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

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 - Well both theories are out of date.

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

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

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

Get twinkling those toes!

If you've got poor circulation - maybe related to mobility problems - get twinkling those toes! - By which I mean - Twiddle 'em! - Wriggle 'em! - That'll help! - And you could let your fingers dance too!  - And squeeze a soft toy! - You could be a Twinkling Star! - Good luck!

Struggling to carry on

Sometimes it's a struggle to carry on and you are in the position of choosing between options as to what's best to do at the time. And sometimes additional problems present themselves. And understandingly you may sometimes choose what is not really the best option.

I wrote in February about meds which cause dehydration and how drinking plain water is what you need to do. - Extract - "By the time you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. And you may unwittingly increase the problem by drinking, say, coffee, which is widely considered to have diuretic properties. Alcohol too is a diuretic. If you are thirsty, you would be much better slaking your thirst with plain water. Salty drinks are clearly inadvisable, and sugary drinks also tend to increase thirst. You are not in need of vague 'liquid'; you are specifically in need of PLAIN WATER." - I had found this so helpful myself and I kept rigidly to my own advice. - But in the last month I have drunk two cups of extremely weak coffee and one cup of weak tea. - In my constant struggle with increasing pain and insufficient sleep, I did this in the hope that these drinks would 'wake me up a bit' from my great tiredness. I hadn't chosen a good option.

When we struggle, especially with very great difficulties, and we make a mistake, there may be the temptation to give up altogether. - Before that, I'd like to suggest asking for help, if you can. There are a lot of kind people in the world. Obviously I don't mean approaching anyone who is going to label your problems and difficulties with the catch-all daft label of 'depression' and want you to take anti-depressants. - You do NOT need even more problems to deal with! - Drink a glass or two of plain water and continue each day to drink plain water and avoid coffee and alcohol. This will help you in many ways and clear your head. If you think you need my input, then email me from my website and I'll do my best to get back to you.

Do you know that a high salt diet can lead to cataracts?

Developing cataracts is one if the lesser-known possible consequences of eating a high salt diet. - See http://www.saltmatters.org/site/uploads/PDFs/SRHP%2025+table.pdf - See also http://wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

(read more)

There is evidence that Salt-Related Health Problems include calcium urinary stones

Evidence that Salt-Related Health Problems include calcium urinary stones, as you can read on this pdf. - www.saltmatters.org/site/uploads/PDFs/SRHP%2025+table.pdf - This is one of the less well-known health benefits that can be experienced by reducing intake of salt and salty food. - See also Associated Health Problems.

 

Many prescribed meds cause dehydration

Many prescribed meds cause dehydration, and the sort of meds I'm thinking of are not the sort that cause increased urine output, such as diuretics. I'm thinking of the ones that increase thirst because they cause the body, principally in its  blood vessels, to retain too much salt/sodium, along with the water which sodium attracts to itself. Over time these meds impair the efficiency of the kidneys. Paradoxically, in fact, these meds reduce urine output, rather than increase it, and so, often, this problem may be misdiagnosed as urinary retention.

What are these meds? you may be wondering. - Well they are the drugs I frequently warn about on my website and in my blogs, namely most antidepressants, many prescribed steroids and HRT, anti-psychotics, anti-convulsants, NSAID painkillers and others.

By the time you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrated. And you may unwittingly increase the problem by drinking, say, coffee, which is widely considered to have diuretic properties. Alcohol too is a diuretic. If you are thirsty, you would be much better slaking your thirst with plain water. Salty drinks are clearly inadvisable, and sugary drinks also tend to increase thirst. You are not in need of vague 'liquid'; you are specifically in need of PLAIN WATER.

So a major, rather strange, consequence of taking these dangerous, over-prescribed drugs, is that while taking them you tend to be chronically thirsty (particularly if taking a high dose), and chronically in a state of dehydration, yet carrying around with you a lot of excess water, mainly in your blood vessels, particularly in your poor, over-stretched, weakened, increasingly painful veins. See my website for helpful information and suggestions relating to these problems.

