Health & Beauty

Devon County Council has today (Wednesday, 3 July) won an award for excellence for a pilot project to tackle smoking and protect children from harm.

The award from the CLeaR Partnership, which works with local authorities across England to assess progress in reducing smoking, was given for Devon’s pioneering work with children’s centres.

At the seven pilot sites across the county, the Council has installed specially designed signage to advise people not to smoke on site and provided bespoke training for staff to raise the issue with parents and offer support to parents who...

This is an extract from a discussion on my face book page that recently caused some interested debate.

Trainers, coaches and physical gurus that preach ‘natural’ muscle gain / fat loss / performance enhancement etc, really ought to tell their audience if they themselves are ‘unnaturally physically enhanced’. Failure to mention this to their adorning followers and clients leads to unrealistic expectations. In my view it is also vaguely dishonest and misleading.

If people are on the ‘gear’, personally I have no problem with their choice…each to their own I reckon. However,...

Hundreds of thousands of women across England and Wales could be spared the distress and uncertainty of a breast cancer diagnosis by taking a daily pill to help prevent the disease. Updated guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says the NHS should give tamoxifen or raloxifene to particular groups of women with a family history of cancer [1] because the drugs can help stop them getting breast cancer if they are taken for five years.

Roughly 50,000 women and 400 men are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK [2], making it the most common...

Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) member GP practices have been rated among the highest in the country – by the patients they serve.

A national survey showed that patient experience of local doctors’ surgeries in Devon was consistently better than the England average.

Almost nine in ten Devon patients said they would recommend their GP surgery to someone who has just moved to the area and 95 per cent said they had confidence and trust in their GP.

A total of 84 per cent of patients in Devon reported they found it easy to get...