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
Last week, one of my blog posts featured a letter which highlighted the relationship between television viewing, sleep and body weight. Television viewing is associated with increased risk of obesity, and this association may be due to the tendency for people to eat more as a result of falling prey to TV advertising as well […]
Children's Health
Back in November 2011, a panel of experts assembled by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in the US published recommendations regarding cholesterol screening in children. The panel recommended that all children aged 9-11 should be screened, and that more targeted testing (in those deemed to be at high risk) should be used […]
Cholesterol and Statins
There’s been a ton of press over the last couple of days regarding a study of what is termed the ‘polypill’ – a combination medication conceived more than a decade ago with, supposedly, the prevention of heart disease and stroke in mind. The original ‘formulation’ combined blood pressure- and cholesterol-lowering medications, along with aspirin and […]
Exercise and Activity
A few weeks back I wrote about a study regarding what is often termed ‘high intensity intermittent exercise’ (HIIE). As it names suggests, this form of activity involves blasts of explosive exercise (such as sprinting or cycling) interspersed with periods of much less intense effort. The study I wrote about revealed HIIE to improve running speed in […]
Sleep
Six years ago I decided to dramatically reduce the amount of time I spent watching TV, and this single intervention (I believe) had a dramatic effect on my life. It liberated a significant amount of time that I could devote to perhaps more useful and rewarding pursuits. You may be thinking that I’m referring to […]
Food and Medical Politics
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post which was triggered by two conversations I had had with friends who had recounted to me tales in which it appears their doctors were not willing to entertain their own thoughts about their symptoms. As I detailed, both of them put forward (I think) utterly reasonable, logical and […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Statins are a runaway success in modern medicine, though it should perhaps be borne in mind that for the great majority of people who take them, they do nothing to prevent disease or delay death. Plus, there is growing awareness that these drugs are not without risk, and have genuine potential to cause adverse effects […]
Nutrients and Supplements
There’s a lot of reasons why someone may complain of undue fatigue, but there’s a few things that tend to recur. One thing worth looking out for, especially in women, is iron deficiency. Monthly blood loss is a major risk factor for this, obviously, especially if coupled with a diet low in properly iron-rich foods […]
Food and Medical Politics
GlaxoSmithKline is the world’s fourth largest drug company, and in 2011 made $9 billion in profit. But this week saw this drug giant was found guilty of a range of misdemeanours by the US Department of Justice. Here’s some of them: Illegal promotion of the anti-depressant paroxetine (Paxil, Seroxat) in individuals under the age of […]
Food and Medical Politics
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is the UK’s largest and best-known ‘heart’ charity and, on the surface at least, appears devoted to doing what it can to reduce the burden of ‘cardiovascular’ issues such as heart attacks and strokes. The BHF website offers a number of stories of people which appear to highlight pertinent issues […]