Kellogg's is to reduce the high salt content of Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes, Coco Pops and Ricicles, Frosties and Crunchy Nut, from March, as reported here. Well this is very good news. It will save a lot of suffering. The salt content of these junk cereals will still be high though, even after the reduction. "The move follows repeated warnings from the FSA that the nation is eating too much salt, calculating the average daily salt consumption is 8.6g, which is 43% above the recommended limit of 6g. The figure is linked to 14,200 premature deaths a year from conditions linked to high blood pressure, including strokes and heart attacks."
These cereals are especially unsuitable for toddlers and small children because children are more vulnerable to salt than adults are. High salt intake is a primary cause of child obesity.
See Children and Obesity
Sodium in foods
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Kellogg's to reduce high salt content of Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes and other breakfast cereals
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Paul Flynn MP denounces swine flu drugs lobby
I must apologise. - I read the Walesonline article a week ago and should have posted about it then, but tiredness intervened. Have a look also at this page from Paul Flynn's blog.
A Welsh MP has raised concerns that the swine flu pandemic was exaggerated under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. Newport West MP Paul Flynn believes the H1N1 pandemic is the latest is a long line of health scares – including Sars and new variant CJD – to be blown out of proportion. He has welcomed a hearing to determine whether the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) pandemic flu declaration in June was based on “objective epidemiological evidence or on pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby”. The left-wing Labour MP, who has tabled two motions in the House of Commons in a bid to expose “the pandemic that never was”, said: “We have had four major scares throughout the world of potential mass-killer pandemics but they have been exaggerated.
Read article at walesonline.co.uk (Wales/UK)
Friday, January 29, 2010
Shameful decision not to strike Dr Jane Barton from the Medical Register
BBC News reports that the GMC's fitness to practise panel found Jane Barton guilty of serious professional misconduct for prescribing "potentially hazardous" levels of drugs to elderly patients who later died. - The word 'potentially' sits oddly there, doesn't it? - These patients died. The drug levels she prescribed were surely actually hazardous, rather than potentially. - Her victims died. There is surely no greater hazard than death.
This woman should have been ignominiously struck off years ago.
Prescription Drugs are a Major Cause of Obesity.
Prescription Drugs are a Major Cause of Obesity. Don't take 'em if you don't really need 'em!
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Lose weight safely.
See Sodium in foods
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
UK Population is Low in Vitamin D
50% of UK Vitamin D deficient
Spending too long indoors, applying excessive sun screen and the changing ethnic population is causing precariously low levels of Vitamin D in parts of the UK, warn Professor Simon Pearce and Dr Tim Cheetham at Newcastle University. "More than 50% of the adult population have insufficient levels of vitamin D and 16% have severe deficiency during winter and spring," they say.
Read article at publicservice.co.uk
No Deaths from Dietary Supplements: Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids, Herbs
No Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids or Herbs
Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements' Safety
There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2008, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 174-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin. Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or herbal product.
Read news release at orthomolecular.org
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Did I have a visitor from the MHRA (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) to my website today?
Did I have a visitor from the MHRA to my website today? - who initially landed on the amitriptyline page and stayed on the website for about 2 hours looking at several pages? The ISP was Mhra Powerserve Customer Allocation.
If it was someone from the MHRA (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) then maybe what they have learned from my website will get them to pull their little socks up!
Annabel Karmel's ready meals for toddlers are salty and sugary and therefore unsuitable for toddlers
BBC Panorama's What's Really in Our Kids' Food? programme this week revealed that Annabel Karmel's ready meals for toddlers are salty and sugary and that makes them unsuitable for toddlers. See What's Really in Our Kids' Food? on the iPlayer Salty food makes toddlers fat and sugar harms their teeth.
Toddlers' meals should not contain added salt. They need to be protected from salt. When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.
Annabel Karmel sounded foolish to me. Her ready meals accustom the toddlers to salty, over-sweetened food - tastes that will damage their lifetime's health. Even as she considered removing sugar, she was talking about replacing it with sweet fruit juice, seemingly determined that children's food, even the savoury food, must be sweet! And she thinks unsalted food should not be provided for them because it tastes bland. - Mrs Karmel, 'bland' is good for children. They should not be encouraged to develop a taste for salty food.
