New Year Resolution Suggestions

If you've not yet decided on your New Year Resolution, here are some suggestions that will benefit the health of your body, the efficiency of your brain and the happiness of your spirit:

1) Give up dieting. It is a major cause of ill-health and depression. Dieting to try to lose excess weight is ineffective, unnecessary and 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://www.bmj.com/content/327/7423/1085.full 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 fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/27/sciencenews.research for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

2) Seriously cut down on salt and salty food.

3) Avoid prescription drugs, especially antidepressants, steroids and painkillers, unless they really are necessary and you have checked out their side-effects. The adverse effects of pharmaceutical drugs are often far more damaging than the problem for which they have been prescribed.

I wish you better health, success and happiness in this New Year of 2012!

So have you given up something for Lent?

Did you give up smoking? - That is excellent.

Did you give up sugar in your tea and coffee? - That's great. - Give up cakes and biscuits as well...(o:

Did you give up eating salt and salty food? - No? - It would improve your health in many ways and you would have more energy to do your work, pursue your interests, help other people... I hope you will consider cutting out, or at any rate, cutting down on, salt and salty food. That mainly means giving up processed food, ready meals and takeaways.

Did you give up dieting? - Unlikely, I guess. - And yet, dieting really isn't good for you. - If you've actually started to diet as a Lenten task, I hope you will consider swapping that resolve, and consider giving up sugar and salt instead. - Doing that swap would achieve the weight loss you wish for, without damaging your health as dieting does.

Dieting in early pregnancy risks damaging your baby's brain

If you eat too little in early pregnancy you may stunt your baby's brain development. Read physorg.com article.

Here is the safe way to avoid gaining excess weight in pregnancy.

The health of millions of women in the UK is endangered by nutritionally deficient diets

Millions of British women have potentially dangerous diets ranging from teenage girls missing out on healthy food to pensioners not getting their vitamins it is claimed. Health experts pulled together the results of 110 separate scientific and medical research studies to paint a worrying picture of what the UK's female population eats. Not only are women in the prime of their lives not getting the right amount of nutrition, which in turn can affect the weight of newborn babies too, but the poor diet extends across all age groups.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: The studies cited in this report show that the nutrients deficient in British women’s diets include magnesium, zinc, potassium, iodine, iron, vitamin B2 and vitamin D. As if this were not bad enough, however, independent studies conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries have shown that the nutrient content of our food has fallen substantially over the past few decades as a result of our soils becoming depleted of minerals. In the Netherlands, for example, research shows that vegetables now contain so few essential minerals, such as selenium, that their levels can barely be recorded. To learn more, click here.

Firefighters had to knock down bungalow wall to free fat woman to get her to hospital

See the report in the Telegraph. This is so horrifying. Poor Joanne Ettienne is only 45, but has not been able, because of her obesity (she weighs almost 40 stone) to leave her bedroom for 3 years. And this is all because of the dangerously incorrect obesity misinformation that continues to be churned out.

Her skin is vastly overstretched and delicate because of the huge mass it contains, and this, of course, makes it vulnerable to infections and tears and other damage. Yet it is extremely unlikely that the hospital she is in will provide her with the food she needs in order to lose weight, fast, easily and safely. She needs to eat food that, as far as is humanly possible, contains NO ADDED SALT WHATEVER. She would lose several stones in weight rapidly, and would feel so much better and so much more comfortable. Simple diuretics should also be considered.

I do hope they do not put the poor woman onto a saline drip for any length of time for some reason or other. That would probably be the last straw for her poor fragile skin and blood vessels.

She does NOT need to diet. - I expect she's spent/wasted years of her life dieting. But diets don't work.

Obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. – No matter how many doctors and other ‘experts’ claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true. – The hypothesis has never been put to the test scientifically and there is certainly not a shred of valid evidence to back it up.

There is, however, a wealth of evidence to show that it is NOT true. – Millions upon millions of innocent overweight people have tried over decades to reduce their excess weight by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise. – Overwhelmingly they fail to lose weight this way. – They get tired; they feel cold and ill and hungry. – But they do not lose weight (or if they do it is only temporary). – The ‘experts’ then tell them that they have done it wrong; they haven’t tried hard enough or long enough; they are lying; they are mistaken, etc. – The ‘experts’ cannot get their heads around the fact that it is THEY who are wrong; THEY who are lying; THEY who are mistaken…

Obesity is usually caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. – It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.

