Spending hundreds of millions of pounds on drugs treatment programmes has failed to improve the success rate of addicts coming off heroin and cocaine.

Addicts kick drugs 'at a cost of £1.85m each'

Extract from Telegraph article:

"Spending of hundreds of millions of pounds on drugs treatment programmes has failed to improve the success rate of addicts coming off heroin and cocaine, according to a report.

The budget of the National Treatment Agency (NTA) has increased from £253 million in 2004-05 to £384 million last year, it said. But the number who emerge from programmes drug-free is still small.

Last year, 5,829 users were cured of their addiction, compared with 5,759 three years ago."

The astronomical expense of the monumentally useless/inefficient National Treatment Agency beggars belief! - It should be dismantled - if that's the word - immediately, if not sooner! - But of course our profligate and equally useless Department of Health defends the National Treatment Agency!

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.

Why not try a low-salt marinade instead of your usual one?

See Low-salt marinades make for great grilling

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.

The cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, has been linked to many cases of serious adverse reactions, including several deaths.

Cervical cancer drug Gardasil linked to deaths

Extract from Telegraph article:

"Fears have been raised over the safety of a cervical cancer vaccine which health officials plan to give all 12-year-old girls, after it was revealed that the drug has been linked to several deaths.

Three young women are reported to have died days after the drug Gardasil was administered, while the jab is also suspected of triggering "adverse reactions" in 1,700 patients. The figures were uncovered by campaigners who made a freedom of information request in the US, where the vaccine was approved for use a year ago.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, which extracted the data, said: "Reports on the vaccine read like a catalogue of horrors."

The women – aged 12, 19 and 22 – suffered heart attacks or blood clots after being injected with Gardasil, which protects against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus which causes most cases of cervical cancer. Hundreds of others reported suffering what could be adverse reactions, including paralysis, seizures and miscarriages.

The news comes just days after the announcement that the drug would be added to the childhood immunisation programme."

Health tourism: - more and more British patients are going abroad for treatment.

Fears and frustrations driving patients abroad

Extract from Sunday Telegraph article:

"The threat of contracting a fatal superbug, and despair over hospital waiting times are fuelling a boom in health tourism, with Britons turning to overseas hospitals in growing numbers.

A survey – as new figures are about to be published on MRSA and Clostridium difficile – reveals that a third do so because of rising hospital infections.

Figures this week are expected to show a continued rise in outbreaks of the superbugs. And experts warn that the latest statistics would represent "the tip of the iceberg" with hundreds of thousands of cases going undetected."

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.

Have you gained weight from taking HRT, e.g. Premarin, or other medication containing oestrogen, e.g. contraceptive tablets? - Here is what to do...

The weight you have gained is because of fluid retention. Oestrogen, as well as being a sex hormone, is also a steroid that like some other steroids causes your body to retain sodium along with accompanying water. - Reducing salt/sodium intake reduces fluid retention, so if you avoid eating salt and salty food you will easily lose weight by excreting some of the excess sodium and water in your urine.

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.

Obesity is the 'main cause of cancer in non-smokers'. - Readers of my website will have known this for years...

Obesity 'main cause of cancer in non-smokers'

Extracts from the report in the Telegraph:

"Obesity has become the main cause of cancer in non-smokers, a global conference will hear next week.

The World Cancer Research Fund has spent five years collecting information about the effect bodyweight, diet and physical activity has on the risk of developing cancer and will present its findings on Thursday.

Smoking is still the single biggest cause of cancers, accounting for one third of the 300,000 cases in the UK each year.

But only one quarter of people smoke and research has found that for non-smokers being overweight or obese is the most important avoidable cause of cancer. In the UK, 12,000 people a year could avoid cancer if they maintained a healthy weight, according to Cancer Research UK.

Obesity is known to cause between nine and 15 per cent of breast cancers – more than defective genes.

A recent study found women who have gone through the menopause and are obese increase their risk of developing breast cancer by a third."

"Obesity is also known to increase the risk of bowel cancer, and accounts for between 11 per cent and 14 per cent of cases annually. Men who are obese have a 60 per cent increased risk of developing the disease.

Studies have also estimated that a quarter of kidney cancers, a third of oesophageal cancers and four in 10 womb cancers are caused by obesity.

There is evidence that obesity is linked to nine other rarer cancers.

Prof Tim Key, an epidemiologist at Cancer Research UK who is presenting at the conference in London next week, said: "Already the majority of people don't smoke and for them obesity maybe the most important identified cause of cancer."

He said eating a balanced diet was important to remain a healthy weight but there was little credible evidence that so-called superfoods such as garlic, broccoli, or berries actually prevented cancer."

My lip tends to curl when people advocate 'a balanced diet'. - Meaningless verbiage, in my opinion. - To avoid or to reduce obesity, the paramount advice should be to avoid eating salt and salty food, avoid dieting, eat good meals with plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables, AND ABOVE ALL, AVOID PRESCRIBED MEDICATION UNLESS IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU TAKE IT. - SO MANY PRESCRIPTION DRUGS CAUSE FLUID RETENTION AND THEREFORE CAUSE OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY.