It was a different kind of Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, in which contributors spoke Truth about the Abuse of Power

It was good to hear a different kind of Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, with much of its content selected and commissioned by PJ Harvey MBE, of whom I am ashamed to say I had never previously heard. I would very inadequately summarise it as an account of harm done by the lies, misinformation, and other abuses of power by many governments and rulers in the world, notably including our own. We learned, for instance, something of the way our arms industry, with the compliance of our Government and the assistance of members of the Royal Family(!), supplies weapons to dictators and the like, enabling them to subdue civil unrest. We heard of the legal word games that permit states, including our own, to torture people legally, by giving the torture a different name. 

We heard the media itself indicted in the global conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless masses of the poor. (Noam Chomsky and John Pilger and others have told us about this many times before.) We heard much about "War and the Pity of War". We heard from individuals who are suffering from the physical and psychological trauma and indignities inflicted on them as a result of Wars. We heard of the overwhelming greed associated with power.

I wasn't taking notes, and I missed much of the programme, so I do not know whether it included the malign power of the Drug Companies, the ghastly cruelty of much of the Farming Industry, the Food Industry's assaults on our health, and the corruption that put profits before truth in so much of what purports to be Science.
 

Were I to become a guest editor on the Today programme, I would seek to draw attention the word games devised for the NHS to abuse its power/unaccountability in order carry out profitable state torture and murder of many elderly and other vulnerable patients. - You remember, don't you, the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway? - I believe they are intending to continue using the LCP under a new name... 

I would seek to draw attention to the prevalence of pharmaceutical drugs which deplete the body's vitamins and minerals, food processing which adulterates and transforms healthy fats to unhealthy fats (see also http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/health/a-lifelong-fight-against-trans-fat.html?_r=5&), adds chemical toxins and minimises nutrients to produce processed pretendfood/crap/junk, instead of good, nourishing food; food processing that kills off good bacteria, distorts our body's mineral and fat metabolisms, interferes with our hormones and with our gut activity, and thus makes us chronically ill, as well as ill-informed. 

The programme would seek to explain how so much of the human race, and the animals and crops that feed us, are now become grotesque distortions of their healthier ancestors. - And who knows what horrors still await us when Genetically Modified Organisms have had longer in which to wreak their havoc?

Don't damage your health for the sake of being polite

Don't damage your health for the sake of appearing polite to your host/hostess/family/fellow guests, etc! - The Christmas season can be a difficult time for people who are trying to avoid foodstuffs and drinks that they know are harmful to them. - If your host/ess is pressing you to have a second helping when you've really had enough, or tempting you to a salty food or sugary confection you would rather forego, be resolute! - Just politely say, 'No thank you'. - You do not have to give a reason (which could invite dissension). -  Be polite, clear and firm. - If you waver and allow yourself to be persuaded against your better judgment, you may find your tempter conclude that you did want it after all and that you are someone who usually needs to be asked more than once. Similarly if you would prefer not to have a cigarette or an alcoholic drink. - Resist the "Go on! - It's Christmas! - It won't harm you to have a little drink/treat once in a while!" - That may - or more likely may not - be true, but you are an autonomous adult and should be allowed to make your own decisions about whether to partake or not. It is not obligatory to over-indulge when you'd rather not.

Well done, Hull! - Here's wishing you all the best for your year as UK City of Culture 2017!

Well done, Hull! - Here's wishing you all the best for your year as UK City of Culture 2017!

I've written in praise of Hull before. - Have a read. - How I wish that I had stayed in Hull!

Many people who were not sensitive to salt become so when they take certain prescription drugs

Many people who were not sensitive to salt become so when they take certain prescription drugs. - Yes. These are some of the pharmaceutical drugs that cause salt sensitivity and a host of associated health problems: amitriptyline and the other tricyclic antidepressants, also many prescribed steroid meds, including HRT and some birth control meds, also Epilim and other anticonvulsants, and some painkillers, and some anti-psychotic drugs. And you can read here about other groups of people who are or who can become vulnerable to salt in different ways.

Black and Blue - Short Story by Margaret Wilde

Black and Blue

 

Her skin was definitely taking on a darker hue. It began with the sides of the nose. She attacked what she took to be blackheads. She scrubbed them with cleansing grains for open pores. She applied refining astringemts. She redoubled her scrupulous facial cleansing night and morning. She tried lemon juice to lighten the colour.

 

The darkening spread slowly, irregularly and ineluctably out from her nose.

 

No-one appeared to notice.

 

Her teeth began to darken too. Light grey became dark grey. Dark grey became black. They loosened somewhat.

