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
I read yesterday that Alan Johnson, the Health Minister here in the UK, is going to call this week for the practice of water fluoridation to be extended here in the UK. Currently about 10 per cent of the UK population is piped fluoridated water, something that is that we are told would reduce dental […]
Brain and Behaviour
News broke in the UK this week that prescriptions for obesity drugs topped 1 million in 2006 ” an eight-fold increase in just seven years. No doubt some of this increase has come about as a result of the increasing dire statistics about the burgeoning rates of obesity. However, as I revealed here and here, […]
Brain and Behaviour
Just like overweight individuals are often seen as greedy or lazy (that’s not a view I hold myself, I should add), prison inmates and young delinquents are generally seen as ‘bad’. But are they? Could, for instance, their errant behaviour and criminal ways be related to something more physiological than social or psychological? Say if […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Last Monday’s blog featured an article which revealed evidence of ‘publication bias’ (basically, the publication of positive studies and the junking of negative ones) in the area of antidepressant therapy. Not only that, but this study revealed that many negative studies are reported by their authors in a way that makes them look positive. The […]
Food and Medical Politics
Those of you familiar with my nutritional beliefs will know that I don’t have too many good things to say about the ‘low-fat’ paradigm that has pervaded nutritional advice for some 30 years. Not only do I believe that there is not much to be feared in naturally-occurring fats in the diet, but the fat-phobia […]
Healthy Eating
You don’t have to wait too long before reading some statistic or other that tells us about how rates of obesity are soaring left, right and centre. As ever, though, the advice to ‘eat less and exercise more’ remains the same. That’s a shame, seeing as there is abundant evidence that neither of these approaches […]
Brain and Behaviour
Many individuals who work in healthcare, and perhaps quite a few who don’t, will have noticed a general thrust in the direction of what is known as ‘evidence-based medicine’. I have serious reservations about evidence-based medicine, myself. For a start, although evidence-based practice was originally billed as: ‘The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating […]
Children's Health
I think they’d be few people who will not have noticed that children’s diets have deteriorated significantly over the last few decades. More and more, it seems, children are eating less real food, and way more rubbish stuff such as processed foods high in refined sugar, processed fats and other unwanted additives including salt, colourings, […]
Exercise and Activity
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big advocate of walking, and have attempted to highlight the evidence which suggests that this most natural and relatively gentle form of exercise can bring significant benefits for health. I was therefore interested this week to read about the results of a study from […]
Food and Medical Politics
My last post on Friday discussed some science which demonstrates the superiority of carbohydrate restricted diets in the management of diabetes. Yes, the authors of this study call for more research to be done before we can confidently recommend such diets. It occurs to me that at least some of the reticence that is apparent […]