Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse.....

My top news story of the week comes from The Daily Mail:

 A quick summary:

• We have a big problem with type 2 diabetes – the drugs (in particular Metformin) don’t work
• NICE are giving the wrong advice
• Diabetes UK (diabetes.org.uk) are giving the wrong advice
• Diabetes.co.uk are giving the right advice
• Many doctors are giving the wrong advice
• But the tide is turning as more and more healthcare professionals learn the truth about how diabetics can manage their blood sugar (and hence their disease) with a LCHF diet.

I have a lot of respect for the daily Mail when they talk about health. Their comments section is frequented by a vitriolic bunch of smug creeps who abhor any notion that the Great British public might want advice about anything and seem to think that the Laissez-faire life that brought some of them riches in the 90’s should be prescribed for healthcare as well.  All the more impressive that The Daily Mail perseveres.

In The BMJ this week we have an interesting article from Dr Simon Tobin and Dr David Unwin; you may recall my post last year on Dr Unwin’s successful LCHF intervention trial in which Diabetes patients lost weight and lowered their dependency on drugs by adopting a LCHF diet.  This week’s report describes how a question from a patient about how to reduce the growing list of drugs he was taking provided an opportunity to step back and look at the  ineffectiveness of the drugs generally being prescribed for the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. The lesson learned appears to be that the drugs being prescribed are not very efficient at dealing with most patient’s problems; mostly because they have been prescribed to combat the assumed general risk of heart disease rather than a specific ailment. The other big lesson is that weight control is the real key to managing all of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. This seems to be the common message from all health practitioners promoting the LCHF diet; eat real food, remove processed food and particularly refined carbohydrates from your diet and you will lose weight and lose your dependence on drugs

In my own family the question of over-medication  is often a heated one. A relative was recently on 7 separate medicines to combat thin blood, raised cholesterol, hypertention, anxiety and other complications; there was no noticeable improvement in any of her ailments but there was a marked increase in her lethargy, loss of mental acuity and physical ability. None of the drugs that she had been prescribed had ever been tested in conjunction with each other. It was my strong conviction that, much like a teenager spaced out on alcohol, nicotine, paracetamol, red-bull, no sleep and perhaps a little cannabis or crystal meth might not be expected to rise at 10 a.m. and complete the Times crossword over breakfast, my relative was unable to function normally for 7 days a week because of the cocktail of drugs that she was taking. And this is not an unusual situation for a woman of 80.   This subject came its natural conclusion when we all listened to this.

My own mother on the other hand refuses to take any drug unless it can be proved to be effective; and as she was a statistics lecturer for 30 years and the proof of effectiveness of any drug is at best an elusive thing, this is a very rare event indeed.  Long may her drug-free rhapsody continue!

An update on my 50@50 challenges

You may recal that 10 months ago I set myself a goal to complete 50 "challenges" before my 50th birthday in October. These challenges might be personal, with family or with friends. The first was to complete the Beachy Head Marathon on my 49th birthday and the last will be to run the same race the day before my 50th.

Well things have been going reasonably well and I have now completed 34 challenges. Here is a brief summary:          

In November I built a training studio for my wife's personal training busines, Aspire Fitness Solutions. She and her team are now using it for training clients every day.
 

In December I completed the "All you can eat sausage challenge" with my son Cam. Between us we ate 33 Tesco's Finest Cumberland sausages.

I also coaxed over 50 people to join in the annual Boxing Day Run for our running club We Run! Hassocks.

In January I hit 50 consecutive backetball shots with Cam.

In February I ran my first Mud Run. This was hard work and I'm pleased with the result but I paid a lot of money to run around some muddy woods which I can do for free outside my front door; or better still pay £3 to run a traditional XC race and get covered in cowshit.

In March Jane and I skied Les Deux Alpes from top to bottom in one go. We have been wanting to try this for years.
    

In April I ran the Brighton marathon. On LCHF of course. With little training I ran a good race and finished fast and strong. Next year as a V50 this will my target race and I hope to get close to 3 hours again.

In May I took my family to see Tom Paxton. I grew up listening to this man sing and it was wonderful to hear him again in his 50th and last year of touring in the UK. The kids were bored senesless!

In June I hit my target of 30 concurrent Strava course records. Some of them were cheaply won but some I am very proud of.  Jane and I also gave a public talk on the LCHF diet, with me gassing on happily for far too long on my favorite subject of Cholesterol.

In July I went to a music festival for the first time in my life. We saw Hugh Masekela and Van Morisson at Love Supreme in Glynde. A very pleasant evening with good friends.

In August we took the kids on a 3-Week road trip in California. We visited Malibu, San Francisco, Yosemite, Vegas, Grand Canyon, Big Bear Lake and Santa Monica.

A wonderful experience for all 4 of us. I took Molly shopping in Vegas (yes that was a challenge!) and I also snuck in a fabulous run named "50 Switchbacks to the South Rim", an 800 meter climb in Grand Canyon.  

