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.
Nutrients and Supplements
When someone takes a medicine, it is generally in the hope that it will do some good. However, whether it does or doesn’t is only half of the story: even the seemingly most innocuous of drugs can have adverse effects on health. In an editorial in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr John Ioannidis of […]
Uncategorized
Regular readers will know that I have a particular interest in the role of sunlight in health, in large part due to its ability to stimulate vitamin D production in the body. Vitamin D, in turn, has been found to be association with a very wide variety of disease processes including cancer, diabetes, and multiple […]
Uncategorized
Mobile phones are undeniably convenient, but that fat that they emit electromagnetic radiation means that they have at least some potential to affect individuals who use them. For a long time, the party line was that mobile phones are safe. This is a message the industry has been particularly keen to cultivate. However, at least […]
Exercise and Activity
Anyone familiar with my health ‘philosophy’ will know that I am a big believer in using our ancient past to inform our modern-day dietary and lifestyle habits. Logic dictates that, say, the foods we’ve eaten for longest in terms of our time on this planet are the foods that we’re generally going to be the […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Last Friday my blog focused on a study which found that fat intake (total fat, as well as levels of, saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated fat) appeared to have no impact on change in body weight over a period of several years. Partly in an attempt to explain how this can be so, I outlined the […]
Healthy Eating
We all know that fat is fattening right? (It is called fat, after all.) But not so fast, because as I detail here, for fat to get ‘fixed’ in the fat cells, a substance known as glycerol is required. Glycerol itself is supplied from a substance known as alpha glycerol phosphate (also known as glycerol-3-phosphate), […]
Brain and Behaviour
I was out last night with a friend, and he mentioned his mother’s depression. Seeing as we’re now deep into the autumn here in the UK, I asked if there was any seasonal component to this. There is. Like a lot of people, his mother’s mood takes a distinct turn for the worse in the […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
In a recent post I highlighted a study which has found that higher vitamin D levels are associated with a reduced risk of death. This evidence actually comes on the back of other studies showing the same thing, and while therefore strengthens the association between vitamin D and death risk, cannot be used to claim […]
Nutrients and Supplements
A month ago I wrote a blog describing some research which found that supplementing elderly individuals with vitamin D led to improvements in their muscular strength without any physical training. I made the point that this sort of effect is important because it means vitamin D may be able to prevent disability. I also mentioned […]
Exercise and Activity
A couple of months ago I wrote a blog which reviewed the evidence which suggests that exercise is not particularly effective for weight loss, and why this might be. That is not to say, however, that exercise is a fruitless endeavour. It is linked, for instance, with improved measures of health as well as reduced […]