Thinking of getting a stairlift?

This week, along with my copy of the Radio Times coming through the letterbox, there were also some of those leaflets advertising this and that. There is usually at least one with a photo of a photogenic TV doctor endorsing something or other, and doubtless being very well paid to do so. This time the 'doctor advert' was trying to sell stairlifts. 

 

If you too received one of these leaflets and it has started you wondering whether you should be getting a stairlift - a very expensive purchase - I would just like to invite you to read this blog article I posted earlier this year. You too may well be short of vitamin D. Most people in this country are short of vitamin D because the main source of vitamin D is sunshine, and we don't get a lot of that in the UK. Perhaps you too would benefit more from improving your nutritional status and thus your bone and muscle strength and general health, than by spending thousands of pounds on an expensive stairlift.

Shame on the Royal Society of Chemistry!

In pursuit of a cheap, filling meal in the name of austerity, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has resurrected, and is publicising, an economical dish from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. The dish in question is a Toast Sandwich. You can read about it in this BBC News report. The 'meal' consists of a slice of thin toast sandwiched between two slices of buttered bread, with salt and pepper added to taste. You can listen to the Today programme's interview with an RSC employee here, and you will find that swapping the butter for margarine instead is even recommended as being more healthy! - I think not!

What an unhealthy meal the Royal Society of Chemistry is advocating! Bread is high in salt and is the main food source of salt intake for the average person in this country, and we are constantly being enjoined to eat less salt in order to reduce high blood pressure, reduce risk of stroke, heart disease and heart attack, reduce risk of developing type 2 diabetes and reduce risk of countless other degenerative conditions. And you even suggest adding more salt! - Spot on there, then, RSC, I don't think! - Bread's also high in carbohydrate: wheat flour and sugar. - More baddies, RSC! - Yeast and gluten are other ingredients problematic for many consumers. Factory-produced bread also contains undesirables like flour 'improvers', preservatives and other unnatural ingredients.

You point to bread as containing additives of calcium, iron and B vitamins making it extra nutritious! - Shame on you, RSC! - This is not a nutritious meal! - At an estimated cost of 7½p, this is a cheap travesty of a meal and a cheap way of damaging your health, endorsed and promoted by a respected institution that should know better!

Study finds Pay-for-Performance does not benefit patient health

"As news outlets throughout Europe and the U.S. report on the plummeting health of Western adults and children, there is no shortage of culprits. One villain often bandied about is the "fee for service" system of incentives for physicians. Clearly, if doctors are financially rewarded for simply performing more procedures, costs will soar at the expense of patient health."

But, as physorg.com reports, Pay-for-Performance, an emerging movement in which physicians are rewarded not for what they do, but for quality of care and patient outcomes, has also not been found to benefit patients with hypertension, despite enormous administrative costs. - Andrew Lansley: please note!

My take on this is that until the healthcare industry acknowledges and promotes evidence-based facts about the causes of the continued rise in obesity and its related degenerative diseases, patient health can only continue to go from bad to worse. The 'prescribe more and more and more drugs' culture embraced by most doctors is harming patients; the falsely-named 'healthy eating' advice given by healthcare agencies and promoted by the Food Industry and the Dieting Industry that profit by it, the salt-laden processed food that crams the shelves of the supermarkets, are disabling and truncating more and more lives.

We need to revert to eating more natural food, without added salt, free of synthetic added chemicals that do not exist in real food, free of cloying sweetness that perverts the taste: food that is naturally nutritious, not with added this and added that to pretend that it is nutritious. We need to curb the pharmaceutical industry's excesses and put legal limits on what and how much doctors are allowed to prescribe - especially to children.

Good nutrition is the foundation for good health. 'A pill for every ill' is a damaging delusion.

Good News: 7 influential UK health groups are revising their position on Vitamin D

I recommend you to read the whole of this excellent article about the merits of Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, and about the harm done by not getting enough of this vital nutrient, often because of being wrongly advised by misinformed health experts. My personal experience is that by taking vitamin D3 supplements (my skin is too sensitive to sunshine for me to expose it to the sun much) my health has benefited immeasurably. I have not had a cold or cough or any other infection since I started taking the supplements, my muscle strength is much improved, my hair is in much better condition, etc.)

Nutrition Science or Nutrition Science Betrayed?

The War for Nutrition Science Integrity
"The American Society for Nutrition (ASN), the largest society for nutrition researchers in the US, openly receives support from pharmaceutical companies like Abbott Nutrition and Martek Biosciences, genetic engineering and pesticide giant Monsanto, food processor ConAgra, and junk food suppliers and producers Coca-Cola, Mars, Kraft, McDonald’s, General Mills, and Kellogg’s, not to mention the Sugar Association, Inc. (among many others). Think about that: an organization claiming “excellence in nutrition research and practice” receives major funding from companies making drugs, pesticides, and some of the most health-damaging foods on the planet."

