Professor Tony Avery, National Clinical Director for Prescribing for NHS England, discusses safer prescribing of medicines.

He highlights the changes he would like to see to enable patients to make genuinely informed decisions, which may also sometimes mean that they decide not to go ahead with a treatment. Tony describes how he believes doctors and patients can work together on initial prescribing decisions, so that patients can be confident that the benefits of the selected approach outweigh the risks.

You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.

The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.

Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Neuropsychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse discusses his concerns that the huge increase we are seeing in mental health diagnoses across the western world, is now medicalizing emotions and feelings that have previously been seen as part of the normal human experience.

He argues in a new book No More Normal – Mental Health in an Age of Over-diagnosis, published by Granta - this is leading to an increasing number of people taking psychiatric medication. Today in England alone over eight million adults take an antidepressant every year. This is creating an unprecedented demand on health services, increasing waiting lists, which most worryingly of all, risks leaving those with severe mental illnesses, who really need the support unable to get it.

You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.

The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.

Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Kevin J. Tracey reveals the extraordinary impact the vagus nerve, which connects every organ in the body to the brain, has on our health. Kevin has been a pioneer in the use of bioelectronic devices to stimulate this nerve to treat a range of auto-immune illnesses and he is the author of a new book The Great Nerve, The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness its healing reflexes, published by Penguin Life.

Patient trials have shown that remarkably, we can electrically stimulate the vagus nerve to ameliorate the symptoms of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. While Kevin is clear the treatment won’t work for everyone, for some patients the results have been truly remarkable enabling them to walk unaided again for first time in decades and get back a quality of life they thought was gone for ever.

And for all of us, it now appears that lifestyle interventions such as cold showers, meditation and how we breathe, may offer critically important strategies to effectively regulating our vagus nerve and so maximises its impact on our health.

You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.

The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.

Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/