I was a family doctor and hypnotherapist in North Yorkshire in England until I retired in 2000. I researched the use of hypnotherapy tapes in Back Pain and Migraine and the results were published in the European Society of Hypnosis Journal. Each showed a clinically significant improvement in symptoms. I was for a while the medical director of an allergy testing company (YorkTest) which I left in 2001. I am now the Chairman of Allergy UK, which is a major British national patient allergy charity.

I also run a website called Shared Care (www.shared-care.com) which links health and life problems with helpful therapies and lists recommended practitioners of those therapies. We also list allergy friendly, disabled friendly and child friendly eating and sleeping establishments, tourist establishments and providers of travel services; and list towns with the emphasis on their suitability for those with mobility problems. The entries and membership are free and we would like to encourage everyone to share their knowledge.

I have two sons, both university graduates, one from Cambridge University (Natural Sciences) and one from Manchester University (Modern History and Politics). They are wise lads as neither are doctors, which is a frustrating occupation area in the dying dinosaur that is the British National Health Service.