Children and Obesity
Sodium in foods
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Radio 4's File on 4 tonight deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data re massive weight gain and diabetes side-effects
Radio 4's File on 4 tonight (26/01/2010) deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data about its side-effects of massive weight gain and diabetes. See article on BBC News. "The marketing team sued over a drug's alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel's former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue."
The British Medical Journal editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, sensibly urges that the medicine licensing system be reviewed. She says the pharmaceutical industry should no longer provide the evaluations of its own drugs for the licensing body to consider.
Actually there are dozens of commonly prescribed drugs that have these side-effects and these are obviously a major cause of the continuing rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and type 2 diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses that are co-morbidities of obesity. The drugs include cortico-steroids, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives), tricyclic anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline, some SSRI anti-depressants, anti-psychotics (notoriously Zyprexa,aka olanzapine), some anti-epileptics/anticonvulsants, e.g. Epilim (sodium valproate). This is by no means an exhaustive list. See my webpage about steroids and HRT et al.
So the NHS (and all other purchasers of pharmaceutical drugs the world over), as well as paying for the drugs that its doctors prescribe, incurs the astronomical costs of the vast spectrum of disabling chronic health problems they cause. - ALL of this avoidable ill-health and suffering results from the primary adverse side-effect, which is sodium retention, and all of the innocent patients who are its victims become sensitive to salt/sodium, and should have been warned strictly to avoid salt and salty food while taking the medication, because for them, salt intake causes them weight gain. I have been researching this subject intensively for well over ten years now, and I have not heard of even one doctor who gives and stresses this vital message to his/her victims/patients. Inadequate knowledge of drug side-effects is lamentably widespread in the medical profession. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
PACE to hold hearings on 'falsified' swine flu pandemic
PACE is to hold hearings on pharmaceutical companies' possible influence on the global swine flu campaign and on the World Health Organization, a Russian daily reported. "The 47-nation Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is conducting an inquiry into an alleged conspiracy between the WHO, the pharmaceutical industry and scientists which could "expose millions of healthy people to the risk of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines," caused damage to public budgets and to health agencies' credibility, according to a PACE resolution. The motion was introduced by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of the health committee, former German lawmaker and a specialist in lung disease, who called the current pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century." WHO declared the pandemic in June 2009 on the advice of a group of experts many of whom are believed to have financial ties with pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, and benefited from the production of drugs and H1N1 vaccines."
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
Comment: Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has apparently said that Russia should withdraw from the WHO if the corruption suspicions are proven.
Diet drinks do not help you to lose weight. Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! Try it!
Here's what to do to lose weight fast and really easily, and it's perfectly safe:
LOSE WEIGHT
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Transfats (artificial trans fatty acids) added to foods should be banned, but Andrew Wadge, Food Standards Agency's Chief Scientist, disagrees. WHY?
This Guardian report informs us that "The UK Faculty of Public Health is urging ministers to eradicate artificial trans fatty acids, known as trans fats, from the British diet. The move is needed to reduce people's risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke, says the faculty, which represents 3,300 doctors and public health specialists in the NHS, local government and medical research."
But Andrew Wadge, the Food Standards Agency's Chief Scientist, disagrees. One wonders why. The fact that only small quantities are added is a disingenuous argument, since even very small quantities are harmful.
In that same blogpost you will see that he is also flogging that old, disproved warhorse, namely that saturated fats are bad for us. He claims that " As a nation we are all eating much more saturated fat than we need to, which is having a negative effect on our health", which is quite untrue, and it's a real shame that the FSA is campaigning to discourage people from eating saturated fats. For a more informed and well-researched view on saturated fats I urge you to read this blogpost by Dr Briffa.
And here's a very simple way to reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke: cut down on salt and salty food.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
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
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Omega-3s Good For Heart Disease Patients
Omega-3s May Slow Aging in Heart Patients
Heart disease patients with the highest blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids appear to age more slowly than those with the lowest blood levels, according to a new study.
Read article at webmd.com
Friday, January 22, 2010
Sleaze? the WHO advisor on vaccines and the secret Big Pharma cash?
A Finnish member of the World Health Organization board, an advisor on vaccines, has received 6 million Euros for his research center from the vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline. Although WHO promises transparency, this conflict of interest is not available for the public to see at WHO’s homepage. Professor Juhani Eskola is the director of the Finnish research vaccine program and a new member of the WHO group ‘Strategic Advisory Group of Experts’ (SAGE). SAGE recommends which vaccines -- and how many -- member countries should purchase for the pandemic.
