Dizziness is a common symptom reported and experienced in primary care. It can be difficult to actually understand exactly what people experience when they report dizziness. It tends to be a sense of unsteadiness, a feeling of movement and more clearly in some people the true experience of vertigo which is a spinning sensation. Commonly … Continue reading Dizziness and migraine →

Hello and welcome to episode 13. This week brings a different slant to the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on an article published in the Lancet  but which also had the results discussed in a national UK newspaper. The article looks at the success of control of the infection by societies taking into account the … Continue reading Cultural tightness-looseness →

Rates of obesity have been increasing since the 1970s and 1980s in what one can call the industrialised or more developed countries. Rates of obesity do you seem to be related to social inequality and that  can be seen by looking at the work of Wilkinson and the book ‘The Spirit Level’. Tables of obesity … Continue reading A new treatment option for obesity →

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034545?query=featured_coronavirus

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.m4858

One of the unknowns of the coronavirus pandemic is the risk of re-infection either in the case of someone who has acquired natural immunity or through vaccination. This has been put into focus with the emergence of new variants of the virus; so the question is raised as to whether conferred immunity remains. The following … Continue reading Covid and re-infection →

Hello and welcome to episode 8. Today’s episode again has a focus on the Covid pandemic. Consideration is given to whether the success of restrictions imposed to control the infection rate are impaired because people are not being willing to comply, or whether there other explanations. Today’s narration is based on an article in the … Continue reading Pandemic fatigue or not? →

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32753-7/fulltext

Hello and welcome to episode six of Talk Medical English. Today we move away from the Covid pandemic and move onto something gastrointestinal. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) affects 10%–20% of the population1but other conditions have similar symptoms. Microscopic colitis is a cause of chronic, non-bloody, watery diarrhoea, particularly in older patients in whom the impact … Continue reading Microscopic colitis →

Hello and welcome to episode five. For its Christmas edition the British Medical Journal or the BMJ publishes articles that are somewhat different to those that it publishes for the other 50 weeks of the year, being more esoteric, humorous and not necessarily in the usual style or subject matter. The current Christmas edition includes … Continue reading A Christmas spin on medicine →