There is a controversy raging in women’s sport. Caster Semenya is the Olympic women’s 800m champion. She also has high testosterone levels which confer greater strength, stamina and bulkier muscles than other women. Intersex people have always existed. Some 1-2% of us may be intersex where there’s a mismatch of sex hormones and chromosomes (X female, Y male) which determine gender. Some will be men with X and Y sex chromosomes, so they are chromosomally male but may have few receptors for testosterone and so don’t show male characteristics. It should be said Caster has been female all her life and lives as a woman. Her parents decided she was a girl and brought her up as one. Caster has no womb or ovaries but instead has internal testes due to a chromosonal abnormality. She is chromosomally masculine. Her body has X and Y chromosomes but she is, to all appearances, indistinguishable from a female. The big question is should she, with her male … [Read more...] about Dr Miriam Stoppard: Athlete gives sport an ethical dilemma
Miriam stoppard
My life through a lens: Miriam Stoppard
Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite photos. This week it’s doctor and TV presenter Miriam Stoppard, 81 Miriam Stoppard, 81, (pictured) reveals the stories behind a selection of her favourite photos RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next 'There is a battle between the skin and the cartilage':... Seeing double! Duchess of Cambridge's mint custom-made dress... Share this article Share 1949: This is me at Central Newcastle High School – I’m in the second row, on the left. It was a fee-paying school in the posh part of town and there’s no way my parents could have afforded it, but I got a scholarship. The uniform was expensive so my mother Jenny, a dressmaker, and my father Sidney, who’d trained as a tailor, made it for me. My education there was the foundation for the rest of my life 1954: Here I am at 17 outside our pre-fab house. This was taken by my then-boyfriend Selwyn. As part of the Jewish community where … [Read more...] about My life through a lens: Miriam Stoppard
Dr Miriam Stoppard: ‘Liver transplants on the rise as more Brits drink up’
Four pints a day? Doesn’t sound like much does it? Yet despite NHS guidelines, it’s adults who regularly drink this amount that are at risk of needing a liver transplant due to alcoholic cirrhosis. Experts at the Royal Free Hospital in North London gave this warning as they announced the 2,000th patient to undergo a transplant at the hospital. The proportion of liver transplants performed on patients with alcohol-related disease has climbed by 50% in the last 15 years. Now alcohol-related liver disease is the main reason a transplant is performed because recipients of a liver no longer have to abstain from having a drink for six months prior to the operation. They do, however, have to commit to giving up drinking after. Researchers at the University of California followed a group of nearly 33,000 people who had a liver transplant between 2002 and 2016. Over time, rates of alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) have increased with the result that more than … [Read more...] about Dr Miriam Stoppard: ‘Liver transplants on the rise as more Brits drink up’
Dr Miriam Stoppard: Liquid diets may be the way to cure diabetes
We all know our motivation to lose weight is high when we manage to lose weight quickly, and we can do this when we replace meals with diet drinks, shakes and soups. So could doctors use this high motivation in overweight people with Type 2 diabetes to lose enough weight to cure them of it? It seems so. When 277 morbidly obese people were put on a low-calorie diet for three months and followed up after a year, rapid early weight loss led to better long-term weight loss than for those using slower diets. “Programme retention was exceptionally high with a low-calorie diet, at 89%,” said lead researcher Mike Lean of Glasgow University. In the British Medical Journal, he said this new strategy offers people the chance of a cure. His main point is that it’s not just a diet but a carefully structured programme aimed at substantial long-term weight loss that can be delivered by ordinary dietitians and practice nurses. It would cost less than the average annual … [Read more...] about Dr Miriam Stoppard: Liquid diets may be the way to cure diabetes
Dr Miriam Stoppard – Just seeing an X-ray can make us behave
As a smoker in my early 40s, I remember seeing a chest X-ray after I’d had a bout of bronchitis going on to pneumonia. It showed quite a nasty picture of lung damage. When I got back to my office and went to light up, the ciggie tasted foul. So I tried another. Same thing. So I opened a new pack. Same thing. Then it dawned on me. My brain, so frightened by my X-ray, was telling me not to smoke. So I didn’t. I quit that day cold turkey. It seems we can all be deeply affected by actually seeing a dire health warning. Showing people ultrasound scans so that they can visualise their furred up coronary arteries leads them to make changes, which reduce their cardiovascular risk. Even in medicine a picture is worth a thousand words, it seems. “This trial shows the power of using personalised images of atherosclerosis as a tool to prompt behaviour change and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” said lead author Ulf Näslund, professor and … [Read more...] about Dr Miriam Stoppard – Just seeing an X-ray can make us behave