Healthy Living

Top 5 Easy Health Wins of 2016
Lose 14lbs/6kg by drinking 2 extra glasses of water a day The simple act of drinking more water is associated with reduced intakes of sugar, sodium (salt), and saturated fat – and easier weight control. A study, published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, showed that people who increased their consumption of plain water by between one and three cups daily lowered total energy intake by 68-205 calories each day and their sodium intake by 78-235 g each day. At the average calorie reduction of 140 calories a day, that... Read more...
Powerful Food Combinations
Food Synergy is where two or more foods combine to give a health boost greater than if the foods were eaten separately. For example, a perfect combination is Salmon + Turmeric + Black pepper. Turmeric + Salmon + Black Pepper Curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, has many benefits that include being a powerful anti-inflammatory. DHA is an active ingredient in omega-3 fat rich oily fish.  A 2011 study in BMC Cancer reported that DHA helps cells to utilise curcumin, and the combination helps to keep cancer cells from multiplying. Rub salmon or... Read more...
Do Vegetarians Live Longer?
The answer is a definite maybe. Bear with me, because the full answer illustrates why so many health articles are contradictory – or just plain misleading. “Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation.” Just because two things occur together doesn’t mean that one caused the other. An action can cause another action, such as Smoking causes lung cancer Or it can correlate with another action, such as Smoking is correlated with higher alcohol consumption So smoking doesn’t cause higher alcohol consumption, but people who smoke are likely to drink more than others. In a similar way, there is a strong... Read more...
Supplements, Doctors and the K Connection
Doctors in general do not practise preventative healthcare. Almost all the so-called ‘age-related’ diseases take from 10 to 20 years to surface as tangible life-threatening illnesses – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. That’s equally true of life-diminishing illnesses like chronic tiredness and erectile dysfunction. Magic bullet drugs are too late Because doctors are faced with the visible endpoint of what is a patient’s decades-long developing illness, they inevitably have to turn to the ‘magic bullet’ drugs of the pharmaceutical industry. It’s largely what they were trained to do. But... Read more...
Nutrient Content of Food is Declining
Many people take a vitamin and mineral supplement as a form of ‘health insurance’. To make sure they really are getting the nutrients they need. Because there is a perception that intensive farming, fast and processed foods and modern plant breeding have all reduced the nutritional value of food. But is it true? And if so, is a simple vitamin and mineral pill enough anyway? The nutritional declines are real Donald Davis and his team from the University of Texas are leading researchers in this field. They studied U.S. Department... Read more...
Pro-Vegetarian Diet
Dr. Paul Clayton’s Health Newsletter Spring 2015 There are hard-core vegetarians, of course, but many of the folks I know who call themselves vegetarians eat chicken, fish, dairy, and eggs. They tend to eschew red meat and are more correctly diagnosed, even if they don’t know the term, as pro-vegetarians. A pro-vegetarian diet doesn’t make recommendations about eating or avoiding specific items, but generally increases the proportion of plant-based foods relative to animal-based foods. It may not satisfy the purist, but pro-vegetarianism, which nods in the direction of the Mediterranean... Read more...
Junk Food is Highly Addictive
Dr. Paul Clayton’s Health Newsletter, October 2014 It baffles me why anyone would want to eat at any of the US-type fast food outlets. I tried a burger from a leading chain recently, out of a mixture of curiosity and extreme hunger, and found it almost completely tasteless apart from the salt. There was a lot of salt, a good deal of grease, a cheap and nasty white bun (which is turned in the gut into sugar), and a small slab of cooked pink slime – quite revolting, really. I... Read more...
Omega 3 and Eastern spices both protect health
I travel widely for my work. In 2012, I studied and lectured in Finland, Sweden, the USA, Australia, Greece, Turkey, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and India. I always try to eat local food, and I am constantly surprised by the variety of dishes that different cultures have to offer. Stinky tofu stewed with clotted pig's blood in Taiwan was a high point, a dish so chock-full of highly bioactive polyamines that, like the fermented fish dishes of northern Norway and Sweden (surströmming) it accelerates the healing process (ie Brzozowski... Read more...
Supplements are the Best Medicine
Regular readers of my newsletter know my position on supplements by now. Unlike thenutritionists and medics who insist, against all the facts, that we can obtain all the micro- and phytonutrients we need in a well-balanced diet, our position is science-based. There is a wealth of evidence that most people are depleted in most nutrients(1-3) and that this is a cause of widespread ill health, and health care costs of €170 billion a year in Europe alone. (4) A tragedy – but utterly predictable and easily avoidable. Today’s low-energy lifestyles mean that most... Read more...