Kate Arnold Nutrition

Internet addiction linked to depression

February 4, 2010 2:56 pm

It’s so very sad to see this headline. Being a tehnophobe I’ve found it increasingly hard to keep up with the never ending updating of technology. The speed of change can take your breath away. A laptop I guess can become a friend that you become dependant on for research/reading/dating/shopping etc. I read with a smile recently that the singer Lilly Allen had dumped her laptop, iphone and stopped twittering and went cold turkey to live without them and concetrate on her relationship.

It’s so uncool to attack the internet and it would be stupid to do so as we have it, its hear to stay and we now couldnt function without it. But I think its sad, sad that kids on computers upstairs can text their parents who are downstairs, sad that getting through to a teenager is even more difficult as they are surgically stuck to their ipods and phones.

The irony is that with all these ways to communicate with each other we are communicating less, becoming less socially interactive and more insular. Going on social network sites doesnt meant that you have thousands of friends – it’s not real. I long for the day pre 2000 that the internet didnt exist but you cant stay there very long. We have to move on.

I think if possible one day a week we should all try and live without our mobiles/laptops and see if the world comes to an end. – It wont. I run my own business and I dont take mobile calls – my number is given to a few friends only, and I have non digital landlines. I don’t think text messaging is the way to have a conversation or a way to dump someone. I get really excited when a handwritten letter or card comes through the day – an email is not the same. I hate how easy it is to access hard core porn on the internet – surely that could have been monitored right at the start? Lastly I’m not sure a world buzzing with electromagnetic frequencies is doing our brains and immune systems any good.

If we all just succumb to the latest gadgets we are feeding into a never ending spiral of  never being in control of our lives.

Vacancy – P/T marketing assistant

February 3, 2010 12:43 pm

I’m looking for a part time marketing assistant to help me with a few projects I’m starting.  The person preferably female would need to be experienced in networking and some marketing. The hours are flexible.  O.T.E. £200 pw. For more information please email me at katenut@aol.com sending a recent CV.

Cutting time with your GP even further

February 2, 2010 12:58 pm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1247804/How-DARE-pen-pushers-decide-long-GP-you.html

This is the largest complaint I hear with my patients – they do not have enough time with their GP and if the above is to be believed it’s going to get worse. I’ve written about this before but its such a “hot” subject I’m in Groundhog day and writing about it again.

The recommended time GPs have at the moment is 10 minutes. It’s not long enough full stop. Often as stated in the above article if someone is really concerned or shy they come with a different problem and don’t discuss the one that is really bothering them.

After ten minutes with a patient I haven’t even started. I’m lucky as I’ve said before I get one to one a half hours and by then I assure you I know that patient very well. I will give you an example of why more time is needed. I had a patient last year who went to her GP with severe IBS – he did a few routine tests and found nothing wrong and sent her home. She was with him for seven minutes. On talking to her in our consultation she started to open up and tell me her mother and grandmother were coeliac and her sister was just getting the test done. She also told me that her grandfather had pernicious anaemia. I asked her if she had told her GP this. She said she hadnt and as she was quite new at the practice she hadnt seen him very often. However what she said next sums this up completely for me. “I really felt that my family history was relevant, but I got flustered. The GP was very brisk with me and started looking at his watch. I’d already taken 5 minutes of his time just by listing my symptoms: severe fatigue, runny stools, terrible cramping and bloating, and a skin rash. There just wasnt enough time to tell him everything and he stood up to let me go. I felt like a number not a person and came out very upset and more anxious”.

I wrote to this GP and spoke to him on the phone about this girl. He was charming and extremely helpful and did arrange for a coeliac and B12 test – she was coeliac and she needed B12 injections. He said he had no idea that she had a family history of this disease. I don’t blame him I blame anyone who is responsible for cutting times with our GP’s. The government always bangs on about patient care first, well this is the front line of patient care and an important window of initial diagnosis. To cut the time further would be madness.

Before size zero

January 31, 2010 11:34 pm

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.

The Great Big Obesity Lie

January 30, 2010 2:25 am

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.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247216/The-Big-Fat-Lies-Britains-obesity-epidemic.html

Men in the dock

January 29, 2010 11:11 am

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.

Female Viagra

January 27, 2010 10:30 am

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

Who knows what a balanced diet is? Not many…

January 25, 2010 11:23 am

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”?!!!

Horizon – Pill Poppers

January 21, 2010 7:41 pm

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…………

Swine flu (cont)

January 20, 2010 10:19 am

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.

In just the fourth quarter of 2009, GlaxoSmithKline shipped $1.4 billion worth of vaccines. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS…)

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.