HRT and water retention: my personal experience

You can read about my personal experience of HRT causing massive water retention and, consequently, morbid obesity, in my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection. Many other prescription drugs cause similar problems. - See amitriptyline and other antidepressants and prescribed steroids and other drugs. If you have these problems, you may like to consider cutting down on salt and salty food.

As I gradually lowered my salt/sodium intake, this gradually reduced my excess weight. I lost 50 pounds in 14 months.

As I gradually lowered my salt/sodium intake, this gradually reduced my excess weight. I lost 50 pounds in 14 months. I weighed myself once a week while I was reducing my salt intake. Almost every week I had lost some more weight, though some weeks I stayed at the same weight as the previous week. There was only ONE week that I gained weight during the whole of that 14 month period. It was the week that I was out one day and bought a sandwich from a shop to have for my lunch. That week I gained a pound. (Shop-bought sandwiches are usually high in salt.) - I invite you to read my Mensa article about Obesity and the Salt Connection. And I invite you to try it yourself: lose excess weight by eating less salt and salty food. - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel sooo much better!

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously?

Is your body trying to tell you something? And are you taking its message seriously? I'll tell you about some of my own experiences of this.

As someone who gets migraines sometimes, I did what is sensibly advised: I thought about the food I had eaten before getting the migraines in case any particular foods were triggering the attacks. I found that if I ate more than just a few slices of cucumber that usually brought on a migraine, and I also found that another trigger was if I went more than about 5 waking hours without food at all. Non-food triggers for me turned out to be rapidly flashing lights in general or the bright, low-on-the-horizon winter sunshine. So I do what you too, no doubt, would do if you had those same messages from your body, namely, I avoid those triggers if I possibly can.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky about some other messages from my body. When I experienced a lot of health problems starting very roughly at the same time as each other and all getting worse pretty fast, it was rather a long time before I was able confidently and correctly to attribute all of them to the prescribed medication I was taking, and this was, I am sure, partly because I became so desperately tired and so very ill, but mainly because my GP and other health professionals I encountered so firmly assured me that I was wrong - absolutely wrong - and that I should continue with the medication.

Some of these body messages were weight gain and getting fatter, face becoming red and puffy, breasts becoming swollen and extremely painful, with visible veins, aching, swollen reddening agonisingly painful hands and feet, painful, distended veins in the legs that made bending the knees a particularly difficult and painful problem, excruciating headaches that no painkillers could extinguish, desperately painful genital area, increasing fatigue, tiredness and breathlessness, hair loss, and many more. I later discovered that all of these signs and symptoms had resulted from the prescription drugs I was taking - because these drugs had weakened my blood vessels and made me sensitive to salt/sodium. - Because of the web of lies, evasions, deliberate ambiguities, prejudiced viewpoints, false beliefs, ignorance and cover-ups of the health professionals to whom I turned or was directed, my proper understanding of what had been done to me was delayed by many anguished years. See story so far and my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

If you are getting a cluster of body messages that may or may not appear to be connected except that they all have followed some time after starting to take prescribed medication, I urge you to give thought to whether the drug/s could be the cause of the symptoms you are experiencing. Check stuff up for yourself: your doctors may be as uninformed and unhelpful as mine were. Here's some drug information you may find helpful: HRT and Steroids, etc and Amitriptyline and Other Antidepressants.

Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)?

Did you know there is a European Childhood Obesity Group (ECOG)? - They appear to have had a 'congress' last month: - I wonder how many 'child obesity experts' attended, and how much that 'congress' cost? And whether it has contributed an iota of anything worthwhile toward preventing or reducing child obesity. - I doubt it.

Let's just pick on one guy: Richard Storey. I don't know him or any of the other people who attended the congress. I've just arbitrarily picked on him. - I see that he is Chief Strategy Officer, M&C Saatchi, London, and that his brief is Communicating the messages of obesity prevention to the public. - What d'you think? Think he's doing a good job? Are the messages getting through? - Is child obesity being reduced? Are obese children learning how to combat their very great problems of constantly being insulted and sneered at and bullied and being given the wrong information and advice, and the wrong sort of food? - Or are the messages about obesity prevention that Mr Storey is giving out the same damaging, ineffective pre-digested gobbets of misinformation that obese adults and children have been force-fed for decades now?

If he's plugging the low-fat, calorie-counting garbage that the self-serving Food Industry pushes, then the incidence and severity of obesity will continue to soar. If he's saying that exercise promotes weight loss then he's helping no-one to lose excess weight. If he himself is slim and fit and thinks that 'eating less and exercising more' reduces obesity then he's plain WRONG, and if he thinks that dieting is helpful and that weight loss drugs and weight loss surgery have a part to play in reducing child obesity then I would profoundly disagree with him.

