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

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 - Well both theories are out of date.

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

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

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

SALT: it doesn't just kill slugs, it can kill people too

Some people kill slugs by sprinkling salt onto them. This draws the water out of their very watery bodies and produces a sort of slug sludge. It seems a peculiarly cruel death. The internet can supply more kindly ways to divest oneself of unwelcome slugs.

 

When salt kills people it is usually a more long-drawn-out death. Instead of the salt drawing water out of its victim's body as with the slug, it draws more water into the body. Salt's victims tend to be babies/small children, who are vulnerable to salt because of the immaturity of their organs and their blood vessels, or pregnant women, made vulnerable to salt by hormone changes in their bodies, or other groups made sensitive to salt, most notably by taking commonly prescribed drugs, including antidepressants and steroids. All of these groups, because of excess fluid retention (extra salt and water, mainly held in the bloodstream), tend to become overweight/obese/morbidly obese, with the health consequences attendant on that, including high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, cancer (especially stomach cancer), arthritis, insomnia, depression, impaired kidney function, liver problems, type 2 diabetes and many more, as well as emotional distress because of the stigmatising attitudes provoked by obesity in modern-day societies.

 

You could lose weight and reduce your risk of suffering from the unpleasant, unhealthy consequences of salt sensitivity/vulnerability, of early disability and premature death, by simply eating less salt and salty food. - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel sooo much better! - and, dare I say it? - less sluggish!

Steroid injections for tennis elbow do more harm than good in the long term

Australian researchers analysed the treatment of tendinopathy in more than 2,600 patients from 41 past studies. They compared results using steroids with results using placebo, and they looked at results in the short, medium and long term. In the short term steroids reduced pain more, but in the long term the use of steroids made the pain worse. The researchers recommend exercise as the best way to cure tendinopathies.
Read the very interesting article about this on the BBC News website.

Don't damage your health with prescription medicines

The Independent reports on increasing problems of addiction to prescription medicines and illustrates the article with examples of celebrity deaths caused by these drugs.

Prominent among harmful prescribed drugs are tranquillisers, anti-depressants, pain-killers and steroids. If you value your health you should avoid taking these potentially harmful pharmaceuticals (some of which are obtainable without prescription) unless they are absolutely necessary, because the adverse side-effects of the drugs, including possible addiction, are frequently far worse than the health problem for which they are being taken. - ALWAYS check out the possible side-effects and bear in mind that drug companies have a track record of not disclosing unfavourable information about their products if they can get away with it.

You can read about some of the many dangerous prescription drugs on these pages:

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

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

You want to get rid of the weight you gained from taking the contraceptive pill?

You want to get rid of the weight you gained from taking the contraceptive pill? - First you need to realise that although we usually think of contraceptives, correctly, as sex hormones, they are also steroids, and taking steroids often causes fluid retention/salt sensitivity/weight gain. You have gained weight because of developing some sensitivity to salt. You can reduce that weight gain, and prevent future weight gain, by avoiding salt and salty food. - That means finding out about the salt/sodium content of foods, looking at labels, etc and choosing the foods that contain less sodium. You really need to try to avoid processed food and instead cook fresh food from scratch, without adding salt to it. Processed food manufacturers add a lot of salt to food; that's why processed food is not usually healthy 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.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Vulnerable groups

Sodium in foods

See also FAT RETENTION

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.

FDA warns of steroid dangers in some body-building products

CNN reports that the Food and Drugs Administration is warning about the use of body-building products marketed as containing steroids or steroid-like substances. The affected products are TREN-Xtreme, MASS Xtreme, ESTRO Xtreme, AH-89-Xtreme, HMG Xtreme, MMA-3 Xtreme, VNS-9 Xtreme, and TT-40-Xtreme, and "the FDA considers them to be unapproved new drugs and says they are neither effective nor safe.

Over the past two years, the agency said, it has received five adverse reports directly related to the named products, including serious liver injury. While there were no reports of acute liver failure or death, it said, there were hospitalizations.

Another 15 events were attributed to this type of product in general, it said."

Walking, gardening or doing housework for 30 minutes most days can cut the risk of dementia by more than a third, scientists have found.

Exercise 'cuts risk of dementia'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Walking, gardening or doing housework for 30 minutes most days can cut the risk of dementia by more than a third, scientists have found.

A team of researchers in Italy measured the calories burnt by more than 700 pensioners each day and found those who were most active were least likely to develop vascular dementia, in which the blood vessels that feed the brain become damaged and lead to mental decline.

