Just went on to my site admin for a routine clear-out of spam messages, and what do I find? Oozing with messages about anorexia and menopause! Another instance of “the world out there”  asking you to buy into health fears. Because Health is big business.

I may be slim-ish, but I have a normal appetite and have absolutely no hang-ups about food, thanks to my wonderful mother who brought me up on a diet of proverbs, such as “a little of what you fancy does you good” and “everything in moderation”, not to mention “eat your greens”! When I was a child, brown bread was always on offer, as well as white, and plenty of fruit, whether cooked or raw.

Nevertheless, spammers seem to seize any opportunity to join in health-hype in order to crank up a health-anxious nation. Straight into the trash for them! Even Radio 4 and the NHS could be found guilty of publicising every small research project that suggests unless we’re super-vigilant, we may imminently die of something dreadful, with a conflicting piece the very following week asking us to do the opposite. Perhaps we all need to calm down and merely be a little more sensible. Am I being irresponsible taking the view that if the statistic that one in two of us will die of cancer is mainly because science has moved on and we now can label illnesses that have been killing us for centuries. After all, we’re all going to die of something. That’s life, as it were. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we should all smoke, take drugs, exist on a diet of doughnuts, chips and ice-cream and have unlimited, unprotected casual sex, not to mention sit on the sofa all day long.

All I’m saying is, why not let’s be independent about this? Hang out a little, rather than get hung up. As for menopause, well, I’m taking that one step at a time…