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.)

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.

Sir John Bourn is set to retire over the scandal of his excessive travel expenses while head of the National Audit Office (NAO).

How unsackable Sir John Bourn sealed his fate

Extract from the article in the Telegraph:

"The man who was virtually impossible to sack finally agreed to retire yesterday, after a furore over the six-figure taxpayer-funded expenses bill he racked up travelling the world, often with his wife.

Sir John Bourn, the Government's spending watchdog, spent £365,000 in travel expenses and £27,000 in restaurant bill in just three years as head of the National Audit Office (NAO).

The auditor general is currently one of the few officials who cannot be sacked by the Government and can only be dismissed after votes in both houses of Parliament. However, following pressure from MPs, Sir John announced yesterday that he would step down in January.

He still faces the prospect of an embarrassing public showdown next week with MPs, who were drawing up plans for improving the "governance" of the NAO following the expenses scandal.

His six-figure expenses bill is particularly embarrassing for the Government as Sir John was also recruited in 2006 to a new position to police the ministerial code of conduct, which sets out standards of behaviour for ministers. Downing Street said yesterday he would also step down from this role when he retires."

I already had a low opinion of Sir John Bourn. - Over 2 years ago I wrote to Edward Leigh MP, who was chair of the Public Accounts Committee, explaining that obesity and the host of obesity-related illnesses needed a change of thinking. - Here is part of what I wrote to him:

"In your position as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, I hope that you will be interested in my findings, which if implemented, would produce massive improvements in health and massive savings in NHS health expenditure. It seems clear to me that the orthodox advice on how to reduce obesity must be wrong since at any one time most obese people are reputed to be dieting (ie eating fewer calories than their body needs in the belief that this will make them slimmer) - and yet obesity continues to increase in both incidence and severity - so the advice does not work. It is clearly based on assumption and assertion, rather than evidence. - I seek to interest you in the connection between salt/sodium intake and obesity. I would be very grateful if you would be kind enough to read the rest this email.

The increasingly prevalent ill-health spectrum encompassed by the term 'obesity' is commonly attributed to over-eating and/or to inactivity. But we all know people who take little or no exercise and eat a great deal but stay slim and fit. Clearly an abundance of calories and inactivity does not cause obesity. So why do certain people - and only certain people - become obese? - My website is www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk which explains about the groups of people who are sensitive to salt, and therefore suffer from excess water retention in the blood stream (leading to obesity) - most importantly, children, and most tragically and dramatically, steroid victims. - I promise that you will find it interesting. It gives an alternative explanation of how obesity comes about. Furthermore, I submit that inactivity is a consequence of obesity rather than a cause of it. The conventional calorie/fat-reduction advice is extremely well-known, even by children, yet has been spectacularly unsuccessful. There has never been any actual evidence to support the calorie theory. - There is, however, evidence against it. (See below.) Most people who are overweight are either dieting or have dieted, yet most of them are heavier than when they first dieted. This CANNOT be because they are all doing it wrong or all lacking in will-power! - I submit that the advice is not only wrong, but is counter-productive. - I lost over 3 stones in weight solely by reducing my salt/sodium intake.

An article by me, about Obesity and the Salt Connection, appeared in the December 2004 issue of British Mensa's monthly glossy magazine. It appears on my website, accessed from a link on the left. I hope you will spare the time to read it. In the recent (April 2005) issue of the British Mensa magazine is a letter from a Mensa member, Joyce Barnard, whom I advised a few years ago that to lose weight all she needed to do was reduce her salt intake. She followed my advice and lost 5 stones (70 pounds) in a year! She went from 17 stones to 12 stones. Every severely obese person who has followed my advice to forget about calories and simply make a genuine effort to reduce their salt intake has lost weight. Typically they seem to lose about 14 pounds in the first month."
My letter was passed on to the National Audit Office for their comments on the points I raised in my letter.

The eventual outcome was that I was sent a copy of "Tackling Obesity in England", a publication dated February 2001 and priced, according to its cover, at £11! - It is described as a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General - i.e. Sir John Bourn - and the claim is made therein that the National Audit Office saves the taxpayer millions of pounds every year...(o: - Not on the matter of obesity, it doesn't, Sir John!!! - When you are completely wrong in your basic assumptions, what follows from them is not going to be the best way forward...

In the Introduction it says: "While some people are more genetically susceptible than others, the direct cause of obesity in any individual is always an excess intake over energy expenditure." - This is a categorically untrue statement. - The most severe obesity is caused by reckless prescribing of drugs that result in sensitivity to salt, sodium retention and water retention, and all obesity is worsened by following the dieting advice of the health professionals who fraudulently claim that eating fewer calories than the body requires results in obesity reduction. - It doesn't; it results in weight gain, because of increased fluid retention.

