Are you troubled by Brain Fog? Too 'foggy' and tired really even to think what to do?

Are you troubled by Brain Fog? Wish you could counter it but don't know what to do? Too 'foggy' and tired really even to try to think about what to do? Well I offer some simple  suggestions.

First off I'd recommend cutting down on salt and salty food. People who try this are commonly amazed at how much better they feel, and how much brighter, happier and more energetic. Even in just a few days.

Secondly, cut down on sugar and sugary food, and on bread/biscuits/wheat. These are notorious for causing fluctuations in blood sugar levels, which can lead on type 2 diabetes, with its attendant health problems of overweight, tiredness, vision damage/possible blindness, cognitive decline, impaired mobility, depression and many more, including premature death.

Improve your nutrition. - You're tired and you can't think straight and that makes processed ready meals/convenience foods a big temptation. Try hard to overcome this temptation because this sort of food is usually high in salt and sugar, the baddies I have already indicted, and very low in nutrients that your brain and body need. They are nutrient-poor and baddie-rich. Instead of taste, they offer addictive saltiness and sweetness, with the added harm of artificial colours, artificial toxic garbage like MSG (monosodium glutamate), synthetic transfats to lengthen 'shelf life', etc. (Note: if an ingredient lengthens the shelf life of a food product, it's a pound to a penny that it shortens the longevity of the person who eats the product!)

Vitamins that are especially helpful for brain fog are Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D. - If you click on the Vitamin D label beneath this blogpost you can read some of my earlier blogposts that go into more detail about this very important vitamin. See also this related page with more info about Vitamin D and other essential nutrients.) Similarly you can read further about Vitamin B12 by clicking on its label beneath this post.

Avoid taking anti-depressants, the ultimate in pharmaceutical junk! Tricyclics and any other drugs that have anticholinergic properties cause memory loss, cognitive impairment/decline and can lead eventually to dementia. You've only got one brain and one body. Don't damage them with pharmaceutical junk.

As you gradually improve your health in the ways - or at least some of the ways - I have mentioned - you will hopefully soon have the energy to do a bit more and take a bit more exercise than you can manage at present. Exercise will in turn add to the virtuous circle and reduce your brain fog and ill-health even further.

And here's a more authoritative and much more detailed webpage about clearing brain fog for when you can cope with reading more demanding reading material than my little effort.

The Food Programme suggests that snacking may lead to high levels of diabetes

The Food Programme (BBC Radio 4) today suggests that snacking/grazing and convenient, bite-sized 'food on the go' may be causing increased weight and obesity, and may lead eventually to unsustainable levels of diabetes.

The Effects of Diabetes: Guest Blog

Coping with diabetes is a daily journey for millions of individuals and their families. If you have a family member or friend with type 1 diabetes, you may be familiar with the allergic reactions, irritation and rash that insulin injections can cause.

People with type 2 diabetes face different challenges, as doctors often prescribe them medications to help their cells use insulin more efficiently. Unfortunately, these patients and their families may be forced to deal with some serious side effects from these medications.

The Most Dangerous Diabetes Drug

Actos is the most popular drug prescribed to treat diabetes — and among the most dangerous.

Actos carries a black-box warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because it can cause heart attacks. In 2011, Actos was shown to increase the risk of bladder cancer by 40 percent if a patient takes it for longer than a year.

Some other dangerous Actos side effects include macular edema, which is an eye disorder that causes blindness, and an increased risk of broken bones and liver failure. 

Patients have sued the maker of Actos, after suffering complications from taking the drug, creating thousands of Actos Lawsuits.

The Dangers of Metformin

Metformin is usually one of the first drugs doctors give to people with type 2 diabetes because it lowers blood-sugar levels quickly. Sadly, it also can have some serious side effects.

Metformin can cause heart or liver failure, or chronic metabolic acidosis — which occurs when extra amounts of acid fill the body. 

Safer Ways to Treat Diabetes

Diabetes is hard enough for patients and their families. No one needs a diabetes drug that can bring even more visits to the doctor or, in the worst-case scenario, a  terminal illness.

The good news for families and diabetes patients is that there are safer alternatives. Doctors can decide whether any of the following might be a good option:  non-sulfonylurea secretagogues, alpha-glucosidase inhibitors or sulfonylureas. These medications can lower blood sugar and carry less risk.

William Richards is a writer for Drugwatch.com. He uses his journalism background to investigate dangerous drugs and promote consumer awareness to better the community.

