Saturday morning, the Frigate Café, Ullapool. This is a great cafe. Catero (my wife), Kieran (my son) and I were here last autumn when we came up for a long weekend. Kierie, who's in his 20's,

Friday morning - I wake at about 5.00am and lie for 15 minutes or so listening to the weather and doing a savouring exe

I wrote a post at the beginning of the week entitled "Looking ahead to the walking retreat".  Now it's happening - Thursday morning 6.30am.  It takes some effort of will to emerge from the only-just-warm-enough sleeping bag, put on more layers of clothes and bring this little computer back to bed. I haven't used this one man tent - a Hilleberg Akto - on an expedition before and I'm still very much learning about headroom, storage space and other essentials. Same goes for this little Eee PC computer I'm typing into.

It's Monday morning. On Wednesday I plan to head up to the Fannaichs, a group of hills near Loch Fannich about 4½ hours drive north of Edinburgh - up into the 'real' Scotland. I'm feeling fairly nervous about it. Is this really the time of life for a 58 year old who has very limited experience of camping to be heading off into the wild for four or five days on his own?! Maybe it is. What am I doing this for ... and why am I writing in the blog about it?

The aim of this blog is to be helpful - for clients who come to see me, for fellow health professionals, and for other website visitors. It's pretty obvious that I may be able to offer something use

A GP friend recently asked me about taking folic acid supplements.

Here are details and links for twenty seven mainly March articles that I found interesting. Most of these articles (and many others) are also listed on the searchable Connotea

On April 9 I wrote "On the fine Authentic Happiness website, Seligman and colleagues discuss three entwining roads to happiness and what they call "the full life". One of these three roads is maximising and appreciating positive emotions - very much the territory of savouring." Do visit the Authentic Happiness site. It's great. They ask you to log in, but this is a quick procedure. If you're interested in the three roads to happiness ideas, try taking the "Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire". I completed it first in August '06 and then took it again in May of last year. I score highly on what they call the "Good or Engaging Life" and the "Meaningful Life", but fairly low on the "Pleasant Life".

In a post on 27 January I wrote about "savouring" - the appreciation of positive experiences. Savouring is, as it's name suggests, a sort of running the positive experience around in one's mouth, really tasting, valuing and enjoying it - a bit like slow, careful appreciation of a good wine. Bryant and Veroff, authors of the key current text on savouring (see below), draw parallels between the importance of being good at coping with negative life experiences and the importance of being good at savouring positive life experiences. Savouring well increases one's happiness, wellbeing and appreciation of being alive. On the fine Authentic Happiness website, Seligman and colleagues discuss three entwining roads to happiness and what they call "the full life". One of these three roads is maximising and appreciating positive emotions - very much the territory of savouring.

A recent study in the British Journal of Nutrition (Rogers, Appleton et al. 2008) throws doubt on the value of fish oil supplementation as a treatment for depression. The authors stated " ...