Breakfast cereals or toast are what many people in the UK consider the right thing to start the day with, and cereal manufacturers work hard to make sure that their products are embedded in our food culture. But there's a problem with this received wisdom: cereals are made mostly from grains, and grains break down into glucose. Glucose is a sugar, and when the sugar (glucose) we eat arrives in the bloodstream, it has all kinds of effects on the body depending on how efficiently it is dealt with. Straight out of the gate is an effect involving a metabolic [...]

Earlier in the year (7th March) was "World Cereal Day", when food companies extolled the virtues of consuming ultra-processed foods for the "most important meal of the day". Many of us in the Western world already need no persuasion: 46% of Americans and 20% of British people start their day with breakfast cereals, and the British spoon £19 billion a year into the coffers of the grain processors. Cereals are big business! Little wonder that the industry is anxious to increase its share of the breakfast pie. Non-soak cereals first landed on the American breakfast table with John Harvey Kellogg's [...]

In Chinese Traditional Medicine, and specifically Five Element theory, the Lung and Large Intestine are associated with the Metal element, and an imbalance in these may manifest itself in lung conditions such as asthma, skin problems like eczema, or digestive problems in the large intestine. Five Element theory is not confined to physical symptoms though. Every aspect of life is embraced. The Metal element is about grief, cleaning out, letting go, boundaries. Its colour is white, its taste hot and spicy. The sound of Metal is weeping or sighing, its odour is rotten, its emotion grief and mourning of [...]

Informed consent is the cornerstone of ethical healthcare, and so we have published a reference list here of peer-reviewed studies to date examining the safety of Covid-19 vaccines, for those wanting to weigh up the risks versus benefits (which should be done for every drug, in conversation with your healthcare practitioner): Cerebral venous thrombosis after COVID-19 vaccination in the UK: a multicentre cohort study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01608-1/Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia with disseminated intravascular coagulation and death after ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccination: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1052305721003414 Fatal cerebral hemorrhage after COVID-19 vaccine: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33928772/Myocarditis after mRNA vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, a case series: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666602221000409Three cases of acute venous thromboembolism [...]