Read article at foodconsumer.org
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Obesity drug, Reductil (Sibutramine), an appetite suppressant, is being withdrawn from use in UK because of risk of heart attack and stroke
BBC News reports that "the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has told doctors to stop prescribing sibutramine and review its use in patients already taking it." And ""Pharmacists are asked to cease dispensing the medicine."
It has been used by 86,000 people in the past year. Since ALL obesity drugs are harmful and unnecessary, it makes me think things must be really bad for the MHPRA to ban its use.
If you are overweight/obese and wanting to lose some of your excess weight, do not turn to weight loss pills. They are neither safe nor effective. The safe, fast, easy way to lose excess weight is to minimise the amount of salt and salty food you eat, avoid dieting, eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables, and make sure you have dairy calcium, e.g. milk and yoghurt, as part of your food intake.
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, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
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
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Good news! - Schwartz make some No Added Salt Seasonings
I've just come across this welcome information while browsing the internet for 'No Added Salt' products. Usually this is a very disappointing quest because some websites appear to claim that they have a list of 'No Added Salt' products, but when you investigate they haven't any - only 'low salt' products, which are not the same thing at all. - If you are very overweight or obese then you are very sensitive to salt and the less salt/sodium you eat the better for your health and the more of your excess weight/fluid retention you will lose. Well done to Schwartz! - I see they have:
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, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
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
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
I can be contacted from my website if you need my further help. My help is free.
Vitamin D treatment transformed Susan White's life.
Reported in this Northern Echo article. Susan White had osteomalacia, a very painful condition caused by vitamin D deficiency. Bones are weakened by this illness and so there is a greater risk of fractures.
Following two spinal fractures, Susan White's condition was mistakenly attributed to osteoporosis, but fortunately for her she later received the correct diagnosis of osteomalacia, for which the treatment is vitamin D. Like Susan White, I too suffered from osteomalacia many years ago, and like her, was told that it was osteoporosis and in consequence years later was put onto HRT, which caused me very great harm. I should of course have been treated with vitamin D for the osteomalacia, but Dr Nigel Bax actively sought to dissuade me even from taking vitamin D off my own bat. He thus set in train a disastrous accumulation of damage to my health. I'm pleased that Susan White has been spared a lot of unnecessary suffering by having her problem correctly diagnosed.
I welcome MSP Margo MacDonald's bill aiming to give terminally ill people the right to assisted suicide
BBC News carries a report on this, in which it says, "A bill aiming to give terminally ill people the right to die has been published at the Scottish Parliament. MSP Margo MacDonald, who has Parkinson's disease, brought the bill to make it legal for someone to seek help to end their life. It is not illegal to attempt suicide in Scotland - but helping someone take their own life is against the law."
Many people oppose the aim of this bill, partly because they fear that vulnerable people might be bullied/persuaded into ending their lives to please someone else, but a series of safeguards are proposed, to prevent abuse of the legislation, should it become law. I believe that when life has become intolerably painful and/or in other ways too burdensome to continue to bear, then provision such as is intended by this bill, would be a kindness to suffering individuals and not a threat to society.
John Humphrys on Radio 4's Today programme has made his prejudices about obese people clear this morning
John Humphrys was interviewing someone this morning about the inconsistency of access to weight loss surgery provided by the NHS. Both interviewer and interviewee seemed to be confident that obesity is caused, or mainly caused, by eating too much and taking insufficient exercise. Humphrys even aired the idea that it should be thought of as a moral or ethical problem. But these two men are so wrong in their ill-informed opinions. (As to whether people should be offered weight loss surgery, with all the risks and pain that major surgery entails, my personal view is that this surgery should be avoided, unless at the same time the correct information is given about the paramount importance of avoiding salt and salty food.)
Salt sensitivity/fluid retention (which often leads to calcium deficiency and fat retention) is the problem, not gluttony or laziness.
Obesity is the main underlying cause of most chronic illness and a lot of frailty. It is therefore increasingly desirable to reduce the incidence and severity of obesity because this would reduce chronic illness, frailty and human suffering to a small fraction of what it is now. But this CANNOT be achieved by continuing to give the wrong information about the causes of obesity and about how best to reduce obesity.
