I bought myself the complete Frasier box set at christmas and have just finished the entire 11 series. I think it ran from 1993-2003. As I watched I realised that none of the main female characters nor any of the guest female stars in all that time were thin. In fact looking at them the thinnest was possibly a size eight – most women looking a healthy size 10-12. Even the wonderful Lilith played by Bebe Neuwith, meant to be skinny in the programme looks normal to me. All these woman have visible thighs, boobs, hips and stomachs. It’s a sad state of affairs that today that would not exist. The cast of Desperate Housewives etc are skeletal by comparison. How times have changed.
For anyone who wants to know why government guidelines for dieting are not working – you may be interested in this article. As I keep on banging on in my blog, its sugar and starch , and not fat that is our enemy.
I hope you like my seemless link from politics to medicine………!
I find it slightly ironic that two very different men are in the “dock” this week being questioned, one on Iraq and one on the MMR vaccine.
Dr Andrew Wakefield, is the doctor who sparked the MMR controversy. He faces being struck off for showing a ‘callous disregard’ for the suffering of children. He is the man who first linked the triple jab to autism and bowel problems. According to the GMC – he acted ‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’ when publicising his research.
Is it not then even more ironic that Tony Blair would not confirm whether his son Leo had the triple MMR in 2001? I’m not against vaccination at all but putting three vaccines into a growing immune system is not the best idea in my book. Why not just give it in divided doses – or what I’d like to call ‘choice” for parents.
Didn’t our late Prime Minister act “dishonestly and irresponsibly” with a research dossier?
Sadly I suspect one of these men will get off very lightly and one will heavily pay the price.
My female friends have never been busier. Whether married with children or single, they work hard, continually juggling what life has to throw at them. Most of my girlfriends with children feel they are failing – as wives, mothers and career women. There is just too much to do, not enough hours in the day and not enough help, support or money to make the problem go away. What is the problem? Tiredness… never ending constant tiredness from lack of sleep. On top of all the juggling, women have never felt more under pressure to look good, be wrinkle free, have fantastic sex and float through life like the earth mothers they assumed they were going to be. The reality is (at least with my friend)is that they had children later in life, have gone back to work to soon after giving birth and are struggling. Having spoken to them about their sex lives, I have gotten mixed responses from some who havent had sex for years to some who manage it two or three times a week. It’s completely dependent on the couple, their overall libidos and whether there is in fact an issue between them about a lack of sex life. It often comes down to the crude reality that if you find a spare 1/2 hour in the day what would you rather do, have a nap or have sex?!
Although there may be a case for a pill in menopausal women, there is little need for a pill to boost a womans libido. Marketing a drug by making women feel there is something else for them to worry about is not the way ahead. Lack of sex or a sex drive does not mean you have female sexual dysfunction(which does not even exist). Women need more sleep, more help, an understanding partner, less media pressure to fill their face with botox and have fantastic sex every day – anyone got a pill for that?
If you would like advice on boosting your libido naturally please get in contact! email katenut@aol.com or tel 01323 737814
All health care professionals need to be asking the following questions not only to themselves but to their patients:
Are you eating a balanced diet?
Do you know what a balanced diet is?
Do I as a health care profesional really know what a balanced diet is?
Have you access to a balanced diet?
Can you afford a balanced diet?
So what should you eat: high protein, low protein, moderate protein, high fat, low fat, moderate fat, high carb, low carb, moderate carb, margarine or butter, supplements or no supplements, sugar free products or not, organic or non organic, tinned or frozen, both or neither, caffeine or no caffeine?
Even though many believe that nutrition plays no role in disease, the evidence is screaming at us with obesity and diabetes at its highest ever levels. And we are failing as a nation – not in technology or drugs – we are getting far better at keeping people alive, but we are still failing terrribly at preventing disease in the first place.
