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
Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is a drug made by the pharmaceutical company Roche and it’s licensed for the treatment of influenza. Not so long ago, the UK Government dished out about a million packets of Tamiflu over the phone, though, it subsequently turned out that only about 20 per cent of those dispensed the drug had the […]
Food and Medical Politics
For some years now there has been quite a raging debate regarding the effectiveness of mammography, and the politics surrounding this screening strategy. I’m polarising things a bit here, but in the two camps on either side of the debate have been: 1. those whose view appears to be that mammography is a no-brainer, and […]
Cholesterol and Statins
I was reading here that there’s a new cholesterol-lowering drug in the pipeline. The Food and Drugs Administration in the US has approved the injectable agent mipomersen for the treatment of ‘homozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia – a genetic cause of raised cholesterol levels associated with cardiovascular disease developing early in life. Mipomersen has been shown to […]
Brain and Behaviour
More misinformation from bread manufacturers Warburtons, the French paradox is not a paradox, and simply mental tricks to enhance motivation.
Food and Medical Politics
If you were to buy a toy for a child, you’d expect it to have been assessed for safety, lest it contains parts that can be easily ingested or inhaled or, say, has sharp bits that may harm a child. You might also imagine that stringent safety rules would exist for medical devices including pacemakers, […]
Cholesterol and Statins
It’s often said that the ‘gold standard’ test of a medical intervention is the ‘randomised controlled trial’. If it was a drug being tested, this normally means randomly assigning half of a group of people to the drug, while the other half gets a placebo. In ‘double-blind’ studies neither the researchers nor the study subjects […]
Food and Medical Politics
A commenter on this website yesterday made me aware of a Q and A session hosted by website netmums featuring nutritionist Fiona Hunter and sponsored by the bread manufacturer Warburton. If you’re a reasonably regular follower of this blog then you may know that I have featured Warburtons twice in recent times. First of all, […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last month one of my blogs focused on a rash of stories bigging up the supposed nutritional properties of bread. It turns out that this ‘news’ had been based on ‘research’ published in the Nutrition Bulletin – a publication of the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). I challenged the notion that bread provides some essential role […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
I got an interesting email over the weekend from a 56-year-old type 2 diabetic. He was diagnosed at age 42. He initially managed this as he was advised: with a high carbohydrate, low fat diet. He moved to ‘healthy’ grains that were ‘less refined’ and ate sourdough bread. In his own words: “And despite all […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last week one of my blog posts focused on a widely reported ‘news’ story which concerned the supposed value of bread in the diet. These reports appear to have followed the publication of an article in the Nutrition Bulletin, the ‘journal’ of an organisation called the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). I admitted at the time […]