The continuing increase in the incidence and severity of obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. – No matter how many doctors and other ‘experts’ claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true. – The hypothesis has never been put to the test scientifically and there is certainly not a shred of valid evidence to back it up.
There is, however, a wealth of evidence to show that it is NOT true. – Millions upon millions of innocent overweight people have tried over decades to reduce their excess weight by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise. – Overwhelmingly they fail to lose weight this way. – They get tired; they feel cold and ill and hungry. – But they do not lose weight (or if they do it is only temporary). – The ‘experts’ then tell them that they have done it wrong; they haven’t tried hard enough or long enough; they are lying; they are mistaken, etc. – The ‘experts’ cannot get their heads around the fact that it is THEY who are wrong; THEY who are lying; THEY who are mistaken…
Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. – It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.
Now – what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? – Here are the main causes:
1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.
Amitriptyline is also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, and is present in some combination drugs, e.g. Limbitrol is a drug which combines amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.
Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking Lexapro, Prozac, Fontex, Celexa and Paxil. These are not tricyclic antidepressants; they are SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.
2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone and SK-Prednisone), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone, betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair – a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen – like some birth control medication (contraceptives) – some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).
If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing’s Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients’ progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.
If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient’s progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.
3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.
4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.
These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.
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, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!
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
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
I can be contacted from my website if you need my further help. My help is free.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Further claims that fish oil benefits health
See Telegraph report that fish oil may be an elixir of youth.
Reducing your intake of salt and salty food also benefits your health in a multitude of ways.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Is the UK's Independent Police Complaints Commission really independent? Radio 4's File on 4 investigates.
I've just been listening to File on 4 on Radio 4. See File on 4. If you missed it, you may like to listen to the repeat on Sun 24 Jan 2010 at 17:00.
"In 2009, 2,445 cases, including allegations of police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence, were referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. But is it truly independent, and does its record over five years encourage public confidence? Gerry Northam investigates."
Having listened to the programme I was shocked at the bias shown by the IPCC. It seems clear to me that investigations of 'police brutality, deaths in custody and serious negligence' don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of being investigated fairly by the IPCC, especially headed as it is by Nick Hardwick, who appears lacking in deductive reasoning, to put it as kindly as possible.
Clearly complaints about police negligence are dealt with as partially as complaints about medical negligence. I reckon we'd be safer without the IPCC, just as I know we'd be safer without the NHS Complaints Procedures and without the General Medical Council. None of these august and expensive bodies can be trusted to tell the truth and to protect the members of the general public when powerful people like the police and the medical profession abuse their power in their dealings with the people they are paid to serve.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Zambians contract HIV after volunteering for AIDS gel clinical trials
A Zambian traditional leader has fumed over reports that a number of his female subjects who underwent a microbicide gel clinical trials have contracted HIV, the virus that cause AIDS. Close to a quarter of volunteers that took part in a microbicide gel clinical trials in Southern Zambia contracted HIV, 12 months after the commencement of the trial. Zambian authorities have remained mute over the development while officials from the Microbicide Development Programme in Zambia and United Kingdom have pains to explain what went wrong during the clinical trials. Chief Mwanachingwala who presides over the affected site in Mazabuka of southern Zambia has expressed regret at the leaked results of the trials. The traditional leader has claimed that the Microbicide Development Programme enrolled illiterate and uneducated women who did not understand the nature of the clinical trials and its consequences.
Read article at africanews.com
Ill-informed heart surgeon urges that butter should be banned.
The Express reports that heart surgeon, Shyam Kolvekar, of London’s Heart Hospital, would like butter to be banned and for people to switch to low-fat margarine. What a pity that he is not up-to-date with research in this field and is therefore giving bad advice to people. - See More up-to-date research that concludes that saturated fat does NOT cause heart disease.
High salt intake can contribute to heart disease - as well as to obesity, high blood pressure, and stroke.
See Sodium in foods
Lose weight safely.
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Protection from the hair loss caused by chemotherapy
BBC News reports that using a scalp cooler can prevent much of the loss of hair that often results as a side-effect of cancer chemotherapy, and features the personal experience of Melanie Rowland, who said the results had been worth the five hours of painful icy cold, because her hair is very important to her.
