What has the phlogiston theory to do with the belief that the only cause of becoming overweight is eating too many calories and taking too little exercise?

What has the phlogiston theory to do with the belief that the only cause of becoming overweight is eating too many calories and taking too little exercise? - Well both theories are out of date.

In the 18th century the phlogiston theory of explaining combustion and breathing held sway until the 1780s when Lavoisier discovered oxygen and explained its role in burning and rusting, etc. The calories in/calories out theory for excess weight presently held by most of the orthodox medical world is an oversimplistic explanation for the excess weight. Essentially it says that overweight people eat too many calories and take too little exercise, ie they are greedy and lazy. The glaring omission is the fact that a great deal of excess weight has nothing to do with calories at all! - That is because it is water - and there are no calories in water!

Professor Sir Richard Doll wrote in a personal letter to me in August 2001, "I was interested to hear about your experience of being overweight and losing so much weight when you reduced the amount of salt in your food. That a high salt diet combined with certain drugs (of which steroids are an example) will lead to water retention is - or ought to be - well known and, of course, the contrary follows that reducing the salt will lead to the loss of water."

There are so many prescription drugs and classes of prescription drugs, and doctors are constantly being exhorted to prescribe more and more drugs, especially antidepressants, many of which cause water retention and its attendant health problems, notably stroke, high blood pressure and heart conditions, that I would contend that the ever-increasing numbers of prescription drugs being taken must certainly be the cause of a high proportion of obese people being overweight. An additional danger is that so many prescribed drugs are addictive, especially painkillers. So I hope that the theory that the only cause of becoming overweight is eating too many calories and taking too little exercise will soon, like the phlogiston theory of combustion, be consigned to the dustbin of history, and people can be saved from all the ill-health that so many prescribed drugs cause.

If you are about to start taking amitriptyline then be prepared for weight gain, bloating, excessive thirst, painful breasts, swollen face, constipation, memory impairment and other problems.

If you are about to start taking amitriptyline then be prepared for weight gain, bloating, excessive thirst, painful breasts, swollen face, sodium retention, fluid retention, constipation, memory impairment and other problems. You can read here about the adverse effects of taking amitriptyline. The adverse effects are not temporary. You can mitigate the severity of these side-effects by seriously cutting down on salt and salty food.

I've been watching BBC2's The Men Who Made Us Fat

I watched Part 1 of The Men Who Made Us Fat on BBC2 last week. I must say it's a refreshing change to have some evidence-supported information about important causes of the dramatic rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and obesity-related ill-health instead of the usual incorrect propaganda.

In Part 1 it was explained how sugar is a major contributor to obesity and how since the second world war the USA's food industry has been ladling sugar, sugar and more sugar, into its processed junk food products, be they sweet or savoury. And another even more-dangerously obesogenic sugar, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is also added to their food junk and their ghastly soft drinks. This corn product use is massively profitable for America's corn farmers and massively damaging to the health and weight of American citizens. - Especially when it is coupled with the ill-conceived (blame Ancel Keys) misinformation that low-fat food is a good way to lose weight (it isn't and it doesn't work) and that low fat intake is good for our health (it isn't).

So those of us who were paying attention learned that although America purports to be a democracy and proclaims, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," these days it's more like, "Government of the people, by the farm industry's political stooges, for the farm industry's profits, and to Hell with the well-being of the 'American people'".

On Thursday night I watched Part 2, in which it was explained that not content with changing America's food to obesogenic mass-manufactured highly-addictive crap, Big Business perverted civilised eating to a fast feeding process, with fast food outlets serving food fast to customers, who ate it fast (it didn't take too much chewing), sloshing it down with over-sweetened soft drinks, having queued for 'counter-service', so much speedier than table service. And furthermore, they increased portion sizes to ludicrous levels. - I found the gargantuan size of the drinks especially horrifying! 

Well America's citizens are now mostly pretty huge - well huge, certainly, but not so pretty... And they are so big that they almost look like another species. - And what does the food industry suggest as a remedy for this gross obesity problem caused in large part by the food industry itself? - Well, blame it on the victims of course! Like rapists used to do. - The victims need to eat less fat and take more exercise! (NOT)

But it is not lack of exercise that causes obesity, so taking more exercise does not and will not reduce obesity. Obesity causes inactivity, not the other way round, as I explain in my Mensa article. And as Professor Terry Wilkin of the Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry. explained in Thursday's programme. 

