Do you find yourself tossing and turning when you go to bed, unable to fall asleep? Do you wake up in the middle of the night and then spend ages tryingto get back to sleep. Do you often wake up feeling groggy and unrefreshed? Ifso, you’re not alone.

Insomnia is so common, it affects millions of people every night. According to the NHS, it’s a problem that regularly affects around one in three people in the UK.

As a sleep specialist, I know poor sleep is more than just frustrating. It can havea significant impact on both physical and mental health. It can causeheadaches, muscle pain, and other physical symptoms and can lead to fatigue,irritability, and difficulty concentrating during the day.

Long-term sleep deprivation can increase the risk of de...

Continue reading...

Fertility:  a word that has the potential to ignite a wide range of emotions for so many, especially for those struggling to conceive. Whilst society empathises with women on this matter men still tend to be sidelined. Many are uncomfortable expressing their sadness, pain or frustration and therefore don’t tend to seek help, they often feel obliged to stay strong to support their partner and are rarely asked how they feel about this unknown, strange, previously uncharted and often baffling world of needing help to make a baby.

In today’s world we invariably expect to be able to be in control of our lives, our plans and our timelines. The latest technology is on hand to help navigate daily demands and we’re continually told that we can do anything and achieve everything that w...

Continue reading...

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coa...

Continue reading...

If you’re someone who has the slightest interest in current affairs, then the last thing you probably need to read is yet another semi-informed examination of who’s to blame in the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard three-ring libel circus currently playing out in a Virginian courtroom.

I’m not going to add to the noise of speculation. In the end, each of them claims to have been abused by the other, and there’s been plenty of evidence presented to the court to suggest that perhaps that’s the closest we’ll ever get to the truth of the abuse question. 

Perhaps the most important thing to take away from the court case that’s being played out minute by minute on US daytime TV is a

Continue reading...

So, Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars, eh?

Right now, you can’t hear yourself think over the sound of the internet breaking as people watch and then re-watch – probably several times and always open-mouthed – the moment when Hollywood A-lister Smith lopes over to the stage and hits Rock over an ill-considered gag about the actor’s wife.

Plenty – and I do mean plenty – has been said over the last week about the rights and wrongs of this unsavoury contretemps, and I’m not about to add my own fuel to that particular fire other than to say that to differing degrees both men were right and both men were wrong, and you need to judge for yourself the morality of each

Continue reading...

If you follow these articles regularly, you’ll know that recently I’ve covered some fairly dark subject matter – from why Facebook and the metaverse pose a threat to your mental health and how the relentless onslaught of bad news is driving anxiety and depression to record levels.

This piece also deals with some dark thoughts, but this time the darkness is literal, rather than metaphorical.

As I write this, we’re now just three weeks from the shortest day of the year. This is, of course, a ludicrous description since it has just as many hours as the other 365 days of this year – it’s just that marginally more of the 24 that make up December 21st are spent in the dark.

Continue reading...

Two years ago this month, I wrote an article about the current occupant of the White House and the future world of post-traumatic stress that he was wilfully and deliberately creating for migrant families through a policy of enforced familial separation.

I didn’t name him in that article and I have no intention of dignifying him by doing so now.

Recently, that individual has threatened to do what no American leader has done in nearly 30 years and deploy troops to tackle the violent protests that have erupted in the wake George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis last week.

It hardly seems coincidental that when George Bush

Continue reading...

There is very little in this old world that’s truly finite. In most things thetre is scope and opportunity to prevaricate, delay and procrastinate, always with the one-size-fits-all excuse that you need to get your ducks in a row.

Here’s the truth: they never will be.

Even the most industrious and committed among us can find a reason not to start, just as the future always holds a better – and usually mythical – time to begin what you instinctively want to put off.

You’ll buy the dress or the suit or the bathing costume – but you’ll do it when you’ve lost a stone or you’ve toned up with the gym membership you bought on January 2

Continue reading...

Here’s the truth about life. Sometimes it turns up wearing camouflage gear and a balaclava, armed to the teeth and hell-bent on hurting you.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

We all experience this at least once in our lives. And if it only happens once, then consider yourself fortunate, because it happens to most of us more than once.

This is the moment where everything seems to be going well and apart from the minor day-to-day issues everyone’s dealing with all the time, there’s not much to distract you from the rather pleasant job of enjoying life.

And then, suddenly, everything seems to go

Continue reading...

Ask anyone with even the most limited appreciation of the arts to name ten of the most famous sculptures in history and the chances are that Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker would probably be having a fist fight with Michaelangelo’s David to be at the top of the list.

Rodin’s work, created in the late Nineteenth Century and first cast at the turn of the Twentieth, now resides at the Musee Rodin in Paris.

I mention this not because I have any specific interest in the work of Heroic Avant-Garde sculptors (don’t worry, I Googled that), but because I have a question.

In the process of creating a masterpiece, which element contributes most

Continue reading...