General Health Checks

A thoughtful editorial in the BMJ - General Health Checks Don't Work (my emphasis):

• We check our cars regularly, so why shouldn’t we also check our bodies so that we can find and treat abnormalities before they cause too much harm? It seems so easy, but the human body is not a car, and, in contrast to a car, it has self healing properties. Actually, the first thing we know about screening is that it will cause harm in some people. This is why we need randomised trials to find out whether screening does more good than harm before we decide whether to introduce it.

The medicalisation of each part of our life leads us to focus on numbers and simple solutions; focus on a metric (often something we measure because we CAN, rather than because we SHOULD), sell pill or lifestyle to shift this metric towards the (currently) 'approved' value.  As we move to the age of the quantified self, this nonsense will get worse.  We end up chasing numbers and lose the bigger picture.

What drives this medicalisation is money.  Lots of it.  The most obvious manifestation of which is the marketing arm of pharma, and the BEHAVIOURS thusly generated:

• Our drug regulators approve diabetes drugs solely on the basis of their glucose lowering effect without knowing what they do to patients. The only large trial of tolbutamide was stopped prematurely because the drug increased cardiovascular mortality, but nothing material happened with its regulatory status and people continued to use it. More recently, rosiglitazone, which was the most sold diabetes drug in the world, was taken off the market in Europe, as it causes myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death and pioglitazone could also face trouble, as it has been linked to heart failure and bladder cancer.

There are good reasons to go to your doctor and to get an issue seen.  But there is a line to be drawn - if you eat well, exercise appropriately, address stress, get your sleep and generally feel 'well', then you are probably fine and you don't want to create an issue for yourself from the side effects of an unneeded treatment.

Even if a single metric (whatever that may be) is outside of 'normal' (whatever THAT may be), you should still exercise some cation before sucking up the pills.  Put diagnosis in to the context of lifestyle.  Lifestyle should be the first line of any non-urgent intervention.

Health is a moving target.  Our 'numbers' will change as the body adapts. As I said in Polypharmacy & the Inverse Care Law, the 'worried well' seem to be complicit in much over diagnosis (see Inverse Care Law).  Let's not make it easy for pharma's marketing arm eh?

Diet and Destiny 2

So according to New Statesman it seems that fat is a political issue,

• "In dense urban environments, it’s easier to be fat than healthy. A fear of crime can stop people going out. A world where poorer parents often have to work more than two jobs leaves little time. Leisure budgets are being cut. Fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive, both in price and in preparation time. Take-aways are easy because children love them; they give exhausted parents a chance to apologise."

It is an interesting angle - but plenty of lean people live in urban environments.  Factor that in to the statement above and you aren't left with much that is plausible.  We get the token mention of 'fruit and veg' but what about the meat?

The Gospel of St Douglass

This starts slow (mired in blesphamy), but reaches majesterial heights of comedy with the arrival of "Evil Wizard Cat!" A "Life of Brian" for the Google generation!

Research Proves Salad is Bad

(Communication. 2007;116:II_77.)© 2007 American Shark Association, Inc.

PAPs and Crapiogenesis

Abstract 460: A Vegetarian Mediterranean Diet Increases Malnutrition and Decreases Metabolic Activity in Carcharodon carcharias

R Sole1; Ivor Biggun2; Phil McCracken3; Hugh Janus4;

1 Death Israel Deaconess Med Cntr, Boston, MA
2 College of Muppets and Sturgeons, New York, NY
3 Death Israel Deaconess Med Cntr, Boston, MA
4 Massachusetts General Hopeless, Boston, MA

Background: Ancestral nutrition may play a role in homeostatic maintenance of metabolic function, thereby mitigating 'western disease'. Long-term clinical trials of vegetarian Mediterranean diets for ancestral fitness have not demonstrated positive effects. We examined the effects of these diets directly on sharks.

Methods: Fifty-two Carcharodon carcharias were assigned after weaning to a standard shark-chow diet (100% protein) or a Mediterranean-vegetarian (30% fat, 50% carbohydrate, 20% protein) diet. After 6 and 12 weeks on the diets, general 'sharkiness' was measured. Quantitation of sharky activity was performed via visual analysis.

Results: By 12 weeks of diet, sharks on the Mediterranean-vegetarian diet had more lethargy compared to chow fed sharks, as assessed by general movement (15.2% vs 8.8%; p<0.05)sharky-smile p="0.03)."> and non-blinking levels were similar in chow and Mediterranean-vegetarian-fed sharks. There was no difference in the extent of bitiness between shark-chow and Mediterranean-vegetarian diets as they were both pissed off (but for different reasons). However, by 6 weeks on diet, movement decreased by ~45% in the Mediterranean-vegetarian fed sharks compared to chow-fed sharks (p<0.05).>Conclusions: Health of Carcharodon carcharias is decreased by a non natural diet compared to its ancestral diet. Vegetarian and/or Mediterranean food must be bad because we made sharks ill by feeding it to them. Probably.

Next Big Thing

Want a new body? Men, do you want rock hard abs? Women - do you want a lean body with curves?

Then read on....

Hollywood is in a Hot Buzz
Hollywood is in a hot buzz over a brand new diet! This amazing diet is :

• your TEMPLATE for fat loss!
• your TEMPLATE for thinness!
• your TEMPLATE for improved bone definition!
• your TEMPLATE for a Hollywood body!

The template for this transformation comes with the TenPlates diet. With TEN Plates it could not be easier.

The TenPlates Template
TenPlates is a revolutionary concept that expects you to eat upto ten full plates of food each day. And here's a thing - you can eat what you want and YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT!

Click on the image above and you will see just what makes the TenPlate diet so exciting and so easy. You will the see the patented TenPlate plate measuring a tiny 20mm across.

The TenPlate Method
All you need to do is load up the special TenPlate plate on the hour every hour with as much food as you can ten times a day. You must only fill the plate up once per hour and only eat what the plate can support*. That's it!

Soon the weight will fall from your body as it begins to illustrate inanition ("The condition of being inane; emptiness; want of fullness, as in the vessels of the body; hence, specifically, exhaustion from want of food, either from partial or complete starvation, or from a disorder of the digestive apparatus, producing the same result" - Dictionary.com) . Calorie restriction has never been so much fun.

Price
Each TenPlate plate retails for £99.99 and if you order before 1st April 2010 we will give you a free GoonSpoon (shown) measuring a tiny 15mm in length and a special Mug's Mug (also shown above) - each worth £19.99 if sold separately.

But hurry. This offer must end soon.

*The resulting calorie restriction may cause death. You must consult a doctor before undertaking this diet. If you actually buy a TenPlate plate and/or GoonSpoon or Mug's Mug, you should probably get your head examined as well.