Parents too readily give children paracetamol and ibuprofen for mild fever

Parents too readily give children paracetamol and ibuprofen for mild fever, the Telegraph reports. There are problems with dosage and over-dosage for children, and with combining the use of each of these drugs in turn, and with the very decision to try to lower the fever anyway, since fever is one of the ways in which the body seeks to fight infection.

Personally I deplore giving these painkiller drugs to children at all. Children should be protected from pharmaceutical drugs and their many potential and actual adverse side-effects. But parents are assailed by frequent advertisements for painkillers, and doctors' training is laced with over-reliance on the prescribing of drugs, i.e. the treatment of illness rather than the promotion and maintenance of health. Painkillers for children were unheard of when I was a child and we were all the better for not being given them. I'm sure we are all better off without most drugs and without their harmful side-effects.

Making sure we eat nutritious meals and get sufficient vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin D and calcium, the vitamin and mineral most often deficient or depleted in people's diets, is the best protection from infection, and prevention is always far better than cure.

Why do nutrition labels include sodium levels, do you reckon? - You CAN'T believe it's because sodium is good for you!

Why do nutrition labels include sodium levels, do you reckon? - You CAN'T believe it's because sodium is good for you! - You can check which foods are high in sodium/salt here.

There's a little rhyming mnemonic about the famous scientist who discovered sodium:

Sir Humphry Davy,
Who abominated gravy,
Lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

I find it curious that although the noun 'odium' gives us the adjective 'odious', there is no parallel adjective 'sodious'. Maybe if Sir Humphry Davy were alive today, having coined sodium he would relish the chance of coining sodious too. It would be a useful word and might assist in warning unfortunate salt-sensitive individuals of the foods they need to avoid. In the meantime, we must be content with sodium-rich and high in sodium and such composites, and I offer sodious as a suggestion for a new word...(o:

David Tench, solicitor and consumer rights champion, who died last month, was remembered on Radio 4's "Last Word" today

David Tench, solicitor and consumer rights champion, who died last month, was remembered on Radio 4's Last Word today, along with four other people. I well remember That's Life, the TV consumer programme from the 70s, for which he worked as legal expert. Until hearing Last Word today, I had not realised that it is David Tench to whom we should all be very grateful for pushing through the Unfair Contract Terms Act of 1977 and the Consumer Protection Act 1987. (See the obituary in the Independent for further details of his life and work.)

We need another such campaigning, public-spirited solicitor/patient rights champion today, to work to reform the appallingly unjust, unfair laws that obtain with regard to medical and surgical treatment both by the NHS and by private healthcare providers. As things are, when patients are harmed by health professionals, they and their families find that the professionals who have harmed them are almost wholly safe from punishment. They are, to all intents and purposes, above the Law. Complaints Procedures are futile and civil court cases are ruinously expensive for the victims who have to pay court costs and wait weary, costly years to get to court at all, if they can manage to stay alive that long.

We need to reduce the terrible toll of suffering and cost that this unaccountability of the medical profession results in. To do that, we need a Law of Contract to apply to doctors and their patients/victims. A law that is not written in such complicated language that lay people cannot understand it, and does not contain terms that are unfair to the patient. We need some lawyers who are on the side of the patients to have a hand in drafting all legal stuff to make sure it protects patients. As it is, there is, effectively, no protection whatsoever for patients against negligent or even deliberately malicious treatment from health professionals. I speak from personal experience on this matter. - Read Fighting the System, which is my online account of my experience. I also wrote a Short Story about this, called Long in the Toothache.

Omega-3 may reduce muscle loss in older people, study finds

Daily supplements of omega-3 fatty acids may boost the production of muscle protein in older people, and reduce the risk of degenerative muscle loss, suggest data from a new human trial. Four grams per day of omega-3 fatty acids for eight weeks were found to increase the rate of muscle protein synthesis associated with increased supply of amino acids and insulin, according to findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Read article at nutraingredients-usa.org

Sanofi Failed To Report Side Effects

In a harsh warning letter, the FDA has reprimanded Sanofi-Aventis for failing to meet regulatory deadlines for reporting serious side effects with many of its drugs, including the Lovenox blood thinner, the Multaq heart drug and the Allegra D allergy pill, and also did not report post-marketing studies or completed, unpublished clinical trials in NDA annual reports.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Chris Kresser has posted his advice on how to heal your gut

Chris Kresser has posted his advice on how to heal your gut. It's worth reading.

