What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You (Liz Tucker)

Professor Joanna Moncrieff discusses the serotonin hypothesis, the evidence for the effectiveness of SSRIs, and the emerging data about SSRI sexual side effects.

What Your GP Doesn't Tell You is hosted by Liz Tucker an award winning medical journalist, and former BBC producer/director. You can find out more about Liz and the podcast at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com, subscribe to Liz's Substack newsletter with weekly podcast updates at liztucker.substack.com and follow Liz on Twitter at @lizctucker

And if you would like to support the podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Former Canadian politician Terence Young became a safety advocate, starting the non-profit group Drug Safety Canada, following the tragic death of his 15 year old daughter Vanessa after taking the drug Propulsid. The drug was withdrawn from the North American market the day before Vanessa's funeral.

Terence argues in a new book that it’s essential that we all educate ourselves about drug safety. We can’t just leave it to doctors.  He says most of us have absolutely no idea about the true risks and benefits of the prescription drugs we take. And the only way we can find out this information is by asking the right questions.

So in this interview Terence explains the ten key points or rules we all need to know. For example, were you aware that a patient’s individual response to a drug can vary by 400 to 4,000 %? And why - unless there is a very good reason - you should try to avoid taking a drug less than seven years old?

Forbidden Knowledge: A Self-Advocate’s Guide to Managing Your Prescription by Terence Young is published by Dundurn Press

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Richard K. Burt,  a world leading pioneer who performed America’s first hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) to treat multiple sclerosis, discusses how he developed this innovative procedure and its future in the treatment of MS.

While the treatment is only suitable for certain MS patients it can be life changing. The US’s National MS Society says there is growing evidence that HSCT may be highly effective for people with relapsing remitting MS who meet very specific characteristics. The society adds it can greatly reduce and potentially even end MS disease activity in some.

But the treatment is not without its risks and patients have died.

However, as Richard argues in this podcast and his recently published book: Everyday Miracles Curing Multiple Sclerosis, Scleroderma, and Autoimmune Diseases by Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant not all types of stem cell transplantation are the same and that it’s vital that both doctors and patients understand the different approaches. That's because the type of stem cell technique used can affect the risks and effectiveness of the treatment for both MS and other forms of auto-immune disease.

And an effective treatment for MS is desperately needed. Currently researchers are also looking at the use of high level vitamin D in the treatment of the disease. While current drugs known as disease modifying therapies may slow the progress of the disease, they cannot stop it.

Dr Richard K. Burt is a Fulbright Scholar, Professor of Medicine at Scripps, a tenured retired Professor at North Western and CEO of Genani Biotechnology. In addition to performing America’s first hematopoietic stem cell transplant  for MS, he also carried out the first procedures in the US for a number of other auto-immune disease too. He was recognised by Scientific American as one of the Top 50 individuals for improving humanity and outstanding leadership.

His book: Everyday Miracles Curing  Multiple Sclerosis, Scleroderma, and Autoimmune Diseases by Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant is published by Forefront Books.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Michael Holick is a pioneer in vitamin D science and has spent a lifetime researching and exploring what he believes are its potentially life-changing benefits.

He argues that across the world guidelines for the amount of vitamin D we need are simply too low. And that many of us, even those  living in a hot climate, will not be able to get enough vitamin D from sunlight alone.

Dr Horlick contends that not only do we need vitamin D for bone health, we also need it for many other critical functions too. Without a sufficient amount, he says our immune system can’t operate effectively, and that a deficiency of the vitamin is linked to a wide range of other health conditions from heart disease and depression, to auto-immune illnesses and cancer.

In this interview, Michael discusses why he believes vitamin D is so essential and reveals the levels he thinks we all need take for optimal health.

Dr Michael F. Holick is a Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Biophysics. He is Director of the General Clinical Research Unit;  Director of the Bone Health Care Clinic and the Director of the Heliotherapy, Light, and Skin Research Center at Boston University Medical Center.

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

The idea of staying fit, young and healthy for longer, is something many of us would love to achieve, but just how possible is it?

Dr Robert Lufkin, who has a particular research interest in the  science of longevity discusses the reality. He says the aim is not to live forever, or live longer when we are frail and ill, but to lengthen our healthy lifespan.

When we age, the odds of us getting a range of degenerative diseases or life threatening illnesses increase, so the science of anti-aging is really all about discovering why this happens and what we can do to slow or stop these pathways.

Lufkin reveals the role that he believes lifestyle, diet and exercise can play. And goes on to review drugs such as Rapamyzin that some people, including him, are now taking in the hope they can keep their bodies healthier for longer. So exactly what is the evidence that we can stave off the perils of aging?

Dr Robert Lufkin is currently Adjunct Clinical Professor of Radiology at the USC Keck School of Medicine. He is also Chief of Metabolic Imaging at a large medical network in southern California. Previously, Rob has been president of the society of magnetic resonance imaging, president of the American society of head and neck radiology. In addition to being a practicing physician, he is author of over 200 peer reviewed scientific papers and 14 books.

