Archives

• Pink Day Blues

  In 1985, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) was created by the American Cancer Society. Funding was provided by Zeneca (later AstraZenca) , a British pharmaceutical company. AstraZenca is still (as at 2018) associated with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. AstraZenca produces Tamoxifen. Tamoxifen is an estrogen antagonist or anti-estrogen drug which works by blocking the effects of estrogen.

  Pink Day is one day in October which is designated to create awareness of breast cancer and to raise money for research.

  Lifetime exposure to estrogen is 2.5-3 times higher in Western women than rural Chinese women in the 1980s. China women reach menarche later, menopause earlier and have reduced levels of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone during their reproductive years.

  There is much evidence that increased levels of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are associated with a significant increase in breast cancer as well as evidence that low-fat, high carbohydrate diet reduces the level of these hormones.

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  27 January 2019

• The Warburg Effect and Ketogenic Diets

  Otto Warburg (1883-1970) obtained is doctorate of chemistry in 1906 which was followed by a medical degree in 1911. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology in 1931. Much of his work involved photosynthesis, metabolism of cancer cells and the chemistry of enzymes involved in energy transfer within cells. An extensive biography was written by Hans Kreb, a colleague who was a co-discoverer of the Krebs cycle.

  His work is sometimes used to justify ketogenic diets.

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  21 January 2019

• Moderation is a Fatal Thing

  Everything in moderation is a near unanimous response by health professional, health support organisations and media commentators to solving our health crisis.

  The same argument was used in in the 1950s and 1960s to convince people to reduce smoking. After all, you would not want to deprive people of the “solace, relaxation and enjoyment to mankind” that smoking has provided for more than 300 years. These days, doctors do not suggest that people reduce smoking but to stop.

  One problem is that moderation cannot be defined. One person may consider a hamburger or packet of cigarettes a week as being moderate. This can easily become two hamburgers a week or just one more cigarette.

  Doing things in moderation does not change a habit. To change a habit requires consistency and commitment over a period of several weeks or months.

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  5 January 2019

• Belief versus Truth

  Stephen Colbert defined a new word: Truthiness, The belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

  A number of popular commentators write that we should trust our intuition (without explaining what that may be) rather than relying on what we read. Most of these commentators have written many, many books to tell us that we do not need these books.

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  24 November 2018

• The Evidence Against Eric Westman and William Yancy

  Eric Westman and William Yancy are medical doctors associated with Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina, where they are associate professors.

  They are prolific authors associated with ketogenic and high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets. They have both received funding from Robert C. Atkins Foundation which supports research into low-carbohydrate nutrition.

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  22 November 2018

• How do Your Genes Affect Obesity and Diabetes

  The purpose of the DIETFITS Trial was "to determine the effect of a healthy low-fat (HLF) diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate (HLC) diet on weight change and if genotype pattern or insulin secretion are related to the dietary effects on weight loss".

  It a popular area of research to determine if there are genetic causes of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, depression and any other illness or condition that is plaguing our society.

  This area of research ignores the fact that often our genetics does not determine health outcomes.  Ignoring this will not solve the problems of our society's rapidly failing health.

  The conclusions of this paper are:

  In the 12-month study, there was NO significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet compared with a healthy low-carbohydrate diet.

  Neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors [genotypes] was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom.

  Frequently the problem is not that complicated.

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  7 November 2018

• Letter to Diggers – October 2018

  In the Spring 2018 edition of Diggers, Bel P claims that What The Health has been “expertly torn to pieces”. No effort has been made to justify this claim. What The Health web site has listed approximately 300 references for the movie with the elapsed time that the information was presented.

  In the absence of a valid critique of What The Health, I will present some evidence presented by the movie for the health benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet. All references provided are from primary sources for which I have the paper or electronic copy.

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  29 October 2018

• Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibrin

  Chronic inflammation is associated with many diseases and conditions. There are many inflammatory markers that can be measured. Researchers are continually looking to add to the list of makers to use to identifying diseases. C-Reactive Protein is one common but non-specific maker. Fibrinogen is another that some researchers have added to their inflammatory marker list.

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  20 September 2018

• Big Fat Myths by Ruben Meerman

  Ruben Meerman and Professor Andrew Brown from the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales published a paper in 2014 When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? 

  Meerman has a physics degree and is known as the surfing scientist and has appeared in a number of television shows including ABC's Catalyst program. and he is the author of Big Fat Myths, a book that expands on the previous paper. The original paper and later book explains how every molecule of fat escapes the human body during weight loss.

  He believes that his research shows that weight loss is best achieved by "eating less and moving more".

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  9 September 2018

• Ancel Keys and the High-Fat Diet “Experts”

  Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

  This study is sometimes referred as the Six Countries Study. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England and Wales as two countries.

  This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

  Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

  “The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

  This was the purpose of the paper.

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  24 July 2018