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 week one of my blog posts focused on a widely reported ‘news’ story which concerned the supposed value of bread in the diet. These reports appear to have followed the publication of an article in the Nutrition Bulletin, the ‘journal’ of an organisation called the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). I admitted at the time [...]
I was away for most of this week and, as a result, this on-line article (and several similar ones) passed me by. It focuses on the ‘research’ conducted by Dr Aine O’Connor of the British Nutrition Foundation and published in its ‘journal’ – the Nutrition Bulletin [1]. I’ve not read the article itself, but here’s [...]
Reading the British Medical Journal today I saw an item in the ‘news’ section which caught my eye. Entitled ‘Too frequent use of painkillers can cause rather than cure headaches’, it relays information coming from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK. It seems that in some cases, painkilling medication [...]
There has been considerable interest in an approach to eating that is usually described as ‘intermittent fasting’. This may involve restricting eating to a window of, say, 6 or 8 hours each day. It might involve alternating days of very restricted eating with ‘normal eating’. It might just skipping or delaying breakfast. The idea is [...]
A lot of conventional medicine is about symptom suppression. For example, with someone with ‘cramping’ in the gut we may give a drug to reduce the cramping. A better (I think) though more alternative approach would be to attempt to find out what’s causing the cramping and sort that out. As an aside, cramping in [...]
There has been some recent interest, even in the mainstream media, in the practice of ‘intermittent fasting’. Essentially, this means going for extended periods of time without food. It comes in many different guises. Skipping of significantly delaying breakfast is one approach. Contracting the ‘window’ available for eating each day to, say, 6 or 8 [...]
I’m a long-time advocate of diets that are generally lower in carbohydrate than those encouraged by most Governments, health agencies and health professionals. I’m not very prescriptive about it, and prefer not in my talks or writings to give specific carbohydrate ‘targets’ e.g. no more than 50 g of carbohydrate a day. I do, however, [...]
Someone recently sent me a link to this report of a study which warns us of the supposed perils of eating eggs. The study on which the report is based [1] looked at the association between the amount of egg yolks people ate and the amount of ‘atherosclerotic plaque’ in the main arteries supplying blood to [...]
Coeliac disease a condition in which there is an intolerance of the protein gluten, found in grains such as wheat, rye and barley. The intolerance causes a flattening out of the finger-like projections in the small intestine, which dramatically reduces the surface area of the gut available for absorbing nutrients from our diet. Not surprisingly, [...]
I learned today that if you want to give a highly-processed, chemicalised, crappy gloop (margarine) a flavour that at approximates to that of butter (a food), then you can add something known as diacetyl. Apparently, this chemical has previously been linked to lung disorders and other health problems in individuals who work in factories where [...]
