Many women arrive in clinic apologising for their bodies. “Doctor, I know… it’s my weight.” They say it before I check their blood pressure. Before I review their blood tests. Before I ask about sleep, stress, grief, work, hormones or the fact that they have not eaten a quiet meal …

There is a fashionable word for what many people feel right now. Burnout. It sounds modern. Sophisticated. Almost noble. The inevitable tax of ambition. But I am not convinced burnout is the correct diagnosis. I suspect something far less poetic. You are not burned out. You are biochemically overloaded. And …

At first glance, the “wellness industry” looks marvellous. It speaks about prevention. It mentions gut health, cortisol, mitochondria and hormones. But if you watch closely, you’ll notice something peculiar. It never wants you finished. It wants you improved. Optimised. Detoxed. Biohacked. Reset. Rebalanced. Rejuvenated. But never done. A cured patient …

Valentine’s Day performs romance very well. Restaurants fill with dodgy service and inflated prices. Florists thrive. Social media becomes an exhibition of curated devotion. Even the chronically indifferent develop an opinion about love. However, Valentine’s Day does not create loneliness. It exposes it. For most of the year we can …

Birthdays are strange things for doctors. For most people, a birthday is cake, candles and messages that arrive in cheerful bursts. For doctors, especially those who have spent years watching bodies fail and time run out, a birthday is also a reckoning. Not dramatic. Not morbid. Just quietly unavoidable. As …

Carnival is supposed to be joy. It is colour and music and rhythm and release. It is sweat on skin, feathers in motion and the collective permission to forget who we are for a moment. Carnival, we say, is culture. Carnival is freedom. Carnival is who we are. And yet, …

January arrives quietly. After the noise of Christmas and the forced optimism of New Year’s resolutions, the world exhales. The decorations come down. Life resumes. Carnival beckons. It is in this quieter month—often overlooked, rarely celebrated—that we mark Cervical Cancer Awareness. There is something painfully appropriate about that. Cervical cancer …

“[…] There is also something profoundly human about the evil eye that modern medicine struggles to acknowledge: the role of envy and comparison in illness. “We live in an age of social media, where admiration is constant and unfiltered. Eyes everywhere. Watching. Liking. Measuring. “If the ancients were worried about …

“[…] Addiction is not a moral failure. It is a disease that hides in plain sight—applauded when convenient, ignored when dangerous. We celebrate excess, mock restraint and then act surprised when bodies fail. “Alcohol plays the long game. It seeps quietly into ordinary evenings… Slowly, it rewires reward systems, erodes …

“[…] In medicine, we abandoned the idea of humiliation as therapy a long time ago… If we treated heart disease the way we treat traffic offences, we would simply fine people for eating fried food and call it prevention. Ridiculous? Exactly. “Punishment alone is not prevention—it is abdication. Humiliation teaches …