A simple tool, the Short Fat Questionnaire (SFQ) developed by researchers at Newcastle University, can be used to assess dietary fat intake and provide education about sources of fat in the diet. The SFQ gives an indication of habitual dietary fat intake from significant fat-containing foods. The SFQ provides an excellent check for obvious fats [...]

Ten years ago, at the age of 27, I was eventually diagnosed as having mild endometriosis after many months of pain, discomfort and one miscarriage. I then tried a variety of treatments — Duphaston, Danazol and laparoscopic surgery — and had some positive short-term results but no full-term pregnancies. I very much wanted children so [...]

Traditionally gynaecologists have described the typical woman with endometriosis as being white, middle class, career-oriented, intelligent, a perfectionist, over-anxious, ambitious, obsessive, and underweight, in her 30s or 40s with a stressful career and who has deliberately delayed childbearing to pursue an education or career. Such a description is a myth, derived from the impressions and [...]

The use of visualisation techniques has played a part in treating disease from early times and in therapies from all over the world. The technique has been ‘rediscovered’ in recent times and is often used in conjunction with a number of other therapies to aid the natural healing process as well as to create a [...]

Technically, those who don’t quite meet diagnoses of major depressive disorder or dysthymia are known as subsyndromal. Studies on subsyndromal conditions have found that they can actually be quite disabling, often causing as much misery and costing those suffering from them as many days off work as the full-blown syndromes themselves. Clearly this is a [...]

This is all well and good, says the conventional skeptic, but the so-called results of the Ecology Unit, and of clinical ecology, are actually based on suggestion. This is the so-called placebo effect (from the Latin “I will please”) in which a totally inert “sugar pill” sometimes has curative properties. In the case of clinical [...]

Manganese is perhaps no less important than calcium for maintaining the strength of the bones, according to Science News (130:199). In fact, that journal reports, the only abnormality consistently found in the blood of a group of women with osteoporosis was an extremely low level of manganese. Furthermore, a young basketball superstar who was constantly [...]

Pain, ache, or throbbing in any area of the head are obvious signs of a headache. The type of headache experienced depends somewhat on the cause of the headache. Some clues to the cause are the location of the pain, how long pain lasts, the time of day at which it occurs, the circumstances leading [...]

It’s All the Rage You know that jackass who insists on driving about 10 miles per hour below the speed limit? The one who inspires Walter Mitty fantasies of you piloting a monster truck, crushing his little Volkswagen like the bug it is? Well, while Sunday drivers have always been a little frustrating, these days [...]

Haematoma A haematoma is a collection of blood which leaks from the tissues during or after an operation and is unable to escape. Blood may collect under the skin flaps which remain after a breast operation, although this is uncommon if the surgeon has taken care to stop bleeding during surgery. The drainage tubes which [...]