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.
Food and Medical Politics
Perusing on-line newspapers yesterday I came across this. According to the national newspaper the Observer (UK), Professor Chris Hawkey, president of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG), is set to debunk more than a dozen ‘fad’ diets when he addresses Gastro 2009 conference for doctors. Locked in his crosshairs, apparently, are the concepts of chewing […]
Exercise and Activity
I have been doing some lecturing this week, and part of the information I imparted concerned the potential advantages of eating a diet relatively low in carbohydrate. It’s not uncommon for individuals to ask about the potential effect of low-carb eating on sporting performance. This question is usually rooted in the notion that those engaging […]
Cholesterol and Statins
Type 1 diabetes is a condition characterised by raised levels of sugar in the bloodstream, and it’s underlying cause is a lack of insulin (usually secreted by the pancreas). The condition is ‘auto-immune’ in nature, which means that it is caused by the body’s immune system reacting to and damaging it’s own tissues (in this […]
Exercise and Activity
Previously, I have written about the drug combination of simvastatin and ezetimibe (sold as Vytorin in the US). Both of these drugs reduce cholesterol, but through different mechanisms. Taken together, these drugs do do a good job of reducing cholesterol levels And we all know that the lower we get the cholesterol levels down the […]
Brain and Behaviour
Exercise is generally good for health, and one form of exercise that I advocate strongly is walking. Regular walking has been associated with protection from chronic diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It also is an activity that tends to take people outdoors. This may have spin-off benefits in terms of, say, […]
Healthy Eating
There is generally unbridled enthusiasm in the medical establishment for cholesterol-reducing drugs known as statins. While they do have the ability to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes, they don’t appear to reduce overall risk of death in individuals who have no history of cardiovascular disease when they start […]
Healthy Eating
There’s a fair chance that at least once in your life you’ve been advised to eat slowly. I think this is good advice, at least in part because slower eating generally means more thorough of chewing of food (which aids digestion and reduces the risk of symptoms such as indigestion, reflux and heartburn). However, another […]
Healthy Eating
I generally advise against eating refined sugar. I, personally, eat hardly any, but I do eat some. Practically all of this comes in the form of 85 per cent cocoa chocolate. I, for quite some time now, have been recommending dark chocolate as a sweet treat of choice. Firstly, dark chocolate is generally lower in […]
Brain and Behaviour
I make no secret of my leaning towards high-protein, relatively low-carb diets. I am well aware of the relatively unhealthy reputation that such diets have. However, when one looks at the research one generally finds that the criticisms of such diet are based on theoretical and ideological concerns. They are not, generally speaking, based on […]
Food and Medical Politics
Probably all of us know that life events and ‘stress’ can change our mood, but there’s less acknowledgement, I think, that what we can have impact here too. One example relates to blood sugar imbalance: if blood sugar levels plummet it can switch on the body’s stress response, which in turn can induce feelings of […]