Food and Medical Politics
Newsnight is a news and current affairs television programme that airs on BBC2 in the UK. It’s most famous presenter is Jeremy Paxman, a man who has a reputation for asking tough questions and sometimes pinning interviewees to the floor. Last night, one of the guests on the show was James Quincy, European president of […]
Cholesterol and Statins
One of my blogs last week focused on new cholesterol management guidelines issued jointly by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology. These new recommendations essentially lowered the threshold for treatment, and mean that many more individuals are now suddenly eligible for treatment with statins. This move seems out of step with […]
Food and Medical Politics
The winter heralds ‘flu season’, and many will be urged to get them themselves adequately protected through vaccination. A recent piece in the British Medical Journal [1] by Dr Peter Doshi (from the John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, US) makes the point that public health campaigns often present flu vaccination as a […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Recently, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology issued new guidelines on the management of cholesterol. The idea that individuals should be treated on the basis of their LDL-cholesterol level has been significantly relaxed. What this means, is that some individuals with ‘raised’ cholesterol but who are deemed to be at low […]
Food and Medical Politics
I had an email this week from 67-year-old lady asking about flu vaccination. She’s had a phone call recently from her surgery asking her to attend for this. She asks if the “flu threat really worse this year or are the drug manufacturers up to their old tricks again!?” Flu vaccination is generally promoted as […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last week one of my blog posts highlighted a piece I had written for the Times on the relative merits of butter and margarine from a health perspective. I was limited to 1,300 words, and in the space allowed attempted to summarise all the most important prevailing nutritional themes here. I came out heavily in […]
Cholesterol and Statins
The ‘Cochrane Collaboration’ is an international collective of researchers whose self-proclaimed role is to provide accurate and robust assessments of health interventions. The group specialises in ‘meta-analyses’: the grouping together of several similar studies on interventions including drug therapies. In 2011, Cochrane researchers assessed the evidence relating to statin use in individuals at low risk […]
Food and Medical Politics
This week, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK issued directive about how doctors should go about managing and advising their overweight patients. Among other things, it recommends as ‘respectful and non-blaming’ approach, and avoiding use of the word ‘obese’. I actually broadly agree with NICE’s recommendations. I have all […]
Cholesterol and Statins
One claim that is often made about cholesterol-reducing ‘statin’ drugs is their ability to reduce cardiovascular events (essentially heart attacks and strokes) by a third. This is a reference to studies in which individuals have been treated with a, say, a statin or a placebo (randomised controlled trials). Saying that a drug reduces risk of […]
Food and Medical Politics
The concept behind screening for cancer is that earlier detection will lead to more timely and more effective treatment. However, objective analysis tends to reveal that, generally speaking, large numbers of people need to be screen for one life to be saved from the disease being screened for. For example, using mammography as an example, […]