Natural approaches to high blood pressure
It never ceases to amaze me how often doctors use needlessly complex and unintelligible language, when plain English would do just as well. A good example of such medicalese is the term ‘essential hypertension’. Hypertension is just doctors’ parlance for high blood pressure. However, the word ‘essential’ in this context it refers to high blood [...]
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The health benefits of folic acid
Of the dozens of vitamins and minerals that are essential to life, only a few have managed to gain widespread renown and acceptance. When a nutrient makes the transition from chemical obscurity to trusted remedy, it usually does so on the basis of some specific action or effect. Vitamin A, for instance, is famous for [...]
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Natural cures for cystitis
Antibiotics are widely regarded as one of the great success stories of the last century. And rightly so: since their introduction into medical practice just a few decades ago, they have revolutionised the treatment of conditions such as pneumonia and meningitis, and countless lives have been saved. Despite their undoubted place in modern medicine, there [...]
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Healthy snacking – the benefits of eating between meals
Dietetic dogma tells us that we should eat three meals a day, but resist the urge to feed our faces with anything else in between. Like doner kebabs and deep-fried Mars bars, snacking is something that the nutritional fraternity tends to frown upon. Despite its sullied reputation, recent evidence suggests that eating between meals mightn’t [...]
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Do the RDA’s (recommended daily allowances) have any relevance?
Whilst I am an ardent advocate of nutritional medicine, my career in the area was almost snuffed out before it began. Just as my interest in the subject was burgeoning, I found myself aghast at what seemed to be the excessive quantities of nutrients recommended by many natural health experts. Compared to the gold standard [...]
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Using diet to protect yourself from macular degeneration
I was never very interested in food as a child, but I do remember being encouraged to eat plenty of carrots to help me see in the dark. Not all nutritional folklore is supported by sound science, but this one is: carrots are loaded with the nutrient beta-carotene, and the vitamin A this may convert [...]
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Caffeine caution – even a little may be enough to cause upset in the brain
For me, eating healthily doesn’t necessarily mean giving up all our little treats. My personal dietary vice is coffee, and I indulge myself with a cafetière of organic Guatemalan brew most mornings. From a purist’s point of view, drinking coffee is nutritional heresy: there’s a stack of research linking caffeine consumption with all manner of [...]
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The many benefits of garlic
Last week garlic was thrust into the spotlight following the publication of a study which suggests that regular consumption of this herb could halve the risk of stomach cancer and cut the incidence of colon cancer by two-thirds. Actually, garlic has long had a reputation as a bit of a cure-all. With references to its [...]
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Natural cures for migraine
Migraine is one of the most common conditions that I see in practice, and the vast majority of sufferers have it affect their daily lives to some degree. As a result, I’m always on the lookout for potential solutions to this problem. Reading this month’s edition of the medical journal Cephalalgia, I discovered that that [...]
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The hazards of too consuming too much salt
For centuries, salt has been revered as a flavour-enhancer and food preservative across the globe. Our appetite for salt has not diminished either: many of us add salt during cooking or at the table, and salt has a ubuiquitous presence in pretty much every processed food. Some salt in the diet appears to be important [...]
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