New Year Resolution Suggestion: Give Up Dieting!

You've tried many diets. They didn't work. You know that dieting doesn't work. You know that you end up weighing more than before. To do again what you have done so many times before and expect a different outcome does not make sense. - Give up dieting! - Let the deadly dieting industry make money out of other people, not you, in 2011.

Eating fewer calories than your body needs is likely to cause you health problems like eating disorders and osteoporosis, and will NOT make you slim. - Here is how to lose excess weight without counting calories or going hungry: cut down on salt and salty food. This reduces the fluid retention which is the basic cause of overweight or obesity. You will definitely lose weight - and you will lose it rapidly and safely.

Salt/Sodium in foods

Vitamin D: good for your health in so many ways

Read Voice of America news item.

Many painful, crippling adverse effects from taking Levaquin or other Fluoroquinolone antibiotics

Johnson and Johnson has to pay damages to a victim. See Pharmalot.com item. - Be sure to read the Comments from other victims beneath the report. Doctors know too little about the dangers of the drugs they prescribe. Too many lives are being destroyed by pharmaceutical drugs.

Don't become part of the statistics. Avoid prescription drugs if you can.

Vitamin D lowers breast cancer risk: study suggests

A new study has suggested that high levels of sunlight combined with a diet packed with Vitamin D can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 43 per cent.
Laboratory studies have suggested that Vitamin D may have a number of anti-cancer effects and has been shown to slow the spread of cancer cells.
Read article in The Times of India

Gifts we can all afford to give - every day

Gifts we can all afford to give - every day - include
a friendly smile
a sincere compliment
appreciation
a listening ear
consideration
kindness
thanks
help
useful information

I'm sure you can add more to the list yourself. I hope you all had a happy day yesterday.- I did. - It was great to meet some new people and to share thoughts and friendliness with them. - I wish you a happy day today.

Indian study finds that most hip fracture patients are deficient in vitamin D

A study from New Delhi India has revealed high rates of vitamin D deficiency among hip fracture patients, confirming the conclusions of similar international studies which point to vitamin D deficiency as a risk factor for hip fracture.
Read article at physorg.com

Vitamin D is necessary for so many aspects of health and conversely there are a multitude of health problems that result from deficiency of vitamin D. - Worth making sure that you are not deficient in this vital vitamin, which is, unfortunately, the nutrient that research keeps finding most people in the developed world actually are short of.

Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)?

Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)? - They appear to have had a 'congress' last month: - I wonder how many 'child obesity experts' attended, and how much that 'congress' cost? And whether it has contributed an iota of anything worthwhile toward preventing or reducing child obesity. - I doubt it.

Let's just pick on one guy: Richard Storey. I don't know him or any of the other people who attended the congress. I've just arbitrarily picked on him. - I see that he is Chief Strategy Officer, M&C Saatchi, London, and that his brief is Communicating the messages of obesity prevention to the public. - What d'you think? Think he's doing a good job? Are the messages getting through? - Is child obesity being reduced? Are obese children learning how to combat their very great problems of constantly being insulted and sneered at and bullied and being given the wrong information and advice, and the wrong sort of food? - Or are the messages about obesity prevention that Mr Storey is giving out the same damaging, ineffective pre-digested gobbets of misinformation that obese adults and children have been force-fed for decades now?

If he's plugging the low-fat, calorie-counting garbage that the self-serving Food Industry pushes, then the incidence and severity of obesity will continue to soar. If he's saying that exercise promotes weight loss then he's helping no-one to lose excess weight. If he himself is slim and fit and thinks that 'eating less and exercising more' reduces obesity then he's plain WRONG, and if he thinks that dieting is helpful and that weight loss drugs and weight loss surgery have a part to play in reducing child obesity then I would profoundly disagree with him.

But Mr Storey may not be treading the doom-laden path I have envisaged. He may be giving the correct advice after all. In which case I'm surprised that it's not been headlined in the press and trumpeted in the broadcast media. Too much salt and salty food is the principal, the most important, the overwhelming, cause of child obesity. Children need to have a low intake of salt/sodium in order to prevent damaging fluid retention/weight gain and also to avoid developing a taste for salty food. Too much sugar can also cause unhealthy weight gain, but salt is a major culprit that most people do not know about. An obese child who is fed food containing no added salt will lose weight rapidly, easily and safely. - No dieting, no hunger, no drugs, no exhausting strenuous exercise: it's a no-brainer.