We must all stand up and be counted in the battle against pharmaceutical junk, food junk and manipulated junk science. Good nutrition should be our civilisation’s foundation and a legacy to be bequeathed to future generations. Our health is being sold by scoundrels and bought by arch-criminals.
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Natural Health (USA)

NHS provides poor care for elderly surgery patients

BBC News informs us that "Hospitals must improve their care of elderly patients undergoing surgery, an independent review has concluded. Pain management, nutrition and delays were all highlighted as problems by experts from the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death. Overall, just over a third of patients were judged to have had good treatment."

I heard this discussed on Radio 4's Today programme the other day and was dismayed that the discussion was steered almost immediately into focussing on the need for better pain relief. - I may be in a minority, even a very small minority, here, but I believe the strong emphasis on pain relief is counterproductive. - What is far more necessary and far more beneficial is to work at pain prevention. - This means the surgeons should perform any necessary surgery ASAP instead of after considerable delays which increase the pain and emotional distress, compromise nutrition, extend the length of hospital stay, and result in more complications and greater need for rehabilitation and caring. - As far as I am concerned, stuff the pain relief and the dedicated pain teams and the multitude of pain-killers with their many harmful side-effects! Concentrate on getting the surgery done as a matter of urgency and compassion, and providing nutritious food and good nursing to promote a speedy recovery.

Gabby Logan on Radio 5 - today' s vitamin supplements discussion

This programme missed the opportunity to do a great deal of good by giving information that is not widely known. Instead it rehearsed the usual distinctly disputable message that if you eat a good balanced diet you will get all the vitamins you need and the usual warning that if you take too high a dose you could harm yourself. The panel of speakers did correctly mention that certain groups, e.g. the housebound, need extra vitamin D, since food alone does not provide sufficient vitamin D. But I felt the tone of much that was said was on the lines of criticising people for eating poor diets and so it was their choice of poor diets that caused their nutritional deficiencies. We were also patronisingly told that staff in health stores will be trying to sell you supplements you may not need. I can't say that that has been my experience.

I did not hear anyone mention that prescription drugs often seriously deplete the body of nutrients. I wrote about this very recently: Medication often causes nutritional deficiencies. Dr Hilary Jones was one of Gabby's panel of speakers. I wonder whether he himself did not know much about this. Few doctors do. And few patients do. It would have been a good idea to have on the programme a doctor with a special interest and expertise in nutrition, e.g. Dr John Briffa.

Age UK survey finds hospitals are still failing on nutrition for elderly patients

See BBC News report. Michelle Mitchell, from Age UK, says, "Not enough is being done to ensure that words are transferring into action on the wards."

Improperly administered artificial feeding shows widespread lack of understanding and knowledge of how to feed patients, UK watchdog, NCEPOD, reports

See BBC News article. "A national safety watchdog found problems in three quarters of the intravenous feeding it cases examined. " - You couldn't make it up, could you! - Three quarters! - There is especial concern regarding the welfare of premature babies not receiving adequate sustenance. (NCEPOD is the abbreviation for the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death.)

The health of millions of women in the UK is endangered by nutritionally deficient diets

Millions of British women have potentially dangerous diets ranging from teenage girls missing out on healthy food to pensioners not getting their vitamins it is claimed. Health experts pulled together the results of 110 separate scientific and medical research studies to paint a worrying picture of what the UK's female population eats. Not only are women in the prime of their lives not getting the right amount of nutrition, which in turn can affect the weight of newborn babies too, but the poor diet extends across all age groups.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: The studies cited in this report show that the nutrients deficient in British women’s diets include magnesium, zinc, potassium, iodine, iron, vitamin B2 and vitamin D. As if this were not bad enough, however, independent studies conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries have shown that the nutrient content of our food has fallen substantially over the past few decades as a result of our soils becoming depleted of minerals. In the Netherlands, for example, research shows that vegetables now contain so few essential minerals, such as selenium, that their levels can barely be recorded. To learn more, click here.

Antidepressants don't work and most of them make you fatter.

So why take them? - It's a no-brainer.

BEFORE you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. - I hope this will save a lot of people having their lives/health damaged by harmful, useless drugs.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.
See amitriptyline
And see Sodium in foods

Nutrition training for doctors needs to be improved

Nutrition needs to be made a more important part of the doctor training system, a leading expert has said. Gastroenterologist Dr Penny Neild, who works at London's St George's Hospital, said training on how to spot and tackle malnutrition was "patchy".
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)

High-Fructose Corn Syrup: personally I avoid it.

I try to avoid all those iffy chemicals found lurking in nutrition labels. A chemical that does not occur in food naturally and has been 'invented'/developed in the laboratory is not something I am inclined to want to ingest. HFCS comes high in that category. Here's the latest study that suggests that HFCS isn't good for health: cnn report on corn syrup.

And here's a YouTube lecture about the harm that High-Fructose Corn Syrup does to the body: The Bitter Truth. You'll need to settle down to watch for well over an hour, but it's entertainingly delivered and very interesting, and if it persuades you to avoid HFCS then it will be time well spent.