Those sticking to guidelines of walking for 30 minutes on at least four days a week were 39 per cent less likely to develop the condition.

Vascular dementia is the second most common form of mental decline after Alzheimer's disease. There are about 700,000 people with dementia in Britain and the vascular form of the condition accounts for 17 per cent of cases.

Symptoms include problems with concentration, memory difficulties, depression, seizures and confusion."

You can also significantly reduce your risk of developing vascular dementia by avoiding eating salt and salty food and avoiding pharmaceutical drugs unless these are essential, because many pharmaceuticals - including steroids like prednisone and prednisolone, HRT and other oestrogen-containing drugs, tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline and other psychotropic drugs - do great harm to the blood vessels.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, vascular dementia, osteopenia, 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

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

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

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

Prescription drugs that can and do cause weight gain include Prednisone, Prednisolone, HRT, some oral contraceptives, amitripyline, Zoloft, Zyprexa,..

Higher doses cause greater weight gain. The drugs that cause the greatest weight gain tend to be some steroids like prednisone and prednisolone, oestrogen-containing drugs like HRT and oral contraceptives, some antidepressants including amitriptyline/Elavil, Paxil, Tofranil/Imipramine and Zoloft, and some antipsychotics including Zyprexa. The antiseizure medication, Depakote, diabetes drugs like Diabeta and Diabinese, and the high blood pressure drugs Atenolol, Cardura and Inderal and heartburn drugs like Nexium and Prevacid may also cause drug-induced weight gain. NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like Brufen/Ibuprofen/Nurofen and some other painkillers can also cause weight gain.

The weight gain is because of sodium retention and water retention, and this fluid retention can easily be reduced by avoiding salt/sodium and food containing salt, such as bacon, ham, pork pies, Marmite, ready meals, tinned soups, shop-bought sandwiches, sauces, etc. - So eating less salt is the fastest, surest and safest way to lose excess weight...(o:

Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Go on! - 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

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

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

'Debate' about obesity: opposing views given, but neither side realises that salt sensitivity/sodium retention/fluid retention explain the conundrum.

Size matters: The Great British weight debate - Independent on Sunday

Yet another article about obesity which wrongly assumes overeating to be the cause of the rising incidence of obesity...)o:

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 the result of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

The conventional 'wisdom' and advice about obesity is wrong.

There is no evidence to support the calorie theory about obesity. - And reducing calories does not reduce obesity. - Reducing salt intake DOES reduce obesity.

Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 BMJ article for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See Guardian article for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

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 and

Associated health conditions and

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

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

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

Britain's leading foetal medicine expert has condemned the IVF industry for 'exploiting women' by offering them unproven and expensive treatments.

Private IVF clinics are 'exploiting women' - Observer

Extract:

"Britain's leading foetal medicine expert has condemned the IVF industry, saying some private clinics are exploiting women desperate to get pregnant by offering them unproven and expensive treatments.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Professor Charles Rodeck, founder and head of the unit for foetal medicine at University College Hospital London, has expressed particular concern over some of the drugs and tests being offered to infertile couples.

'The commercial world of IVF provision is a very competitive one, so some clinics try to keep a step ahead by offering more interventions than their competitors, even if they know those procedures might not work,' he said.

Rodeck transformed the use of foetal medicine in Britain by initiating the use of ultrasound for foetal therapy and diagnosis of malformations in the late Seventies. He went on to set up the first foetal medicine unit in the early Eighties, as well as setting up clinics specialising in the care of young women.

'Even though I have no evidence that the mothers or babies are being harmed by the extra hormones and steroids they are increasingly being given by these clinics, you can't be sure what happens to a baby when you put unnecessary and unproven medicines into its mother's body,' he said.

His work has left him open to attacks from the anti-abortion lobby but he is defiant. 'The truth is that not all human life is totally sacrosanct,' he said. 'Nature has a mechanism called "miscarriage" which eliminates many of its early errors but it is not always totally efficient and so some of these errors survive. What we are trying to do simply use technology to assist Nature.'

Rodeck also criticised some private clinics for giving poor information to couples. 'Offering these interventions becomes exploitation when clinics do not spell out the pros, cons and limitations of these interventions because couples so desperately want to get pregnant, that they will pay for virtually any treatment if they think it will increase their chances,' he said.

There are 85 licensed fertility clinics in the UK, in an industry worth up to £500m a year. According to latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, in 2004 more than 30,000 patients underwent more than 40,000 treatment cycles, each costing up to £8,000.