But Mr Storey may not be treading the doom-laden path I have envisaged. He may be giving the correct advice after all. In which case I'm surprised that it's not been headlined in the press and trumpeted in the broadcast media. Too much salt and salty food is the principal, the most important, the overwhelming, cause of child obesity. Children need to have a low intake of salt/sodium in order to prevent damaging fluid retention/weight gain and also to avoid developing a taste for salty food. Too much sugar can also cause unhealthy weight gain, but salt is a major culprit that most people do not know about. An obese child who is fed food containing no added salt will lose weight rapidly, easily and safely. - No dieting, no hunger, no drugs, no exhausting strenuous exercise: it's a no-brainer.

I invite Richard Storey to read my child obesity page, my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection, and the other information on my website, and to read some of the stuff on my blog/s. I wish him success in his mission.

It's European Obesity Day today.

Drawing special attention today to the growing incidence of obesity is unlikely to reduce the problem, because the usual suspects (eating too many calories/too much fat and not taking enough exercise) will be re-accused and again found guilty, and the well-known but incorrect advice will yet again be trotted out mindlessly to the unfortunate victims of the advice, namely: "Why don't you just eat less and exercise more?" - See the mostly sneering Comments that follow this Guardian article.

While the rôle of salt remains unacknowledged by the 'experts' on obesity, there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that obesity will start to decline.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

A little bit of excitement for me!

My Mensa article Obesity and the Salt Connection now has its URL on youtube.

See http://www.youtube.com/user/BrokeTheInterweb

And the young lady in the video talks about my article. I am tickled pink...(o:

Misleading Weight Loss Advice from Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University

See esciencenews.com article, where you will read: ""In the midst of America's obesity epidemic, physicians frequently advise their patients to reduce the number of calories they are consuming on a daily basis. This research shows that simply dieting will not likely cause substantial weight loss. Instead, diet and exercise must be combined to achieve this goal," explained Judy Cameron Ph.D., a senior scientist at OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center, and a professor of behavioral neuroscience and obstetrics & gynecology in the OHSU School of Medicine, as well as a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh."

Actually, neither dieting nor exercise is necessary to lose excess weight, nor is it necessary to eat low fat food, because obesity in human beings is caused by salt sensitivity, not by eating high fat food or too many calories or by taking insufficient exercise.

Experts must stop giving the wrong advice. Their misinformation is damaging the lives, health and happiness of millions of innocent people, most poignantly, children.

Obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. – No matter how many doctors and other ‘experts’ claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true.

Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. – It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.

Now – what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? – Here are the main causes:

1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.

Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.

2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone, prednisone, cortisone, hydrocortisone, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen – like some birth control medication (contraceptives) – some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the any of the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing’s Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients’ progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient’s progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.

3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.

4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.

These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.

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.

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

Dr Iain Brownlee and Prof Jeff Pearson of Newcastle University believe that seaweed may prove significant in reducing obesity. I don't.

The suggestion made by these researchers is widely reported today. See this BBC News report and this Press Release Could seaweed reduce obesity by reducing fat absorption? for example.

Their claim is that the addition of dietary fibre from alginate, one of the world’s largest commercially-used seaweeds, could reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by around 75%. Call me cynical, but my sceptical antennae are roused by the information that this seaweed is a highly commercial product. No doubt a number of food and drink companies are hoping to profit from this research.

Well, maybe alginate could significantly reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body. I don't know. But whether it could or not is, I submit, largely irrelevant. Reducing fat intake does not reduce obesity, and low fat intake is not conducive to health.

Excess weight is caused by sensitivity to salt and NOT by overeating. - Sensitivity to salt leads to fluid retention and this sometimes leads on to fat retention. - Fluid retention (i.e. excess weight) is easily reduced by cutting down on intake of salt and salty food. Eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables makes the fluid loss even speedier. These measures also reduce fat retention. In addition, fat retention can be reduced by increasing intake of calcium, magnesium and potassium.

And WHEN is someone in Government going to inform people that the most extreme cases of obesity - morbid obesity - are the result of taking prescription drugs incautiously prescribed, often in high dose, by doctors inadequately informed about their side-effects? - If we could have a Government initiative to curb the massive over-prescribing by doctors, that would reduce obesity very effectively indeed!

Here is the correct information:

Lose weight safely, 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, 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.

