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.
Uncategorized
I see that a study has been published today in the New England Journal of Medicine [1] that concerns the condition irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). You can read a summary of the study here. This study tested the effect of an antibiotic (rifaximin) on individuals with IBS. Compared to placebo, two weeks of this antibiotic […]
Food and Medical Politics
I came across this story this morning. It tells us that less than half America women attend their scheduled, recommended mammogram examinations. The article cites possible reasons for this short-fall in take-up, specifically “discomfort from the test, lack of available screening centers, general non-compliance or denial.” All of these have some validity, I suppose, but […]
Cholesterol and Statins
I came across this story this morning. It concerns the fact that there are plans afoot in the US to label meat products with nutritional information including calorie counts, levels of fat and specifically (and inevitably), saturated fat content. According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, “More and more, busy American families want nutrition information that […]
Healthy Eating
It’s a widely recognised idea in nutrition that moderate drinking is ‘healthy’. This advice is based on evidence which links moderate drinking with improved health outcomes (notably a reduced risk of death from heart disease) compared to not drinking at all. However, I remember more than 10 years ago sitting in a presentation given by […]
Food and Medical Politics
My blog on Christmas eve (My nutritional Christmas wish list) detailed 14 things I feel should be more widely known including the facts that saturated fat is not linked in any meaningful way with heart disease and there’s no good evidence that margarine is healthier than butter. Another was that there’s no good evidence that […]
Uncategorized
A couple of days ago the British Medical Journal published on-line a piece from its editor, Fiona Godlee, wishes urges us to “start the year as we mean to go on—by promoting rational healthcare decisions based on the best available evidence.” In her piece, Dr Godlee highlights a recent assertion by one of the BMJ’s […]
Food and Medical Politics
Placebos are essentially inactive agents that are typically usually used in trials used to determine if a drug has genuine benefits or not. In most so-called ‘randomised, controlled trials’ individuals are assigned to take the medication or treatment being tested, while the rest get a placebo. If it turns out that the group receiving the […]
Nutrients and Supplements
As we get older, we can be prone to wasting of muscle tissue (known as sarcopenia). If nothing else, sarcopenia can lead to weakness, which in turn can cause us to be immobile, prone to falls, and increasingly reliant on others for our activities of daily living. One way of preserving muscle bulk as we […]
Sleep
As Christmas approaches, the bods at the British Medical Journal have a tradition of publishing an edition filled with more lighted-hearted fare than is usual. Perusing today’s copy my eye was caught by an article entitled ‘Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people’ [1]. In this study, 23 […]
Healthy Eating
In my blog on Monday I wrote about how different foods satisfy the appetite to different extents, and in particular how eating a ‘primal’ or ‘Paleolithic’ diet appears to be effective for helping individuals avoid over-eating without undue hunger. In today’s blog my aim is to offer advice regarding some simple strategies that can help […]