{"id":567082,"date":"2026-07-25T05:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T05:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/567082\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T05:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T05:04:10","slug":"signals-by-saira-hameed-hooray-for-hormones-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/567082\/","title":{"rendered":"Signals by Saira Hameed: Hooray for hormones \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Signals: The Inside Story of Our Hormones <\/p>\n<p>Author: Saira Hameed<\/p>\n<p>ISBN-13:  978-0571389773 <\/p>\n<p>Publisher: Faber &amp; Faber<\/p>\n<p>Guideline Price: \u00a320; 336pp<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Chemistry is what we are, a fact underlined by our endocrinology: our hormones. Hormones act as keys or switches or signals in the body, with Signals being the apposite title of Saira Hameed\u2019s excellent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/books\/\">overview<\/a> of disordered functionality in our normally fine-tuned internal milieux. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Hameed immediately argues that endocrinology is a \u201cwhole body \u2013 whole mind \u2013 whole person speciality\u201d. Diagnosis sometimes requires the detective skills of a persistent Columbo type. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She highlights the often-tortuous narratives and plot lines of an endocrine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/health\/\">patient<\/a>\u2019s history-telling, the hunt for a key reveal, the demand that the doctor listen carefully, undertake a close reading of the story. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Rather than a memoir, she gives us a succession of clinical vignettes that major in the pedagogic. We get explications of both common hormonal conditions such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Then there\u2019s Graves\u2019 disease, one form of thyroid overactivity, first described by one of Dublin\u2019s finest \u2013 Robert James Graves. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">There are more recherch\u00e9 albeit fascinating presentations as with an overly sleepy, overly hungry child with a craniopharyngioma, a tumour that impinges \u201clike melted cheese to toast\u201d on the hypothalamus \u2013 the Heathrow hub of hormones if you like: Endocrine Central.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Hameed is alert to the fallibility of the medical profession and sensitive to the insensitive use of language when dealing with those suffering from fertility issues or in need of replacement oestrogen or testosterone. She\u2019s witnessed \u201ccar-crash\u201d consultations, observed too how endocrinology is \u201cprone to &#8230; silver-bullet subterfuge\u201d. By this she means the ludicrous claims made online for \u201csupplements\u201d that lack a solid evidence base.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She\u2019s also stealthily critical of Harley Street, noting that Thomas Addison \u2013 still famed for the description of his eponymous disease \u2013 was \u201ceither unable or unwilling to feign the solicitous emollience needed for a successful private practice\u201d. The antipathy of academia to women in medicine is decried but pointedly Hameed asks the co-inventor of the insulin pen device \u2013 Sheila Reith (my old boss!) \u2013 to take a bow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">There\u2019s an inherent hopefulness to Signals. Unlike other medical disciplines, the NNT in endocrinology \u2013 the number of patients needed to be treated for a drug be effective \u2013 is often just one. Hameed is an optimistic cheerleader for a speciality that currently is weirdly underrecruiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signals: The Inside Story of Our Hormones Author: Saira Hameed ISBN-13: 978-0571389773 Publisher: Faber &amp; Faber Guideline Price:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6489,103,61,60],"class_list":["post-567082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-book-reviews","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}