Wellness

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 …

We can’t pretend that this society, our society, has not become ugly and hateful. The place has been practically reduced to internecine warfare, spewing venom-like mud volcanoes. Try as you might to avert your eyes and focus on the little sparks of decency and beauty that still refuse to be …

“[…] 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 …

Have you ever noticed that some people never get ill? They seem to be so perfectly constructed that no matter what dreadful ailments are soaring about the countryside, they remain untouched. Some years ago, I had written about how I had been plagued by chronic headaches since I was about …

“[…] Economists call it ‘presenteeism’. This means being physically at work but mentally checked out due to untreated mental health problems. In a small island economy, this is a productivity killer—difficult to quantify with hard data. “[…] Mental health budgets cannot be viewed as charity. That would be the wrong …

“[…] 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 …

“[…] The entitlement, indiscipline and misdirected priorities of some lawless citizens who inconvenience and endanger law abiding citizens will not be tolerated anymore. No discipline will be met with no tolerance. “No one will sway me from cleaning up this lawless dump to benefit citizens who try to live decent …

“[…] Writers from tourism-oriented Caribbean states mainly target free-spending first-worlders seeking sea, sand and stress-free living in preferably sunny climes. “[…] Dr Clarena Spencer has spent much of her adult life as a secondary school teacher and it’s easy to tell from the text. Best Vacation Ever is an educational …

“[Critics] suggest that a caring state relies on education, while a punitive state relies on force. This binary view, however, obscures the reality of how safety and civil order are actually maintained. “[…] The assertion of law is not an abdication of care. On the contrary, it is often the …

According to Chinese astrology, from mid-February, 2026 will be known as the Year of the Fire Horse. From what I’ve gathered, this occurs only once in 60 years. I was born in 1966, falling into the category of a Fire Horse. Apparently there are many horse years—gold, water, wood and …

“[…] 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 …

“[…] Ordinary citizens know the challenges all too well: waiting lines that stretch for hours before a doctor can be seen; appointments pushed months into the future; shortages of essential medicines, forcing families to search from pharmacy to pharmacy at unaffordable prices. “Equipment is outdated or broken, leaving patients without …