Should sugar be taxed to reduce health problems like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes?

Should sugar be taxed to reduce health problems like obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes? BBC News reports today that "Sugar is as damaging and addictive as alcohol or tobacco and should be regulated, claim US health experts. According to a University of California team, new policies such as taxes are needed to control soaring consumption of sugar and sweeteners. Prof Robert Lustig argues in the journal Nature for major shifts in public policy." And this is countered by the Industry body the Food and Drink Federation saying that "demonising" any particular foods is unhelpful. - Well that's true inasmuch as it's unhelpful to the Food and Drink Federation and its profits!

The Food and Drink Federation like to sell addictive food and drink to their customers. Addicts return to buy again the products to which they are addicted - to buy them over and over and over again. - I heard the subject of whether sugar should be taxed - because its heavy consumption is causing widespread damage to people's health - being discussed in the last minutes of Radio 4's PM programme today. I think the interviewer was Eddie Mair.

There was Prof Robert Lustig on the phone from America, supplying the voice of reason, and suggesting a heavy tax on sugar stuffs in order to produce a really significant reduction in consumption. And there was a guy from the Food and Drink Federation spouting his ritual rhetoric about sugar not being the baddie - many factors are associated with non-infectious diseases, not just sugar. Think of insufficient exercise, sedentary life-styles, etc. - We need a balanced diet, more exercise, etc etc. - There's no evidence that sugar causes disease... Burble Burble. Burble Burble.

Actually I wondered whether this robotic guy was deaf? - Prof Lustig (Eddie Mair kept calling him Dr Lustig) was explaining that there is actually a great deal of evidence that sugar is definitely being consumed in too high quantities, that it is addictive, that it is actually toxic in that it causes serious metabolic changes to the body - fatty liver, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, etc. - Prof Lustig knows his sugary science (listen to his lecture The Bitter Truth) and he knows his sugary statistics, but his unheeding interlocutor continued burbling about no evidence to support the taxation of sugar, and repeating that it's a matter of a balanced diet, no new evidence, burble, burble, burble. - I think I can hazard his idea of a balanced diet - the sort of balanced diet the Food Industry might find profitable to supply the products for: a Sugar-crammed, intensely sweet cereal breakfast with additive-laden fruit drink, balanced by a salt-laden sandwich for lunch and an over-salted processed ready meal for tea, with snacks throughout the day of biscuits (high in sugar and salt), crisps and maybe a token apple (high in pesticides) added to impress the 'healthy food' brigade.

Crumpled faces

A couple of weeks ago I watched a very interesting TV programme but found that I was at times distracted by the presenter's face. Such a crumpled face! This was an older man, but by no means an old man. I felt sorry for the owner of the face, as I always do feel sorry for people with crumpled, 'quilted' faces. I think how difficult it must be to wash the face, to clean each wrinkle and furrow, each soft, wobbling line. I wondered why the fellow's face was so crumpled: it could not simply be that he had been out in the sun too much most of his life.

A few days later, by strange coincidence, I came across a possible explanation. Strange, because in all my life I had never heard about it before. The likely answer seems to be GLYCATION. - Go on! - Look it up using your favourite search engine! - It seems that glycation can occur when protein and sugar combine in the body. The Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs) that result are undesirable signs of accelerated ageing, which can include wrinkles, cataracts, peripheral nerve damage and many more. So if your poor face has started to look crumpled, or you'd rather like to prevent it ever starting to look crumpled, perhaps you'd like to cut down on the sugar and sugary stuff you eat. Stay as sweet (and young and beautiful) as you are by avoiding the sweet stuff! And reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes...

Today is World Diabetes Day

Today, November 14th 2011, is World Diabetes Day. November 14th was the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, the Nobel Laureate who, in 1922, discovered insulin. If you have diabetes, I believe you would find the following articles interesting:

Paleolithic diet much better for diabetics than conventional ‘diabetes diet’

Vitamin D has potential to combat Type 2 diabetes

Conflicts of interest rife in those setting diabetes and cholesterol guidelines

More about Conflicts of Interest within the Medical Profession

"In 1996, shortly after we began tracking the pharmaceutical industry, we spent time looking at obesity research and the latest diet pills. In doing so, we noticed that a panel that was assembled by the government to develop a guideline for the overweight known as the Body Mass Index. And it was populated by experts, nearly all of whom had a financial tie to a drugmaker selling or developing such pills. The finding, of course, was not all that new, but the practice continues, according to a new study in BMJ, which examined panels responsible for generating clinical practice guidelines on screening and/or treatment for high cholesterol or diabetes in the US and Canada between 2000 and 2010. A good many of the panelists - and panel chairs - had conflicts of interest. But not all were disclosed."
Read article at pharmalot.com
See also Dr Briffa's recent article on conflicts of interest.