If he or Edward Leigh had bothered to read my letter and give serious consideration to what it said, they could have started to turn round the obesity crisis by now, and saved a lot of suffering by individuals, and saved a lot of taxpayers' money too.

Scale of pharmaceutical industry's payments to US medical schools revealed. - Is this a bit of bribery and corruption?

Scale of pharma payments to med schools revealed

Extract from report in New Scientist:

"Stock options, free meals, lecture fees - the pharmaceutical industry showers them all on department heads at some US medical schools."

Obviously there should be curbs on this dodgy largesse...

First UK births using new fertility treatment that does not require women to take potentially dangerous hormone drugs.

First UK births using revolutionary procedure

Extract from Telegraph report:

"Twins have become the first babies born in Britain using a revolutionary new fertility treatment that does not require women to take potentially dangerous hormone drugs.

The boy and girl were born a week ago after they were conceived through vitro maturation (IVM) - a technique which is quicker, safer and cheaper than traditional IVF.

The twin babies, whose parents have requested that their identities not be released, were born a minute apart at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Both are said to be healthy.

The boy, who was born first, weighed 6lb 11oz, while his sister weighed 5lb 14oz.

Although the new technique currently has lower success rates than IVF, doctors believe it could one day become the standard treatment for infertility.

The twins are the first babies born in the UK using the technique, however about 400 IVM babies have been born worldwide.

The Oxford Fertility Unit, the private clinic which announced the twins' birth, became the first clinic in the UK licensed to carry out the procedure earlier this year.

Mr Tim Child, a reproductive medicine researcher at Oxford University and a consultant gynaecologist at the Oxford Fertility Unit, said: "I'm absolutely delighted for the couple."

If you are infertile because of obesity, you can reduce your weight safely, and thereby increase your fertility, by minimising your intake of salt/sodium.

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.)

Supermarkets may be misleading their customers with omega 3 claims

Supermarkets 'mislead with omega 3 claims'

Extract from report in the Telegraph:

"Supermarkets and food companies are misleading customers by making baffling health claims about omega 3, an organisation has claimed.

The fatty acid has become increasingly popular in recent years after some studies suggested that it can help reduce the risk of heart disease.

However, parts of the food industry have been accused by the consumer group Which? of "riding the money-making omega 3 wave".

A survey of 2,405 of their members found that 45 per cent were more likely to buy a product that claimed to be high in omega 3 than the same food without such a claim.

However, it found that more than half the products on supermarket shelves which claimed to include omega 3 had negligible health benefits, because they either contained so little or the wrong sort of the acid.

Sliced bread, yoghurts, fruit juices and milk were all found to exaggerate the amount or type of omega 3 that was included in the food. Omega 3 is found naturally in oily fish, such as salmon or mackerel.

It can also be found in plant extracts. However, this vegetarian type – ALA – is not nearly as beneficial, health experts claim."

Undoubtedly the best, the safest, the most effective and reliable way to reduce risk of heart disease is to avoid eating salt and food containing salt/sodium. This brings a host of other health benefits too...(o:

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.)

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.

A good news story about healthy hot meals in some rural schools: - set up by Tim Crabtree and Local Food Links

Recipe for success

Extract from Guardian article:

"As Dorset this week stages a celebration of local food - a reflection of the growing interest in local, organic produce that began with the rise of farmers' markets - the man who helped kick-start this trend has turned to something more significant than catering for the rural rich.

Tim Crabtree set up the West Dorset Food and Land Trust, which initiated the farmers' markets, but now runs Local Food Links, a community-benefit society that cooks and delivers hot meals to schools around Bridport.

Crabtree says the impetus behind Bridport's LFL was that while visitors and retired people could afford to shop at farmers' markets, ordinary working people struggled. "We live in a low-wage economy, and so our remit has been to address the fact that local and organic food has become an expensive niche market."

Almost two years ago, in response to the Jamie's School Dinners series on TV, the government announced that all schools should serve hot meals by September 2008. But amid all the fuss about "scrotum burgers" and Turkey Twizzlers, one fact was overlooked: 25 years ago, under the last Conservative government, all the primary schools in Dorset got rid of their kitchens.

The county council thought microwavable ready meals would be the only option if schools were to reinstate hot lunches, but companies refused to tender for the job, saying they were unable to do it profitably due to the large number of small schools spread across such a rural area.

LFL stepped in, initially offering hot, freshly made soup to two primary schools. Ruth Clench, headmistress of Bridport county primary school, says: "There was a really good take-up, and a superb part of the experiment was that some of the children helped make it. That persuaded other children to try it." Laura Wood, whose daughters attend the school, says: "Before, my kids had only ever eaten Heinz tomato soup, and it encouraged me to make soup at home, too."

