Dr Nina Byrnes
As Doctor in the House returns, Jess O Sullivan meets one of the medical trio
When you’ve been avoiding a problem for a long time, inviting someone into your home along with a camera crew, to help you solve it, is a brave move. But when the crack team of problem solvers is made up of Drs Nina Byrnes, Sinead Beirne and Professor Niall Moyna, you know you’re in good hands. The medical trio are back for a new season of Doctor in the House, joined this time by nutritionist Daniel Davey, who has also worked with the Leinster rugby team and the Dublin footballers.
As a busy working parent of three with her own medical practice, Dr Nina Byrnes is well placed to understand how difficult it can be to maintain a healthy lifestyle while meeting the demands of family life. This is exactly the problem the Twomey family had during the first episode of the new series. The three daughters in the family: Ava (20), Regan (18) and Ella (12) really struck a chord with the GP, who has a teenage daughter of her own. Leaving Cert student Regan admitted to suffering from anxiety brought on by her use of social media. “I think she brought out the mother in me a bit. Girls in general, they’re all so obsessed with social media, and all those perfect bods on it. It’s heartbreaking to see these beautiful girls in front of you whose self-esteem is knocked because they’re comparing themselves to unreal influences on social media.”
Regan admitted that she would often wake in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, and immediately go on her phone. Dr Nina feels this is a big problem in homes across the country. “We really don’t know what our kids are doing at night. I think turning off the internet in the house and putting all phones downstairs should be the rule.” This is something that she practises in her own home because she understands the importance of sleep. “The kids have a time when they have to hand up their phones and we turn off the internet before we go to bed. The kids don’t really fight it because they know that’s the way it is and it’s not up for discussion.”
Her eldest daughter Alex (16) has had a phone since she was 11 but it’s only in the past two years that Nina and her husband Dean have really noticed how much her children are on social media. As well as Alex, her family includes Luke (14) and Ed (5). “We became aware that maybe we weren’t policing it as much as we should, so we made the decision that we didn’t want phones in their room at night.”
Dr Nina’s two eldest children didn’t grow up with social media but she is fascinated to watch her youngest son Ed’s use of it. “He doesn’t watch cartoons, he watches YouTube, mainly other kids playing with toys. When he plays with his teddies he pretends to be a YouTuber. He even has names for his followers – he calls them werewolves. So that is the kind of imaginative play that five-year-olds are doing now.”
Of course, Dr Nina knows the internet is a fantastic source of good health information, but that there are also a lot of unsubstantiated claims peddled by people whose only qualification is having an opinion “Sites full of rubbish can look very impressive. There’s the worry that because something has thousands of likes or is someone who has presented themselves as an authority that people will take them seriously. I think it’s dangerous and can be very damaging to people’s health.” Having a GP that you trust and can talk to is something everyone should look for, as Dr Nina explains that GPs really are the only doctors who will know you for years and can look at you as a whole, both mentally and physically. “You can’t be physically well if you’re not mentally well. What myself and Sinead Beirne are doing on this show is not any different to what GPs around the country are doing every day.”