Birmingham launches Vitamin D Against Rickets drive

Birmingham is launching a Vitamin D Against Rickets drive. Well done to Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust, who have taken this important initiative to safeguard/improve the health of the children of Birmingham.

Rickets, in former times a disease of poverty and deprivation, has re-emerged in Birmingham and other parts of Britain, partly because of our chronic shortage of sunshine, partly because screening children from possible sunburn has been too zealous, and partly because the preponderance of processed foods and salty snacks makes modern-day children's meals less nutritious than they might be.

You've heard of rickety stairs, no doubt: rickety meaning shaky, not strong, weak, liable to break, etc. A child with rickets is recognisable by bowed legs as well as weakness and by the physical disabilities of this serious bone disease.

Safeguard your children's health by ensuring they get their share of sunshine when our summer eventually brings us some. And protect them from the harm that a salty food intake and ready meals with insufficient nutrition can do to them. Read Fat Retention and the consequences of salty food, insufficient calcium and insufficient Vitamin D. Read also about Salt Intake and Child Health. You can read further about Vitamin D and its many health benefits by clicking on the labels beneath this blogpost.

Australian medical journal has stopped all drug advertising

An Australian medical journal has "stopped all drug advertising forthwith" over concerns it could unduly influence doctors, and has called on similar publications to do the same.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

Half of NHS Trusts are still not complying with Patient Safety Alerts

AvMA, Action against Medical Accidents, reports that half of NHS Trusts are still not complying with Patient Safety Alerts. It should really beggar belief, but somehow the repeated cavalier attitude to patient care comes to be simply what we expect of the NHS, the Health Service that puts patients last.

"AvMA today published its latest report into implementation of patient safety alerts "Too little too late?" It shows that whilst there has been a significant improvement since our report six months ago, half of NHS trusts still have not complied with at least one alert which is past its deadline. 45 trusts had not complied with 5 or more alerts, some of which were years past the deadline. Full implementation of all alerts by the deadline given is supposed to be mandatory. Each alert not implemented leaves patients at unnecessary risk and it is inevitable that non-compliance with alerts has already resulted in patients being unnecessarily harmed or even killed."

Please read again the last sentence of that extract, and think about it.
The full report can be downloaded from the AvMA website.

Seriously, why are we even considering more junk additives in processed food, instead of simply banning the salt?

Seriously, why is anyone even considering more junk additives in processed food, instead of simply banning the salt? See today's Sunday Telegraph article. - Do you really fancy a bit of dental plaque(!) mixed in with your ready-meal? your cornflakes? your slice of toast? - Of course you don't!

The Food Standards Agency should stop playing about, and so should the Dept of Health and Andrew Lansley. They should all get it made illegal to add salt to processed food and thereby do what they are purportedly paid for, i.e. protect the health of UK citizens against the self-serving interests of the Food Industry. - And while they're about it, ban the addition of transfats too! - Come on, Mr Lansley! - Show us what you're made of! - Prove that you are not influenced against such a ban because of a conflict of interest that favours food manufacturers.

Are you your brother's keeper? your father's/mother's/sister's/friend's defender?

Yesterday on the radio I heard a woman tell of the neglectful and very distressing treatment of her elderly father, leading to his suffering and death in hospital. Her voice was clearly affected by emotion as she spoke of the guilt she feels and will carry to her grave by not speaking out about it at the time, not trying to put a stop to it, not fighting for him to be treated compassionately as a human being, he who had been a good man, a good father, a father whom she had loved.

We are all tempted to do nothing in the face of evil when the evil is being done to someone else. We are all tempted to kid ourselves that things aren't really as they seem, or that by 'interfering' we would maybe make matters worse, to delude ourselves that matters will surely improve without our having to intervene, to be brave, to risk getting into some sort of trouble or embarrassment. And we leave the victims, the suffering ones, the ill and weak and frail and exhausted ones, our relatives, our loved ones, our friends, to struggle on without our help. We have become complicit in the negligence.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke. Fight for accountability in the NHS. - See Fighting the System.