Encouraged by the success of the soup kitchen, Crabtree expanded the operation in April to provide hot meals two days a week to eight schools. He hopes that by Easter next year all eight schools will be supplied with hot meals five days a week. The target is 95,000 meals, which would take the area to the current national average of a 40% take-up.

What has helped in getting children to accept a wide range of vegetables is that they get involved in choosing them. LFL holds tasting sessions for the children and their parents, pays close attention to their comments, and also sneaks extra vegetables into their meals - for instance, by pureeing butternut squash and adding it to tomato sauce (a Jamie Oliver recipe)."

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.)

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.

Professor Julian Le Grand, chair of Health England, says a completely fresh approach is required to reverse the epidemic of obesity...

Unveiled: radical prescription for our health crisis

Extract from the article in the Independent:

"A radical plan to persuade people to stop smoking, take more exercise and change their diets was proposed last night by a leading Government adviser.

As new figures were published yesterday showing that England tops the European league as the fattest nation in the EU, Professor Julian Le Grand, chair of Health England and a former senior Downing Street aide to Tony Blair, said a completely fresh approach was required by Government to reverse the epidemic of obesity and to tackle similar ills caused by "excess consumption".

In a speech to the Royal Statistical Society last night, Professor Le Grand said instead of requiring people to make healthy choices – by giving up smoking, taking more exercise and eating less salt – policies should be framed so the healthy option is automatic and people have to choose deliberately to depart from it.

Among his suggestions are a proposal for a smoking permit, which smokers would have to produce when buying cigarettes, an "exercise hour" to be provided by all large companies for their employees and a ban on salt in processed food.

The idea, dubbed "libertarian paternalism", reverses the traditional government approach that requires individuals to opt in to healthy schemes. Instead, they would have to opt out to make the unhealthy choice, by buying a smoking permit, choosing not to participate in the exercise hour or adding salt at the table."

Let us consider the professor's suggestion to reduce obesity, namely participation in an exercise hour. - Exercise can be beneficial in many ways, but it has no effect in reducing obesity. - Exercise has nothing to do with preventing obesity - Forget about it! - Obesity is NOT caused by overeating or by inactivity. It is caused by fluid retention, frequently because of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. (When doctors prescribe drugs that cause sodium retention and water retention they should warn the patient not to eat salt, or food containing salt, while taking the medication. When they do not give this warning, the inevitable consequence is considerable weight gain.)

Read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt: vulnerable groups

Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' or 'dieting' is unnecessary, ineffective and harmful.

So you will realise that I am enthusiastically in favour of a ban on salt in processed food. - This is what steroid victims and other salt-sensitive people desperately need.

However, Prof Le Grand, apparently, is advocating the salt ban in order to reduce incidence of high blood pressure - which it would - and not informing people that salt reduction is the fastest, safest, most reliable way of losing excess weight. - If the salt ban were to be implemented, obesity would be reduced, but presumably the reduction would falsely be attributed to the exercise hour!...)o:

But people desperately need to be told the TRUTH!

Also, Professor Le Grand, an excellent way to reduce the incidence of morbid obesity would be to curb the reckless prescribing habits of doctors. - See above.

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.)

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.

Shocking story of how incompetent bureaucracy led to an innocent young woman being incarcerated for 70 years.

Innocent woman freed after 70 years, dies

Extract from Telegraph report:

"A woman who was locked up for 70 years after being falsely accused of stealing half-a-crown, has died just months after being reunited with her family.

Jean Gambell spent most of her life being passed around various mental institutions after being sectioned as a teenager as a “feeble-minded person”.

Over the years, the 85-year-old lost all contact with her family.

It was by chance that her brother discovered that she was still alive and was able to organise a tearful family reunion at a care home in Macclesfield.

"I couldn't believe it. I suddenly realised that my sister was still alive," said David Gambell, 63, who stumbled across correspondence relating to his sister that was sent to his dead mother.

"I rang the care home straight away and they confirmed that our sister was there."

At the age of 15, in 1937, Jean was falsely accused of stealing 2s 6d (12.5p) from the doctor's surgery where she worked as a cleaner.

She was sectioned under the 1890 Lunacy Act and even though the money was later found, she has been moved from mental institution to mental institution."

The Department of Health ignored damning report into an outbreak of Clostridium difficile at a hospital trust in Kent more than five months ago...

Government ignored deadly hospital bug report

Extract from Telegraph account:

"The Department of Health knew of a damning report into an outbreak of Clostridium difficile at a hospital trust in Kent more than five months ago and failed to act, it was claimed last night.

A draft copy of the Healthcare Commission report was first received by the health department on May 3, yet ministers only intervened when the document became public in October, the Tories said.

They are now demanding to know why the Government failed to act immediately on the report, which found that the outbreak had "probably or definitely" killed at least 90 people at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust hospitals.

Drafts, requiring factual accuracy checks on figures, were sent to health officials in May and September. But Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, told Parliament that he only received the report on Oct 9."