We also spent two days with Jane's cousin Adrian and his wife Karen at their home in Modesto. Ados was one of the early pioneers of ultra distance running. In 1983 he ran the length of the Himalayas in 100 days with his brother Dick. He was also an early "winner" of The Badwater Marathon (his route caused some contraversy though, as he neglected to use the road and short-cutted across the salt flats on skis!). I took a brief run in Death Valley and concluded that anyone trying that particular challenge must be made of different stuff entirely.

I seem to have got my climbing legs back as I followed my Grand Canyon run today with "The Tank Tracks Challenge", 12 repeats of our local hill, amounting to 1500 meters of ascent fuelled by fat. This is the most climbing I have done since the 3 peaks 4 years ago.

There is a lot more to come in the next 2 months and I'll do well to complete the full 50. But even if I do not, I have had a lot of fun along the way.

Michael Mosley misses the whole point on Cholesterol

Michael Mosley’s latest attempt at popular science airs on the BBC this week as part of the Trust Me I'm a Doctor series. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33601171 This time he is investigating different diets for lowering cholesterol. The program looks serious and appears to employ a reasonable but limited experiment comparing three different diets using a randomly allocated sample group and then observing the effect of each on total cholesterol levels.

One of the diets was a low cholesterol diet, any yet we have known for a long time that dietary cholesterol has very little impact on blood cholesterol, in fact the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recently removed it from their list of bad things to eat! A second group ate high fibre diet as fiber binds with cholesterol in the gut and stops it getting absorbed; this is even dafter as the premise is still based on the role of dietary cholesterol. The third group added nuts to their normal diet; this approach is known to lower cholesterol.

Mosley then trumps the lot with a "Portfolio" diet where he creams off the best bits of each diet, adds some other changes and lowers his cholesterol by more than the guinea pigs.

But here’s the thing. Total cholesterol is almost meaningless number when it comes to risk of heart disease!Why? Because it includes the "good" HLD cholesterol, and apparently the more of that we have the better. And because the role of LDL is misunderstood.

Mosley then quotes some out of date information on LDL cholesterol from the NHS Choices web site which still maintains that Total LDL is the enemy, despite consistent evidence showing that there is practically no relationship between total  LDL and heart disease. Heart surgeons have been pointing this out for decades but they have been silenced by the makers of statins.

Why, oh why couldn’t Mosley have done a bit more research and looked into the fact that LDL particle size is the real culprit? Smaller LDL particles are more dangerous and larger ones are safe, and hence their total mass is of no consequence. 

He could then have made the quantum leap back to his favorite subject of diets and announced to the world that high-carb diets promote small LDL particles and high-fat low-carb diets promote larger safer LDL particles.  

The funny thing is that diet is the answer, it's just that the question is wrong. Now if he had asked "Can you lower your triglycerides by changing your diet" then he might really have been onto something.

Missed again Michael!

In fact I ought to say "Missed again BBC!", I am amazed by the low quality of the science provided on the BBC when it comes to the subject of diet and obesity. There are dozens of top scientists who understand the subject infinitely better than Michael Mosley does, but the BBC's commissioning editors do not appear to be interested in discovering the inconvenient truth that the NHS's advice on cholesterol and heart disease might be wrong.

Time to get tough on sugar

This week the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), which advises Public Health England and other government agencies on nutrition, have said that the recommended daily intake of sugar should be halved to reduce obesity risk and improve dental health.  This bring top level UK government advice to the same recommendations as provided by the World Health Organisation.

As well as other recommendations the SACN have recommended:

• A ban on all forms of targeted marketing of ultra-processed, unhealthy foods and drinks to children.
• We should disassociate physical activity with obesity by banning junk food sports sponsorships.

Why is this such great news? After all most health campaigners have been banging on about this for years!  The reason is that it is this committee that the government relies on for advice on policy making. The reason the government have not acted until now (aside from the fact that they are under pressure from the food industry) is that they have not had clear advice from their advisors on what to do.  Well now they have and it is time to act.

And how have the food and drink industry reacted to this life-threatening news?  The Food and Drink Federation described the goals set out in the report as "stretching".

FDF Director general Ian Wright said: "The most thorough scientific review of carbohydrates and health carried out in recent years should leave people in no doubt that sugars can be enjoyed safely as part of a varied and balanced diet." He added: "Demonising any one ingredient in the obesity debate isn't helpful."

Talk about bending the truth! The report may have said that sugar can be consumed but the clear message is that consumption should be halved. Not just reduced, HALVED!

When the growth in consumption of one ingredient has caused an worldwide epidemic costing billions of dollars and millions of lives then I say let’s demonize it. Although let’s be clear about it, sugar is not at fault; no it is the FDF and its members that have deliberately increased the percentage of sugar in our food over the last 30 years in their attempt to get us hooked on their products.  We have been silently poisoned.

Tobacco companies have been sued for knowingly damaging our health and it is time to take the same approach to our food.