Health & Wellness

Exercise and healthy diet the key to avoiding diabetes

“Keep moving”! That’s the simple advice on how we can try to avoid getting diabetes from a Wollongong-based expert. During National Diabetes Week (13-19 July) Diabetes Australia is highlighting the importance of prevention, to reduce adding to the...

Jeremy Lasek

For healthy people, cities and hospitals, charity prescribes prevention

Local organisation Healthy Cities Australia (formerly Healthy Cities Illawarra) takes a collaborative approach to community health, working with local government, universities, businesses and other community organisations to “bring people together...

Tyneesha Williams

Dr Meaghan Miller-McConochie

How to Stay Healthy Through Cold & Flu Season

As winter approaches across the Illawarra, cold and flu season intensifies alongside the cooler weather. In 2024, Australia saw over 349,000 influenza cases, with children under five and seniors most at risk. Vaccination remains the most effective prevention, yet concerning trends show only 13.7% of children aged 5–14 were vaccinated last year—and this number continues to decline.

What we are really teaching kids when we keep them too safe

By Simone Potter, founder of Bush Magic Adventure Therapy We live in a world where children’s lives are more protected, programmed, and padded than ever before. Helmets, knee pads, safe surfaces, safety scissors – these things have their place...

Simone Potter

Is it okay to boil water more than once, or should you empty the kettle every time?

The water contained trace amounts of metals such as iron and lead, low enough magnesium levels that it can’t be tasted, and sodium levels substantially lower than those in popular soft drinks

The Conversation

Finding Steady Ground in an Uncertain World

By Clinical Psychologist Dr Marianne Bourke Life doesn’t come with a pause button. In a world where life feels more uncertain than ever, many of us are quietly carrying more than we let on. We’re often expected to keep functioning, caring...

Dr Marianne Bourke

June 2025

New local social enterprise aims to make exercise ‘For Funsies’

Local marketing professional Elise Sinclair is set to launch a new social enterprise to make fitness inclusive, non-competitive and accessible for women and girls – or, as she puts it, just ‘For Funsies’.

Tyneesha Williams

June 2025

Staying Well at Every Age: Essential Health Checks for Men

By Dr John Deady of Bulli Medical Practice Men’s health encompasses the full spectrum of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing throughout life’s journey. While we all share many common health concerns, certain conditions like heart disease, high...

Dr John Deady

June 2025

Why did I choose homebirth?

The seeds of influence that would bloom into my first homebirth were sown during my pregnancy with my first child. She was born at Wollongong Public Hospital in the waterbirth tub after an induction. My experience was both incredibly empowering and...

May 2025

Food Intolerances: What To Watch For

By Dr Amy Harkness of Bulli Medical Practice Is your child experiencing unexplained symptoms after meals? Unlike food allergies that cause immediate reactions, food intolerances can be subtle and difficult to identify, affecting up to 25% of...

Dr Amy Harkness

May 2025

Bridging the Divide: How to Navigate Tough Conversations with Confidence

The second in a two-part series by local clinical psychologist Dr Esther Davis We all know that tricky conversations – about differences of opinion or even who forgot to take the bins out – can quickly go off the rails. With the federal election...

Dr Esther Davis

April 2025

Where have all the preschools gone?

When my first child was two and a half, I embarked on the daunting process of finding childcare for her two days a week. I was immediately overwhelmed with our fragmented childcare system, and that feeling remains today after two years and my second...

April 2025

Immunisations for Seniors: Why Vaccinations Are Vital

By Dr Julie Blaze of Bulli Medical Practice Is your immune system working as well as it used to? As we age, our body’s defence system naturally weakens, leaving us more vulnerable to infectious diseases and making vaccines less effective. This...

Dr Julie Blaze

April 2025

Bridging the Divide: Why Difficult Conversations Go Wrong And How to Fix Them

Whether we’re talking about reality TV meltdowns, political clashes, or that never-ending debate in your group chat, tricky conversations tend to get stuck at the wrong level. The Harvard Negotiation Project’s framework for difficult conversations...

Dr Esther Davis

Misinformed consent in the birth room

A friend told me a story recently about an online consent module she completed during her uni degree. It was one of those tests that fails you until you memorise the answers and get one hundred percent. My friend kept failing due to one question. It...

Parenting

The masks we wear: are they false, or are they us?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the different masks we wear. We like to think of ourselves as ‘whole’ people who walk around being our authentic, whole selves all the time, or at least we aspire to. But really, I think we have different...

Menopause matters

Are you in your forties or fifties and noticing changes? Perhaps your periods are irregular, you’re feeling irritable, or experiencing sudden hot flushes at inconvenient moments. Maybe you’re waking at 3 AM, unable to get back to sleep... If this sounds familiar, you might be entering perimenopause or menopause.

Dr Rebecca Goodman

Parenting

The tragic short life and sudden death of Ducky the chicken

Early in the New Year, I ordered some fertile chicken eggs to hatch in my small incubator. I often do this to replace old laying hens or inject new breeds or genetics into my flock. It also provides my children a beautiful opportunity to learn how...

February 2025

Ozempic and Weight Loss

By Dr Jeffrey Hall, Bulli Medical Practice Ozempic is the trade name for the medication Semaglutide. It is a bio-similar medication to a gut hormone that regulates insulin responses to food and is the best known in the class of medications called...

Dr Jeffrey Hall

February 2025

Is reality TV ‘harmful’? We asked 5 experts – including an ex-reality TV participant

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article

The Conversation

February 2025