You can reduce your risk of most cancers and most other degenerative diseases by
1) avoiding prescription drugs unless they are really necessary and
2) minimising your intake of salt/sodium and salty food
3) giving up dieting - permanently
See Sodium in foods
Lose weight safely.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Monsanto's GMO Corn is linked to Organ Failure
In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto's GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.
Read article in The Huffington Post
To read the study, click here.
BPA (Bisphenol A) in plastic bottles 'poisoning us'
A leading toxicology scientist believes tighter regulations are needed to prevent chemicals leaking into the human body from common plastic drink bottles and packaging. University of Canterbury professor of toxicology Professor Ian Shaw says it is crucially important to decrease the amount of the chemical BPA from New Zealanders' diets. BPA, which leaches from food and drink containers into the body, has consistently been found in overseas tests in blood, urine and even the amniotic fluid protecting a foetus. Such chemicals are linked to health problems that can include reduced sperm count in men, early puberty in girls and increased incidence of breast and testicular cancers - and countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have become alert to potential risks.
Read article in the New Zealand Herald
Friday, January 15, 2010
Do YOU believe that saturated fat causes heart disease?
Do you believe that saturated fat causes heart disease? - I invite you to read Dr Briffa's blogpost about saturated fat and heart disease. It may make you change your mind.
High salt intake can cause heart disease - as well as obesity, high blood pressure, and stroke.
See Sodium in foods
Lose weight safely.
Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Inquiry says Iraq war had no mandate
"An inquiry into the Netherlands' support for the invasion of Iraq says it was not justified by UN resolutions. The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on Iraq said UN Security Council resolutions did not "constitute a mandate for... intervention in 2003". The inquiry was launched after foreign ministry memos were leaked that cast doubt on the legal basis for the war. The Netherlands gave political support to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but has denied having any military role. The report demolishes the Dutch case for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond. It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says."
Read full article on the BBC News website (UK)
Thursday, January 14, 2010
I watched the last of C4's My Big Fat Diet Show programmes this evening
In the last of the My Big Fat Diet Show programmes this evening we were given some more misinformation. Food scientist Richard Marshall said, "We're programmed to need salt." - That is certainly not true. Babies are not born with a taste for salt. Salt is an acquired taste, though unfortunately it is not difficult to acquire the taste for salt, so it is wise to provide low salt meals for your children and protect them from getting into the habit of eating salty snacks like crisps, Pringles, salted nuts and cheese, especially the extra highly-salted cheese junk like Cheese Strings. The taste for salt can be like an addiction - a dangerous addiction that can result in high blood pressure, early onset type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and the risk of stroke and heart attack.
The food scientist went on to say, "It goes back to our evolution, we were hunter gatherers, we needed lots of energy all the time, so all those things we needed." - Well that's a strange thing to say in connection with salt, because salt contains no calories at all and so cannot provide energy, nor did hunter gatherers eat salt as such; they ate only the very small amount of salt naturally present in food, i.e. they did not eat added salt.
Reducing salt intake is an excellent way to lower high blood pressure. A guy who contacted me just over a week ago from my website, wanting advice about lowering his high blood pressure, reduced his salt intake as I advised and in just a week this is what he wrote to me: "Just to let you know that after one week of severely restricting my daily sodium intake to around 1000mg, my blood pressure has gone from 152/86(average of previous three weekly readings) to 133/88(average of three readings today." - Impressive, isn't it? He also says he has a lot more energy now.
Early humans in fact had a low sodium, high potassium food intake which means that our bodies evolved on a low sodium and high potassium intake. The modern diet has reversed this to high sodium and low potassium. The intake of salt has massively increased in recent years - as has the incidence of obesity and of the degenerative diseases I have listed.
To lose excess weight it is necessary to reduce fluid retention and fat retention. Both of these are easily and safely reduced by eating less salt/sodium. The weight reduction is speeded up by eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are potassium-rich foods.
Some further important information these four programmes omitted to mention at all is that when you are overweight it is because you are sensitive to salt and so very prone to fluid retention. This problem with salt in turn depletes the body of the essential minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium and zinc, and the calcium loss in particular results in fat retention. - Fat retention is not caused by eating fatty foods. It is caused by insufficient essential minerals, especially calcium. So if you increase your calcium intake with milk or yoghurt say, you will be helping yourself to lose excess, unwanted fat, and lowering your risk of fragile bones and other problems that calcium deficiency causes. Dieting should be avoided, especially diets that restrict calories to fewer than the body requires. It is not necessary to diet to lose weight, and dieting is likely to make your body even more deficient in calcium and other essential nutrients.
