British Health Foundation warns that severe heart failure can feel like drowning

British Heart Foundation warns that severe heart failure can feel like drowning.

The British Heart Foundation is currently warning that severe heart failure can feel like drowning, as is reported in this BBC News article today. "There is no cure for heart failure, which can lead to extreme exhaustion and breathlessness." The BHF is aiming to raise funds for its Mending Broken Hearts Appeal: ""We aim to raise money to carry out basic research into regenerative medicine. Stem cells could help by offering therapeutic interventions." 

The BHF is primarily a drug-oriented charity (see Health Campaigning Charities), with a heavy emphasis on the controversial drug family of statins. It always seems to me such a pity that they so rarely inform people that cutting down on salt and salty food can bring about dramatic improvements in heart health, e.g. helping with problems of breathlessness, reducing the size of an enlarged heart, reducing the risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease and heart attack, as well as a host of other degenerative conditions, including being overweight or obese. Salt reduction is particularly appropriate for overweight that involves fluid retention. If you want to help people who suffer from breathlessness, whether caused by heart problems or by asthma, or simply by being overweight, you could do them a big favour by telling them of the benefits that salt reduction can bring. 

(I apologise for my typo in the title of this post. - It should say British Heart Foundation, not British Health Foundation.) 

Average man in the year 2000 over a stone heavier than he was in 1986

Scientists from Oxford University’s British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group have analysed data on body weight along with changes in the amount of food people consumed over the 15-year time period. See physorg.com news item. They found that the average man in the year 2000 is over a stone heavier than he was in 1986. But "Dr Peter Scarborough of the Department of Public Health at Oxford University, who led the research, said: ‘We looked at how much food was available over time, accounting for food that’s wasted or thrown away. It’s clear people are eating more, and today we’re seeing a continued increase in the amount of food available.’"

I don't myself find that Dr Scarborough's conclusion follows from the data. For one thing "the actual observed increase in average male weight of 7.7kg was much more than expected from the extra food available to men in 2000." The researchers then use the usual get-out of ascribing this discrepancy to a reduction in physical activity. - But remember, folks, exercise - even a lot of exercise over a long period - produces little or no weight loss, even though researchers constantly claim that it does. - Exercise is not the answer - not even part of the answer - to the increasing problem of obesity and its attendant ill-health.

For another thing, there is no mention of salt in the article, and yet the fastest, safest and most reliable way to lose excess weight is to reduce salt/sodium intake.

Thirdly, there is no mention of the constantly increasing number of pharmaceutical drugs being prescribed by GPs and other healthcare workers, when weight gain is a very common side-effect of many, or even most, prescribed drugs. These drugs include steroids, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptics and many more that are frequently over-prescribed and frequently unmonitored. (The weight gain is because of fluid retention resulting from weakened blood vessel walls/ salt sensitivity.)

Fourthly, the research is funded by the BHF, who have as their constant refrain the need for calorie reduction and taking more exercise to lose weight, and yet that is not at all a good, or even a likely, way to lose excess weight. The BHF would be unlikely to publish or give prominence to research findings at variance with their reiterated advice. As likely as politicians on the make being heard telling the truth, I reckon. I am not an admirer of the BHF and its iffy advice and constant plugging of statins, a drug that does more harm than good to most of the people who take it.

So I would favour other factors as more likely reasons for the heavier weight of men. These would include as major causes:
1) taking more prescription drugs and not being told of the need to avoid salt and salty food when taking the ones that cause sodium retention/ fluid retention
2) the irresponsibly high concentrations of salt that food companies add to their processed foods and to their bread
3) dieting - by which I mean eating fewer calories than the individual's body requires and/or expending more energy by way of taking more exercise.
A lesser cause would be the increasing amounts of oestrogen in the drinking water supply because it and other sodium retention-causing compounds are excreted in the urine of women on 'the pill' or on HRT and so enter the water table.

And of course the heavier you are the more calories you need, both to carry your heavier body around and service its organs, and to keep the heavier body warm, since heat lost from a body is proportional to the surface area of the body, and the heavier person tends to have a bigger surface area than the lighter person.

