The pulmonaut: how James Nestor turned breathing into a 3m copy bestseller

It is the most essential thing we do - yet many of us arguably breathe badly. The author of Breath explains how that can be changedIn the last stages of writing his book, Breath, James Nestor was stressed. “Which was ironic when writing a book about breathing patterns and mellowing out,” he says. The book was late; he’d spent his advance and was haemorrhaging even more money on extra research that was taking him off in new, potentially interesting, directions – was it really necessary, he wondered, to go to Paris to look at old skulls buried in catacombs beneath the city? (It was.)Then a couple of months before the book’s May 2020 publication date, the Covid pandemic hit, and Nestor was advised to wait it out

Four NHS trusts in England declare critical incidents after ‘surge’ in A&E admissions

Four NHS hospital trusts in England have declared critical incidents after a “surge” in A&E admissions driven in large part by patients with flu, norovirus and respiratory viruses.Three trusts in Surrey and one in Kent sounded the alarm after a “surge in complex attendances to A&E departments”.A critical incident, which is usually declared when A&E departments are not able to necessarily deliver all of their services safely, is the highest alert level used by the NHS and allows bosses to take immediate steps to create capacity.NHS Surrey Heartlands said the situation at three hospital trusts – Royal Surrey NHS foundation trust, Epsom and St Helier university hospitals NHS trust and Surrey and Sussex healthcare NHS trust – was “exacerbated by increases in flu and norovirus cases and an increase in staff sickness”.It added that the “recent cold weather front has also impacted on more frail patients needing to be admitted to hospital”

‘People are desperate’: ADHD clinicians in England on a system in chaos

When Craig, not his real name, started as a clinician for a private ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) clinic in the spring of 2023, he was pleased by how thorough the training was and how seriously the organisation seemed to take clinical standards.“The training and clinical supervision there were the best I’ve ever experienced in any organisation,” he said. “They truly invested in developing their staff … a consultant paediatrician would often sit in on assessments to observe and provide detailed feedback.”But issues at the company emerged over time: the workload was massive and the quality of the clinical work did not seem to carry through into the reports sent to patients and GPs, which were often done by administrative staff to save time. “Over the 13 months I was there, I never actually saw a single report that appeared to have been written by me, even though they were sent out under my name,” he says

Man who infected woman with HIV after stopping treatment is jailed

A man who infected a woman with HIV after he stopped his treatment and did not tell her about his diagnosis has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.Luke Davis, 31, was found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on the woman, who described being diagnosed with HIV as a “life sentence”.Davis, of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, had initially taken his medication after being diagnosed with HIV in 2017, but disengaged completely from his care in 2019, Hereford crown court heard.His victim discovered she was HIV positive in 2021 after a routine screening.Judge Martin Jackson said Davis chose not to tell the woman about his diagnosis for “entirely selfish reasons”

I loved my teaching job. But as a trans man in Texas, quitting was the only way to get my dignity back

After the state’s bathroom ban went into effect in December amid a slew of new anti-trans policies, I couldn’t keep trying to hide my identity at workUntil recently, I was a music teacher in north Texas. I also happen to be trans. I have never, ever told a student about my identity. At work, I was “stealth” – a term that means that I passed as a cisgender man. Only my administrators knew I was trans, because I was not yet taking gender-affirming hormones when I started this job in my early 20s

HMRC accepted ‘tolerable’ risk of harm in child benefit fraud crackdown

UK tax authorities believed that withdrawing child benefit payments from parentswithout prior consultation as part of an anti-fraud drive carried a “tolerable” risk, with only a “remote” chance of inflicting harm, according to internal documents.The revelations come just weeks after it emerged that at least 63% of those who had their child benefit stopped were in fact still living in the UK and had not emigrated, as inferred by incomplete Home Office data used in the crackdown.Senior HM Revenue and Customs officials are due to be questioned about the episode by the Treasury select committee on Tuesday, which last year said the department appeared to have been “cavalier with people’s finances”.The controversy began after HMRC suspended almost 24,000 child benefit accounts between July and October. Parents received letters referring to overseas holidays – sometimes dating back as far as three years – for which the Home Office had no record of a return journey