Obesity drug, Reductil (Sibutramine), an appetite suppressant, is being withdrawn from use in UK because of risk of heart attack and stroke

BBC News reports that "the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has told doctors to stop prescribing sibutramine and review its use in patients already taking it." And ""Pharmacists are asked to cease dispensing the medicine."

It has been used by 86,000 people in the past year. Since ALL obesity drugs are harmful and unnecessary, it makes me think things must be really bad for the MHPRA to ban its use.

If you are overweight/obese and wanting to lose some of your excess weight, do not turn to weight loss pills. They are neither safe nor effective. The safe, fast, easy way to lose excess weight is to minimise the amount of salt and salty food you eat, avoid dieting, eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables, and make sure you have dairy calcium, e.g. milk and yoghurt, as part of your food intake.

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

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

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

Give your children the best start in life. Protect them from salt and salty food.

Salt and salty food are bad for little children. It is eating salty food that causes children to become fat. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body. Overweight children should not be put on a diet; dieting is harmful and unnecessary and does not usually result in weight loss. Once children start dieting it is often the beginning of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and increasing weight and ill-health.

Unfortunately bread contains a lot of salt and most families eat quite a lot of bread because of using it for sandwiches in packed lunches, and for toast, etc. Because of its high salt content bread is not a healthy food for little children or for anyone who is overweight. Some bread manufacturers have lowered the salt content of certain loaves, but most bread still usually contains 0.5g or more of sodium per 100g. This is too much. - Always check on the packet; look for the lowest sodium content.

Boycott salty snacks that manufacturers make for children. Salty snacks damage the health of little children, and the damage is permanent.

Try to find children's foods with less salt. Or provide home-cooked meals, without any, or without much, added salt, rather than commercially produced ready meals and snacks.

For breakfast consider providing porridge, ReadyBrek, Shredded Wheat or Shreddies, all of which have no added salt, instead of cornflakes or most other breakfast cereals, which have had a lot of salt added by manufacturers.

If your children are keen on beans in tomato sauce, look at the label on the tin. - Buy the tin with a lower salt/sodium content. Give them smaller helpings of the beans.

In general it would be good for children not to develop a taste for salt. Providing snacks of fresh fruit, ready-to-eat dried fruit or unsalted nuts instead of salty savouries would help them.

See Children and Obesity

See also FAT RETENTION

Suffering from constipation? painful defecation? haemorrhoids? overweight?- maybe also varicose veins? phlebitis? obesity?

You'd find it very helpful to eat less salt/sodium. This would reduce the problems themselves and also the pain and other difficulties they cause. Also try to eat plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables and to drink plenty of water.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

See also FAT RETENTION

Vulnerable groups

Sodium in foods

Do you have Cushing Features/Cushing's Syndrome and wonder if there is anything you can do about it?

Do you have Cushing Features/Cushing's Syndrome and wonder if there is anything you can do about it? - There is!

You cannot cure the Cushing problems, but you can certainly reduce them. If you seriously cut down on salt and salty food - permanently - and if you also try to eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables, and if you completely abandon dieting and going hungry and counting calories, you can reduce those Cushing features, lose some of your excess weight, look more like your old self and have lots more energy.

I'm editing this post to make clear that I am not talking about Cushing's Disease, that is why I did not use the term Cushing's Disease in the title of this blog entry. Cushing's Disease is not caused by prescription drugs.

I should have made clear that I am talking only about Drug-induced Cushing's Syndrome, best known of which is Steroid-induced Cushing's Syndrome. i.e. a syndrome caused by taking drugs such as inappropriately-prescribed corticosteroids or certain other classes of prescription drugs. I myself developed Steroid-induced Cushing's many years ago.

People who become morbidly obese in this way, with a host of associated health problems like high blood pressure, thin skin, moonface, enlarged heart, etc. are often described as 'steroid victims'. There are millions of them the world over, wherever these pharmaceutical drugs are prescribed.

Two of the many side-effects of the medication are sodium and water retention and these lead on directly to many of the other problems, for example, the high blood pressure.

I had been on the steroids for nearly ten years unfortunately before I found out by chance about the role of salt in Drug-induced Cushing's. I lost 51 pounds weight by strict sodium reduction, and the other side-effects of the drugs were similarly reduced. For example the high blood pressure returned to normal.

I created my website and my blog to save other people from needless suffering. See my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Drug-induced Cushing's sufferers lose weight easily by following my sodium reduction advice, e.g. Tara and 'Dee'. See Tara and her problems with prednisolone
and see 'Dee' and her massive weight gain and stretch marks from being prescribed prednisolone in too high dosage

My apologies to people who have actual Cushing's Disease, which is much more complicated than Drug-induced Cushing's Syndrome. I was not writing about Cushing's Disease.

