Dr Mercola is warning us about the presence of glyphosate in human urine

Dr Mercola is warning us about the presence of glyphosate in human urine and about the many health risks that may result from this toxic component of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller. If you are interested in health and in the safety of food, as surely you are, I urge you to read his article.

The Daily Telegraph investigation exposes corrupt practices in the metal on metal medical devices saga

Journalists from the Telegraph have been investigating the scandal of the faulty 'metal on metal' hip implants. These implants have caused increased pain and disability for patients, some of whose experiences are highlighted in this article. All too often the agencies that the public looks to to safeguard our health and well-being turn out, as in this case, to do the opposite - at great cost in personal suffering to the patients involved and in financial cost to the NHS and the wider economy. In this article we read:

 

"The European system of regulation has prompted widespread concern over whether medical experts are really at the vanguard of deciding which devices can be implanted in patients. 

 The Daily Telegraph and the British Medical Journal therefore decided to investigate the rigour of the licensing process, amid allegations that dozens of private companies are competing with one another to offer licences for medically questionable devices. Was profit being put before patient safety?"

And of course when you read the article you cannot but conclude that profit is indeed being put before patient safety. This is but one of the many undesirable consequences of our present membership of the EU, notorious as it is for corruption and waste. The Telegraph carries an analysis of the flawed regulatory system, written by Carl Heneghan. I urge you to read it, and to put yourself in the place of the innocent victims of this chicanery.

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to EU

It's beyond parody isn't it? - See this report in the Telegraph, where you will read: "The European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize, despite a year marked by riots on streets of many capitals and the looming prospect of an acrimonious break up amid an economic crisis caused by the euro." - Could any other entity possibly have wrought greater damage on the EU's member states than the Gargantuan parasitic bureaucracy itself?

""The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," said the Nobel prize committee.""- Now would you say that the Nobel prize committee was, in this instance, exhibiting lack of sanity or lack of probity? - I am of the opinion that they are still sane... I have written about the Nobel prize committee before.

Obesity is on the increase in Scotland. Scottish people desperately need to be told the truth about how to reduce obesity.

BBC News reported in November 2009 that two-thirds of men and more than half of women in Scotland are now overweight. Well that's a great shame and much of that increase could have been avoided. It is about eight years since I contacted Bill Gray, who was at the time National Project Officer of the Scottish Community Diet Project, Scottish Consumer Council, and also others working in the same field. We wrote and we spoke on the phone. I sent him lots of material and evidence making clear that to reduce obesity/overweight it is necessary to reduce salt intake and that it is not necessary to diet or to try to lose weight by exercising. Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the blogpost from Sunday 29 November 2009, but since it was important and is still just as relevant, I am reposting it today, 8 October 2012.

This is an extract from what I wrote to him (in late 2001, if I remember correctly):

"As I explained to your female colleague, I am not asking you to endorse my
advice.

I am asking you to tell people that it could be salt and water retention
that has caused their weight gain and that if they reduce their salt intake
they could lose weight. They have only to try it. They will then find for
themselves that they lose weight. Without the information that salt can be
the cause of weight gain they are highly unlikely to discover it for
themselves.

I have quoted to you EXACTLY what Sir Richard Doll wrote to me, but you seem
to have discounted what HE says, as well as what I say.

Why I say you have treated me shabbily is mainly because you are not a man
of your word. You promised, TWICE, to reply to my letters. You did not
reply. Your colleague, stammering and almost incoherent when I spoke to her,
also promised me a response. Again nothing. Good God! You would think I was
asking you to tell people something that might endanger their health rather
that enhance it! Cutting down on salt is entirely safe and completely free.
Just give the additional information that it could also cause weight loss in
the obese.

Why don't you have the courage to believe Sir Richard?

My MP has sent me a photocopy of a letter he has received from Pauline
Jackson, a friend of mine and another of his constituents. In a separate
email, I shall send you a copy of it.

THEN PLEASE COME BACK TO ME ON THIS.

Copying my stuff and passing it on to others in the hope that they will have
the courage to do what you yourself lack the courage for, is just a waste of
time and paper. They will be as cowardly as you have shown them that you
are. They too will be unwilling to put their heads above the parapet and you
will all continue to leave many THOUSANDS of people needlessly suffering all
sorts of health problems and all sorts of emotional and social and
psychological distress. Do you really want that on your conscience?"

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, 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
Sodium in foods
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

It's National Poetry Day today

Safely stored in memory, poems reappear to strengthen us in times of trouble and take us back to happier days.

When I was little and it was bedtime, my mother used to read/recite a poem to me about all nature's little ones going to bed. My favourite verse began with the butterfly drowsy. I often used to think about the butterfly drowsy. The words were heady with sleep and mystery.

