Click HERE to see the Sunrise segment from today!

Vitamin YUM

Despite dire warnings by every health organization under the sun that our obesity levels are killing us, it seems that chocolate is the new black, with a comprehensive literature review published in the British Medical Journal giving it the thumbs up as a preventer of heart disease. This is no joke… people who consumed most chocolate over a total of 7 studies had 37% less strokes and heart disease than those who ate the least.

And we’re not just talking about your slightly blah dark chocolate. The scientists threw in reports of chowing down on choc chip cookies, Freddo frogs, hot chocoalte and pretty much anything chocolatey you can think of that has hitherto been labelled as bad for you. Collective cheering explodes from multitudes of premenstrual women everywhere as their one-time guilty hidden pleasure can come out of the closet and be placed on the shelf next to the vitamin pills and green tea bags!

The Heart Foundation reacted with horror attempting to put our excitement back in the box declaring chocolate to be high in sugar and saturated fats and an altogether unsavoury snack. Pardon the pun!

So what’s the JD with chocolate? At the risk of invoking the ire of my role models at the Heart Foundation, I think we’d be foolish to dismiss the BMJ’s editorial team and their pooled analysis of 7 studies quite that quickly. We know chocolate (or more specifically cocoa) contains a wonderful array of antioxidants which travel around the body like fairy godmothers tapping nasty damage-causing free radicals and neutering them. We also know chocolate consumption seems to be linked to less diabetes and blood pressure.

But I don’t think that’s the full story. I’m no nutritionist but I suspect that the 500,000 odd steps between picking a cocoa bean and producing a choc chip muffin might lose a little of that antioxidant superpower along the way. My theory is this; lightening up!

Have you read ‘Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality’ by Glenn Ellenbogen? It’s actually about mental health but the name is brilliant isn’t it? My favourite book title ever ….and don’t I know a few people with exactly that problem? I am constantly supprounded by health zealots who want to wage holy Jihad against sugar, coffee, alcohol, carbs, non-organic vegetables, aritifical colours and all other sources of enjoyment. No that’s a bit of an exaggeration but guys,,,,, LIGHTEN UP!!! If you drink a couple of wines now and then you’re unlikely to die an unatural death. Coffee is actually good for you and all the other stuff is fine in moderation.

Maybe the chocolate lovers’ win is their willingness to just relax and not take their diet too seriously all the time? And now we know the odd Caramello Koala could sit on your hips but put a smile in your heart!

Smile party girls, let's raise the roof!

Put a smile on your dial- even genetically hard wired sad sacks can tone down the misery

It was just a matter of time before we found the happiness gene. Your pre-programmed smile dial, which will decide whether you sit and whine about your lot when everyone else thinks you’re living the dream or whether you seem perennially satisfied despite being thrown from pillar to post by your own slings and arrows. New research published in the Journal of Human Genetics by Jan Emmanuel de Neve has found and named the new gene.

But if you suspect your low mood is the genetic aberration that abrogates you of your duty to smile, think again. Maybe it’s winter but nearly everyone I’ve seen this week at my surgery is feeling down- from just the exhaustion of dealing with sick miserable kids to outright depression. So, here’s the good news; everyone can take a few small steps to up their own happiness scores. There are mountains of research on this but these are my very best tips to feel happier;

1. Don’t let the little things pass you by. When life as a whole seems to hard, try instead to weave together little moments of happiness into a whole. That means stopping to register a bright blue sky, the sound of children laughing when you walk past a school playground, the smell of a fantastic coffee.. you get the drift. Lots of little happy moments can put a smile on your face that will last for five minutes… until you can find another moment of sunshine.
2. Be grateful. In Australia, we live in the most beautiful, free, open minded and liberal society. We all have people around us who care and would do lots for us.
3. Look after your body. If you are sleep deprived, run down to the point of sheer exhaustion or generally feeling like a train smash, it really is hard to love life. Don’t go for a radical lifestyle transplant in one hit but if your health habits could do with an extreme makeover, start with catching up on sleep, doing a little exercise and cutting out some of the junk food and move forward from there. I promise you, the way you feel will make you feel so much brighter.
4. Give. Studies have found that giving to charity, but even more importantly giving of your time and efforts to help those less fortunate is a short cut to satisfaction with your own lot.
5. Surround yourself with good energy people. Dig around your address book for the friends who make you laugh and who can take you away from your worst thoughts. You know those people who exhaust you and make you want to slit your own throat after a five minute conversation? Yeah, of course you do! Give them a very wide berth when things aren’t great!!