 

She took to eating food which required no chewing: mashed potato, potted beef, soft white bread, tinned rice pudding...

 

She avoided smiling, gave up singing, appeared morose as she spoke less and less. Her eyes grew dim, though they often brimmed with tears. She cried herself to sleep night after night.

 

Still no-one drew attention to what she thought was so glaringly obvious. Tact, she supposed. - She consulted her doctor.

 

"You say you noticed a darkening from about six months ago? Well I'm sure it's nothing serious. A bit too much sun, perhaps. - More noticeable to you than to anyone else. - Take one of these tablets an hour before you go to bed. - Come and see me again in about a month." Throughout his monologue the doctor barely looked at her. His gaze and his attention were elsewhere - on his desk? on his prescription pad? on his previous patient? on his imminent lunch?...

 

She consulted a dentist: "Oh well, if it's been going on so long it's probably psychological you know. Have you seen your doctor? What about a psychiatrist?"

 

Were they all mad? Or was she going mad? Surely not. Her face was almost black all over now.

 

She was having a light lunch at work, sharing a table with another woman. She responded monosyllabically to the proffered conversation. - Oh God!  A tooth had finally detached itself! A thin, coal-black, top front tooth plopped into the soup she was eating, and her companion was splashed a little. Murmuring brief, embarrassed excuses, she hurriedly rose and left the table.

 

It was a week to the day after this that her black face fell off, also into the soup.

 

The bones revealed were black too.

 

She could not speak at all now, of course, without lips, and with only a few back teeth; but with her shrunken black-furred tongue she attempted to reply to people who, amazingly, continued to behave as if nothing was amiss.

 

It was the winter that finished her off. Her head was so very cold without the face. Every breath was a chill agony, though she tried to protect the exposed bones by wearing a modified Balaclava helmet.

 

The remaining stumps of teeth were chattering uncontrollably; there was a sudden "Snap!" and her head fell off.

 

It turned out to have been a hereditary problem. What else can you expect when your name is Schwarzkopf?

 

 

Margaret Wilde © 1983

Deluded Dentists?

Women with agonising toothache in the 1980s used to encounter daftnesses like these:

Saying that you are in such agonising pain that you are contemplating suicide, proves you are 'really' depressed. You do not need your imaginary pain to be dealt with; you just need antidepressants.

"Prescribing antidepressants to someone who is contemplating suicide because of the intensity and long duration of pain is a life-saving measure and I am proud of saving lives in this way." - A belief (about their women patients) commonly held by GPs in the 80s.

"He wasn't being rude to you. Speaking like that is just his way." - This was Miss Anne Atkinson's response when I told her that Mr Reg Dinsdale had repeatedly addressed me as "You Fat Depressives" (plural), instead of by my name. These two misguided health professionals worked at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital. Mr Dinsdale was an 'eminent' oral surgeon. Miss Atkinson was a Senior Lecturer in dentistry who claimed to be trying to help me.

When I told my then GP, Dr Hazel Radley, of Mr Dinsdale's insulting way of speaking to me, she described it as "Shock Treatment", intended to 'shock' me out of believing that I was in pain!

Miss Atkinson demonstrated her own mastery of daft dental logic by insisting to me that I was not really in pain, I only thought I was in pain!

And when Mr Dinsdale was performing an apicectomy on my UL2, he told his student assistant that Depressives did not actually feel pain, they only complained about being in pain! - And when bone failed to regenerate after his poorly performed apicectomy, which had left me in greater pain than before, he told the student who was looking at the X-ray with him that 'neurotics' were very poor at regenerating bone! - Very clearly, this man was deluded. An 'ordinary dentist', a general dental practitioner, did a re-apicectomy on the UL2 the following year, and this time the op was done properly and the infection was properly removed so that the bone did at last regrow.

I was sent by Roger Heesterman - Community Dental Officer, I think his title was - in a further stage of the cynical game of pretending that something was being done to help me, to see a Mr Hirschmann, another high-up dentist at a dental hospital in another city, (Heestermann could, and should, in my opinion, have helped me himself. He was a qualified dentist after all. But I suppose there was some Dept of Health rule that people complaining of dental negligence must on no account receive any actual help, only exhausting hassle so that they'd give up their struggle.)

