Dr Roger Henderson

I plead guilty as charged m’lud. For the last four decades I have been telling patients who have been losing the battle with waistline spread that it’s their body's metabolism causing all the problems. This was conventionally believed to start to steadily slow year on year from the mid-30s onwards, meaning it became trickier to shift those stubborn pounds as time went by. It was also assumed that hormonal changes such as occur in pregnancy or the menopause further impacted on how quickly we burnt off calories, all adding to the struggle to keep weight off. Well, it now seems that, along with the rest of my medical colleagues, I was probably doing those patients a disservice.

Britain isn't a country geared up to deal with extreme heat. We lack cool spaces to retreat to; our homes and gardens are often better suited to rainy winters than the hot, balmy summers we associate with the med. But with an extreme heat weather warning issued by the Met Office and with large parts of England and Wales being affected in the coming days, it's wise to take precautions. People vulnerable to extreme heat are likely to experience 'adverse health effects', while the rest of the population could suffer heat exhaustion and other heat-related illnesses that are not usually visited on these shores.

The world's richest man – who, beyond Tesla and Space X, is known for naming his first child X AEA-12 – generated more headlines this week, when he announced on the American television show Saturday Night Live that he has Asperger syndrome. ‘I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but that’s just how my brain works,' he explained. Asperger syndrome, first described in 1944 by the Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger, is a lifelong condition that is part of the autistic spectrum. As a child, Hans Asperger appears to have exhibited some features of the very condition named after him, such as remoteness and talent in language.

As the Covid vaccination continues to roll out across the country with impressive speed and daily numbers of cases continue to steadily fall, the allure of the gradual release of lockdown restrictions into the sunlit uplands of something resembling a more normal existence grows stronger by the day. Unfortunately for many people – latest estimates suggest up to 200,000 in the UK – the long term effects of having been infected with the virus continue.

It remains the case that for most people free NHS tests are only available for those taking part in pilot schemes, who have been asked to have one by health professionals, or in people or families showing symptoms of the virus. This means that some people are now looking to private providers to get tested before seeing loved ones and although many such providers are offering tests for a fee now, how do you know which are high quality and which should be avoided? For a start, always look for a home test kit that is CE-marked as this shows it meets the European standards for medical testing and is also approved for sale in the UK – do not use any test without this approval mark.

The epicentre of coronavirus – now more correctly called COVID-19 – remains in mainland China, and concerns about a global pandemic occurring have fortunately not been realised although in this fast-changing story this still remains a possibility in the coming weeks. The first death in Europe was recently reported in France, with nine documented cases in the UK. The advice from Public Health England if you have been in Wuhan or the Hubei Province in the last 14 days is that you should stay indoors and avoid contact with other people, like you would for flu, even if you do not have any symptoms. If you develop symptoms, call NHS 111 and inform them of your recent travel to the city.

Being a family doctor is sometimes the least glamorous job in the world, dealing with the unpleasant, mundane and sometimes just downright boring health issues that exist. However, for the patients suffering from these problems, it’s a big deal and one of the typical common currencies of minor problem I see almost every day in my surgery is the issue of warts and verrucas. These are caused by a harmless viral infection in the skin called the human papilloma virus (HPV). HPV causes keratin, a hard protein in the top layer of the skin, to grow too much, giving the typical roughened texture of a wart. There are more than 60 different types of viruses known to cause warts.