The butterfly drowsy has folded its wing,
The bees are returning, no more the birds sing;
Their labour is over, their nestlings are fed,
It's time little people were going to bed.

PositiveMoney's generic article: Why Are House Prices So High

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Why Are House Prices So High? (Press Release)

In the ten years up to the start of the financial crisis, house prices rose by over 200%. Why? A common belief is that there are too many people, too much immigration, and too few houses to go around.
Our new 2 minute video addresses the root causes of the housing crisis. It explains that house prices aren’t high because there’s “too many people and too few houses”. And it answers the crucial question: Why are house prices really so high?

INFOGRAPHIC: Why are house prices so high?

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You can find more details on this here:
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/consequences/house-prices/
and
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/consequences/house-prices/in-depth/

Our aim is to raise awareness and start conversations about the causes of the housing crisis and get us thinking more critically and creatively about the solutions.

Positive Money is a not-for-profit research and campaign group. They work to raise awareness of the connections between our current monetary and banking system and the serious social, economic and ecological problems that face the UK and the world today. In particular they focus on the role of banks in creating the nation’s money supply through the accounting process they use when they make loans – an aspect of banking which is poorly understood. Positive Money believe these fundamental flaws are at the root of – or a major contributor to – problems of poverty, excessive debt, growing inequality and environmental degradation. For more information, please visit: http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/

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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.) 

You can count them on the fingers of one thumb

You can count them on the fingers of one thumb - approximately - the civil servants, the Ministers and Secretaries of State, the MPs, the Select Committees, the Department of Health officials, the agents and agencies of the State, the GMC, the GDC, the powerful, the influential, the appointed ones, they who will rush, fly, speed, drift, dawdle, limp, turn to stone, in their resentful trudge to your aid when you have been harmed by that colossal injustice misnamed the NHS. - Just thought I'd clarify that.

Jeremy Laurance draws attention to vast scale of drug company criminality

Jeremy Laurance draws attention in his detailed article in the Independent to the vast scale of drug company criminality and the failure of multibillion-dollar fines to curb the criminality. What is necessary is for the criminal bosses of these companies to appear in court to be tried and sentenced as individuals. Prison sentences for the people who initiate and sanction the bribery, corruption, fraud, cover-ups, lies, etc that result in great and avoidable suffering and premature deaths for innocent victims would be more likely to curb the criminal behaviour than corporate fines.

Thomas Szasz has died

The Telegraph carries an excellent obituary of this great man. Thomas Szasz was a Professor of Psychiatry who did not 'believe in' mental illness. Many of his books are about what he described as "the myth of mental illness" and about the great harm that is done by a belief in mental illness (or the pretence of believing in it). I read most of his books in the 80's and I found them compelling reading. I regard him as the foremost writer on psychiatry and I have written about him before. (See HERE.) His books display an incisive intelligence and a mordant wit, as he sought to protect the victims of psychiatric labelling from the harm that such labels do in the hands of medically-qualified knaves and fools supported by a misbegotten legal system.

A reminder about the high levels of salt in bacon

A few days ago the Guardian reported that CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) has again warned about the high salt content of bacon, and has described it as "now the second-biggest source of salt in the UK diet after bread." - Me, I sometimes describe it as laden with salt. One of the reasons the food manufacturers make it so salty is so that they can get away with adding more water to it, because salt helps to hold water in a product. This enables salt water to be sold at the same price as the bacon which holds it, and accounts for that off-putting feature, when frying bacon, of seeing water vapour rising from it as some of the water content is driven out by the heat. 

 

If you have high blood pressure, or if you are overweight - particularly if you are overweight as a result of taking anti-depressants or prescribed steroids or anti-epileptics or anti-psychotics - then cutting down on salt-laden food like bacon would benefit your health immensely and you would feel sooo much better. - Go on! - Give it a try!

The Radio 4 Appeal today was presented by Henry Blofeld on behalf of the Macular Disease Society.

The Radio 4 Appeal today was presented by Henry Blofeld on behalf of the Macular Disease Society. I thought it was a pity that the opportunity was not taken to mention that there is evidence of a dietary measure that can help with this condition. See this BBC2 webpage. Eating spinach helps to prevent "age-related macular degeneration", a major cause of poor eyesight and sometimes blindness. It can even repair some damage to the macula that has already occurred! - The nutrient involved is lutein. This nutrient is also contained in kiwifruits, leeks, peas, eggs, broccoli, etc. You can find them easily by using a search engine. Maybe Henry Blofeld would like to try this dietary measure for himself, since he is himself experiencing macular degeneration.