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BBC Radio 4


Series that demystifies health issues, separating fact from fiction and bringing clarity to conflicting health advice.


Inside Health

Dementia is now the UK’s leading cause of death - but could a vaccine one day help prevent it? New data from Wales suggests the shingles vaccine is linked to a 20% lower risk of developing dementia in later life, adding to evidence that viral infections can influence brain health.

Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer, Assistant Prof of Medicine at Stanford University discusses his findings and the further evidence required to prove this link, along with Prof Tara Spires-Jones, Group Leader in the UK Dementia Research Institute.

The UK has begun using the world’s first gonorrhoea vaccine - though it was originally developed for meningitis. With antibiotic-resistant strains increasing, we speak to Dr Suneeta Soni about why gonorrhoea has been so hard to target with vaccines.

At the Bristol Robotics Lab, engineers are creating devices to support mobility in older age. James meets Jonathan Rossner and tries out “The Right Trousers” - an inflatable exoskeleton designed to help people walk and to strengthen their muscles.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producers: Debbie Kilbride, Tom Bonnett & Minnie Harrop
Editor: Ilan Goodman
Production coordinator: Ishmael Soriano
This episode was produced in partnership with The Open University.

Potential Break Through in Dementia Treatment

More and more parents are using melatonin to help their children sleep - but there is little research on the long-term effects. 

So, what do we know about the risks and is it ok to give it to children as an aid to help sleep?

James chats to Paul Gringras, professor of children’s sleep medicine and neurodisability at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Vicki Beevers, chief executive of The Sleep Charity. 

Also this week, resident GP Margaret McCartney on the potential promise - and peril - of doctors using AI in the NHS, and should you eat your placenta? We hear from a dietician on whether there’s any evidence it’s good for you.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producers: Tom Bonnett, Debbie Kilbride & Gerry Holt
Editor: Ilan Goodman
Production coordinator: Ishmael Soriano

This episode was produced in partnership with The Open University.

Is it safe to give kids melatonin?

Drug-related deaths are at their highest levels in England and Wales since records began 30 years ago.

Scotland has had the highest number of drug deaths in Europe for at least seven years. And the UK has even seen opioid-related deaths surpass the number of people dying in road traffic accidents.

So today on Inside Health we’re asking, what's the real story behind these numbers? Who is dying of a drug overdose and why - and how can we tackle this issue?

James Gallagher is joined by an expert panel, including:

- Professor Catriona Matheson, Professor in Substance Use at the University of Stirling and former chair of Scotland’s drug deaths taskforce
- Dr Caroline Copeland, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology and Toxicology at King’s College London and Director of the National Programme on Substance Use Mortality
- Dr Michael Blackmore, a GP in Grangemouth, central Scotland, who has a special interest in addictions and is himself a former drug addict, now 16 years in recovery

We also visit Professor Sir John Strang at the National Institute for Health and Care Research King’s Clinical Research Facility to see how he is experimenting with new ways of tackling rising deaths. 

Professor Strang is based at the National Addictions Centre, King's College London, and monitors heroin users in the lab to see if this could in future bring about a wearable overdose detection device to save lives.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producer Gerry Holt
Researcher: Minnie Harrop
Editor: Ilan Goodman
Production coordinator: Ishmael Soriano

If you’ve been affected by addiction, details of help and support are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

This episode was produced in partnership with The Open University.

Can we reverse rising drug deaths?

Exosomes are tiny balls of fat that allow cells to communicate with each other in our bodies. They're being actively researched as an experimental new type of medicine, and they're also being used in the cosmetics industry in serums, as well as being injected into people's skin. Researchers have raised concerns about the safety of this hot new trend in beauty.

Presenter James Gallagher meets Dr James Edgar from the University of Cambridge who studies exosomes in his lab, he's also joined by consultant Kamal Kaur who advises the cosmetics industry on regulation around products containing exosomes, and we head to one of the UK's hot spots for beauty clinics and dermatology - the Marlyebone area of London - to meet consultant dermatologist in the NHS and One Wellbeck, Dr Ellie Rashid. 

Also in the programme, a new physio app is being trialled by the NHS. It's been rolled out to patients in Lothian in Scotland and we meet the people who have been using it, the real-life physio behind it and hear whether apps could be the way many people access physio in the future. 

Producer: Tom Bonnett with Debbie Kilbride
Assistant Producer: Minnie Harrop
Editor: Ilan Goodman

Exosomes: Is cosmetics' biggest trend a health risk?

With bin strikes in Birmingham having gone on for months, James Gallagher heads to the Small Heath area of the city to ask what the health risks could be from rubbish left on the streets. He meets campaigners Shafaq, Ashid and Danni from End the Bin Strikes who tell him what residents are worried about. To discuss what diseases could be brewing and how they might spread, he's also joined by Professor Malcolm Bennett from the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham and Martin Goldberg, Lecturer in Microbiology from Birmingham City University.

Following news that a child who contracted measles has died at a hospital in Liverpool, James also talks to Professor of Children's Health Helen Bedford from University College London about the risk of measles in the UK. And, over the past week James has been reporting on the news that children have born using a technique which uses two women’s eggs and a man’s sperm to prevent mitochondrial disease being passed from mother to child. The babies inherit around 0.1% of their overall genetic code from the donor woman. The UK became the first country in the world to make it legal back in 2015 after a big ethical debate about what should and shouldn’t be allowed. These kinds of ethical issues are becoming more and more pressing as technology is revolutionising fertility science. To discuss what questions we could be asking next, James speaks to Dr John Appleby, Co-Director for Medical Ethics and Law at Lancaster University. 

