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.
Exercise and Activity
The on-line version of the British Medical Journal recently published a study in which the effects of exercise on body weight was assessed in some 545 children with an average age of 4 [1] The children exercised for 30 minutes, three times a week. Basically, this additional exercise made no difference to their weight. The […]
Children's Health
This month’s edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has published a study which found that women drinking four or more cola drinks a week were at increased risk of reduced bone density (1). And this is not the first evidence that has linked the drinking of fizzy drinks to weaker bones. A number […]
Brain and Behaviour
A study published this week in the British Medical Journal has analysed the relationship between breast-feeding and subsequent intelligence. Breast-feeding was associated with enhanced intelligence, but this study found that this benefit was associated not with the breast-feeding itself, but by other factors including the mother’s intelligence. No doubt, the results of this study will […]
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 […]
Exercise and Activity
Having ‘no time’ is the most common reason individuals quote for not taking exercise, so it can be useful to know of ways in which exercise can be taken in a time efficient manner. In a study published this week in the Journal of Physiology tested two fitness regimes in young men click here. One […]
Specific conditions
Radio 4 informs me this morning that doctors are being advised to ration flu vaccines due to problems with supply. For those left out in the cold or who are uncomfortable about being vaccinated against a condition that is almost always self-limiting and without complication, I have attached a couple of articles which explore natural […]
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 […]