Holistic Feathers

27/02/2008Tottenham Hotspur have for many years, been the winners in the making, but have consistently remained in the middle of the league tables. Last season, they finished an incredible 5th, but recently, in the new season, after only 10 games, they were third from the bottom. The manager left and Juande Ramos, the new manager entered onto the scene.

Now after 24 games, they have only lost 4 and have returned to the higher levels of the League. So, what happened?

Only one thing was changed; their diet.

Marcos Alvarez, the new fitness coach, said on observing the footballers diet: “The truth is, the first buffet I saw I took photographs of because it was very interesting. Lots of sauces, a lot of cakes, chocolate muffins, a box full of sweets. So we tried to put things right”

Now, by following a diet recommended by Antonio Escribano who has successses with other top sports people and performers, the team are well on their way to losing the 100 kilos of extra weight they were carrying which was affecting their stamina and performance on the field. They are now eating wholesome foods and fresh vegetables and fruits and have dropped the high fat, high sugar and salt content foods.

Marcos said “They have now lost between 40 and 50 kilos. Now getting the rest off is the most difficult part – but we have also turned a lot of fat into muscle. At the start, the players complained as we were taking away the things they liked. But gradually they have understood that we have done it so they can improve. And as the results have improved, they have realised that it is necessary. They have all lost weight — some drastically. But they have seen how performances have improved and the team has moved up the league and they have accepted it.”

HealthyPages.net 

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Stop the diet: Is it better to be bigger?

If you’re tubby and tired of being lectured about it, here’s good news: the latest research suggests overweight people may be less likely to die early

By Hugh Wilson – Tuesday, 19 February 2008

In the restless world of medicine, where one piece of definitive research is followed within weeks by another that’s wholly contradictory, this is the study many of us may have hoped for.

After the World Cancer Research Fund concluded that we should try to stay as slim as possible (within healthy limits) to prevent cancer, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an American federal agency, says that being chubby may not be so bad.

Actually, the report says more; it says that overweight (though not obese) people – calculated by body mass index (BMI) – have a higher risk of dying from kidney disease and diabetes than people of normal weight, but a lower risk of dying from a range of conditions including emphysema, pneumonia and lung disease. And it found that overweight people are no more likely to die from heart disease and cancer than those of normal weight.

As a whole, the research says that the overweight have a lower mortality rate than people who are underweight, obese or normal. In other words, a little fat appears to have a protective effect. And, the study says, obese people have higher death rates than normal people, but this is driven by a higher incidence of heart disease; they have little higher risk of dying from cancer.

There are nuances in that finding. Obese people were more likely to die from a range of cancers that have been associated with extra weight, such as colon, breast, kidney and pancreas. But overweight people weren’t.

Still, for those with a BMI of 30 or more, the message is the same: slim down or risk an early death. For those carrying an extra stone or two, it’s less clear. Lead researcher Dr Katherine Flegal says she wouldn’t make recommendations to the public “that differ in any way from current public health recommendations to eat right, get some exercise and not smoke”. But she admits that “the relation of weight to mortality is a fairly complex issue”.

For the public, the issue of weight and health now seems very complex. Official advice is to aim within a “normal” BMI range of 18.5-25. Now, Flegal’s research suggests that “normal” may not be optimum in terms of life expectancy.

The discrepancy is partly down to focus. “Our data are based on mortality, not on incidence of disease,” Flegal says. “We don’t address the probability that someone gets cancer or heart disease, but rather the probability that someone dies from them.” One explanation may be that overweight people get ill as much as people of a normal weight, but die of illness less often.

Put simply, during serious illness, overweight people may have additional nutritional resources to draw on. But, according to other CDC researchers, that may not be the only explanation for the discrepancy. In fact, one of the researchers, Dr David F Williamson, questions whether there is any discrepancy at all. “If one carefully examines the graphs in Chapter Six in the World Cancer Research Fund report, it is very difficult to see evidence of a marked increase in either cancer incidence or mortality in the ‘overweight’ BMI range,” he says.

So two studies fail to show a marked link between moderate excess weight and cancer, and the CDC report shows no increased risk of dying from heart disease. But other experts point out that the CDC study only looked at mortality rates, andthat good health is about far more than staying alive.

So health groups are not changing their message: “People who are overweight or obese are more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, high blood pressure and some types of cancer,” says Dr Joanne Lunn of the British Nutrition Foundation.

And some question how the CDC report has been interpreted. “Much has been made of the absent or lower risks in the overweight range, but it would be a mistake to interpret this as meaning that being overweight is protective,” says Dr Shiriki Kumanyika, a professor of epidemiology and part of the expert panel for the World Cancer Research report. Kumanyika says the processes that lead to cancer in some obese people may have started when they were overweight but only showed up much later.