Link to the web page of Dr Lufkin's website with research paper references, some of which are discussed in this podcast: https://www.robertlufkinmd.com/academic-papers/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Whistleblower Dr Carl Elliott's life changed for ever, when he tried to alert his university about the running of a drug trial which had resulted in the suicide of a patient. A patient whose mother felt should never have been enrolled in a trial in the first place.

Carl’s battle came at a huge personal and emotional cost and at the end of years of campaigning and lobbying, little had really changed.

His disillusioning experience as a whistleblower has driven him to meet others who have had similar experiences. And it seems few escape with their careers and personal lives intact.  In a new book: The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the The Price of Saying No, published by WW. Norton and Company, Carl reveals  his own personal painful story and that of other medical whistleblowers too.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke discusses how addictive substances like alcohol and drugs cause our dopamine levels to rocket, and reveals - perhaps surprisngly - that highly processed, high sugar food can also have a similar effect on our brains. This is the second podcast of three that I'm doing in conjunction with the International Food Addiction Consensus conference held in London on 17th May. 

Anna argues we've transformed our world into a place of overwhelming abundance, where we're constantly bombarded by  triggers - whether that's food, drugs, social media or other addictive substances that continually stimulate high dopamine release in our brains.

She believes we're becoming addicted to pleasures that make us sick. Anna reveals the neuroscience of food addiction; the impact of  constant dopamine hits to our brains; the value of a month long dopamine fast; and what we can all do to lead healthier, more balanced lives.

Dr. Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Professor Sarah Berry discusses her research in personalised nutrition, which is uncovering the hugely varied effects different foods may have on one particular group or individual compared to others. This variability can be due to our genetics, metabolism or a number of other factors.

This may well have important implications for what, when and how we  should eat.

For example, research is revealing that as we age, many of us have  a worse tolerance for eating carbohydrates in the evening compared to earlier in the day. And while some blood markers have a strong genetic effect, many others can be heavily influenced and changed by lifestyle.

Professor Sarah Berry is a nutrition scientist based at King’s College, London University. She has particular research interests in individualised nutrition, food and fat structure,  and the metabolic changes that happen after eating. She is also the chief scientist for the nutrition company Zoe.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr Gary Fettke frustrated by the increasing number of diabetic patients' limbs  he was having to amputate, started prescibing low sugar diets to these patients. But then found himself sanctioned by the Australian medical board for giving nutritional advice.

Fettke was told: "there's nothing associated with your medical training that makes you an expert, or authority on the field of nutrition, diabetes or cancer, you're not allowed to make any recommendations to your patients on nutrition". It would take nearly five years for the decision to be reversed.

Fettke's belief in the importance of preventative medicine began his lifelong research into the science of nutrition, dietary guidelines and exactly what makes a healthy diet.

And he has become convinced that for all of us - not just those with diabetes -  sugar, refined carbs and polyunsaturated fats come together to create a perfect storm in our bodie. That is why he believes we are seeing a higher level of metabolic illnesses such as diabetes type 2, heart disease and cancer,  than ever before.

Dr Gary Fettke, is an orthopaedic surgeon, based in Tasmania, Australia.  He has a particularly interest in  preventative medicine. Although his speciality is surgery, Gary believes it is much better to help patients avoid surgery if at all possible, by making dietary changes.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Psychiatrist Professor Joanna Moncrieff discusses her new book Chemical Imbalance: The Making and the Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth.

I first spoke to Joanna two years ago, just after she had published a review paper suggesting that there was no link between depression and an imbalance of serotonin in the brain.

And her book picks up what happened next. As her article gained more and more attention, she found herself in a political maelstrom facing vitriolic personal and professional criticism.

Because if the serotonin hypothesis was false, what could be the possible grounds for prescribing the popular antidepressants - the selective serotonin uptake inhibitors - better known as the SSRIs?  It’s been claimed in the past they can alter brain chemistry and correct imbalances, but how can they work if Joanna is right and no imbalance exists?

What followed illustrates the fierce political divide in psychiatry between those who remain sceptical of her claims and believe that the current medication for depression is a vital tool and those such as Joanna who are unconvinced by its value.

And we also discuss why much to her surprise, Joanna – although she has always been a socialist -  found far more sympathy for her research from right wing media sources rather than the left.

Chemical Imbalance: The Making and the Unmaking of the Serontonin Myth by Joanna Moncrieff is published by Flint Books.

The host of this award nominated 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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Eric Topol, one of the world’s leading cardiologists, reveals how the smartphone has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and create far more targeted treatment for patients.

Eric, who has been listed as one of the top ten cited researchers in all of medicine and has been voted the number one most influential physician-leader in the United States, explains the huge range of tests that phones can now carry out, from assessing kidney function to controlling asthma. And with technical attachments, phones can also do full body ultrasound scans, skin, eye and eye tests. All in real time and far cheaper than using conventional hospital technology.

But the real game changer is the wearable biosensors that can be attached to patients and their phones, collecting data 24 hours a day. Information that can then be fed back directly to patients and their doctors. This can help doctors spot drug interactions,  discover which drugs work for which patient, assess how  a patient’s genetic make-up may affect how they respond to a treatment or medication. All of which will enable doctors to treat diseases earlier and more effectively, and potentially even prevent illnesses developing at all.

