Brain and Behaviour
Today’s post on drbriffa.com is its 1000th. I’m marking the occasion with a personal account of my health and wellbeing transformation over my life. Many people who don’t know me imagine, given my profession, that I’m a naturally health-conscious and relatively clean-living individual. Actually, that’s not true at all. For long periods in my earlier […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
I came across this interesting story the other day. It concerns an American, Bob Krause, who has just turned 90. Nothing to extraordinary about that, perhaps, in these days of enhanced longevity. What makes the story interesting is that when he was 5 years old, Bob was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This is condition […]
Healthy Eating
While some see body weight as simply a function of the balance of the calories going into and out of the body, there is little doubt in my mind that this stance is becoming increasingly untenable. It is clear that body fat regulation is influenced by many factors, including levels of key hormones. A central […]
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.
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Over the weekend I spent some time looking at the evidence in the area of ‘primal’ or ‘Paleolithic’ eating. I was aware, I think, of much of the evidence in this area (and I’ve even reported on relevant studies here and here), but it seems I missed a quite-important study that I am going to […]
Cholesterol and Statins
‘Healthy’ sterols can damage the heart, raised overall blood sugar levels linked with increased risk of death, British Medical Journal reminds of the importance of setting health policy based on all the evidence.
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
One key factor in health, I believe, is the general level of sugar in the bloodstream. We don’t want blood sugar levels too low (this starves the cells of energy in certain circumstances and can even be fatal). We don’t want them too high either. Glucose can bind to proteins in the body and damage […]
Brain and Behaviour
Alzheimer’s disease (a form of dementia) is characterized by the build-up in the brain of a protein known as ‘amyloid-beta’. Not surprisingly, amyloid-beta has been ‘targeted’ by drug companies, including Eli Lilli who produced the drug Semagacestat which did a nice job of retarding amyloid-beta synthesis. However, in trials, Semagacestat accelerated decline in brain function […]
Brain and Behaviour
I’ve written before about the fact that many people in the area of obesity research have the opinion that obesity is simply the result of eating more calories than the body burns through metabolism and activity. My position, and that of a growing number of researchers, is that there’s more to obesity than calorie balance, […]
Healthy Eating
Yesterday my blog focused on some recent research which showed cholesterol levels had little or no relationship with what is known as ‘ischaemic stroke’ – essentially ‘heart attacks of the brain’. On the other hand, a strong relationship was found between this most common form of stroke and levels of blood fats known as triglycerides. […]