Warning against Sports and Energy Drinks for Teenagers

Paediatricians warn against Sports and Energy Drinks for Teenagers, TIME reports.

Deplorable level of NHS obstetric care

Deplorable level of NHS obstetric care reported in the Daily Mail. "Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action for Victims of Medical Accidents, said: 'We never seem to make much progress with CTG failures. 'This problem has been around for years. Hundreds and hundreds of children have either been damaged or killed due to an inability to spot the warning signs of a baby in distress. I wonder if the NHS will ever learn.'"

Taking Amitriptyline for oral/mouth pain is not a good idea

Taking Amitriptyline for oral/mouth pain is not a good idea in my opinion. Amitriptyline is a tricyclic antidepressant that is sometimes prescribed as a painkiller, particularly when the pain is in the mouth. This is often because the prescribing doctor doesn't really believe that the patient actually is in pain, especially if the patient is female.

Doctors who prescribe amitriptyline for pain sometimes explain to the patient that amitriptyline is an antidepressant drug that can help with pain, but often these doctors deliberately deceive the patients into believing that amitriptyline actually is a painkiller and do not mention that it is an antidepressant, and that they are prescribing it because they have decided the patient is 'a depressive', not a person in pain. Doctors often confuse depression and pain, unfortunately.

Whatever the ins and outs of the matter, amitriptyline is not a good idea for mouth pain. - For one thing antidepressants work no better than dummy pills for depression. For another thing, they usually cause unhealthy weight gain and all its attendant health problems. And amitriptyline in particular causes 'dry mouth', which patients are told will stop when their body has got used to the drug, but which often does not stop however long they are unfortunate enough to be on the drug.

Now 'dry mouth'/lack of saliva obviously makes dental decay more likely, especially of the lower teeth, since normally many of these are bathed in saliva most of the time, and this inbuilt natural 'mouthwash', therefore, protects the teeth to some extent from food residue clinging to them. Furthermore, saliva is a buffer solution which chemically protects teeth from acid attack. So existing mouth pain is likely to be augmented by the development of dental caries, making matters worse, not better.

Study suggests high dose vitamin D may boost exercise capacity for COPD sufferers

High dose supplements of vitamin D may increase the exercise capacity and strength of respiratory muscles in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), suggests a new study.
Read article at nutraingredients-usa.com

Study indicates 'bad' cholesterol not as bad as people think

The so-called "bad cholesterol" - low-density lipoprotein commonly called LDL - may not be so bad after all, shows a Texas A&M University study that casts new light on the cholesterol debate, particularly among adults who exercise.
Read article at medicalxpress.com
Comment: A scientific review of 22 cholesterol lowering trials published in the British Medical Journal in 1992 concluded that lowering serum cholesterol concentrations does not reduce mortality and is unlikely to prevent coronary heart disease.

Would your illness be alleviated/made less severe, or its progress retarded, by lowering your salt intake?

Would your illness/suffering/symptoms be relieved by lowering your salt intake? - The answer is YES if you are in one of these groups that are vulnerable to salt. - Check it out!

There are suggestions about ways to reduce salt intake on this Sodium in Foods page. I urge you to give it a try: there are so many health benefits from cutting down on salt - including reducing fluid retention/excess weight/obesity.

Can there be another country that treats elderly patients worse than the UK?

Frankly, I doubt it. So many times I have blogged about elderly patients in UK hospitals being left unfed or underfed, dehydrated because no one gave them a drink of water, lying in bed in pain and in misery, humiliation and excreta, because no one had the decency or compassion to take them to the toilet or help them onto a commode or bedpan, often with bedsores or avoidable injuries because of poor nursing. Over and over and over and over again we read accounts of such awful suffering. It makes you sick to the stomach and sick at heart. This is our much-vaunted NHS! These are our healthcare professionals.

Yesterday was another of these days of shame, the news media full of the scandalous 'care' accorded to elderly patients in 3 hospitals in particular - 3 in particular out of 12 hospitals that the Care Quality Commission inspected unannounced and were appalled by. See this BBC News report. Yes, I know that not every British hospital and not every nurse treats elderly vulnerable patients in this disgracefully cruel way, but how does that excuse the ones that do?

