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
Optimal health and well-being are not only the product of physical behaviours, but our mental behaviours and attitudes too. Our thoughts, and whether these are essentially positive or negative in nature, have an obvious impact on how we feel about ourselves, our lives and others. This not only has a bearing on our sense of […]
Uncategorized
Our physical health and well-being is influenced by an enormous array of factors. However, the vast majority of health issues can be tracked back to a relatively small number of factors and imbalances.
Healthy Eating
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with dairy products. I love, generally speaking, how they taste. I also like the fact that dairy products (e.g. cream, cheese) are relatively rich in protein and fat, and (importantly) not so rich in carbohydrate. Their nutritional profile is, therefore, kinda in line with ‘primal’ foods such […]
Healthy Eating
If you want to cut your risk of heart disease, reduce intake of saturated fat and eat more carbohydrate. That’s what most doctors, dieticians and Governments would have us believe. So it must be true, right? It’s a message we’ve heard a thousand times, so surely is based on sound science? So what does happen […]
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On Christmas day last year I blogged not about health, as such, but about random acts of kindness. I had a few days earlier witness a random act of kindness in an underground station. I was so touched by the experience, that I resolved making at least one random act of kindness my New Year […]
Sleep
In my blog yesterday I mentioned how a carbohydrate-rich diet can drive some people to overeat. High-carb foods tend to disrupt blood sugar levels in a way that can lead to episodes of low blood sugar that itself can trigger cravings for further carb-rich fare. Also, carbohydrate has relatively limited capacity to sate the appetite […]
Exercise and Activity
Some time ago one of my blogs focused on the thoughts of Dr Andrew Wadge – Chief Scientist at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK. The blog specifically focused on his broadside at ‘detox’ regimes. I can understand that someone may be a bit sceptical of such regimes. However, if Dr Wadge wishes […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last week one of my blogs focused on prostate cancer screening, and specifically the prostatic specific antigen (‘PSA’) test. For a variety of reasons, the doctor who discovered PSA says the practice of using it to detect cancer should be stopped. In that post, I mentioned that doubts have also previously been raised about the […]
Unhealthy Eating!
Variously on this site I’ve discussed the notion that ‘a calorie is a calorie’. Simply put, this concept, widely populated by doctors, dieticians and other health professionals, is that when it comes to their effects of weight, all forms of calorie are the same. In terms of its impact on body weight, a kilogram of […]
Healthy Eating
Coffee, despite its not-so-healthy reputation, has been quite consistently linked in the scientific literature with benefits for health including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. See here, here, here, and here. While the research regarding the effects of coffee on health is voluminous, the great majority of it comes in the form […]