Salt shakers with fewer holes may reduce salt intake in Cllr Harwood's West Norfolk Council area and benefit the health of fish 'n' chip lovers

I'm a bit late in coming across this BBC News item from 2008 but it is never too late to give praise where it is due.

Well done to Cllr David Harwood and his fellow councillors for taking a practical step in reducing the ill-health that salt/sodium and salty food can cause to many, many people.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

See Vulnerable to salt.

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

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

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.

How to lose amitriptyline weight gain:

See amitriptyline

Amitriptyline is one of the many prescription drugs that cause salt sensitivity/sodium retention/water retention/weight gain/obesity.

Lose weight by eating less salt/sodium.

Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Inferior healthcare for older citizens, obesity, chronic illnesses, frailty and a way forward.

Read this candid World Net Daily article on widespread government practice that gives inferior healthcare to older citizens. Essentially the message is that it is a matter of cost.

But quite apart from the human suffering, unfairness, hypocrisy and lies that result from giving inferior healthcare to older people, I invite you to consider a better, more moral, and, amazingly, much cheaper alternative...(o:

Tell people the truth about prescription drugs, obesity and the salt connection.

Chronic illness and frailty are the main reasons that old people's healthcare costs tend to be higher than younger people's. Obesity is the main underlying cause of most chronic illness and a lot of frailty. It is therefore increasingly desirable to reduce the incidence and severity of obesity because this would reduce chronic illness, frailty and human suffering to a small fraction of what it is now. But this CANNOT be achieved by continuing to give the wrong information about the causes of obesity and about how best to reduce obesity.

Obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. - No matter how many doctors and other 'experts' claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true. - The hypothesis has never been put to the test scientifically and there is certainly not a shred of valid evidence to back it up.

There is a wealth of evidence to show that it is NOT true. - Millions upon millions of innocent overweight people have tried over decades to reduce their excess weight by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise. - Overwhelmingly they fail to lose weight this way. - They get tired; they feel cold and ill and hungry. But they do not lose weight (or if they do it is only temporary). - The 'experts' then tell them that they have done it wrong; they haven't tried hard enough or long enough; they are lying; they are mistaken, etc. - The 'experts' cannot get their heads around the fact that it is THEY who are wrong; THEY who are lying; THEY who are mistaken...

Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. - It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.

Now - what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? - Here are the main causes:

1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.

Amitriptyline is also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, and is present in some combination drugs, e.g. Limbitrol is a drug which combines amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.

Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking Lexapro, Prozac, Fontex, Celexa and Paxil. These are not tricyclic antidepressants; they are SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.

2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone and SK-Prednisone), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone, betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair - a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen - like some birth control medication (contraceptives) - amitriptyline and some other anti-depressants, some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing's Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients' progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient's progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.

3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.

4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.

These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.

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

Vulnerable groups

Sodium in foods and

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

and FAT RETENTION

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

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

Further Negative Findings re Breast Cancer Screening

The Telegraph reports on a study which finds substantial 'overdiagnosis' in breast cancer screening: more than a third of cancers detected in the screening are 'harmless'.

I have never been in favour of breast cancer screening. I have not myself taken up offers of this screening. My personal strongly held opinion over many years is that it does much more harm than good.

I remember an earlier negative finding reported in the Telegraph, which I wrote about in my blog on October 18, 2006:

Screening for breast cancer 'may harm women' here - Extract from the report:

"Breast cancer screening may be doing more harm than good, a new report says today. One in nine UK women is diagnosed with breast cancer at some time. The research found that for every 2,000 women invited to have mammograms, one would have their life prolonged but 10 would endure potentially devastating and unnecessary treatment."

Since the incidence of breast cancer is rising, and one of the contributory causative factors is obesity, women who are overweight would lower their risk of developing breast cancer if they were to lower their sodium intake, because salt sensitivity and fluid retention are what cause obesity, rather than over-eating.

(A survey carried out by Cancer Research UK found that most British people do not know there is a strong link between obesity and cancer. Most were aware of a link between obesity and heart disease, but not with cancer. Studies have shown that being overweight increases the risk of cancer of the breast, bowel, womb, kidney and oesophagus. A major study (2003) by the American Cancer Society also associates obesity with stomach cancer and prostate cancer in men, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and cancers of the cervix, ovary, prostate, liver, and pancreas.)

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 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

Susan Greenfield on Radio 5: Simon Mayo Programme

I've been listening this afternoon to Baroness Susan Greenfield, Oxford University professor, on Simon Mayo's Radio 5 programme. And that means I've just heard her give wrong information about what causes obesity. And that's a great shame, because she's known as a scientist and she's very influential.

