Dr Briffa's Blog - A Good Look at Good Health
A health-focused blog that makes sense of science, and offers accurate, trustworthy and practical advice about all aspects of healthy living.
Last month one of my posts was devoted to some research which found a link between weight accumulation around the mid-riff (abdominal obesity) and an increased risk of dementia. In this post, I also explored some of the mechanisms which might explain this association. At the heart of these suggested mechanisms is the hormone insulin. [...]
Previously on this site I have presented evidence that the traditional way of assessing body weight ” the body mass index (BMI) ” is pretty useless as a marker for health. Part of the explanation for this lies in the fact that the BMI tells us nothing about the composition of the body. Neither does [...]
When it comes to blood sugar control, it makes sense to avoiding eating too much in the way of foods that tend to disrupt blood sugar levels. This is particularly true for diabetics whose bodies tend not to handle sugar at all well. However, in addition to eating a ‘carbohydrate-controlled’ diet, it can also help [...]
Back in December I reported on a study which found that supplementing men with an extract of green tea led to a significant reduction in their weight, waist size and ‘fat mass’. The extract in question, which goes by the name of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), is believed to boost metabolism by stimulating the burning of fat [...]
I love being out in the sun. And not just because I like it, but also because of the abundant evidence linking sunlight exposure with a reduced risk of conditions such as cancer and multiple sclerosis as well as improved physical and psychological functioning. And it’s free. And I like sporting a tan. I recently [...]
Variously on this site I, and quite a few commentators, have expressed concern for the conventional vogue of advising a diet rich in carbohydrate. Excesses of carbohydrate can cause gluts of the hormone insulin which in turn can predispose us to all sorts of problems including weight gain, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular [...]
It’s difficult to avoid the doom-laden statistics concerning rates of overweight and obesity. And at the same time we’ll no doubt be aware of the standard advice for those wanting to lose weight: ‘eat less and exercise more.’ The problem is, the evidence suggests that neither of these approaches is particularly effective for the purposes [...]
It’s funny how things seem to come in threes, and this week was an example of this maxim in that I saw three patients all of whom had deranged liver function tests. All of them had raised levels of at least two liver ‘enzymes’. This, in medicine, is generally taken as a sign of damage [...]
Variously on the site in the past I have attempted to highlight the science (never mind the common sense) that if you have diabetes and want to control it (or don’t want to get this condition in the first place), the part of the diet that generally needs reigning in comes in the form of [...]
When it comes to cholesterol and blood sugar levels and blood pressure, the general principle in medicine is ‘the lower the better’. The idea here is that the more suppressed these parameters are, the lower (supposedly) the risk of complications such as heart disease and stroke. However, as with everything in life, it’s not necessarily [...]
New post: Is pot-smoking healthy? drbriffa.com/2013/05/17/is-…
About 3 days ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
New post: Low-carb diets can help maintain the metabolism after weight loss drbriffa.com/2013/05/15/low…
About 5 days ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
Link to article in USA Today: Are psychiatrists inventing conditions that are actually normal human behaviour? usatoday.com/story/news/nat…
About 5 days ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
Do low-carb diets really make people sleepy? Are you kiddin' me?! drbriffa.com/2013/05/09/do-…
About 2 weeks ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
FDA grants licence for another unproven cholesterol drug drbriffa.com/2013/05/08/the…
About 2 weeks ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
British doctor laments the pharmaceuticalised management of diabetes drbriffa.com/2013/05/02/bri…
About 2 weeks ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
Why are female rats more likely to binge eat than male rats? drbriffa.com/2013/05/02/why…
About 3 weeks ago from Dr John Briffa's Twitter via web
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