Study finds clear association between obesity and vitamin D deficiency

Clear association between obesity and vitamin D deficiency
A study conducted at Uppsala University has demonstrated that obese people often suffer from serious vitamin D deficiency and poor calcium metabolism. The findings have been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. According to the researchers, the problem is underappreciated by the health care establishment. "... the researchers hold it to be probable that obesity causes the vitamin deficiency and not vice versa."
Read article at physorg.com

High levels of Vitamin B6 and the amino acid methionine appear to cut the risk of lung cancer by half

BBC News reports. "People with plenty of a B-vitamin in their blood appear to be at a reduced risk of lung cancer, even if they smoke." "High levels of Vitamin B6 and the amino acid methionine cut the risk by half, a study of 400,000 people suggested."

Methionine is found in protein like meat, fish and nuts, and vitamin B6 is found in meat, nuts, vegetables and bananas. Obviously, giving up smoking (or never starting to smoke) is the best way to reduce risk of lung cancer, but these two featured nutrients are associated with lowered risk for both smokers and non-smokers.

Certain prescription drugs deplete the body of vitamin B6. I experienced this when I was a teenager, taking drugs to treat pulmonary TB. It became totally impossible for me to sleep. I could not sleep AT ALL. The drug called isoniazid had depleted my body of vitamin B6. No-one told me that my intractable insomnia was the consequence of severe lack of vitamin B6 (aka pyridoxine). The doctors probably did not know at that time, when the drugs were pretty new, that there was this side-effect. If I had been prescribed pyridoxine tablets to make up for the deficiency I would not have suffered those terrible years of insomnia, which brought in its train many other problems.

The Soil Association is concerned about "The big fat lie about doubling food production."

The Soil Association is rightly concerned about "The big fat lie about doubling food production." Unfortunately, when Big Business is involved in promulgating statistics, we invariably find, as in this case, that claims made are not facts, but propaganda. And when Monsanto is involved, as in this case, the propaganda is very dangerous. The spread of GM crops/food needs to be resisted. No good will come of GMOs.

Sodium foods increase fluid retention; potassium foods decrease fluid retention

So if you are overweight or obese you need to avoid salt/sodium and salty food, and eat plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables because these are naturally rich in potassium. You will then safely and easily lose excess water weight and you will have much more energy because of not having to carry that extra fluid around with you all the time.

Sodium and Potassium in foods

Non-organic produce that is highest in pesticides

If you're eating non-organic celery today, you may be ingesting 67 pesticides with it, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group.
Read article and watch video at cnn.com

Drugs commonly used for heart failure and high blood pressure problems are linked to increased risk of cancer

BBC News reports that researchers have found a slightly increased risk of cancer associated with taking angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs). As usual, people are being advised not to stop taking the drugs, but to seek advice from their GP if they are concerned about this research finding.

There is a completely safe, drug-free way to reduce high blood pressure, reduce heart problems and lower your risk of stroke, diabetes and most cancers, and that is to cut down on salt and salty food. Cutting down on salt/sodium also reduces excess weight.

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

Ariel - Short Story by Margaret Wilde

Ariel

She swung in and out of the sun.

"Look, Daddy," her heart sang. "I'm almost flying!"

From far away the loved voice acknowledged her daring.

"I won't fall,"she called out to the world. "I know how to swing."

"Strewth! - Hey, Missus, these swings is for kids, not pensioners. Geroff!"

Margaret Wilde © 2010

Further attention drawn to health risks of GSK's diabetes drug, Avandia

See This is London article, where you will read that "David Graham, of the Food and Drug Administration, said patients taking the drug had a 27% greater chance of suffering a stroke, a 25% increased risk of heart failure and a 13% greater chance of dying."

Have you gained weight from taking birth control medication (contraceptives)?

And do you want to lose that extra weight? But you are finding it difficult? - You may be surprised to learn that the sex hormones in those contraceptive medications are steroids, and that some of them have some of the same side-effects on the body as the drugs we more usually think of as steroids.

Oestrogen is the sex hormone in contraceptives that is causing your weight gain. And that weight gain is because the oestrogen is causing some salt sensitivity. That means that when you eat salt you gain some weight because the salt is causing your body to retain water. - You know - water weight. - If you cut down on salt and salty food you will excrete some of that water your body is holding in your blood vessels, and so you will weigh less. You will also feel better and have more energy without all that excess fluid to carry round with you everywhere...(o:

Read more about how to lose weight by eating less salt. And read more about steroids, HRT and other prescription drugs that cause salt sensitivity and water weight gain. And read about salt in food.