I went to a talk she gave about ten years ago and I made a point of speaking to her afterwards and showed her photos of me from 1997: photos in which I was extremely fat as a consequence of taking prescribed HRT. She could see that I had lost a great deal of weight (51 pounds, in fact) since then and was surprised to learn that I had done this by drastically reducing my sodium intake, not by dieting.

She was in a bit of a rush and asked me to write to her as she was very interested. This I did, writing to her at the Royal Institution, in her capacity as Director there. I explained that blood volume increased markedly with obesity. We exchanged a few letters but the correspondence was disappointing to me, as I had hoped she would pursue the matter of sodium retention and water retention as causing obesity, rather than overeating, and sodium reduction for reducing excess weight, rather than eating fewer calories or less fat.

I gained from that correspondence the very strong impression that she was reluctant to consider prescription drugs and the medical profession and misinformation from them as blameworthy in regard to people becoming obese. I believe she was reluctant to criticise medics.

The statement of purpose of the Royal Institution when it started in 1799 was: "The application of science to the common purposes of life." As such, clearing up the misinformation and spreading the truth about obesity and how it can best be prevented/reduced would admirably accord with that purpose.

Sadly, Baroness Greenfield gave the same misinformation today that we commonly hear, as she spoke of eating too much being the cause of overweight. - It isn't, and there is no evidence to support her assertion. - I'm very surprised that ten years on from our letters she appears to have failed to investigate the connection between obesity and salt sensitivity.

Happily, when I wrote to Professor Sir Richard Doll, then Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, in 2001, he wrote back agreeing with what I had written about obesity problems caused by poor prescribing and indicating that these could be lessened by diuretics and/or eating less salt/sodium, a fact I had already deduced. He wrote that all doctors should know this.

Obesity is not caused by overeating; it is caused by salt sensitivity/fluid retention in vulnerable people. These include children. - See Vulnerable groups

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, 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.

Britain's biggest baker, Warburtons, is selling bread with up to 20 per cent more salt than rivals.

Warburtons bread 'has highest salt content'
Article in the Telegraph

Extract 1

"An investigation revealed that some loaves made by Warburtons, – the UK's biggest food brand after Coca-Cola – contain half a gram of salt per slice, meaning that a five-year-old child would reach their safe limit from eating three sandwiches.

Salt raises heart pressure which is the biggest cause of heart attacks and strokes. Campaigners say lowering levels would save 16,500 lives a year – a third of the deaths from smoking. A further 16,500 people would be prevented from having debilitating non-fatal heart attacks and strokes, according to the pressure group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash)."

Extract 2

"Overall, Warburtons had an average of 1.08g salt, 5 per cent more than Kingsmill, 12 per cent more than Tesco, and 20 per cent saltier than Sainsbury's, which has been praised for improving cardiovascular health.

Warburtons, a privately-owned brand from Bolton, Lancashire, promotes itself as a wholesome, family-run baker. Warburtons defended its record, saying it had cut salt by "over 30 per cent in recent years" and would hit targets by their deadline in 2010."

I don't think it's completely accurate for Warburton's to say that they have cut salt by "over 30 per cent in recent years" because a few years ago some of the loaves they used to sell were called, if I remember correctly, Healthy White loaves, and they definitely contained a much lower amount of salt than other loaves - about 0.3g sodium (equal to 0.75g salt) per 100g, because they used LoSalt in the making of the bread, rather than ordinary salt. - I was very sorry that they discontinued this loaf, because it was so much less harmful than other shop-bought bread. Most bread at that time contained about 0.5g (or more) sodium per 100g.

Remember, you can make your own bread easily in a breadmaker and then you could keep the salt content down. Bread manufacturers often claim that salt is necessary to the bread-making process. - I find this hard to believe because I don't put any salt at all into the bread I make and the 'process' doesn't seem to be affected...(o: - However, this is purely my own experience; I know nothing at all about salt in bread-making other than my own experience so I may well be wrong about whether salt affects bread-making.

Extract 3

"The campaign group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) urged it to immediately make steeper cuts to improve its customers' health. Three million people eat Warburtons bread every day. "Bread is the major source of salt in the diet," said Cash's chairman, Professor Graham MacGregor, an NHS doctor who treats heart patients at St George's Hospital, south London. "It is vital that bread manufacturers take a really responsible role."