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.

And see Sodium in foods

prescribed steroids and HRT

amitriptyline

Ed McMahon's Health Story from 2001 Gives Helpful Dietary Advice for Losing Weight and Lowering High Blood Pressure

This Health Story from USATODAY is from 8 years ago, but the dietary advice "decreasing sodium intake, increasing potassium-rich whole foods" is just as helpful today as then. By doing this, Ed McMahon lost 50 pounds weight, lowered his high blood pressure and found he was full of energy.

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

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.

Being bullied or insulted because you're fat?

Here's what to do.
All that any overweight person needs to do to lose a lot of excess weight is to give up dieting and concentrate on reducing the fluid retention that is the cause of overweight/obesity. This entails cutting down on salt/sodium and eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables. In practice, the best way to do this is to avoid ready meals, takeaways and processed food, and instead to cook from fresh. But you don't need to count calories and you don't need to eat low-fat, sugar-free diet junk. - Eat real food, and don't go hungry. - Just avoid salt/sodium and salty food.

Here is a helpful page of information for you: Sodium in foods

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

and FAT RETENTION

Australians pay heavily for heavy public servants to lose weight

Article in the Telegraph

It seems that while we in the UK have been paying for our MPs to live lives of luxury and excess, Australian taxpayers have been shelling out for overweight government staff to take part in very expensive Weight Watchers 'slimming' courses. - What a waste! - They'll not even lose weight!

Australians in general, and not just public servants, are getting heavier/more obese.

All that any overweight person needs to do to lose a lot of excess weight is to give up dieting and concentrate on reducing the fluid retention that is the cause of overweight/obesity. This entails cutting down on salt/sodium and eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables.

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

Swine flu has now reached Britain

The Telegraph reports that two people are being treated in a hospital isolation unit in Scotland after contracting the disease on holiday in Mexico.

You can boost your immune system by cutting down on salt and salty food and by eating good healthy food with plenty of fruit and vegetables. Dieting should be avoided as inadequate food intake lowers your resistance to infection.

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

Hypertension may be lowered by a protein in yellow peas.

The Telegraph has an article about the discovery of a protein in peas - a protein that lowers high blood pressure and is of especial benefit when high blood pressure accompanies kidney disease.

In fact all vegetables and fruits, because of their high potassium content, help to lower high blood pressure, though this report about a protein in peas must mean that there is an additional benefit conferred by peas. The reason potassium lowers high blood pressure is that potassium displaces sodium in the body. The fastest way to reduce high blood pressure is to eat less salt/sodium and salty food, so make sure your peas and your other vegetables are not salted.

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

New research based on flawed assumptions claims to explain why some people do not get flabby.

The research reported in this article in the Daily Telegraph Fat enzyme explains why some people don't get flabby is based on the usual false assumptions for which there is no supporting evidence, namely that obesity is caused by high calorie intake and that retention of excess fat is caused by excessive fat intake. These assumptions are not true so any conclusions based on them must be flawed and are likely to be irrelevant.

Obesity is caused by sodium retention/fluid retention/salt sensitivity, not by eating too much food. It can be easily reduced by cutting down on salt/sodium and salty food. The calorie explanation for obesity (eating too many calories and not taking much exercise – i.e. greed plus laziness) is clearly wrong because many – probably most – people can eat as much as they like and not become overweight, even if they take very little exercise. – They are what I call on my website ‘the lucky people’. – They are the slim people. – They are the people who have healthy veins and kidneys and are not sensitive to salt. They simply excrete in the urine any excess salt and its attendant water, so they do not gain weight by fluid retention.

The reason they do not put on excess weight when they overeat is that they simply excrete any excess fat/calories they eat. (Faeces tend to contain a lot of fat/calories, which is why animal dung is used as fuel in many countries.)

A few years ago BBC2 showed a series of programmes called “The Truth About Food” and I learnt about some Danish research which throws light on this. – See http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/slim/calcium.shtml where you will read: "a high calcium intake increases the excretion of fat in the faeces". – There is the necessary information! – In fact, the researchers found that twice as much fat was excreted on a high calcium intake as on a low calcium intake – and this was independent of calorie intake. – They also found that dairy calcium (they suggest low fat yoghurt) is a particularly good source for this extra calcium.

Even the frequent claim that fat deposits in the bodies of fat people are there to be drawn upon 'in leaner times' is a pure guess and is not correct. - The fat deposits are caused by the altered body chemistry (depletion of calcium and other essential minerals in the body) resulting from excess blood volume/fluid retention/salt sensitivity.