But there does seem some acknowledgement that, for the mildly overweight, living healthily may be more important than frantically slimming. Lunn says an overweight person should eat well and be active. Preventing further weight gain is, however, important. Judy O’Sullivan, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, agrees that, for heart disease, one of the big risks is the ease with which “overweight” can slide into “obese”, particularly as we get older.”

Dr Mitchell Gail, another CDC report author, is less equivocal. “If you are in the pink and feeling well and getting a good amount of exercise,” he told The New York Times, “and if your doctor is happy with your lab values and other test results, then I am not sure there is any urgency to change your weight.”

(c) The Independent

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A recent study shows drinkers of diet drinks are 34 percent more likely to suffer from this particular type of disease.
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk factors including elevated waist circumference, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and high fasting glucose levels.  The presence of three or more of the factors increases a person’s risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A new study conducted by Pamela Lutsey, Lyn Steffen, and June Stevens at the University of Minnesota on more than 9,500 men and women ages 45 to 64 and tracked their health for nine years found that otherwise-healthy adults who eat two or more servings of meat a day increase their risk of developing metabolic syndrome by 25 percent compared with those who eat meat twice a week.

Even more shocking is that the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

There is no firm evidence from the study to explain the result. Co-author Lyn Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University said in the New York Times; “Why is it happening? Is it some kind of chemical in the diet soda, or something about the behavior of diet soda drinkers?”

Steffen said that one result was clear: Too much meat, fried foods and diet soda, do not add up to a healthy life.

Date: 14/02/2008

The Ecologist

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Antidepressant drugs don’t work – official study

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor (The Independent)

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the “happiness pills” that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year.

But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don’t work.

The finding will send shock waves through the medical profession and patients and raises serious questions about the regulation of the multinational pharmaceutical industry, which was accused yesterday of withholding data on the drugs.

It also came as Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced that 3,600 therapists are to be trained during the next three years to provide nationwide access through the GP service to “talking treatments” for depression, instead of drugs, in a £170m scheme. The popularity of the new generation of antidepressants, which include the best known brands Prozac and Seroxat, soared after they were launched in the late 1980s, heavily promoted by drug companies as safer and leading to fewer side-effects than the older tricyclic antidepressants.

The publication in 1994 of Listening to Prozac by Peter Kramer, in which he suggested anyone with too little “joy juice” might give themselves a dose of the “mood brightener” Prozac , lifted sales into the stratosphere.

In the UK, an estimated 3.5 million people take the drugs, collectively known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), in any one year and 29 million prescriptions were issued in 2004. Prozac, the best known of the SSRIs made by Eli Lilly, was the world’s fastest-selling drug until it was overtaken by Viagra.

In the study, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of all 47 clinical trials, published and unpublished, submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the US, made in support of licensing applications for six of the best known antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, Seroxat – which is made by GlaxoSmithKline – and Efexor made by Wyeth. The results showed the drugs were effective only in a very small group of the most extremely depressed.

Two drugs were excluded from the study because of incomplete data. A third drug, chemical name nafazodone, has been withdrawn from the market because of side-effects.

Professor Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, who led the study published in the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine , said the data submitted to the FDA would also have been submitted to the licensing authorities in Britain and Europe. It showed the drugs produced a “very small” improvement compared with placebo of two points on the 51-point Hamilton depression scale.

That was sufficient to grant the drugs a licence but did not meet the minimum three-point difference required by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) to establish “clinical” significance. Yet Nice approved the drugs for use on the NHS in the UK because it only had access to the published trials, which showed a larger effect.

Professor Kirsch said: “Given these results, there seems to be little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit. This study raises serious issues that need to be addressed surrounding drug licensing and how drug trial data is reported.”

Five years ago, there were allegations that antidepressant drugs were addictive and could trigger suicides. All but Prozac were banned for children, although a major investigation on the safety of medicines cleared them of causing suicide in adults.

Alternative treatments for depression, such as counselling or physical exercise , should be tried first, Professor Kirsch said. The pharmaceutical companies had withheld data that was available to the licensing authorities so that doctors and patients did not understand the true efficacy, or lack of it, of the drugs.

“This has been the frustration. It has made it very difficult to answer the question of whether the drugs work. The pharmaceutical companies should be obliged when they get a drug licensed to make all the data available to the public. When you analyse all the trials of these SSRIs, both published and unpublished, it leads you to more sober conclusions,” he said.

Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ research unit, said the findings, if proved true, would not be surprising. As head of the National Collaborating Centre for Nice guidelines on mental health, he said it had proved impossible to get access to unpublished trials in the past.

“The companies have this data but they will not release it. When we were drawing up the guidelines on prescribing antidepressants to children [in 2004] we wrote to all the companies asking for it but they said no. The Government pledged in its manifesto to compel the drug companies to give access to their data but that commitment has not been met.”

