There has long been a surreal quality to cholesterol lowering drugs; prescriptions in the millions, earnings in the billions and yet a growing evidence that if you are taking them to prevent your first heart attack, unless you are one of the lucky ones – one in 1/300, 1/500, 1/700; the figures vary – they […]
Cardiologist: time to stop demonising saturated fat
October 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
At first sight geology and nutrition have little in common but a major shift in thinking about the surface of earth is a handy way of highlighting a major change in ideas about how to cut the risk of heart disease with diet. Back in the 1920’s a meteorologist called Alfred Wegener came up with […]
Confused about calories? No wonder
October 15, 2013 by 1 Comment
What would make you put on the most weight – eating 5000 calories a day on a high fat/low carb diet or 5000 calories on a high carb/low fat diet? To a conventional nutritionist this will sound like dietary version of the old school-days trick question: Which is heavier a ton of bricks or a ton […]
Benzos: Beware the baddest drugs in a doctor’s armoury.
August 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Benzodiazepines are the serial offenders of the drugs’ cabinet with a cluster of pharmaceuticals ASBOs to their name. They’ve been around since the 1960s and are generally given if you are complaining of the likes of insomnia or anxiety – family names include temazepam (for sleep) and the tranquillizer valium. They have a charge sheet that […]
The Alzheimer’s charities are in a hole but they keep digging
July 13, 2013 by 11 Comments
Earlier this week I won freelance consumer journalist of the year at the Medical Journalists’ Association awards which was fantastic. You had to send in three features to enter and two of mine each focused on a different non-drug treatment that might help with Alzheimer’s. I mention this because looking at them again I was freshly shocked […]
Why hounding homeopaths is both batty and arrogant.
June 27, 2013 by
There is no shortage of villains in the world. Psychopaths – domestic and national – whalers, toxic waste dumpers, global eavesdroppers, billionaire tax avoiders and their army of accountants – all well worth campaigning against with the aim of getting them banged up or forced to cough up. There is also an infinite supply of […]
Hidden dangers of diabetic drugs exposed – yet again
June 10, 2013 by 3 Comments
Incretins are the newest and most expensive class of blockbuster diabetes drug but according to a remarkably through investigation just published by the BMJ (British Medical Journal) the risk that they could cause pancreatic cancer is much greater than patients and doctors have been told. The biggest sellers in the UK are Byetta (exenatide), Victoza […]
Alzheimer’s: we want a cure but please don’t mention B vitamins
May 21, 2013 by 54 Comments
The article in today’s Daily Mail about B vitamins and Alzheimer’s is the story of the triumph of dogged scientific persistence – do read it first if you can because this blog would become impossibly long if I repeated all the details. But behind it is another story of indifference and prejudice that is preventing […]
What is wrong with randomised trials Part 2
May 5, 2013 by 4 Comments
Could alcohol get a licence as a drug for depression? How do you test for the safety of a drug that causes the same side effects as the disease it is used to treat? These are just two of the points I didn’t have room for in my post last week on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) […]
We know how to cut diabetes deaths. So why aren’t we doing it?
April 10, 2013 by 6 Comments
Who’s responsible for our diabetes/obesity epidemic? Is it those fat lazy bastards who eat crap food and sit on the couch all day or is it the drug companies that spend billions researching and marketing drugs of limited effectiveness or dubious safety or is the government that allows commercial interest to create a food supply […]
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