Hirschman said that no doubt I did have some dental problems, but that the real problem was depression. He said that he wouldn't indulge me by taking any X-rays and that none of the dentists there would help me, but possibly one of the students could be spared after the summer holidays...

In contrast to all this daft dangerous misogynistic nonsense:

I had an article published in Mensa magazine about my great suffering at the hands of high-up dental drips:  Cruelty, Negligence and the Abuse of Power in the NHS: Fighting the System. Someone sent a copy of the article to an academic health campaigner, and she wrote to me to commend me for my "excellent piece in Mensa about customer complaints". She continued, "I have been fighting the medical attitude to consumer complaints - especially from women - for years - as a member of a Regional Health Board, then Chair of the Patients Association, now as a lay member of the General Medical Council.

I certainly remember a number of cases from my days at the Patients Association of patients with intractable dental pain who were treated as neurotic or frankly loony - and all women. They were laughed at, insulted and generally had a rotten time."

She went on to suggest that I should write a similar article for the British Dental Journal to get to the professionals directly. - I did, in fact, do this, but the article was rejected, as you might, perhaps, have guessed it would be.


The very top man in the whole world on the subject of pain used to be Professor Patrick Wall of University College, London, who died in 2001. In a personal letter to me some years ago, he wrote: "Simple-minded doctors and dentists (the majority) have a built-in scale of how much pain they expect for how much damage. If you fall outside their norm, you are labelled as mad. It is they who need their heads examining. They also need to read and think."

If you would like to further your education but the cost has put you off, this offer of free university courses may interest you

If you would like to further your education but the cost has put you off, this offer of free university courses, reported on BBC News Online, may interest you: Launch of FutureLearn, UK's biggest online university project.

 

If you are trying to get off amitriptyline, stay motivated by focusing on how much better you will feel without it.

If you are trying to get off amitriptyline, you are reducing it gradually, of course, because that is the safest way. But you will already be thinking more clearly, and your impaired memory will be improving. You're less thirsty, less constipated, steadier on your feet and less liable to faint, having fewer nightmares. Your breasts are becoming less swollen and less painful, your swollen face is returning to normal. You are feeling less bloated, your vision is less blurred.

 

There are so many side-effects of this dangerous drug, and they are so unpleasant and harmful - especially if you have been prescribed it in high dose - and the benefits from taking it are so few and, in my opinion, not worth the candle. You may find that the greatest blessing of all from getting off amitriptyline is that you will lose a lot of the weight gain that has been puzzling you. So you'll have more energy and feel ever so much better!

 

It's Invisible Illness Week

You can read about Invisible Illness Awareness Week here. And here's a web article listing the personal thoughts and experiences of someone who suffers from an invisible illness. Since we are all guilty at times of misunderstanding and making false assumptions, maybe reading these pages will help us not to add, unintentionally, to the difficulties of sufferers from invisible illness.

I have to see a cardiologist about Atrial Fibrillation

I've had AF (Atrial Fibrillation) for years but I've never seen anybody about it before. Maybe you've read about GPs frequently assuming women are healthy when actually they have heart disease. (See also Unconscious bias: why women don’t get the same care men do.) - I'm hoping that some of this massive excess Blood Volume can be removed and thus relieve the pain of all the swollen veins (caused by taking inappropriately prescribed drugs in the past). - Fingers crossed I'll not be expected to take drugs for the condition. I'm very anti-pharmaceuticals because they have caused me such harm.

Cave Salem!

If my blog and I were transported back in time, and you, Dear Reader, were an Ancient Roman, then I might well say to you, "Cave salem!" thus giving you a bit of advice to improve your health. Though of course, as an Ancient Roman, you would not be particularly in need of that bit of advice...(o: 

 

But in our present-day culture, and speaking in English, I say, "Beware of salt!" and that is a very necessary warning for most people, because there is way too much added salt in our modern diets. The Food Industry ladles a great deal of salt into the ready meals and other processed food products it manufactures. - Excessive salt intake may well be contributing to your weight problem, or to your high blood pressure and breathlessness. It may well have been the main factor in the stroke or heart attack you had or any/all of the chronic ill-health you suffer. - Be that as it may, if you cut down on the amount of salt and salty food you eat, you will feel ever so much better, have more energy and think more clearly. Give it a try! - Read about salt in food.

Here's a bit of information about butter which may not yet have come your way.