What do we routinely hear after such sordid revelations? - It is usually a statement couched in strange jargon-ridden gobbledygook that favours weasel words and the passive voice. We are told that 'lessons have been learned' and other lies. And nothing changes. No one is arraigned and charged for their cruelty and neglect, no one is even sacked, for their dereliction of duty, for their failure to fulfil their duty of care. We all pay a great deal of money by way of taxes for our massively flawed NHS. Some of us, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, are getting a very poor deal indeed.

Study suggests that Vitamin D helps with Psoriasis

Relief from red, itchy skin: Vitamin D helps to reduce the inflammation associated with psoriasis, a common skin condition that causes red, itchy patches on the skin, shows a new study.
Read article at medicalxpress.com

Does Peer Review ensure the quality and reliability of scientific articles?

You think that Peer Review ensures the quality and reliability of scientific and medical articles? - I'm sorry to disappoint you: it doesn't. - Here's the most recent article I've seen that details flaws and corruptions in the system.

More about Drug Industry Ties to Medical Societies

ProPublica reports further about Drug Industry Ties to Medical Societies. "As we reported earlier this month, financial links between these professional societies and the drug and device industries are a widespread concern. The Heart Rhythm Society got nearly half of its $16 million in donations last year from companies that make drugs and devices used to control abnormal heart rhythms. The Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions took in $4.7 million, more than half of its total receipts in 2009, from drug and device manufacturers." In the words of the old proverb, "He who pays the piper, calls the tune," and in today's words, "Follow the money!"

"The Plot Against the NHS" This review has the ring of truth

Dr Richard Horton is editor in chief of the Lancet, and in this Guardian article is reviewing The Plot Against the NHS by Colin Leys and Stewart Player. I recognise the chicanery and deceptions that have been practised by politicians of all hues for many years in all aspects of the NHS. While I am certainly not a fan of the NHS, the deficiencies of which I have frequently drawn attention to and deplored, I see no redeeming features in the privatisation of parts of it. What is overwhelmingly needed is proper accountability by the medical profession, the nursing profession and other healthcare professionals, and by the bureaucracies and management that administer both public and private healthcare. - By which I mean accountability to patients, who both as taxpayers and as private patients, pay the salaries of the Healthcare Industry, but are grossly ill-served both by the futile Complaints Procedures and by the partisan legal system, when they are harmed by professional negligence, ignorance or incompetence.

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously?

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously? I'll tell you about some of my own experiences of this.

As someone who gets migraines sometimes, I did what is sensibly advised: I thought about the food I had eaten before getting the migraines in case any particular foods were triggering the attacks. I found that if I ate more than just a few slices of cucumber that usually brought on a migraine, and I also found that another trigger was if I went more than about 5 waking hours without food at all. Non-food triggers for me turned out to be rapidly flashing lights in general or the bright, low-on-the-horizon winter sunshine. So I do what you too, no doubt, would do if you had those same messages from your body, namely, I avoid those triggers if I possibly can.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky about some other messages from my body. When I experienced a lot of health problems starting very roughly at the same time as each other and all getting worse pretty fast, it was rather a long time before I was able confidently and correctly to attribute all of them to the prescribed medication I was taking, and this was, I am sure, partly because I became so desperately tired and so very ill, but mainly because my GP and other health professionals I encountered so firmly assured me that I was wrong - absolutely wrong - and that I should continue with the medication.

Some of these body messages were weight gain and getting fatter, face becoming red and puffy, breasts becoming swollen and extremely painful, with visible veins, aching, swollen reddening agonisingly painful hands and feet, painful, distended veins in the legs that made bending the knees a particularly difficult and painful problem, excruciating headaches that no painkillers could extinguish, desperately painful genital area, increasing fatigue, tiredness and breathlessness, hair loss, and many more. I later discovered that all of these signs and symptoms had resulted from the prescription drugs I was taking - because these drugs had weakened my blood vessels and made me sensitive to salt/sodium. - Because of the web of lies, evasions, deliberate ambiguities, prejudiced viewpoints, false beliefs, ignorance and cover-ups of the health professionals to whom I turned or was directed, my proper understanding of what had been done to me was delayed by many anguished years. See story so far and my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

If you are getting a cluster of body messages that may or may not appear to be connected except that they all have followed some time after starting to take prescribed medication, I urge you to give thought to whether the drug/s could be the cause of the symptoms you are experiencing. Check stuff up for yourself: your doctors may be as uninformed and unhelpful as mine were. Here's some drug information you may find helpful: HRT and Steroids, etc and Amitriptyline and Other Antidepressants.

