More evidence that obesity is not the spectre it’s so often made out to be
This week’s British Medical Journal contains a report of a study published this week in the journal Critical Care in which diabetes was found to be associated with an increased risk of organ failure (such as heart or kidney failure) and death from this, but obesity (in the absence of diabetes) was not. This is [...]
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Snack attack ” are crisps really causing our children a major oil crisis?
The British Heart Foundation has launched a hard-hitting campaign which highlights the fact that a child consuming a packet of crisps a day will down a full 5 litres of cooking oil over the course of a year. I’m all for the idea of highlighting the hazards of processed foods, but I have a couple [...]
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GORD blimey! Advice for those who have trouble coming up from down below
Digestive symptoms rank amongst the most common of everyday ills. A significant proportion of the population suffers from symptoms such as indigestion and heartburn. Increasingly, doctors are diagnosing a condition known as gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) – a condition characterised by frequent attacks of heartburn. One of the most common theories about what causes GORD [...]
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Why the notion that eating nuts causes weight gain is, well, nuts!
This week, I saw a story reporting some American research in which an extract of a pine nut from Korea was found to increase the level of the appetite suppressing substances cholecystokinin and glycagons-like peptides. No doubt, some company or other will attempt to exploit this finding with a wonder-pill based on this extract (actually [...]
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Get oiled up! Why dressing helps you get maximum nutritional benefit from your salad
OK, so the summer is on its way out, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to report on a recent study which supports the idea that there is real nourishment to be had from salad-munching. Research conducted at UCLA and Louisiana State University on more than 17,500 men and women has found that consumption of [...]
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Spending a penny at night? – more of one mineral can often put a stop to it
The need to get up at night to have a pee is not only inconvenient ” by disrupting sleep it can seriously impair energy levels and general well-being. Usually, this symptom is taken to be a sign that the prostate gland (which sits underneath the bladder and encircles the ‘water pipe’ or urethra) has enlarged. [...]
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Jamie Oliver takes dim view of parents who their kid’s lunchboxes with rubbish
Jamie Oliver is on the rampage again, and is putting his all into improving the nutritional status of our young. Yesterday, Jamie took his ire out on typical items to be found in school lunchboxes, including crisps and soft drinks (including Red Bull) and described the parents that provide such foodstuffs as ‘tossers’. Even for [...]
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Older dads at risk of fathering autistic children ” and the diet that can help those affected by this condition
In the news this week a story has been just circulating about the fact that men aged 40 ” 49 (that includes me) are many times more likely to father autistic children than younger men. We’re unlikely to know what the mechanism is here, but what is good about this story is that it at [...]
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Have the purveyors of fizzy drinks gone soft in the head?
It may perhaps come as no surprise that food companies that sell what I regard as utter crap to the masses spend a lot of time and money on giving their products a ‘healthy’ sheen and befuddling governments and journalists with inaccurate and misleading PR schmooze. This morning, for instance, Coca-Cola launched a PR offensive [...]
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Tea – the perfect cuppa?
I’m a coffee drinker myself, but have been a long-time fan of tea as a beverage that may bring benefits for the body. Tea is rich in substances called polyphenols that have ‘antioxidant’ activity (which means they have the capacity to neutralise the effects of damaging, destructive molecules called ‘free radicals’). Previous research has linked [...]
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