Scotland plans to abolish prescription charges

Scotland plans to axe prescription charges

Extract from Telegraph article:

"The public services ''apartheid" between England and Scotland has widened again as Scottish ministers pledged to abolish all prescription charges north of the border.

Your view: Should English taxpayers subsidise Scottish health care? While millions of patients in England will still be expected to pay for vital medication, prescriptions in Scotland will be available free of charge within four years. The move was cited as the starkest example yet of the "unfairness" of the current funding arrangement, with English taxpayers forced to pay towards improvements to health care and education available only in Scotland. Scottish residents already have access to free eye care and dental check ups, free personal care for the elderly, extra central heating grants and a number of drugs deemed "too costly" for the National Health Service in England and Wales. As a result of plans announced earlier this summer, Scottish students will receive a free university education and pupils in the early years of primary school could soon be taught in class sizes as small as 18." Unfortunately, most prescription drugs are far from 'vital', as the article mistakenly implies. - Overwhelmingly, prescribed drugs do far, far more harm than good. - See I've been warning for years about prescribed drugs Scotland already has the highest obesity in Europe, and free prescription drugs are likely to increase obesity still further, since so many of the drugs cause/worsen obesity because of sodium retention and water retention. 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.) 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.

Continuing to give the wrong advice will further increase child obesity and wreak havoc with children's health and happiness

Parents of obese children to get warning letters

Extract from the Telegraph report:

"The weighing programme was not well received during its first year and as many schools did not take part, the statistics were deemed to be useless.

Last year the participation levels were much improved, however, with the weights of almost a million children being collected as a result of every primary care trust in England and Wales taking part.

Ministers believe they can now introduce the controversial letters and all parents will be sent the obesity warnings as a matter of course.

The growing scale of the crisis was revealed in a Government report last week which predicted up to half of adults and 26 per cent of children would be obese by 2050.

The Foresight report also warned of the life-threatening problems of childhood obesity and suggested that there would be a 70 per cent rise in type 2 diabetes, 30 per cent increase in strokes and 20 per cent increase in heart disease.

As a result overall life-expectancy could decrease by as much as 13 years.

When the report came out, Mr Johnson insisted that children would be the focus of efforts to curb the trend.

He said: "More than 80 per cent of obese 10 to 14-year-olds remain obese into adulthood."

He added that more would need to be done in schools to in terms of the nutrition of the meals and participation in physical education.

Ministers are now bracing themselves for criticism that the warning letters could stigmatise fat children."

All that is needed to reduce obesity in children is for them to eat meals low in salt/sodium. Dieting is harmful and ineffective; exercise is hazardous and humiliating for obese children and adults.

Overweight and obesity are not caused by overeating; they are caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt/sodium. - You can read on my website about the vulnerable groups of people:

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.)

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.

I've been warning for years about the catastrophic effects of drugs recklessly prescribed by ignorant doctors who do not notice or monitor outcomes.

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3081840.ece

Special report:

Prescription medicines -

from the Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Each year, Britons are dying in their thousands because of the side effects of prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Reported deaths are up 155 per cent in a decade – and experts are seeking new safeguards. Nina Lakhani reports

Published: 21 October 2007

Thousands of patients are dying each year as a result of side effects from pills prescribed by GPs and hospital doctors.

And while the number of deaths from suspected adverse reactions to prescription drugs has more than doubled in the past 10 years to 973 last year, medical experts warn that as few as one in 10 deaths and other serious complications are being reported.

Doctors' poor prescribing skills and repeated failures to recognise accurately adverse drug reactions in patients have seen deaths multiply by about two and half times since 1996.

Experts are calling for a revamp of the current warning systems designed to alert doctors to potentially lethal prescription drug treatments.

They believe tens of thousands of patients suffer life-threatening, disabling or other serious reactions that need hospital treatment because of a failure to spot and report many dangerous side effects and drug interactions quickly enough.

One study estimated that the equivalent of all the beds from seven general hospitals – 5,600 places – are occupied with patients suffering from drug reactions at any one time, costing the NHS more than £450m each year. Researchers believe around 70 per cent of adverse reactions could be avoided through better training, computerised prescribing systems and staff spending more time talking and listening to patients."

If you read the whole article, you will notice the efforts being made to absolve our overpaid doctors of their appalling guilt in the matter of negligent prescribing. - But the best way to remedy matters is to label this harmful prescribing for what it is - criminal negligence - and have some of these dangerous doctors in court to face criminal charges. That would stop the terrible harm being done to their innocent patients/victims. - Power without responsibility and without sanction is always a recipe for disaster.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html on 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.)

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.

Portion control is not necessary to reduce excess weight; all you need to control is your salt/sodium intake.

Overweight and obesity are not caused by overeating; they are caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt/sodium. - You can read on my website about the vulnerable groups of people:

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.)

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.

Some British people are going abroad for dental treatment because of the shortage of NHS dentists.

