DostoevskySober Hope: Finding Faith in the Bleak MidwinterAs winter descends to end the year 2023, it is a time for contemplation: a time to revel in the joys and find balm for the woes of the past year, a time to find the courage to hold on, and the hope to thrive in the new year. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) faced his own bleak (and Russian!) winters, from childhood play amongst the impoverished at his father's medical clinic to a last...

Obesity, autism, mental health problems, IBS, allergies, auto-immunity, cancer. Does the answer to the modern epidemic of ‘Western’ diseases lie in our gut?You are 10% human. For every one of your cells, there are nine impostors hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and bone, but also bacteria and fungi. And you are more ‘them’ than you are ‘you’.Your gut alone hosts 100 trillion of them and until recently we thought that our microbes didn’t matter. This is all set to cha...

Obesity, autism, mental health problems, IBS, allergies, auto-immunity, cancer. Does the answer to the modern epidemic of ‘Western’ diseases lie in our gut?You are 10% human. For every one of your cells, there are nine impostors hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and bone, but also bacteria and fungi. And you are more ‘them’ than you are ‘you’.Your gut alone hosts 100 trillion of them and until recently we thought that our microbes didn’t matter. This is all set to cha...

Six years ago, Alanna Collen began talking to the world’s leading weight scientists in pursuit of her belief that however much you dieted your body would always override your willpower. The evidence was everywhere, not least in the fact that after 70 or so years of bestselling diet programmes few people managed to keep the weight they had lost off. Historically, it was also obvious that people were far slimmer and healthier in the past, and not because there was less food.And then ...