Rodeck says he agrees with the concerns voiced earlier this year by Lord Winston, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, that the IVF industry has been corrupted by money. He pointed to a growing range of expensive clinical practices offered to couples at private clinics, despite there being very limited evidence that such interventions work."

It's good to see a doctor warning that prescribed drugs can do harm.

If a woman is subfertile because she is overweight/obese, avoiding salt and salty food would help because this would reduce the fluid retention that is the cause of obesity.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

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 and Associated health conditions

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

Suggestions for asthmatics that do not involve drugs.

Breathing lessons - Guardian

Extract:

"There are 5.2 million people in the UK currently receiving treatment for asthma - which makes for a lot of inhalers lurking in bathroom cabinets. Inhalers, the most common treatment for asthma, come in two types: preventers, which are taken daily to control inflammation in the airways long-term and usually contain low-dose steroids; and reliever inhalers, which instantly relax the muscles if something triggers symptoms. Most asthmatics agree it's no big deal having to take them. And yes, it's great that they work.

But as with anyone with a long-term reliance on drugs, many asthmatics would like to reduce their reliance on inhalers without increasing the likelihood of a potentially dangerous attack. "Lots of people are very keen to know what they can do about their asthma other than take drugs to control it," says Dr Mike Thomas, a GP and senior research fellow for the charity Asthma UK.

There's a large amount of information out there about "natural" treatments, from avoiding cow's milk to eating more shiitake mushrooms. But as Thomas warns: "There's a fairly low amount of evidence for many of these things because lots of the research is based on drug treatments. It's basically much harder to fund non-drug research - but that has been increasing in the last 10 years, so the evidence is growing."

So what are the alternatives, and how effective are they?"

Click on the link to the article to read about the alternatives.

My own suggestion is that reducing your intake of sodium/salt and salty food could be helpful, especially as any steroids you have been prescribed may have caused some fluid retention/salt sensitivity/sodium retention. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

and Sodium in foods

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

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

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

Doctors call for measures to reduce heavy drinking.

Doctors call for ban on drinking in street - Telegraph

Extract:

"A national ban on drinking in the street should be introduced to help defeat the binge-drinking culture, senior doctors will say next week.

Laws to increase the legal age for buying alcohol to 21 - except in pubs and hotels - and increases in tax on alcohol and advertising restrictions will also be proposed.

Delegates at the British Medical Association's annual conference will debate the suggestions on Tuesday.

There are already restrictions on drinking in the street in some parts of the country after councils were given powers in 2001 to designate public areas in which it is an offence to consume alcohol if asked not to do so by a police officer.

The BMA motion calls for total national prohibition.

This follows growing concern about the impact of binge drinking on the nation's health and the financial implications for the NHS and the taxpayer of alcohol-related disease.

A Government report this month to accompany its new alcohol strategy suggested that Britain has eight million problem drinkers. Liver disease is the fastest growing illness and hospital admissions have doubled in the past decade."

Alcohol is not the only, and not the main, cause of liver disease. - Prescribed drugs, frequently prescribed inappropriately, in far too high a dose and for far too long a period, cause massive damage to the liver and other organs of the body. The most harmful tend to be those which cause sodium and water retention - that is steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, most notably amitriptyline, other psychotropic drugs and, to a much smaller extent, many painkillers and other drugs. The most dangerous of these sodium retentive drugs - the steroids, HRT and tricyclic antidepressants - should never be prescribed without a warning to avoid eating salt/sodium while on the medication. This warning is seldom, if ever, given...)o: The effect of the sodium retention is to turn sodium in food (usually encountered as salt) into a very slow poison for the unfortunate victims/patients of the negligent prescribing. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html

You can protect your liver by only taking drugs if they are absolutely necessary, taking them at the lowest dose necessary, and taking them for the shortest period of time necessary, and by avoiding salt and salty food. See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/sodium_foods.html

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.)

DNA pioneer predicts future for gene-screening

Gene-screening will be norm in 10 years, says DNA pioneer - Guardian

Extract:

"Personal DNA sequences will become a routine tool in the diagnosis of diseases within 10 years, according to the father of genetics, James Watson. He said that, as the costs of the sequencing technology tumble, doctors will be able to use the information to plan more effective treatments for conditions including mental illness, cancer, obesity and diabetes.

Professor Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA in 1953 with his Cambridge University colleague Francis Crick, was speaking yesterday at the launch of the Wellcome Collection, a new national museum based in London that will examine the scientific and artistic connections between people and biomedicine.

