In March this year The British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an article on ‘Low back pain in people aged 60 years and over’. The authors rightly remind doctors to have a higher index of suspicion for cancer, infections, and bone fractures in older people, but otherwise the approach to back pain is largely the same as in younger [...]

Allen Carr—he of Easy Way to Stop Smoking fame—published a book in 2004 called The Easy Way to Control Alcohol. There have been later editions but since he died in 2006 if the text has been rewritten it would have been by someone else. Easy Way to Stop Smoking, in spite of its shortcomings—I describe these in a [...]

There’s something faintly ridiculous about sitting like a lemon for forty-five minutes while expensive vitamin-laced salt water is transfused into your bloodsream via a vein in your arm. Yet this is what will happen if you fall for the blandishments of clinics offering to boost your immune system, detoxify your body, and abolish all your unhappiness. These claims, [...]

Wouldn’t you like to strengthen your immune system, detoxify your body from the inside out (!), reduce your stress levels, and be helped to recover and rehydrate quickly after exercise? All these so-called benefits, and a lot more besides, are available – for a nice fat fee – at private clinics springing up in cities in the UK, [...]

How difficult it is to write well! Even something as simple as a parking notice requires thought and care. As for a letter to the editor of a medical journal, one should make sure one has something worth saying before sending it. In today’s post I offer examples of the pitfalls in both kinds of communication. Trespassers will [...]

These words were spoken to me by the late Dr James Cyriax. He was lamenting the fact that he didn’t get the recognition he felt he deserved for his seminal work in diagnosing and treating the ubiquitous disorders of back pain, sciatica, shoulder pain, etc. Even after his death in 1985 his work has been largely ignored. A [...]

Dr James Cyriax, 1904 - 1985 When I was training to be a general practitioner I realised there were many patients suffering from disorders of the moving parts of the body. That is, pain felt in the muscles or joints, such as stiff neck, shoulder pains, backache, sciatica, tennis elbow, etc. Further, it soon became clear to me [...]