A new study has found that certain inherited brain abnormalities can make some people more prone to addiction than others. The study, conducted by the University of Cambridge and published in the journal ‘Science’, used scans from 50 cocaine addicts and their non-addict siblings to look for differences in brain functioning. Scientists found that abnormalities read more »

Sarah Hart was a size 24 when she decided to share a joint wedding ceremony with her size 8 sister. The resulting pictures shocked the mother of two into losing more than 11 stone in under two years. ‘My size was always in the back of my mind, but I was in denial at the read more »

Cramps? Constipation? Diarrhoea? Bloating? No one wants digestive problems when there’s so much great food on offer over the festive season. IBS, or irritable bowel syndrome, is the more common form of digestive problem. It is thought to effect  about 1 in 10 people in the UK and is most common among women aged between read more »

Companies who do not address the mental health problems of their employees could face a high number of absences and reduced productivity in the work place. According to research conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, one in four individuals in the UK workforce have experienced a mental health problem at some point read more »

A US study recently published in the journal Cancer has revealed that individuals who light up first thing in the morning stand a higher risk of developing cancer than those who have their first cigarette later on in the day. The study in question looked at 7,610 smokers, 4,776 of whom had lung cancer and read more »

Dr Peter Naish and Dr Clare Gerada discussed the use of hypnotherapy within the NHS on BBC radio 4 this morning. Dr Peter Naish, president of the Royal Society of Medicine’s hypnosis section has said that hypnotherapy is a useful tool which he would like to see used more widely across the NHS. Naish commented read more »

A Tourette’s sufferer launches blog to explore the funny side of her tics. Jessica Thom was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome in 2006 and is now just one of the 300,000 individuals in the UK who is affected by uncontrollable tics. Jessica belongs to the 10 per cent of Tourette’s sufferers who involuntarily use’s offensive language. read more »

Though gastric bypass surgery undoubtedly has its benefits such as increased life expectancy, lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure – there are concerns about this type of surgery when used on adolescents who are morbidly obese. While the risk of death in adults is currently very low at below 1 per cent, there are a read more »

A recent study conducted in the U.S has found that women suffering with breast cancer which had spread to other parts of the body experienced a significant reduction in their pain when they underwent hypnotherapy. Women like those described above usually experience pain through what is known as a metastatic tumour, which simply means it read more »

The stress which is caused by day to day worries often to builds to a point where some begin to literally pull their hair out. It sounds like an extreme reaction but often starts when individuals fiddle with their hair, a habit which eventually builds and escalates to a condition known as Trichotillomania. A French read more »