Here is how to lose weight safely.
Sodium in foods
FAT RETENTION
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
My Big Fat Diet Show, Episode 3, shown January 12th
Well I watched tonight and there were points made that pleased me. I was glad to see the 'cheese-addicted' woman helped to get over her 'addiction'. - Cheese is high in salt and so it is a food best avoided by overweight people wanting to lose weight, because all overweight people are sensitive to salt. For overweight/obese people, eating salt/sodium tends to increase their problem of fluid retention and so they weigh more. Because this woman drastically cut down on her cheese intake, this reduced her salt intake and so she lost some of her fluid/water retention. The fluid is lost by excreting more urine. If you want to lose excess weight, you would do well to reduce your intake of cheese.
Cheese figured in another part of the programme tonight too - Dairylea cheese. - But of course Dairylea cheese isn't really cheese at all: it's a concoction. The dietician on the show explained that it is mainly composed of skimmed milk powder, butter, cheese, emulsifiers and a high amount of added salt. - See Nutritional information for Kraft Dairylea Spread. Since it is so very high in salt/sodium it is not something you should be eating if you want to lose excess weight. To convert sodium content to salt content, multiply the sodium by 2.5.
Chocolate digestive biscuits, both the usual ones and the ones labelled as 'lower fat', featured in tonight's show. Both of these types of chocolate biscuit, and indeed almost all sweet biscuits, you may be surprised to learn, are high in salt! - If you are trying to lose excess weight you should cut down on biscuits or avoid them altogether.
If you find exercising difficult, please do not feel you have to do it to lose weight. Exercise is good for many aspects of health, but it has practically no part to play in losing weight.
Here is how to lose weight
Sodium in foods
FAT RETENTION
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, Mo Mowlam, Dame Muriel Spark. - What is the connection?
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, Mo Mowlam, Dame Muriel Spark. - What is the connection? - They all gained a great deal of weight and became bloated as a result of taking prescribed drugs, and none of them was warned that while taking those drugs they should have avoided salt/sodium and salty food as far as they could. The weight gain is called 'drug-induced obesity'.
See Jerry Lewis
Dr Mo Mowlam
Dame Muriel Spark
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Monday, January 11, 2010
EU to probe the “influence” exerted by drugmakers on the World Health Organisation over “false pandemic”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is to hold an emergency debate and inquiry this month into the “influence” exerted by drugmakers on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global H1N1 flu campaign...[...]... The WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” according to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman the PACE Health Committee, who introduced the parliamentary motion.
Read article at pharmatimes.com
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Dieting and weight loss drugs are not necessary for losing excess weight
Dieting and weight loss drugs are not necessary for losing weight: the fastest, easiest, safest, most reliable way to lose excess weight is to eat less salt/sodium and salty food. - And when I say that, I am NOT accusing you of eating a LOT of salt. - But whether you eat a lot of salt, or a moderate amount, or very little salt, the fact remains that you will lose excess weight very easily if you cut down on the amount of salt and salty food you eat.
Lose weight
Sodium in foods - You'd be surprised at some of the foods that are high in sodium!- Like biscuits!
FAT RETENTION
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Baroness Susan Greenfield intends to sue the Royal Institution for sex discrimination
Baroness Susan Greenfield intends to sue the Royal Institution for sex discrimination after being made redundant from her post as Director because the RI is strapped for cash: reported HERE by BBC News. I find it astonishing that she feels she has been subject to sex discrimination, of all things, when she has been in post for over a decade! It seems eminently sensible to me for the Royal Institution to sack a highly paid employee when her salary can no longer be afforded. For her to sue on the grounds of sex discrimination is, it seems to me, grossly insulting to the many women who really have suffered, and suffered very greatly indeed, because of sex discrimination.
I must declare my interest in Lady Greenfield, because I am not one of her admirers. - See Susan Greenfield, speaking on Simon Mayo's Show, gave the wrong information about what causes obesity.
Friday, January 08, 2010
Professor Steve Jones fails to realise that fluid retention/salt sensitivity is the main cause of obesity.
