Louis Weinstock, a psychotherapist, recalls how a teenage girl with acute mental health problems, including self-harm and suicidal thoughts, confided to him that she had begun to question whether or not her suffering was real. She had seen so many of her friends post about their “anxiety” and “depression” that “she felt like she wasn’t … Read more
These may be the years of plate rotation. Our careers and relationships are falling into place and with that comes the stress of mortgages and family commitments. We are not as young as we were and it is more difficult to recover as quickly as we did. If your food mountain up to this point … Read more
Doctors, unsurprisingly, are skeptical, citing a lack of evidence to support the use of supplements for mental health conditions. Paul Blenkiron, Consultant Psychiatrist and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, says: “I would never blame anyone for wanting to find a solution to their depression or anxiety, especially if nothing else has worked, but … Read more
He explains to me how our breathing is intrinsically linked to our nervous system. “The way we breathe directly affects our mind and body. If we breathe calmly, we will create a sense of calm and calm thoughts will follow. Often when we are stressed, we breathe erratically, with rapid or short breaths. In short, … Read more
But meat, the kind of high-welfare meat that Buxton would like us all to eat, is expensive. “That’s because our food system is biased. If I were designing policies to make it affordable to eat right, I would tax the most processed stuff and empty carbs and junk and subsidize regeneratively farmed eggs and meat, … Read more
NHS figures show that around one in three adults over the age of 65 will have at least one fall a year, says physiotherapist Katie Knapton, while half of people over the age of 80 will have at least one fall a year. In 2013, figures from the National Institute for Excellence in Health and … Read more
If you came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, you will no doubt remember the crazy diet culture of that era. The Beverly Hills Diet, first published in 1981, advocated eating only grapes on Tuesdays, while the Cabbage Soup Diet, well, you can probably guess. Meanwhile, we were also encouraged to over-exercise and incredibly … Read more
From time to time, I worry about being a bit of a spoilsport in this column. An old Victoria Meldrew. I complain about leaf blowers, telling them that they shouldn’t wear the wrong kind of wellies and that they can only have curtains, not blinds, in their house. Still, I’m not sure there’s anything in … Read more