With a firm tongue in my cheek, I’m delighted to see Professor Regan put high sugar cereals and cheese straws in her acceptable diet clinic tonight and learned from the nutritionist at Kelloggs that there is no evidence that sugar causes obesity. So it’ll be all the fruit and vegetables and unrefined food we are all eating thats keeping us all so slim then!! Excellent…. I can retire happy in the knowledge that feeding my face with white sugar will keep me nice and trim. I must stop watching this programme as its doing my blood pressure no good at all. Perhaps I should see a nutritionist!
Posts tagged Professor Regan’s Diet Clinic
Professor Regan’s Diet Clinic
After watching the second installment of Professor Regan’s diet clinic I am up in arms over the research she did regarding homeopathy. I’m not a homeopath, I’m a nutritionist but what I saw was seriously flawed media journalism.
Professor Regan put forward the case that homeopathy was little more than a placebo and the “research” she found was not good enough to put it in her so called diet clinic.
The homeopathy study she did was on four people, all who had chronic insomnia. Instead of giving homeopathic remedies she used sugar pills. I’m wondering why she didnt just try the homeopathic remedies anyway. Perhaps she was worried that they might actually work! The placebo pill worked well on the insomniacs and homeopathy was branded as nonsense. If she had used sugar pills on the second trial she did with painkillers one wonders if there would have been the same outcome. If the rugby players had been given placebo painkillers, would they have felt pain. Possibly not. So the whole point of this exercise makes no sense to me at all. We all know that placebo can work with all conventional drugs as well, so why did she choose to use it on homeopathy. What would have made far more interesting viewing would have been giving the homeopathy to young children or babies where placebo becomes a non factor.
The TV screen quickly flicked onto some of the research papers she was studying – I clocked one backed by Wellcome. If a trial is backed by a pharmaceuctical company how can the trial be unbiased? We have no idea who paid for these research trials and that is key to how to interpret the results or any trial done on any medicine.
Questions still unanswered were why do we still have a homeopathic hospital in London if it doesnt work? Why do animals and babies respond so well to homepathy if it is all in the mind?
The principle of like for like curing symptoms is used in conventional medicine for vaccines – why did Professor Regan find this so hard to understand?
You could argue that placebo could be used for all drugs and medicines – if the body thinks something will cure it, it usually will, as was proved by the rubgy players feeling less pain with the branded painkillers rather than the generic cheaper brands.
The final point I have to make before getting off my soapbox is the woman who took st johns wort whilst taking the contraceptive pill. The story was built up for us to think an awful side effect had occurred whilst taking the herbal supplement. We then found out what this side effect was…………and lord help us ….it was a baby!!! Yes it turns out that st johns wort reduces the effectiveness of the contraceptive pill. Well guess what – I have a friend who got pregnant while she was taking antibiotics and on the pill. Surely they could have come up with a better side effect than a lovely bouncing baby!! As a nutritionist I dont give st johns wort to my patients as it can be extremely toxic to the liver and very difficult to regulate the amount needed for each patient as there are so many varying kinds of low mood and depression. Isnt that more useful information?!!!
I would be interested to hear your views on this, and your experiences good or bad with homeopathy/herbal medicine and painkillers.
