Conditions

Raised blood pressure is one of the few conditions that gets in the way of nothing for years while quietly wearing out the arteries every single day.

Hyperglycaemia is a blood glucose level above normal. It can be a one-off finding on a blood test or an ongoing problem in someone with diabetes.

Cholesterol is neither a disease nor a poison in itself: no cell membrane gets built without it, and neither do the hormones or the bile.

The hip is built like a ball in a cup: the round head of the thigh bone sits in a socket in the pelvis and is held there by the depth of that socket, by the…

This is a condition present from birth in which the nerve cells never reached the last stretch of the bowel, so that stretch cannot relax.

HIV is a virus that settles into the cells of the immune system and wears it down from the inside over years, giving almost no warning.

Hodgkin lymphoma is an uncommon tumour of the lymphatic system: roughly two to three cases per hundred thousand people a year.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection: most sexually active people acquire it at some point in their lives.

Huntington's disease is an inherited condition in which nerve cells in specific areas of the brain gradually die.

The old name for hydrocephalus, "water on the brain", is wrong twice over: there is no water in the head, and the brain does not float in it.