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.
Healthy Eating
I’ve been a coffee drinker since childhood. At one point (when I was a student) I was drinking 10 or more mugs of instant coffee a day (each with two teaspoons of sugar in, I might add). As I got older, my tastes became more refined. I was persuaded by my older brother Joe to […]
Children's Health
Probiotic supplements contain gut bacterial organisms believed to exert beneficial effects. As expected, much of the focus to date has been on the effects such supplements can have within the gut. For example, probiotics have been test in and been found to be useful for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). See here for more about this. […]
Healthy Eating
It’s nice when something that you like turns out to be good for you. And that does seem to be the case for chocolate-lovers everywhere. Over the last few years there has been a number of studies which suggest that chocolate exerts beneficial effects on the physiology of the body that would be expected to […]
Exercise and Activity
On Monday, a friend sent me this link to an article about the role of exercise is weight loss. Basically, the article says it doesn’t work. I agree. I’m sure it may work for the odd individual, but overall, it’s a pretty hopeless. I mentioned this to a patient yesterday who was seeking to shed […]
Uncategorized
Last Wednesday I wrote about ‘mindful eating’, and mentioned I was in the process of reducing my own weight. Actually, I don’t really care about my weight, it’s fat I’m attempting to lose. My aim is to improve my body composition, and to this end weight is relatively irrelevant. However, I confess that I have […]
Brain and Behaviour
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which, once consumed, breaks down into three components ” aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. Aspartame has been passed as fit to consume by more than 100 countries around the World, but there is evidence that each of aspartame’s chemical components can have toxic effects on health. See here and here […]
Brain and Behaviour
Over the last few weeks I have, as part of a book I am writing, embarked on a bit of an overhaul of my own diet. Apart from ‘tightening things up’ a bit, I’ve also decided (urged by my girlfriend) to slow my eating down and eat a bit more ‘mindfully’. I have generally been […]
Weight Loss
Variously on this site, most recently here, I have reported on studies which show that being ‘overweight’ is associated with a reduced risk of death compared to having what would be generally taken to be a ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ weight. The studies that show this association are based on the measurement known as the body […]
Healthy Eating
Cardiovascular conditions such as heart disease and stroke are a major cause of disability and death. For years we’ve been led to believe that fat is the major dietary offender here, but in reality the science shows that naturally occurring fats are not the issue. In fact, some fats (principally so-called omega-3 fats) actually help […]
Specific conditions
Raised blood pressure is believed to be a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke. Studies show that, in a population, the higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk of cardiovascular disease. This has led to some researchers suggesting that the lower the blood pressure is, the better. However, we […]