Eric argues that this individualised approach will help put patients at the centre of their own care and bring what he says is the long over due democratisation of medicine.

Dr Eric Topol is the  founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research Institute and has also advised the UK’s NHS.

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

Neurosurgeon and author, Mr Henry Marsh, pioneer of the awake craniotomy, a brain surgery performed while the patient is still awake, discusses the ethical dilemmas and realities of the surgeon’s role. And he explains why he thinks doctors need a certain level of self-deception and exaggerated self-belief.

But after decades of treating patients, frequently for dangerous and life-threatening conditions, it was a huge shock as Henry describes in his latest book, And Finally, when he found himself diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was treatable but not curable.

So just how does a doctor cope when he becomes the patient?

You can sign up to the podcast mailing list and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

Dr David Healy was one of the first psychiatrists to suggest that while in some cases the antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs may help prevent suicide, in other very rare cases, they might actually increase the suicide risk. So how does a doctor balance that risk?

David also discusses the evidence from healthy volunteer trials, these are small trials that take place before the major trials and regulators can be unaware of these trials' results yet they often contain important information about a drug's potential side effects.

And he also discusses the problems of sexual dysfunction that some people suffer after taking SSRI drugs. David says he has had personal experience of several patients who have committed suicide as a result of this ongoign sexual dysfunction and even been asked by people suffering from this to write referral letters to the right to die group Dignitas.

Psychiatrist David Healy is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Canada.  He is also founder and CEO of Data Based Medicine Limited, which through its website RxISK.org, aims to make medicines safer through online direct patient reporting of drug side effects.  David has been involved as an expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs, and in raising issues with these drugs with the American and European regulators.

https://rxisk.org/blog/

https://davidhealy.org/blog/

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Deepak Ravindran, a NHS consultant in pain medicine, reveals how we need to completely rethink our views about pain.

Pain, particularly long term intractable chronic pain, can be one of the most difficult medical conditions to live with, making normal work or life almost impossible. Globally around 20% of people suffer from the condition. And getting the help they need can be incredibly difficult.

Ravindran explains how many of us totally misunderstand pain. The problem can be someone with chronic pain can have a battery of tests that all come back clear, which may lead some medical professionals to suggest that there is not actually anything wrong with these patients. But that is not the case.

For the first time in 2022, the World Health Organisation updated the International Classification of Diseases to include chronic pain as a separate medical condition.

And as Ravindran reveals, the biological mechanism of chronic pain, which can lead to an over-sensitised immune and nervous system is not the same as acute pain. That means a very different treatment is required, using not just drugs, but taking a whole body approach which includes diet, exercise, sleep and cognitive techniques. It’s a technique that has had life-changing consequences for patients, who have often suffered for years with crippling chronic pain.

In the podcast, Ravindran discusses the importance of being cautious about every drug that is given for pain management and recommends the following website:

https://thennt.com/

The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain by Dr Deepak Ravindran is published by Vermilion

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Investigative reporter Michael Moss has spent many years uncovering just what it is about processed and fast food that makes it so hard for many of us to resist.

This is the final podcast of three that I am doing in conjunction with the  International Food addiction Consensus conference held on 17th May.

Michael says he now believes from his decades of research, that particular combinations of  flavour, texture, fat, protein and carbohydrates can create food that has the potential to be addictive.

He argues the evidence is clear and believes the food industry is facing the same challenges the tobacco industry once faced, when it argued cigarettes were not addictive.

Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He's a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. And he's written two best-selling books about processed and fast food, the most recent is Hooked: Food, Free Will And How The Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions (US title) published by Random House; Hooked: How Processed Food Became Addictive (UK title) published by Ebury Publishing.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede is pioneering the use of low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic - diets to help treat a range of mental illness from major depression to schizophrenia. An approach she believes could revolutionise psychiatric care in the future.

She spent a decade treating patients with the standard approaches of medication and psychotherapy but became increasingly frustrated that she was not seeing the results she had hoped. So began to explore nutritional options and has now treated hundreds of patients using this approach.

A recently published paper on which Georgia was an author, reported that 28 patients who had either major depression, schizophrenia or biopolar disorder were put on this diet. These patients had tried multiple medications previously with very little improvement. But following this diet, 43% went into total remission and 64% were discharged on less medication.  This was a small study without a control group, but having said that it's almost unheard of to see results like these in a psychiatric trial, so if these results are replicated, this approach could have a major impact for patients in the future.

In the podcast, Georgia recommends a number of websites to go to for further information, here they are:

https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/

https://baszuckigroup.com/

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/patient_care/metabolic.html

https://www.dietdoctor.com/home

Georgia also talks about insulin resistance and suggests the various tests to take to see if you are insulin resistant or not:

https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/files/content/pdfs/Insulin-Resistance-Tests-rev01-20.pdf

Dr Georgia Ede, trained at Harvard Medical School, before first working for the Harvard University Health Services and then moving to Smith College. In 2018, she set up her own psychiatric nutritional practice, helping patients reduce or eliminate the use of medications by changing what they eat.

