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.
Healthy Eating
Appetite is something that can run riot in certain individuals, and the last few years have seen scientists attempt to identify the mechanisms that influence it. For example, a hormone by the name of leptin has been found to suppress appetite, while one called ghrelin has the opposite effect. This week saw the publication of […]
Food and Medical Politics
Over the weekend, I was reading about an Australian study in which individuals shopping on-line for food were able to be diverted away from foods rich in saturated fat by some nifty software that gives purchase-specific dietary advice. I like the idea of anything that gives individuals the opportunity to make informed eating choices more […]
Food and Medical Politics
This week’s British Medical Journal contains a report of a study published this week in the journal Critical Care in which diabetes was found to be associated with an increased risk of organ failure (such as heart or kidney failure) and death from this, but obesity (in the absence of diabetes) was not. This is […]
Children's Health
The British Heart Foundation has launched a hard-hitting campaign which highlights the fact that a child consuming a packet of crisps a day will down a full 5 litres of cooking oil over the course of a year. I’m all for the idea of highlighting the hazards of processed foods, but I have a couple […]
Healthy Eating
Digestive symptoms rank amongst the most common of everyday ills. A significant proportion of the population suffers from symptoms such as indigestion and heartburn. Increasingly, doctors are diagnosing a condition known as gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) – a condition characterised by frequent attacks of heartburn. One of the most common theories about what causes GORD […]
Healthy Eating
This week, I saw a story reporting some American research in which an extract of a pine nut from Korea was found to increase the level of the appetite suppressing substances cholecystokinin and glycagons-like peptides. No doubt, some company or other will attempt to exploit this finding with a wonder-pill based on this extract (actually […]
Healthy Eating
OK, so the summer is on its way out, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to report on a recent study which supports the idea that there is real nourishment to be had from salad-munching. Research conducted at UCLA and Louisiana State University on more than 17,500 men and women has found that consumption of […]
Children's Health
Jamie Oliver is on the rampage again, and is putting his all into improving the nutritional status of our young. Yesterday, Jamie took his ire out on typical items to be found in school lunchboxes, including crisps and soft drinks (including Red Bull) and described the parents that provide such foodstuffs as ‘tossers’. Even for […]
Brain and Behaviour
In the news this week a story has been just circulating about the fact that men aged 40 ” 49 (that includes me) are many times more likely to father autistic children than younger men. We’re unlikely to know what the mechanism is here, but what is good about this story is that it at […]
Healthy Eating
I’m a coffee drinker myself, but have been a long-time fan of tea as a beverage that may bring benefits for the body. Tea is rich in substances called polyphenols that have ‘antioxidant’ activity (which means they have the capacity to neutralise the effects of damaging, destructive molecules called ‘free radicals’). Previous research has linked […]