Its alright for an Orthopaedic Surgeon in Sweden to recommend LCHF. It’s also interesting to read his story of personal health as part of his awakening.

I seem to end up trying to talk many patients out of surgery. Strange behaviour from a surgeon.

This is consistent with the higher rates of dementia associated with diabetes and obesity. This study looks at imaging showing ‘older’ brains for age matched controls.

Another good reason to get leaner and healthier.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-08-brains-overweight-people-ten-years.html

https://www.facebook.com/thegaryscience/posts/1088490371245413

Virtually every person becomes a victim of the system when diagnosed with cancer. They become what I call ‘medical tourists’.

All control is lost as you travel around from specialist to specialist, clinic to clinic, appointment to appointment, always fearing the worst whilst awaiting test results. You are anxious and so is your family around you.

You have lost control. It’s not a good time.

What if there is something you can do to alter the outcome? What can you do to have some input into your well-being?

This recent study out of JAMA Oncology shows a 36% less likely chance of recurrence in women that fast more than 13 hours regularly. That can mean having an early dinner and then just not eating until breakfast.

The women that fared better also ended up having more sleep, better blood glucose control and lower markers of inflammation.

http://oncology.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2506710

Other literature has shown that good blood glucose control is associated with lower cancer risk and better outcomes. Inflammation is a major component in the cancer model. Improving these factors is not a bad thing in cancer management.

Was the fasting the factor or was it the better blood glucose control in this study that made the difference? It will take a long time to work that out from further research.

In the meantime, skipping that evening snack (and particularly the sweets, biscuits, etc) and getting a good night sleep makes perfect sense.

Healing of tissue happens in the deep sleep cycles. Melatonin levels and Interleukin -6 are tied up in this mechanism. http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.85.10.6871

All of this ties in with the Metabolic Model of Inflammation and Cancer. Cutting back on sugar, refined carbohydrate and polyunsaturated oils. Throw in some fasting and a positive attitude. http://www.nofructose.com/health-issues/cancer/

Taking control of your diet, skipping the night snack and getting some extra sleep has NO COST and NO SIDE EFFECTS. Importantly it gives you some input into your cancer management.

It gives you back some control. That’s a good thing as you travel around as a ‘medical tourist’. You might even have some input into your destination.

https://www.facebook.com/thegaryscience/photos/a.407869679307489.94446.393958287365295/1084838298277287/?type=3

Today I have outlived my mother! It’s great to be alive.

One of the reasons I keep promoting the Low Carb Healthy Fat concept comes out of family.

Today is a special day because my mother died when I was only 16 and that leaves a permanent scar upon oneself. I thought she was ‘really old’ when she died from cancer spreading throughout her after being misdiagnosed by an Orthopaedic Surgeon some months before. Funny how one’s career paths are determined by life’s events beforehand.

Writing up drug medication charts is not something I am fond of. Those poor staff who then have to interpret my writing will vouch that reading my writing is not something they are fond of either.

The number of drugs that are prescribed to patients is growing every year. This has been concerning me for some time.

Many of the drugs are there for lifestyle related disease.

Essentially people would not need to be on them if they had a better relationship with their eating, smoking and exercise habits over the preceding years. Addressing nutrition NOW means taking back control of health TODAY.

I see those people taking back control of their nutrition every week and reducing their medications. They are happy people.

Only yesterday I saw a gentleman with 27 years of unstable diabetes control, grin from ear to ear, telling me that he had reduced his insulin requirement by 25% in just 3 weeks of taking on Lower Carbohydrate Healthy Fat living. He was happy. His wife was happier. Happy wife = happy life and even happier surgeon.

A real food change sees potential reductions in blood pressure medication, diabetes drugs, pain killers, anti-inflammatories, reflux medication and those statins.

It fascinates me that most doctors find it easier to add medications to patients rather than reducing them.

I wonder if that is a fear factor of a patient succumbing to a supposedly preventable condition.

