Brain and Behaviour
Yesterday, my blog was based on a piece that appeared in the UK’s Daily Mail from melanoma specialist that urges us to get more sun (and quite right too). While reading this piece, my eye was caught by another article in the same publication with the headline High Court judge ‘beat up his wife because […]
Food and Medical Politics
I almost fell of office chair yesterday when I read this article in the UK’s Daily Mail by oncologist (cancer specialist) Professor Angus Dalgleish. Professor Dalgleish has a particular interest in malignant melanoma. In the piece, he draws our attention to the links between vitamin D and cancer, including the link between low vitamin D […]
Healthy Eating
Here in the UK this week the media has been feasting on a recent pronouncement from the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) which urges us to strictly limit our consumption of red meat to protect ourselves from bowel cancer. The WCRF’s statement is based on research conducted recently at the Imperial College London, in the […]
Food and Medical Politics
Vitamin D boosts wellbeing in the elderly, the nonsense of ‘normal’ ranges, and why the ‘broadening of disease’ can be good business for drug companies but leave ordinary people worse off. For RSS feeds, click on http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/8966 and then the ‘RSS feeds’ button to the right. For help regarding the playing, downloading and subscribing of […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last September one of my blogs reported on a piece in the British Medical Journal in which journalist, authors and patient advocate Ray Moynihan alerted us to the potentially unhealthy links between the pharmaceutical industry and doctors who set health policy. Specifically, Mr Moynihan’s concern was the definition of disease is being widened, and this […]
Brain and Behaviour
Vitamin D (actually, a hormone) appears to play a wide variety of roles in health and disease. Back in 2007 I reported on a study which found that higher levels of vitamin D were associated with better physical functioning in the elderly over time. This may not come as too much of a surprise when […]
Food and Medical Politics
If you’ve ever had blood drawn for testing, most of your results will come with a ‘reference range’ attached. The reference range allows doctors (usually) to compare your result with what is accepted as ‘normal’. Normal, as far as references ranges are concerned, usually encompass around 95 per cent of people. In other words, in […]
Children's Health
Paleolithic diet and diabetes, thyoid disease and miscarriage, sunlight, vitamin D and Crohn’s disease For RSS feeds, click on http://www.podcastmachine.com/podcasts/8966 and then the ‘RSS feeds’ button to the right. For help regarding the playing, downloading and subscribing of the podcasts, click here.
Specific conditions
Crohn’s disease is one of the two main ‘inflammatory bowel diseases’ (the other being ‘ulcerative colitis’). The condition is generally believed to be ‘auto-immune’ in nature – which means the body’s immune system is reacting against its own tissues (in this case, the bowel wall). Crohn’s disease can affect any part of the gut, and […]
Pregnancy and Fertility
In conventional medicine it is my experience that we tend to struggle a bit with the diagnosis and management of certain conditions, and near the top of the list (again, in my experience) is low thyroid function (hypothyroidism). Conventional wisdom dictates that ‘normal’ levels of thyroid hormones mean normal thyroid function. The ‘screening’ test for […]