Presenter: James Gallagher
Production: Tom Bonnett with Debbie Kilbride and Minnie Harrop
Made in collaboration with the Open University

Health risks of bin strikes, measles warning and ethics

As an era-defining summer of women’s sport kicks off, Inside Health looks at the science of sport and the female body. 

What do we know about how female physiology affects sporting performance? 

James visits Manchester to meet elite athletes and the scientists who are at the forefront of investigating the impact of periods on athletic performance and why women are more prone to certain injuries than men. He also hears about breast movement and why the right sports bra really matters.

You'll hear from: 
- Calli Hauger-Thackery, a distance runner who has represented Team GB in the Olympics and Commonwealth Games;
- Kirsty Elliott-Sale, Professor of Female Endocrinology and Exercise Physiology at Manchester Metropolitan University;
- Dr Thomas Dos'Santos, Senior Lecturer in Strength and Conditioning and Sports Biomechanics at Manchester Metropolitan University;
- Joanna Wakefield-Scurr, Professor of Biomechanics and Head of the Research Group in Breast Health at the University of Portsmouth;
- Katy Daley-McLean, former England rugby captain and leading England point scorer of all time, now Women's Performance Lead at Sale Sharks Women

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producer Gerry Holt 
Editor: Glyn Tansley and Martin Smith 
Production coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth 

This episode is produced in partnership with The Open University. Curious to know more? Try The Open University’s ‘Menstruation Myths’ quiz by following the links to The Open University.

Sport and the female body

The Prime Minister has launched a 'new era' for the NHS that aims to move away from reactive care in hospitals to preventing illness through community services. It's an ambitious plan and one with a lot of ambition and a lot of unknowns. James Gallagher discusses the plans with Sarah Woolnough, Chief Executive of The King's Fund, an independent think tank working to improve health and care across England, and Sally Gainsbury, Senior Policy Analyst at the Nuffield Trust, specialising in evidence-based research on health and social care provision in the UK.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being touted as a way to improve efficiency and save money in the 10 Year Plan and every day in healthcare there are headlines about new AI-driven tools that could revolutionise medicine. In a new mini-series, James hears about different ways AI is being used starting with heart scans that use AI to analyse large amounts of data to predict health outcomes in a way that would be near impossible for a human to achieve. He talks to Dr Arunashis Sau from the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College, London.

Also, with a 200-year-old condom made from a sheep's insides attracting crowds to the Rijksmuseum in The Netherlands, James finds out about the history of condoms with cultural historian Dr Kate Stephenson.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Additional production: Ella Hubber
Editors: Glyn Tansley and Martin Smith

Can the ten-year plan save the NHS? Heart scans with AI, and who invented condoms?

When the sun shines, out come the warnings that we all need to be careful in the sun to avoid burning and the risk of skin cancer. There are, though, those who believe that sort of public health messaging isn't positive enough about the benefits of the sun.

As James Gallagher hears on the streets of Brighton, many of us know about the health benefits of vitamin d but new research suggests other benefits could be important for our health too.

Should we working harder to get a balance of taking care in the sun but making sure we get enough exposure to it?

James Gallagher looks at the evidence with Dr Richard Weller, Personal Chair of Medical Dermatology and Honorary Consultant Dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Zoe Venables, a dermatologist with an interest in skin cancer epidemiology at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, and Dr Margaret McCartney, GP, expert in evidence-based medicine. 

This episode is produced in partnership with The Open University.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Assistant Producer: Katie Tomsett
Editor: Glyn Tansley

Are we being too safe in the sun? How to balance the risks

What's the science behind a sweet tooth? James Gallagher explores whether sugar really can be addicted and what happens in our bodies when we want it and when we eat it. 

He's joined by Professor Susanne Dickson, who specialises in the neurobiology of appetite at the University of Gothenburg, and Professor James Brown from the School of Biosciences at Aston University.

With Easter coming up, James meets dental hygienist and researcher Dr Claire McCarthy from King's College London in the BBC loos to get some top tips on keeping our teeth clean and gets a few pointers on where he could do with brushing up on his technique. 

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producers: Tom Bonnett and Hannah Robins
Assistant Producer: Anna Charalambou

Can you be addicted to sugar?

We continue our exploration of some of the issues that could crop up if assisted dying becomes law under The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that is currently working its way through Parliament.

Today we consider what those final moments might be like and if the ideal of a peaceful death is a reality with the drug options currently available.

To discuss we're joined by:

Katherine Sleeman - Professor of Palliative Care at King's College London
David Nicholl - Consultant Neurologist at University Hospital Birmingham
Mark Taubert - Consultant Palliative Medicine at NHS Wales
Erica Borgstrom - Professor of Medical Anthropology at The Open University

It's claimed that within each of us there is a credit card's worth of microplastics. We dig into the figures underlying that with Kit Yates, Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath.

And, we answer your questions after our programme on hearing loss with audiologist Dr Hannah Cooper, Kevin Munro, Professor of Audiology at the University of Manchester and Nish Mehta, an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon at Royal National ENT Hospital.

Presenter: James Gallagher
Producers: Hannah Robins and Tom Bonnett
Editor: Holly Squire

Assisted Dying: What might the final moments be like?

Dr Mark Porter explores Dementia Challenge - the Department of Health's much publicised campaign to improve dementia care, including a new scheme to test everyone over 75 who's admitted to hospital for signs of the condition. Will this lead to overdiagnosis or will it get people treated early? 

And prescribing sleeping tablets for those unable to rest on a noisy hospital ward may seem like a quick fix but there is strong evidence that they are linked to side effects including an increase in falls. Mark Porter investigates and finds some simple solutions to getting a good night's kip in hospital. 

Plus a leading expert on the thyroid gland answers a listener's concerns about the use of the hormone thyroxine.

Dementia, Sleep, Thyroxine

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