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
Earlier this month one of my posts focused on a study which tested the effect of exercise on weight loss in women. This year-long study found that, on average, the women needed to exercise for 77 hours to lose a kg of fat. Now, if I said I had pretty-much foolproof way of getting a […]
Healthy Eating
I came across this post recently, on the website of a Tom Naughton – a comedian and now nutritional commentator based in the US. Now I should imagine that comedians don’t necessarily make for the best nutritional commentators ordinarily. But Tom is an exception to this rule – he does a great job, in my […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Back in December I wrote this post which explored the apparent ability of cinnamon to reduce blood sugar levels, particularly in diabetics. One of the studies mentioned in this post showed that cinnamon added to normal diabetic care led to improved outcomes compared to standard diabetic care alone. While this result was certainly promising, the […]
Food and Medical Politics
Mammography is a screening tool designed to diagnose breast cancer earlier than it other would be, which should lead to earlier, better and more effective treatment. Well, that’s the theory anyway. But as with the case with many things, theory does not always translate smoothly into practice. There has been for some years now growing […]
Healthy Eating
Conventional dictates that to lose weight we need to eat less and/or exercise more. Traditionally, this leads people to cutting back on what they eat and perhaps upping their exercise too. Studies show that exercise, however, is not particularly effective for the purposes of weight. See here for a recent blog post about this. And […]
Healthy Eating
The idea that eating more saturated fat will increases our risk of heart disease is claimed to be ‘well-established’ according to most nutritional commentators. The fact is, as I disclosed here, there really isn’t any good evidence to support this assertion. Three major reviews in recent times have failed to find evidence demonstrating that saturated […]
Food and Medical Politics
Variously, I have written about the now quite voluminous and ever-growing body of research which demonstrates that fructose has considerable potential to harm health. See here, here, here and here for examples of research which implicates fructose as a potential causative factor in a wide range of health issues including weight gain and cancer. So […]
Healthy Eating
Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men in the Western world. However, many of these cancers are slow growing, and do not prove to be fatal. Many men, actually, will die with prostate cancer that never showed itself when they were alive. However, prostate cancer can and does kill with enough […]
Exercise and Activity
Although I am an advocate of exercise, I have more than once felt the urge to express the view that it’s not a particularly effective tool for weight loss. The view is partly based on my experience (the experience of a friend of mind that he recounted over dinner and you can read here is […]
Uncategorized
Sitting at dinner with friends last night, the subject of exercise came up. One of my fellow diners made, I think, a perfectly valid point when he commented that exercises such as running and cycling are not particularly effective where weight loss is concerned. I supported his point of view by quoting some science on […]