Using current technology sequencing a single person's DNA takes 20 technicians around nine months. "In five years the hope is that you could reduce that to a week with just two or three people," said Michael Jones, head of the genomics core lab at Imperial College London. "New technologies are trying to eliminate the technicians you need. The idea is you can take someone's DNA and plug it into a machine and the data will come out.""

Well, as far as "cancer, obesity and diabetes" are concerned, the main contributory cause is fluid retention/sodium retention/salt sensitivity, which in turn is caused by misinformation from the medical profession about the causes and treatment of obesity, coupled with their reckless prescribing, often in high dose, of drugs like steroids, HRT and certain antidepressants and other drugs which cause sodium and water retention, and inadequate or non-existent monitoring of patients taking the drugs. - The high-tech stuff detailed in the article would come very low indeed in any list of desirable expenditure I were to compile...

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

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.)

Dutch kidney donor show was a hoax to raise awareness of the shortage of transplant organs.

TV kidney donor show revealed as hoax to provoke debate on organ shortages - Guardian

Extract:

"It was decried as the show that would break the reality TV format's back. The makers of the Dutch De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) promised a one-off programme in which a terminally ill woman would chose which of three contestants would receive her kidneys when she died.

But last night the show, which sparked worldwide controversy, was revealed to be a hoax staged by Endemol Netherlands and the public broadcaster BNN to raise awareness about organ donation in the Netherlands.

"If the Big Donor Show had been real, it would indeed have been shocking but facts illustrate that the reality is far more so," said Paul Romer, managing director of Endemol Netherlands.
"In staging this programme our goal has been to promote a debate about this crisis in the Netherlands. We have succeeded in spades."

The hoax was announced at the end of last night's show, which showed the "donor", identified only as Lisa, 37, "selecting" the recipient of her kidney based on their history, profile and conversations with their families and friends.

Lisa, 37, was revealed as an actor by the programme makers, but the three patients involved were genuine cases who were fully aware of the stunt and supported the programme's aims."

What a pity people are not told about the main reasons for kidney impairment and the need for kidney translants! - The kidneys of children are harmed by high salt intake. When adults develop kidney impairment I believe it is likely to have been the result of taking powerful prescribed medications (like prednisolone or other steroids, like HRT, like antidepressants like amitriptyline) that cause sodium retention and water/fluid retention, and eating salt or salty food while taking the medication, or by eating salt and/or salty food while pregnant. Eating salty food is very harmful to people who are sensitive to salt. - You can read about these vulnerable groups here - http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/vulnerable_groups.html

What happens is that the blood vessels become weakened and distended by an abnormally high blood volume - high because of excess sodium and excess water held in it . - This high blood volume (which, of course, produces obesity) with its excess of sodium and water, is a strain on the kidneys (and the liver and the heart and, indeed, ALL the organs and systems of the body) and they gradually function less and less efficiently.

To reduce the risk of developing these problems, or to reduce their severity, it is necessary to eat less salt and salty food. - Even if you do not eat much salt, you still need to eat LESS salt. - If you can possibly stop eating any added salt at all, that would be best. - Your body would not suffer if you gave up added salt entirely, because every morsel of food eaten, and every drop of water drunk, contains a very small amount of sodium and chloride (the constituent parts of salt, which is sodium chloride) and this is sufficient for your body's needs, because it does not need much salt.

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

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.)

Some misguided scientists/nutritionists claim that eating soup could be the key to losing weight...)o: - How wrong they are!

Why eating soup could be the key to losing weight - The Independent

Extract:

"Eating soup with a meal could be the answer to the obesity crisis, according to scientists in the US.

People who fill their stomachs with soup at the start of a meal eat less overall, research shows, and rather than piling on the pounds, the addition of the extra course can actually help people lose weight.

The soup regime is recommended by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, who tested it on volunteers. They found that when participants ate a first course of soup before a lunch entrée they reduced the total calorie intake of their meal by a fifth compared with those who ate the entrée alone.

But they stressed that the soup must be low-calorie. Adding a creamy soup to the meal would be likely to have the opposite effect and boost the total calorie intake and lead to weight gain.
The research, supported by the National Institutes of Health, was presented to the Experimental Biology conference in Washington, yesterday.

Barbara Rolls, professor of nutrition and co-author of the study, said it had built on earlier work into the role of low-calorie soup as a way of reducing food intake.: "Earlier work suggests that chunky soup may be the most filling type, so the purpose of this study was to determine whether different forms of soup might have different effects on food intake.""