Here's a bit of information about butter which may not yet have come your way. - Anchor butter, which used to be a pastured butter, can no longer be relied upon to be a pastured butter. - Previously it was made from the milk of cows that eat grass - New Zealand grass as it happens, because Anchor butter used to come from New Zealand, where there is lots of grass and lots of fine sunny days for the cows to go out into the pastures to feed. When cows feed on grass in pastures, their milk and other dairy products are said to be pastured. (Not to be confused with the word pasteurised.)- So Anchor butter no longer has  the health benefits that it used to have when it was from grass-fed cows. President butter is pastured butter, and I believe Kerrygold is also pastured butter.

You can read here why pastured butter is better for you than butter from cows that are not grass-fed: http://aboutsalt.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/have-you-ever-given-thought-as-to-which.html

And you can read here why butter is much, much, much, much, much better for you than margarine! - http://wildeaboutobesity.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/butter-is-good-better-and-best.html

Maybe, like me, you were lured along the wrong path many years ago, but it is never too late to change to the healthier option. - Go on! - Give it a whirl!

I'm disappointed about these government U-turns that disfavour Public Health

I'm disappointed about the two current government U-turns that disfavour Public Health, namely an indefinite delay in the introduction of plain cigarette packaging and the anticipated abandonment of plans for minimum alcohol pricing in England and Wales. Disappointed, but not, of course, surprised. The opportunity to accord a modicum of protection to children's health by making smoking less of a temptation before they become addicted is obviously so much preferable/more likely to be effective than attempts to beat addiction to smoking as an adult. But our government is more concerned about tobacco industry profits than about child health. And similarly is more concerned about the profits of the alcohol trade than about the appalling and increasing harm that heavy drinking is causing, notably in young people and in particular young women, and tragically pregnant mothers who continue drinking too much alcohol during their pregnancies, thus giving birth to babies suffering with terrible health problems from the very start of their damaged, shortened lives.

This government made clear its lack of concern about public health shortly after coming into power, when Andrew Lansley, then Secretary of State for Health, put the profits of the Food Industry above the health of UK citizens, by opposing and reversing the planned ban on synthetic trans fats in processed food products. He mendaciously painted the intended ban as an example of a 'nanny state'.

It's so HARD to find a SOFT bed

It's so HARD to find a SOFT bed these days! - or a fairly soft bed, or a medium soft bed, or a slightly soft bed or anything even remotely approaching what could be described as a soft bed...)o: - Well that's what I've found anyway.

 

It used not to be difficult to find a soft bed. I had a pretty soft bed when I was a girl. And when, in my twenties, I went to stay at my cousin's for a week or two, I slept on a divinely soft bed. I floated on clouds...(o: - That was a feather bed.

 

But somewhere along the years, the belief that a bed 'should' be hard began to be taken up. We were told that firm, i.e. hard as a rock, beds were good for our backs. (Not my back, that's for sure.) These beds of uncomfort were sometimes referred to as 'orthopaedic' beds and were often 'endorsed by' medics well-rewarded for these cryptic endorsements.

 

For a brief period there was a resurgence of somewhat softer beds, among them latex foam mattresses and water beds. And divan beds could be bought with spring bases. - We Softies could rest more easily for a while. - But then it became the thing to have drawers under the mattress. - Goodbye, sprung bases! - And people found that water beds were not the panacea they had been led to believe. - And I harbour the ghost of a suspicion that the EU couldn't bear the thought of anyone sleeping comfortably in their beds and so brought out regulations that militated against softness in beds. - Maybe it was something to do with fire safety...(o: - Maybe we shouldn't be comfy in bed in case there's a fire and we just can't bear to flee to safety 'cos our beds are so lovely and comfy...(o:

 

These days, lying in their teeth, salespeople and their marketing brochures will extol the 'virtues' of memory foam beds. They will claim that memory foam beds are soft. Even as they speak and even as you read the brochures, the noses of the sales and marketing staff are, like Pinocchio's nose, growing because they are telling porkies. Any day now we will hear of a salesman whose nose has grown so large that the birds of the air are flying to nest in its branches...

 

Believe me; if you want a bed that is hard, a bed that is firm, a bed that resembles cast-iron, then a memory foam bed will be just perfect for you. - But if you want a soft bed, well, they don't make 'em any more...