Burping, bloating, rumblings, and tummy pains. Patients with dyspepsia have crowded my GP days of late. I have turned my computer screen around for patients to deliver my familiar online show and tell of NICE guidelines, patient information leaflets, and google images of where your gullet, stomach, and guts are. Then I’ve printed off their […]
Category: The BMJ today
The BMJ Today: E-reefers and cannabis gummi bears
Everybody must get stoned! Sang Bob Dylan back in the lazy hazy days of the mid 1960s. In that respect, it was clear from walking around Amsterdam last week, where I was covering a research conference on addiction, that not much has changed. And yet, as my Feature on bmj.com finds, there is suddenly so […]
The BMJ Today: The schools of hard knocks?
Schools should teach students not only academic knowledge and cognitive skills, but also the knowledge and skills they will need to promote their own mental and physical health, and successfully navigate the world of work, argued an Editorial published on bmj.com last week. It seems a no-brainer, and many schools may already be doing this, […]
The BMJ Today: Smoking, nicotine, e-cigarettes, and corruption
Should smokers be advised to cut down as well as to quit? This is the debate captured in our latest Head to Head article, just published on bmj.com. The cost effectiveness body for England and Wales, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), last year changed its guidance to recommend that smokers are […]
The BMJ Today: Statins and The BMJ
Even those whose daily diet does not include the pages of the national press could not have missed the furore over The BMJ’s very public correction of an error in two articles this week. In an Analysis article, John Abramson and colleagues questioned the merits of extending the routine use of statins to people at low […]
The BMJ Today: How to defeat the world’s deadliest animal
“What is the most dangerous animal in the world?” Not an obvious opening line to an Observations article by The BMJ’s regular columnist Douglas Kamerow. However, if you follow his line of questioning (A shark? The black mamba? Jellyfish?) to the eventual answer, then all becomes clear, for all these fearsome creatures “pale when compared […]
The BMJ Today: Barriers to shared decision making
A research study published online in the journal Cancer has suggested that the rate of invasive cervical cancer in the United States is much higher than had been previously thought. The study, conducted by Anne F Rositch, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Patti Gravitt, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg […]
The BMJ Today: Childhood poverty and early health
Spring seems to have finally reached London, and what we’re lacking in lambs The BMJ seems to be making up with newborns, the BMJ baby count so far stands at three with two more to come soon. A good early start in life is important, and the benefits of breast feeding are well known—but this […]
The BMJ Today: Teenage pregnancy and breastfeeding
Good news from the US—pregnancies, births, and abortions among US teenagers aged 15 to 19 have fallen to historical lows. This news comes from a report by the Guttmacher Institute, which found that although teenagers were more likely to engage in sex, they are less likely to get pregnant. This trend is similar in the […]
The BMJ Today: Late nights with Iain Chalmers
“Tired” pupils aged over 16 at a private school in Surrey are to start lessons at 1.30pm. The school’s headteacher Guy Holloway says the move is based on research by neuroscientists which says that teenagers have a biological predisposition to go to bed later and get up later, and better sleep in teenage years is […]