Food and Medical Politics
Many individuals will be familiar with the almost-constant recommendations that come at us with regard to what we should be eating to reduce our risk of heart disease. A central theme in this advice, though not everyone would agree with it, is that the diet should be low in fat and high in carbohydrate. Sometimes, […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
This week’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association contains a commentary entitled ‘Can Diabetes Be Cured’ [1]. It caught my eye, partly because I have some interest in diabetes as a condition, but also because the word ‘cure’ is not usually applied to a condition like diabetes. The conventional wisdom is that […]
Food and Medical Politics
The painkilling drug rofecoxib (Vioxx) was originally licensed in the USA in 1999. It proved quite a success for its manufacturer, the drug company Merck, until it emerged that the drug was associated with a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and strokes). Merck withdrew the drug in 2004, but not before there […]
Food and Medical Politics
This morning, I saw this piece of news on the BBC website which reports on the accusation some doctors (endocrinologists) have leveled that some doctors are misdiagnosing and mistreating thyroid disease. The main gripe appears to be the fact that some doctors are willing to entertain the diagnosis of low thyroid function (hypothyroidism), even when […]
Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome
Diabetes is a condition characterised by higher-than-normal levels of sugar (glucose) in the bloodstream. One problem here is that there is more tendency for glucose to react with proteins and fats in the body (through a process known as glycation) that can damage tissues. The complications of diabetes, including nerve, vessel, eye and kidney damage, […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last week one of my blogs focused on mammography. My objection here, in a nutshell, is that it seems this practice has been presented to women as a no-brainer, when in reality it has a number of important downsides that put quite a dent in the arguments for mammography that many of us will be […]
Food and Medical Politics
Mammography is a widely advocated and popular intervention designed to pick up breast cancers earlier than they would otherwise be, and therefore allow less invasive and more effective treatment. However, as I pointed out in a blog back in 2007, some researchers believe that the benefits of mammography are somewhat overblown, and that the potential […]
Food and Medical Politics
While many doctors and health professionals like to believe they practice ‘evidence-based’ medicine, the reality is that much of healthcare practice is simply not supported by good science. This isn’t necessarily a problem, of course, as there are other means that practitioners might use to base their practice decisions. One of these, as I pointed […]
Cholesterol and Statins
You don’t have to wait too long before yet another study is published which is used to persuade us that cholesterol is a killer and cholesterol-reducing drugs are essential for keeping us from the mortal spectre of heart disease. The focus, for some time, has been on controlling so-called ‘low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol’ ” […]
Food and Medical Politics
Last November I reported on a review of treatments for irritable bowel syndrome that had recently been published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The review showed that, of the treatments it assessed, peppermint oil was the most effective. One of the other treatments that was the subject of this review was fibre. As the […]