That fountain of knowledge, Dr Karl has a great post about food addiction on the ABC’s Science website.
Dr Karl almost seems surprised when he discovered these large multinational food polluters use neuroscience to get their customers addicted. I call them food polluters because for the most part they remove the healthy components (like the germ and bran of wheat) from their ingredients and add unhealthy, addictive chemicals.
I wrote a post on Kraft over two years ago that revealed how their scientists had colluded with the likes of cigarette makers PhillipMorris on how to make their products addictive. I am glad that the science is catching up and consumers are gradually finding out the truth.
After many years of my own personal research and experience I have come to the conclusion that to live a healthy life, it’s far more important to leave unhealthy options out than to take expensive supplements. I tried this myself for a full year and with making the one change of avoiding all packaged, processed and fast foods, lost 10kg and friends kept telling me I looked younger!
This is a great article from the Daily Mail in the UK. The picture painted here is much the same as in Australia and places like Canada, New Zealand and the US.
What is needed is a totally different approach to pain from the medical profession and an end to the reliance on prescribing these highly dangerous drugs.
Some other excerpts of the article…
What do we do? Moan at the doctor about our ‘constant pain’. With a queue of people in the waiting room and ten minutes to listen to our story, more and more of them hand out a prescription for these strong painkillers. A few months later — when these pills stop working (as they inevitably will) — we go back, moan again and get the dose doubled.
Doctors haven’t got the time or resources to treat pain any differently. The majority of people I know over 80 are now on a cocktail of opioids — a chemical cosh that just isn’t working and, if taken in high doses, reduces users to zombies.
Read more…
According to a new report into chronic pain in Australia:
- 29% of Australians say they experience chronic pain. With women (31%) more likely to experience chronic pain than men (26%).
- Among those who experience chronic pain, 47% say it is the result of a diagnosed condition such as arthritis, an inflammatory condition, multiple sclerosis or cancer.
- 5% of Australians with chronic pain have attempted to commit suicide because of their pain and a further 20% have thought about suicide.
- Chronic pain is reported across all age groups ranging from 19% of people aged 18-29, to 29% of those aged 66 and over.
- Forty per cent (40%) of people in pain say chronic pain has followed from a life event such as an operation or accident-related illness.
- 13% of people in pain report there is no identified medical reason for their pain.
Principal Physiotherapist, Dianne Hermans performing real time diagnostic ultrasound.
Not only that, but our health system often fails these patients, take the case of the Gold Coast patient who had to wait 4 years for an appointment or the recent report tabled in the WA parliament which expressed concern at over 22,000 West Australian’s addicted to opioids such as morphine, while having to wait 12 months to see a pain specialists.
Read more…
In a world where pharmaceutical companies control most of the research dollars and the prevailing dogma pedalled by scientists and media is that we are a victim to our genes and environment and medication and gene therapy hold the keys to our health, it’s refreshing to see these two pieces of research. In what I would consider nothing short of the bleeding obvious the two stories which you can click on below highlight the importance of personal choices and responsibility in determining the quality of our own health and wellbeing.
Professor Neil Mann, Professor of Human Nutrition at RMIT University conducted the acne study. He mentions in the interview that all the medical texts state that diet has no effect on acne. Is it any wonder most doctors practicing today have little idea about nutrition? This is what their taught in university by the professors, so why should they question it?
See the links below for the stories and audio:
Happiness more than gene deep.
The effect of diet on acne.
ENJOY!
Smoking…are all the drugs and treatments to quit really worth it?
For people who enjoy their cigarette smoking (I can’t see any other reason why one would continue with it), their single most important health gain is to simply quit, stop, cease, give up.
What’s the most effective way to quit? According to this article it’s a two step process: Read more…
The recent ABC radio national Health Report covered obesity research.
Norman Swan: “They have several areas of research from basic science through to behaviour change. And one focus is the so called fatty liver – which doesn’t get much press”.
Robert Kushner: “Yeah, what we know now is that as people gain weight you’ve run out of the deep hole of how you store your calories which is the fat that people typically think of. And the worst case scenario is when the fat starts to infiltrate the liver, so we are now seeing individuals with fatty liver disease that is going on to cause cirrhosis. And at least in this country it is projected that the number one cause for liver transplantation will be fatty liver caused by obesity outpacing the typical causes such as hepatitis C or hepatitis B viral infection”.
Not many researchers must have read Dr Cabot’s Liver Cleansing Diet, otherwise the dangers of fatty liver would have been common knowledge. For more on how to avoid a fatty liver, go to the source.
When certain things pop up that motivate me to take the time to comment, then I post a blog. I had one such occasion this evening. The kids came home with some food stuff for their school lunches – they went with Mum of course! Well, they came back with Kraft, Chicken In a Biskit. They know that we NEVER buy Kraft (Philadelphia Cream Cheese being the only seldom exception) but their usual 20 pack Arnotts Shapes were out of stock.
I have scanned the ingredients for you so you can see what’s in them. It should be illegal to call this stuff food, let alone feed it to kids. Firstly you will notice that the first three ingredients are some of the biggest scourges in our highly processed nutrient poor western diet. And look, they call it oven baked as if that’s got to be good for you – well at least, I guess, it’s not deep fried!
Read more…
We have some good friends who like a drink, but they call Monday-Thursday their AFD or alcohol free days. I thought this was a great idea and something we now work on. There are a number of alcohol free beverages that you can use as a substitute to replace that relaxing feeling of having a nice red wine or beer with the evening meal . Pomegranate juice is one we often use, not the cheap one you find in the supermarket made from concentrate, but you can find some very good ones sold at green grocers.
Why not enjoy a pomegranate juice or something similar with the evening meal 3-5 nights per week and if needed, teach yourself to take comfort in things other than health destroying stimulants such as alcohol, cigarettes and processed, fatty foods. Click pomegranate-juice-magazine-scan-low-res to see an excellent article on Pomegranate from the Life Extention magnzine.
As this article from a pro wine site shows, even the French are beginning to question the regular consumption of alcohol. I have long been suspicious of the media’s bias in the health benefits assigned to red wine. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a glass of red just as much as anyone, but there are plenty of other ways to consume the antioxidants and Resveratrol contained in red wine without having to take in the alcohol. I think the media placates our guilt as we eagerly buy into the latest report stating the health benefits of red wine. It helps us justify our consumption in that at least it’s good for us, but most of us would think again if we were honest with ourselves. But then there is the much maligned alcopops and beer and the heavier spirits which are by far the bigger concern and to make matters worse I don’t even think their manufacturers have a case to put forward regarding any of their inherent health benefits.
Just look at some of the facts when it comes to alcohol
Government Fact Sheet
Government Fact Sheet2
Read more…
Recent Comments