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Professor Karol Sikora, one of the world's leading cancer experts - an oncologist for 44 years and a past director of the WHO Cancer Programme - talks about his experience of treating cancer over the last four decades, and  explains what cancer patients really need to know. He believes those who take an active interest in their care are in the strongest position to get the best treatment, so knowing how to navigate the health care system effectively can make a huge difference.

He talks about his experience in the UK's NHS, but much of his advice will be useful to patients in many other countries too.

What Your GP Doesn't Tell You is hosted by Liz Tucker an award winning medical journalist, and former BBC producer/director. You can find out more about Liz and the podcast at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com, subscribe to Liz's Substack newsletter with weekly podcast updates at liztucker.substack.com and follow Liz on Twitter at @lizctucker

And if you would like to support the podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr John Abramson, who has published several peer reviewed papers examining the data behind statins, discusses the facts you need to know before deciding with your doctor whether to take one of these drugs or not.

Statins are drugs that lower cholesterol levels and the numbers of people recommended to take them continues to increase. Just this year, the UK’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence, NICE, has extended its recommendations to suggest that those with a less than 10% 10 year risk of heart disease consider taking one.

Yet interestingly, the vast majority of the clinical trial data had been collected ten years ago. So the podcast explores the basis on which these new recommendations are being made.

Dr Abramson discusses the risks and benefits of statins, which will vary depending on if you are male or female, and if you are at high or low risk from heart disease.  

And just to note, in this podcast we talk about US and UK recommendations, but both are based on the same clinical trial data,  which countries across the world rely on.

The key difference is the US measures cholesterol levels in milligrammes per decilitre and the UK in millimoles per litre. (To convert milligrams per decilitre to millimoles per litre divide by 18 and there are also various calculators online that can convert from one system to the other too.)

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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.

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at patreon.com/whatyourGPdoesnttellyou

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

This week’s podcast is about one of the world’s top selling drugs, Neurontin (generic name Gabapentin).  And it centres on an extraordinary court case which for the very first time accused a drug company, Pfizer and its subsidiary Warner Lambert, of racketeering, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, a piece of legislation that was actually brought in tackle organized crime.

The company had been accused of  encouraging doctors to use Neurotonin not just for its approved use, but for several unapproved uses, something that is known as off-label marketing and is illegal in the US. It had attempted to market the drug for bipolar disorder, neuropathic pain and migraine. Despite the fact that in the judge’s words there was “little or no scientifically accepted evidence that Neurontin is effective for the treatment of bipolar disorder,  neuropathic pain or migraine”.

Detailed detective work by the plaintiff’s expert witnesses revealed how data was distorted and  inconvenient evidence buried to suggest the drug was effective. And the shocking discoveries in this decade old trial continue to be highly relevant for patients and doctors today.

Telling this story is Dr John Abramson, who  was one of the expert witnesses in the trial, who spent nearly two years forensically examining thousand of documents to uncover the truth. John is based at Harvard Medical School, where he teaches health care policy. John has written several books about the pharmaceutical industry and consults as an expert in litigation involving the industry.

You can sign up to the podcast mailing list and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

Norwegian GP Dr Torkil Færø argues wearable devices that measure our heart rate and other health metrics, if used in the right way can be transformative in keeping us healthy and helping prevent disease in the future.

In his book, The Pulse Cure, he explains why he thinks far more attention should be paid to a key metric which turns out to give a surprisingly accurate snapshot of our level of stress and overall health -  and that is our heart rate variability or HRV for short.

Torkil explains what it is and simple steps we can all take to improve our heart rate variability. Remarkably, it turns out that drops in our HRV may predict future illness and a higher heart rate variability has even been correlated with a better performing immune system.

The Pulse Cure - The Revolutionary Way to Balance Stress, Optimise Health and Live Longer by Torkil Færø is published by Quercus.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

The idea of developing dementia is probably one of our greatest health fears. We tend to think of it as an irreversible disease that gradually robs us of our faculties.

But podcast guest, psychiatrist Dr Kat Toups is one of a group of doctors and researchers who argues that certainly in its early stages, the disease is actually reversible. The mistake - she says  - is to think of dementia as an illness with a sole cause and instead we need to see it as multi-system disease, which requires a coordinated approach to work out what is injuring the brain and then provide effective treatment.

Toups calls her approach the three Rs: remove, replace and regenerate. So that means taking away anything causing problems; providing the nutrients and hormones to help the brain function optimally; and then using a number of neuroplasticity techniques to enable the brain to form new connections and regenerate.

Patients in her latest study who have undergone her protocol have seen a remarkable improvement. Their brain scans are now showing less signs of aging than those who don’t have dementia. All of her subjects have now raised their cognitive scores into the normal range. In one case a fine artist who had had to stop painting has been able to start painting again and has even opened a new exhibition, and another patient has just started a new business.

For the full details of the protocol, please click here.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Professor Tim Spector reveals how developing research about our gut biome – the microbes in our gut – is revolutionising our understanding of  diet and disease. And he argues this may also help explain why we got so many things wrong about food. For example, it turns out that not all calories are equal, because different microbes will deal with identical calorie foods in very different ways.

