If you're a smoker you are two to three times more likely to go blind from macular degeneration. This means losing your middle and central vision and, even worse, your field of view becomes a black hole. Nicotine contributes to the problem - it thins blood vessels, ageing them faster and neutralising essential anti-oxidants in body tissues, including the eyes. But it's not all doom and gloom for those who can quit in time. Carte Blanche Medical adds to the warnings against smoking.;

Chantal Christiansen and Thomas McEwan know what it's like to constantly nod off - even halfway through conversations - and then wake up to continue as if nothing's happened. This frightening, involuntary and sometimes dangerous sleep behaviour is called narcolepsy. It's a sleep disorder caused by a deficiency of Orexin - a hormone that keeps us awake. One of its most disabling symptoms sees people temporarily paralysed in response to emotional stimulation like laughter. Carte Blanche Medical finds that there's more to some people's fatigue than meets the eye.

How many hours of the day do you spend sitting at your desk? And how many hours do you spend wishing you could get to the gym? Carte Blanche Medical brings you Part 2 of Derek's Deskercises - exercises that not only work muscles, but also improve circulation while you're supposedly hard at it in the office.

For Michael Mitchell the simple act of eating a meal was once an impossible task. Body building and healthy eating are some of the ways by which he overcame Anorexia. Successful businessman Dean Krawits has also hiked the long road to recovery from this eating disorder. Once thought to predominantly affect teens and young women - mostly white - anorexia and bulimia now manifests in males - young and old - and in people from different cultural and racial backgrounds. Two courageous men talk to Carte Blanche Medical about what it took to confront their relationship with food.

If you spent any time over the past month watching football at a chilly stadium, clad in a beanie or balaclava, you may have been reminded of the theory that you lose more heat through your head than the rest of your body. Carte Blanche Medical asks whether this is true, and, if so, whether children lose more or less heat than adults.

When you take a painkiller for a headache, the drug spreads throughout the body. Some of it reaches the head, giving the necessary pain relief. But what happens when the area that needs treatment is harder to target - such as a sensitive part of the eye, or a cancer cell? In drug delivery laboratories at Wits University, Carte Blanche Medical meets scientists who are working on cutting edge research to get medicines into the eye, and to treat ovarian cancer without impacting on normal healthy cells.

How many hours of the day do you spend sitting at your desk? And how many hours do you spend wishing you could get to the gym? Carte Blanche Medical brings you the first segment of our Deskercise series - desk exercises that not only work the muscles but also improve circulation, help with stability and balance while stretching your weary body.

Dr Joe Tobiansky thought he had received a death sentence when he was diagnosed with a form of cancer called MDS. But a new wonder drug has very likely saved his life. The drug has its origins in a small local lab, where a chance discovery in the 1970s eventually led to South African scientist Professor Peter Jones discover a method of changing cancer cells back into normal cells, by simply switching certain genes on and off. Join Carte Blanche Medical as we meet Prof Jones at his Los Angeles base.