New Study suggests Sunshine may help prevent Multiple Sclerosis

A new study in Australia suggests that obtaining Vitamin D through sun exposure may help prevent the onset of multiple sclerosis as well as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and some types of cancer.
Read article on the Daily Nexus website (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Today is World Diabetes Day

Today, 14th November 2010, is World Diabetes Day. Here is a page of links to good advice/information for people with diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and for other people to reduce their risk of developing diabetes. It is also helpful to cut down on salt and salty food.

Further attention drawn to health risks of GSK's diabetes drug, Avandia

See This is London article, where you will read that "David Graham, of the Food and Drug Administration, said patients taking the drug had a 27% greater chance of suffering a stroke, a 25% increased risk of heart failure and a 13% greater chance of dying."

Processed meat risks health, studies suggest; fresh meat OK.

BBC News reports that a Harvard University team which looked at studies involving over one million people from 10 countries found just 50g of processed meat a day increased the risk of heart disease and diabetes, while there was no such risk from unprocessed meat, such as beef, lamb or pork. They posit that the difference may be explained by the salt and preservatives added to processed meats (like bacon, sausages, salami and other luncheon meats).

Well I've been saying for years on my website and in my blogs that salt intake and dodgy added chemicals in processed 'foods' promote degenerative disease and obesity.
See Sodium in foods.

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data re massive weight gain and diabetes side-effects

Radio 4's File on 4 tonight (26/01/2010) deals with how AstraZeneca 'suppressed' Seroquel drug test data about its side-effects of massive weight gain and diabetes. See article on BBC News. "The marketing team sued over a drug's alleged side effects tried to suppress key data, an ex-employee has claimed. Seroquel's former UK medical adviser told the BBC he was pressured to approve promotional material which said weight gain was not an issue."

The British Medical Journal editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, sensibly urges that the medicine licensing system be reviewed. She says the pharmaceutical industry should no longer provide the evaluations of its own drugs for the licensing body to consider.

See also File on 4 itself: "A British drug company is being sued by more than 15,000 people in the United States who claim its bestselling antipsychotic drug caused severe weight gain, diabetes and other serious medical conditions. Ann Alexander investigates concerns about the way it was marketed and asks how much the public should be told about the drugs they take."

Actually there are dozens of commonly prescribed drugs that have these side-effects and these are obviously a major cause of the continuing rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and type 2 diabetes and a host of other degenerative illnesses that are co-morbidities of obesity. The drugs include cortico-steroids, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives), tricyclic anti-depressants, especially amitriptyline, some SSRI anti-depressants, anti-psychotics (notoriously Zyprexa,aka olanzapine), some anti-epileptics/anticonvulsants, e.g. Epilim (sodium valproate). This is by no means an exhaustive list. See my webpage about steroids and HRT et al.

So the NHS (and all other purchasers of pharmaceutical drugs the world over), as well as paying for the drugs that its doctors prescribe, incurs the astronomical costs of the vast spectrum of disabling chronic health problems they cause. - ALL of this avoidable ill-health and suffering results from the primary adverse side-effect, which is sodium retention, and all of the innocent patients who are its victims become sensitive to salt/sodium, and should have been warned strictly to avoid salt and salty food while taking the medication, because for them, salt intake causes them weight gain. I have been researching this subject intensively for well over ten years now, and I have not heard of even one doctor who gives and stresses this vital message to his/her victims/patients. Inadequate knowledge of drug side-effects is lamentably widespread in the medical profession. Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

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

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

Sodium in foods

Fat retention and fat excretion: the importance of getting enough calcium.

The Telegraph reports on study indicating that breastfeeding lowers risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

The Telegraph reports that breastfeeding lowers the risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

Also nursing mothers who breastfeed for longer are helping to prevent their baby from becoming obese. See Breastfeeding for longer helps to protect your baby from obesity

The main reason for this is that human breast milk is low in salt/sodium. Sodium is more harmful to children than to adults because of their small size, and it is particularly harmful to babies.

