourself from being a mouth breather is good for your oral health?This might sound like a bad mash-up of…

I love self-testing: I regularly test my blood pressure and cholesterol. And, as many of you will know by now, I was once diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and while I reversed it, I also still check my blood sugar levels.It’s something…

Once upon a time, before the arrival of electric light, people would eat their evening meal by candlelight.When my wife, Clare, and I are feeling romantic (or when there is a power failure), we still sometimes do this, although turning…

What do Napoleon Bonaparte and Elvis Presley have in common?The surprising connection is they both suffered from chronic constipation. In the case of Bonaparte, it led to haemorrhoids (piles) so bad he couldn't ride his horse to survey…

Not many of us would volunteer to be infected with a potentially lethal new virus in the name of science.But early in the pandemic, in a first-of-its-kind trial for Covid, that’s exactly what 36 healthy — and brave — young people did,…

One of my regrets in life is not being able to speak another language with any real fluency.I'm embarrassed by my very basic French, but not embarrassed enough to put in the hard work to improve it. So I was delighted when I came across…

A few years ago my wife Clare was startled when a patient came into her GP surgery and said lightly, 'My husband is beating me.'Fortunately, this was not a case of domestic violence: what the patient was really complaining about was that…

Have you ever seen a ghost? I haven't, but my wife, Clare, woke me earlier this week, convinced there were ghosts in our bedroom.'I can see them moving around at the end of the bed,' she told me. 'They don't have faces and they don't…