Lobbying could lead to unapproved GM crops entering European food chain

Agribusiness accused of 'scaremongering' lobbying tactics as it pushes for the import of animal feed containing traces of unapproved genetically modified (GM) crops - using the guise of combating feed shortages
The EU is on the brink of allowing a raft of unapproved GM crops into the food chain as it prepares to lift restrictions on animal feed containing trace elements of GM crops.
Read article in The Ecologist (UK)

Study finds that bonuses do not improve work performance, but fines do.

Study finds that bonuses do not improve work performance, but fines do. See thisismoney.co.uk report.

"The love of money is the root of all evil," is a Bible quotation that holds a lot of truth. - I'd be one of the many who would favour putting this study's finding into practice with the bankers who have wrought havoc on our economy, and with the over-rewarded and patently undeserving, arrogant healthcare professionals who so callously mistreat so many of their vulnerable hospital patients.

Another good reason to avoid drinking cola

Read here about the caramel food colouring in cola drinks that may cause cancer.

The Ombudsman's damning report of cruel neglect of vulnerable elderly patients in NHS hospitals and staff's callous indifference to their suffering

The Ombudsman's damning report of cruel neglect of vulnerable elderly patients in NHS hospitals and callous indifference to their suffering by staff employed to look after them has filled our newspapers and our broadcast media. See Telegraph report here, BBC report here, Guardian report here. We have many times over many years read of such horrors. Nothing appropriate is ever done about this atrocious cruelty by healthcare staff on their innocent fellow citizens - their patients, their victims. Read the Comments left beneath the newspaper articles and see other sickening examples of arrant cruelty by our highly-paid healthcare staff.

Since its inception the NHS has been protected from censure and sanction alike in matters of professional negligence. For decades its damaged victims were prohibited from even making a complaint! Then when complaints at last were permitted, the standard response to serious complaints was that the complainant was mistaken, lying, half-witted, mentally ill, trying to obtain compensation without cause, and similar nonsense directed toward attacking the complainant rather than investigating the complaint. Nothing was done about actually dealing with the complaints. And this is still the case.

In the intervening years it has become easier to make a complaint, but still nothing is done about the complaint, and the cases of negligence are increasing - inevitably, since the staff learn more and more surely, that they are unaccountable. The NHS Complaints Procedures are, and are designed to be, exercises in futility, and the Government is hoping to put an end to any scrap of justice for victims of medical negligence who go to Law by removing the possibility of legal aid in these cases.

As usual people who are ever-ready to defend the indefensible assure us that these flaws must be looked at in perspective, likewise assuring us that the vast majority of NHS patients are happy with their treatment. - Not remotely true, dear Reader. - That there are a lot of people ready to defend the NHS is not unconnected with the fact that the NHS is the largest employer in Europe, and so its employees and their dependants defend it. By contrast, read this Guardian article: "Half the patients treated in NHS hospitals are dissatisfied with the standard of care, a survey by the consumer organisation Which? reveals today. But it found few patients complain to NHS staff about inedible food, lack of cleanliness or poor organisation on the wards.

Among those who were dissatisfied, over a third thought raising an issue would not make any difference. Almost a quarter said nothing because they "expected their hospital stay to be like that" and 12% feared that a complaint would provoke reprisals and compromise their care.

Which? said doctors, managers and politicians interpreted the low level of complaints as evidence of patient satisfaction. But the survey suggested they were fooling themselves."

Do you care about water fluoridation? democratic rights? forced medication? abuse of power?

Do you care about water fluoridation? democratic rights? forced medication? abuse of power? - Then I suggest you read this new article by Dr Briffa. - Speaking for myself I am firmly against the fluoridation of drinking water and firmly against forced medication.

Breast Cancer: useful information

I welcome Dr Mercola's comprehensive article today on how to prevent Breast Cancer and how to limit its spread. As usual, his main emphasis is on nutritional factors and dietary advice, and he gives links so that you can check out research findings for yourself. I would myself add that avoiding salt and salty food is particularly beneficial to keeping the breasts free from pain and other avoidable harm.

