Tag: dietary guidelines

Mar23201923rd Mar 201923rd Mar 201916Commentsby Marika

Malhotra takes aim at heart of media statin support

Posted in Heart Disease

By Marika Sboros

The Guardian newspaper in the UK has been haemorrhaging readers for years.

The newspaper’s recent uncritical support for medical orthodoxy and dogma around diet, nutrition, drugs and cardiovascular disease hasn’t helped. Its treatment of ongoing controversy around cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins is raising red ethical flags.

Britain’s leading cardiologists, Dr Aseem Malhotra, is demanding that The Guardian retract its online article by health editor Sarah Boseley. Under the headline Butter nonsense: rise of the cholesterol deniers, it aims right at the heart of Malhotra’s credibility and professional integrity.

Malhotra has lodged a written complaint with The Guardian’s editor in chief, Katharine Viner. He has included the UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Board and Complaints Committee.

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Feb23201923rd Feb 201923rd Feb 20190Commentby Marika

Exercise: you’re never too busy for its magic!

Posted in Food for Thought

44th US President Barack Obama gets incidental exercise with his dog, Bo.

By Marika Sboros

I’m a big fan of exercise – as we all should be. It makes, or should make, intuitive sense that exercise is good for overall health. Exercise builds endurance and keeps you supple and strong as you age

It also makes, or should make, sense that exercise is not the best weight loss tool. Despite what many MDs and dietitians still say.

They want you to believe that obesity the result of gluttony and sloth. That all you have to do to lose weight is eat less and move more.  That’s just food and drug industry propaganda.

It is not possible to outrun or outexercise bad diet.

And like many of us, you might think you are too busy to exercise. You’ve got that wrong. It’s dead easy to fit regular, incidental exercise. Take a leaf out of 44th US president Barack Obama’s lifestyle book, for starters.

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Jan28201928th Jan 201928th Jan 20190Commentby Marika

THE DIET FIX: FINALLY, ‘LAST WORD’ IN WEIGHT LOSS!

Posted in BOOKS

Picture: Dreamstime

By Marika Sboros

Are you battling to lose weight? Confused by the minefield of conflicting nutrition and weight-loss advice out there?

Or simply and seriously concerned with your health or the health of those you care about?

If so,  this book is for you.

The Diet Fix is by British public health and obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe. The sub-title says it all: How to lose weight and keep it off… One last time!

On the front cover, British consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra calls The Diet Fix “a gamechanger”. It is that and more.

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Dec18201818th Dec 201818th Dec 201818Commentsby Marika

Kendrick, Wikipedia and ‘dark forces’ waging war on science

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

When I heard that Wikipedia had deleted Scottish GP Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s profile, I was shocked. Not just because I’ve met Kendrick, have read his most well-known, groundbreaking books, written lots about him and have the greatest respect for him.

It’s also not because I take Wikipedia at all seriously. The signs have been there for ages that Wikipedia falsely claims to be a “free encyclopedia”. It is proving to be part of something far more sinister and costly – by default or design.

I was shocked because I know how – and why – Wikipedia did something so stupid and self-destructive. And how it damaged its tattered reputation further by deleting someone of Kendrick’s knowledge, experience and standing. (Not surprisingly, Wikipedia ignored my tweeted request for comment.)

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Nov18201818th Nov 201810th Dec 20184Commentsby Marika

Harvard study: ‘Case against carbs, for fats grows stronger’

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

It’s not the definitive word for best weight loss diets but it’s close. And it doesn’t venture into the contentious plant- versus animal-food divide. A major new Harvard study shows that replacing carbohydrates with fats speeds up metabolism.

It overcomes one of the biggest hurdles in conventional weight-loss diets: the “plateau”. That is the metabolism slowdown that prevents weight loss on conventional diets.

It’s why so many lose some weight but stay hungry and find it increasingly harder to lose more.

The Harvard study in the BMJ is well-designed and randomised. It is also one of the largest feeding studies ever conducted, say the authors. Add recent US research by Virta Health on low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets to reverse type 2 diabetes and experts say it’s a recipe for speedy, safe, sustainable weight loss.

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Nov0820188th Nov 20189th Nov 20181Commentby Marika

Dr Jason Fung’s single best weight loss tip!

Posted in Food for Thought

 By Marika Sboros

Psst! If your MD or dietitian still subscribes to the CICO (calories-in, calories-out) obesity model, find another one. Quick!

According to the model, obesity is from gluttony and sloth. A calorie is a calorie. And all you have to do to lose weight and keep it off is “eat less and move more”.

The model is not just unscientific, it’s out the dark ages of nutrition science.

Yet many (if not most) MDs and dietitians still believe that CICO rules. Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung is not one. As a kidney specialist, Fung sees many patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes. The two conditions are now so common that doctors refer to them as “diabesity”.

