Category: Health

The General Medical Services (GMS) contract is the standard agreement between NHS England and GP practices in England for delivering core medical services, according to NHS England. It's a national contract negotiated yearly, defining what services GPs are expected to provide and how they are funded. The GMS contract covers a significant portion of GP practices in the UK (and is 195 pages long!)

As summer approaches, many of us seek ways to feel stronger, healthier, and more energised. The Fitness Box, located in The Manor, Tur Langton, offers small group training sessions. These focus on functional fitness, helping real people live better, move better, and feel better daily.

Look after your mind - deep relaxation. The word relax comes from Latin and means to loosen or open. It is also linked to free, as in free up. Relaxing deeply is not just a physical process, but also a loosening up of thoughts. A kind of quiet and gentle concentration that focuses the mind on pleasant things. Here’s a script I use when I want to relax. If you try it, I recommend getting someone with a soothing voice to record it for you, speaking quietly and slowly. When you wish to listen, sit somewhere peaceful where you will not be disturbed. Close your eyes, though this is not essential, but if you keep them open stare at the floor or a blank space on the wall and don’t let your gaze wander. Now notice your body and deliberately relax your muscles, then enjoy…

Tennis is a popular, exciting sport offering many physical and social benefits, but it's not without risks. At Kibworth Osteopaths, we often see how tennis impacts the body, primarily through overuse injuries or strains. 

As of 2024 there are estimated to be nearly a million folk living with dementia in the UK, projected to be 1.4 million by 2040. That equates to 7000 new diagnoses a month. It currently takes six months, after GP referral, to get a diagnosis. As many will know this is a debilitating, isolating disease, affecting not only the sufferer but the carers and family around them.

Exercising in Hot Weather

Dreams are creations of the subconscious mind, reflecting our conscious thoughts, anxieties and experiences. Sometimes they are endeavours to resolve a problem or deal with unfinished business. Occasionally in my work as a hypnotherapist I’m asked to try and help people who have troubling and / or recurring dreams. One lady who came to see me said that she had a disturbing unpleasant dream. She was driving down a long, straight road at night and all was well. Suddenly the steering failed; the car veered off the road and plunged down a steep bank. To my client’s horror, caught in the headlights was a small child. She almost hit the child and then woke up horrified in a cold sweat.

I see from an online search that ‘wow’ comes not from English but from Scots. In a 1513 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, translator Gavin Douglas wrote the lines, ‘Out on thir wanderand spiritis, wow!’ – not that this leaves me any the wiser. We tend to say wow when we’re surprised, impressed or astonished: it’s embedded in the language and has become a kind of verbal reflex.

Those of us with a garden area or a patch of land nearby, like a grass verge, can join the battle for saving our soils, bees and insects by abandoning the use of pesticides. Instead the Pesticides Action Network www.pan-uk.org with its amazing list of alternatives, can lead us on an exciting journey into life changing alternatives.