I invite Richard Storey to read my child obesity page, my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection, and the other information on my website, and to read some of the stuff on my blog/s. I wish him success in his mission.

Are you unsteady on your feet? A bit wobbly? Prone to falling?

Are you unsteady on your feet? A bit wobbly? Prone to falling? - It may well be, that like me, upping your vitamin D intake would bring about a great improvement.

Here is news of recent studies that have found that for older people, taking exercise and taking vitamin D supplements is associated with reduced risk of falls. This was certainly my own experience, coupled with much greater muscle strength that makes it easier to rise from a chair, and much more confident walking. If you decide to take vitamin D supplements, then be aware that Vitamin D3 is the more effective version of this vitamin supplement. You could be saving yourself from a fall and a consequent broken bone or two. - Well worth taking the tablets...(o:

Vitamin D is one of the vitamins that are soluble in fat, so the best way to take Vitamin D supplements is with or after a meal that contains some fat.

It's also vital to improve your dietary intake, of course. - Healthy, natural, unsalted food, raw or cooked from scratch, is more likely to reward you with a healthy body than feeding it processed, highly-salted, sugar-laden, chemical-drenched, nutrient-low, denatured junk, isn't it? - Take care of your body! It's the only one you've got. - Saving money by choosing to eat cheap, processed rubbish instead of real food, preferably organic, is the most costly economy measure you could take, because it could cost you your health.

Concerned about Animal Welfare? Access to pasture? Healthy food?

Concerned about Animal Welfare? Access to pasture? Healthy food? Then you may want to object to a proposed ‘mega-dairy’ in Lincolnshire, which if allowed to go ahead would be the largest dairy in the UK, with an initial herd of 3,770 cows to be increased to 8,100 when practicable. "Each cow would be expected to yield 10,000 litres of milk per year. These animals would be kept indoors for the majority of their lives, with little or no access to pasture." Read the Soil Association's webpage about it and how to submit an objection to it.

Good News: 7 influential UK health groups are revising their position on Vitamin D

I recommend you to read the whole of this excellent article about the merits of Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, and about the harm done by not getting enough of this vital nutrient, often because of being wrongly advised by misinformed health experts. My personal experience is that by taking vitamin D3 supplements (my skin is too sensitive to sunshine for me to expose it to the sun much) my health has benefited immeasurably. I have not had a cold or cough or any other infection since I started taking the supplements, my muscle strength is much improved, my hair is in much better condition, etc.)

Do YOU think that illegal drugs should be decriminalised?

Do YOU think that illegal drugs should be decriminalised? - Bob Ainsworth, a former Home Office minister has been calling for it. See this BBC News report. My personal opinion is that the overwhelming need is for legal drugs - by which I mean the drugs medics prescribe - to be very severely restricted, and I suggest that the heaviest prescribers should be charged with a criminal offence. And maybe we could have something like a 'Three strikes and you're out' system - three offences and they get struck off the Medical Register.

The main drug-pushers in the country are, of course, the doctors, largely paid by the state - and their recklessly high prescribing of drugs, most of which do far more harm than good, e.g. statins, antidepressants and antipsychotics, is arguably a primary cause of the drug culture pervading and damaging so much of our society.

Here's a contrarian viewpoint with information you may not have encountered before: The secret history of Big Pharma's role in creating and marketing heroin, LSD, meth, Ecstasy and speed.

Ten Food Additives to avoid

Read Top Ten Food Additives to Avoid. - Plus avoid added salt/sodium, of course, especially if you are overweight or have high blood pressure or suffer from breathing problems.

NHS Cumbria's director of Public Health favours seasonal flu vaccine propaganda on Eastenders and other TV soaps

NHS Cumbria's director of Public Health favours seasonal flu vaccine propaganda on EastEnders and other TV soaps, as reported here.

If you favour staying healthy without recourse to vaccines or other drugs, and favour your TV drama unlaced with propaganda, then you may like to consider supplementing your diet this winter with Vitamin D3 tablets and with Vitamin C. Good nutrition is the safest medicine. Another way to improve your nutrition is to reduce your intake of salt and salty food.