Professor Wilkin led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain and found that children do not gain weight because of inactivity and do not lose weight by taking exercise. The study had been commissioned by the government of the time, but the findings were unwelcome, so they were buried and funding stopped, and successive governments, few among them scientists, chose to heed the falsehoods of the food industry, i.e. cut down on fat, especially saturated fat, and take more exercise! - Oh dear! - Do you think it's too much like America's plight? - Government of the people, by Big Business interests, for the profits of the Food Industry and its mates? - What do you reckon? - We've got the Dept of Health being advised about how to tackle obesity by the food and drinks businesses who promote obesity. - Looks like we're gonna be getting more and more obese with all this crap food and crap advice, doesn't it?

And when are they going to get on to SALT? and anti-depressants? and other prescription drugs that cause weight gain?

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.

Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients

Most prescription drugs deplete your body of essential nutrients. Perhaps the most notorious of these widely-prescribed drugs are statins. Quite apart from the patients-reported adverse effects of pain, statins deplete the body of Co-enzyme Q10. Patients who take these drugs should be warned of this and advised to take Co-enzyme Q10 as a supplement. This information should always accompany the prescription. But it doesn't.

 

The many prescribed drugs that cause sodium retention/water retention/fluid retention/weight gain/obesity/water weight deplete the body of calcium, potassium, magnesium and possibly zinc. This means (among other adverse health effects) that the bones get weaker and a fall is much more likely to result in a fracture - and a more complicated fracture. These dangerous drugs include amitriptyline and other tricyclic antidepressants, Epilim and other anti-epilepsy drugs, HRT, steroids including hydrocortisone, prednisone and prednisolone, anti-psychotics and others. Patients taking these drugs should be advised to eat full fat dairy yogurt for its dairy calcium and to reduce their intake of salt and salty food. They should also eat plenty of potassium-rich foods, e.g. vegetables.

 

Diuretics like bendrofluazide/Bendroflumethiazide, which are often prescribed for raised blood pressure, deplete the body of potassium and magnesium. Patients taking these are often advised to eat bananas because of their potassium content.

 

Isoniazid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis, depletes the body of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). This depletion in turn causes disordered sleep, mainly insomnia. Patients taking isoniazid should be prescribed vitamin B6 to remedy this problem.

 

Beta-blockers such as propranolol can deplete our bodies of melatonin, and insufficient melatonin (one of the hormones in the body) causes loss of sleep. If the physician does not prescribe melatonin to help the patient with this problem, melatonin can be bought without prescription.

 

These are by no means all of the nutritional problems caused by prescription drugs, and of course malnutrition is only one of the host of adverse side-effects of prescribed medications. It is best to consider carefully whether taking prescribed drugs is more likely to do harm than good. For example, statins do most people more harm than good, and anti-depressants work no better than dummy pills, but cause many health problems, including cognitive impairment and memory loss. - You've only got one brain and it is not infinitely elastic to cope with brain-damaging drugs. You've only got one body and you can't trade it in for a new one. In my opinion it's best to avoid all prescription drugs unless they really are necessary, and best to have the lowest effective dose and to take it for the shortest time. The safest medicine is good natural food (not processed food), and the best doctor is good nutrition.

How can eating salt and salty food when you are on certain medications cause weight gain?

Table salt is a chemical compound. Its chemical name is sodium chloride. It is present in the bloodstream in solution as sodium ions and chloride ions. It is the sodium ions that are involved in the fluid retention that causes weight gain. This webpage tells you more about sodium in food.

Amitriptyline does not contain salt. But amitriptyline weakens the walls of the blood vessels so that extra sodium ions and the water associated with them can distend the blood vessels so that they hold a greater blood volume than before. - The blood has been diluted a bit with the sodium ions and water. This is an example of fluid retention and an example of one of the many medications that cause it by weakening the walls of the blood vessels.