I would guess that nearly everyone visiting their GP could do with some form of nutritional support/information relevant to their condition. Who tells people with anxiety or high blood pressure not to drink black coffee for instance? Those who dont think what they are eating is affecting their health are walking around in a daze of lack of information.
Any one like to comment on what they think or have been told is a “balanced diet”?!!!
Yet another Horizon programme popped up on our screens last night. Although nothing new to me I was left outraged and deeply saddened by its contents.
I was outraged to learn from a professor that all of us are in the spectrum of ADHD – I know what she was trying to say but thats still a very disturbing statement.
I was outraged that 6 million people in the UK are taking statins, and the cholesterol level target we now need to reach has been lowered.
I was outraged that the drug companies are making a CURE for female sexual dysfunction when it doesnt even exist.
I was outraged that a drug initially meant as treatment for severe erectile dysfunction was prescribed or got hold of by people who don’t feel they are “normal when in fact they are.
I was saddened by yet another child taking Ritalin and students using it to be more clever before exams.
6 million people I assume have tried diet and lifestyle changes before taking statins.
Men with erectile dysfunction I’m assuming take high doses of garlic, ginko biloba, and zinc to get them functioning again.
Children with ADHD I’m assuming have an amazing diet fully of omega 3, fibre, no additives, preservatives, caffeine and refined sugar.
Women with sexual dsyfunction I assume aren’t juggling work, career, kids. Let’s give them one more thing to worry about – as if they havent already.
The slow creep from family GP to prescription writer was starting to emerge.
Do you know I’m so outraged that I think I’m veering heavily towards the upper spectrum of ADHD – someone get me a pill…………
For those asking for some harder hitting news on the swine flu fiasco – he’s what Mike Adams of NaturalNews has to say. (These are US stats by the way!):
The great swine flu hoax of 2009 is now falling apart at the seams as one country after another unloads hundreds of millions of doses of unused swine flu vaccines. No informed person wants the injection anymore, and the entire fear-based campaign to promote the vaccines has now been exposed as outright quackery and propaganda.
Even doctors are now calling the pandemic a complete hoax. As reported on FoxNews, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a leading health authority in Europe, says that drug companies “organized a ‘campaign of panic’ to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic. He believes it is ‘one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,’ and he has called for an inquiry.” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933…)
H1N1 swine flu was never dangerous, and it never should have been escalated to a level-six pandemic in the first place. It was all a big marketing scam whose purpose was to simply sell vaccines.
And it worked! Big Pharma made out with billions of dollars in profits for a useless vaccine that’s now being dumped by the truck load. These vaccines were, of course, paid for with taxpayer dollars, making the Great Swine Flu Hoax of 2009 nothing more than an elaborate financial scam whose goal was to transfer wealth from the People to the shareholders of Big Pharma.
That’s $1.4 billion worth of taxpayer dollars, by the way. Dollars that could have been spent on nutrition or real health education. $1.4 billion worth of free vitamin D supplements would have done far more to protect public health than vaccines could ever hope to accomplish.
I hope some of you managed to catch last night’s BBC1 documentary “Britain’s Really Disgusting Food”. Alex Riley(sounding a lot like Louis Theroux) set out to unearth the horrors in meaty snacks. Although its nothing we havent seen before I think its a worthy subject to keep looking at.
There is still a huge issue over cheap poultry and meat for those on severely restricted budgets – Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley Whittingstall have covered this in their excellent campaigns and TV programmes. One side of the argument is to keep producing cheap meat with connective tissue and all the grissle, additives and chemicals because of consumer demand or stop it completely. Stopping it completely means that there would need to be a clear message from the FSA about the minimum amount of meat/poultry in a product. It is still legal to have 10% chicken in a bought chicken kiev. Perhaps that level should be increased to at least 70%. Obviously the best way to steer clear of all this is to make it yourself.