Anemia prescription drug that causes more harm than good

Read about Epogen, also known as Procrit, in this Bloomberg report. "A drug sold by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson for people with anemia didn’t reduce heart damage in patients who’d experienced heart attacks and may increase the chances of recurrence or death, a study found. Epogen, approved in 1989 as the first drug for Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen, is used by patients undergoing kidney dialysis to boost their depleted red blood cells. J&J sells the drug as Procrit, mostly for cancer patients getting chemotherapy."

Doctors are over-prescribing paracetamol to toddlers

The Telegraph reports that doctors are over-prescribing paracetamol to toddlers. "One-in-four young children are being given too much of the pain relief drug, putting them at risk of liver damage, scientists found. A study of medical records of some youngsters found that a quarter between the ages of one and three were prescribed an "excessive" paracetamol dosage by their doctor."

That is an extremely high proportion of toddlers being overdosed. I have blogged with my views about giving painkillers to babies/toddlers before. No-one wants to risk their child getting liver damage from taking painkillers. Paracetamol, aka Calpol, is not harmless. I advocate comfort and cuddles for little ones, rather than pharmaceutical painkiller drugs with all their risks. Unlike drugs, a kiss and a cuddle have no adverse side-effects:

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

I read an interesting book review this morning.

I read an interesting book review this morning. The book is called Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America. "Perjury [is] becoming the norm among affluent criminals and threatens legal system, says Pulitzer winner James B. Stewart."

His book tells of how lies and perjury (lying under oath) increasingly feature at the highest levels of business, media, politics, sports and culture, and in particular tells the stories of Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Bernie Madoff and Barry Bonds. I'm feel sure the subject matter would interest most people who follow current affairs, though obviously Americans especially.

Were I to write such a book, it would no doubt be about the damaging lies 'obesity experts' and 'dieting gurus' tell about the causes of and remedies for obesity, and about the many other criminally dangerous lies that have become so prevalent in the Healthcare Industry, the Drug Industry and the Food Industry, and about the politicians, bureaucrats et al who are their creatures, and about how these lies are destroying the health and happiness of billions of innocent people the world over.

ProPublica is investigating how drug company money reaches physicians

ProPublica is investigating how Pharmaceuticals Industry money reaches physicians, and the credentials and calibre of the physicians it uses. See this article.

Extract: "In 2001, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Pennsylvania doctor James I. McMillen to stop “false or misleading” promotions of the painkiller Celebrex, saying he minimized risks and touted it for unapproved uses. Still, three other leading drug makers paid the rheumatologist $224,163 over 18 months to deliver talks to other physicians about their drugs."

There are many interesting Comments beneath the article.

Will Powell is campaigning with others for a Duty of Candour (Robbie's Law) in the hope that it would reduce medical errors and associated cover-ups

Among the online Comments beneath the Telegraph article about Lord Crisp's disgraceful attempts to cover up NHS hospital maternity deaths, is one by Will Powell, who tragically lost his 10-year-old son, Robbie, to gross medical negligence in 1990. Since his loss Will, whom I met some years ago at a SIN (Sufferers of Iatrogenic Neglect) conference, has been campaigning against lying by healthcare professionals, and against the cover-ups that permit them to treat patients negligently with complete impunity.

I hope you will read what Will Powell has written and be shocked by this extract: "As the law stands now, however, doctors have no duty to give parents of a child who died as a result of their negligence a truthful account of the circumstances of the death, nor even to refrain from deliberately falsifying records."