Now – what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? – Here are the main causes:

1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.

Amitriptyline is also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, and is present in some combination drugs, e.g. Limbitrol is a drug which combines amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.

Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking Lexapro, Prozac, Fontex, Celexa and Paxil. These are not tricyclic antidepressants; they are SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.

2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone and SK-Prednisone), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone, betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair – a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen – like some birth control medication (contraceptives) – amitriptyline and some other anti-depressants, some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing’s Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients’ progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient’s progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.

3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.

4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.

These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

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

Antidepressants don't work and most of them make you fatter.

So why take them? - It's a no-brainer.

BEFORE you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. - I hope this will save a lot of people having their lives/health damaged by harmful, useless drugs.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.
See amitriptyline
And see Sodium in foods

C4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' was better tonight because the dieters ate less salty food

Well Channel 4's My Big Fat Diet Show was better tonight - better in that the dieters had their intake of salty snacks restricted. The previous programme scarcely mentioned salt as an ingredient to avoid. Because of the lowered salt intake this time it was to be expected that there would be significant weight loss, as there was, because of the water loss resulting from sodium reduction. The dieter who didn't lose weight this time despite sodium reduction was the one who drank a lot of alcohol, and of course alcohol also causes fluid retention (ascites, in the abdomen) in people who are sensitive to salt. - Details about sodium in food and about alcohol on this page: Sodium in foods

The best and safest way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food. - If you do this gradually you will lose weight gradually; if you do it more rapidly you will lose weight very fast indeed, especially if you make sure that you eat plenty of fruit and (unsalted) vegetables as well, because fruit and veg are rich in potassium, and potassium displaces some of the sodium in your body, thus enabling you to excrete more of the excess fluid from your body. Reducing salt intake is safe and we are advised to eat less salt. Most of us eat too much salt.

It is DIETING - by which I mean eating fewer calories than your body requires - that is harmful. Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7423/1085 for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fatter.

If you have fat retention as well as fluid retention, you will find that the fat retention is also reduced by cutting down on salt. - Fat retention is not caused by eating too much fat and is not cured by eating meals low in fat. - Read about fat retention here: FAT RETENTION

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight.

Channel 4's 'My Big Fat Diet Show' last night gave the usual bad advice to people wanting to lose excess weight. The overweight women dieters featured on the show were told they must cut down on calories to lose weight, and that for this diet they must eat only 1200 calories a day - i.e. fewer calories than their bodies need.

For the purposes of the programme there was a gimmick of providing 100 calorie portions of different foods, e.g. a quarter of a cup cake was a 100 calorie portion and one very large egg was a 100 calorie portion. Fresh vegetables obviously provided a lot of food for 100 calories, compared with the junk processed food that seemed to be the major element of the food usually eaten by the women.

At the weigh-in after a few days, most of the women had lost weight, and one, who had lost several pounds, was congratulated warmly and told excitedly that that was proof that reducing calorie intake reduces overweight. - This was despite the fact that another one of the women had gained 2 pounds! - The woman who had gained 2 pounds was very distressed because, presumably, she had put a lot of effort into reducing her calorie intake. - But she was not told that gaining weight was proof that eating fewer calories increases overweight! - No, of course she wasn't. She was told not to worry, that weight gain sometimes happens, but that she would lose weight if she continued with the calorie reduction.

It's all such nonsense. The women victims chosen for the show are all serial dieters and therefore should know from experience that dieting almost always results ultimately in weight gain to a heavier weight than before the diet.

If only programme-makers could abandon their misplaced obsession with calories and dieting, and instead think of outcomes for the subjects in their programmes. All overweight people are sensitive to salt and that is why they are overweight. And so the safe, fast, effective way to lose excess weight and reduce obesity is to cut down on salt/sodium and salty food, and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and plenty of real food, instead of salt-laden processed junk.

And no need at all for that pointless exercise, struggling up and down stairs to 'use up calories'...)o: - What a waste of life that is!

If those women had cut down on their salt intake instead of cutting down on calories they would ALL have lost several pounds, without any hunger and without damaging their health. And then we could have stopped having these silly TV dieting programmes cluttering up the schedules and harming people's health.

How to lose weight

Sodium in foods

Would targeting depression early prove helpful? - Not in my opinion.

BBC News reports that Ministers are saying that targeting depression early is the key to prevention. I can't say that I agree that that will prove successful. In my opinion continually talking about depression and referring to it as though it is a real disease, and as though there is agreement about what it constitutes, tends to lead vulnerable people to focus on the idea that that may be what their problem is. But depression is only a putative disease.

