The Guardian Health

Chat to strangers and let your kids be bored: how to embrace a ‘slow September’ – and enjoy life more

The pressure to self-optimise at the start of the new school year can lead to disappointment and burnout. Instead, here are seven ways to slow things down and reap the benefitsIt is a hangover from our school days that September can feel like a time for getting back to the grind. As in January, there is a sense that we should return as better workers, partners, friends and parents. This sense is even stronger now a culture of optimisation – has taken over – evidenced by the fad for adding “maxx”

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

Is a recommended diet affordable any more? – video

High food prices are affecting everyone right now, but it turns out they are affecting some people way more than others. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks at the grocery price situation and official healthy eating advice in different countries to find out how food prices are hitting lower-income households harder and whether it’s even mathematically possible to eat a government-recommended healthy diet Continue reading...

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

A remarkable documentary made by blind students: ‘We were stunned by the footage’

In Brailled It, the tension and stakes of the annual Braille Challenge are brought to the screen by three of the competitorsFor the past 26 years, some 22,000 blind and visually impaired schoolchildren from around the world have competed in the Braille Challenge: a literacy test against a loudly ticking clock. It has all the theater of a Model UN competition, all the stakes of a make-or-break standardized exam and young competitors from first grade through high school juggling their own expectat

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

‘If you can’t understand what sex is, it’s irrelevant if you seem to be enjoying it’: how Queen at Sea upended the dementia drama

Lance Hammer’s first film in 18 years is a heart-wrenching masterpiece about family, mental decline and sexual consent. He and supporting actor Juliette Binoche discuss how they brought unabashed realism to a condition rarely seen on screenThe first time we see Martin and Leslie, the elderly couple at the centre of Lance Hammer’s wrenching new film, Queen at Sea, they are walking together up a set of stone steps: one of their regular outings, we assume, in days filled with pottering and quiet co

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

New Zealand drugs regulator approves use of MDMA to treat severe PTSD

New Zealand decision follows Australian approval in 2023 of psychedelics to treat PTSD and treatment-resistant depressionTwo psychiatrists in New Zealand won approval on Friday to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade MDMA to people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).The move by New Zealand’s pharmaceutical regulatory body Medsafe makes the country only the second worldwide to approve the party drug for use in treating PTSD, following Australia in 2023. Continue reading...

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

The body snatchers: how a young Nigerian man was lured to London in an organ-trafficking plot – podcast

Daniel was working at a market in Lagos when he was given the chance to start anew in the UK. He had no idea what was expected of him in returnBy Alexis Okeowo. Read by Nneka OkoyeRead the text version hereSupport the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod Continue reading...

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

Do people really smell different as they get older? The truth behind ‘old person smell’

Experts say that the smell comes from a chemical compound called 2-nonenal, and it can show up much earlier than one expectsLast week, my mom complained that she’s starting to smell “like an old person”.She had grabbed her favorite sweater and draped it over herself at the movie theater. “It smelled like my grandmother,” she said, almost whispering. “I thought someone must have borrowed the jacket. But it was just me.” Continue reading...

health  4d ago

The Guardian Health

The September reset is real. I’m about to become a better person, flaxseed by flaxseed | Emma Brockes

Small changes are what I’m aiming for – 10-minute workouts, cleaning out my handbag. Then I’m less likely to have failed come OctoberAre you a January resolutions or a September reset person? The latter has always felt more propitious to me, light of the exhaustion of Christmas and with the weather still on our side. Last week, when the Pavlovian response to buying new stationery (for my kids) kicked in, I found myself following a rote impulse to sort my life out by replacing the bag in the vacu

health  5d ago

The Guardian Health

An autism or ADHD diagnosis without access to treatment is a hollow outcome | Letter

Helen Macdonald responds to a report by the parliamentary and health service ombudsmanThe parliamentary and health service ombudsman’s findings are stark and sadly familiar (Autism and ADHD care complaints more than triple in five years in England, 26 August). A more than 200% rise in complaints, years-long waits, patients paying thousands of pounds for private care when the NHS fails them, and a system so complex that people are routinely denied rights they are legally entitled to – these are e

health  5d ago

The Guardian Health

Banning nuts from the skies would not keep people with allergies safe | Letters

Alison Smith says food bans do not improve compliance, they create a false sense of security in patientsAs the mother of a child with anaphylactic allergies, I am sympathetic to the terror that Lucy Pasha-Robinson describes (Food allergies when flying are no joke. That’s why nuts should be banned on planes, 27 August). Indeed, last summer I spent six hours compulsively cleaning on a demonstrably filthy flight. Flight crew handed out wipes to passengers “to clean your tray tables”, then proceeded

health  5d ago

The Guardian Health

Free cholesterol tests on the NHS are great – but here’s the five-point health MOT I’d really like to see | Devi Sridhar