Manufacturers use salt to improve taste and disguise the use of cheap ingredients. 75 per cent of sodium in the diet comes from processed food."

I do wish Professor MacGregor would tell people the most important information about salt, namely that obesity is caused by salt sensitivity/fluid retention/sodium retention and is reduced by eating less salt. It is inconceivable that he does not know it. I wrote him a long letter about obesity and the salt connection years ago. I politely pointed out that there were some serious errors in his book about salt.

The longer he delays telling the truth about obesity, the greater the harm done to millions of people. The risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, while correct to attribute (in part) to salt intake, does not have the impact that telling the truth about obesity would have. Whilever most people, including the Government's Health Ministers, the Department of Health, doctors, dieticians and the Food Standards Agency, continue to promulgate the lie that obesity is caused by eating too many calories and is reduced by eating fewer calories than the body requires, obesity and its attendant illnesses and ill-health will almost certainly continue to increase, because, as we have just read, the food companies are dragging their feet in reducing the amount of salt they ladle into their harmful products without a lot of censure from their customers, who are being misinformed by the medical profession and Government agencies and the dieting industry.

They all need to confess that they have been misleading the public. - The misinformation is causing terrible, needless suffering, because dieting/calorie restriction leads to inadequate nutrition/malnutrition and so increases the harm done by the salt sensitivity and does not reduce obesity at all. And of course they need to tell the public about the huge rôle prescription drugs play in making people sensitive to salt.

(Addendum: according to my hitcounter, it looks as though someone from Rank Hovis has been reading this blog entry today, October 31st. - Let's hope it will do some good!)

See Extract 4:

"In general, branded breads had more salt than those made by supermarkets. Hovis' white granary bread had 1.4g of salt per 100g – the highest in the survey.")

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - 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.)

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods

vulnerable groups

See amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Fat Underground Throws Weight Into Obesity War - cut and pasted from another website

I found a moving article on the internet today. It is clearly an account of deeply-felt true experience. - I just feel so very sorry that these people, and millions of other obese people today, have not discovered the facts about what really causes obesity and how it can easily be reduced, without dieting, without hunger, without extra exercise, without drugs or doctors - and without fail! - Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

I've cut and pasted the article from http://www.largesse.net/Archives/FU/LATimes.html because the webpage gives permission to do so, provided that the following statement is included:

Presented as a public service by Largesse, the Network for Size Esteem
http://www.largesse.net/
This document may be freely copied and distributed in its entirety for non-commercial use
in promoting size diversity empowerment, provided this statement is included.

Fat Underground
Throws Weight
Into Obesity War

BY JANE WILSON

"I just can't bear fat bodies. 1 think there should be fat catchers, like dog catchers, to go around and put big nets over fat people and take them all someplace and get them slimmed down. And then show them what really good eating is. Because what they're doing is advertising their unhappiness and their anger or frustration for everyone to see, and 1 don't want to see it."

--Cloris Leachman, quoted in the December issue of Family Circle

As a nation, we have an obsession with slimness. The prevailing aesthetic, which dictates an essentially adolescent body shape for everyone, makes millions miserable while fattening the weight-loss business into a multibillion-dollar industry. For the obese in America, for those who are not simply a little plumper than fashion requires, but who are 30, 40, 50 or more pounds above what doctor's weight charts say they should be, getting into socially acceptable shape is a desperate undertaking.

To be found "unbearable" by those who, like Cloris Leachman, weigh 110 pounds and like to go on periodic fasts is among the least of the burdens borne by the truly fat. They are in many ways outcasts, denied jobs, threatened with dire medical warnings about the results of their supposed gluttony, lectured for their own good by anyone of "normal" weight and ridiculed behind their backs and to their faces with cruel jokes and personal remarks. To be obese is to be unable, ever, to go to a show, a movie or a concert because you can't fit into the seats, and to stay away from all but the most spaciously arranged restaurants for the same reason. To be obese in our fiercely antifat culture is to be perpetually ashamed of your own body. Cloris Leachman is right in supposing that fat people are unhappy, angry and frustrated-but these feelings, many fat people contend, are much more often the socially induced result of being fat than its cause.

So why would anyone either become or stay fat in a society where every possible motive for thinness is provided? The answer, according to a group of women in Santa Monica who call themselves, uncompromisingly, The Fat Underground, is that they have no choice-unless an intestinal by-pass operation or having one's jaws wired together or living out one's life in perpetual gnawing hunger may be seen as any kind of acceptable alternative. The Fat Underground is an offshoot of the growing Fat Liberation movement, whose cry until now has simply been "Leave Us Alone!" Since an obvious reply to this appeal would be to say, "OK-if you want to kill yourselves," a basic concern of The Fat Underground has been to examine carefully the validity of medical evidence that a fat body is, necessarily, an unhealthy and shortlived one.