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

I listened to the Afternoon Play on Radio 4 today: "Last Days of Grace"

It was superb. If you go to this page you could yourself listen to it now or in the next 7 days. It has 2 characters, plus Christopher Martin-Jenkins as the Voice of Cricket. The 2 characters are W.G Grace, the famous cricketer from the early days of cricket, and a rather mysterious other man.

I have no interest in cricket or in cricketing history, but the play had me hooked from the first moment. The quality of the acting! - What actors of the calibre of Kenneth Cranham and Benedict Cumberbatch can put into a sentence! If you like a play that disturbs you somewhat into a feeling of unease, if you like a little shiver inching down your spine, I think Benedict Cumberbatch would do it for you, as he did for me.

We are so fortunate to have Radio 4 and its Afternoon Plays, and to have such fine actors as these to act in them.

Who benefits from diets and dieting?

Well, the dieting industry benefits, you will agree:
the manufacturers of diet foods and diet drinks,
the authors of diet books,
the women's magazines that publish the latest diets,
the newspapers that do similarly,
the slimming clubs.
I'm sure you can think of others to add to these I have listed.

Who doesn't benefit from diets and dieting? - Sadly, the people who do not benefit from dieting are overweight and obese people who want to get rid of excess weight, because in practice, dieting is far more likely to cause an increase in weight than it is to reduce obesity. - If you are obese and you have already tried to lose excess weight by dieting you will have experienced for yourself that what I say is true. - DIETS DO NOT WORK.

The safe, fast way to lose excess weight is to reduce the amount of added salt/sodium you eat. This means cutting down on salt, not cutting down on calories or cutting down on food.

See how to lose weight by eating less salt. And see salt/sodium in foods.

Calorie counting nonsense and calorie restriction advice are propaganda/misinformation. You do not have to believe propaganda. Recognise it and confront it for what it is. - If your personal experience proves that low calorie diets do not work and that they make you hungry, tired, cold and depressed then accept that proof. It is called empirical proof. - 'Empirical' means derived from experiment and observation rather than theory.

The theory about low calorie diets is based on arithmetic; it is not based on what happens to real people who try to reduce their obesity by testing out the theory: those real people who become cold and tired and hungry and feel weak and faint, and catch colds, etc. easily because the dieting has lowered their immunity to infection.

If you follow my suggestions of giving up the calorie game and instead eat real food and don't go hungry, and avoid salt and salty food (that means mainly avoiding ready meals, takeaways and processed food as these are usually high in salt and pretty low in nutrition) - if you follow these suggestions you will not feel cold or tired or hungry or depressed. - Instead you feel very much better. You will have more energy. You will have excreted some of the excess fluid that has been held in your body - held there by the added salt in your food - fluid retention weighing you down. Your health will benefit in a multitude of ways. You will enjoy your life so much more and you will not be sacrificing your life and health and happiness to the dieting industry and the food industry and all the other guys who profit from the usual dieting propaganda. - And you will lose weight...(o:

Low-calorie diet drinks (usually sickly sweet with dodgy sweeteners and other chemical additives that would be better staying in the lab than entering the human body) don't make fat people slim, and low-calorie diet meals (usually low-fat, salty junk) don't make fat people slim.

So why does the dieting industry sell us this false propaganda and non-nutritious diet meals and diet drinks which don't work? - Well I hope that it is obvious when you think about it: they don't actually want fat people to become slim and fit. - They need fat people to keep buying their products - cheaply produced out of low-cost ingredients, dearly bought at the cost of the health and happiness of the consumer. If diet products did what they promise to do, the dieting industry would go out of business.

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

Clear thinking about the corruption that links WHO and the pharmaceutical industry

Here's an outspoken, courageous page about the World Health Organisation and the H1N1 scam: http://keithconnectsthedots.com/2010/06/06/who-scandal-exposed-advisors-received-kickbacks-from-h1n1-vaccine-manufacturers.aspx

I warned against the vaccine on my aboutsalt blog last September: http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2009/09/think-before-you-vaccinate.html

The pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted. Nor, clearly, can the World Health Organisation be trusted.

