‘Water is too boring’?! Can you really survive on nothing but coffee, tea or juice?

Everyone agrees you need some form of hydration – but are any of the alternatives as good for you as H20? And precisely how much should you be gulping down?

‘I was sick with pain – but doctors thought I was a hypochondriac’: the spreading agony of kidney stones

Up to one in 10 of us will get kidney stones, according to the NHS. Even teenagers are at risk from what was long seen as an older man’s affliction. Why – and what can we do to prevent them?

Babies are dying because of NHS failings, poverty and inequality, charities warn

Maternity services need urgent improvement and investment to meet government target of halving stillbirths and neonatal deaths

Tim Dowling: how can I make my blood pressure normal in a hurry?

My reading is so high I daren’t send it to our GP. And that’s before I’ve got stuck in traffic on the way to the surgery …

Woman who miscarried fined by NHS for claiming free prescription while pregnant

Plight of expectant mum who miscarried is latest case exposing errors in issuing charge exemption certificates

NHS doctors offered up to £5,000 to recruit colleagues for private hospitals

Exclusive: HCA Healthcare is spending tens of thousands of pounds on ‘golden hello’ bonuses for staff from overstretched public service

You can’t just cheer up people who have depression. There’s a key role for antidepressants

The NHS is planning to offer patients art, music and gardening classes rather than antidepressants. Nice idea, but it won’t work, writes psychotherapist Lucy Cavendish

NHS fines mothers for claiming free prescriptions while pregnant

Pregnant women are entitled to free medication, but without a maternity exemption certificate they face bills of hundreds of pounds

A message to the NHS: disabled people like having sex, too

A sexual health checkup became an ordeal – and underlined the accessibility issues people such as me face, says Cathy Reay, a writer on disability and relationships

‘It’s not medical tourism, it’s desperation’: rising number of Britons resort to treatment abroad

Despair over NHS waiting lists is driving people who could never afford private care in UK to countries like Lithuania

What would you do to support the NHS? My mother gave up her festive tipple

From refusing a whisky to not having her cataracts done, my mother’s quality of life has been irrevocably reduced by the party that has whittled away our health service, writes Zoe Williams

My US hellscape or broken Britain: where would you rather seek healthcare?

It’s insurance renewal time again – when I discuss cover in New York, hear tales of NHS woe in the UK, and wonder which is worse, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

Maternity care is not on a journey of obvious improvement

History suggests that reports exposing NHS failings do not banish the culture that harms babies and mothers

Side Effects by David Haslam review – what do we want from healthcare?

The ex-chair of Nice considers the spiralling costs of medical treatment and asks how we might fix a creaking NHS

GPs to prescribe walking and cycling in bid to ease burden on NHS

Suggestion of activities to help improve mental and physical health part of wider movement of ‘social prescribing’