The Food Programme on Radio 4 today was about MILK, and whether raw or pasteurised is better

You can listen to the programme (available for the next 8 days) by visiting this webpage and using the iPlayer. In the notes on the webpage Professor Ian Givens, Director of the University of Reading's Centre for Dairy Research, explains that the evidence connecting milk consumption with cardiovascular disease shows a slight reduction in higher milk drinkers from lower milk drinkers.

I've posted my own views about my preference for Raw Milk before. This programme gives a wealth of interesting information, much of which was new to me. We were also told about an English dairy farm which produces and sells Raw Milk: Hook & Son.

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day?

Have you ever gained a lot of weight in just one day? - If you have, then you are, perhaps, puzzled at how that could be possible. Here is the answer to the puzzle:

The weight you have gained is water weight, also known as fluid retention, sodium retention or salt sensitivity. It is often caused by pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors. See anti-depressants and other drugs and HRT, Steroids and other drugs. It can also be caused by pregnancy.

You can read on my website about the vulnerable groups that can gain (and lose) weight very rapidly. They include children.

You can lose water weight fast, easily and safely. You can also safely lose excess fat.

Meta-analysis finds Vitamin D linked to colon cancer protection

High blood levels of vitamin D are associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, according to a new meta-analysis of observational studies from an international team of researchers. Analysis of data from nine studies revealed that, for every 10 nanograms per milliliter increase in levels of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) the associated risk of colorectal cancer decreased by 15 percent.
Read article at nutraingredients.org

Dragons' Den offers are not always what they seemed on the show

Thisismoney.co.uk reports on Dragons' Den deals that appear to have been misleading, despite having been watched by millions of viewers to the BBC2 show. I must confess my sympathies are usually engaged by the underdogs in any situation and that is the case here. I guess the BBC has no legal culpability in these disappointing outcomes for a number of the inventors; they doubtless employ enough solicitors to ensure that. But if you read the article I think that, like me, you will be shocked, for instance, at the apparent misrepresenting of loans as cash investments.

The Dragons will be well shielded by their lawyers and the BBC likewise, but the pawns in the show appear to be insufficiently briefed beforehand and inadequately supported and protected after the show. It seems to me that the programme and its sequelae are exploitative of many of the inventors, without whom there would be no programme. The BBC should make it legally clear during the broadcast whether an offer is a loan or an investment, and that certain follow-up guarantees should be made, and made legally binding, e.g. contact with the Dragons concerned in the deals. I consider there is a moral obligation here.

Artificial sweeteners have harmful side-effects and they do not help overweight people to lose weight.

Artificial sweeteners are very cheap to produce and so are very profitable to the manufacturers who add them to their food and drink products. They are 'dieting' products, marketed with the claim that by reducing the calorie content in a product they will assist overweight consumers to lose excess weight, but this claim is false. Not only is it false, but some of the sweeteners - most notably Aspartame and the new sweetener kid on the block, Neotame, a relative of Aspartame - interfere very profoundly with the intricate biochemistry of the body, risking serious and permanent health side-effects. These include neurological damage, increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and more. If you value your health and the health of your family, as I am sure you do, I advise you to check the nutritional information on packs carefully, and to avoid artificial sweeteners. There are many internet sources of warning information about these unsafe substances. The very informative article I have been reading today is Dr Mercola's article.
And here is a safe, sure way to lose excess weight.

Britain's Best Health Blog 2010: my blog is runner-up

Britain's Best Health Blog 2010: my blog is the runner-up...(o: - My thanks to those of you who chose to vote for it. I am delighted by the result. There are more details here.

Popeye was right about spinach making muscles stronger

Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)

How do YOU deal with temptation?

How do YOU deal with temptation? - I've decided the best way for me to deal with it is to avoid it as far as I can. - If it's something that would harm me if I ate it - like cheese, say, which contains a lot of salt and therefore should be avoided by steroid victims - I simply never buy it. If it's not in my home, I can't give in to a moment of weakness and nibble at 'just a bit'. I think it's so much harder to resist what is there in the fridge or in a cupboard, than it is to resist buying it in the first place.

