It’s likely that you’ve heard the term ‘diabetes’ but what is it? What are the symptoms? Are there different types? Will I need insulin? In this quick read article, we'll give you an overview of diabetes and help answer the most common questions we get asked as doctors.

Diabetes mellitus is essentially a problem with keeping your blood sugar in check, and this can have far-reaching consequences from head to toe. Your feet are at particular risk for a number of reasons, and they are checked every year in your annual diabetes check-up at your surgery. This ensures that any problems are found early and addressed.

If you have type 2 diabetes, you will probably have been told by your healthcare professional that keeping your weight at a healthy level is extremely important in helping your blood sugar levels stay low and reducing your risk of long-term complications such as eye, kidney and heart problems. In this article we look at why this is so important, what a healthy weight reading is, weight loss tips for diabetes, and why the Healthwords weight loss plan may be for you.

DEXA is short for 'dual energy X-ray absorptiometry' which is the medical term for a type of scan that uses mild X-rays to measure how dense bone is. The density of bone helps determine how strong the bone is, so the lower the density, the weaker the bone is considered to be. A DEXA scan can be used to diagnose conditions such as osteopenia and osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is when your bone density is significantly lower than the normal range for your age and gender, and the bones are therefore at a higher risk of breaking easily. Osteopenia is a milder form of this with just a slightly lower than normal bone density. Osteoporosis is when bone density is significantly lower than the normal range for your age and gender, and the bones are therefore at a higher risk of breaking easily. Osteopenia is a milder form of this with just a slightly lower than normal bone density.

Depression is surprisingly common, affecting around 3 in every 100 people at some point in their lives. It’s just not really commonly discussed, so it feels like a hidden illness. It can have a massive impact on your quality of life, and the journey through the course of the illness can be varied and, for some long. But there is hope you will come through it. There is no ‘normal’course for depression, no textbook example – as a doctor, I tell my patients that you are you, and your condition is its own. But your condition may share a common trajectory with others before you reach a state of recovery: let’s take a look.

COVID-19 has morphed and changed, with new variants appearing all the time. This is normal for a virus. The Delta variant was another strain of the novel coronavirus that was concerning. It was more contagious at the time of discovery than previous variants but has since been found to be less contagious than the following variant, Omicron. Nevertheless, Delta had a severe and devastating impact on people and economies around the world. Here’s our take on it.

Degenerative disc disease (DDD) is very common and although in some people there may be a genetic component to it there are many other causes apart from genetics. These include factors such as age, lifestyle, and environment that all play significant roles. In this article we look at what degenerative disc disease is, whether you may inherit a tendency to have it, and what is involved if you are considering having genetic testing.

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. Hypertension means high blood pressure so the DASH diet is using diet changes to help control blood pressure. The diet emphasises having lots of vegetables and fruit along with low-fat dairy, whole grains, fish and poultry and some nuts and seeds and limits refined sugars, red and processed meat along with high fat and saturated fat.

A healthy balanced diet means eating from a variety of food groups to gain the nutrients we need for functioning at our best. We may choose to exclude a particular food group for any number of reasons – faith or religious beliefs, health beliefs, ethical or green reasons, or we may have an allergy or intolerance. Nutrients come under six categories: carbohydrates, protein, fibre, vitamins, minerals and fat. The main food groups incorporated in this include simple and complex sugars, fruit and vegetables, meat, fish, dairy, nuts, and pulses. Excluding any food group can put us at risk of a deficiency, but armed with information, we can source the right foods and supplements to keep us healthy.

Cystitis means inflammation of the bladder and is usually caused by a bacterial infection. Cystitis is often used interchangeably with the term urinary tract infection (UTI), although technically cystitis is a subtype of the umbrella term UTI, which also includes infections in other parts of the kidney-bladder-urethra system to pass urine. Common complaints are pain or burning on passing urine, needing to go more often and yet little may be passed, and racing to the loo with great urgency to pass urine. Less common symptoms include stomach pain, blood in the urine or smelly urine. Cystitis is usually caused by certain bacteria, many of which occur naturally on your skin and in your gut. Owing to the close proximity of your waterworks to the bowel system, bacteria that are usually harmless in the poo or on your skin can contaminate the urinary system and cause a bladder infection.

It can be difficult as a parent to know how to approach the difficult task of cutting your child’s nails. As children get older, they can think of much better things to be doing than sitting still and being groomed – and it might feel like a daunting task for to pin them down and overcome any built-up fears. Whilst it’s tempting to leave it, any scratches or marks serve as a reminder that the job can't be ignored forever. There’s the additional concern, as they get older, of long nails being a warm, moist haven for bacteria. This puts them at risk of infected skin if they get itchy conditions like eczema, and short nails reduce the chance of nail-biting habits. Toenails in children can often become ingrown, and the sides of fingernails can get bacterial infections if bitten or pulled off. We’ve put together some tips from our own experience to help get the job done.

CT stands for computerised tomography and it is a way of scanning that uses multiple X-rays to create accurate 3D images of the inside of your body. X-rays send small amounts of radiation energy through though the body and detect the amount that has passed through to the other side. Different tissues block or absorb different amounts of the X-rays depending on how dense they are. The more dense the matter, the more radiation it will block and so the whiter it appears on the image. So, for example bone shows up as bright white as it blocks a large amount of the radiation, whereas air such in the lungs allows more to pass through and shows up as much darker.