Read this very informative page: http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Vitamin-D-Deficiency.htm

See also www.vitamindcouncil.org

NHS appeals for blood donations because of low stocks

BBC News reports that the NHS is appealing for blood donations because of low stocks caused by bad weather.

Pfizer and its calamitous drug trials in Nigeria.

Pfizer and its calamitous drug trials in Nigeria.- Justice delayed is justice denied. The Law should serve the afflicted, not the Pfizer pharmaceutical company that harmed them. Read this article and weep for the child victims of Big Pharma and its corrupt associates.

Will oranges become the next frankenfood?

Will oranges become the next frankenfood? - Read farmwars.info on GM Oranges and China.

Dangers for elderly patients who regularly take opioid painkillers

It is often the arthritis sufferers among elderly patients who most regularly take painkillers, because their pain tends to be chronic. Adverse side-effects are not uncommon, especially with the opioid painkillers, which include codeine, morphine, methadone and brand names such as Demerol, Percocet, Percodan, Darvon, , Vicodin, and Lomotil. The side-effects can be very serious, even dangerous, e.g. more fractured bones. Read this report on MedicalNewsToday.

Yet there is a completely safe and very effective way to reduce the pain/severity of osteo-arthritis, and it does not involve taking pharmaceutical drugs. - You just need to avoid salt and salty food as much as you can. - The less salt you eat, the less pain you will experience from your arthritis...(o: And, since you will also lose some excess water weight from your body which salt has been holding there, there will be less wear and tear on your joints, not having to carry so much water around. - So give salt the elbow, and say goodbye both to so much pain and to dangerous drugs. - See salt/sodium in foods.

Be amazed at how quickly your health improves when you stop eating salt and salty food

You really will be astonished at how quickly your health improves when you stop eating salt and salty food. - Within just a few days you will feel better, have more energy and be more mentally alert. If you are obese or overweight you will have lost some of that excess weight without dieting or counting calories. If you have high blood pressure it will be lower. If you worry about your high cholesterol that also will be lower. And you may well be having people comment on how well you are looking...
See Lose weight by eating less salt! and Sodium in Foods.

Yet another Johnson and Johnson Product Recall

See JnJ recall of Rolaids after customer complaints of finding metal and wood particles in the product.

I reckon that taking painkillers is a habit best avoided, especially for children

I reckon that taking painkillers is a habit best avoided, especially for children. - Don't you agree? - And so I'd suggest not getting into the habit of giving babies and toddlers liquid paracetamol or similar after they have had an injection or taken a tumble. When I was a little girl it was unheard-of for children to be given pharmaceutical drugs to stop their tears. Instead their mothers would give them a kiss and a cuddle, and a special kiss on the poorly place to 'kiss it better'. Happily,unlike drugs, a kiss and a cuddle have no adverse side-effects. I offer this little couplet:

Give a kiss and a hug,
Not a painkiller drug.

Older children can be encouraged to be a 'big boy' or a 'big girl' when they experience pain and to be rewarded with approval for their stoicism. This could serve them well in later years. Our society is too dependent on pharmaceutical drugs, which, on the whole, do far, far more harm than good.

Tony Blair recalled to Iraq War Inquiry

Tony Blair has been recalled to appear at Britain's inquiry into the Iraq War for the second time. The former Prime Minister is likely to give evidence at a public hearing in late January. It is thought Sir John Chilcot and his panel were concerned about gaps and possible inconsistencies in his evidence. Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the invasion, cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell and Lord Turnball, his predecessor, have also been asked to return. Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, is among those the panel has asked to submit written evidence.
Read article on the Sky News website

How to avoid/reduce/minimise weight gain from prescribed steroids

How to avoid/reduce/minimise weight gain from prescribed steroids: read Prescribed Steroids Cause Sodium and Water Retention. Read also Obesity and the Salt Connection and How to Lose Weight easily and safely without dieting or counting calories.

Butter: is Good, Better and Best

Here is an impressive array of the virtues of Butter. If you have been misled into believing, as I was misled years ago, that margarine was a healthier option and that saturated fats were bad for your heart and made you fat, etc then for your health's sake you need to read the evidence, which clearly shows that margarines are the baddies, and good dairy butter has been wrongly maligned both in the past and in the present. See what Dr Briffa has to say here and here. Here's what I wrote about butter last August. And remember, it's best for your health to avoid added salt, so buy unsalted butter for preference.