Ok they’re just the starters. But good ones. See if life looks better in a week’s time?

Is pain in your head? in your genes? Seriously?

The breakthrough in all its gory detail as seen on The Morning Show today

click HERE to find out how it works and find out where Larry was for this painful experience!

Click HERE to watch it

Flu? Too bad; mums can't get sick!

The seasons are starting earlier, don’t you think? It’s only March and it feels like July. The number of sick little ones doing the day care shuffle between ear infections, diarrhoea and the fabulous winter snot fest is frankly incredible. Their poor mums are already worn out from the endless nights of bleary eyed attempts at measuring out Panadol at 2am and then cleaning a steady [procession of runny nappies…

I almost don’t have the heart to tell them that we’re about to hit flu season and they’re already in the firing line. WE do know that children, especially little children from day care to the early primary years are the most likely to catch the flu. In kids flu is slightly different to adults. Along with the usual stock standard fevers, coughs and being miserable and off their food, they get diarrhoea and sometimes vomiting as well so the flu is just a great look all round. Not sure whether you knew this but along with the very sick and elderly, it’s the under twos that are most likely to be slammed hard by the flu and land up in hospital.

But kids are amazing. On the whole they bounce back and are running around like little madmen hours after mum was in tears with worry at the listless, pale mess in her arms.

She on the other hand is less resilient when she gets the flu. Not only does having flu make her feel like ten kinds of rubbish, it also stuffs up her entire family as a recent survey by Priceline pharmacies confirmed. The survey of busy mums (I know that is a tautology) and dads found that their number one concern was not being able to care for their children! Coming in far behind was their worry about falling behind with housework or losing income from having to take a day off work. Only 17% of the mums surveyed thought their family would manage fine if they caught the flu.

I’m seeing bundles of irony there. Firstly she is sitting in the firing line of the flu because she’s nursing her children through it. Also, hello; she can’t take care of her kids? Who exactly is taking care of her? Who’s making her a tea with lemon and honey and running to the shop for cold and flu tablets, huh? That didn’t even register as a concern for mums surveyed here.

That’s probably why mums don’t get flu shots (in the survey 43% had had one in the last three years). Oddly it was the blokes who were getting their shots (56%), probably because they get them free through work.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and flu is no different. A lot of mums think that it’s good hand hygiene that will save their skins this winter. I like the thinking and in no way am I bashing a good hand wash but when it comes to flu, it’s a vaccination that is by far the best way to prevent the flu and the ensuing chaos for the family. To me it’s a no brainer- yes I had one this year already!

Mother to mothers out there, I can relate to the expression ‘I can’t afford to get sick’. So if there’s a way to dodge the flu bullet, why wouldn’t you do it?

I love my job

So it turns out that when you say ‘work is killing me,’ it is. Literally. Well for some people anyway.

A new Australian study has added scientific rigour to the trend I see in my surgery every day; do a job that you hate and it is a drag on your mental health. The worst offenders; poor job security, excessive workload and feeling like you have no control over what happens at work.Ultimately it steals your sleep and zaps you physically as well.

It’s hardly surprising. In today’s materialistic, fast paced world, there are so many of us whose job defines us. So if you love you work, you feel good about yourself, but on the flip side turn up day in day out to a place where you’re not valued, not rewarded and it can rip the stuffing out of your soul.

I spend so much time trying to patch half broken people back together to get them back to work when it is clearly wearing them down. Especially when going to work means knowing the boss will look down her nose dismissively at everything you do; where you’ll be expected to stay back, come in early, never take sick leave and not be appropriately rewarded financially or otherwise; where you have no career progresion and no guarantee you’ll be employed next month; where you’re so loaded up with work that it starts consuming you; when work steals your sleep and it makes you feel useless and unappreciated.