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities

For a new perspective on conflicts of interest with regard to the pharmaceutical industry and health campaigning charities I invite you to put the name of one such charity and the words "pharmaceutical sponsors" into your favourite search engine's searchbox. - I typed

asthma.org.uk pharmaceutical sponsors

into my searchbox and I was led to a page about a publication by The Stationery Office, viz.

The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Fourth Report of Session 2004-05

By Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Health Committee, Health Committee Parliament Great Britain House of Commons.

Whoever the actual people were who wrote this publication, they were clearly aware that the drug industry's sponsorship of charities is not motivated by philanthropy, but by greed, in the hope and expectation of increasing the sales of their drugs, and thereby increasing their profits. You may draw your own conclusions from that, as I do mine. It leads me to conclude that the advice given on the websites and in the literature of some at least of the major health campaigning charities, such as AsthmaUK, DiabetesUK, British Heart Foundation and others, may not really be in the best interests of the patients/sufferers they ostensibly serve. I hold in mind that we are constantly assured that business companies must act in the interests of their share-holders. So if I wanted to help people suffering from asthma, I personally would advise them to cut down on salt and salty food as this would improve their health in many ways. It would reduce excess fluid retention and thereby reduce excess weight, one of the risk factors for asthma, It would reduce high blood pressure if they had high blood pressure. It would reduce breathing problems. - And very importantly, if they had gained a lot of weight from using prescribed steroids for their asthma symptoms, it would speedily reduce that weight gain and the other serious adverse effects of prescribed steroids.(See my webpage about prescribed steroids.) What I would definitely not do is donate to AsthmaUK... - I don't donate to drug company profits.

Yet Another Plug for Healthy People to Take Statins...

The Telegraph reports that statins are once again in the news, with researchers again advocating that healthy people should take statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs. An extraordinary claim is made in the report:

"Cathy Ross, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "It is well established that most people with heart and circulatory disease benefit from taking statins.

"This study brings together evidence from several clinical trials to highlight that statins can benefit people who don't have symptoms of heart and circulatory disease, termed 'primary prevention'."

I urge you to read about nnt (number needed to treat) here. There you will find that very few people actually do benefit from taking statins. The vast majority of people who take them do not benefit, despite having the bother of taking them every day for years.

Far more people experience unpleasant side-effects from statins than benefit from them. The chief benefit of statins is to the drug companies who manufacture and sell them.

The best, cheapest, and most effective way to lower your risk of heart attack, reduce heart disease, lower high cholesterol levels, lower high blood pressure, reduce excess weight and benefit your health in a host of other ways with no adverse side-effects whatsover is to reduce your intake of salt and salty food as much as you can. Salt/Sodium reduction is of especial benefit to people who already have heart and circulatory disease or high blood pressure, or are overweight, etc. Salt reduction is real 'primary prevention'.

I don't know why the British Heart Foundation persists in banging the drum for statins, instead of stressing the many huge benefits of sodium reduction. - What's in it for them? Why do they want more and more people taking drugs - even when there is nothing the matter with them? - What's in it for them?

Very often it is prescription drugs that cause heart problems, etc. in the first place...)o: - drugs like steroids, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, antipsychotics and many more that are frequently over-prescribed and frequently unmonitored. It's best to avoid prescription drugs unless you feel they are really necessary. As a whole, they do far more harm than good.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

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

Prof Peter Weissberg is again wanting statins to be prescribed more widely.

This Telegraph article reports that Prof Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, is suggesting that prescribing statins should be considered, in order to protect against blood clots in the veins of the legs and in the lungs. This guy does an awful lot of suggesting that statins be taken. - Forgive me for being cynical and asking, is there something in it for him?