See Professor Jones' article in the Telegraph, in which he blames his 4 pound weight gain over the festive season on "gluttony and sloth", thereby by implication attributing gluttony and sloth to all who are fat/overweight/obese. Being a geneticist he brings genetics into his essay, and being a man of his time, conditioned by the calories message that has mislead most people for many decades now, he fails to consider the rôles played by higher salt intake engineered by a 'purely' profit-driven food industry and the even more sinister rôle played by the pharmaceutical industry, far too many of which's drugs directly cause sodium retention/water retention/obesity/morbid obesity and a host of co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, dementia, 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!
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connectionhttp://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations
Thursday, January 07, 2010
C4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' was better tonight because the dieters ate less salty food
Well Channel 4's My Big Fat Diet Show was better tonight - better in that the dieters had their intake of salty snacks restricted. The previous programme scarcely mentioned salt as an ingredient to avoid. Because of the lowered salt intake this time it was to be expected that there would be significant weight loss, as there was, because of the water loss resulting from sodium reduction. The dieter who didn't lose weight this time despite sodium reduction was the one who drank a lot of alcohol, and of course alcohol also causes fluid retention (ascites, in the abdomen) in people who are sensitive to salt. - Details about sodium in food and about alcohol on this page: Sodium in foods
The best and safest way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food. - If you do this gradually you will lose weight gradually; if you do it more rapidly you will lose weight very fast indeed, especially if you make sure that you eat plenty of fruit and (unsalted) vegetables as well, because fruit and veg are rich in potassium, and potassium displaces some of the sodium in your body, thus enabling you to excrete more of the excess fluid from your body. Reducing salt intake is safe and we are advised to eat less salt. Most of us eat too much salt.
It is DIETING - by which I mean eating fewer calories than your body requires - that is harmful. Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7423/1085 for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fatter.
If you have fat retention as well as fluid retention, you will find that the fat retention is also reduced by cutting down on salt. - Fat retention is not caused by eating too much fat and is not cured by eating meals low in fat. - Read about fat retention here: FAT RETENTION
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, 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!
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt ConnectionWednesday, January 06, 2010
Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight.
Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight. The overweight women dieters featured on the show were told they must cut down on calories to lose weight, and that for this diet they must eat only 1200 calories a day - i.e. fewer calories than their bodies need.
For the purposes of the programme there was a gimmick of providing 100 calorie portions of different foods, e.g. a quarter of a cup cake was a 100 calorie portion and one very large egg was a 100 calorie portion. Fresh vegetables obviously provided a lot of food for 100 calories, compared with the junk processed food that seemed to be the major element of the food usually eaten by the women.
At the weigh-in after a few days, most of the women had lost weight, and one, who had lost several pounds, was congratulated warmly and told excitedly that that was proof that reducing calorie intake reduces overweight. - This was despite the fact that another one of the women had gained 2 pounds! - The woman who had gained 2 pounds was very distressed because, presumably, she had put a lot of effort into reducing her calorie intake. - But she was not told that gaining weight was proof that eating fewer calories increases overweight! - No, of course she wasn't. She was told not to worry, that weight gain sometimes happens, but that she would lose weight if she continued with the calorie reduction.
It's all such nonsense. The women victims chosen for the show are all serial dieters and therefore should know from experience that dieting almost always results ultimately in weight gain to a heavier weight than before the diet.
If only programme-makers could abandon their misplaced obsession with calories and dieting, and instead think of outcomes for the subjects in their programmes. All overweight people are sensitive to salt and that is why they are overweight. And so the safe, fast, effective way to lose excess weight and reduce obesity is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food, and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and plenty of real food, instead of salt-laden processed junk.
And no need at all for that pointless exercise, struggling up and down stairs to 'use up calories'...)o: - What a waste of life that is!
If those women had cut down on their salt intake instead of cutting down on calories they would ALL have lost several pounds, without any hunger and without damaging their health. And then we could have stopped having these silly TV dieting programmes cluttering up the schedules and harming people's health.
How to lose weight
Sodium in foods
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Interesting article about the Climate Change Row
Special Investigation on Climate Change issues and manipulation of the data, published in the Daily Mail. Well worth reading.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Radio 4's Food Programme today was about School Meals and I wasn't too impressed.
