Red meat kills? It’s flagrant bias that’s killing me…
This week the media has been awash with news about the perilous dangers of eating red meat, and processed meat in particular. The cause of this consternation was a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine which analysed data from two large ‘epidemiological’ studies [1]. These studies basically followed people over many years monitoring [...]
Continue Reading →
BMJ columnist holds doctors to a higher standard over industry payments
Here in the UK the on-going ‘Leveson inquiry’ has been investigating the practices of the press, as well as its relationship with the police and politicians. It is alleged to have revealed illegal undisclosed payments made by the press to public officials. This is clearly intolerable and wrong but results from a cultural change. In [...]
Continue Reading →
Coffee again associated with a reduced risk of diabetes
While coffee does not enjoy the healthiest of reputations, it has been consistently linked with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in the scientific literature. Back in February, for instance, a German study was published which found that individuals drinking 4 or more cups of caffeinated coffee each day had a 23 per cent [...]
Continue Reading →
Kellogg’s found guilty of misleading us about sugar, but this is just the tip of the iceberg
Kellogg’s is a company that, in my view, makes a lot of quite-crappy food, particularly breakfast cereals made from highly processed grains with added sugar that are highly disruptive to blood sugar and may well pose hazards for health. Not that you’re likely to learn any of this from Kellogg’s itself, as it continues to [...]
Continue Reading →
What’s wrong with the dietary advice Diabetes UK dishes out to diabetics?
If you’re reading this blog post on 5th March 2012, there’s a good chance you came to it as a result of listening to discussion on BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘You and Yours’ about the most appropriate diet for those suffering from diabetes. You can listen to the broadcast here (the item starts about 15 minutes [...]
Continue Reading →
The FDA issues new warnings about statins
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US is responsible for making decisions about which drugs should be licensed. It also keeps a database of information regarding the adverse effects of drugs, and occasionally revises the warnings issued with prescription medication. Earlier this week, the FDA issued new guidelines regarding the management of individuals [...]
Continue Reading →
A cautionary tale regarding the screening of ‘weight issues’ in children
The body mass index is a commonly used measure of body size. It’s calculated by dividing someone’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in metres. It looks kinda ‘sciency’, but actually it’s a quite useless measurement, principally because it takes absolutely no account of the body’s composition nor the distribution of fat [...]
Continue Reading →
My Times piece on intermittent fasting
Last Saturday the Times here in the UK published a piece I wrote about ‘intermittent fasting’. This topic has been getting a lot of press of late (the Daily Mail, for instance, carried a piece earlier this week too). I’m pleased to see that intermittent fasting is getting some attention, and there’s some challenge to [...]
Continue Reading →
We doctors aren’t very evidence-based (we just think we are)
I went to a meeting for journalists and broadcasters on Tuesday night, organised by the Guild of Health Writers, dedicated to the subject of dementia. One of the speakers there was Jerome Burne – a London-based health writer of some repute (he won an award from the Medical Journalists Association in January). Jerome in the [...]
Continue Reading →
If UK’s leading diabetes charity wants better care for diabetics, it should start by getting its own house in order
Baroness Barbara Young is the chief executive of the UK’s largest diabetes charity – Diabetes UK. She’s been on the warpath recently, calling the UK Government out on a ‘lack of political will’ to do something about substandard testing and care of those with diabetes. Baroness Young has this week performed something of a media [...]
Continue Reading →