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.
Men's Health
Screening for illness is based on a simple concept: catch the disease early and more timely treatment will (inevitably) lead to better outcomes. However, as with most things in life, things turn out to be not a clear-cut as they sometimes seem. Tests are not foolproof, of course. And sometimes tests can detect things that […]
Sunlight
Malignant melanoma is a form of skin cancer we are repeatedly warned about. As long as I can remember, just as things start to hot up, we are subjected to dire warning about the hazards of exposing ourselves to the sun’s rays. As a prelude to this this year, we have a recently published study […]
Healthy Eating
While walking the dog today, my mind wandered and I found myself thinking about nutrient absorption. I’d just had lunch (leftover roast pork from yesterday) and some veggies and salad including rocket (a type of lettuce). My girlfriend dished it up and all I had to do was add a drizzle of olive oil to […]
Children's Health
Back in February I wrote a post that was largely focused on my experience of supplementing with vitamin D, and specifically the fact that I had not had a single infection (e.g. cold or flu) since starting supplementation. I still, by the way, have not had an infection. Not even a hint of one. This […]
Children's Health
The natural food for human babies is breastmilk. However, at some point, children need to be weaned onto ‘solid food’. In the long term there is good reason, I think, for aiming for a childhood diet that is essentially ‘primal’ in nature. That means a diet based on foods like meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, […]
Sunlight
Earlier today, I came across this story in the on-line version of the Daily Mail (UK) which reports on a theory relating to why the Scotland enjoys a preponderance of redheads. The theory, which the originator herself describes as ‘speculation’, is that a combination of the ‘bad weather’ in Scotland, coupled with a genetic mutation, […]
Exercise and Activity
I have since last June been undertaking a bit of a personal experiment. Over couple of years I’d found I’d somehow managed to accumulate some added fat to my midriff. At 43, I suppose ‘middle-aged’ spread might have had something to do with it. But also when I looked at my diet with as much […]
Exercise and Activity
I eat a relatively low-carb diet, and as a result, eat very little bread indeed. I literally cannot remember the last time I ate a sandwich, for instance. And when I do eat bread, I tend to opt for a thin slice or two of dark rye bread. I prefer rye to wheat bread partly […]
Healthy Eating
Over the weekend the radio was on and I caught an item about the apparent hazards of popcorn. The Food Standards Agency in the UK has, it seems, launched a bit of a blitz against the snack foods and drink available in cinema foyers (see here for a report regarding this) and popcorn is firmly […]
Brain and Behaviour
Iron is an essential nutrient for the making of haemoglobin – the component in red blood cells that carries oxygen and delivers it to the tissues. If iron is deficient in the body, haemoglobin levels can fall and eventually cause anaemia (pathologically low haemoglobin). Symptoms of this can include mental and physical fatigue and low […]