70% of our immune cells are actually in our gut, so how our microbes interact with these immune cells has a major impact on how effective our bodies are at fighting infections and illnesses.

In his recently published book: Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well, Tim reveals what we should eat to optimise our gut biome and health.

Tim Spector is a professor in genetic epidemiology at King’s College, London and one of the founders of the personalised nutrition company Zoe.

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Jason Fung a kidney specialist, and one of the world's leading pioneers in low carb diets and intermittent fasting, reveals why modern medicine has been so slow to explore the  benefits of fasting and discusses its benefits not just for type II diabetes but for a range of other metabolic and neurological conditions.

For decades, patients with type II diabetes were told to eat a high carbohydrate diet, despite the fact that their problem was that their carbohydrate levels were already out of control.

A major study published back in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals, had shown that  intensive best practice management of type II diabetes actually increased the death rate from the disease.

But despite this, treatment remained largely unchanged. Yet emerging data now suggests that the majority of type II diabetes patients can not only reverse their disease with diet, they can also prevent it developing and so stop many of the life-changing side effects of the disease, so why did it take so long for medicine to discover this?

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

Welcome to Season Two of What Your GP Doesn't Tell You

This week’s story is so extraordinary that the best selling spy writer John Le Carré used it as the inspiration for one of his novels. And indeed if it was a work of fiction it would be dismissed as too fantastical or improbable. To tell this remarkable tale, I am talking to whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri, who became concerned during a  trial about the effectiveness of a drug that she was using to treat thalassemia – an inherited form of anaemia.

Nancy was threatened with legal action by the drug company Apotex - who were part funding the trial -and told it would be a breach of contract if she mentioned her concerns to  patients. This would spark decades of legal action, vitriol and intrigue during which time many careers including Nancy’s would be destroyed, investigations would be launched, private detectives  be hired and an academic found guilty of sending anonymous letters finally  tracked down by his DNA.

Dr Nancy  F.  Olivieri is a professor of pediatrics, medicine and public health services at the University of Toronto, a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital and the executive director of Hemoglobal®

You can sign up to the mailing list to the podcast and be first to know when a new episode is published at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com and also find out more about the pod there.

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 @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at patreon.com/whatyourGPdoesnttellyou

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

In the final part of his interview, Professor Karol Sikora, one of the world's leading cancer experts and a past director of  the WHO Cancer Programme, explains why the UK does poorly in the treatment of some common cancers and the reforms he believes are necessary to change this.

And Karol goes on to discuss the devastating impact that Covid has had on the UK's cancer services, which led to palliative care being halted and now means that patients are presenting with much later stage cancers, which are far harder to treat. He argues we will see the results of this in a higher cancer death toll in years to come.

Professor Karol Sikora worked in the UK's NHS for over 35 years and until recently was also the Chief Medical Officer of Rutherford Health, a private company providing proton bean therapy centres.

To sign up to the podcast mailing list and be first to know when a new episode is published, go to whatyourgpdoesn'ttellyou.com

The podcast's host, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director.  You can follow Liz on Twitter at @lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at liztucker.substack.com

If you would like to support this podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou or via PayPal at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

This week's guest is Dave Feldman, who unusually for this podcast is not a doctor or a medical researcher, but actually a software engineer.

For a long time, there has been concern that those on a very low carb or ketogenic diet are pushing their cholesterol to very high levels. This is something that Dave experienced personally, when he noticed the amount of his so called bad cholesterol -  the low density lipoprotein, known as LDL - shoot up on a keto diet.

And when he found others reporting similar findings, he decided to set up an organisation called the Citizen Science Foundation to fund research to find out exactly what was happening in the particular case of  people like him - what he has labelled as lean mass hyper-responders - who are slim, metabolically healthy, but see their cholesterol levels rise substantially once they are on a ketogenic diet.

Perhaps surprisingly, the early results from this work, suggest that this group -  contrary to what has been thought in the past - may not be endangering their health.

At the very least what this research clearly demonstrates is the large gaps in our current understanding of the role of cholesterol in metabolic health.

One illustration of this is an experiment carried out by one of Dave's colleagues, Nick Norwitz, who found that eating Oreo cookies while on a keto diet actually lowered his LDL cholesterol more than a statin, which I don’t think I need to add is not a recommended medical intervention!

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Journalist Gabrielle Jackson reveals how the  research for her book Pain and Prejudice uncovered just how little medical science understands the female body. Astonishingly, it turns out that most of what we know about human biology comes from the study of men, male animals and male cell lines.

Up until the 1990s, women were largely excluded from medical trials. The result of this is that there are many drugs in use today that were never trialled on women.

And in fact, eight out of ten drugs that were taken off the market by the  US Food and Drug Administration between 1997 and 2000,  were removed due to the greater health risks for women.

As Dr Janine Clayton, Head of the Office for Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health Center puts it: "We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology".

What Your GP Doesn't Tell You is hosted by Liz Tucker an award winning medical journalist, and former BBC producer/director. You can find out more about Liz and the podcast at whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com, subscribe to Liz's Substack newsletter with weekly podcast updates at liztucker.substack.com and follow Liz on Twitter at @lizctucker

And if you would like to support the podcast you can do so at patreon.com/whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com

GP Dr Safia Debar discusses how we can leverage emerging knowledge of neuroscience to help us more effectively manage our stress.

