The NHS Will Have to Cut Down on Spending

The BBC News website reports that the NHS will experience severe financial cuts after 2011.

The NHS Confederation cites rising costs within the health service, and new treatments and the ageing population as two of the factors causing the inflation in the health service. They suggest a cap on the budget for new drugs and the possible exclusion of care such as IVF, homeopathy and elements of dentistry.

I have some further suggestions to make:

1. A complete ban on psychotropic prescription drugs for children under 18.
2. A complete ban on antidepressants, since they don't work. - See Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills'
3. Massive cuts on all prescription drug budgets to curb reckless, damaging over-prescribing.
4. An end to breast enlargements and gender re-assignment operations on the NHS.
5. Put strict legal limits on the amount of salt/sodium that food producers are allowed to add to their products and that food retailers are allowed to sell. This would improve most people's health very quickly indeed.
6. Make it a legal requirement that salt levels appear on the labels at the front of all processed foods and and sandwiches, etc.
7. Have all retail packs of table salt labelled with the information that added salt damages the health of most people, especially children, pregnant women and overweight/obese people.
8. Put a heavy tax on table salt.
9. Abolish higher awards/merit awards for hospital consultants, which, at the top, can double pay to nearly £200,000.

Above all, however, health professionals need to tell the truth about obesity. The lies need to be admitted and the truth told. This would almost instantly improve the health and happiness of millions of users of the NHS and very greatly reduce chronic illness in particular. See
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations.

Obesity is mostly caused by sodium retention/fluid retention/salt sensitivity, not by eating too much food. It can be easily reduced by cutting down on salt/sodium and salty food. The calorie explanation for obesity (eating too many calories and not taking much exercise – i.e. greed plus laziness) is clearly wrong because many – possibly most – people can eat as much as they like and not become overweight, even if they take very little exercise. – They are what I call on my website ‘the lucky people’. – They are the slim people. – They are the people who have healthy veins and kidneys and are not sensitive to salt. They simply excrete in the urine any excess salt and its attendant water, so they do not gain weight by fluid retention.

The reason they do not put on excess weight from fat retention when they overeat is that they simply excrete in their faeces any excess fat/calories they eat. (Faeces tend to contain a lot of fat/calories, which is why animal dung is used as fuel in many countries.)
A few years ago BBC2 showed a series of programmes called “The Truth About Food” and I learnt about some Danish research which throws light on this. – See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/slim/calcium.shtml where you will read: "a high calcium intake increases the excretion of fat in the faeces". – There is the necessary information! – In fact, the researchers found that twice as much fat was excreted on a high calcium intake as on a low calcium intake – and this was independent of calorie intake. – They also found that dairy calcium (they suggest yoghurt) is a particularly good source for this extra calcium.
Even the frequent claim that fat deposits in the bodies of fat people are there to be drawn upon 'in leaner times' is a pure guess and is not correct. - The fat deposits are caused by the altered body chemistry (depletion of calcium and other essential minerals in the body) resulting from excess blood volume/fluid retention/salt sensitivity.

So to reduce fat retention, if it is present, the most important thing is to alter the diet to reduce the fluid retention which is the initiating cause of excess weight and the primary reason for fat people being short of calcium and for fat people ‘dieting’. That means reducing sodium intake and ensuring plenty of fruit and vegetables in the diet (because their high potassium content helps to displace sodium from the body).

And specifically it also means having a higher intake of calcium, especially, if possible, from a dairy source like unsweetened natural yoghurt. – It is also necessary to ensure sufficient vitamin D intake, as this is needed to metabolise the calcium. There is increasing research evidence that vitamin D deficiency is associated with being overweight - and insufficiency of vitamin D is quite common, as is widely reported, e.g. here - http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp

In my personal opinion it is neither necessary nor desirable to adopt a low fat diet. Low fat intake can be harmful, especially for small children.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers
Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions
and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.