Stress is not a new concept, but we live in an age which is constantly creating fresh varieties of angst to add to our mental in-tray.

Caring doesn't sound like it should be one of those in-tray items. Helping family, friends and strangers can often be uplifting.

But when we...

Have you popped into your local, neighbourhood Death Café recently?

No, it's not a new franchise with baristas offering to add a dash of arsenic to your daily caffeine spike. Nor is it a high street variation on Dignitas where you can enjoy an espresso with your euthanasia.

It's not every day the science of genetics comes up on The Graham Norton Show.

But it did on Friday when Olympic hero Mo Farah was asked why his identical twin brother Hassan isn't also a world-class runner.

Referring to his other guests, Gwyneth Paltrow and Lee Mack, the chat...

The original doom and gloom merchants touting a coming apocalypse were religious seers.

Nowadays, though, faith-based threats of calamity tend to be greeted with a flood of sassy Tweets, rather than waves of panic. "I used to have a job carrying those "End of the world" signs but I...

A doctor has become a deserving Face of the Year.

Not just for being a doctor, but for being the right doctor in the right place at the right time.

Cardiologist and Spurs fan Dr Andrew Deaner rushed onto the White Hart Lane pitch when Fabrice Muamba went...

The need to balance work, home and social activities can be intense at Christmas time. Order is admirable but it can be stressful to shape our lives around an overly rigid to-do list. I've found that leaning a little less on human planning and a little more on the guidance...

The machine, beeping steadily away in the background, reassuringly spells life.

Suddenly it goes haywire. Something's wrong. The patient needs urgent attention. Visiting family members panic as the monitor warns of their loved one's impending doom.

In rush the concerned clinicians - first the nurses, then the doctors. It's action...

"Einstein's Brain Arrives in London After Odd Journey", read the intriguing headline.

Which could prompt one to ask: "What kind of journey would it be normal for a brain to take without its owner?"

The answer that comes to mind is: "None!"

Or should that read that the...

Question: Who's currently challenging scientific certitudes by claiming he is "proof" of a heaven filled with the consciousness of God's "unconditional love".

Is it: (a) a trappist monk, (b) a sufi imam, or (c) a Harvard neurosurgeon?

If you answered (c) you would be correct.

Dr....

The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, was questioned by the BBC today on views expressed in a five year old letter to a constituent.

The letter defended NHS funding of homeopathic hospitals and the question was whether the Health Minister thought homeopathic medicine worked.

So you've got a headache and you want to be rid of it.

It's simple, right? You take a tablet.

Or is it? As the Global Year Against Headache draws to a close the strategy for dealing with "the most frequent of...

For 210 minutes last Wednesday night the world was treated to a unique lesson in what constitutes real ability.

The opening ceremony of Paralympics 2012 wasn't just a colourful and carefully choreographed extravaganza of lighting effects, fireworks, music and a large cast of volunteers but something much more...

Head to Stratford for London 2012 and you'll find one thing that's almost as noisy as the home crowd egging on the Team GB athletes.

It is the impassioned voices of men and women who fervently believe that their Christian calling impels them to stand on...

If one of the world's top athletes asked you how to find happiness, what would you tell him?

Go for gold, perhaps?

That has to be a real possibility for champion sprinter Tyson Gay, although a spanner in the works might be his remarkable competitor, Jamaican

Health care reform - just three simple words.

But it is a phrase that has been convulsing the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic for a long time, commanding an untold number of print and digital column inches.

In the US it is a major talking point in...

What do women want?

Some might say it's a question that has perplexed men for millennia!

But in the box office hit of the same name, Mel Gibson's screen character comes face to face with eye-opening answers when he unexpectedly finds himself reading the minds of women around him.

The...

It probably takes a lot to phase comedian Jimmy Carr.

But a moulded plastic mask of Einstein's head managed to do that on an episode of QI.

Why? Because even when he knew he was looking at an optical illusion he couldn't not see what he...

Mrs Drucker died as a result of a doctor's error.

Who says so?

The doctor.

Dr Brian Goldman was a resident in the Emergency Department of a teaching hospital at the time he sent a "wife, mother, grandmother" home when she should have stayed put.

As a highly...

"Have you noticed how everything seems a little impersonal nowadays? We have all become user names, reference numbers and IP addresses."

Thus spake Starbucks in their latest ad, unveiled last Tuesday. But they have a remedy.

"From now on," they promised, "We won't refer to you as a...

The "gods in white coats" era is over.

And many physicians would be the first to say "amen" to that.

As family practitioner Dr. Andrew D. Saal has put it: "We as doctors are essentially powerless over the unknown, just as we are powerless over everyday events. No...