Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker

Sugar - A Chronic Toxin?

This is the second of two repeated podcasts that were aired a while ago, which are being re-released. This one with Dr Robert Lustig  was particularly popular with listeners.
Dr Robert Lustig  argues sugar is fuelling an epidemic of chronic and metabolic disease, from diabetes and strokes, to cancer and heart disease costing hundreds of thousands of lives. He says in a view that some have seen as controversial that we need to see sugar not just as empty calories,  but as a chronic, addictive toxin. In this podcast, Rob reveals just what sugar does to our bodies.
And he claims that while modern medicine has been highly effective in treating acute illness, it has failed in its treatment of chronic conditions, only able to treat the symptoms rather than curing the diseases.
In his words:
“You can’t fix healthcare until you fix health. You can’t fix health until you fix diet. And, you can’t fix diet until you know what the hell is wrong”.
Rob explains what he thinks it is essential to eat to stay healthy  and contends that  prevention is not just better than cure it is the cure.
 
Dr Robert Lustig is a Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, at the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. He has written a number of best selling books about the dangers of sugar, refined carbohydrates  and metabolic illness. And his research and clinical practice have focussed on childhood obesity and diabetes.
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Why Blood Sugar Levels Matter

Over the holiday season, I'm releasing a couple of previous podcasts that were particularly popular with listeners. This first one is an interview I did with GP Dr David Unwin.
David  has been a pioneer in the UK developing and promoting a low-carb approach for treating type 2 diabetes. In 2016, he won the NHS innovator of the year award for his work. His treatment approach has been so successful that  he has put around half his type 2 diabetic patients, who follow a low carb diet, into remission. And as a result, his practice, spends far less on diabetic medication than any of the surrounding GP surgeries. The potential cost savings if this approach was adopted nationally and internationally, would be huge for health services across the world.
We tend to think that unless we have a form of diabetes that we don’t really need to be concerned about our blood sugar levels, but nothing could be further from the truth.
As we get older, all of us unless we change our diet and lifestyle, will see our blood sugar levels rise, this causes our bodies to produce more and more insulin, which can lead to insulin resistance. If we eat a diet high in carbohydrates, this is likely to exacerbate the problem.
And that matters because insulin resistance isn't just linked to type 2 diabetes but a wide range of illnesses including high blood pressure, heart disease, Alzheimer's and some cancers too.
In the podcast, David discusses the Public Health Collaboration, a charity that he set up with colleagues, which aims to promote metabolic health and so prevent many chronic diseases. Here's a link to it:
https://phcuk.org/
And here is a link to David’s most recent paper published in BMJ nutrition, also discussed in the podcast:
https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/6/1/46
 
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

How Can We Make Prescribing Medicines Safer?

Professor Tony Avery,  National Clinical Director for Prescribing for NHS England, discusses safer prescribing of medicines.
He highlights the changes he would like to see to enable patients to make genuinely informed decisions, which may also sometimes mean that they decide not to go ahead with a treatment. Tony describes how he believes doctors and patients can work together on initial prescribing decisions,  so that patients can be confident that the benefits of the selected approach outweigh the risks.
You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Are we Over-Diagnosing Mental Health Conditions?

Neuropsychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse discusses his concerns  that the huge increase we are seeing in mental health diagnoses across the western world, is now medicalizing emotions and feelings that have previously been seen as part of the normal human experience.
He argues in a new book No More Normal – Mental Health in an Age of Over-diagnosis, published by Granta  - this is leading to an increasing number of people taking psychiatric medication. Today in England alone over eight million adults take an antidepressant every year. This is creating an unprecedented demand on health services, increasing waiting lists, which most worryingly of all, risks leaving those with severe mental illnesses, who really need the support unable to get it.
You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

The Vagus Nerve - How Medicine is Harnessing Its Benefits

Dr Kevin J. Tracey reveals the extraordinary impact the vagus nerve, which connects every organ in the body to the brain, has on our health. Kevin has been a pioneer in the use of bioelectronic devices to stimulate this nerve  to treat a range of auto-immune illnesses and he is the author of a new book The Great Nerve, The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness its healing reflexes, published by Penguin Life.
Patient trials have shown that remarkably, we can electrically stimulate the vagus nerve to ameliorate the symptoms of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. While Kevin is clear the treatment won’t work for everyone, for some patients the results have been truly remarkable enabling them to  walk unaided again for first time in decades and get back a quality of life they thought was gone for ever.
And for all of us, it now appears that lifestyle interventions such as cold showers, meditation and how we breathe, may offer critically important strategies to effectively regulating our vagus nerve and so maximises its  impact on our health.
You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Evidence Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Mistletoe Injections - Could these be a valuable supplement to standard oncological care?

