Tuesday, September 8, 2009
This a quote from a subheading in one of my favorite books of all time, “The Peter Principle“.
But in fact this approach has a long and rich history.
I am just about to head overseas on a 2 month trip with my wife and 3 small kids – and leave my counselling practice unattended for all [...]
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As I was cleaning out some of my old medical files I came across a couple of letters from 1998 about the weight loss drug phentermine.
Back in 1998 I was reading the material of a medical organisation called MaLAM, which monitors and lobbies pharmaceutical companies on their advertising.
Always a fascinating read, but this time they [...]
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
No, this is not my line.
“The LAP-BAND Solution: A Partnership in Weight Loss” is the title of a book by Australian surgeon Dr Paul O’Brien which I read with interest when one of my patients found it in a library and showed it to me.
Since the start of 2007 I have been doing public talks [...]
People say that your adult life is shaped by your childhood experiences.
Now I have my own young children I begin to recall all sorts of nursery rhymes, songs and tunes I haven’t heard for ages. What effect did they have on me I wonder?
I’m not sure that my mum singing “The Purple People-Eater” greatly influenced [...]
“There have now been six meta analyses in the last decade showing little difference between antidepressants and placebos, yet this is not commonly recognised in clinical practice.” – Medical Observer April 4 2008 pg 31
So says Professor Gordon Parker of the Black Dog Institute in Australia, who has long been a critic of “depression” as [...]
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
With the recent studies showing antidepressants to be far less effective than previously reported, this leaves a big gap in the field.
What can take the place of antidepressants?
What solutions are already out there for depression?
What books, courses, websites, resources of any type are there for “curing” people who have been given the label “Depression”?
I’d like [...]
Fake pills and treatments are such wonderful things.
They work roughly 30% of the time, on almost anything.
With the technical term of ‘placebos’ they are the gold standard treatment against which every other treatment is measured.
And the whole field is shrouded in mystery.
Why do blue placebos make people more sleepy, while red placebos keep people more [...]
This week March 3-8 the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) is holding National Sleep Awareness Week (NSAW, but SNAW would have sounded so much better.)
Had you hear about this week?
Each year it seems to be getting bigger so eventually you might.
Let me quote from the NSF’s “Sleep in America Poll 2008 – Summary of Findings”
“Long work [...]
The commotion over the study that said anti-depressants are a waste of time for all but the most severely depressed people, has continued to escalate.
It hit the middle editorial pages of my local city’s newspaper, and that means the story is big!
Much of the criticism that I have read of this study has been badly [...]