My personal opinion is that the best measures to take to reduce 'Depression', whatever anybody means by that slippery word, is to curb the use of the word in a medical context and concentrate instead on enabling people to eat good nutritious meals.

Dieting or fasting or so-called 'detoxing' or any other form of inadequate nutrition is a major cause of depression, tiredness, sad thoughts and all that syndrome of negativity. Unfortunately, the increasing incidence of obesity is accompanied by more and more pressure on overweight people to "eat less and exercise more". If this advice is taken by overweight people, especially if they are young and sensitive, then they will not lose weight. They will more likely gain weight because inadequate intake of food/calories/nutrients leads to increased fluid retention, which is actually the cause of excess weight gain and obesity. Then being more and more overweight makes most people feel more and more depressed and frustrated.

The government would be well advised to get the food industry drastically to lower the amount of salt/sodium it adds to its products: to do this not by exhortation and by slow increments, but to use the full power of the law. It is added salt that is the main cause of child obesity and is the means by which older fat people who are sensitive to salt usually keep gaining weight. The food industry has harmed the health of the nation for long enough. Their leaders should be taken to court and punished if they do not desist from what is effectively, poisoning, however slowly, the majority of their customers.

The other HUGE problem is the ever-growing numbers of drugs being prescribed. Many drugs, including cortico-steroids and HRT, anti-psychotics, NSAIDS, and, ironically, anti-depressants CAUSE salt sensitivity/weight gain/obesity/depression and a host of other health problems and this proliferation of reckless, inappropriate prescribing should be curbed, again, BY LAW.

Good nutrition is the best and safest medicine.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

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

You don't need diet food to lose weight; you need unsalted food.

Give up dieting and eating diet junk! - Avoiding salt and salty food is the SAFE, healthy, natural, effective, RAPID way to lose weight!

See Sodium in foods and Lose Weight

And visit The Truth About Obesity

Is dieting making your nails weak and causing them to tear? and making you suffer hair loss, thinning/brittle/breaking hair in poor condition?

Is dieting making your nails weak and causing them to tear? and making you suffer hair loss/thinning hair/brittle hair/dull/dry/breaking hair/hair in poor condition? - You need to give up dieting and lose weight the safe, easy way instead: that is, lose excess weight by cutting down on salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage 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

Vulnerable groups

Sodium in foods

See also FAT RETENTION

advice for pregnant mothers

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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Associated health conditions

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

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

Anti-depressants can make young people more than twice as likely to feel suicidal

Kate Devlin in the Telegraph reports that antidepressants can make young people more than twice as likely to feel suicidal. - Crazy, isn't it? - The times I've heard doctors boasting about 'saving people's lives', when actually they have been talking about prescribing antidepressants! - not about saving lives at all: just about prescribing pharmaceutical junk! - We don't want young people being made to feel suicidal from taking this junk that purports to be treatment for depression! The only people who benefit from this are the drug companies and their shareholders et al.

A major cause of 'depression', especially in young people, is dieting or otherwise eating an inadequate diet. It is not necessary or desirable, or even safe, to diet. - To lose excess weight safely and quickly, without drugs or side-effects, give up dieting completely and just concentrate on cutting down on salt and salty food. This reduces fluid retention, the initiating cause of excess weight. This also reduces depression.

Actually there is no good reason to prescribe anti-depressants to anyone. - See Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' about research by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch.
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 damage 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

See advice for pregnant mothers
Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions
and FAT RETENTION

More and more people are taking antidepressants

More and more people in America are taking antidepressants, as TIME reports, despite this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. And remember, they have many harmful side-effects, e.g. weight gain is a common side-effect of antidepressants and other pharmaceutical drugs.

And remember, when you read the claims of pharmaceutical firms that antidepressants are effective, that "Research undertaken by pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted." - See http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/news/business/pharmaceuticals-need-clinical-trial-regulation-$443564.htm where Sir Iain Chalmers, editor of treatment monitoring organisation the James Lind Library, argues that the untrustworthiness of clinical health trials has reached endemic proportions in the UK.

A brief search on the internet will find many other examples of collusion between researchers and the drug companies, e.g. The Boston Globe's article about Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa's investigation into whether Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman's association with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson influenced his research findings about their psychotropic drugs, and therefore harmed children.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.