It both shocks and bemuses me that time and again, as in this case, researchers count calories and do arithmetic and then make claims about weight loss! - Where is the weight loss? - Where is any evidence for their claim? - How can they claim to be scientists when there is still no evidence at all that reducing calorie intake reduces obesity?

The whole of their research here seems to be about calories, not about weight loss. - Weight loss is so very easily achieved by simply reducing the amount of salt (sodium) that you eat. - You can eat lots more calories if you wish and yet you will still lose weight - provided that you eat less salt. To advise people to eat soup as a means of losing weight is very poor advice indeed because soup tends to be high in salt!

(People sometimes wonder how many calories there are in salt. - Actually, there are no calories in salt.)

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 http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Bruce Ponder, cancer scientist, explains about his dogged research to find out how the disease strikes

The top cancer scientist tells Polly Curtis about his dogged research to find out how the disease strikes - Guardian

Extract:

"The Taichi Arch - Gate of Health, a large bronze by the Chinese master Ju Ming, stands outside the entrance to the newly opened Li Ka Shing Centre, home of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute on the Cambridge biomedical campus, next to Addenbrooke's Hospital. A symbol of the graceful coordination of tai chi is appropriate for the new facility, which brings together scientists and doctors from a broad spectrum of disciplines to unravel the many mysteries of how cancer kills.

Ponder, the new institute's director, is professor and head of the university's department of oncology, and co-director of two other centres on the campus - a cancer research institute and a centre for epidemiological studies of diseases. Until the new centre was ready, he moved between the different centres, at one point working from four offices. Today, he has consolidated what almost amounts to an empire. The aim is to find out how cancer works and, of course, a cure. His angle is the genetics of cancer: how we inherit a risk of developing different cancers.

Ponder's career started in medicine as a doctor, swinging from clinical work to laboratory work - unusual for the time. He had to fight for funding, as well as to be taken seriously as both a doctor and a scientist.

After general medicine and a PhD in molecular biology, he trained for a year in oncology in the US. "With cancer you have the whole spectrum of medicine," he says. "From some poor old guy with cancer of the oesophagus, who would like to die at home and how can you support him and palliate him, to cancer being the outstanding problem in biology. What cancer is, I think, is a breakdown in the way tissues are organised ... If one understood the basic biology, you might understand something about treatments.""

I believe that prevention is far, far, far more important than treatment. And since it is known that obesity is the main contributory factor in the causation of most cancers, reducing obesity and reducing the numbers of people who become obese should be the chief aims of cancer research, in my opinion. - To this end, the truth - the facts - about how obesity comes about should be told, and similarly the correct information should be given about how to reduce obesity. - It needs to be widely publicised that slimming/dieting is unnecessary, ineffective, often harmful and sometimes downright dangerous, because obesity is not caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention. There has never been any evidence to support the theory that overeating is the of obesity, nor to support the calorie reduction theory of how to reduce obesity. - Indeed these theories have never even been subjected to scientific test!

In children the fluid retention is usually caused by eating meals that contain too much salt/sodium. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html

In adults, the fluid retention - and therefore obesity - is usually caused either by pregnancy, because the rise in the levels of certain hormones causes salt sensitivity - or by taking prescription drugs too readily, and often recklessly, prescribed and inadequately monitored if at all, by doctors insufficiently aware of their potential for grave harm. - These drugs include steroids, HRT, tricyclic anti-depressants like amitriptyline and many other drugs.

Obesity can be easily and swiftly reduced by abandoning the calorie myth and instead reducing sodium intake and eating plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit. - This, then, is the most effective, easiest, and cheapest possible way to reduce the incidence of most cancers.

It is also, clearly, vitally important that the reckless prescribing of drugs, especially in high dose, be curbed by law. Clinical freedom to ignore drug prescribing protocols is destroying the lives and health of vast numbers of innocent victims/patients.

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.)

More about the dangers of statins and the ignorance of doctors about the devastating symptoms they cause when prescribed to lower cholesterol levels.

The deeper I go into it, the fishier statins seem to become - Dr James LeFanu - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Statins again, whose mass prescription is turning out to be much more serious (and sinister) than I could have supposed.