Almost all the food that I buy is bought over the internet and so that naturally reduces temptation for me. If you normally go to shop in physical shops, then it must be harder for you to resist your favourites, especially if you ever go shopping when you are really hungry and the likelihood of impulse purchases is much greater. If impulse shopping is your downfall, why not try ordering your groceries over the internet or by phone sometime and see if that makes it easier for you to keep your little 'addictions' in check?

Government Ministers and possible conflicts of interest

There is a pretence that when UK government ministers put their financial investments into a blind trust this frees them from conflicts of interest in the decisions they make as ministers. (See Guardian report and the Comments beneath the report.) People who believe this nonsense, I suspect, spend quite a lot of their time away with the fairies... No doubt they also believe those members of the medical profession who claim that their financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry in no way influence their decisions about which drugs to prescribe/recommend?

Spray-on skin for burns victims: would it work for steroid victims too?

Spray-on skin for burns victims, is reported in the Telegraph: "The spray-gun which fires stem cells on to the damaged skin has already been used successfully on a dozen patients."
I wonder if it would it work for steroid victims too? The skin of steroid victims, and also the skin of victims of other prescription-drug-induced morbid obesity, becomes very thin, painful and delicate. Sometimes, for instance, the skin at their elbows completely disappears and the elbow actually pokes through! - Just try to imagine how painful that would be - and how vulnerable to infection! - Especially as most doctors are disgracefully ill-informed about drug-induced morbid obesity.

Leukaemia drug treatment research compromised by drug company funding and authors with potential conflicts of interest?

Three Australian oncologists say cancer treatment research published in one of the world's most prestigious medical journals may have been compromised by a drug company that funded the study. They said publication of the research in The Lancet might have boosted the drug's perceived value to doctors and patients around the world, helping its manufacturer, Roche, make billions of dollars from the product.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

Ambulance bosses are spending big money buying bariatric ambulances and equipment to accommodate bigger patients

Ambulance bosses are spending big money buying bariatric ambulances and equipment to accommodate bigger patients, as reported by BBC News. Clearly this is necessary. Ambulance bosses are not in a position to correct the misinformation and professional negligence that destroy so many people's health and happiness. On the BBC webpage carrying the report, there is a short video about Eileen Forde's painful and humiliating experience travelling in a standard ambulance when she weighed 34 stone (476 pounds). If you put that lady's name into your search engine I'm sure you will find, as I did, many vituperative, insulting personal comments about Ms Forde, though I think you'd have a long search to find any of these bullies with the courage to comment using their real name. Mostly Eileen is accused and found 'guilty' of being greedy and eating too much - guilty, Dear Reader, with neither evidence nor proof to support the unjust verdict.

I feel great sympathy for anyone like Eileen, subjected to the jeers of fools - and indeed I am brought close to tears sometimes, like today, at such examples of cruelty and unmerited criticism. Instead of blaming morbidly obese people for eating too many 'pies' and the like, the bullies would be nearer the truth if they blamed the pharmaceutical drugs that are a major cause of morbid obesity. You can read about some of these drugs here and here. The bullies would also be nearer the mark if they heaped blame on the highly-paid doctors who prescribed the drugs despite being so ill-informed about their side-effects that they didn't know they would result in obesity because of weakened blood vessels and massive fluid retention. And they didn't know that these side-effects could be avoided by stressing to their patients/victims the need to avoid added salt/sodium and salty food while taking the potentially harmful medication.

If you're going to hurl abuse, choose the right targets: ill-informed healthcare professionals, uncaring drug manufacturers, food scientists who cram salt and sugar and other harmful additives into the junk 'food' that weighs down the shelves of the supermarkets and weighs down the bodies of their customers.

Would you like to know the truth about sunscreens and skin cancer?

Dr Briffa's blog article here refers to the fact that "interests that are not scientifically based seem to be driving the heavy reliance on sunscreens as the first line of prevention against skin cancer." - Unfortunately, those interests that are not scientifically based may well have led to the use of sunscreens blocking the manufacture of vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, which is linked to helping to prevent cancer...

Study shows swine flu vaccine likely causes narcolepsy in children

"Children injected with the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine were nine times more likely to contract narcolepsy than those who were not vaccinated, a preliminary study by Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare, THL, showed Tuesday." - See physorg.com article. "Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder which causes extreme fatigue and often results in the patient falling soundly asleep without warning, even in the middle of an activity."