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The World Cup is starting this week and a condition that affects around one to two footballers in each national squad is femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAI), also known as hip impingement. Often misdiagnosed as a groin strain, the problem is actually with the hip joint itself and the way it develops in the growth phase of our early teenage years.
We are born with a round ball in a round socket, but sometimes the ball becomes more egg-shaped or is not perfectly round, which means it jams in particular places in the socket. This can cause damage to the cartilage and labrum leading to pain in the hip joint.
One option is physiotherapy, surgery is another, but it is a major operation and has a long recovery time. So Damian Griffin, Professor of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Warwick, and an international team have been developing a new keyhole surgery technique, which has now been tested against physiotherapy in a large randomised control trial. The results have just been published in the medical journal The Lancet.

"The exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of man". Four hundred years ago the English Composer William Byrd knew something that researchers working in the 21st century have now confirmed with evidence; that singing is good for our health, both mentally and physically. The latest findings were on display at the National Centre for Early Music in York in the North of England. The ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s reporter Jack Meegan went to find out more and experience the joys of singing for himself.

There is no part of the body that gets left out of Health Check. A German urologist called Dr Oliver Gralla is determined that men should become more comfortable about talking about their penises, and that they should care for them better. His new book Happy Down Below was prompted by some of the more unusual cases he came across working night shifts in the emergency room; cases where sex had gone very wrong. But he also found in his every day work – most commonly helping men experiencing erectile dysfunction or hormonal problems - they many did not seem to know much about their anatomy.

(Photo: Hip Pain. © Getty Images)