In the last few decades, there has been a huge increase in allergy and allergic reactions, but why? Just what has changed in our health and environment to bring this about? Consultant NHS allergist Dr Sophie Farooque discusses one of the biggest puzzles in medicine. For example peanut allergies were almost unknown before the 1990s, but today it  and other food allergies are much more common. Sophie reveals the best thing to do to stop a child developing a food allergy is - perhaps counter intuitively -  to ensure that from an early age, they are exposed to a wide variety of foods, in ..read more

Dr Jason Fung argues that much of what we think we know about weight loss is simply wrong. Jason says that the critical factor in losing weight is hormones - not calories. He believes calorie counting is an overly simplistic approach. And that actually dieting may be the worst thing you can do, because it slows your metabolic rate which actually makes it harder to reduce weight in the future. Jason argues medical science reveals that we all have what is effectively a fat thermostat in our bodies that tries to keep our body within a particular set weight. Try to reduce weight and our metabolism ..read more

Beth Zupec–Kania is a dietician and nutritionist, who has spent over 30 years developing very low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic diets - to treat a range of both physical and mental health conditions. She has worked with many of the leading neurologists and psychiatrists pioneering this field. I heard Beth speak at a conference  Metabolic Psychiatry: Understanding How Modifying Metabolism Can Create Mental Health last November. I was very keen to get her on the podcast, because I’ve now done several episodes about the use of ketogenic diets to treat different illnesses. And so ..read more

Dr Barbara Mintzes and Dr Joel Lexchin, have recently published a review paper on the weight loss drug Wegovy (generic name semaglutide). They discuss it and the new generation of similar obesity medications. The hype surrounding this new class of drugs has been huge, but is it justified? These pharmaceuticals are called glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists or GLP-1 for short. They work by stimulating cells in your intestines to release a natural hormone called GLP-1 that tricks your stomach and your brain into thinking you’ve just eaten a large meal. Clearly, obesity is major problem in countries ..read more

Dr Mark Horowitz discusses why psychiatric medication has turned out to be far harder to stop than any one expected. For Mark, this is as much a personal as well as a professional interest. For as a patient, at one point he was taking five different psychiatric drugs. Ironically, although Mark was working in London at the Institute of Psychiatry, he found the mostly useful information about deprescribing came -  not from the medical profession - but from peer support websites. This experience has driven his research and interest in safely stopping psychiatric medication. He, along with Pr ..read more

Psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede argues that the medical profession has completely underestimated the huge impact of diet on our mental health. In her new book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind,  Georgia reveals improvements we can all make to our diet, and in particular, three different dietary approaches for those looking to improve their mental health. She suggests that early results from a range of trials using this approach to treat conditions from bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, show a much great effect, in fact 6 to 10 times then that seen in any comparative drug trial. Georgia bel ..read more

Dr Lisa Sanders, writes a column called Diagnosis in the New York Times magazine, which was the inspiration for the Fox medical series House MD. The show in which Hugh Laurie playing Dr Gregory  House,  remarkably managed to diagnose the most obscure of medical conditions. But today Lisa has arguably a rather tougher challenge than Hugh Laurie ever faced, she’s recently started running a clinic for long covid. It’s a condition that can affect multiple systems and organs in the body, and finding effective treatments so far has largely eluded the medical profession. However, Lisa revea ..read more

Dr Robert Lufkin argues that modern medicine hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to the underlying causes of diseases, and has tended to treat symptoms instead. And in a controversial new book Lies I taught at Medical school, How Conventional Medicine is Making You Sicker and What You Can Do to Save Your Own Life, published by BenBella books, as evidence for his claims, he points to the epidemics of chronic disease, we are now seeing in the industrialised world. In the US in 2010, 16-21% of adults had two or more chronic diseases. Today, shockingly, the figure is 40%. Rob explains what needs t ..read more

Kim Witczak's life was changed for ever one tragic day in 2003 when her husband Woody killed himself. Several weeks earlier, Woody, who did not have a history of depression or mental illness, had been prescribed the SSRI anti-depressant drug Zoloft (generic name sertraline) for his insomnia. Kim sued the drug company Pfizer for wrongful death, later settling out of court. Pfizer did not admit liability. Since Woody’s death 20 years ago, Kim has become a committed advocate for safer medication. She campaigned for stronger safety warnings to be put on SSRI drugs. And in 2004 and 2006, labelling ..read more

GP Dr David Unwin has been a pioneer in the UK developing and promoting a low-carb approach for treating type 2 diabetes. In 2016, he won the NHS innovator of the year award for his work. His treatment approach has been so successful that  he has put around half his type 2 diabetic patients, who follow a low carb diet, into remission. And as a result, his practice, spends far less on diabetic medication than any of the surrounding GP surgeries. The potential cost savings if this approach was adopted nationally and internationally, would be huge for health services across the world. We ten ..read more