Health – Public Spend Forum Europe

The Lowdown on the Ketogenic Diet

Is the ‘keto’ diet the latest celebrity diet or could it be the lifestyle modern society needs in order to address spiralling obesity rates and metabolic disease? If you haven’t heard of the ketogenic diet here is a run down:

Foods consumed are high in fat with a very low carbohydrate intake. By reducing carbs and replacing with fat the body goes into a metabolic state called ketosis. Ketosis is where the body uses ketones from the fats as its source of energy rather than from carbohydrates. Ketones are water soluble molecules produced by the liver from fatty acids when carbohydrate consumption is restricted. Ketones are converted into acetyl-CoA which are eventually used (after some complicated biological functions!) for energy by the mitochondria in our cells for physical as well as mental energy.

Kombucha Vinegar VS Apple Cider Vinegar

We know the health benefits of drinking fermented probiotics drinks like kombucha. But are there any benefits to consuming kombucha vinegar? Raw unpasteurised apple cider vinegar (ACV) has been used as a health tonic & natural preservative for hundreds of years – can we get the same benefits from a kombucha vinegar?

Kombucha vinegar is simply kombucha which has fermented twice the amount of time & turned sour. So it’s very easy to make – particularly if you forget about your ‘buch culture sometimes! Just make your kombucha as you normally would with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts) black or green tea & sugar. Allow the culture to consume all the sugar & ferment for up to 60 days. (Tip: If you’re just starting out making your own kombucha & find that your kombucha is too sour for your taste just keep fermenting to make your own vinegar!).

Are you sick of getting colds & flu?

Australian adults suffer from 2 to 4 colds a year with children contracting up to 10 colds a year. That’s an estimated 96 billion colds a year!!! So the chances of avoiding a nasty cold or flu can be slim particularly when you are exposed to those germs from other people on buses, in shopping centres, your work, and children. Eating a healthy diet of vitamin rich fruits and vegetables will go a long way to preventing illness but boosting your immune system with therapeutic strength herbs gives you an even greater chance of giving those colds the flick!

Rip-Off Pricing on Generic Drugs – a Failure of Public Procurement?

The Times last week featured an investigation the paper undertook to look at firms manufacturing generic drugs. These firms – not the household name companies – tend to buy the rights to long-established, off-patent drugs from large pharmaceutical firms. They look for those “generics” that don’t have real competition in the market, and because of the weakness of the National Health Service (NHS) pharmaceutical procurement process, they are then able to charge pretty much what they like for these drugs.

In numerous cases the producer has raised the price many times over recent years. As the Times reported, “the price of 32 drugs have risen by more than 1,000 percent over the past five years”. So a drug that cost £9.57 a packet five years ago in one case now costs £353.06! The price of Welldorm, an insomnia drug, rose from “£12.10 a pack to £138.56 between late 2014 and this month, an increase of more than 1,000 per cent”.