Skip to main content

Tips on How to Stay Healthy and Well this Winter

With England’s NHS under immense pressure even before the full onset of winter, here are some tips on how you can make the most of the NHS, use health services more appropriately, and obtain the care you and your family need to protect your health and wellbeing.

1. Attend for appointments for medication reviews and for the management of long-term conditions when invited.

2. Take-up the offer of Covid-19 and flu vaccinations if you are eligible. Make sure you are up to date with any other vaccinations you are eligible for. Attend for health screening appointments when invited.

3. Use the NHS app to book appointments, view your GP medical record and order repeat prescriptions.

4. Be aware of the range of options for NHS care – including opticians, pharmacists, self-referral services (e.g. podiatry, IAPT, smoking cessation), and NHS 111.

5. Use the NHS electronic prescription service so that your prescription is sent directly to a pharmacy.

6. For queries about hospital care, contact the hospital PALS team rather than your GP.

7. Apply for online access to your hospital records if this is available.

8. Don’t Smoke.

9. Exercise regularly including outdoors so that you get some sunlight exposure. This will also help with seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

10. Eat 5 portions of fruit & vegetables every day and eat plenty of high-fibre foods.

11. Limit your sugar & salt intake.

12. Limit your alcohol intake to a safe level.

13. Take time to improve your mental health; including by meeting regularly with friends and family.

14. Check your own blood pressure.

15. Take your medication as prescribed.

16. Get a good night’s sleep.

17. Listen to experts on health issues and not random people on social media.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the difference between primordial prevention and primary prevention?

Primordial prevention and primary prevention are both crucial strategies for promoting health, but they operate at different levels. Primordial prevention aims to address the root causes of health problems and improve the wider determinants of health. It focuses on preventing the emergence of risk factors in the first place by tackling the underlying social, economic, and environmental determinants of health. This involves broad, population-wide interventions such as: Policies that promote healthy food choices: Think about initiatives like taxing sugary drinks to discourage unhealthy consumption, or providing subsidies for fruits and vegetables to make them more accessible. Urban planning that prioritises well-being: This could include creating walkable neighborhoods with safe cycling routes, ensuring access to green spaces for recreation and relaxation, and designing communities that foster social connections. Social programs that address inequality: Initiatives aimed at reducing pov...
Post a Comment
Read more

UK Covid-19 Inquiry - The Importance of a Strong Primary Healthcare System

In my witness statement for Module 10 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, I discuss the pandemic's impact through from the perspectives of  primary care and public health, drawing on my extensive experience as a senior academic at Imperial College London and as a practising GP and NHS Public Health Specialist.  I emphasise that the pandemic disproportionately affected people who were clinically vulnerable, the disabled, ethnic minority communities and those living in deprived areas. The pandemic highlighted how structural inequalities, multigenerational housing, and employment in high-risk frontline roles exacerbated health disparities.  My statement also critiques the weakening of public health infrastructure - particularly for the control of infectious diseases - and the lack of integrated health data systems to identify at-risk groups such as the clinically vulnerable. I also advocated for a more robust preventive healthcare model that prioritises community-based primary care ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Relevance Over Recall: Rethinking How AI Uses Clinical Data

Our article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine argues that safe and effective AI in healthcare must incorporate mechanisms that emulate human judgement - down-weighting old, inaccurate or superseded information and prioritising what is recent, clinically relevant and reaffirmed - so that AI supports, rather than disrupts, high-quality patient care.  Clinicians constantly revise, reinterpret and filter past information so that only what is relevant, accurate and timely shapes present-day management decisions; medical records function as dynamic “working tools” rather than fixed archives. By contrast, many AI systems lack this capacity for selective forgetting and often treat all historical data as equally meaningful.  This can lead to outdated or low-confidence diagnoses being repeatedly resurfaced, persistent labels influencing clinical expectations, and irrelevant, long-resolved events cluttering summaries and decision-support outputs. Such indiscriminate recall...
Post a Comment
Read more