Inside Health

The Inside Health podcast is back with a bang! Find out how having a couple of mates round for the football trapped scientist Alex Crozier inside a Covid experiment. Laura talks us through her remarkable journey, from a fear of needles to having her Covid jab, and Oxford University’s Daniel Freeman has some tips for you too. We’ve unleashed our cardiologist, Rohin Francis, for the first of his “Ro...

This is the remarkable story of how the UK’s Recovery Trial saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Covid patients. It was set up in nine days, after a conversation on the number 18 bus. Within 100 days it had found the first life-saving drug. This trial has united thousands of doctors, the NHS and 40,000 patients, at the scariest moments of their lives, changing the pandemic, and possibly med...

I was floored for three days with side-effects after having my first Covid jab and many of you have been in touch about your side-effects too. Why do some of us feel awful after the vaccine, while others barely notice anything? What does this say about our immune systems and how protected we will be against covid? We put your questions to Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious dis...

I have become hooked on playing online chess during this lockdown and after watching the Queen’s Gambit. So we’ll find out if it is actually doing my brain any good and whether it and similar games can ward off dementia. Margaret McCartney takes us on a fascinating tour through the history of deliberately infecting people with diseases, as the first “challenge trials” with coronavirus are about to...

What has the pandemic done to our sex lives? We’ll hear if there’s been a baby boom with Dr Margaret McCartney and Dr Rebecca Thomson-Glover has the lowdown on sexually transmitted infections. We’ll also explore changes to contraception and sexual health services. Meanwhile it feels like we’re on the march to normality, but what about the backlog of patients whose treatment has been cancelled. We...

Most people recover rapidly after catching coronavirus. But I chat to three people who were infected almost a year ago and are still feeling the impact, both on their bodies and their minds. Doctors are having to rapidly grapple with how to treat patients with long Covid. We speak to one of them, Dr Manoj Sivan, the Research Lead for the Long Covid Service in Leeds, who warns that long Covid could...

A fever, cough or loss of smell and taste are criteria for a Covid-19 test, but what if you have different symptoms? James Gallagher discusses whether more symptoms should be added to the UK government's list with resident GP, Margaret McCartney and Dr Thomas Struyf of KU Leuven. Cardiologist Dr Rohin Francis explains what symptoms he sees when patients with coronavirus arrive in hospital. One of...

One or our listeners, Katharine, asks whether mouthwash can help stop the spread of coronavirus. We hunt down the answer with the help of biochemist Valerie O’Donnell, from the University of Cardiff, and our own Dr Margaret McCartney. Then it’s our turn in the dentist’s chair. Dentistry is up close and personal with a fair amount of splatter, the perfect place for coronavirus to spread. So dentist...

It’s an exercise special on Inside Health. This week Amanda wants to know how quickly she can get back to exercising after Covid. Dr David Salman has drawn up some advice and Dr Navjoyt Ladher explains why this virus means we should be taking it easy, as well as having a shocking confession of her own. We check in on George, Jen and Dr Helen Hawley-Hague to see how they are getting on with their p...

In Covid, oxygen levels in the body can crash without noticeable symptoms - it’s known as “silent hypoxia”. This week we’ll be discussing whether letting people monitor their oxygen levels at home with a pulse oximeter could save lives. James talks to Chris Harris, who’s been using one, and two pioneers of the project - Dr Matt Inada-Kim, Consultant in Acute Medicine at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Tru...

Should you take vitamin D pills to ward off coronavirus? Our own Dr Margaret McCartney has been sifting through the evidence in search of answers. Also clinical trials expert Dr David Collier of Queen Mary University London tells us about new treatments for Covid-19 that are in the pipeline. And is the mysterious “nocebo effect” causing most of the side-effects from statins? Janice Richardson from...

2020 was awful. So what about 2021? I chat with Prof Neil Ferguson to see how this year could play out and when life might return to normal. Cardiologist Dr Rohin Francis and cancer nurse Aly Foyle are both back to share their experiences of coping during Covid. I promise you, it’s not all bad news. And our own Dr Margaret McCartney, alongside Cancer Research UK’s Jodie Moffat, scrutinises a new b...