Dr Nina Fuller-Shavel discusses the use of injectable mistletoe as a cancer treatment in conjunction with the standard treatments such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.
Nina was working as a doctor in the UK’s NHS when she discovered in her early thirties that she had breast cancer. That was a decade ago, but that experience helped focus her mind on the reality of being a cancer patient and of the importance of treating the whole person not just the disease.
Injectable mistletoe therapy is used widely in hospitals in  Germany with up to 60% of patients having it as part of their cancer care, but it is rarely used in the UK or the states.  Yet results and published data suggest it can help a patient’s fatigue, general quality of life and may even be able to help improve white cell count, which could be critically important for chemotherapy patients who sometimes have to delay further treatment if their therapy causes their white cell count to drop too low.
Nina has now had patients who have been on the treatment for years and is keen to persuade the British authorities to adopt it as recommended, cost effective cancer treatment .
You can find out more about this podcast on its website and if you would like to support it you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Ketogenic Diets: New Research Suggests They Might Help in Anorexia Treatment

Dr Guido Frank discusses his research in the use of ketogenic diets to treat anorexia nervosa. Although, his research is at an early stage his results appear do appear promising.
Anorexia is a disease which is one of the hardest psychiatric conditions of all to treat with a depressingly high mortality rate, so this work is of huge potential interest. Up to now, there has been no effective treatment for the disease and no medication has ever been approved for it. 
Guido believes the critical key to treatment may lie in uncovering what happens in the brain chemistry of anorexic patients when they starve themselves. He argues by stopping eating, they actually put themselves into a ketogenic state, which calms their brain and makes them less anxious. But this has the consequence of stopping them wanting to eat again. 
So Guido and his team wondered what would happen if they put anorexic patients into ketosis not by starvation, but  by feeding them a ketogenic diet.
In an initial small study five anorexic patients who had regained weight but still had major food anxieties and concerns, were put on a ketogenic diet. Normally, in patients like this the relapse rate is around 50%, but in this case, all four patients who remained on the diet stayed healthy and the researchers also saw a dramatic reduction in their eating concerns and phobias. And Guido is now in the process of recruiting patients for a new study.
So could this work offer a potentially successful approach to managing a  disease which has proved so intractable to treat?
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Diagnosed as a Bipolar Teenager: A Patient's Story and Redemption

Laura Delano, was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder when she was a teenager and would go on to spent 13 years receiving psychiatric care, both as inpatient and outpatient. In the process,  she accumulated more and diagnoses, and was given more and more drugs. But - as she explains in her new book: Unshrunk – How the mental health industry took over my life and my fight to get it back, published by Monoray - there was a problem, Laura wasn’t getting better.
Despite being a high achieving student for whom it had once appeared a glittering future awaited, her life had fallen apart. She had dropped out of university, was unable to hold down a job and had tried to kill herself.
But then one day Laura had a life-changing epiphany - was it possible that rather than the care and medications she was receiving helping her,  might they actually be causing her problems?
Gradually over several years, she weaned herself off all her medication – no easy process given the withdrawal effect of many psychiatric drugs . But the impact was transformative and today Laura has completely turned her life around. 
So what went wrong with Laura's care?  And why was the medical system unable to recognise how the treatment was making her worse not better?
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
 
 

Alzheimer's Disease Research Fraud: What Are the Implications for Treatment?

Investigative journalist Charles Piller explains the remarkable story of fraud he has uncovered in Alzheimer’s Disease research, which he discusses in a new book: Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s. Charles argues the result of this is that Alzheimer’s research and treatment has been set by years - if not decades.
He goes on to discusse the trial data on which several Alzheimer’s drugs, including Aducanumab, Lecanemab and Donanemab, were approved. Charles says the data is unconvincing and  the side effects – including brain swelling and bleeding -  concerning.
Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s by Charles Piller is published by Icon Books.
Charles Piller is an investigative journalist who works for the journal Science. His work has also been published in a number of other publications including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Charles has won a number of journalism awards for his work and is also the author of the books Gene Wars and The Fail-Safe Society.
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Herbs & Spices: What's The Evidence They Might Benefit Our Health?

Kerry Bone,  a herbalist who has spent 40 years working in the field, joins the podcast to discuss just what the evidence is that certain herbs and spices might benefit our health.
Today we are bombarded with so much confusing information telling us what to eat, when to eat, and often how particular medicinal plants are particularly beneficial to our health.
So, today I hope our conversation gives the opportunity to find out what the latest data suggests.
One area Kerry discusses is pain managment. He explains that research now indicates that the painkiller paracetamol has a poor safety profile (something also discussed in my podcast with NHS pain consultant Dr Deepak Ravindran) and is not very effective, so reveals we thinks we should also be looking more at herbal alternatives such as curcumin and Boswellia. 
And Kerry reveals the herbs and spices that he takes every day.
Kerry Bone is the  Principal of the Australian College of Phytotherapy. He also founded the Masters of Health Science (Herbal Medicine) course at the University of New England in 2004, and served there as Associate Professor from 2004 to 2012. He is co-author of more than 40 scientific papers on herbal research, and currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Phytomedicine. In addition, he has written a number of textbooks on herbal medicine and is also a co-founder of the company Mediherb.
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at or via PayPal.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on X and read further information about the podcast on her Substack newsletter.
Medical Matters with Liz Tucker has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/