It’s a big day for me, today, posting my first ever YouTube video. It’s many years now since I had the idea to have a YouTube channel called OsteoFM, but I got engrossed in writing the blog, earning money, then covid happened, then new jobs to get good at…. But today’s the day! A chat…
Am I autistic, or am I just bad at social chitchat and a bit obsessive?Is my husband autistic, or does he just like documentaries about modifying cars? Surely I can’t be the only one who’s pondered questions like these. The good news is that there’s an actually an easy, free, instant way to find out.…
A report from the Osler Lecture, Meeting Minds, 2025, Oxford University. Speaker: Professor Sir Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator, and one of TIME Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in health. What is the UK Biobank? I had heard of the UK Biobank before. Along with the Human Genome Project, I was vaguely familiar…
Gut Instinct: Why Microbial Diversity Matters – a talk by Professor Kevin Foster at Meeting Minds 2025, Oxford University I don’t think it will come as a surprise to many manual therapists out there that we are absolutely crawling with microbes (just to get clear on the wording: the word microbe is shorthand for, (and…
Mal-aria Ok, I know a few interesting facts about malaria, I’d call them fun facts but it doesn’t seem very appropriate.. And I know a few facts which are, in fact, extremely serious and sad. I learnt these courtesy of Doctor Mehreen Datoo, at Oxford’s annual Meeting Minds Conference 2025. She is a clinical lecturer…
Insurance might not sound the sexiest subject, but please read this through. It might save you months of stress. It will certainly ensure that your patients are protected in the unlikely event of an injury. This post, I should add, is targeted at osteopaths registered with the General Osteopathic Council in the UK. While it…
Brain surgeon has to be up there with rocket scientist as one of the jobs which sounds like it’s the winner of the Most Impressive Job competition. You have to be very brainy, very skilled, and the stakes are as high as they get. The wonderful thing about this book – Do No Harm –…
In the near future our glasses might be able to advise us on our diet, warn us we might be in the early stages of Parkinson’s, and let us know if we should seek help for our mental health. Yes, by glasses I mean spectacles. Or rather “eyewear”, for the modern reader. Years ago, I…
Edzard Ernst is a leading campaigner against alternative medicine. He is also highly intelligent and hardworking, so is a person of interest to me. As a high profile, dare I say vituperative, critic of complementary therapies, it helps to know what sort of man he is. I won’t say “Know thine enemy”, because I believe…
In a shameless ripoff of the back page of the Sunday Times money section, in which a different person each week was asked questions about their finances and how they managed them, I have decided that this would be a great idea for the blog. Osteopaths can find out about how other osteopaths manage their…
How much do I know about hiccups? I do realise that hiccups are not caused by elves, as was thought in Olde England. I know that they are sometimes confusingly spelt hiccoughs, making me want to pronounce the word awkwardly as hick – offs. I have a hazy notion that the basic hiccup can be…
A report from the Osler Lecture: Artificial Intelligence in Imaging, given by Professor Fergus Gleeson on the use of AI in medical imaging. September 20, 2024, Mathematical Institute, Oxford University Q: Is AI replacing human radiologists? A: No. We are not even close. But why ever not? When I saw the title of this lecture…
It will come as no surprise to many osteopaths out there that there might be a link between head trauma, even in the distant past, and a patient’s current psychological state. It seems self-evident to those of us who have palpated many heads in our lives and heard the many histories that accompany them. However…
I was lucky enough to sign up for a lecture at Kellogg College, home of Oxford University’s Centre of Evidence-Based Medicine, given by Professor Carl Heneghan, and Dr. Tom Jefferson. They promised to enlighten us on the subject of “Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM): Why it’s important and Why It’s Controversial”. I was nearly tempted by a…
This blog post delves into the challenges faced by osteopathy according to the perspectives of Thomson and Macmillan. It highlights issues such as a weak theoretical basis, reliance on manual therapy, practitioner-centredness, and implausible mechanisms. The authors urge for critical self-reflection and embracing concepts from outside osteopathy to ensure the profession’s development and legitimacy.
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