So to reduce fat retention, if it is present, the most important thing is to alter the diet to reduce the fluid retention which is the initiating cause of excess weight and the primary reason for fat people being short of calcium and for fat people ‘dieting’. That means reducing sodium intake and ensuring plenty of fruit and vegetables in the diet (because their high potassium content helps to displace sodium from the body).

And specifically it also means having a higher intake of calcium, especially, if possible, from a dairy source like low fat yoghurt. – It is also necessary to ensure sufficient vitamin D intake, as this is needed to metabolise the calcium. There is increasing research evidence that vitamin D deficiency is associated with being overweight - and insufficiency of vitamin D is quite common, as is widely reported, e.g. here - http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp

In my personal opinion it is neither necessary nor desirable to adopt a low fat diet. Low fat intake can be harmful, especially for small children.

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

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

Potassium lowers blood pressure. New study

http://www.scientistlive.com/European-Science-News/Medical/Potassium_lowers_blood_pressure/21618/

Well I've been telling people for years, both in this blog and on my website (www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk) that potassium lowers blood pressure and that the way in which it does that is by displacing some excess sodium from the bloodstream.

Anyway, the link I have given from the scientistlive.com website gives interesting information from a new study. Obviously the main dietary change necessary to lower high blood pressure is to reduce sodium intake, but when lower sodium is accompanied by plenty of potassium this lowers high blood pressure even more.

I recommend you read the whole article, but here, at any rate, is an extract from it:

"The new study "is a quantum leap in the quality of the data compared to what we have had before," Whelton said.

Whelton was a member of a recent Institute of Medicine panel that set dietary recommendations for salt and potassium. The panel said healthy 19-to-50 year-old adults should consume no more than 2,300 milligrammes of sodium per day -- equivalent to one teaspoon of table salt. More than 95 percent of American men and 75 percent of American women in this age range exceed this amount.

To lower blood pressure and blunt the effects of salt, adults should consume 4.7 grams of potassium per day unless they have a clinical condition or medication need that is a contraindication to increased potassium intake. Most American adults aged 31-to-50 consume only about half as much as recommended in the Institute of Medicine report. Changes in diet and physical activity should be under the supervision of a health care professional.

Good potassium sources include fruits, vegetables, dairy foods and fish. Foods that are especially rich in potassium include potatoes and sweet potatoes, fat-free milk and yogurt, tuna, lima beans, bananas, tomato sauce and orange juice. Potassium also is available in supplements.

Whelton is among the nation's top experts on high blood pressure. He has published more than 400 papers on the subject, and has been the principal investigator on more than $100 million of studies funded by the National Institutes of Health."

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.

My usual message about how best to lose weight is to eat less salt/sodium, but you can also reduce your sodium by eating more potassium-rich foods. -

My usual message about how best to lose weight and reduce high blood pressure is to eat less salt/sodium, but you can also reduce your sodium by eating more potassium-rich foods - like fruit and vegetables. This is because potassium displaces sodium in the body.

See Sodium in foods

Try not to add much salt to the meals you prepare.

If you find it hard to cut down on salt, do it gradually. Your taste will gradually change. Try using pepper, garlic, herbs such as basil, chives, lemon grass, rosemary or coriander, spices such as chilli or ginger, balsamic vinegar or lemon juice, rather than salt, to add flavour to your food.

You can get a lot of flavour from onions too, you know, and I've just been reading about how good shallots are for our health. - As well as being rich in potassium, they are a rich source of vitamin A, B and E and even contain a high level of vitamin C, particularly if eaten raw.

Have a look at this post for some further ideas about how to lower your sodium intake.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, sleep better, improve your concentration 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

Childhood obesity is set before the age of five...

Obesity 'set before age of five'
article on the news pages of the BBC website

Extract:

"The EarlyBird Diabetes study of 233 children from birth to puberty is being published in the journal Pediatrics.

One in four children aged four to five in England are overweight, latest figures show.

Disease 'of our time'

At birth, the children in the study were of similar weight to babies 25 years ago, but had gained more fat by puberty compared with children of the same age in the 1980s.

The bulk of this excess weight was gained before the children were five.

Weight at five years bore little relation to birth weight, but closely predicted weight at nine years old."

"Lead researcher Professor Terry Wilkin, of the Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth, said: "When they reach the age of five the die seems to be cast, at least until the age of puberty.

"What is causing it is very difficult to know."

He said there must be a factor now that was not there 25 years ago which is making today's children obese."