The sad thing about these reconstituted meat products is that they actually dont taste too bad (as seen at the Henley food festival) but thats the additives and flavours added to disguise what is essentially the left over pieces of the carcass. The thought of eating canned meat makes me physically sick but then its served an entire two generations of people who clearly like it and eat it.
Do you buy one free range chicken that hasnt been injected with water and use every bit of it and get as many meals out of it as you can, or buy the plumped up two for one creatures with hock burns and hormones? Its a chicken and egg situation – if the supermarkets stopped selling this stuff, the public wouldnt buy it and if the public stopped buying it the supermarket would stop selling it.
Moving on to another tv programme – Delia Through the Decades, a wonderful nostalgic look at the rise of the Queen of Cooking. Although not a huge fan of her recipes (she’s always been a bit domestic science for me) she has done more for British cooking than anyone in the last 30 years. Do you remember when supermarkets ran out of cranberries!!!!! Wonderful stuff.
I see in the papers today a suggestion to ban butter. I really think its time to leave poor old butter alone. I was bought up to believe a scrape of butter was better for you than hydrogenated margarine. In fact in the 1970’s my father worked for a very large company that made a lot of margarine. On visiting the factories and getting inside no-how he always used to joke to us that it was made of gorilla fat and not to touch it!
My grandmother and great grandmother always had butter in their diet and in their cooking. What they didnt have and what my family dont eat now is REFINED WHITE SUGAR. We need to look at our overall insulin load with heart disease and not just cholesterol, but homocysteine as well.
Heart disease has boomed since the increase in processed food and decrease in exercise. Also with this comes the increase in statin prescriptions. If you don’t want to take statins, do try changing your diet first but do get the right advice because you will be wasting your time otherwise. Many people try and lower their cholesterol by themselves and generally fail as you do need to know what you are doing – so many cut out fat and wonder why their cholesterol has stayed the same. The best cholesterol drop to date I have seen through diet change was in 2008 when a man came to see me terrified after some blood test results showed very high cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL (bad cholesterol). He also had high blood pressure. He knew he was a walking time bomb and had an appointment with a cardiologist about six weeks after he saw me. He was also terrified of taking drugs. After our consultation I had no idea whether he could do what I suggested. It was a tough regime as he had only weeks to get his levels under control. I wasnt convinced of a good enough outcome for the consultant not to put him on several drugs. Six weeks later he called me and said he had been so scared that he had followed what I suggested to the letter and done even more than I asked. His results were astonishing. All his blood tests came back in the normal range, except his LDL although it was lower and his blood pressure was also normal. (His cholesterol dropped from 10 to 4.8 – his triglycerides from 5 to 2, his blood pressure from 170/94 to 130/70, his homocysteine from 15 to 4, he raised his HDL from 1 to 3). Not bad going – its amazing what fear will make someone do!
If you would like to try and reduce your cholesterol naturally, do get in touch.
I got into a heavyweight discussion the other night with a great friend of mine and we got talking about our life’s purpose. Do we need one or do we already think we have one? After much deliberation my friend conceded that he didnt set out to gain a life purpose but as a life coach was thrilled with the direction his life was going. In guiding others towards their goal, he was reaching his without even thinking about it. Which led to my life purpose. Again, I never had one. I never dreamed when I left school I’d be doing the job I do today – but I guess thats where most of us lie in our life journey.
I continually strive towards a position of balance – hopefully a voice of common sense. Two quotes came to mind as we sat and discussed this further:
“Most men would rather die than think. And they do.” Bertram Russell
and
“Be open minded but not so open minded that your brains fall out” Groucho Marx
I aim to lie somewhere between the two! In trying to achieve balance in my life and in my job, I am always leaning towards the personalization of health and not the assembly line medicine approach. The very fact that everyone responds differently shows me what unique individuals we are. The general response with people is reflected in their desire to be thought of as an individual and not as a figure or a number swallowing a pill.
The purpose of me…. I hope is to set people on the path towards full health and listen to what these people have to say and of overall importance is to question…always!
