I'm disappointed about these government U-turns that disfavour Public Health

I'm disappointed about the two current government U-turns that disfavour Public Health, namely an indefinite delay in the introduction of plain cigarette packaging and the anticipated abandonment of plans for minimum alcohol pricing in England and Wales. Disappointed, but not, of course, surprised. The opportunity to accord a modicum of protection to children's health by making smoking less of a temptation before they become addicted is obviously so much preferable/more likely to be effective than attempts to beat addiction to smoking as an adult. But our government is more concerned about tobacco industry profits than about child health. And similarly is more concerned about the profits of the alcohol trade than about the appalling and increasing harm that heavy drinking is causing, notably in young people and in particular young women, and tragically pregnant mothers who continue drinking too much alcohol during their pregnancies, thus giving birth to babies suffering with terrible health problems from the very start of their damaged, shortened lives.

This government made clear its lack of concern about public health shortly after coming into power, when Andrew Lansley, then Secretary of State for Health, put the profits of the Food Industry above the health of UK citizens, by opposing and reversing the planned ban on synthetic trans fats in processed food products. He mendaciously painted the intended ban as an example of a 'nanny state'.

Tripling of liver cancer cases because of high alcohol intake and obesity, i.e. salt sensitivity

Tripling of liver cancer cases is being attributed to high alcohol intake and to obesity. See this Telegraph report.

Obesity, i.e. salt sensitivity, increases risk of liver cancer, throat, pancreas, bowel, breast, womb and kidney cancers, stomach cancer, prostate cancer in men, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and cancers of the cervix and ovary. Obese people need to cut down on salt and salty food.

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

The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

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

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

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.

Has your nose become bigger/redder/fatter/more bulbous? Do you wonder what to do about it?

The most likely reason for it is that you have become sensitive to salt and so the blood vessels in your nose, along with your other blood vessels, have become swollen with extra salt and water in your blood stream. - The good news is that if you cut down on salt/sodium all of this swelling will be reduced and your nose, along with the rest of your body, will look less red and bulbous. (If you happen to drink a lot of alcohol, it would also help if you reduce alcohol intake, but you doubtless already know that.)

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

Associated health conditions

I watched the ITV programme: Claire Sweeney: My Big Fat Diet

I watched the Claire Sweeney My Big Fat Diet programme last evening. Here are my thoughts about it:

The peg on which the programme hung was that Claire would abandon her usual highly disciplined pattern of eating (about which I noted that she said she was always hungry! - not a healthy way of living, in my opinion) - and her rather heavy commitment to exercise, which seemed to involve a great deal of running up and down an outdoor stairway - very boring, I thought - and a lot of repetitive exercises like sit-ups, etc. accompanied by her personal trainer and a stopwatch.

I think most people would want to abandon that routine...

However, the idea was that after abandoning this unhealthy routine, she would take up a different unhealthy routine for 6 weeks - of eating whatever she felt like, whenever she felt like it, and eating/drinking as much as she wanted - and see how much weight she would gain and how unfit she would become.

She didn't stick to this though. At first she claimed not to be making a pig of herself and deliberately eating more than she wanted, but later on it was clear that she was forcing herself to eat more than she wanted, because she was, for example, really struggling to stuff a HUGE concoction of layers of bread bun and other stuff into her mouth when her mouth was nowhere near big enough to get it round the concoction...)o: - I forget what was in the ghastly mountain - was it a built-up hamburger? - meat/cheese/sauce etc etc squashed into the bread? - No way would I or anyone I know ever eat such awful 'food' in such quantity in such an ugly form or unattractive way...)o: -

She gained a load of weight very quickly indeed! - And raised her blood pressure and her pulse rate, etc.

If you force yourself to eat more than you have a stomach for you will of course gain weight, just as the guy in the 'Supersize Me' film did. - He gorged himself constantly, making himself feel ill and sick, eating far more than anyone in real life would.

This is NOT how people become fat. - It so clearly isn't. - And most fat people are constantly trying to lose weight or at any rate not to gain more weight. They are not trying to burst out of their skin. They are uncomfortable and long to weigh less and feel less bloated and not be laughed at and insulted... This means in reality that most fat people are watching what they eat, counting calories, etc most of the time for many years, often for most of their lives. - Yes, some of them eat too much, but that is a minority of them. And some slim people eat too much as well. - The apparent paradox there is that the naturally slim people simply excrete the excess calories/fat/salt they eat, whereas the fat people have a different body chemistry and cannot do this.

Such a pity that the programme reinforced yet again the false stereotype of fat people as greedy and lazy...)o:

It wasn't the amount of fat/food/calories that Claire ate that caused her to gain a lot of weight fast (though the amount of alcohol she seemed to be knocking back would certainly have contributed to the fluid retention in her abdomen). - It was that her salt intake must have been very high, and as a person who had in the past had an eating disorder - bulimia - she will have a tendency to salt sensitivity/fluid retention and so will easily put weight on.

I didn't think much to the programme. People need to be told the truth - namely that salt intake and fluid retention are the main critical factors that determine whether they are overweight or not. - Exercise has nothing to do with it, however many people insist to you that exercise helps you to lose weight. - It doesn't! - Reducing salt intake and avoiding dieting result in swift, safe weight loss, and if Claire happens to read this, then I advise her to adopt this easy, healthy way of living and give up always being hungry and constantly pounding those boring outdoor steps - and cut down on the booze! - Alcohol causes fluid retention in the abdomen if you are sensitive to salt.

A note about the clothes Claire wore in the show: - she seemed to go out of her way to wear the tightest clothes she could manage to get into, so that it was absolutely impossible not to notice her fatter tummy, etc. - Doesn't she have any clothes that are not skin-tight?

The final irony of the programme to me was that salt was not mentioned even once in the context of weight gain/loss, except that at the end Claire said something about taking something 'with a grain of salt'...(o:

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

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

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

A glass of red wine a day, or eating certain fruits, could help to prevent breast cancer, a new study shows.

Red wine could help prevent breast cancer
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Laboratory tests have shown that a chemical found in the skin of grapes could halt the development of most cases of the disease.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women, and almost 45,000 cases are diagnosed in the UK every year.

Now scientists have found that a chemical called resveratrol, which is also found in blueberries, bilberries, cranberries and peanuts, can suppress the creation of tumour cells.

The chemical works by blocking the way that oestrogen combines with DNA in a woman's bodies to create the cancer.

Researchers found that even low levels of resveratrol, the equivalent to that found in a typical glass of red wine, was enough to create the effect."

But alcohol increases the risk of developing breast cancer. - See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1585095/A-little-alcohol-%27increases-breast-cancer-risk%27.html so the fact that red wine contains low levels of resveratrol is a red herring really. - To minimise risk of breast cancer, alcohol intake should be minimised. - Get your resveratrol from the fruits themselves...(o:

Reducing salt intake also reduces the risk of breast cancer and most other cancers.

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