If you want to get the hang of it better, I suggest you read http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/lose_weight.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/obesity_and_the_salt_connection.html

If your medication gives you a dry mouth or makes you thirsty

If your medication gives you a dry mouth or makes you thirsty, then it may be causing fluid retention, and fluid retention results in weight gain and sensitivity to salt (and many other unpleasant and undesirable side-effects). If you want to reduce the weight gain then the options are: reducing the dosage, gradually weaning yourself off the drug, changing the medication to another, and/or seriously cutting down on salt and salty food. The most commonly prescribed drugs that tend to have this effect are anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline.

Thinking of taking amitriptyline or other antidepressants? You may like to think again.

For a start, antidepressants don't work. - See Anti-depressants no better than dummy pills. For another thing, most antidepressants cause weight gain leading to overweight/obesity. And they have many other adverse common side-effects too. Have a read of my webpage about amitriptyline and other antidepressants. So, they don't work and they're harmful. It's a no brainer, isn't it? - A safe, drug-free way to feel less depressed is to cut down on salt and salty food. - Honestly. I'm not kidding. - Just try it! Go on!

Drug-pushing: irresponsible suggestion that tamoxifen and raloxifene be prescribed to prevent breast cancer

BBC News reports "an international panel of cancer experts" recommending that women at high risk of developing breast cancer should be prescribed tamoxifen and raloxifene, despite the risk of serious adverse side-effects from such drugs. 'Cancer experts' who recommend toxic cancer drugs for people who do not have cancer would, I guess, be 'experts' who have cosy relationships with the drug manufacturers and that their foolish recommendation stems from conflict of interest. I say that because I feel that anyone truly concerned about women at high risk of breast cancer would be seeking to protect them from running any unnecessary risks from taking toxic drugs, and would be advising them to safeguard their health by eating good, natural food free of additives, high in nutrition, low in salt/sodium and low in sugar - something like a paleo diet. There is a well-founded opinion that cancers feed on sugar, so it would clearly be best to avoid sugar as far as possible. (Note : it is often the taking of prescribed drugs that predisposes some women to weight gain and breast disease in the first place, i.e. prescribed steroids and HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and many more.)

Steroid victims say GPs gave no warning: archived article from 1995

Very occasionally, I come across sad evidence of the long, long years prescribed steroids have been harming patients, and the comprehensive lack of any effective measures being taken to STOP doctors catastrophically harming their patients. I came across one yesterday.

In this archived article from The Herald, Scotland, we read:

"HUNDREDS of Scots suffering from the side-effects of steroids have claimed they were never warned by their GPs about the drug's dangers.

They claim steroids have caused them to endure crippling illnesses like the bone-crumbling disease osteoporosis, as well as angina, diabetes, cataracts, weight gains, and skin disorders."

In 2011, this is still the situation. The medical profession's ignorance/negligence in the matter of prescribing powerful, potentially harmful/dangerous drugs, including steroids, but many other classes of prescribed drugs too - antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptics, and more - is staggering and scandalous.
If you are a steroid victim, or know someone who is a steroid victim, or victim of some other prescribed drug, there is helpful information on these pages:

• Steroids and HRT

• Amitriptyline and other antidepressants

Melatonin: I take a 3mg capsule of melatonin near bedtime to help me to sleep

Melatonin: On most days I take a 3mg capsule of melatonin near bedtime. It is a natural human hormone that has many roles, but it is as an aid to sleep that I take it. There are many possible causes for a person not secreting enough melatonin. One of the causes is prescribed medication: e.g. beta-blockers such as propranolol can deplete our bodies of melatonin. So if your sleep has deteriorated and you are puzzled as to what has caused this, it may possibly be a side-effect of tablets you are taking or have taken.

But it may be that, like me, you are in a lot of pain and that pain is keeping you awake. - You may feel pretty desperate at times because of severe lack of sleep. You may be wondering whether sleeping pills would be helpful. - I hope you will decide against that course of action. - If you look on the internet you will find a wealth of research findings about the adverse effects of sleeping tablets, or hypnotics as they are also known. And these side-effects are even more harmful to older people. Sleeping tablets are harmful and dangerous and should be avoided, especially by older people.