Good nutrition is the best physician and the safest medicine.

European Medicines Agency working with patient groups bankrolled by drug industry

EU drugs agency working with patient groups bankrolled by Big Pharma
European patients' groups, set up to represent the interests of the subjects of medical procedures in their dealings with healthcare systems, insurance firms and drug companies are in many cases bankrolled by pharmaceutical firms, according to a report. Complicating the situation, many such groups are working with and on the board of the European Medicines Agency - the very EU agency charged with evaluation of medicines in the bloc. A fresh report from transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory accuses the EMA of mis-administrating conflict of interest guidelines allowing individuals and groups to say falsely that they are not sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry.
Read article at euobserver.com

Millions wasted by NHS on expensive, useless MS drugs

See report in the Telegraph, where you will read that experts "called for a Government-backed scheme to provide the drugs to be scrapped and called for a public inquiry. In total at least £250 million could have been saved if a review had been carried out on the “costly failure” after its first two years, they warn."And also "The four drugs involved Avonex, Betaferon, Copaxone and Rebif, cost around £8,000 per patient per year."

These expensive drugs have been provided on the NHS for six years now, during which time they have performed less well than a placebo. - Why then, has it taken till now for anyone to seek to do anything about this? MS sufferers have enough to contend with, without being given false hope and useless drugs. And why can't the many legal eagles on the State payroll devise watertight contracts to ensure that the drug companies do not screw the NHS for costly drugs that prove to be worthless.

It is time we had some people in Government and in the Dept of Health with enough sense to resist the blandishments and lies of the pharmaceutical companies, and enough courage and integrity to listen to the people who are ill, rather than to the drug company executives who cosy up to the people in power, seeking to make money out of their expensive products, regardless of how useless or harmful those products are. During those six years of uselessness, why was no-one taking heed of their uselessness to patients? - No-one listening to the patients?

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

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

Investigation finds WHO swine flu experts WERE financially 'linked' with drug companies

Read BBC News report here. "A spokesman for WHO said the drug industry did not influence its decisions on swine flu." - Anyone believe that? - Anyone at all? - I certainly don't. - I suppose most people realise by now that the World Health Organisation is corrupted by the fact that some of its advisers are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. We therefore cannot trust what WHO tells us. What a terrible waste...

GeneWatch Director has resigned over Food Standards Agency 's pro-GM stand

FSA GM dialogue process a ‘PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry’
On 26th May, Dr Helen Wallace, the Director of GeneWatch UK, resigned her membership of the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) Steering Group for the GM dialogue, with immediate effect. In a public letter of resignation to John Curtice, the Chair of the Steering Group, she declared that it had become clear to her that the purpose of the FSA process was nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. She also believes that the process would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers'money.
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) Europe

I'm pleased that the General Teaching Council is to be scrapped.

The Telegraph reports that the General Teaching Council is to be scrapped, partly to save money and partly because it hasn't been much use.

If only the useless, partisan General Medical Council could be scrapped too!

Chemical cosh to be used less on dementia sufferers in Scotland

See Telegraph report. I've been urging for a curb on the use of anti-psychotics on elderly people for a long time. The declared intention to reduce their use now though seems less to be motivated by humanity than by a desire to cut costs!

The Luck of the Drawer - Short Story by Margaret Wilde

The Luck of the Drawer

She was placed into a drawer and the drawer was closed. She fell asleep and woke because of a nightmare in which she was placed into a drawer and the drawer closed.

Apart from the feeling of suffocation itself, she also was suffering from claustrophobia. - She explored with her hands. She did remember quite well the structure of a chest of drawers and had made one once for her doll, using empty matchboxes and tiny buttons for the handles. But she was sideways, the only way that she would fit the space. It was very difficult to push sideways towards the back of the chest. She succeeded in getting splinters into her fingertips, but not in opening the drawer.

She shouted for assistance but the sounds were muffled of course and were easy to ignore.

They freed her in the morning.

When they lifted her to put her to bed in the drawer again the next night she fought. She screamed and kicked and punched. Such were the energy and persistence she demonstrated that she won the ‘battle’. They put her to sleep on the sofa instead.

She had learned an invaluable lesson very early in life. Namely, that it is a great deal easier to avoid being shut up in a drawer than it is to escape from it later.

Margaret Wilde © 2010