He’s a proper national treasure. There are millions of people who now presumably think that I look like Ben Whishaw too, and I’m absolutely happy with that!’ he laughs. There is no shame in having put in your hours and your years and then going off to something else. Because medicine isn’t your defining characteristic as a as a person, it’s your job and you can’t let it destroy you.’ He points out multiple times that the value of his advice comes from taking all of it at once, and not in some hodgepodge fashion. All or nothing, he says, because the positive outcomes are a result of the synergy of all the suggestions taken together, not in any one or two singly applied.

By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and humbling, Undoctored is about what happens when a doctor hangs up his scrubs, but medicine refuses to let go of him. The NHS is trying to persuade former clinicians to return to the profession. What would it take to persuade you to swap your pen for a stethoscope? Which do you prefer: people asking you for medical advice at parties, or people recognising you and asking you about Ben Whishaw?Ben Whishaw as Adam, with Ambika Mod as Shruti in the BBC drama This Is Going to Hurt. Photograph: Anika Molnar/BBC/Sister/AMC Do you feel any guilt about leaving the NHS and finding fame by monetising the experiences that all NHS doctors live through and still experience on a daily basis, despite not working as an NHS doctor for more than a decade? Our medical system is a bloated monster designed to generate profit and patients and our society pay the price. I was the same way in school. I will say that a lot of it was self-imposed because I intentionally put my life on hold by saying that I'd find friends in medical school who were like-minded. I came and there wasn't much of a difference in the type of people; worse, because we weren't forced into close proximity for eight hours every single day, it was harder to make friends. I do consider myself relatively proactive and I did make friends (though I often do still feel lonely). However, when hanging out with people, I catch myself falling into the same trap of "oh my Gods, I have work to do and I can't afford to become besties with this person if they expect me to hang out with them every weekend." My first thought is always how little time I will have left to study. As I said before, I liked Kay’s previous books but in my opinion this was the most well written one because it showed how he improved as a writer and a comedian and the way it was edited was so well done and the flow was immaculate which made me appreciate it even more.

I just started work in foundation year 1 and didn’t realise it would be this brutal. I’ve been a doctor for about a week-and-a-half and have already worked 120 hours, told someone’s family that their relative is going to die soon, verified two deaths and cried on the way home more times than not. I know you eventually left medicine, but does this next bit get any easier? Also, any tips for getting out of medicine? Write down what it is you want to do at the bottom of a piece of paper, and then see if you can work on what the steps are to getting there. But clinical trials have repeatedly demonstrated virtually no benefit with calcium supplementation—no slowing of bone thinning, no reduction of osteoporotic fractures. Likewise, people who consume plentiful dairy products containing calcium do not have better bone health. One thing that people who supplement calcium do have is more death from heart disease. You have been criticised for misogyny, particularly in the descriptions of women’s bodies, at the vulnerable time that is pregnancy and childbirth. What are your thoughts on this? The thing that I thought as soon as I started watching the rushes come together, and then a bunch of doctors have said to me, is I can’t believe they’re not actually doctors, midwives and nurses, because they just embodied it so well. I think Ambika in particular, for someone who had basically done practically nothing on-screen before – she’s just such an intelligent, nuanced actor.’But, if you've read anything by Kay, you know that even when the subject matter is horrific or sad, he is very, very funny. The humour is often on the raunchy side here, but there are also moments of raw honesty. He puts it this way: "I've never thought of those two theatre masks as comedy and tragedy, more as how I present myself on stage versus how I actually feel." The structure of the book makes it very easy and even addictive to read. And, like in his children's books, there are some fun running gags: his made-up metaphor "like a wolf on a panini," and faking an anglicisation "replace-all"-gone-wrong to turn participants into "particitrousers." Fructose follows a different set of rules. Ingested as, say, the high-fructose corn syrup in a soft drink or ketchup, it provokes the glycation reaction even without raising blood sugar, a stealth reaction that is difficult to detect. Even without the immediate rise in blood sugar, fructation—glycation by fructose—is eight- to tenfold worse than glycation by glucose. 32 And as with glucose-induced glycation, it is also irreversible. Iodine protects against or can reverse fibrocystic breast disease. Fibrocystic breast disease, believed to be a precursor to some forms of breast cancer, occurs to greater degrees in women with iodine deficiency and can be reversed in many women with iodine restoration. Coming out to his family (I was confused about this because I thought he had already come out and that H, his partner from This Is Going to Hurt was a man, I think I probably got the TV show mixed up)

Stand-up is both diagnosis of pain and cure: the fury and the laughter that soothes it. I’m not surprised he wanted to bring babies into the world: he is all in pieces. I now see Kay’s attempt at medicine as a great act of transference: to heal others at the expense of himself; to birth others who would be happier than himself, in a kind of thwarted renewal. It’s a very big question, and it’s a bigger question than ever. When I left medicine, I was the first or second person in my cohort of hundreds to leave. And these days, I can’t think of the last time I spoke to a doctor who wasn’t talking about their plan B, whether that was going part-time or moving to another country or working in a different industry entirely. But all I’ll say is, being a doctor is an amazing, brilliant, precious career. But if you’re struggling, and if you’re not enjoying it, you can’t do the best for your patients. And there are lots of people who say, “Oh, you must stay in the job no matter what”, and that’s unhealthy and unhelpful. Just work out what it is you want to do. The writer was flattered by the interest in a second potential series of This Is Going To Hurt, starring Ben Whishaw, but said it was written as ‘a one and done’ (Picture: BBC/Sister/Anika Molnar) Speaking of extracurriculars, medicine really is all about privilege. I know I wouldn't have made my way here without all the private classes my parents were able to afford. But, much like Adam, I can't help feeling a tiny bit defensive. A lot has happened to Adam Kay since he left medicine, and even since he wrote This Is Going to Hurt; only some of it has made it into the books he's published since then ( Twas the Nightshift before Christmas and two books for children, Kay's Anatomy and Kay's Marvellous Medicine). I've read all of these and there were still things here that surprised me. I knew he is now married to a man named James, having been married to a woman he calls H in his first book; whatever, none of my business, but I presumed he was bi or his orientation had changed. Instead, he reveals that he was gay all along (had known he was since childhood, had even come out to his parents during his uni years), but still went along with a heterosexual marriage with all the best intentions. To an extent, he was doing what his parents expected of him, just as he was in following in his GP father's footsteps instead of pursuing music.

Join the Inner Circle Today!

Corn is also a prominent trigger for allergies. As many as 90 percent of people who deal with cornstarch in the pharmaceutical industry (as filler in pills and capsules), food production, or agriculture develop allergic responses to corn over time. 43