Brain and Behaviour
One of the burgeoning fields in nutrition concerns the influence that maternal diet can have on the health and development of her unborn child. Every baby starts out as an egg and a sperm, and ends up, say, 6 or 7 pounds in weight. The vast majority of a baby is composed of what the […]
Children's Health
I’m not really one for anecdotes, but feel compelled to share one with you. In my practice on Monday I saw a small boy, whose parents were seeking nutritional advice. Less than three weeks ago their son had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which for him right now necessitates him having insulin injected 2-3 […]
Children's Health
Even though I like to think of myself as reasonably progressive, the reality is that when it comes to eating, I’m a traditionalist at heart. This does not just mean eating a diet based on natural, unprocessed food, but also refers to how this food is eaten. In particular, I’m fan of family meals, as […]
Brain and Behaviour
Here in the UK, the kids are back at school which is usually a cue for some “child-focused stories to emerge in the press. One pearl of a story that recently surfaced concerned a trial in which certain food additives (colourings, mainly) were tested in children aged 3 and 8-9. This research, undertaken in Southampton, […]
Children's Health
I don’t know for how long parents have been advised not to feed their kids too much fat. ‘Eating fat makes them fat’ is the usual message here, and therefore eating less of this particular foodstuff is the way to put a break on the burgeoning rates of overweight and obesity we’re seeing in our […]
Children's Health
On Saturday night I was on a plane winging me back to the UK from Kenya where I’ve been for the last week. I was perusing the in-flight magazine and came across an ‘advertising promotion’ for a company making soft and ‘sports’ drinks. The promotion featured some Q and A’s with a UK GP on […]
Brain and Behaviour
Throughout this site you will find various references to the ‘glycaemic index’ or ‘GI’ – essentially a measure of the speed an extent to which a food disrupts blood sugar levels. Relatively high GI foods will tend to cause surges in the hormone insulin which, in time, can predispose to a range of ill effects […]
Brain and Behaviour
The raw materials to make a newborn baby come almost exclusively from what its mother ate during pregnancy. It is perhaps no surprise therefore that there has been a fair amount of scientific interest on the relationship between the maternal diet during pregnancy and the health and wellbeing the subsequent child. Perhaps the most obvious […]
Children's Health
Today I was reading about a study presented this week at the American Thoracic Society conference which has found an association between eating apples in pregnancy and relative protection from asthma in childhood. This research found that women eating four or more apples a week were about half as likely to have an asthmatic child […]
Children's Health
Asthma is a condition characterised by episodes of narrowing in the airways (bronchospasm). The condition can be related to one or more of several underlying factors, including food sensitivity. In some individuals, specific foods seem to have the ability to trigger immune responses in the lungs that cause bronchospasm. While any food may do this […]