Dr John Briffa's blog, A Good Look at Good Health — writing on food, cholesterol, weight, energy and the science behind everyday health, from the drbriffa.com archive. Filter by topic, browse by category, or search the library.
Food and Medical Politics
When a drug is licensed for use by a regulatory authority, it is normal for its use to be subject to a quite specific remit. In general terms, this will mean the drug will be licensed for use for a specific condition (or conditions), at a particular dose, to people of a particular age. That […]
Food and Medical Politics
Mammography has traditionally been presented to women as a bit of a ‘no-brainer’ – essentially you’d have to be lacking a brain not to submit to regular breast cancer screening. Over the last few years, though, there has been the publication of several scientific articles which highlight the fact that mammography simply does not deliver […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Last year saw the Japan Society for Lipid Nutrition hold its 20th annual meeting. A panel discussion during the event was held entitled ‘Rethinking Cholesterol Issues’. Recently, the Journal of Lipid Nutrition published an account of that panel discussion [1], and it makes for interesting reading. The panel was made up of six experts from […]
Children's Health
Back in November 2011, a panel of experts assembled by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in the US published recommendations regarding cholesterol screening in children. The panel recommended that all children aged 9-11 should be screened, and that more targeted testing (in those deemed to be at high risk) should be used […]
Cholesterol and Statins
There’s been a ton of press over the last couple of days regarding a study of what is termed the ‘polypill’ – a combination medication conceived more than a decade ago with, supposedly, the prevention of heart disease and stroke in mind. The original ‘formulation’ combined blood pressure- and cholesterol-lowering medications, along with aspirin and […]
Food and Medical Politics
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post which was triggered by two conversations I had had with friends who had recounted to me tales in which it appears their doctors were not willing to entertain their own thoughts about their symptoms. As I detailed, both of them put forward (I think) utterly reasonable, logical and […]
Food and Medical Politics
GlaxoSmithKline is the world’s fourth largest drug company, and in 2011 made $9 billion in profit. But this week saw this drug giant was found guilty of a range of misdemeanours by the US Department of Justice. Here’s some of them: Illegal promotion of the anti-depressant paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat) in individuals under the age of […]
Food and Medical Politics
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is the UK’s largest and best-known ‘heart’ charity and, on the surface at least, appears devoted to doing what it can to reduce the burden of ‘cardiovascular’ issues such as heart attacks and strokes. The BHF website offers a number of stories of people which appear to highlight pertinent issues […]
Food and Medical Politics
I was interested to read the column of Dr Des Spence (a British general practitioner/family physician) in this week’s British Medical Journal [1]. He has chosen this week to lament the fact that modern medical practice has become more “tyrannical, hierarchical, controlled, intolerant, and dogmatic.” There is pressure on doctors to ‘follow the evidence’ even […]
Food and Medical Politics
I’m a bit cynical about the food industry’s attempts to help us lower our weight and trim our waistlines through tactics such as giving us smaller portion sizes or taking some fat out of a highly processed foods to replace it with sugar or something else of dubious value. I recently wrote about this here after […]