In the article below, Fung gives his top weight loss tip for those struggling with diabesity. Spoiler alert: it’s about as far from CICO as it’s possible to be.

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Oct12201812th Oct 201813th Oct 20187Commentsby Marika

FETTKE: COVER-UP GROWS AFTER CASE AGAINST HIM COLLAPSES?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke’s professional reputation and licence to practise medicine are no longer under threat. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) recently cleared Fettke of any misconduct over his opinions on nutrition.

That response was legally and ethically correct, under the circumstances. However, it raises more questions than answers.

One question is why AHPRA went to war on the side of the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) and its members who mobilised against Fettke. Another is why no heads have rolled in AHPRA’s prosecution of Fettke – in a case that legal analysts called a “kangaroo court“.

Yet another is why AHPRA has ignored extensive evidence of bullying, mobbing and intimidation of Fettke at his workplace, Launceston General Hospital (LGH) in Tasmania, for more than eight years. That is raising questions of a cover-up at the highest levels.

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Sep28201828th Sep 201828th Sep 201816Commentsby Marika

FETTKE FREE AT LAST: AHPRA DROPS ALL CHARGES!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke is a free and vindicated man. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) has dropped all charges against him.

In a letter to Fettke, AHPRA clears him of any wrongdoing or misconduct in a case that has dragged on for more than four years. The Agency has also apologised for its actions against him.

Those actions include slapping a lifetime ban on him in 2016 from speaking to patients about nutrition. Not just any nutrition but his advocacy for low-carb, healthy-fat (LCHF) therapies.

The ban falls away – although Fettke had ignored it anyway.

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Sep12201812th Sep 201812th Sep 20186Commentsby Marika

Seriously! Stomach surgery first option for diabetics?

Posted in Diabetes

By Marika Sboros

I’m always unnerved when doctors encourage diabetics to have stomach surgery before more effective, much safer, less invasive methods. Like simple dietary changes.

The recommendation has been popping up again on social media.

There is robust evidence to show that bariatric surgery can be life-saving for morbidly obese people. However,  it is invasive and the success rate is nothing to write home about. Complications can also be lethal and include heart attack, stroke and death.

So it should be worrying when doctors advise stomach surgery as first resort, especially for diabetics who are only mildly obese.

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Sep0620186th Sep 201812th Sep 20180Commentby Marika

From hunger to wholeness: ‘road map’ to avoid overeating

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

Hunger is one driver of overweight, obesity and associated health problems.  Another is the “weight” that many people with obesity carry.

That weight is as much emotional as physical, say the authors of a new book. From Hunger To Wholeness is a “road map” to guide readers back to a healthy weight.

The co-authors are UK-based psychoanalytic psychotherapists, Caroline Taylor-Thomas and Pam Kleinot. I came across it as both are former journalist colleagues of mine back home in South Africa.

The book’s subtitle gives their aim: Strategies To Free Yourself From Overeating. To deliver, they mix extensive investigative reporting skills and clinical experience of patients with eating disorders and other forms of substance abuse.

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Aug30201830th Aug 201811th Sep 20183Commentsby Marika

Vitamin D: is it snake-oil for snake-oil disease?

Posted in Future of Food

By Marika Sboros

Nutrition science is looking decidedly dodgy these days. One reason is the love affair with vitamins, a century after scientists discovered them.

That affair has spawned the billion-dollar global supplement industry. It has also created “pseudo-diseases” in its wake, says British geneticist Prof Tim Spector. One of those pseudo-diseases is Vitamin D deficiency.

Spector is professor of genetic epidemiology and director of the TwinsUK Registry, at Kings College London. Spector has looked at another confounding variable in nutrition research these days: We have ignored a new “virtual” organ in our bodies for the digestive and endocrine system, he says. It is the microbiome that he calls our “second brain”.

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Jul0920189th Jul 201810th Jul 201810Commentsby Marika

DID WITS ETHICS CHIEF LOSE HER WAY JUST TO NAIL NOAKES?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

Prof Amaboo ‘Ames’ Dhai

By Marika Sboros

Here’s an intriguing ethical and moral dilemma in the latest issue of the SAMJ (South African Medical Journal).

It’s in an article by University of the Witwatersrand bioethics head Prof Amaboo “Ames” Dhai. The title: The Life Esidimeni tragedy: Moral pathology and an ethical crisis.

In it, Dhai speaks of “core values of compassion, competence and autonomy”. Together with respect for fundamental human rights, these are “the foundation of ethical practice in healthcare”, she writes.

But why is that an ethical, moral dilemma and for whom? Well, for starters, for Dhai herself.

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Jul0720187th Jul 20188th Jul 20188Commentsby Marika

Saturated fat causes heart disease? Pure bollocks – Kendrick!

Posted in Heart Disease

Quick! If your doctor or dietitian still says you should eat a low-fat diet for your heart’s sake, find another one. In the final of a two-part series, Scottish GP Dr Malcolm Kendrick explains why so many doctors and dietitians dish up junk about cholesterol.

And why everything the experts have been telling you about saturated fat, its impact on LDL, and its impact on CVD is – frankly – ‘complete bollocks’. – Marika Sboros

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Jul0520185th Jul 20185th Jul 20184Commentsby Marika

LDL FAT HEART PUZZLE: KENDRICK SOLVES IT!

Posted in Heart Disease

Some find it puzzling that cardiologists still tell patients to avoid saturated fat like the plague. And that they also tell patients to lower their levels of so-called “bad” LDL cholesterol.

It’s as if cardiologists don’t know that there isn’t such a thing as “good” or “bad” cholesterol. And that LDL isn’t cholesterol at all. Never was, as Scottish GP Dr MalColm Kendrick explains in this two-part series. 

Kendrick has a special interest and clinical experience in cardiovascular disease over decades. He is a voice of sanity in a mad scientific debate. Here, Kendrick explains why saturated fat can’t “cause” heart disease by raising blood LDL cholesterol levels. And why there are more important things to worry about for your heart’s sake.  – Marika Sboros

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Jun0420184th Jun 201811th Jun 20180Commentby Marika

Vintage eating: look backward, fast forward to good health!

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Fast food is often just a euphemism for junk food. Ditto for “convenience”, so-called “comfort” food. A new book gives bold new taste, flavour and health to fast food.

It is Dinner Plans, Easy Vintage Meals by Jennifer Calihan and Adele Hite. It shows how easy it really is to make healthy foods fast for dinner daily.

The secret is in the “vintage”, say the authors. Vintage meals are the “original fast food”. Vintage eating is the way your great-grandmothers used to cook. That was “back when people used to feel satisfied between meals and look and feel better”.

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May28201828th May 20184th Jun 201813Commentsby Marika

PHC FINALLY LAYS LOW-FAT DIETS TO REST! Part 2

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Are you on a low-fat, high-carb diet because your doctor or dietitian says that it’s “healthy”?

That’s “fake news”, says Scottish professor of metabolic medicine Iain Broom.

You are part of an “uncontrolled global experiment” over 40 years.

It is one that has had “disastrous” results for people across the planet, Broom said.

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May25201825th May 20185th Jun 201814Commentsby Marika

LCHF SLIPS INTO MEDICAL MAINSTREAM AT PHC GATHERING! PART 1

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

If you harbour any doubt that low-carb, high-healthy-fat (LCHF) diets are becoming medical mainstream, the recent Public Health Collaboration (PHC) annual conference in London dispelled it.

Former Australian cricket team doctor Peter Brukner set the tone in his opening address on May 19. It is “almost negligent”, even close to “criminal”, he said, for doctors not to put patients on LCHF diets for diet-related illnesses. That was fighting talk and it resonated with speakers who expressed similar sentiments.But there was another strong sign that LCHF is becoming mainstream.

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May11201811th May 20186th Jun 201815Commentsby Marika

TYPE 1 DIABETES STUDY: LOW-CARB DIETS DISH UP RADICAL NEW HOPE

Posted in Diabetes

By Marika Sboros

Type 1 diabetes is usually a terrifying diagnosis, more so for parents when doctors diagnose it in their children. A lifetime dependency on increasing use of insulin and other drugs looms large.

If diabetics don’t manage their condition properly, the spectre of life-threatening complications also looms large. These include kidney failure, blindness, limb amputation and premature death.

Now, US scientists offer type 1 diabetics a radically different approach to conventional treatment and management of type 1 diabetes.

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May0820188th May 20186th Jun 20184Commentsby Marika

SUGAR TAX USUAL SUSPECTS SAY: IT WASN’T US! APOLOGIES TO SHAGGY

Posted in Food for Thought

A sugar tax is a good thing, right? It’s a significant step to resolve obesity and type 2 diabetes pandemics, right? Public-health experts desperately want you to believe that.

It’s a message that leaves a sour taste in mouths of medical nutrition experts globally. Australian GP Dr Joe Kosterich is among them.

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May0120181st May 201824th Sep 201852Commentsby Marika

MIKHAILA PETERSON: GLOBAL POSTER GIRL FOR CARNIVORE LIFESTYLE

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Canadian Mikhaila Peterson is the poster girl for low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) living. Actually, not just LCHF – she’s the global poster girl for a carnivorous, ketogenic lifestyle.

Following in her ketogenic footsteps is her famous father, Dr Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and University of Toronto psychology professor. His diet is not as restrictive as his daughter’s. He eats meat and greens only – and olive oil. Mikhaila eats meat and salt only and drinks lots of sparkling water. (Editor’s note: Jordan recently ditched the greens to follow his daughter on the meat-only path.)

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