Saleyha Ahsan reports from Ysbyty Gwynedd, her own hospital in Bangor, North Wales about how the Intensive Care Unit is preparing for winter. Saleyha meets Val and the Critical Care team who have looked after her since the pandemic began. Val was admitted to the unit in March and has become part of the intensive care family. Producer, Erika Wright

Covid-19 damages the lungs, leaving people struggling to get enough oxygen into their body. In the early stages of the pandemic many patients needed a lot of support in intensive care - including artificial ventilation. But there are other ways of boosting oxygen levels in the body - which are being studied in the Recovery-RS trial. Professor Gavin Perkins from the University of Warwick is compari...

Margaret McCartney on National Test and Trace and why households are receiving multiple calls. Beth tells of being contacted many times when her child tested positive and began to think all the family had been separately in contact with different cases, until the penny dropped that the calls were all about the same contact - her daughter. Professor Kate Ardern, director of Public Health in Wigan e...

The Radio 4 Touch Test included questions about touch in health care. Dr Natalie Bowling who's a psychologist from the University of Greenwich helped to create the test with colleagues at Goldsmith's University. Analysing the data revealed that a positive attitude towards touch in treatment settings increases as we get older. Surprisingly men reported being more likely to feel comfortable with tou...

The story of one child's recovery from PIMS-TS, the rare new condition that caught doctors by surprise in April. James Gallagher visits specialists at the Evelina London Children's Hospital to hear how they coped with identifying and treating a condition they'd never seen before. Dr Jenni Handforth and Dr Sara Hanna explain how 'they had to reinvent and tweak the rule book' to manage PIMS-TS, wher...

Thromboses - blood clots that form in the circulation - are easily the biggest single killer of British men and women. They affects people of all ages, races and ethnicities. Most strokes and heart attacks are caused by thromboses forming in the arteries supplying the heart or brain. But clots in the veins can be just as lethal, particularly when part of the clot breaks off and travels around the...

How will this year's expanded flu vaccine programme be delivered? In addition to usual groups the flu vaccine will be offered to all eleven year olds, any household contacts of vulnerable people told to shield, more health and social care workers and - the biggest change - everyone over 50! Dr Margaret McCartney discusses the difficult logistics for GP practices and pharmacies trying to work out h...

Dr Mark Porter on a new bedside test that differentiates between Covid-19 and other infectious diseases including flu in under an hour. Mark meets Dr Tristan Clark who has already been using the test as part of a trial. And the world's largest study into 'Long Covid' recruiting 10.000 people from 50 different hospitals across the UK who've been hospitalised for Covid to assess their long term reco...

As the Government announces GPs should start to prescribe cycling Margaret McCartney examines the evidence for exercise referrals with Harry Rutter, Professor of Global Health at the University of Bath. Temperature checks are popping up in bars, restaurants and receptions but do they work or are they giving false reassurance? Plus while the pandemic progresses Professor Carl Heneghan explains anot...

Public health doctors don't dash around hospitals wearing white coats brandishing stethoscopes. The work of this medical specialty is mainly outside of hospitals and it has a very long history. It has a local, national and global reach, an international skeleton charged with the care of populations. And in this pandemic, it is public health which is doing the heavy lifting. In this special edition...

One of the most striking features of the coronavirus pandemic is the disproportionate toll it’s taken on some groups in society. Research by the Office for National Statistics shows black people are nearly twice as likely to have died from coronavirus than white people. And you see a similar pattern of elevated risk in other ethnicities too. Why is this? And to what extent is Covid 19 shedding lig...

Coronavirus has turned the NHS upside down and inside out and by re-organising to treat people with the virus, other potentially fatal diseases like cancer have taken a backseat. At University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, which Inside Health visited weekly as the pandemic unfolded, cancer diagnoses fell by half in March and April and of the 50% who were asked to come in for follow up...

Tanya has rheumatoid arthritis, a compromised immune system and heart problems. Getting the virus is a risk she cannot take and this is the tenth week that she's been isolating at home with her husband and teenage daughter. But how long will this last and will she have to self isolate in her own home away from her family for the foreseeable future, if her daughter goes back to school? Tanya talks...