There are more factors than one. Here are the main ones:

1) Children these days eat far more salt and salty food than formerly. Human breast milk is not high in salt/sodium, so breast-feeding a baby for as long as possible helps to protect the baby from becoming overweight. The younger the baby or child, the more harm salt causes. I expect that 25 years ago a lower proportion of mothers of young babies went to work, and so possibly breast-feeding was continued for longer than today.

2) The advice about reducing obesity is wrong. And people are bombarded by this wrong advice. - Obesity is not reduced by eating less food/fat/calories, because obesity is not caused by greed or 'over-eating'. Obesity is caused by fluid retention, caused in turn by sodium retention, and can only be reduced by reducing the fluid retention and that is done mainly by reducing salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of food that is rich in potassium. Fruit and vegetables contain a lot of potassium. Potassium displaces some of the sodium, and the water that always accompanies it, from the body.

3) Sodium retention depletes the body of essential minerals, mainly calcium, magnesium and potassium, and this mineral loss has many adverse consequences - fat retention and bone weakening being the main ones.

4) Dieting increases body weight because it increases fluid retention.

5) Exercise does not result in weight loss, no matter how many people insist that it does.

6) There are far too many pharmaceutical drugs prescribed and taken, and many of these cause or exacerbate fluid retention.

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

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

Easy drug-free ways to lower your high blood pressure/hypertension. - Eat less salt/sodium and more fruit.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs 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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

There are thousands of miles of blood vessels in the human body and every inch becomes a little swollen if they become weakened by dieting/'slimming'

There are many thousands of miles of blood vessels in the human body and every inch becomes a little swollen/distended/dilated if the blood vessels become weakened by dieting/'slimming'/fasting or relaxed by certain prescription drugs, e.g. tricyclic anti-depressants like amitriptyline, cortico-steroids, oestrogen-rich medications, anti-psychotics, certain painkillers, etc. - This means in effect that because of fluid retention with sodium and the water it attracts to itself, increased blood volume will cause you to gain excess weight.

When I googled to find how many miles I found different estimates - 60,000, 62,000 and 100,ooo miles. - You may possibly find other estimates; but it's clearly a helluva lot!

When people whose blood vessels are weaker than the norm eat salt, the result is weight gain and obesity (because of excess sodium and water held in the blood vessels and elsewhere). This condition is also known as sodium retention, water retention, fluid retention, salt sensitivity or oedema. If these people reduce their salt intake they lose some of the excess sodium and water, and so lose weight, and if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables they lose weight faster, because the potassium in the fruit and vegetables displaces some of the excess sodium from the body.
Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in food

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers
Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

A bit more about Inegy, the cholesterol lowering drug that 'increases risk of cancer by 50 per cent'

Cholesterol lowering drug 'increases risk of cancer by 50 per cent'
Article in the Telegraph

Extract 1:

"Researchers found there were 105 cases of cancer in people taking Inegy compared to 70 in those on a dummy drug over a four year period.

The study also suggested that Inegy, which combines a statin called simvastatin and another drug called ezetimibe, has little effect in reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Prof Heinz Drexel, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria and spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology, said: "I am not sure that the efficacy is proven and I am not sure that the safety is proven. I wouldn't take the drug myself.

"In patients with an urgent need to reduce cholesterol I would give them the drug but that is they are the exception and that is not consistent with how it is being used currently. "It is being more widely used than I think it should be. We can use something else in patients whose cholesterol is not sky high."

In the last two years 300,000 prescriptions for Inegy were dispensed in England and Wales and between four and five million people are thought to be taking standard statins."

Note well that Prof Heinz Drexel would not take Inegy himself! It's rare for a doctor to speak as forthrightly as that.

Extract 2:

"There was also a higher proportion of deaths from cancer with 39 deaths in the Inegy group and 23 deaths in those on the placebo.

The cancers in both groups were across all major areas of the body including the skin and lungs, according to the findings, which were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine."

The best and the completely safe way to reduce the risk of most cancers is to avoid prescription drugs unless they are absolutely necessary and rigorously avoid salt and salty food and make sure you eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables.

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

And see Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

The powers that be are considering taking fat children from their homes and families and putting them into care...)o:

Obese children may be put into care
from the Channel 4 website. The article is © Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

I think it would be very unwise and harmful to remove a child from home and family. - People just need to be told the facts about what causes child obesity and how to prevent/reduce it. The conventional 'wisdom' is that over-eating is the cause of obesity. - This is wrong. - So is the advice to 'just eat less and exercise more'. - Dieting (i.e. under-eating) and exercising do NOT reduce obesity, because obesity is caused by fluid retention, and fluid retention is not reduced by eating less or by taking more exercise.