This is something, she has personal knowledge of after finding herself burnt out as a GP, when she turned to her first degree in neuroscience to see how it could help her rethink her approach.

Safia argues it is not so much the stress that we face, but how we think about that stress and the processes that we put in place to manage it.

It is now implicated in almost every disease you can think of and intriguing new research suggests that using meditation as a calming technique, doesn't just affect the mind, but can create genuine biological change, switching our genes on and off.

The host of this award nominated 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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Oncologist Professor Robert Thomas, argues along with standard conventional cancer treatments - all of which he uses - that exercise and diet can play a pivotal role in improving cancer outcomes.

Robert says for the newer biological therapies which require a patient to have robust immunity, research is revealing that a healthier lifestyle and gut health, can improve the chances of responding well to these biological agents by 30-40%.

He discusses his research using  supplements which have shown significant benefit in the treatment of cancer patients.. One of which has also been shown to help those with long covid. Here are the links to the supplements discussed in the podcast:

https://yourgutplus.com/prostate-research/

https://yourphyto.com/scientific-study

The podcast receives no financial benefit or incentive from any of these products or companies.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Rob Lustig discusses whether it’s really possible to become addicted to food, and if it is, does that change how we view those who struggle in their relationship with food?

In our conversation, Rob argues that the phrase "food addiction" is a misnomer, and that the real issue is food additive addiction. He says all the medical evidence suggests that two additives drive this - sugar and caffeine. And while foodstuffs such as fat and salt may make our food more palatable or enticing, they are not in themselves addictive.

In a staggering figure, Rob reveals there are 600,000 foods in the American food supply and 74% of these contain sugar. Over half of all sugar in the US diet is found in processed foods. And frequently where America leads, the rest of the world follows...

This is the first podcast of three that I am doing in conjunction with the  International Food addiction Consensus conference being held in London on the 17th May. Each  will feature a different speaker from the conference.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Tanya JW McDonald discusses the use of low carb (otherwise known as ketogenic) diets for patients with epilepsy, Alzheimer’s Disease, malignant glioma and other neurological conditions.

Remarkably, low carb diets have been used successful to treat  patients with epilepsy for 100 years, but fell out of favour when drugs were developed. However, in recent years there has been a resurgence in the use of these diets, and studies suggest that around 50% of pediatric and 40% of adult patients whose epilepsy is resistant to drug therapy can be helped with a low carb diet.

And in malignant glioma, a form of brain cancer, some research now suggests that tumour cells prefer glucose. So following a low carb diet cuts sugar, removing this potential cancer cell fuel source.

So is it possible that food can access neurological pathways that drugs can’t? And what implications does this have for the treatment of other neurological diseases?

Dr Tanya J. W. McDonald is a neurologist based at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the US. She focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy and seizures. Her particular interests include dietary therapies for adults with epilepsy, evaluations for seizure surgery and epilepsy in women.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Colorectal surgeon Mr James Kinross reveals the remarkable impact that our microbiomes have on every aspect of health from the moment we are born. He argues that the biome may hold the key to understanding diseases as varied as cancer, bowel and auto-immune conditions.

And that the rise of these conditions may be at least partially due to the disruption that’s been caused to our biomes, by the food we eat, antibiotics and the environment around us.

In his new book: Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome, James even suggests that the way a man and woman’s biome interacts may have an  impact their ability to reproduce.

James Kinross is a senior lecturer in colorectal surgery and a  surgeon at Imperial College London. He leads a research team exploring how the microbiome may drive cancer and other diseases of the gut.

Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome by Dr James Kinross is published by Penguin Random House.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Neuroscientist Dr Sabina Brennan argues that while we may be increasingly aware of the importance of physical health, we neglect the value of brain health.

By giving our brains the right stimulation, she believes, not only can we increase our odds of either avoiding or delaying serious diseases such as Alzheimer’s, we may actually be able to build in resilience and slow down the ageing of our brains.

Sabina discusses the research that shows how essential it is that at every stage of our lives, our brains receive the right input at the right time. And she argues that we completely fail to understand the teenage brain. Our brains are not fully formed until we are around 24, and due to this, in our adolescence we are more like to indulge in risk taking, and are also at high risk of addictive behaviour. Yet she believes that neither society nor the way parent our teenagers really takes this into account.

Sabina was responsible for running Trinity College, Dublin’s Brain Fit, a study of brain health, lifestyle, genetics and dementia.  And she has published a number of books about brain health including 100 Days to a Younger Brain and Brain Fog. Sabina also has a website Superbrain with advice on how to enhance brain health and has a particular interest in promoting the public understanding of science. 

https://superbrain.ie/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Cardiologist Dr Scott Murray discusses what we can all do to reduce our risk of heart disease.

I think many of us are familiar with the idea that elevated levels of the so-called bad cholesterol - low density lipoprotein or LDL for short - have been linked to cardiovascular illness. (Although, in fact there is a group of scientists who argue that LDL levels are unconnected with heart disease.)