Lack of NHS dentists forces patients abroad - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Nearly 80 per cent of the population no longer has an NHS dental service. But rather than going private here, increasing numbers of people are heading abroad."

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.)

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.

BEWARE OF EXTREMELY HIGH SALT CONTENT IN MEALS AT PIZZA HUT, KFC, McDONALD'S AND BURGER KING. - CHILDREN ARE ESPECIALLY AT RISK.

Fast food 'almost as salty as the sea' - Telegraph

Extracts:

"Family meals at fast food outlets contain more than twice the recommended daily amount of salt, a new study claims.

Health campaigners say the "big four" restaurants - Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's and Burger King - are behaving irresponsibly by making some meals almost as salty as sea water.

A report by Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) named Pizza Hut as the worst offender, with an average family meal containing more than twice the maximum level of salt for adults, and almost four times the limit for a six-year-old child.

Prof Graham MacGregor, the chairman of Cash and the director of St George's Hospital Medical School blood pressure department, accused the fast food chains of using excessive salt so children become hooked on them and help drive up profits.

"Salt is very addictive," he said. "You see this in children when you give them good, home-cooked food without much salt, they think it does not taste right."

"Cash is calling for firms to slash salt levels in their products and to display traffic light symbols on all products so customers can see at a glance how much their food contains."

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!

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

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.)

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.

Beware Amitriptyline, also known as Elavil or Endep. - It can, and often does, cause massive weight gain because of fluid retention. - Avoid salt!

See Amitriptyline and weight gain - (The website does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

And read my Mensa article - Obesity and the Salt Connection

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

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/

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

Charity chief, Camila Batmanghelidjh,speaks out against labelling of obese children

Charity chief lashes out at labelling of obese children - Guardian

Extract:

"Camila Batmanghelidjh said that since obesity moved on to the government agenda, many more children were being teased in school about their body shape.

"Is it really right to define children by their diseases? As adults we do it with goodwill, but we are not really thinking carefully about the implications for the lives of children," she told the Guardian Healthy Kids Summit yesterday.

Ms Batmanghelidjh, who has won acclaim for her work with challenging, often violent young people at Kids Company, said the same problems applied to children labelled disturbed or antisocial.

"They can be taught to deal with their emotional distress, but they are not going to manage if they are called names and labelled," she told the conference in London."

I agree with Ms Batmanghelidjh - especially as the usual advice about obesity is so unhelpful.

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!

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

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.)

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.

Trans fats are to be banned

Trans fats to be banned to halt rise in obesity - Telegraph

Extract:

"Last month, a report by Gordon Brown's former adviser, Sir Derek Wanless, found that obesity was one of the problems that would "overwhelm" the NHS in the future.

Targeting trans fats is one of the ways the Government intends to tackle the problem. Many supermarkets have already started phasing out the use of trans fats in thousands of their own-brand food products. In addition, hundreds of branded foods have been reformulated to avoid using the fats.

Although they can form naturally in dairy products, most of the trans fats in the diet come from processed food. They are added by manufacturers to extend shelf life and enhance the taste."

I have no doubt at all that manufactured trans fats are bad for our health, but they are not a major factor in the rapidly increasing incidence and severity of obesity around the world. The main contributory causes of the 'obesity epidemic' are fluid retention/sodium retention/salt sensitivity, frequently initiated by recklessly-prescribed pharmaceutical drugs by a medical profession dangerously ill-informed about drug adverse side-effects, and by the high levels of salt ladled into our food by the profit-centred food industry.

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!

How to Lose weight!

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.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

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

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

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

Up to 20 hospitals had higher levels of clostridium difficile last year than the health trust at the centre of the superbug outbreak that killed 90+

Twenty hospitals worse than superbug ward- Telegraph

Extract:

"Up to 20 hospitals had higher levels of clostridium difficile last year than the health trust at the centre of the superbug outbreak that killed at least 90 people, new figures reveal.

List of problem hospitals

Iraq soldier Jamie Cooper latest superbug victim

At the weekend it emerged that 18-year-old Private Jamie Cooper, the youngest Briton to be injured in Iraq, could be one of the latest victims of the disease which causes severe diarrhoea and is spread by poor hygiene.

The list of hospitals with a poor C.diff record emerged as the Government was accused of ignoring an internal memo in 2006 that warned that the infection was becoming endemic in NHS hospitals and suggested that £270million was needed to tackle it. "

Superbug hospital chairman, James Lee, has resigned.

Superbug hospital chairman steps down - Telegraph

Extract:

"The chairman of the NHS trust at the centre of Britain's biggest superbug outbreak has resigned following pressure over the decision to award the trust's chief executive a £250,000 pay-off.

James Lee resigned from the board of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospitals NHS Trust in Kent following an outbreak of Clostridium difficile which claimed up to 90 lives.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced the resignation to the House of Commons, apologising for the "truly scandalous" outbreak.

