Tag: vitamin C

5 Best Selling Food Supplements that Don’t Work: So why do we still take them?

 

We sure love popping pills.

daily doseIn the last two decades, popular culture has decreed that three basic meals a day isn’t enough: modern-day healthy living needs something more – supplements. Despite a global economic downturn, the world’s appetite for dietary supplements remains insatiable; every year we collectively swallow over fifty billion dollars of minerals, vitamins and weird herb extracts.

Stepping into the Aladdin’s treasure trove of weight-loss berries, anti-cancer honeys and natural pain-fighting remedies (that is your local health food store) how do we know which (if any) actually work? Often endorsed by high profile celebrities and glossy magazines – I’m in pursuit of finding out which actually do anything useful... Read more

Can You Cure the Common Cold?

It's that time of year again, when we all start to get the sniffles

Curing the common cold sparked a debate in the office at work yesterday: It was reported in the news that the “cure for the common cold” had been found.  It sounds exciting but like much science reporting in the media: it’s fantastically over-exaggerated. The ‘ground-breaking’ research gives interesting insights into how our immune system works (the intricacies of will go above the understanding of most). A  cure will be years, probably decades away.

So, while we wait for science to discover a cure, we must do our best to cope with home remedies and shop-bought medicines. Everyone in the office had a personal favourate for treating colds: honey and lemon, rubbing goose fat on the chest, or a bit of ‘hot toddy’…!

What do you do when you start to feel unwell?

Today’s blog is looks at a range of cold treatments: some of which are downright weird. There are some surprising truths about what works and what doesn’t

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