The first sign of a problem was excessive tiredness.

 

"I started needing a short nap in the afternoon; but eventually I was sleeping for four hours during the day," says project manager Ina Whitlam.

"It wasn't refreshing sleep, it was horrible and restless. But I couldn't function without it."

Her condition gradually worsened, so eventually she was having to sleep most of the day.

The otherwise fit and healthy 63-year-old had to give up her job with Age Concern, but even then she couldn't throw off the feelings of chronic exhaustion.

"One day I tried to go to the shops but I couldn't manage more than a few steps," she recalls. "I had to give up and go back inside. I sat down and cried."

Ina was also suffering from chronic constipation, as well as very dry skin and thinning hair.

Specialists were unable to help; her GP simply dismissed her problem as chronic fatigue syndrome.

Play golf in Lithuania. Choose your golf weekend and golf packages. Watching her tend her ill son, there is no doubting the love Clare Ginns feels for her ten-year-old son Joshua.

 

"Are you comfy?" she asks as she gently props up her boy with pillows on the sofa.

"Now, let's give you your lunch," she says.

She even manages to handle the pumping of liquidised food into his stomach through a tube in a reassuring way.

For the past six years Joshua has battled a rare and aggressive brain tumour called an ependymoma.

The cancer itself, and also the aggressive treatment he has received for it, have left him severely physically disabled.

He is paralysed from the waist down and has to be fed through a tube in his stomach; he can also speak only in a whisper as he has a tracheostomy (breathing hole) in his throat.

Chemotherapy has damaged his hearing - a recognised side-effect - and he has to wear hearing aids.

Supermarket ready meals sold as healthy have more fat than fast foods like burgers, fish and chips and kebabs, it has been revealed.

Their nutrition labels can be wildly inaccurate, according to leading food industry experts.

They are calling on the Government to back a compulsory uniform traffic light labelling system on the front of food packs to help shoppers fight obesity and poor health.

Ready meals are a huge moneyspinner, generating sales of more than £2billion a year. Premium and "healthy" versions are the fastest-growing sector.

But the upmarket packaging and fancy claims can hide nasty truths.

For example, Marks & Spencer's Beef Lasagne costs two and a half times more than Simply Value Lasagne from Somerfield - and has five times more fat.

Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Cheese and Spinach Macaroni contains nearly twice as much fat as its own Basics Macaroni Cheese.

Waitrose Chicken and Mushroom parcels cost seven times more than a chicken pie from Sainsbury's Basics range but, at 20.3 grams per 100g, contain 30 per cent more fat.