Too much salt in ready-made Sunday lunches

See BBC News report. This is another instance of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) homing in on a particular example of salty food and highlighting the worst excesses of the Food Industy's responsibility for that high salt content.

These groups of people are vulnerable to salt. They need to minimise their salt intake.

Andrew Lansley, UK's Health Secretary, does not favour regulation to improve public health

It is shaming to read in this excellent Independent article, that Britain's Secretary of State for Health intends to reduce the regulation of junk food, smoking and cheap alcohol. And it is astonishing that a guy who was formerly a director of a marketing company with junk food clients, should have been placed in a position to exert such malign power over food policy. Britain has massive health problems, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, etc. that could so easily be reduced by banning food producers from adding transfats to foods and by putting legal curbs on the amount of salt/sodium that processed food manufacturers, restaurants and fast food takeaways are allowed to add to the food they sell. Lansley is seeking to promote the interests of the food and drinks industry, rather than the health of UK citizens. This is deplorable.

Are you vulnerable to salt? Here is the safe, sure way to lose excess weight fast by cutting down on salt and salty food.

Well done to the Daily Mail for campaigning about the appalling care provided to far too many elderly patients by our unaccountable NHS!

As readers of this blog already know, the NHS Complaints Procedure does nothing about complaints except make life harder for the complainants; it is a sheer waste of time and effort making a complaint about poor or negligent treatment. And Kenneth Clarke, the Secretary of State for 'Justice', is proposing to remove clinical negligence from the scope of the civil legal aid scheme, so no help there either for anyone brave enough to take on as adversaries the extremely experienced legal eagles employed by the NHS and the healthcare professionals.

So very well done to the Daily Mail for campaigning about the appalling care accorded to far too many elderly patients by our non-accountable NHS, and for making a large donation to the Patients Association, a charity that tries to help victims of poor NHS treatment.

Medical Journals Complicit in Corruption

"A growing number of prominent physician-scientists, including several former journal editors, and New York Times columnists, have written sobering critiques about the corrupting impact pharmaceutical industry influence has had on medicine. That influence has debased the integrity of medical research, clinical practice and medicine's institutions."
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (USA)

EU disregards first ever citizens' petition

The EU hopes to set aside a million signatories in a petition, organised by Greenpeace, calling on the EU to ban GMOs.
Read article at euobserver.com.

13% increase in written complaints about NHS and community services

The Patients Association reports a rise of over 13% in the number of written complaints about the NHS and community services, and Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive, deplores "stories of neglect, misdiagnosis and a distinct lack of care and compassion," and states that the number of complaints between 2008/9 to 2009/10 rose from 89,139 to 101,077, and that this is certainly a massive underestimate of the number of people who actually want to complain. She says, "We need a fundamental review of the complaints process. As a first step every person that makes a complaint should be asked to rate the response and that information should also be published. That will also enable us to pick up those Trusts making no effort to learn. At a time when the NHS is facing budget constraints, we want to make sure that the quality of care patients receive is not compromised and that staff and management become more open and more accepting of complaints and respond constructively when something goes wrong."

A previous Chair of the Patients Association told me years ago that she did not know of even one case of a complainant being satisfied with the response to their complaint. My own experience of the NHS Complaints Procedures is that the complainant is actually punished for making the complaint, and nothing at all is done to help the complainant or to prevent appalling treatment from happening again. Indeed, that the healthcare staff complained about are routinely protected from censure or sanction, ensures that poor treatment will be repeated.

Study links tricyclic antidepressants to increased risk of CVD

The Telegraph reports on a study that finds that taking tricyclic antidepressants is linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease. These harmful anticholinergic drugs, the most commonly prescribed of which is amitriptyline, are well known for causing unhealthy weight gain and many other serious side-effects. See amitriptyline.

Since antidepressants do not work anyway, doctors should not be prescribing them. Don't doctors ever read research about antidepressants? Don't they care about the harm their prescribed drugs cause their unfortunate patients? The very tiny likelihood of benefit from them is far, far outweighed by the harm they do and the risk of further harm, including brain damage in later life.