Or is it the collateral damage of the multi doctor clinics where people can be seen by different doctors each time. The medical record is the same but there is less continuity of care and it takes time to educate people to reduce medication.

The same thing happens in hospitals where many teams may see a patient and add in their medication. Once patients leave hospital they can often head off with enough tablets to sink a ship.

Good doctors do good prescribing.

Great doctors do deprescribing!

https://www.facebook.com/thegaryscience/photos/a.407869679307489.94446.393958287365295/1081733105254473/?type=3

This is probably the most important thing I can teach my patients and my students. I think it applies to both physical and emotional damage

We live in an impatient world. We are constantly bombarded by quick fix solutions. We want everything now. We want pain to be gone now. We want the easy path to lots of things. Healing however will go along at Mother Nature’s pace and we can slow her down but not speed her up.

What we can do, however, is observe healing in action.

I would like to have this written in the front pages of every medical textbook. Just a small goal of mine.

Healing has finished when the scar goes from pink to white.

If it’s pink on the outside it’s pink on the inside.

Healing takes a long time.

What does that mean to my patients? Look at the scar. If it’s still pink, then they are still healing, and it’s therefore okay to have some aches and pains.

This simple message that empowers the patient with knowledge allays many concerns in this impatient world.

It often takes 12 to 18 months for that scar to heal and finally matures over about 3 years. That’s a long time but that’s healing maturation and scar turnover.

If anyone has had a serious injury or major surgery and reflects on the ‘recovery’ time, then they will know that it takes a long time to get back to normal.

I think the same goes with emotional damage. It takes a long time to recover. Try considering the early period of recovery as a raw scar and it’s only with time that we recover. Rushing it does not help. It only makes us impatient, adds to stress and that doesn’t aid recovery.

Doctor in Latin means ‘to teach’. Teaching my patients and my students something they can use every day makes it all worthwhile.

I am told over and over that the brain is dependent on glucose and its dangerous to run low carb. This is the primary concern of doctors, medical students, dietitians, midwives and most people, but not biochemists.

Let’s explore some religion to break a myth.

Is God (in whatever form that is) stupid enough to make our most important organ, the brain, dependent on only one fuel source of glucose? Surely not.

On my recent trip to Vanuatu I was looking through a 1996 textbook of physiology. There it all was on page 22 of a 1148 page textbook – in the Introduction to Physiology chapter. We are not even in the ‘fine print’ area!

Here’s some basic biochemistry, and it’s not even new. Continue reading →

Processed food is behind cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Statins just make it worse.

The perfect storm of too much sugar and refined carbohydrate combined with polyunsaturated seed oils creates inflammation in every blood vessel, in every cell membrane and in every mitochondrion, the engines of cells. That creates the susceptibility in every organ to other damaging processes including stress, chemical exposure, genetic predispositions, vitamin deficiencies, and the potential damage from poor gut flora.

This review article from Harumi Okuyama puts further science behind my Nutritional Model of Inflammation and Modern Disease. This may be the most definitive review on the science that I have seen to date. It is worth the entire read and chasing down of the references. I will go through it over time with some further posts.

There is more evidence coming out every week supporting the central role of poor nutrition in our deteriorating health. It is the combination rather than just the individual component. It is just toxic to us all. Continue reading →

This has been a long standing concern of mine. Have you considered the time that that we have had antibiotics and the short 100 years for Mother Nature to develop resistance to most of them?

How long have we had antibiotics around for? The first ones were developed in the early 1900s. There have been no new antibiotics designed for nearly 30 years. What antibiotics we have now are becoming less effective.

Continue reading →

“Nestlé’s impact on the history of how we eat is almost impossible to overstate.

Food is cheap, plentiful, and familiar. It “really turns the pharmaceutical model on its head,” he says. “How do we activate the biggest drug that we take every day?”

If making consumers fat has been big business, making them healthy could be bigger. The pharmaceutical industry is worth $1 trillion a year and growing.