The underground has also done some investigation of the side effects of reducing diets, the generally prescribed "cure" for a large body. Underground members point out that it is a well-established,.if little publicized, fact that at least 95% of those who go on reducing diets of any kind will regain any weight lost within five years or less. Of these dieters, some 90% will regain more weight than they originally lost. Nevertheless, since it is so socially painful to be fat, very few obese people are likely to accept permanent fatness as their natural condition, so even if they know the odds they repeatedly diet in hopes of being among the metamorphosed 5%. Thus large numbers of fat people are fooled all the time and, after two and a half years, there are only 20 members of The Fat Underground, 20 women who have stopped dieting, stopped hoping to be thin, and started working to change public prejudices and ignorance about fatness. Having come to the hard conclusion that their own obesity is permanent, they need also to offer one another constant support in dealing with the pain involved in such acceptance.

All the members of the Fat Underground are radical feminists and many have also participated in a radical therapy group established in Santa Monica. They are therefore committed to changing society rather than adapting themselves to it, and they are habitually skeptical of received medical and psychiatric wisdoms. The group began when a few women in the radical therapy group became aware that they felt oppressed not simply as women but as fat people. As one of their members put it, "Fat was the crisis area, the area where our identification ran highest and where we felt most strongly persecuted."

A young woman who gave only her "radical name," which is Aldebaran, met with me first as a representative of the whole group. Since she has a background in graduate chemistry, it was she who had initiated most of the medical reading and source research undertaken by The Fat Underground, using as her principal tool the Index Medicus in the Bio-Medical Library at UCLA. "I discovered there, she said, "that what doctors tell the public about obesity, and what the public therefore believes, is somewhat different from what doctors tell each other in their research papers. The first thing I discovered is that the average fat person eats no more than the average thin person. Some eat more, and then again some thin people eat enormously without ever getting fat. But the average is the same. This finding is the result of more than 20 years of research by nutritionists, and is well documented. But the popular view, sponsored by the medical popularizers, is that fat people are all gluttons who sit around scarfing up cupcakes without restraint. Fat people are seen, so to speak, as thin people gone bad.

Dull Ache of Hunger

"There is a minority of fat people who have been so heavily oppressed around their eating habits that they have reacted by becoming gluttons. But the average fat person has enough self-control to lose the 10 to 20 pounds that affluent, sedentary life adds to many people in America. Beyond that, to lose 50 or 60 pounds, to get down to the doctor's weight chart figures and stay there requires intense, prolonged hunger and much, much more exercise than is necessary for the mildly overweight. You are going to have to eat much less than the average person, forever. And you never do get used to the dull ache of hunger on a 1,000-calorie diet. You never lose the anxiety that at any moment you may lose control and go on a starvation-induced eating binge. The best you can hope for is that you will remain sufficiently alienated from your feelings, sufficiently coerced by your dread of becoming fat again, with all the pain that that will entail, that you will be able to minimize and endure the hunger. But very few can endure it indefinitely.
"Some doctors and nutritionists, who do not have a vested interest in making a lot of money from weight loss programs, will admit the degree of hunger that must be borne by obese dieters. Yet psychiatrists and psychologists still insist that any eating beyond what is necessary to be slim is 'emotional.' The problems of a fat person on a diet around food are not emotional but physical-the physical pains of hunger."

Ballet Dancer

Aldebaran's weight since she stopped dieting has remained constant at 60 pounds more than the charts say it should be for a woman of her height and build. She says she eats moderately, has no more trouble with eating binges and her blood pressure, when she has it checked at work, is normal. When she has it checked by a doctor it is high--because, she says, she is then in a stress situation.

Aldebaran told about a community of 1,700 Italian immigrants, living in the town of Roseto in Pennsylvania, whom she had read about in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., and also in a book called "Fat Power" by Llewellyn Louderback. These Rosetans are notably fat as a group and cheerfully consume large quantities of high-calorie, high-cholesterol Italian foods. Yet they enjoy remarkably good general health, dying from heart disease at about one-third of the national toll, and being afflicted with diabetes at only a quarter of the rate of the population at large. Teams of researchers from the University of Oklahoma investigated the Rosetans three times, in 1962, 1964 and 1967, but could find no explanation for the low incidence of supposedly obesity-related disease among their number. One researcher did suggest that "contentment" might have something to do with it.

