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
Along with saturated fat and salt, sugar is a dietary constituent which is often targeted as unhealthy and to be avoided. And rightly so, seeing as sugar consumption has been linked with an increased risk of a range of ills, most notably obesity. Some of the research that has examined the health effects of sugar […]
Brain and Behaviour
While medical practice generally turns a blind eye to the value of nutrition in health, it has at least embraced the importance of certain specific nutrients including iron. Iron is important for the manufacture of haemoglobin ” the protein in the red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen around the body and delivering it to […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last Tuesday evening I attended a debate organised by the Guild of Health Writers. The debate centred on the motion that ‘A treatment should have to be scientifically proven to be available on the NHS. The motion had two proposers and two opposers. The proposers were Dr Evan Harris (LibDem MP) and Dr Jonathan Ledermann […]
Healthy Eating
Today sees the publication of a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which the effectiveness of four diets were assessed over a year-long period [1]. Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine ascribed women to eat either the Atkins’ diet (low carb), Zone diet (carb, protein and fat in the ratio […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
One of the pieces of nutritional advice we’ve been force-fed over the last decade or three concerns the supposedly health-giving properties of wholegrains. Friday saw this message redoubled on the presentation of a study at the American Heart Association annual conference in Florida, USA, which apparently found and association between the eating of wholegrain breakfast […]
Healthy Eating
Many of you will know that there has been a big focus of late on the potentially toxic effects of industrially produced ‘trans’ fats which can be found in foods such margarine, biscuits and other baked goods and salad dressings. These fats have been strongly linked with an increased risk of heart disease, and also […]
Children's Health
I’ve given up television viewing other than DVD’s and rugby, and my main way of keeping in touch of what’s going in the outside world is the radio. Yesterday, I was out taking a walk with the dog and, plugged into my radio, was listening to a news story about an eight-year-old boy here in […]
Food and Medical Politics
It’s not like me to be lost for words, but I honestly am not sure where to begin. On Friday I posted a blog which was a response to an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal in which Dr Ben Goldacre took nutritionists to task. My response focused on the fundamental lack of evidence-base […]
Food and Medical Politics
A couple of weeks ago an opinion piece entitled ‘Tell us the truth about nutritionists’ appeared the British Medical Journal which asked serious questions of about ‘media nutritionists’. It’s author, Dr Ben Goldacre, is a practising doctor and man behind the website www.badscience.net, the aim of which is to expose ‘pseudoscience’ and those he feels […]
Healthy Eating
In my practice from time to time I m consulted by women who complain of excess hairiness. Many of them tell a story of finding hairs sprouting in places where they weren’t there before such as their chins and around their nipples. This condition ” the medical term for which is ‘hirsutism’ ” is often […]