Doctors often confuse pain, insomnia and depression, so they sometimes persuade patients, particularly female patients, to take antidepressants when they are in pain. Antidepressants do not work for depression and seldom help with pain. They are sometimes helpful for insomnia, but most of them cause serious weight gain and many other adverse side-effects and also cause brain damage years later, so they are better avoided.

The other medication you may be considering, or have very likely tried, is analgesia/painkillers. And you may, like me, have found that they do not help at all with the pain or with the sleep problem. Or you may, like me, be concerned about the many harmful side-effects from them. And you may, like me, prefer 'natural' help when possible, rather than pharmaceutical products.

Well the natural ways to reduce chronic pain are to avoid salt and salty food, and avoid dieting and calorie-counting. And obesity is linked to poor sleep and to greater sensitivity to pain, so it is helpful to lose excess weight. Eat good, nutritious food, preferably low carb, low sugar and high fat of the good sort, such as from grass-fed cows. See LCHF. Make sure you get enough calcium and vitamin D. - See this Fat Retention page, with further information about calcium and vitamin D.

And one of the ways to help with poor sleep is to take melatonin. I believe it is safer than hypnotics, antidepressants and painkillers. - I'm assuming you have already made sure the bed is as comfortable as possible and that the curtains keep out unnecessary light, etc.

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

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

The weight gain associated with oestrogen therapy is an increase in Blood Volume.

The weight gain associated with oestrogen therapy (and with PMT, I am sure, when the body’s oestrogen levels rise naturally) is an increase in Blood Volume. See oestrogen-induced weight gain and PMT. It can easily be reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. Read how to lose weight.

Watch out, South Africa! - GSK has you in its sights!

In this Guardian report, we read: "The rainbow nation is "eating itself slowly to death", according to the drug and healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which says 61% of South Africans are overweight, obese or morbidly obese."

Let's see now: that'll be GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest pharmaceutical company, whose top drug product is the asthma steroid medication Advair, which is well-known for causing weight gain...

Another of GSK's drugs is epilepsy treatment Lamictal, which causes weight gain.

And another is antidepressant Paxil, which also causes weight gain.

I think we can see a common side-effect of these GSK drugs here, can't we? - Weight gain.

You'll probably be aware of the Avandia scandal, revivified in recent weeks. Among the host of harmful side-effects of this very dangerous diabetes drug is weight gain/fluid retention.

So GSK's products are themselves directly causing weight gain - i.e. that's pharmaceuticals that are causing weight gain, yet the pharmaceutical company itself blames overeating for the obesity of South Africa's citizens and doesn't mention drug-induced weight gain at all.

If you have gained excess weight from taking prescription drugs, you can lose some of that excess weight by avoiding salt and salty food. This is the safe, sure, fast way to lose excess weight. - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website here and how to lose excess weight safely and vulnerable groups.

Pharmaceutical drugs are a major cause of obesity - especially of morbid obesity - and all the Pandora's box of ill-health and distress that accompanies obesity. I fear from this report that Glaxo may be setting off on a campaign of further damage to South Africa's unfortunate citizens by conning them into taking weight loss drugs - i.e. further harmful pharmaceutical junk.

Researchers wrongly conclude that cutting down on meat will result in weight loss.

It's remarkable how often researchers draw false conclusions from accurate data. In this BBC News item we read that a study of "almost 400,000 adults found that eating meat was linked with weight gain, even in people taking in the same number of calories.

The strongest association was found with processed meat, such as sausages and ham, the Imperial College London team reported."

But instead of adopting the scientific approach and investigating why the processing of meat, such as sausages and ham, was so significant, they have decided that their research "counters the theory that diets with high amounts of protein and low amounts of carbohydrate promote weight loss." - What nonsense! What arrant nonsense! Research is a waste of time and expense when such an illogical conclusion is drawn! - They also failed to follow the clue about the calories to its logical conclusion.

I suggest that they investigate the significance of salt/sodium intake on weight gain. It's high time somebody did! (High sodium content is the main difference between processed meat and fresh meat.)

How to lose excess weight safely and easily without bothering about calories at all.

See sodium in food.

Groups vulnerable to salt.

Have you gained weight from taking birth control medication (contraceptives)?