Women are inherently risk averse. After spending years talking to women who put up with what I frankly see as toxic marriages, unacceptable treatment at work and even from their girlfriends, I’ve worked out that they hate change. They know their situation is a drudge, but they’re nervous to make any real moves because they instinctively believe that the grass on the other side of the mountain is no greener, but, rather, is likely to be a toxic swamp.

But this study has confirmed that waiting around for the world to change, or the Messiah to come, or whatever pie in the sky lightning bolt to make your life better is not just pointless but harmful to boot.

Food for thought!

Put the bottle down and step away from the baby- child abuser!

Get ready with your guns and your vicious emails. I’m putting it out there; I support women who bottle feed.

Before you decide that I have a death wish against babies, let me explain.  The evidence for the wellbeing of babies who are breastfed is good. I myself loved breastfeeding and did so exclusively for all my children, and for way too long in some peoples’ opinions. But I was young fit, well supported, had easy, healthy babies and it worked.

Pan across to my surgery where I see LOTS of new mums, exhausted and often overwhelmed report something like this; Baby breast feeds, it takes an hour. Baby doesn’t settle. She sterilizes a bottle, give the baby some top up formula which he guzzles down in no time and then settles. She immediately attaches herself to a pump. She attempts to get a good let down from a cold, uncomfortable, soul-less machine. It takes 30 minutes to get 30mls of milk out. She freezes this and then baby wakes up and wants another feed. I see her after she’s been cycling through this horrible routine all day for a couple of weeks. She keeps feeding and expressing because everyone says it’s the right thing to do and it’s important for baby. Hubby’s going back to work soon and mum’s going home to Tamworth or Auckland or back to work and the thought of facing this cycle for the next 6 weeks makes her want to cry.

She’s not enjoying breast feeding. A lot of the time she’s not even enjoying her longed for and very much loved baby. I know she’s going to move onto the ease of a bottle so she can try and get some sleep and start smiling again. But she’s going to feel like a failure as a mum, she’ll feel like she needs to justify herself to every stranger that vents an opinion at her, as well as well-meaning family and friends.

Reality check; my role now is not to lecture, to cajole her into continuing or to lay at her feet the scientific evidence for the benefits of breastfeeding. My role is to support this mum and bub unit to survive this time as well as possible. If she can continue to breast feed great, and if not, move on.

I agree in the ideal world, all things being equal, of course she would breast feed her baby for six months or more. But what trumps baby’s need for breast milk is his mum’s need to cope with motherhood. To feel empowered as a woman that she can meet her baby’s needs. That she is not so worn out by physical and mental exhaustion that she has nothing to give her little one. I will fight for my little patients to have their mums on board with them in this critical period and if that means caving in and giving breast feeding the flick, well so be it.

But I love it.. I want it...

My neighbor spent Christmas night in hospital- with his puppy. After a tad too much Christmas cheer and an orgy of turkey and plum pudding their entire household had crashed, leaving boxes of chocolates in plain view of their new spoodle who hoofed in and fell into a coma. You see chocolate is neurotoxic- it kills brain cells and, as it turns out, kills dogs.

My neighbour’s dog survived the chocolate ordeal but 50 percent of the dogs admitted to hospital with the very same Christmas-induced chocolate overdose with him weren’t as lucky. Ironically, my neighbor told me, the survivors apparently develop a taste for the deadly stuff. Having had a whiff of chocolate, they don’t comprehend the finer physiological points of the effects of chocolate on their cerebral cortexes and just want MORE. They’ll sniff it and go after it for ages afterwards. Dog owners, I ask you; in a pink fit would you give your dog chocolate? Even if he begged? Even if it was the very thing he craved and desired above anything in the world. Not unless you actually hate the dog. You’d say no for his own good right?

That there, my friends is a little allegory which has a whole raft of applications for all of us. But if you think I’m going to lecture you about not giving your kids the iPad or $200 to spend at Westfield, that’d be way too easy.