See Children and Obesity

and advice for pregnant mothers

FSA wants salt levels to be further reduced

The Telegraph reports that the Food Standard Agency is urging the Food Industry to cut salt levels further in order to save avoidable deaths.

In my opinion, both the Food Standards Agency and the Food Industry need to pull their little socks up and get real about this vitally important public health measure. - Salt reduction in bread and other processed foods is going at the speed of a slug on tranquillisers...)o:

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

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

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

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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

Takeways and adult ready meals do not give toddlers a healthy start in life.

Wales News online has some good advice here

These meals - takeaways and ready meals - tend to be low in essential nutrients like vitamins, and they also contain a high proportion of salt/sodium, and salt is particularly bad for small children, as well as giving them a taste for salty food which will continue to impair their health as they grow older. They will have higher blood pressure than if they were eating less salty food,. They will be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and heart problems. They will even be more likely to have a stroke at a young age! - You may also be surprised to learn that it is salt and salty food that causes obesity in children.

You will give your children a healthier and happier start in life if you give them less salty food to eat and if you encourage them to eat plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables.

See Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods

If you have diabetes and you live in the UK I believe you would find this of interest:

Are the financial incentives given to UK doctors regarding diabetes doing more harm than good?
Blog entry on Dr John Briffa's blog.

Extracts:

"From April of this year, if GPs can get half of their type 2 diabetic patients to have a HbA1c level (this is a measure of blood sugar control over the preceding 3 months or so) of less than 7 per cent, then the practice gets an additional payment of £3000 ($4250). Prior to this, the target set by the government was 7.5 per cent. Clearly, the government feels that when it comes to HbA1c levels, lower is better."

"It seems that not only is the UK government’s recent move to lower the HbA1c targets for GPs not particularly evidence-based, there is a risk it might actually do more harm than good. The authors of the BMJ piece use some good old-fashioned plain-speak to conclude their piece by stating: “The change of target from 7.5% to 7% should be withdrawn before it wastes resources and possibly harms patients.”"

Increasingly it seems to me that the government favours more and more drug treatment for long-term health problems. This appears to be treating symptoms instead of attacking causes of ill-health. I favour improving diet rather than the ever-increasing prescribing of powerful drugs with all their potential for adverse side-effects.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

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

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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

Elderly patients are being harmed because doctors prescribe them too many drugs.

Doctors 'too reliant on prescribing drugs'
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Some patients are receiving too little advice about cutting down on smoking or reducing their weight as doctors increasingly reach for pills to treat them, according to the study, published in the Lancet medical journal.

The report comes just a week after a leading expert warned that millions of elderly patients were being prescribed drugs that they did not need, for conditions ranging from high blood pressure to high cholesterol or diabetes.

Professor Michael Oliver warned that a "tick-box culture" was leading to overtreatment and unnecessary anxiety for many older people."

I'm all in favour of cutting down on prescription drugs. They do far more harm than good.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

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

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

Patients should be given facts about pharmaceutical drugs

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions each year to market drugs to doctors and potential patients. That makes it all the more outrageous that AstraZeneca is asking an Orlando court to keep information about the performance of its lucrative antipsychotic drug Seroquel secret. The company is claiming public safety, saying it shouldn't be required to release information about the drug that could cause a panic among "a vulnerable patient population" that might stop taking the drug without a doctor's oversight. But the real public safety issue is one of public health and whether the company hid findings that Seroquel causes weight gain and diabetes. The legal system must put public health — and a patient's right to know — above a company's interest in secrecy.
Read editorial in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida/USA)

Lose weight, by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

A charity has warned that 700,000 people with diabetes are at risk of losing their sight because they are not being screened.

Diabetics at risk of blindness because NHS is not testing them: charity
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The latest figures published by the Department of Health show that more than a quarter of people with diabetes aged 12 and over were not screened in the year up to October 2008.

Almost two thirds (98 out of 152) of primary care trusts are still failing to meet the target of screening 80 per cent of people with diabetes, Diabetes UK has warned, even though the target should have been reached over a year ago.

Retinal screening is used to spot signs of retinopathy, a condition that occurs when blood vessels in the retina of the eye become blocked, leaky or grow haphazardly. If left untreated can damage vision and ultimately cause blindness."

You can lower your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by eating less salt and salty food.

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

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

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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

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

Adequate vitamin D can prevent diabetes.

Diabetes can be prevented, and the disease’s complications for those diagnosed with it reduced, through adequate intake of vitamin D, says a report.
Read article in The Times of India