"It seems", commented Aldebaran, "that the Rosetans liked themselves a lot and thought it was pretty neat that they were so fat. They felt no anxiety or stress about it and didn't find it undesirable. But when the fat children of these fat parents went into the mainstream of American society, and went on diets, they began to suffer from obesity-related diseases at the same rate as the rest of the population."

"It does appear", she said, "that fat people are particularly susceptible to heart disease and strokes, that they tend to have high blood pressure and to suffer from kidney disorders and metabolic problems such as diabetes, together with a whole range of psychological ills ranging from depression to 'bad self-image'. I don't think it's necessary even to talk about the origins of the psychological problems. But the medical difficulties do bear a lot of examination. Statistics on the health of fat people are most often based on fat subjects found in medical settings, where it is unlikely that they will have avoided either subjection to dieting or feelings of intense anxiety about their health. Such fat patients, who have been sufficiently serious about weight loss to have consulted a doctor, are people under stress who may have gone on and off diets repeatedly, each time losing weight only to regain it again. The dangers of such a procedure have been known for more than a decade."

At this point Aldebaran produced a copy of a 1966 U.S. Public Health Services Report on "Obesity and Health" and read the following extract: "Repeatedly losing and gaining weight may be more harmful than maintenance of a steady weight at a high level. For example, it has been shown that serum cholesterol levels are elevated during periods of weight gain, thus increasing the risk of deposition. We have no evidence to show that once cholesterol has been deposited it can be removed by weight reduction. It is possible that a patient whose weight has fluctuated up and down a number of times has been subjected to more atherogenic stress than a patient with stable though excessive weight...If an animal has once been obese and then has been repeatedly reduced it will have a shorter life expectancy than an animal which has never been reduced.

"We feel", she went on, "that any doctor who knows this information about serum cholesterol levels--and he most certainly should know it--and who tells a fat person who has dieted many times before to make yet another. doomed attempt at reduction is, in effect, saying, 'Go kill yourself.' It simply has not been profitable for bariatricians to face up to the contradictions in their approach to obesity, to the stupidity, for example, of their mystified use of the term 'overeating.' Perhaps that's why they never put out more than the first edition of something called 'The Journal of Bariatrics'. They have refused to learn from their own failure rate, but just go on saying, 'Go on a diet' with the unspoken thought, 'Perhaps a miracle will happen for you.' On a purely practical level, the worst problem that a fat person can have with doctors is that any physician can say, 'This fat person is not healthy enough to work at such and such a job' and there is no appeal. We can be routinely denied a civil right because a doctor says we shouldn't have it until we reduce the size of our body. The doctors, you see, are backed by a multibillion-dollar industry, and by national prejudice."

The future of The Fat Underground does not include any large-scale plans to recruit. They have learned that it maybe a long and difficult process for a new member to come to terms emotionally with the idea that her own obesity is probably genetic in origin, and is permanent. "Most fat women's feelings about fat are so dreadful," said Aldebaran, "that they have really 'numbed out' in that area--they can accept incredible insults without reacting. But when they start to get in touch with the numbed feelings it is excruciatingly painful--so we have needed to have constant support groups to help us stop feeling wretched about ourselves, to stop feeling worthless and ugly."

At a recent weekly meeting of the Fat Underground there was some good cheer in that a feminist newspaper in Denver had written, out of the blue, to offer moral support and suggests that the Underground might help to produce a special issue of the paper on the oppression of fat women by society at large, with particular attention paid to the role of the medical profession. But then they heard that a woman author, whose new book contained several expressions of aesthetic disgust at fat bodies, had been unwittingly invited to speak to some members of their own feminist group. There was anger in the room.

Obese Americans are, some contend, the scapegoats of a guiltily well-fed nation. The Fat Underground is working to reestablish the lost distinction between gluttony as a sin of self-indulgence and fatness as a natural characterisic which, like unusual height or above-average intelligence, occurs in proportion of the population.

The underground has a motto--"Fat people of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose!"

This afternoon this blog and my website had a visitor from the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust ...

I see that someone from the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust has been visiting this blog, obviously looking on the internet for reactions to the scandal of the death of Gary Foster in the drug trial that had been set up on UCLH's computer system. That person briefly looked at some other entries on my blog and then visited my website to look at (and, hopefully, READ) my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

Over the years many, many health professionals from all over the world have visited my website and my blog. I trust they will eventually have the courage to tell the truth about obesity and will stop harming their overweight patients by advising them to eat less and exercise more, instead of giving them the vital information that reducing sodium intake is the safe, effective, speedy way to reduce excess weight. Above all, I hope they will curb their profession's reckless over-prescribing of the many powerful drugs which cause obesity/morbid obesity by weakening the blood vessel walls and thereby causing massive fluid retention/sodium retention.