You could be walking around symptom-free and not know you’re pre-diabetic, living with hypertension or at a high risk of a heart attackProf Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Benjamin Franklin’s adage goes. Yet that simple prescription has been hard to follow in the current NHS. As has been frequently highlighted, one of the biggest challenges for the health system is not just how much we spend per capita

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find

Study reveals that pesticide poisoning kills 11,000 people each year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of fatalitiesAlmost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every single year, a study has found.Using publicly available data from 2006-2023, the study, which was commissioned by Pesticide Action Network, found there to be an estimated 402-433m cases of unintentional acute pesticide poisoning of farmers and farm workers every year. Continue reading...

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

A moment that changed me: I had a panic attack on public transport – and it led me to a horrifying secret

For a decade I lived with a fear so bad that I once tried to climb out of a tube carriage while it was in motion. Then a hypnotherapist told me to ask my parents one very important questionIn 2000, I had been living in London for just over a decade and working at EMI Records for five years. I had moved to Brixton from Surrey – where space and peace were generally abundant – in the late 80s, and I’d noticed I was becoming increasingly anxious and claustrophobic, particularly on public transport.A

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

‘I want to live’: the disabled people unable to go abroad because of care funding refusal

Campaigners say care users face a postcode lottery for support overseas – despite no extra cost to taxpayerDisabled people are being blocked from travelling abroad by NHS care boards and local councils that refuse to let them use their care funding outside the UK, the Guardian has learned.Campaigners warn of a “postcode lottery” in England where the right of a disabled person to travel overseas depends on where they live or the whim of local officials – even when there is no extra cost to the ta

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

It’s not easy to show my scars. But I am proud to break the deadly silence around breast cancer in Nigeria | Gloria Chinyere Okwu

I was told to keep my diagnosis private but I am determined to show the reality of breast cancer and reject the stigma that prevents women seeking treatment‘Madam, this looks like breast cancer, and if it is, we will chop off your breast.” That was how the doctor welcomed me into the chaotic world of cancer in 2017 when I was 32 years old. He had his back to me, but kept on talking, peering into the specimen bottle.For a moment, I could no longer hear him. I thought of my three children, the uni

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

Assisted dying, palliative care and patient choice | Letters

Readers respond to an article by Dr Zubir Ahmed, who argued that better palliative care should be prioritised before assisted dying is legalisedI work as a renal physician, including on a transplant ward, so I will have had many of the same experiences as Zubir Ahmed, but I do not share his opinion about assisted dying (As a doctor, I say this: before we even consider assisted dying, fix how we care for the most vulnerable, 26 August).It is universally agreed that patients with capacit

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

We must do more to save care leavers’ lives | Letters

Readers respond to a report on the tragic consequences of the ‘care cliff’, when vital support is taken away at age 18Your article draws attention to a landmark review that describes the “care cliff” for young people leaving care at 18 leading to tragic outcomes (‘He was left on his own’: the care-leaver lives lost to a system that abandons them at 18, 25 August). The good news is that there are ways to fix this problem, but they are neither quick nor straightforward.My own research found that f

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

Full-blown adulthood: does it actually start at 50?

According to a new survey, that’s the age when people feel most confident and in control of their lives. In other words, they no longer have a chairdrobe ...Name: 50 (and thriving).Age: You can work this one out. Continue reading...

health  6d ago

The Guardian Health

Forget T-maxxing – the manosphere’s obsession with testosterone is just fear-maxxing | Donna Lu

Testosterone replacement therapy comes with serious and potentially irreversible health risks including infertility and early heart diseaseRead more in the Antiviral seriesAre you tired? Feeling flat and irritable? Finding it difficult to concentrate? Maybe you’re experiencing the seemingly ubiquitous symptoms of modern life. Or, if you’re a man, you may have been told by countless uncredentialed online influencers that you’re probably suffering from “low T”.For decades, testosterone has been ma

health  Sep 1, 2026

The Guardian Health

Dyson launches £420 toothbrush that films ‘live cleaning footage’ inside your mouth

James Dyson says ‘complete dental system’ will also include toothpaste and mouth rinse that each cost £8.50It is the live stream you never wanted to see but may find impossible to resist: rolling footage beamed live from inside your mouth while you are cleaning your teeth.Dyson, the home appliance maker that made its name inventing bagless vacuums and bladeless fans, has turned its attention to oral hygiene with a £420 all-singing, all-dancing toothbrush that can clean, floss and even spray tiny

health  Sep 1, 2026