If you have not yet signed the petition for Robbie’s Law, you can access it here.

Lord Crisp, the Dept of Health, NHS hospital errors and political pressures

If you wear rose-coloured spectacles or blinkers when viewing the NHS, and if you think governments give a toss about NHS patients in any capacity other than as voters, then read this recent Telegraph article, the content of which should be electrifying. It informs us that Lord Crisp "David Cameron's new health advisor attempted to cover up a hospital scandal in which nine women died giving birth." Furthermore, "When he was permanent secretary at the Department of Health (DoH), Lord Crisp put pressure on NHS regulators to wait until after a General Election to ban the hospital from carrying out caesarean sections." This evidence was given to a public enquiry by Sir Ian Kennedy, former chairman of the Healthcare Commission. I urge you to read the whole of the article and to be shocked by it, because until people other than the actual victims become informed and seek reform of the evil system that sustains the NHS's lack of concern for patient safety, nothing effective will be done to correct it.

What if it's not too much fat that you are carrying around? What if it's excess water weight?

What is it's not too much fat that you are carrying around? What if it's excess water weight? - That's right. - Have you considered that it could be fluid retention that is your problem? If it's fluid retention it is a simple matter to reduce it. You need to eat less salt and salty food.

Your excess weight is likely to be water weight/fluid retention if you are one of the people who are vulnerable to salt, also known as sensitive to salt. The vulnerable groups include people who take or have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants, or SSRIs like Prozac, people who take or have taken some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children.

If you fall into one of the vulnerable groups I have listed or if you ate a high salt diet as a child you will be sensitive to salt. People without this problem can eat salty foods without doing a lot of harm to themselves, because their kidneys will excrete the sodium which is excess to their requirements. But for people sensitive to salt, some of the excess sodium, along with the water it attracts, will enter their blood stream and not be excreted. So they carry extra weight - as water - around with them all the time. They also lose more heat from their bodies because the surface area of their body has increased with the added water, and the rate at which a body loses heat is proportional to its surface area. - They therefore need extra calories to do the extra work and to provide the extra heat. - So their appetite increases in order to obtain these extra calories. - So they may very well eat more to satisfy their genuine need for calories. - If what they eat is salty, then the cycle will repeat itself and they are likely to become obese.

To break the cycle and put the process into reverse, all that is necessary for them to do is to eat less salt. And eating extra potassium by way of fresh fruit and vegetables will accelerate the excretion of the sodium and water and speed up the weight loss. If you want to lose weight, eat less salt!

Have you ever eaten red kidney beans?

Have you ever eaten red kidney beans? - I did once, many years ago. - My goodness, they made me so ill! - Diarrhoea and abdominal pain. I pretty well took up residence in the toilet for about 24 hours! - I had no idea food poisoning from a vegetable could be so bad! I hadn't known that red kidney beans contain the toxic agent Phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) which causes food poisoning when the beans are consumed raw or undercooked.

Too late I learnt that these red beans should be soaked in water for at least 5 hours during which the water should be replaced periodically, then poured away and the beans boiled briskly in fresh water, with occasional stirring, for at least 10 minutes. That seems an awful lot of messing about to ensure that a few beans don't poison you! - My considered advice is that it's better to be safe than sorry, i.e. avoid eating these toxic veg! - I'll certainly never touch them again. I'd rather go hungry...

The medical drug-pushers are at it again: Wald still pressing for his polypills to be routinely prescribed to over-55s

In this BBC News report Professor Sir Nicholas Wald makes the dubious claim that when assessing the risk of heart problems, offering drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure to all over-55s has the same results as testing for cholesterol or blood pressure problems. He also says it would be simpler and cost effective. Well it might be simpler, and it might very well be cost-effective for Wald himself (see some discussion here of possible conflict of interest, since Wald and Law own a patent on the idea of the polypill) but I strongly doubt that there would be any gain for the NHS.

Statins are drugs that lower cholesterol and Wald wants statins to be part of the polypills. Statins are extremely profitable for drug manufacturers, but they do more harm than good to most of the people who take them. - Click on the STATINS label below this post to see lots of information about this.