And do you want to lose that extra weight? But you are finding it difficult? - You may be surprised to learn that the sex hormones in those contraceptive medications are steroids, and that some of them have some of the same side-effects on the body as the drugs we more usually think of as steroids.

Oestrogen is the sex hormone in contraceptives that is causing your weight gain. And that weight gain is because the oestrogen is causing some salt sensitivity. That means that when you eat salt you gain some weight because the salt is causing your body to retain water. - You know - water weight. - If you cut down on salt and salty food you will excrete some of that water your body is holding in your blood vessels, and so you will weigh less. You will also feel better and have more energy without all that excess fluid to carry round with you everywhere...(o:

Read more about how to lose weight by eating less salt. And read more about steroids, HRT and other prescription drugs that cause salt sensitivity and water weight gain. And read about salt in food.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Panorama: Spoilt Rotten - horrifying child health problems of obesity, bad teeth, drunkenness...

I was truly shocked at what I saw in this programme. You can watch the main points here or watch the whole programme on the i-Player: Spoilt Rotten

Poor little children having to have a general anaesthetic to have a lot of rotted teeth out! Poor little souls. Surely their mothers should/must have known that giving them lots of sweets and sugary stuff repeatedly would rot their teeth? That giving a sugary drink in a bottle to go to bed with is especially damaging? That children need to brush their teeth and go to bed with a clean mouth? - Couldn't/Didn't the mothers notice that their children's teeth were rotting? - Some of the teeth were eroded almost to the level of the gums!

Don't Health Visitors stress this sort of information to mothers? Dental decay like this should not be happening. As the programme stressed, this is an avoidable health problem. It's a great shame.

With regard to the obese children featured in the programme, the one most featured was Leon, a five year old lad who weighs over 10 stone! - Yet I heard not one mention of salt! - Not one! - The doctor advising Leon's mother stressed the need for the lad to exercise more, but it has been proved time and time again that exercise does not reduce or prevent child obesity. Exercise is a good thing but it does not reduce weight. How is it that doctors dealing with problems of child obesity are giving such unhelpful advice? When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Parents should be told this.

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.

See Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods

The programme reported shocking instances of children taken to A and E because they were drunk! And we saw a 13 year old boy who regularly drinks excessive quantities of vodka! Maybe it is time, in the interests of child health, to set limits on the ease with which alcoholic drinks can be bought, and to raise the price of them.

Other children who had been treated for glue ear were suffering unnecessarily because of their parents smoking. Apparently the smoke interferes with the working of the grommets that had been inserted into their ears to assist their hearing. One father gave up smoking and that would have benefited both his own and his son's health. Another father claimed not to believe that his smoking was damaging his child and he continued to smoke. His cigarettes were more important to him than his child's health.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight

vulnerable groups

FAT RETENTION

This article is by Margaret Wilde

The Delivery Man who brought my grocery order today was overweight and had a very red face.

The redness of his face led me to think he had probably been prescribed steroids in the past and taken them, and I plucked up courage to ask him politely if this was the case. Happily, he wasn't offended by my question, and he said yes, he had taken prescribed steroids in the past and yes, they had caused him to gain weight.

Obviously, I couldn't, and didn't, delay him in his work, but I was able to give him one of my cards and encourage him to visit my website where he will be able to discover how to lower his excess weight easily and swiftly and improve his health in a multitude of ways just by cutting down on salt and salty food. I do hope he will visit my website and follow the salt reduction suggestions there. - It would at the very least make it a lot easier for him to deliver the heavy groceries...

How to lose weight

And see Sodium in foods

prescribed steroids

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 Connection

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Sodium in foods

Children and Obesity

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

If you don't want to gain a lot of weight over Christmas, go easy on the salt and salty food.

When people gain excess weight it is because they are sensitive to salt. For them, eating salt/sodium and salty food increases fluid retention in the body, and it is this fluid retention that is the cause of the weight gain. See Sodium in Foods.

Salt sensitivity leads to some fluid retention from alcohol too. So go easy on the alcoholic drinks too.

But the good news is that you don't need to diet, or worry about calories, or avoid fatty foods. The Christmas cake and the cream in your coffee won't make you fat. Just shun the salt.