Category: Health

  • Ssssssssmokin!

    I’ve got one of these for a work thing I’m doing soon. It’s the SuperSmoker! If you haven’t already seen the video, it’s hilarious. I’ll report back :)

  • Hey! Let’s talk about smoking! Again!

    Hardly unpredictable I know, but the Scottish parliament plans to ban the display of cigarettes in shops in order to – yes! – protect the kiddies. The next step, apparently, is to legislate so cigarettes are sold in plain packaging. As ever, the online comments are lovely: this lot is from the Scotsman. Dacinda72 hasn’t…

  • A great book, but the people who need it won’t read it

    I mentioned this briefly before, but I’d like to mention it again: Suckers, by Rose Shapiro, is a wonderful demolition job of the alternative medicine racket. Like all polemics, it sometimes crushes things that perhaps don’t deserve to be crushed – so it’s very hard on acupuncture, despite some indications that it can be useful…

  • Baby food bollocks from the department of transport

    The Department of Transport (Aviation Security Domestic Branch) has replied to my query about air travel and baby food. I asked why all baby food had to be opened at security when it was potentially dangerous (baby food should be disposed of within two hours tops). The reply says: The liquids requirements were introduced on…

  • It’s time for a crackdown on binge drinking… doctors

    I’m sure this will be all over blogland, but I’m posting it anyway because it made me laugh. The BMA, which condemned 24-hour drinking last week and called for higher taxes on alcohol, faces accusations of hypocrisy after complaints of drunken antics at its central London headquarters. It has emerged that while blaming everyone else…

  • The Martian Death Flu survival kit

    Martian Death Flu – or, as it’s known to women, “the cold” – is a rubbish thing to have, especially when you work in a creative job: you’re ill enough that your brain turns to cheese, preventing you from doing any work, but you’re not ill enough to get any sympathy whatsoever. So here’s what…

  • Boozy bosses

    Chief executives of big companies and public sector organisations are coping with their stressful positions by drinking the equivalent of almost three bottles of wine a week, new research shows. Three bottles a week? Lightweights! There are quite a few stories like this one turning up in the papers, and you tend to see the…

  • Excellent website needs excellent writer/editor

    BestTreatments, the site that provides accurate information on what health stuff works and what doesn’t, is looking for an editor. It’s a permanent position based in central London. You will write, edit and help to commission material, taking responsibility for sign-off through to publication and liaising with key contacts including clinical experts, colleagues and freelancers.…

  • The easy way to stop smoking – permanently

    Want to stop smoking permanently? Then why not kill yourself? According to the Daily Mail, the stop-smoking wonder drug Champix can make some users suicidal. It’s not a big surprise if true – I tried the previous wonder drug, Zyban, and stopped taking it after a few weeks because its side-effects terrified me – but…

  • Still no cure for colic (but there are a few things worth trying)

    One for the parents and parents-to-be: one in five babies gets colic, which typically develops at about two weeks of age and hangs around until twelve weeks before disappearing as mysteriously as it arrived. Nobody really knows what causes it, but if you’ve experienced it (or are currently experiencing it) you’ll know how hellish it…