P.S. added 23rd September.
The visitor from University College London Hospitals NHS Trust has visited my blog again today. I do hope these visits will result in much less harm being done by health professionals to patients.

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

A foolish, ill-informed David Cameron has attacked "moral neutrality", saying the obese, the idle and the poor have no one to blame but themselves.

David Cameron launches 'moral neutrality' attack on obese, idle and poor
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"We talk about people being 'at risk of obesity' instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise."

Absolutely wrong, Mr Cameron! - Where's your evidence? - Any research to support your offensive, false assumption? - Of course not! - You are as ill-informed about obesity as is the prejudiced, ignorant Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of the BMA Council. - See http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/08/fat-people-are-just-greedy-says-ill.html

Dieting, i.e. eating less food/fewer calories does not reduce obesity, nor does increasing exercise. - This is because obesity is not caused by overeating.

WHEN is the truth going to be told about obesity?

Read my Mensa article Obesity and the Salt Connection

All that is necessary to curb the growing incidence of obesity is to tell the truth about what causes it! - Obesity is NOT caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, frequently because of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. (When doctors prescribe drugs that cause sodium retention and water retention they should warn the patient not to eat salt, or food containing salt, while taking the medication. When they do not give this warning, the inevitable consequence is considerable weight gain.)

Read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt: vulnerable groups

Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' or 'dieting' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - 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.)

If you want to lose weight, don't buy food that's canned in BRINE. The salt/sodium in the brine will add to your weight problem.

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

See FAT RETENTION

Obesity increases risk of many cancers. - Both obesity and these cancers and other illnesses are the result of years of medical experts' wrong advice

Extra two stones boosts risk of cancer

The link is to a Telegraph article. - I have been warning for years that obesity greatly increases the risk of most cancers. - And I have been explaining for years that the answer to the obesity crisis is for people to be told the truth about obesity - i.e. that it is not caused by overeating, but by fluid retention in people who have become sensitive to salt. - Reducing salt intake rapidly and safely reduces excess weight in obese people. - Very sadly, dieting/'slimming'/calorie reduction does not reduce excess weight AT ALL. And yet health professionals and others routinely advise obese people to eat less. Dieting usually causes weight increase in overweight people because it further weakens the blood vessel walls and therefore increases fluid retention, which is why weight increases.

Extract from the article:

"The chance of developing five different types of cancer increases by 50 per cent if your weight goes up by more than two stones, according to new research.

A study at the University of Manchester found that those who put on weight equivalent to a five-point increase in the body mass index (BMI) were at significant risk of contracting cancer of the colon, breast, skin, thyroid.

The increase in BMI is equivalent to two-and-a-half stones (18.9kg) for a healthy man of average height, 5ft 9ins (1.75m), and almost two stones (12.6kg) for a healthy woman of average height, 5ft 4ins (1.63m).

Men who gained that amount of weight were 50 per cent more likely to develop oesophageal cancer and a third more likely to suffer thyroid cancer. Their chances of getting colon and kidney cancer increase by 24 per cent; they are also at a smaller but significant risk of rectal and skin cancer.

Women who are similarly overweight increase their chances of cancer of the womb lining and gallbladder by 59 per cent. They also have more than a 50 per cent increased risk of oesophageal cancer and are a third more likely to develop kidney cancer.

The chances of women getting pancreatic, thyroid, and colon cancer increased significantly if they were overweight, but were not as great as the risk for men."

To lose weight obese people need to avoid eating salt and salty food.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, 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.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

See FAT RETENTION

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

Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

Dieting makes you tired, cold and hungry; it does NOT make you slim! - Obesity is caused by sensitivity to salt. - Lose weight by eating less salt!

Read here about Obesity and the Salt Connection

You do not need drugs to lose weight. You do not need to count calories. You do not need to exhaust yourself exercising.

You just need to give up dieting, eat good healthy meals with plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables, and avoid salt and salty food. - Here is a page of information about foods high in salt/sodium (the foods to avoid) and those low in sodium and/or high in potassium (the foods that are better for people who are wanting to lose excess weight) - sodium foods

You will lose weight easily and rapidly and you will have more energy and feel so much better. - Go on! - Try it! - You KNOW that dieting doesn't work...