Vitamin D supplements may help to prevent type 2 diabetes

A New Zealand study has found that South Asian women with insulin resistance improved markedly after taking vitamin D supplements. Nutrition researcher Pamela von Hurst of the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health at Albany, said while diet and exercise played a major part in the onset of type-2 diabetes, her findings reinforced the importance of vitamin D from the sun and supplements to prevent type-2 diabetes.
Read article at pharmacynews.com.au (Australia)

Cancer patients recover faster from gastrointestinal surgery if given liquid food directly into the intestine

BBC News reports on a study that finds that cancer patients recover faster from gastrointestinal surgery if given liquid food directly into the intestine. It appears that, amazingly, it had previously been thought nutrition hampered patients' recovery!! - I wonder who was the half-witted originator of this strange idea? "Oesophageal, stomach and pancreatic cancer patients usually fast, or are nil by mouth, for up to 10 days after gastrointestinal surgery." It must have harmed many thousands of cancer patients over the years...)o:

Anyway, thankfully, they have now found "that patients given nutrition directly into the intestine through a feeding tube recovered around three days faster than those who were fasted and only given basic hydration." And there are also fewer complications, so as well as saving patients needless extra suffering, costs to the NHS will be lower and there will be fewer bed shortages.

You can lower your risk of cancer by cutting down on 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 damage 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.

Can Psychiatry and its Prescription Drugs be Trusted

This Radio 4 programme BBC webpage entitled "Rewriting the Psychiatrist's Bible" is available to listen to online for another week. I am sure you would find it interesting and illuminating - and sinister...

Psychiatrists invent new psychiatric illnesses/conditions; drug companies invent or rediscover pharmaceutical drugs to treat these putative conditions. The pharmaceutical industry profits from the sales of this mind-altering medication; the medics who prescribe the stuff benefit financially from their ties with Big Pharma. - All is fine and dandy - except for the fall guys: the children and adults who trustingly take the psychotropic junk and suffer the multitude of adverse side-effects, one of which is usually massive weight gain and its attendant ill-health.

Avoid this junk.

Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest medicine.

More and more people are taking antidepressants

More and more people in America are taking antidepressants, as TIME reports, despite this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. And remember, they have many harmful side-effects, e.g. weight gain is a common side-effect of antidepressants and other pharmaceutical drugs.

And remember, when you read the claims of pharmaceutical firms that antidepressants are effective, that "Research undertaken by pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted." - See http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/news/business/pharmaceuticals-need-clinical-trial-regulation-$443564.htm where Sir Iain Chalmers, editor of treatment monitoring organisation the James Lind Library, argues that the untrustworthiness of clinical health trials has reached endemic proportions in the UK.

A brief search on the internet will find many other examples of collusion between researchers and the drug companies, e.g. The Boston Globe's article about Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa's investigation into whether Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman's association with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson influenced his research findings about their psychotropic drugs, and therefore harmed children.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.

Before you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this:

BEFORE you go to the doctor to ask for anti-depressants, consider this research finding, reported in February 2008 in the Telegraph: Anti-depressants 'no better than dummy pills' by a Hull University team led by Prof Irving Kirsch. Not very often doctors seek to reduce pill-taking! - I fervently hope this will save a lot of people having their lives/health damaged by harmful, useless drugs.

MIND, the mental health charity, recommends a walk in the country as being helpful in lifting depression.

Are you on a diet? - Dieting is an often overlooked, but significant cause of depression. Good nutrition is an excellent way to improve your health. Obviously when you are not eating enough for the needs of your body and your brain you will experience both physical and mental harm. - It is not necessary (or desirable, or effective or even safe) to diet to lose weight. The safe, natural way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food. Avoid ready meals and takeaways because these are usually highly salted and offer poor nutrition. They are likely to worsen your feelings of depression.
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 damage 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
FAT RETENTION

Read also:
amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Want to know more about the political influence of the pharmaceutical industry in America?

Want to know more about the political influence of the pharmaceutical industry? - Then I suggest you look here. The website states that "The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable."

I am someone who has been greatly harmed by prescribed pharmaceutical drugs and so I am particularly aware of the danger to the public health (and the public purse) of the great and increasing power of the multinationals, especially Big Pharma. I believe that rather than treating illness with pharmaceuticals, we would do better by preventing and/or treating most illness with better nutrition, which is, after all, the natural way, and which does not have the disadvantage of adverse side-effects. A good way to improve your nutrition and to get the most benefit from your food is to lower your salt/sodium intake.

Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest medicine.

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 damage 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

FAT RETENTION

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Vulnerable groups

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

Healthy lifestyle lowers risk of cardiovascular disease

Healthy lifestyle lowers risk of heart disease. - This can't come as a surprise to anyone, surely? - Statistical back-up here: blog on the Boston Globe

Good Nutrition is the Best Physician.

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 damage 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

FAT RETENTION

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Vulnerable groups

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions