Brain and Behaviour
Most individuals believe that physical activity is beneficial, but many at the same time may find themselves leading quite sedentary lives. The time that exercise can take can be a perceived barrier for some who believe there’s simply ‘not enough hours in the day’. I don’t judge this point of view because I can fall […]
Food and Medical Politics
A commenter on this website yesterday made me aware of a Q and A session hosted by website netmums featuring nutritionist Fiona Hunter and sponsored by the bread manufacturer Warburton. If you’re a reasonably regular follower of this blog then you may know that I have featured Warburtons twice in recent times. First of all, […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last month one of my blogs focused on a rash of stories bigging up the supposed nutritional properties of bread. It turns out that this ‘news’ had been based on ‘research’ published in the Nutrition Bulletin – a publication of the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). I challenged the notion that bread provides some essential role […]
Cholesterol and Statins
There’s a widespread view in the scientific and medical communities that saturated fat is bad for the heart. In particular, this form of fat (found in, among other things, meat, eggs, dairy products, coconut and palm oil) is said to raise levels of cholesterol, which in turns increases our risk of heart disease by promoting […]
Food and Medical Politics
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 […]
Food and Medical Politics
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 […]
Brain and Behaviour
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 […]
Healthy Eating
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 […]
Healthy Eating
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 […]
Healthy Eating
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 […]