There is a simple, safe, cost-free, drug-free way to lower high blood pressure, improve heart health and reduce heart attacks and strokes and many other degenerative illnesses for the over-55s - or indeed for any other age. - That is for GPs and other healthcare professionals seriously to explain to patients and the general public the huge health benefits from eating less salt and salty food. An even more effective measure would be to have a Secretary of State for Health with the guts and sense and decency to push through statutory upper limits for the amount of salt/sodium permitted to be added to processed foods, and especially to bread, which is usually high in salt and yet is a large part of most people's diet. He should also ban the food industry's use of synthetic transfats as additives to biscuits, cakes etc. And he should remove the food and drink manufacturers from the Dept of Health committee that advises on what to do about obesity.

Here's another good idea: tell the truth about Saturated Fats. - You may like to spare 2min 35secs to watch the excellent little video on this page.

Have you heard of Bifidobacteria?

Have you heard of Bifidobacteria? You should have done. Bifidobacteria are friends of yours...(o: They are some of the little beneficial microbes that live in your gut. They are sometimes referred to as Probiotics.

You've heard of Antibiotics I am sure. Now when we take antibiotics in order to treat an infection, as well as dealing with the baddie bacteria that are responsible for the infection, antibiotics unfortunately tend to kill off some of the friendly microbes like Bifidobacteria. This can lead to gut problems and many other problems, including thrush/candida and BV/bacterial vaginitis/bacterial vaginosis. And the harmful bacteria in the gut thrive and digestion is compromised. The immune system gets damaged and your risk of developing cancer increases.

But never fear! - Send Bifidobacteria to the rescue! - An easy way to increase the friendly bacteria in your gut and decrease the harmful bacteria, is to eat Probiotic dairy yogurt. - The best sort of probiotic yogurt to look for is that made from full fat milk that has come from cows that eat grass in the fields, not those poor cows that live in overcrowded, dark, unhealthy barns and eat pesticide-treated grains and are given antibiotics because of the poor hygiene. And you should avoid yogurt that has added sugar, because sugar feeds the baddie bacteria that cause those yeast infections like thrush. And you should also make sure the yogurt is organic. Personally I eat Probiotic Yeo Valley natural yogurt usually. It's delicious and it's good for your health. But it is not the only good probiotic wholemilk yogurt. - Why not try all the ones you can find? - Give your gut a treat! - Buy it some probiotic yogurt! - You can read more about Bifidobacteria and the ways it benefits our health by reading this Wikipedia article

Keep wishing your excess weight would simply fall off?

Do you keep wishing your excess weight would simply fall off? - Well there is a completely safe dietary change that has worked for many people. It doesn't involve going hungry or exercising, and, importantly, it doesn't involve taking drugs. It does involve seriously cutting down on salt and salty food. Read my Mensa article about my own experience of losing excess weight easily, and read about the Fat Man with the Red Face who also lost excess weight rapidly, easily and safely by following my advice. - Instead of just wishing, you could start today to lose that excess weight! - Go on! - Try it! - You'll feel so much better!

I am very tired and in very great pain.

It is a bit of an embarrassment for me to write that I am very tired and in very great pain because I so often write that cutting down on salt/sodium reduces tiredness and reduces pain. Maybe you think, reading this, that I should practise what I preach, and you are right. I should practise what I preach - and I do.

Late in 1997, when I first began to discover the benefits of eating less salty food, I was, literally, so tired I could scarcely even summon the energy to blink! I am not exaggerating. And I was in so much pain that to walk even one step was like torture, and lying down in bed was so fraught with pain it was like lying on a bed of nails. I would certainly have died before the end of 1997 if I had not started to cut down on my salt intake, even though I already ate very little salt.

If you are reading this while you are very tired and/or in constant or intractable pain, I urge you to consider reducing your intake of salt and salty food. Try it! - Go on! - It is a truism that what can't be cured must be endured, but by cutting down on salt you really will feel better than you do now. There are many, many health benefits that result from eating less salt. I invite you to visit my website and find out more about how to reduce your salt intake, and about other natural, drug-free ways of improving your health and well-being.