But Scott argues the picture is actually  far more complicated than looking at just one factor and we need to be examining all the different elements that make up our cholesterol and fats. That means looking at our figures for total cholesterol, high density lipoproteins (HDL), LDL and triglycerides, not solely focussing on LDL to get an accurate picture of what is really going on in our bodies.

And there is one other factor that is often overlooked, but that Scott believes is an even bigger risk for heart disease and that is a high blood sugar level.

But as Scott reveals, the good news is that there is preventive action you can take.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Shilpa Ravella, a transplant gastroenterologist, argues that inflammation may be a common factor in many of the diseases we face today from heart disease to cancer.

While our bodies' inflammatory response is essential in fighting off infections and viruses,  in her recently published book A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet and Disease,  Shilpa claims many of us are suffering from hidden low inflammation which may be at the root of many illnesses and reveals simple lifestyle changes we can make to reverse this.

And one of the many surprising facts she reveals is that most so-called anti-inflammatory pain killers such as ibuprofen although they may suppress inflammation initially, actually delay the resolution of inflammation in our bodies. It turns out that one of the oldest pain killers of all - aspirin -  is one of the very few painkillers which does help resolve inflammation.

Dr Shilpa Ravella is a transplant gastroenterologist with a particular expertise in nutrition and an assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

Her Book: A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet and Disease is published by Bodley House, an imprint of Vintage.

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dentist Dr Victoria Sampson argues that while the gut microbiome gets a huge amount of attention, funding and publicity, the oral microbiome gets almost entirely overlooked, yet it is essential to our health.

As she explains in this podcast, it has  a close symbiotic relationship with our gut biome, so changing the composition of one affects the other. And perhaps most importantly of all, poor oral biome health is linked to a range of illnesses from heart disease and Alzheimer's to diabetes and arithitis.

Remarkably even our fertility can be affected by the health of our mouth. But the oral biome is usually disregarded as a possible cause or aggravating factor in all of these conditions.

So what can we all do to ensure that we have a healthy oral biome?

Dr Victoria Sampson is a co-founder of the  Health Society.

In addition to all the standard dental services, the Health Society also offers oral diagnostic testing. And anyone wantting to join the waiting list for a new oral microbiome test which will shortly be available can do so here.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

As a teenager, journalist Hadley Freeman spent over two and half years in hospital being treated for anorexia. In this interview, she gives a brutally honest account of her experience and describes how she was finally able to recover from what is one of the most puzzling psychiatric diseases.

She has just published a book about her illness called: Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, and during her research for it, also spoke to many experts and patients. Anorexia remains an incredibly difficult disease to treat with the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition - of around 1/3.

Perhaps most revealing of all, Hadley discusses the thought processes that an anorexic patient can go through which to an outsider or worried parent can seem so illogical. And she explains the advice she would give to a parent today, who has a child with anorexia.

Hadley Freeman is a staff writer at The Sunday Times. Prior to that she worked at The Guardian and her articles have appeared in many other publications too.

Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia by Hadley Freeman is published by 4th Estate

For anyone with an eating disorder or supporting someone with an eating disorder, the charity Beat Eating Disorders offers help and support:

https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/get-information-and-support/get-help-for-myself/i-need-support-now/helplines/

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

In the very first episode of the new season of What Your GP Doesn't Tell you, Liz Tucker talks to medical doctor and researcher, Dr William Li who has treated some of the toughest cancer cases imaginable.

He argues for the 21st century treatment of cancer, the solution lies not in a single silver bullet but in an integrative approach. In addition to traditional cancer therapies this also includes newer ones such as immunotherapy and takes into account factors such as the gut biome.

Published research now suggests that the health of someone’s gut biome and the particular species of bacteria it contains can make a genuine difference in their body’s ability to fight cancer. William believes it’s essential doctors use all the tools at their disposal to provide the most effective treatment possible.

In a number of patients, including his own mother who faced a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. Using a multi-factorial methodology, William has been able to successfully treating cancer cases which initially appeared to have extremely bleak diagnoses.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Kim Witczak's life was changed for ever one tragic day in 2003 when her husband Woody killed himself. Several weeks earlier, Woody, who did not have a history of depression or mental illness, had been prescribed the SSRI anti-depressant drug Zoloft (generic name sertraline) for his insomnia. Kim sued the drug company Pfizer for wrongful death, later settling out of court. Pfizer did not admit liability.

Since Woody’s death 20 years ago, Kim has become a committed advocate for safer medication. She campaigned for stronger safety warnings to be put on SSRI drugs. And in 2004 and 2006, labelling in the US was changed to include a black box warning on antidepressants regarding the risk of suicidality in young adults.

Today Kim, as a consumer representative, sits on the (Food and Drug Administration (FDA) psychopharmacologic advisory board committee, which recommends whether a new drug should be approved or not.

She argues that safety is not given a high enough priority by the FDA and explains why she thinks the system is failing. Kim says that for the sake of both patients and doctors it's essential this changes.

