What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You

Allergies: What You Need To Know

In the last few decades, there has been a huge increase in allergy and allergic reactions, but why? Just what has changed in our health and environment to bring this about? Consultant NHS allergist Dr Sophie Farooque discusses one of the biggest puzzles in medicine.
For example peanut allergies were almost unknown before the 1990s, but today it  and other food allergies are much more common. Sophie reveals the best thing to do to stop a child developing a food allergy is - perhaps counter intuitively -  to ensure that from an early age, they are exposed to a wide variety of foods, including potentially hypoallergenic ones.
And Sophie discusses how  children with eczema are at increased risk of  developing a cascade of other allergies, and what parents and doctors can do to minimise this risk.
She explains why if you are allergic to one cat you will probably be allergic to all, but why that’s not necessarily the case for dogs. It turns out that cat allergen is one of the most powerful allergens of all, and remarkably resilient. Amazingly, it has even been found in Antartica.
And for those parts of the world where it's the start of spring and many are starting to suffer from hay fever, she explains why she recommends nasal rinses and steroid sprays, but says patients should stay away from nasal decongestants and hay fever steroid injections.
The link below gives the BSACI's (British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology) advice on early weaning to avoid food allergy),and the BSACI website also contains lots of other information about allergies in general.
Preventing food allergy In your Baby
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/

Why Hormones Not Calorie Counting May Be Key In Obesity

Dr Jason Fung argues that much of what we think we know about weight loss is simply wrong.
Jason says that the critical factor in losing weight is hormones - not calories. He believes calorie counting is an overly simplistic approach. And that actually dieting may be the worst thing you can do, because it slows your metabolic rate which actually makes it harder to reduce weight in the future.
Jason argues medical science reveals that we all have what is effectively a fat thermostat in our bodies that tries to keep our body within a particular weight range. Try to reduce weight below this and our metabolism will do its very  best to sabotage our diet, making it harder for us to lose weight and easier for us to regain it.
If that’s the case, is there anyway we can reset this internal fat thermostat, so that we can lose weight? Or are we doomed forever to be caught in a vicious circle of dieting and weight gain?
Jason argues there is a solution. And it involves both changing what eat and when we eat.
Jason who is based in Toronto, Canada, is a kidney specialist and an expert on intermittent fasting. He believes that many of today’s chronic medical issues are related to diet and obesity. And says that  a dietary problem needs a dietary solution. He is the author of a number of best selling books,  the scientific editor of the Journal of Insulin Resistance, and the managing director of the nonprofit organization Public Health Collaboration (Canada).
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou

The Secrets To A Successful Keto Diet

Beth Zupec–Kania is a dietician and nutritionist, who has spent over 30 years developing very low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic diets - to treat a range of both physical and mental health conditions. She has worked with many of the leading neurologists and psychiatrists pioneering this field.
I heard Beth speak at a conference  Metabolic Psychiatry: Understanding How Modifying Metabolism Can Create Mental Health last November. I was very keen to get her on the podcast, because I’ve now done several episodes about the use of ketogenic diets to treat different illnesses. And so many people have asked me about the practicalities of following this dietary approach, so Beth seemed the perfect guest to discuss these issues.
She explains her particular keto strategy. Critical to this is transitioning slowly to avoid what is sometimes known as "keto flu"; the role of medium chain trigleride oils, MCT for short; and the inclusion of Beth's own specially designed smoothie recipe. The podcast will be making Beth's recipe available to all mailing list subscribers a week after the podcast has gone live.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou
 

Should You Take A Weight Loss Drug?

Dr Barbara Mintzes and Dr Joel Lexchin, have recently published a review paper on the weight loss drug Wegovy (generic name semaglutide). They discuss it and the new generation of similar obesity medications.
The hype surrounding this new class of drugs has been huge, but is it justified?
These pharmaceuticals are called glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists or GLP-1 for short. They work by stimulating cells in your intestines to release a natural hormone called GLP-1 that tricks your stomach and your brain into thinking you’ve just eaten a large meal.
Clearly, obesity is major problem in countries across the world, but as Barbara and Joel reveal although these drugs do achieve a significant weight loss, weight gain is common once the medication is stopped.
And like any drug there are side effects, common ones include headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, and constipation. Rare reported side effects include pancreatitis and increased heart rate.  Currently, the European drug regulator, the EMA is reviewing data on the risks of thoughts of suicide and self-harm associated with GLP1 medicine. It is analysing around 150 reports. It expects to report on its findings this year.
So exactly what are the risks and the benefits of these drugs, and who should take them?
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou

Deprescribing from Psychiatric Drugs: The Problems and the Solutions

Dr Mark Horowitz discusses why psychiatric medication has turned out to be far harder to stop than any one expected.
For Mark, this is as much a personal as well as a professional interest. For as a patient, at one point he was taking five different psychiatric drugs. Ironically, although Mark was working in London at the Institute of Psychiatry, he found the mostly useful information about deprescribing came -  not from the medical profession - but from peer support websites.
This experience has driven his research and interest in safely stopping psychiatric medication. He, along with Professor David Taylor, has just written a new handbook The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, providing step-by-step instructions on how to effectively stop all commonly used antidepressants, benzodiazepines, gabapentinoids and z-drugs.
One of the key findings from this work, is that it is essential to taper off the drugs much more slowly than patients have previously been advised. And perhaps most surprising of all, is  how a small amount of medication can have a completely disproportionate effect. In some cases, a 1mg dose can have nearly half the effect of a 20 mg dose, which means patients may have to taper far more gradually as they move down to smaller and smaller amounts of a drug. A process that may need to take months or even years.
The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines, Gabapentinoids and Z-drugs (The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines Series) by Mark Horowitz and David Taylor, published by Wiley-Blackwell will be available from 15 February 2024.
 
