What a strange day it has turned out to be thanks to this story
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/329161/Heart-attack-risk-in-dieting
Strange because I've been teaching this for the last 25 years, well in a round about way that is. You see alcohol is a carbohydrate that doesn't work like a carbohydrate and effectively your body enters Atkin's mode when you live purely off booze. This is why extreme alcoholics are thin.
Yes I know you get a beer belly but that is because normal drinkers continue to consume normal food amounts alongside their normal drinking and a pint of beer holds between 180 and 300 empty calories per pint on average.
So I am really glad that this study has finally come out and shown what we've all really known about but were too scared to talk about in public for fear of masses of litigation by the massive dieting industry. It's simple really carbohydrates are required in your diet so get used to that idea. You don't need loads but you do need them and if you really want to lose weight well it's all about cutting down slightly across the spectrum of food that you eat, not targeting a food area, and exercising slightly more.And it takes time there are no quick fixes! Simples really!
On a second note you are probably aware that I have no love of this sociopathic government in power particularly the way in which the poor and needy are going to suffer as a result of benefit changes in a time when there is no serious alternative for lots of people. This is particularly true in the area of mental health called addiction. However I'm going to blog about this at a later date for in this part of the blog I actually am going to praise David Cameron.
You see there has been a massive outcry over the fact he left his young child at the pub. As a parent I can not throw any stones here because the same happened to me with my beloved youngest son when he was four and we were on a trip to Disneyland Paris. One minute he was there the next he wasn't as everyone had assumed that someone else had taken responsibility. Luckily the fantastic Disney staff had him whisked him away to the security of lost children where we found him happily drawing away after he had been found queuing for a ride! So I don't blame the Prime Minister for that aberration although I do wonder about the security team. No the reason I am talking about this is because he took his children to the pub. By taking this action he has done what any European parent knows Don't mystify alcohol! However I can't help having a dig because if he doesn't help educators like myself work to educate the body politic then his Government is doing exactly that.
Come on Dave be brave and admit that you need people like me. People who are serious about effecting change and not about creating a diversive society!
Wednesday 27 June 2012
Tuesday 5 June 2012
What a Carry On
I'm sat here with the TV on half listening to a program on the late, great Kenneth Williams and it has got me to thinking about the latest headlines appearing in the Daily Mail this week.
Firstly the Oxford study claiming that 3 in 100 lives will be saved by reducing alcohol intake when looking at the 11 most common reasons for death in the UK.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2152424/Dont-drink-quarter-pint-DAY-Oxford-study-claims-slashing-official-alcohol-limit-save-4-500-lives-year.html
However this commentator thinks that this is a rather strange comment to focus upon when the reality is that the other 97 people in that 100 will still die prematurely. Look let's face it we drink too much in the UK. We're not as bad as some in the world who consume more but we are the worst in the world in the way in which we consume the alcohol.
It is Binge Drinking that really causes the problem in this country. Our bodies are simply not designed to cope with large amounts of alcohol in short spaces of time.
Physiologically speaking the group of enzymes that control the degradation of alcohol, the alcohol dehydrogenase family, are in limited supply in the human body. We know only a little about how they work and we cannot reproduce them on mass in tablet form. Put simply they are a miracle of nature that nature doesn't want mankind to make artificially. So nature has actually designed a defence mechanism against alcohol in small quantities but not for large quantities in a short space of time.
If you drink 24 units in 3 hours, roughly the equivalent of 7 to 8 pints of an average lager or cider in the UK, compared to drinking the same evenly over a 24 hour period then you cause about 33 times more damage to your body. Do it on a regular basis and you're storing up trouble for the future. If nature had not designed us to deal with small amounts of alcohol then no mechanism of coping would have ever evolved.
Now the second thing that caught my eye was a piece on Professor David Nutt. Now I like this guy and I think he is misrepresented a lot of the time but he doesn't understand the nature of drinking and driving if he thinks that putting an alcohol immobiliser in all cars will stop drinking and driving and change our national drinking habits as a byproduct.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2152586/Alcohol-sensors-cars-compulsory-says-controversial-professor-claimed-Ecstasy-safer-drink.html
A quick look at the internet tells anyone that a child of five with the right inexpensive kit can run around even the classiest of immobilisers. A serious drink driver will soon find a way around such a device and then where will we be left. If all cars have such a device then the police would have no idea who may or may not be under the influence. Before he starts talking about a world he simply has no real experience in he really needs to talk to those of us who do, and that means me. So if you want to drop me a line Professor please feel free.
The key to drinking and driving, and I've said this repeatedly, is a six fold plan that can only be implemented by Government action. It involves technology, yes, but that without effective public transport, effective education, a public psyche change to social intolerance, effective policing and effective punishment, it would not work.
Alcohol professionals in the UK well matron it really is a carry on.
Firstly the Oxford study claiming that 3 in 100 lives will be saved by reducing alcohol intake when looking at the 11 most common reasons for death in the UK.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2152424/Dont-drink-quarter-pint-DAY-Oxford-study-claims-slashing-official-alcohol-limit-save-4-500-lives-year.html
However this commentator thinks that this is a rather strange comment to focus upon when the reality is that the other 97 people in that 100 will still die prematurely. Look let's face it we drink too much in the UK. We're not as bad as some in the world who consume more but we are the worst in the world in the way in which we consume the alcohol.
It is Binge Drinking that really causes the problem in this country. Our bodies are simply not designed to cope with large amounts of alcohol in short spaces of time.
Physiologically speaking the group of enzymes that control the degradation of alcohol, the alcohol dehydrogenase family, are in limited supply in the human body. We know only a little about how they work and we cannot reproduce them on mass in tablet form. Put simply they are a miracle of nature that nature doesn't want mankind to make artificially. So nature has actually designed a defence mechanism against alcohol in small quantities but not for large quantities in a short space of time.
If you drink 24 units in 3 hours, roughly the equivalent of 7 to 8 pints of an average lager or cider in the UK, compared to drinking the same evenly over a 24 hour period then you cause about 33 times more damage to your body. Do it on a regular basis and you're storing up trouble for the future. If nature had not designed us to deal with small amounts of alcohol then no mechanism of coping would have ever evolved.
Now the second thing that caught my eye was a piece on Professor David Nutt. Now I like this guy and I think he is misrepresented a lot of the time but he doesn't understand the nature of drinking and driving if he thinks that putting an alcohol immobiliser in all cars will stop drinking and driving and change our national drinking habits as a byproduct.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2152586/Alcohol-sensors-cars-compulsory-says-controversial-professor-claimed-Ecstasy-safer-drink.html
A quick look at the internet tells anyone that a child of five with the right inexpensive kit can run around even the classiest of immobilisers. A serious drink driver will soon find a way around such a device and then where will we be left. If all cars have such a device then the police would have no idea who may or may not be under the influence. Before he starts talking about a world he simply has no real experience in he really needs to talk to those of us who do, and that means me. So if you want to drop me a line Professor please feel free.
The key to drinking and driving, and I've said this repeatedly, is a six fold plan that can only be implemented by Government action. It involves technology, yes, but that without effective public transport, effective education, a public psyche change to social intolerance, effective policing and effective punishment, it would not work.
Alcohol professionals in the UK well matron it really is a carry on.
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