Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Heart Foundation Caught in Bed with Kelloggs

In February while I was out driving I came across this sign at Richmond in Qld - half way between Townsville and Mt Isa.





It's a little hard to see it, but if you look carefully at the bottom right hand corner of the sign you'll notice Australia's puissant medical charity has partnered up with one of the world's premier junk food manufacturers in awarding recognition for Local Government recreation initiatives.

The lake is a man-made lake named after former Richmond mayor, Fred Tritton and has become a focus for recreational activities in the town. The day I drove through Richmond it was over 40 degrees and dry as the proverbial dead dingo!



The Heart Foundation has a long standing tradition of marrying up to the junk food industry. A few years ago it was the McDonald exceptionally fast food company, but the marriage left a nasty taste in too many mouths for it to last. Plus hands up all those people who go to McDonalds to buy plastic bags of cut up apple?

They've joined the dieticians association and jumped into (an increasingly crowded) bed with the food manufacturing industry.

But what can you expect from a medical charity that will scrape money off the top of sales of manufactured food to fund research into medical and pharmaceutical solutions for the body system dysfunctions caused by the ravages of manufactured food?

When you cast your eye over the Heart Foundation's healthy food Tick program you couldn't have expected a better selection of junk food than if Billy Bunter himself had been on the selection panel. If it's manufactured food, if it's delivered in packets, tins, cardboard boxes and plastic bags - and if it comes with a back-hander, there's a good chance the Heart Foundation will run an enthusiastic ruler over it.

They've given the tick to:

   Milo - 46% sugar
   Breakfast biscuits
   Pasta, including creamy, bacon carbonara
   Ice cream
   Pies
   Pizza

In their own words, 'The Tick Program is the Heart Foundation’s guide to helping people make better food choices quickly and easily. Tick foods meet the Heart Foundation’s strict nutrition standards for nutrients such as saturated and trans fats, sodium, kilojoules (calories) and fibre.'

Baloney!



If you want to know more, grab yourself a copy of the Hourglass Diet and receive a free copy of 'Eat and Grow Fat' and the 'Glycemic Index Sideshow'.


Plus you'll get the 'Aerabyte Aerobic Fitness Training System' and the 'I'm Getting Closer to my Ideal Weight' inner mental training audio file.

Here's the link

http://www.hourglassediet.com

In the meantime stay tuned, highly tuned and take Bob Carr's advice; 'less flour, more power'.

John Miller

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Scheissenhausen's disease

There is no medical cure for this disease.

It was first described by German metabolic physician, Gustav Adolph Scheissenhausen (8th June 1864 – 9th September 1945)  in 1915 and was named after him in 2014 when the prevalence of the disease became notified as a world-wide pandemic. Prior to that it had been notified as a syndrome – which is medical speak for ‘We don’t know what’s caused it.’

SD is diagnosed in people of all ages over the age of 15. In 2013 it was estimated that over 800m people, mainly from Europe, North America and the Antipodes were suffering from the disease. It is predicted to grow at an exponential rate as people lead increasing sedentary lives, eat more and more junk food and live lives that swing between stressed-out-of-their-brain and quiet desperation.

Although Scheissenhausen’s Disease develops differently for every individual, there are many common symptoms. You’re tired all the time. You’re over weight, in fact your trousers are so tight they’re ring-barking you. You get a thumping headache after lunch that goes away after a double shot coffee. You’ve got a crook guts, insomnia, brain fog, reflux, constipation, piles, sore muscles, joint pain and the deadly metabolic trio, high blood pressure, high cholesterol level and high blood sugar.

You drink too much alcohol, coffee and cola. You exist on a diet of fat, flour and sugar. There is a high likelihood you’re in the wrong job or under-appreciated at work. Similarly there is a high likelihood you’re in the wrong relationship or under-appreciated at home. Furthermore there is a high likelihood you don’t even like yourself.

In short you feel shithouse.

Early symptoms are often mistakenly thought to be manifestations of stress, aimlessness and vacuity, but that’s only half the problem. In general the main driver of SD is poor metabolic health. This is the reason why there is no medical cure. It’s not a medical problem; it’s a fitness, diet and wellbeing problem.