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou

Could Changing Your Diet Improve Your Mental Health?

Psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede argues that the medical profession has completely underestimated the huge impact of diet on our mental health.
In her new book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind,  Georgia reveals improvements we can all make to our diet, and in particular, three different dietary approaches for those looking to improve their mental health.
She suggests that early results from a range of trials using this approach to treat conditions from bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, show a much great effect, in fact 6 to 10 times  that seen in any comparative drug trial.
Georgia believes a metabolic evaluation should be standard practice for every patient seeking psychiatric help.
In her own practice, this approach has enabled her to reduce the medication many of her patients take and in some cases allowed them to come off all medication all together.
Ironically, the psychiatric drugs used to treat many of these mental health conditions, which Georgia argues can also be useful, can at the same time actually worsen metabolic health, which can then negatively impact brain health.
So just how does a psychiatrist -  or indeed any doctor  - balance the benefits and risks of treatment?
Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind by Georgia Ede is due to be published by Yellow Kite books on 30th January 2024.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou

Treating Long Covid

Dr Lisa Sanders, writes a column called Diagnosis in the New York Times magazine, which was the inspiration for the Fox medical drama House, M.D. .The show in which Hugh Laurie, playing Dr Gregory House, regularly managed to diagnose the most obscure of medical conditions.
But today Lisa has arguably a rather tougher challenge than Hugh Laurie ever faced, she’s recently become the Medical Director of Yale's Long Covid Multidisciplinary Care Center.   Long Covid  can affect multiple systems and organs in the body, and finding effective treatments so far has proved extremely difficult.
However, Lisa reveals several approaches that it does appear can help at least some patients.
She argues that we need to see long covid not as entirely new phenomenon, but in the context of many other post-acute infection syndromes such as ME/CFS or flu. Controversially,  Lisa suggests that it needed enough doctors to get sick from long covid for the profession to start taking these syndromes more seriously.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou

What Doctors Don’t Get Taught

Dr Robert Lufkin argues that modern medicine hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to the underlying causes of diseases, and has tended to treat symptoms instead.
And in a controversial new book Lies I taught at Medical school, How Conventional Medicine is Making You Sicker and What You Can Do to Save Your Own Life, published by BenBella books, as evidence for his claims, he points to the epidemics of chronic disease, we are now seeing in the industrialised world.
In the US in 2010, 16-21% of adults had two or more chronic diseases. Today, shockingly, the figure is 40%.
Rob explains what needs to  change and why he believes medical teaching gets a number of pivotal facts so wrong.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou
 

Thalidomide - The Story You Don’t Know (Part Two)

This is the second episode of a  two parter about  a new investigation into the drug thalidomide, so if you haven’t listened to part one, please do go back and listen to that first.
Thalidomide is one of the greatest medical catastrophes of the 20th century. It’s now thought to have been  responsible for around 100,000 miscarriages and disabled children.
In this episode, journalist Jennifer Vanderbes reveals the second half of the story. The result of six years of research, resulting in her recent book: Wonder Drug: The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal.
After thalidomide’s launch in 1957 by the Germany company Chemie Grunenthal, four years on, doctors in a number of countries, are becoming increasingly concerned about the drug’s effects.
In Australia obstetrician, Dr William McBride, having delivered several disabled babies in mothers who were given thalidomide, starts to conduct animal experiments and becomes convinced the drug is linked to the disabilities he is seeing.
While in Germany, geneticist Dr Widukund Lenz's analysis of babies whose mothers  have taken thalidomide, produces what he believes is a clear evidence that the drug is very far from safe. The devastating disabilities being caused in new born babies, include a shortening or absence of limbs; hands and feet that don’t fully form; and damage to ears, eyes, brain, skeleton and internal organs.
So the pressure to take the drug off the market grows.
And in the States, further children will be harmed as unbeknownst to the FDA, the drug has been dispensed by over one thousand doctors. This is despite the fact that it has not been approved for use, a development which will add further heartbreak  to the tragedy. In total, Vanderbes estimates that five million doses of thalidomide were distributed in America.
Jennifer Vanderbes Wonder Drug: The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal is published by Harper Collins.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou
 

Thalidomide - The Story You Don’t Know (Part One)

It was one of the greatest medical tragedies of the 20th century.
In 1957, a new wonder drug was launched in Germany. It was marketed as an astonishingly safe sedative. Tragically, this could not have been further from the truth. For this was the drug thalidomide, and it would end up being responsible for around 100,000 miscarriages and disabled children.
This week’s guest, journalist Jennifer Vanderbes,  in a forensic six year investigation has uncovered compelling and shocking new information about warnings that went unheeded, test results that were misrepresented, and uncovered scores of potential victims who have never before been recognised as harmed by the drug.
One of the heroines of this narrative is a dogged and committed FDA reviewer Dr Frances Kelsey, who sceptical of the drug never approved it for US use. However, as Vanderbes reveals in her new book: Wonder Drug The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal, published by Harper Collins, although the drug was never sold in the states,  the medication was sent out to 1,200 doctors to be used in what were termed clinical trials. These physicians then passed on thalidomide to other colleagues.
But the FDA later described these not as a clinical trials - but a marketing scheme. Which as Jennifer reveals, means, tragically, there are also American babies born with birth defects likely to have been caused by thalidomide.
Had early safety signals been acted on or investigated, thousands of families and babies could have been spared unbelievable heartbreak.
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
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou