Conditions

Anyone can fall, but past sixty a fall stops being mere clumsiness. At that age a bone breaks from standing height, and a few hours spent on the floor…

A seizure during a high temperature is one of the most frightening things a parent can be handed.

A fibroid is a firm lump of muscle and fibrous tissue that grows in the wall of the womb. It is not a tumour in the usual sense: it does not turn into cancer…

Fibromyalgia is the situation where almost everything hurts for a very long time while the tests find nothing: the blood work is clean, the scans show no…

A flat foot is one whose inner arch has dropped, so that when you stand the sole meets the floor along almost its whole length.

Flu is not a bad cold but a different infection with a different character altogether. A cold creeps up on you: the throat prickles today, the nose runs…

This name covers the whole range of effects a child is left with because their mother drank alcohol during pregnancy.

A food allergy is a mistake made by the immune system: it reads the protein in an ordinary food as a threat and answers it the way it would answer an infection.

Food intolerance is what happens when the body cannot cope with digesting a particular food, or a substance inside it.

Food poisoning is the illness caused by food contaminated with germs or with the toxins they produce.