Just how accurate and informative was BBC2’s Horizon program on Wednesday that aimed at scientifically answering the question: which is more deadly: Eating lots of sugar or lots of fat? The format was to feed two doctors who were also identical twins – Alex and Chris – unlimited amounts of one or the other. Alex got a low carb/high fat diet while Chris followed the traditional low fat/high carb diet with added the sugar. (Read more…)

This week Horizon, BBC’s flagship […]

Unfortunately for the rest of us today’s medical research is not driven by an abstract search for objective truth but by the need to produce a product. Unless there is a drug at the end of promising new line of research it’s unlikely to attract funding from the biggest payers – the drug companies. Instead it will be parked with the comment that it needs more research, the funding for which will be virtually impossible to obtain, however effective it is. (Read more…)

Modern medicine’s authority depends on […]

One New Year tradition, along with wondering how you could have spent so much on so little, is making healthy resolutions which may involve some sort of supplement. As a nutritional therapist I’ve been helping people for years to handle chronic disorders and stay healthier by recommending specific nutritional supplements based on risk, coupled with substantial changes in people’s diet. There’s plenty of evidence it benefits people but there’s lots we still don’t know and new well-conducted research is always welcome. (Read More…)

Are supplements a waste of […]

One of the comforting myths about the powerful drugs used in modern medicine is that they are prescribed on the basis of good scientific evidence. Proper randomised clinical trials, we are regularly assured, compare them with a placebo and the results can tell us which are safe and effective.
However this is an illusion. For nearly thirty years drug experts have known that there was a major flaw in this assumption, which doctors and the agencies set up to regulate drugs have chosen largely to ignore. (Read more…)

Non-drug ways of preventing or […]