The new finding would make doctors “much more cautious about prescribing the drugs,” Mr Kendall added.

GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Seroxat, said the authors of the study had “failed to acknowledge” the very positive benefits of SSRIs and their conclusions were “at odds with the very positive benefits seen in actual clinical practice.” A spokesperson added: “This one study should not be used to cause unnecessary alarm for patients.

Lilly said in a statement: “Extensive scientific and medical experience has demonstrated that fluoxetine [Prozac] is an effective antidepressant.

Wyeth said: “We recognise the need for both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments for depression.”

On the new training for therapists, Mr Johnson said the programme signalled a decisive shift away from drugs in favour of non-drug treatments for depression. “We are not taking the decision away from clinicians,” he said.

“For many, medication is successful. But talking therapies can have dramatic effects. We have put a lot of emphasis on medication in the past and it is about time we redressed the balance and put more emphasis on talking treatments.”

The treatments that do work

* Exercise: Helps some people with depression. Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, said running helped him cope with depression.

* Friends: Talking through your feelings can help in mild depression with a friend or relative or in a self-help group.

* Cognitive behavioural therapy: Teaches you to challenge negative thoughts and feelings of hopelessness.

* Interpersonal therapy: Focuses on relationships and problems such as difficulties with communication.

* Counselling: Helps you think about the problems in your life and find new ways of dealing with them.

* Antidepressants: Increasingly seen as a second-line treatment, if exercise or talking treatments do not work.

(c) The Independent

* * * * *

As someone who suffered with devastating clinical depression for a decade after my son was born, I feel that to some extent this study is correct … I took it upon myself to come off antidepressants in one swoop, handing back all of my tablets in one go as I no longer wanted to be on that merry-go-round.  I have since learnt that nutrition plays an enormous role in our moods and I have never looked back.

That said, with hindsight – always 20/20 vision! – it was an incredibly foolhardy and risky thing to do, not something I would ever advocate anyone else to do.

However, some people do need “a pill” – they need to hand the personal responsibility of their health to some other force to help through that period of their life.

An interesting study … now we need to have studies showing how complementary therapies and alternative medicine have a positive role to play in assisting people with depression.  The key element is that we ‘allow’ the patient to take back their own responsibility, nourish and guide them through the health maze.  Medical practitioners instead prefer to treat on the diagnosis, rather than getting to the root of the cause of ill-health.  Wellbeing comes from internal balance, harmony … a pill cannot offer that, only effort and will.

With love & blessings

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You may not be aware that last week the controllers of BBCHealth (www.bbc.co.uk/health), the health section on one of the most accessed websites in the world, decided to remove all coverage of complementary medicine!

They used to have substantial coverage with over 40 pages on this subject covering all the major therapies, their pros and cons, evidence for their effectiveness, how to find a qualified practitioner, etc.

However the site has in recent months been targeted by the self-appointed ‘Quackbusters’, (scientists and medics vehemently opposed to complementary therapies such as Prof David Colquhon et al) who sent a deluge of letters and emails claiming that complementary therapies such as homeopathy and cranial osteopathy were ‘unscientific’ and should be removed. As a result large chunks of this part of the site were simply removed overnight and now, following recent cutbacks, it was decided that, rather than update this part of the site, it should simply be removed altogether!

It may seem incredible that a public service site this prominent can deem complementary medicine so insignificant that it no longer warrants any coverage other than the odd news story. This is despite the fact that complementary medicine is used favourably by a significant proportion of the population (recent surveys have estimated that around 1 in 5 Britons use it at some point or other) and that increasing numbers of people are now seeking to train in these therapies.

However, as the ‘quack busters’ become more organised and active, evidence of the backlash against complementary medicine is appearing all over the place – such as the removal of NHS Trust funding for homeopathy, the threatened closure of the homeopathic hospitals, many negative news stories in the press and so on. Rather than taking a reasoned view and considering the evidence from good research studies on complementary medicine these individuals seem simply hell bent on trying to ’stamp out’ complementary medicine in any way possible. The BBCi removal of complementary medicine coverage (which has been in place for almost 15 years!) is one example.

If you care about complementary medicine and believe info rmation pages on it should be returned to BBCi, please, please take just a minute to express your views using their online comment form at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ then select in the left hand side column (general comments) the section on the BBC website. Fill in your details, put in your question/complaint/comment and send to make your view known. As a public service company they have to listen to your views so your email will make a difference. Apparently for all the many letters and emails that they received that were against complementary medicine they only received a handful in support.

Therefore if you are in support please let them know so they may revise their thinking on this subject.

Please act as soon as possible and pass on these details to anyone else you know who may also be willing to write in support of complementary medicine.

Thank you for reading.

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