The response to my last two columns has been, almost literally, overwhelming, so why are doctors apparently so unaware of the devastating symptoms they can cause? The British Heart Foundation (whose chairman, Professor Peter Weissberg accused me last week of being "easily led" on this matter) claims that statins have "minimal side effects" compared to those taking controlled (or placebo) drugs. And, indeed, several major trials report an astonishingly low incidence, of around 0.5 per cent, of the commonest side-effects of severe muscular aches and pains, both in those taking statins and those taking the placebo.

This seems staggeringly unlikely, the more so since a recent survey of 5,000 patients taking statins, conducted for a Dutch television programme, produced a rather different figure of 27 per cent, That would mean that nearly a million people are affected by statin-induced muscular pains and reduced mobility. It is not necessary to be a conspiracy merchant to suspect that something fishy is going on here.

The need to find out what is really happening is all the more urgent as medical leaders and prominent cardiologists are now pressing for a yet lower "ideal" cholesterol level, with a target of less than four, which will catch yet more millions in the statin trap. Several readers report that their family doctors have already doubled the doses of their drugs in the last six months. The time has surely come, with such vast sums of public money at stake, for questions in the House."

There should also be questions in the House about the reckless overprescribing of steroids and other drugs that cause massive fluid retention and therefore obesity and even morbid obesity. They damage the lives of scores of thousands of innocent sufferers in this country, and probably worldwide the total of victims would number millions.

If you are concerned about the health of your heart, it would be wise to cut down on the amount of salt that you eat. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
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.)

First over-the-counter weight loss pill to be UK-approved next year

First over-the-counter weight loss pill to be UK-approved next year - Independent

This is absolute lunacy!

1st Extract:

"In the US, the Food and Drug Administration gave the go-ahead to Alli last month, triggering a marketing campaign that the company hopes will reap five to six million US customers a year. Priced between $12 and $25 a week (£5-12), Alli could have annual sales of $1.5bn. "

What a disgraceful and unnecessary waste of money!

2nd Extract:

"Glaxo said yesterday that it planned to apply for a European licence by the end of the year with the launch of the drug expected to follow within 12 months. Alli is a version of Xenical, the prescription weight loss remedy launched by the Swiss pharmaceutical company, Roche, in 1999.

Two thirds of adults are overweight or obese and the numbers are continuing to rise. Experts believe diet and discipline are not alone sufficient to prevent waistlines expanding and that extra help is required. "

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

3rd Extract:

"This unabsorbed fat has to go somewhere and dieters using it are prone to diarrhoea, its least attractive side-effect. Steve Burton, the Glaxo executive in charge of promoting Alli, has used the drug himself and described to reporters the embarrassment it caused when he ate a fish and chip meal - the result was a dash home for a change of clothes. Still, Mr Burton, 48, is a walking advertisement for Alli. Over three years his weight fell from 275lb to 210lb. "

Appalling! - And Mr Burton could have lost the same amount or more of weight in a far shorter time, simply by reducing, and then eliminating, all avoidable salt/sodium from what he eats, and making sure this included plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit. - This would have been completely safe, and cost-free, and would have involved no hunger, no fat restriction, no adverse side-effects at all. - Indeed there would have been a host of additional health benefits from the salt restriction.

Addendum (added 18 October 2008)
See FAT RETENTION for further information and advice. - It is a webpage I had not written at the time I posted this news item originally.

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.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions

Consumption of residues of steroids in meat/beef by pregnant women may be lowering fertility in their sons. - Study published in the journal Human Rep

Eating beef could threaten sons' fertility - Telegraph

Extracts:

"Prof Shanna Swan, lead author of the study published in the journal Human Reproduction, said: “These findings suggest that maternal beef consumption is associated with lower sperm concentration and possible sub-fertility, associations that may be related to the presence of anabolic steroids and other xenobiotics (foreign chemicals) in beef.

“Theoretically, the foetus and young children are particularly sensitive to exposure to sex steroids. Therefore, the consumption of residues of steroids in meat by pregnant women and young children is of particular concern.”

But while the study results revealed a significant link between the lowest sperm counts and mothers who were the highest beef consumers, researchers could not pinpoint hormones, pesticides or other environmental chemicals as a direct cause.

“What we’re really doing here is raising an issue,” said Prof Swan, who is director of the Centre for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester, New York.

“The average sperm concentration of the men in our study went down as their mothers’ beef intake went up.” "

"Dr Allan Pacey at The University of Sheffield, said: “That hormones given to cattle might have lowered the sperm counts of adult men because their mothers ate a lot of beef when they were pregnant with them, is alarming to say the least. This clearly needs to be investigated further.” "

You really do need to read the whole article because there are conflicting views.