Kim is the  co-founder of Woodymatters, a non-profit dedicated to advocating for a stronger FDA and drug safety system She is on the board of directors of National Physicians Alliance and MISSD (Medication Induced Suicide Prevention in Memory of Stewart Dolin).  And Kim is also an active member of the DC-based Patient, Consumer, and Public Health Coalition that aims to ensure that the voice of non-conflicted patients and consumers is represented in healthcare and FDA related legislative issues.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Dr Louise Newson, who runs a menopause clinic, discusses many of the myths about Hormone Replacement Therapy for women - or HRT for short. What are the risks? Who should take it and for how long? It's a subject which has been much misunderstood.

Too frequently, women in either the years leading up to the menopause or during the menopause itself, get misdiagnosed when they go to see their GP about symptoms. That can mean they end up on antidepressants, sleeping pills and potentially a cascade of other drugs, some of which may be very difficult to stop once they start, and don’t actually treat the underlying issues caused by the menopause.

Shockingly, Louise has even met women who have been given electro-convulsive therapy for their menopausal symptoms.

Recently, there has also been controversy about dosage levels of HRT and why doctors like Louise sometimes prescribe higher doses of the hormone estradiol. But she argues this is because these women are poor absorbers of HRT. They need higher levels of the hormone to achieve an effective level of estradiol in their bloodstream.

In a recent paper, she and colleagues explored the variation in estradiol levels in women using transdermal patches.

Louise Newson's book: The Definitive Guide to the Perimenopause and Menopause is published by Yellow Kite.

The host of this award nominated 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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Author and journalist Tom Mueller,  after meeting whistleblowers working in the US dialysis industry seven years ago, decided to investigate further. Tom argues what he found is a cautionary tale not just about dialysis, but about the impact on healthcare of for profit medicine in general.

His book How to Make A Killing: Death, Dollars and the Business of Blood, contains one statistic that I found extraordinary. Although the US has one of the most sophisticated health care systems in the world, around 22% of US dialysis patients die each year, yet in Europe the figure is only 9-12%.

So what could possibly explain this?

How to Make A Killing: Death, Dollars and the Business of Blood by Tom Mueller is published by WW Norton and Company.

Before publiciation, Tom contacted organisations, both private and public, involved in the US dialysis industry about the material contained in his book, most did not respond but DaVita one the two companies responsible for 80% of US dialysis healthcare did.

It said that its company’s principles rendered many of Tom’s assumptions incorrect or downright impossible.

It states that patient welfare is paramount in its facilities: “The first consideration in every decision we make is patient safety….We are committed to providing a comfortable, therapeutic environment for all patients.”

Tom Mueller's work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere.  Previous books include Crisis of Conscience, a cultural history of whistleblowing and fraud.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Journalist Katherine Eban's investigation over more than ten years has uncovered one of the most shocking medical scandals imaginable, which affects millions of patients across the world.

In this podcast, she discusses the shocking reality of what happens or perhaps more accurately what doesn’t happen, when generic drugs that we import, are manufactured in countries with poor regulations.

When a drug is first approved, it is released with its own brand name, but once the drug’s  patent expires, then other manufacturers are allowed to make cheaper generic versions of the same medication.

Now most patients and indeed many doctors think these generic drugs are the same as the brand name ones - but they are not. Current regulations only require the medications to be "bioequivalent" and they also allowed to have very different absorption rates, so may work very differently to the brand name pharmaceuticals, which has huge implications for patients.

But although that is worrying enough, many of the world’s generic drugs are made in India and China - where as Katherine explains -  there is little regulation and they can be made very cheaply. In what was India’s largest pharmaceutical company – Ranbaxy - 200 of its generic drugs were revealed to have been filed with the US drug regulator, the FDA, with inadequate, falsified or completely missing data. And furthermore in other companies, an FDA investigator found in over 80 plants in India and China he visited, 80% had falsified data.

These generic drugs are sold into every country, so may well end up on the shelves of your local pharmacy, so what can we do as patients and doctors to protect ourselves?

On her website, Katherine gives some tips for consumers in  A Guide To Investigating Your Own Drugs.

Bottle of Lies: Ranbaxy and the Dark Side of Indian Pharma by Katherine Eban is published by Juggernaut.

The host of this award nominated 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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 15 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University,  reveals the key role our body clock plays not just in controlling how and when we sleep, but in every aspect of our biology and health.

He discusses his tips for getting a good night's sleep and what do when you just can’t drop off. And explores the huge toll that shift work takes on both our physical and mental health, so much so that the World Health Organization has described the link between shift work and cancer as probably carcinogenic.

Russell goes on to explain why modern medicine needs to pay far more attention to the impact that our body clock has on the time of day we should take certain drugs.

Remarkably, one study revealed that if you take an aspirin for stroke prevention,  it can be 50% more effective depending on the time of day you take it.  And another trial for the treatment of ovarian cancer discovered there was a fourfold difference in a successful outcome depending on when in the 24 hour cycle the chemotherapy was taken.

Russell Foster is Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, Director of the Sir Jules Thorne Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute, and  Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at Oxford University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and was awarded a CBE for his services to science. And he is the author of the book Life Time: The New Science of the Body Clock, and How It Can Revolutionise Your Health.

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 via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/

What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/

GP Dr David Unwin 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

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 Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/