As the disease advances, symptoms increase. People often withdraw into their own little world spending more and more time on the couch watching Days of Our Lives, eating potato crisps and Delta Cremes, drinking diet Coke and drifting off with the faeries.

Since the disease is different for each individual, predicting how it will affect each person is difficult. SD develops for an unknown and variable amount of time before becoming fully apparent, and it can progress undiagnosed for years. On average, the life expectancy following diagnosis is approximately 50 years.

The great tragedy is people are living for years with Scheissenhausen's Disease without a clue as to what’s wrong with them. Some people are victims of ignorance, particularly that of their physician. Others are just plain lazy, ignorant or attached to the junk way of life. Many are beyond hope. The only relief they get is from their tailor, chemist, publican and barista.

There are no available medical treatments that stop or reverse the progression of the disease.

When SD is suspected the last person you should see is a physician.  Current medical and pharmaceutical treatments only help with masking the symptoms of the disease. In the long run you’ll gradually get worse, leading to more medication. Sooner or later the medications will conflict with each other. Side effect on top of side effect will be treated with more medication. In the end you won’t just feel shithouse you’ll be completely stuffed.

The doctor will also send you to the pathologist, the radiologist, the gastrologist, the astrologist and the proctologist neither of whom will be able to account for the causes of SD. They’ll slug you an arm and a leg, write out some Latinate gobbledook and send you back to your doctor. Not knowing the cause of the disease, let along the cure, the doctor will take the path of least resistance – which is to whip out the pad, scribble off a script, ask you whether it’s ‘cheque, savings, credit, PIN or sign and send you over to the chemist.’ End of diagnosis, end of treatment. Next!

The great tragedy is that you may come away from the doctor diagnosed with a whole range of body system dysfunctions, all except SD.

The cause and progression of Scheissenhausen’s Disease is very well understood by fitness practitioners.
If you’re feeling shithouse, improve your aerobic fitness dramatically. With 1000 aerabytes a week you should soon notice an improvement.

Embark on a regular and systematic strength and flexibility training program, stop stuffing yourself full of fat, flour and sugar, get back closer to your ideal weight, lay off the grog, stop drinking cola, limit yourself to one coffee a day, get some counselling, go to a high powered personal development weekend and Scheissenhausen’s Disease will start to disappear.

SCHEISSENHAUSEN Gustav Adolph  (8th June 1864 – 9th September 1945) German metabolic physician, after who Scheissenhausen’s Disease is named.
 Gustav Adolph Scheissenhausen was born in Marktbreit, Bavaria on 8th June 1864 where his father was a night soil engineer and his mother a haus frau.
 
Coincidentally, Marktbreit was the home town of Alois Altzheimer (14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915).

The two famous physicians were in the same class at the same school and entered the same university (Wurzburg) to study medicine. Scheissenhausen became a metabolic physician and Altzheimer a neurologist.
 
In 1917, while the country was in the grip of what would later become known as the First World War, Dr. Scheissenhausen observed that an increasing number of German men and women were being referred to him with a mysterious illness that included the symptoms of lethargy, headaches, insomnia, belly ache, obesity and running out of puff when gardening. In a speech given to the Deutsche Institut für Metabolische Dysfunktion on 18th April 1922, he was able to identify for the first time the pathology and the clinical symptoms of what would become Scheissenhausen’s Syndrome.
 
Despite the rise of Nazism, which curtailed medical research expenditure, Scheissenhausen plugged on, attending to patients, making observations, filling filing cabinets with notes and writing articles about the syndrome in German Medical journals that few people had the opportunity to read.
 
Eventually on 9th of September 1945 he succumbed to the disease for which he would become famous.
It was not until 2011 that Australian mug physical educator, John Miller, on holidays in Europe was having a coffee and kuchen at the Scheisenhausen Institute  in Marktbriet that a chance conversation with Scheissenhausen’s son Hans led to the filing cabinets containing Scheissenhausen’s epic work.
 
The rest as they say is history. After a short period of intensive research at the Australian Institute for Metabolic Health Studies in Iron Knob, South Australia, it was in February 2014 that visiting fellow, the (self-styled doctor) Miller officially elevated Scheissenhausen’s syndrome to Scheissenhausen’s Disease, bringing to a close the mystery surrounding the collection of symptoms that make up this popular disease.