I wish that as medical director of the British Heart Foundation, he would be as ardent to advise people to avoid salt and salty food - the simplest and most effective way to lower cholesterol levels and high blood pressure, and reduce the risk of heart disease and heart attacks - as he is to suggest prescribing drugs with many adverse side-effects to people who are not ill, in the questionable expectation that the drugs may possibly prevent illness.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Visitor/s from the British Heart Foundation have been reading my blog and my webpages because of my critical blog entry about them yesterday.

I see I've had someone from the British Heart Foundation visiting the blogpost I made about them yesterday. They've also visited my website. They appear to have spent a lot of time reading my stuff.

Hopefully they will now consider altering the misinformation about obesity on their website.

I've also noticed they don't mention cutting down on salt/sodium in their advice about how to lower high cholesterol on this page http://www.bhf.org.uk/keeping_your_heart_healthy/preventing_heart_disease/cholesterol.aspx, and yet this is probably the most effective dietary adjustment you could make to lower your cholesterol level as it will simultaneously reduce high cholesterol, reduce excess weight, reduce high blood pressure and reduce any fat retention.

Yes, I know they mention lowering salt intake elsewhere on their website, but they do not give it the importance it merits. Indeed they've only been mentioning salt intake at all for a relatively few years, because I certainly remember some years ago visiting one of their charity shops and picking up one of their leaflets there which had no mention whatsoever of salt intake. I decided against donating anything to them as their advice was so flawed.

And this is their page about diabetes - http://www.bhf.org.uk/keeping_your_heart_healthy/preventing_heart_disease/diabetes.aspx - Here again, no mention is made of the importance of low salt intake in preventing type 2 diabetes and managing diabetes.

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 Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free. I am not a doctor or a dietician or a nutritionist. My website does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

The British Heart Foundation (the BHF) is mainly giving the wrong information about the causes of overweight and how to reduce it.

I've been looking at their website today and on this page - http://www.bhf.org.uk/keeping_your_heart_healthy/healthy_eating/managing_your_weight.aspx - it says:

"Why do we gain weight?

By taking in more energy (calories) than your body is burning, you will gain weight. The extra calories that you’ve consumed will be stored as fat – too much of which results in weight gain. If you’re not physically active, you’re even more likely to gain weight.

Fatty foods, sweet foods and sugary drinks are all likely to cause excess weight gain""

I have quoted selectively, but not inaccurately. This is their main message about what causes weight gain, but the fact is that excess weight gain is caused by fluid retention, NOT by calorie excess or energy imbalance. The fluid retention is maintained by salt/sodium intake, and the excess fluid is mainly held in the blood vessels, so that if you are very overweight you may already be aware of distended and painful veins. Calorie reduction does not reduce fluid retention, nor does it reduce fat retention.

On the same page it also says:

"How can I lose weight?

The best way to lose weight is by reducing your calorie (energy) intake by cutting down on the fat and sugar in your diet and following a healthy balanced diet. Being physically active also plays an important part in losing weight as you burn up calories.

Try not to lose weight too quickly. Losing weight slowly and steady about one to two pounds (between half a kilo and one kilo) a week is healthier, and you are more likely to keep the weight off for good. Gradual weight loss is the safest and most effective long term way to lose weight."

None of this is true. There is no evidence to support what they claim about burning up calories to lose excess weight. - 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

Here are the facts about obesity:

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 Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free. I am not a doctor or a dietician or a nutritionist. The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

A drastic lack of cardiac care is putting heart patients lives at risk, according to a new study, released today by the British Heart Foundation (BHF)

Lack of cardiac care 'putting heart patients lives at risk'
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Only 40 per cent of patients receive rehabilitation after a heart attack or heart surgery, the research shows, despite a Government target to offer it to 85 per cent of them.

Staff shortages mean those who do receive the care get just one third of the recommended hours of physiotherapy.

The report, released today by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) failed to find a single cardiac rehabilitation programme in Britain with the minimum recommended number of staff.

Studies have shown that patients who do not receive cardiac rehabilitation are 26 per cent more likely than those who do to die within five years.

Mike Knapton, director of prevention and care at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Cardiac rehabilitation saves lives but the majority of patients don't get the service.""

You can lower your risk of heart attack and other heart problems by reducing your salt intake.