I’m going to talk about giving a loved one fodder for a fatal attraction to anger and negativity. You know the ruts people get into when they feel betrayed, hurt, aggrieved or otherwise blah. There’s a certain period where you owe them a decent sympathetic tongue clucking, a generous shoulder and ear. After that you have to make a choice; do you become part of the solution or do you become part of the deadly spiral that sends hurt, angry and miserable people to no place good?

Being sad or angry or both is not only a dud way to live, it’s also potentially lethal. Linked to heart disease, early death and some cancers, it’s no joke. Negative people often end up in unhealthy relationships that further fuel the spiral. If you care about your friend or loved one, remain part of the problem and fuel their misery at their peril.

Next time you take a hurt and bitter loved one out for a coffee, ask yourself whether she needs to hear the nasty gossip about the one who hurt her or whether she needs a joke or talk about travel or the latest novel you read.

She might not want to hear about it. She might only want to chew your ears off about her #^*%#@$&* boss or *&$@#%!~ ex husband and she might want to hear nothing other than what a creep you think he is too but for her good, think of those chocolate seeking puppies and what you would do to keep them away from their fool’s gold.

Happy New Year.

Empty your wallet- vitamin poppers beware!

Lots of my patients take something from the supplement aisle of their pharmacy or health food shop. That’s not surprising as Australia’s Biggest Health Check confirmed that 82% of Aussie women take some sort of supplement- often a multivitamin.

I’m always torn when I hear this because I’m not a big fan of health in a bottle…. Especially when the evidence for it is patchy or nonexistent or there are potential harms. FYI, I take fish oil if I don’t have fish for dinner and that’s it.

Taking multivitamins every day has been linked to breast cancer and prostate cancer. Beta carotene has been linked to lung cancer and vitamin E supplements are linked to strokes. We have no idea why but there are a couple of theories; one is that the body destroys unwanted cells intentionally and that too many antioxidants may interfere with the body’s self regulation of damaged cells. The other theory is that there is more to vitamins than we know and that artificial synthetic vitamins are not the same as the real deal packaged up as Mother Nature intended in a broccoli floret or a banana.

We have minimum recommended doses but are yet to establish a maximum dose. Meanwhile, these days basic (read: not healthy) foods such as white bread, fruit juices and kiddy-targeted breakfast cereals have vitamins and other nutrients added in. Popping a pill on top of everything else just makes no sense to me until we’ve established that they’re safe and that there are benefits. Fail on both scores- sorry but that’s the bottom line.

Yesterday on an unnamed but usually exceptionally high quality TV show, there was a segment by a ‘nutritionist’ on vitamin supplements. It made me a little nauseous to be honest. The very attractive and erudite ‘nutritionist’ made some outrageous statements.  She recommended vitamin C in mega doses (Oh yes she went there) and B vitamins for ‘adrenal fatigue’. Mega doses of vitamin C have not been found to be beneficial in any condition except possibly gout but have been linked to miscarriage, cataracts and kidney stones. And vitamin B supplements have no beneficial effects, ‘adrenal fatigue’ is a crock; although at least this bit of advice will harm only your wallet, not your body. She claimed most of us are deficient in these vitamins due to poor diets (not true) and that we should get blood tests just to be sure. If you pay tax and therefore fund Medicare, think long and hard whether you want your taxes to go towards pathology testing at hundreds of dollars a pop for zero yield.

She redeemed herself scientifically when she mentioned the need for folate supplements during pregnancy (“to prevent birth defects”- OK half a redemption. Folic acid supplements during the first trimester help prevent neural tube defects only. No other birth defects.)

The reason I mention this is that the viewer is left to navigate this quagmire of misinformation alone. What was glaring misinformation from someone who got a diploma out of the nearest cereal box to me could be exceptionally harmful advice to someone else. As if the net wasn’t a horrid enough source of misinformation.

My advice; take everything that you hear with a pinch of salt, even on reputable programs. Find a go-to person you trust or a high quality website and check, check, check!

To your health!!