Fruit (and vegetables) are rich in potassium, and potassium helps to prevent/reduce obesity in children because it displaces sodium from the body. When children eat salt and salty food their bodies get too much sodium and this causes fluid retention/weight gain, leading to obesity.

So food low in added salt is best for children's health and happiness (fat children are often bullied and humiliated) and plenty of fruit and (unsalted) vegetables makes their food intake even healthier. - Children should NEVER be expected to diet to lose weight. Dieting is harmful and unnecessary. They just need to avoid salt and salty food.

See Sodium in foods

You can read about the causes of obesity on my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk (the site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information) and in particular about child obesity on this page - http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html

If you are overweight/obese and want to lose weight, you can do it easily and safely. - Read these pages to see how:

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

See also FAT RETENTION

Vulnerable groups

One in seven children - up to 1.7million - never eat any fruit, a report has warned.

One in seven children never eat fruit, says School Food Trust
Article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"In total, 14 per cent of youngsters do not even touch an apple, orange or a banana ever despite experts recommending that we eat five portions of fruit or veg a day.

Many children wrongly think that a healthy diet involves starving themselves, the government-backed report by the School Food Trust claimed.

"Although the term healthy eating is familiar to children, it is neither well understood nor applied in practice," it said."

"Childhood obesity is growing with one in three children regarded as overweight or obese, according to the report. By 2050, two in three children and 90 per cent of adults could be fat, risking heart disease and diabetes."

Fruit (and vegetables) are rich in potassium, and potassium helps to prevent/reduce obesity in children because it displaces sodium from the body. When children eat salt and salty food their bodies get too much sodium and this causes fluid retention/weight gain, leading to obesity.

So food low in added salt is best for children's health and happiness (fat children are often bullied and humiliated) and plenty of fruit and (unsalted) vegetables makes their food intake even healthier. - Children should NEVER be expected to diet to lose weight. Dieting is harmful and unnecessary. They just need to avoid salt and salty food.

See Sodium in foods

You can read about the causes of obesity on my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk (the site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information) and in particular about child obesity on this page - http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html

If you are overweight/obese and want to lose weight, you can do it easily and safely. - Read these pages to see how:

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

See also FAT RETENTION

Vulnerable groups

Researchers at the National Institute for Agricultural Botany in Cambridge have produced a GM wheat that releases fewer calories into the body.

New flour means bread could fight obesity
Article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"Researchers at the National Institute for Agricultural Botany in Cambridge have produced a genetically modified form of wheat that releases fewer calories into the body compared to other varieties currently available.

Food made from the new crop is also digested slower, making people feel fuller and less likely to eat more food. The scientists hope that these qualities could help make staple foods such as bread, pasta and other flour products healthier."

"Scientists at Birmingham University have also discovered a new method to replace fat in food products by using a protein found in mushrooms. The protein creates an air filled capsule that mimics the texture of fat.

The researchers claim that the protein could be used to replace fat in foods such as salad dressings, mayonnaise, sauces and even ice cream where most of the fat is used to provide a rich texture rather than taste.

Dr Phil Cox, one of the researcher on the team, said: "It is hoped that, by making indulgent foods more healthy, the consumer will be able to continue to enjoy those foods that are currently seen as bad for you, without worrying about the fat content.""

Wouldn't it be great if the researchers gave up this misguided research and did something useful instead?! - They could at least check that their research is founded on reliable evidence. - There is no evidence whatsoever that reducing calorie intake reduces obesity. Nor is there evidence that reducing fat intake reduces obesity. - And they've never even tested out these theories to check if they are right...)o:

The facts are that obesity is caused by salt sensitivity/sodium retention/fluid retention and sometimes, additionally fat retention, i.e. obesity is not caused by overeating or by taking too little exercise. - Obese people can easily lose excess weight, i.e. excess fluid and excess fat, by significantly reducing their intake of salt/sodium and by eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables. - Reducing calories or fat intake has no effect on fluid retention so does not result in loss of excess weight. - Slim people do not have the problem of salt sensitivity; THAT IS WHY THEY ARE SLIM! - It isn't that they don't overeat. - Frequently slim people are the ones you see eating like there's no tomorrow and taking no exercise, but nobody tells them they are greedy or lazy. - It's only the fat people that get gratuitously insulted and accused of greed, yet most fat people are counting calories/dieting MOST OF THE TIME and so they are hungry and UNDER-EATING most of the time.

The fattest people - the morbidly obese - are usually the victims of prescribed drugs that cause sodium and water retention. Doctors prescribe these drugs far too readily/carelessly/recklessly, often in high dose, and without the important warning that while taking them the patient should avoid eating salt of salty food.

See Health problems associated with salt sensitivity and fluid retention

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

See also FAT RETENTION