IBS: An Existential Issue.
There is an absence about Irene. She lives alone in a small village in the Yorkshire Dales, forty miles from the nearest town. Her husband works abroad for much of … Continue reading
Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth!
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth, And spotted the dangers beneath All the toffees I chewed, And the sweet sticky food. Oh, I wish I’d looked after me … Continue reading
From High Fibre to Nutritional and Microbial Diversity: Back to the Future
Some time in the early nineteen eighties, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Dennis Burkitt on the fibre hypothesis. Burkitt had worked for many years as a … Continue reading
All in the mind/all in the gut: it’s a false dichotomy.
Many of the posts in this blog tend to focus on trauma, stress and how what happens to us affects how the gut feels and misbehaves, but please don’t conclude … Continue reading
IBS: fact or fiction?
By the nineteen nineties, I had been conducting clinical research for 20 years. I knew my trade, had published several hundred papers in academic journals and was in demand on … Continue reading
And after the affair
The books and magazine articles are clear. Let it go, move on and start again. Erase his number from your phone, don’t read any letters, throw away all those poems … Continue reading
Love-sick
Sigmund Freud has been criticised for implying that most mental illness and much physical illness is due to sex. He might have said love or attachment, but nevertheless, he was … Continue reading
True Love: the myth and the misery.
Falling in love can be such a wonderful, transformative experience. The discovery of that special person, with whom we seem to connect so easily, can make everything seem so much … Continue reading
Trust, illness and the impossibility of sex.
One sunny afternoon in early autumn, while I was busy dissecting the reproductive organs of the Arctic Skate (Amblyraja hyperborea) for my Zoology practical when my biology teacher, Mr Ernest … Continue reading
Delusion: a necessary refuge from life and illness.
It is Wednesday and I am writing from my cottage in Derbyshire. All seems safe outside, a soft rain is falling and a thrush is singing from the gable end, … Continue reading
The Sensitive Gut 