Inside Health Folgen

In the last of the current series Mark Porter answers your feedback on sex education, off licence use of drugs and drinking smoothies instead of eating fruit.Plus hospital bed numbers have been halved over 25 years, while admissions have rocketed - up by 3 million in the last decade alone; Inside Health discusses how hospitals have been coping.Plus calls for frailty to be an official diagnosis rather than simply a general description - Mark Porter examines the implications.

Mark Porter visits a very smelly laboratory to find out how your gut bacteria could be influencing your weight - and more besides.Doctors have written to the authorities asking for permission to use the drug Avastin instead of the more expensive alternative, Lucentis, to treat patients with age related macular degeneration (AMD) - the commonest cause of blindness in older people. Inside Health investigates.And new research into peanut allergy, turning conventional wisdom on its head, that every parent should know.

The big news in public health this week with the parliamentary vote on the introduction of standardised cigarette packets. A move the tobacco industry has resisted fiercely. Inside Health discusses the evidence for the sort of impact the policy might have on the nation's smoking habits?The difficult issue of when and how to tell children about sex. Schools throughout England are to be offered new guidance to help them with sex education in PHSE classes for KS3 and KS4 pupils. But, the classes are still not going to be made a statutory part of the curriculum. Inside Health's Margaret McCartney examines the evidence.And a listener has asked about gallstones after a recent scan had shown debris or sludge in the gallbladder.Plus news from Las Vegas, New York and the UK on trends in plastic surgery.