Mr Lee was last week ordered to attend a meeting with local MPs to explain why Rose Gibb was given the severance deal just days before the extent of the trust's failures to prevent the spread of clostridium difficile was revealed in a damning report.

Mr Johnson stepped in to block the payment to Miss Gibb, who left her post as head of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust by "mutual agreement" at the end of last week.

It unclear whether Mr Johnson has the legal power to prevent Miss Gibb being paid the money, and the matter now seems likely to end up in court.

MPs and health campaigners have expressed their disgust over the trust board's decision to award Miss Gibb the money in the first place."

Was your skin once white (or tanned) and now it is red (e.g. red face) or pink (e.g. pink arms) or purple/blue (e.g. purple feet)? - Read on...

You have become sensitive to salt - maybe from prescribed steroids, HRT or antidepressants, maybe as a result of eating salty food during pregnancy, maybe because of dieting...

Your skin has become thinner, and the colour - red/pink/purple/blue - is from the blood vessels beneath the surface... Have a look at 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.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

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

Should schools think twice about installing Wi-Fi systems?

Schools 'should wait for official report' before installing Wi-Fi - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Schools should think twice about installing Wi-Fi systems while an official investigation into their safety is carried out, teachers' leaders said yesterday.

Philip Parkin, general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, said that the investigation – announced late last week by the Health Protection Agency – suggested that there was "no smoke without fire". He added that schools should consider more carefully whether they should introduce them into the classroom.

The £300,000 investigation marks something of a victory for The Independent on Sunday, which for five months has been calling for one, and will be the first of its kind. The agency says it can find only one peer-reviewed study in the scientific literature on radiation received from Wi-Fi, even though it is now to be found in half of all primary schools and four-fifths of secondary schools in Britain, and is being extended to cover vast areas of cities such as Norwich, Brighton, Manchester and London.

The agency says: "Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly widely used... However, there has not been extensive research into what people's exposures actually are to this new technology and that is why we are initiating this new programme of research and analyses."

It plans to spend at least a year "on a systematic programme of research" measuring radiation emissions from a wide range of Wi-Fi equipment and laptop computers, and calculating the doses received by adults and children using them."


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!

How to Lose weight!

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.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

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

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

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

Half of British people will be overweight in a generation, a Government report predicts...

Half of us will be overweight in a generation - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Nine out of 10 men will be overweight - half of them obese - within 15 years. And in 25 years, at least half the population will be obese, a leaked Government report reveals.

Have your say: How should we tackle obesity?

The obesity crisis is described as being as great a threat as that posed by climate change.

It is expected to cripple NHS resources, with spending linked to obesity predicted to triple in less than a decade, and rise seven-fold by 2050.

A draft analysis from the Foresight programme report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that if current trends continue, at least half the population will be obese by 2032, while half of all primary school boys will reach that point by 2050.

In less than 15 years, 86 per cent of men will be overweight, half of them obese, according to the inquiry which was ordered by chief scientific adviser Sir David King."

Actually, I wrote to Sir David King, and to other personnel at the Department of Trade and Industry, which he headed, years ago, explaining the real causes of obesity and the way to reduce it. My information and insights were not acted upon. - If they had been, the obesity crisis would have been well on the way to being solved by now, and much suffering would have been avoided. The many MPs, journalists, broadcasters, scientists, medics, etc to whom I have written over the years have also disregarded what I wrote to them...)o:

The advice currently being given by obesity 'experts' is wrong, is highly damaging, and is a major factor in increasing obesity.

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!

How to Lose weight!

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.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

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

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

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

Britain's hospitals are buying special equipment to cope with increasingly obese patients. - They should be providing low salt/sodium meals for them.

Hospitals on 'supersize' alert - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Hospitals have doubled their spending on "supersize" beds, trolleys and mortuary fridges to cope with increasingly obese patients.

An investigation of 150 hospital trusts shows the amount spent by the NHS on equipment that can take the weight of increasingly huge patients has risen from £5.8 million to £13 million in just three years.

Hospitals said they were treating increasing numbers of "super-heavy" patients weighing 40 stone and more. Several said they had been forced to ban the heaviest patients from floors which could not take their weight.

Data collected by the Liberal Democrats under the Freedom of Information Act shows the average hospital spent £60,000 on supersized equipment this year, compared with £30,000 spent three years ago."

Its health spokesman Norman Lamb said: "This is a stark and depressing demonstration of the failure of this Government to tackle the problem of obesity.""

The main cause of morbid obesity is pharmaceutical drugs, recklessly over-prescribed by doctors insufficiently knowledgeable about their adverse side-effects and failing to do appropriate monitoring. - The main drugs that cause obesity are steroids like prednisone and prednisolone, oestrogen-containing medications like HRT, and tricyclic anti-depressants like amitriptyline. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

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!

How to Lose weight!

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.)

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

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

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

Warning about NHS superbugs went unheeded...