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 or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

Should cigarette vending machines be banned to stop their being used by child smokers?

Move for ban on cigarette vending machines

Extract from Telegraph:

"Cigarette vending machines could be banned to stop them being used by child smokers, it emerged yesterday.

As many as 50,000 children are feared to use the machines to acquire cigarettes, and there are fears that figure will rise after last month's raising of the legal age at which tobacco can be bought.

The British Heart Foundation is attempting to secure a Private Member's Bill to introduce legislation banning the sale of cigarettes through the machines, in the hope it will help reduce the number of youngsters smoking."

I would be in favour of this.


Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

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

Statins - the benefits claimed and the many disbenefits that are seldom mentioned.

The worrying wonder drug - Telegraph

Extract:

"Last week, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) unveiled new guidelines stating that statins should be prescribed to people with a 20 per cent risk of developing heart disease.

So we can expect them to appear on many more breakfast tables. In fact, new research suggests that as many as 14 million people aged 40 or over could be eligible to take them.

Statins, which were introduced in the late 1980s, include the brands Zocor, Lipitor and Crestor, have been hailed as a wonder drug.

They lower cholesterol and, according to the British Heart Foundation, reduce the risk of dying from coronary heart disease by 25 per cent. Their use has also been associated with improved function of the endothelium (the lining of blood vessels), less plaque in the blood vessels, general anti-inflammatory action and even the prevention of blood clots.

Further studies are under way to establish how helpful they are in fighting dementia, cancer and cataracts."

But PLEASE click on the link and read the whole of the Telegraph article and you will see that these drugs - Zocor, Lipitor and Crestor, benefit very few indeed of the people who take them and do harm to a great many of those who take them and actually cause the death of hundreds of people who take them... - The only people who really profit from these drugs are the shareholders and other beneficiaries of the drug companies who produce and market them. - And click on the statins tag at the foot of this blog entry to read further evidence of the harm that statins do.

The safest, most effective way to lower your risk of heart disease, is to cut down on your intake of salt and salty food. This will also lower your cholesterol, lower your blood pressure, reduce any excess weight, reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes or having a stroke, and will give you many, many other health benefits. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

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

See Sodium in foods

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

More about the dangers of statins and the ignorance of doctors about the devastating symptoms they cause when prescribed to lower cholesterol levels.

The deeper I go into it, the fishier statins seem to become - Dr James LeFanu - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Statins again, whose mass prescription is turning out to be much more serious (and sinister) than I could have supposed.

The response to my last two columns has been, almost literally, overwhelming, so why are doctors apparently so unaware of the devastating symptoms they can cause? The British Heart Foundation (whose chairman, Professor Peter Weissberg accused me last week of being "easily led" on this matter) claims that statins have "minimal side effects" compared to those taking controlled (or placebo) drugs. And, indeed, several major trials report an astonishingly low incidence, of around 0.5 per cent, of the commonest side-effects of severe muscular aches and pains, both in those taking statins and those taking the placebo.

This seems staggeringly unlikely, the more so since a recent survey of 5,000 patients taking statins, conducted for a Dutch television programme, produced a rather different figure of 27 per cent, That would mean that nearly a million people are affected by statin-induced muscular pains and reduced mobility. It is not necessary to be a conspiracy merchant to suspect that something fishy is going on here.

The need to find out what is really happening is all the more urgent as medical leaders and prominent cardiologists are now pressing for a yet lower "ideal" cholesterol level, with a target of less than four, which will catch yet more millions in the statin trap. Several readers report that their family doctors have already doubled the doses of their drugs in the last six months. The time has surely come, with such vast sums of public money at stake, for questions in the House."

There should also be questions in the House about the reckless overprescribing of steroids and other drugs that cause massive fluid retention and therefore obesity and even morbid obesity. They damage the lives of scores of thousands of innocent sufferers in this country, and probably worldwide the total of victims would number millions.

If you are concerned about the health of your heart, it would be wise to cut down on the amount of salt that you eat. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)