I listened to Radio 4's Food Programme about School Meals today. You too could listen to it - on the BBC iPlayer - by visiting this BBC webpage. There was a strong congratulatory air about the programme which in my opinion was not well-merited. Certainly it is great that children are no longer being fed the ghastly, appallingly unhealthy pretend food of some years ago (before Jamie Oliver's providential intervention), namely Turkey Twizzlers. And certainly it was good to hear of a school where children were growing vegetables and salad foods and eating them in their school meals. - That's excellent. - And it's good that some children are learning and practising cooking.
But what I was shocked, appalled and very disappointed to hear was that while children are learning to cook poached eggs (good), they are also cooking BACON AND SAUSAGES, and serving them and BACON SANDWICHES for school breakfasts...)o: - Salt is much more harmful to children than to adults. This is NOT healthy eating.
Bacon and sausages in particular, and bread also, are very high in SALT/SODIUM, and it is SALTY FOOD that is the main cause of child obesity and the increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in children. Children already eat too much salty stuff. Schools should be discouraging them from eating salty meals and salty snacks, and definitely not encouraging them to think of bacon and sausages as healthy breakfast food. - Just because it's cooked, doesn't mean it's healthy Bacon and sausages are part of the over-salted processed food perversion that is compromising people's health around the world.
See Children and Obesity
Lose weight
and Sodium in foods
Sunday, January 03, 2010
I welcome Ehrenreich's denunciation of "the tyranny of positive thinking"
I welcome Barbara Ehrenreich's criticisms of the 'positive thinking' brigade who impose further problems and difficulties on breast cancer sufferers by exhorting them to a cheerfulness and optimism they may not feel and may consider neither appropriate nor logical. See Ehrenreich's Guardian article.
In my experience these nonsensical, exhausting extra burdens tend also to be heaped onto people suffering constant severe debilitating pain. I would include particular criticism of the self-styled Christians who tell people who are ill and/or in great pain that there is no need to be ill or in pain: they need only to accept Christ's healing. - They are credulous bullies, as are the health professionals who keep insisting to people who know that painkillers do not work for them and who do not want to take them, that the painkillers really do work and that it's the sufferer's own fault if they're in pain since they stubbornly refuse to 'try' them - ignoring the fact that it is because they have tried them - many times and unsuccessfully - and know the futility and harm of taking them, that they now refuse them.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Women's average shoe size has gone up from a 5 to a 6 in the past five years
The Telegraph reports that women's feet are getting bigger and that in the last 5 years women's average shoe size has risen from 5 to 6. This is being attributed to the 'obesity epidemic'.
My personal experience is that my shoe size used to be a very narrow 5½ and it is now a wide 7½. This is not, of course, because my feet have grown; it is because they have become very swollen: swollen with the fluid retention that has resulted from my being inappropriately prescribed HRT years ago and negligently not warned to avoid eating salt and salty food while taking those tablets. The fluid retention is easy to see because it shows itself in the grossly distended, intensely painful and extremely delicate veins that disfigure my feet, making them blue/purple, rather than the white they were formerly.
If your feet have become swollen and your shoe size is now bigger, you can reduce the swelling and the pain/aching considerably by avoiding salt and salty food. As well as improving the state of your feet, avoiding salt will benefit your health in many other ways too, including reducing your excess weight and lowering high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Friday, January 01, 2010
Researchers at the Institute of Food Research have developed a machine which they claim works as an accurate working model of a human stomach.
You can read about it here on the BBC News website. There is also a write-up on The Advertiser of Norwich, where it says, "A pioneering machine developed in Norwich, which eats roast dinners and curries, is set to change the face of the medicine industry across the world when it goes on sale.
Scientists at the Institute of Food Research have produced the world's first accurate model of a working stomach, which is allowing them to study the complex methods of digestion of every kind of food and drug in any combination.
They hope the model, which took 15 years to develop, will help to reduce levels of obesity in society and minimise the amount of animal testing conducted by the pharmaceuticals industry, as well as speeding up the time it takes to develop medicines and reduce their cost."
My personal opinion is that it will be of no use at all in reducing levels of obesity, because obesity is caused by weakened blood vessel walls leading to increased blood volume/sodium retention/water retention/salt sensitivity/weight gain/oedema, which I doubt the artificial stomach will have the capability of measuring because the researchers are unlikely to have realised the relevance of the strength of blood vessel walls in considering excess weight. You can read about these problems on my website, and about how to lose weight safely and easily by cutting down on salt and salty food.
Prescription drugs are a major cause of weakened blood vessel walls. See my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
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