Labour failed to heed NHS superbugs warning - Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"They were told last October, in a confidential memo which The Sunday Telegraph has seen, that hospitals were not taking the problem seriously and that £270 million was needed urgently to combat the bug. But Labour provided just £50 million, topped up by another £50 million this summer as public concern grew. The memo was written by Liz Woodeson, the head of the Department of Health's infection unit, just a month after Britain's biggest superbug outbreak infected 1,100 patients at three Kent hospitals, killing 90 and contributing to the deaths of 240.

Miss Woodeson warned the then health secretary Patricia Hewitt that "virtually all trusts" were reporting outbreaks. "We suspect some trusts simply see it as an unavoidable fact of hospital life," she said.

Miss Woodeson added that £270 million should be invested in efforts to combat bugs, including £200 million on isolation rooms.

Cases have risen five-fold in the past decade, with 55,000 now reported annually, while the number of deaths linked to it tripled over four years to reach almost 4,000 by 2005.

Clostridium difficile is a highly contagious bacterium commonly caught from touching contaminated surfaces."

"A Healthcare Commission investigation into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust found "significant failings" in infection control at three of its hospitals between April 2004 and September 2006. They included unwashed bedpans, a lack of isolation units and beds too close together.

Maidstone's MP Ann Widdecombe, cared for her mother Rita at home until her death in May aged 95 rather than send her to Maidstone Hospital.

She said: "Old folk go into our hospitals and die of dehydration because drips run out. They starve when trays are taken away with meals untouched. They ring bells for nurses which are ignored."

Police and the Health and Safety Executive are investigating the Kent outbreak."

Toxic make-up? Toxic shampoo? toothpaste? window sprays? etc. - Channel 4 programme.

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/T/toxic/ - I watched this Channel 4 programme - presented by Sarah Beeny - on Thurs Oct 11th evening and found it interesting. - A lot of iffy chemicals are being absorbed into the bodies of users of make-up and of commonly-used household products. And when pregnant women use these products the babies growing inside them can be harmed by the chemicals. Also breast-feeding mothers can transfer the chemicals to their babies in their breast milk.

NHS superbug board should have been sacked, say Tories - Guardian reports today

NHS superbug board should have been sacked, say Tories - Guardian

Extract:

"Government ministers were last night accused of aggravating the NHS superbug scandal by failing to take charge of the hospitals where 90 people died as soon as the scale of mismanagement became clear.

Andrew Lansley, the Conservative shadow health secretary, last night said the three hospitals of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust should have been brought under direct departmental control.

In a report on Thursday, the Healthcare Commission said scores of patients died from infection by Clostridium difficile bacteria in Britain's worst outbreak of a hospital superbug. It blamed the trust board for a catalogue of safety lapses that caused the death toll between April 2004 and September 2006.

Mr Lansley said the government should have acted to suspend or sack the trust's board as soon as it received an advance copy of the commission's findings in the middle of last week.

Instead, it allowed directors to agree a package worth more than £250,000 for Rose Gibb, the chief executive, who quit her job on Friday last week without any announcement or public explanation.

Mr Lansley said: "This devastating report should have precipitated the immediate removal of those responsible on grounds of gross negligence. Normally employees are entitled to written warnings, but in circumstances of gross misconduct most contracts allow for summary dismissal. I do not know why that did not happen in this case."

The commission accused the trust of "significant failings in infection control". When inspectors went into its hospitals after the C difficile outbreaks were contained, they found patients being provided with bedpans that were visibly dirty with faeces. Bedding and equipment was left on the floor, fire doors were blocked and needle and sharp instrument disposal bins were overflowing on four wards. Staff washed cups in treatment room sinks and stored food in the clinical refrigerators.

Mr Lansley said: "The Department of Health could and should have removed the entire board and any directors with a contribution to make could have been appointed to a new one. The power exists when ministers have no confidence in a board. It is difficult to imagine what might be a graver offence than the one they perpetrated." Sacking the board would have forestalled any payoffs, he added.

After media criticism of the payoff on Thursday, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, instructed the trust to withhold the severance payment, pending legal advice. The department said yesterday its lawyers were still considering the matter."

Are household cleaning sprays and air fresheners to blame for the high rates of asthma across Europe?

Asthma blamed on cleaning sprays and air fresheners - Independent

Extract:

"Household cleaning sprays and air fresheners could be to blame for the high rates of asthma across Europe.

Use of the sprays on a regular basis increased the risk of developing the disease by between 30 to 50 per cent, a study of 3,500 people in 10 European countries including the UK has found. Even occasional use as little as once a week increased the risk. Air fresheners, furniture sprays and glass cleaners were found to have the strongest effect. Liquid cleaners and polishes had no effect.

The findings come from the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, one of the world's largest studies of lung disease. They are published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Previous research has shown that professional cleaners have increased rates of asthma but it is the first time that domestic cleaning has also been shown to create a risk."

Cutting down on salt/sodium intake can reduce asthmatic symptoms.


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!
How to Lose weight!

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.)

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

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

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