Dr David Cox

Middle-aged males often dismiss health red flags until it’s too late, even though a trip to the GP can prevent risky symptoms from developing into serious problems

For the typical middle-aged man, a visit to the doctor is one of life’s great inconveniences, something that has long been a source of vexation to the country’s medical specialists.

“Sadly, a lot of patients come to see me because a friend drops dead,” says Robert Kelly, a consultant cardiologist and lifestyle medicine physician at...

Balancing on a single limb can be surprisingly challenging as we get older, but training yourself to do it for longer can make you stronger, boost your memory and keep your brain healthier.
Unless you're a flamingo, spending time delicately poised on one leg isn't something you probably invest a lot of time in. And depending on your age, you might find it surprisingly difficult.
Balancing on one leg generally doesn't take a lot of thought when we are young. Typically our ability to hold this ...

Know your numbers. That’s the simple piece of advice for anyone over 60, say researchers, who believe it’s crucial for staying healthier for longer; important guidance considering that, by 2035, 67 per cent of all over 65s in the UK are expected to be living with two or more chronic health conditions.
As Eric Verdin, President of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging puts it: “Health is a lifelong process, and when you reach 60 you’ve accumulated 40 years of either bad ageing or good agein...

Who doesn’t love cream cheese? It makes a celery stick more appealing, while a smoked salmon bagel just isn’t complete without a schmear.
But might it also be good for our health? A glut of recent studies has suggested that consuming cheeses of any kind might be a good idea in the context of healthy ageing. A recent study, for example, which tracked nearly 8,000 over 65s in Japan for more than three years, reported that those who ate cheese at least once a week, had a lower dementia risk, whi...

After many years of campaigning from patient groups, UK regulators have taken the step to place strengthened warning labels surrounding the risk of addiction, physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms on a range of common prescription drugs.
Benzodiazepines, a collective of drugs commonly prescribed for anxiety and sleeping problems, gabapentinoids such as pregabalin and gabapentin which are used to treat epilepsy and nerve pain, and Z-drugs which are prescribed for insomnia, are the medica...

Take a glance at the website or shelves of most major supermarkets and pharmacies and it’s clear that the self-testing market is booming

Last January, Stephanie Meehan, a 49-year-old children’s nurse from Wigan, noticed to her dismay that her sense of smell seemed to have disappeared virtually overnight.

Initially, the most noticeable impact was on the taste and appeal of food and drinks. A surprising degree of our ability to sense flavours comes from odours drifting up from the mouth into the nasal cavity as we chew. Without the sense of smell, food can start to taste like cardboard.

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On average, the typical American contracts two to three colds per year between September and May, at an estimated cost of around $40 billion to the economy. Effective forms of treating or preventing colds have proven hard to come by, with the majority of over-the-counter medicines yielding modest results; it’s hard to devise a drug that tackles the vast array of viral pathogens that cause them. The need for better respiratory protection during the...

As he addressed an audience of virologists from China, Australia, and Singapore at October’s Pandemic Research Alliance Symposium, Wei Zhao introduced an eye-catching idea.
The gene-editing technology Crispr is best known for delivering groundbreaking new therapies for rare diseases, tweaking or knocking out rogue genes in conditions ranging from sickle cell disease to hemophilia. But Zhao and his colleagues at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity have envisioned a n...

Tony Wilkinson was in his late 50s when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He felt completely helpless as his condition steadily deteriorated over the next seven years – before he stumbled upon a new treatment that changed his life.
Having taken early retirement from a job he loved in fibre optic network planning, he found that his reaction speeds were becoming too slow to drive safely and the chronic symptoms often experienced by people living with Parkinson’s, from constipation to i...

“Hangovers are so many things,” says Sally Adams, an associate professor at the University of Birmingham, who has become known as the UK’s most eminent hangover expert. “It’s inflammation, it’s dehydration, and it’s the fact that alcohol is changing the chemistry of your brain.”
She believes a cast-iron cure has been hard to find, because what we perceive as a hangover is actually a surprisingly complex cocktail of biological events, which combine to yield the tell-tale symptoms we’re all fam...

From running up stairs, to rigorous gardening: these everyday activities could boost your health and help you live longer.
Everyone knows that the key to a healthy long life is to exercise and eat well. But what if you simply don't have the time to slog it out at the gym, or chalk up 10,000 steps a day? The good news is that doing everyday activities with more rigour and energy can achieve huge benefits.

Certain men face a far greater risk of prostate cancer – yet many will still not be routinely offered testing under new screening plans

From boosting the brain to reducing pain, joining others in song can bring some wide-ranging benefits.
It's that time of year when the air starts to tinkle with angelic voices – or ring with the occasional lusty hymn – as carol singers spread their own indomitable brand of festive joy. All that harking and heralding. It's joyful and triumphant.
But these bands of tinsel-draped singers may be on to something. Whether they realise it or not as they fill shopping centres, train stations, nursing...