Being that the health industry recommended avoiding saturated fats for a long time and pushed people to margarines, which now turn out to be bad for you, then it is right to be very dubious of any recommendation of theirs to use statins.

Absolutely and therein lies the main issue. Bodies such as the NHS were trusted to inform and guide the public. Now it’s slowly emerging that they got it very wrong. So in simple terms, who’s going to listen to them in future? Confusion will reign. Better the NHS publically admitted to historical, institutional dogma and that they need to change.
That way, at least, people might give them a second chance. Instead, all I see is snippets, dribs and drabs of “new” guidance slipping out and not necessarily from the NHS. The entire dietary fat hypothesis has been badly managed and it’s time someone put their hand up and set the record straight.
A while back I posted a link to a BBC article reporting that actually, dietary fat was not only better for you than previously thought, but that it is in fact, essential. Then our local neighbourhood NHS advocate tried to dish my post as old news, as if the clinical advice had recommended dietary fat for a longtime. Which was plane tosh.

Edit:
There’s some good, up to date information out there now, regarding Cholesterol. Just don’t be disappointed if your NHS GP doesn’t agree with that information…

nickc – my q was really just a general q, not relating to specific individuals or myself. What’s really needed is for folk to educate themselves more about their health and monitor accordingly, it can’t be left to the DoH/NHS. It needs to be on the curriculum.

jobro- thanks for explaining. 🙂

Suggsey – good to hear of an improvement in your health but of course we do hear about vit D but not enough of its benefits. Also one needs to take a reasonable-sized dose taken alongside fatty food for maximum absorption, probably more needed in Winter. I take 5,000iu daily but am in no way suggesting others should do this and it’s quite cheap to get vit D tested anyway.

Of course we were lectured to apply sun cream regularly and it’s now been proved that it wasn’t necessarily good advice. 🙄

Another vitamin that’s often overlooked is B12, pernicious anaemia. that can make a huge difference to health.

To add to CinnamonGirls point earlier re. Health in schools.

My viewpoint is that our western medical model of health essentially means we actually have sick care and not health care.

I.e we invest far more in pills and cures instead of investing in trying to help people stay ‘healthy’ e.g. cheap gym memberships, cheaper childcare to allow parents to get out more, better street lighting to help individuals feel safer when going to a gym\class in the dark, cycle lanes etc.

I guess it’s all down to the fact the most powerful in society set the terms and conditions and within a neoliberalist society the people setting these terms are the huge corporations etc with their agenda of bank balances….

I take 5,000iu daily but am in no way suggesting others should do this and it’s quite cheap to get vit D tested anyway.

Its actually, relatively, expensive to test Vitamin D – about £20
Coupled with the fact that pathology tests for vit D don’t measure the free (active form) of vit D, doesn’t measure the various forms of Vit D equimolarly and it doesn’t have a normal range as we would normally understand it, then I always suggest giving the patient Vit D rather than measuring it and see if they get better! Its a lot cheaper.

It would help if the medical profession (and the Daily Mail) remembered that Vitamin D isn’t a vitamin but a hormone. The above becomes more obvious.

jobro – I should of course had stated D3. 😳

edenvalleyboy – completely agree with your post, well said. 🙂

I was forgetting people’s names who I knew really well, couldn’t go to the shops for two items without forgetting one of them once there.

I do that now and I am not on any medication 🙁

Is the reason why GPs are leaving the profession in droves due to them being put in an impossible position with regard to prescribing targets for medicalising conditions instead of utilising their knowledge to know what is the most appropriate treatment, if any, for the patient?

Whilst I don’t disagree with your frustration at the shackles that are frequently placed on me for pointless targets to be met (which, if not me, are likely to result in my surgery being unable to continue to run, which results in my patients NOT having a local surgery – it’s a double edged sword..). i very much doubt this is the reason GP recruitment is down, and many GPs are leaving the shores for pastures new…
People don’t want to take on the ever increasing workload, for ever decreasing pay, with ever increasing complaints, and ever decreasing respect….

DrP

DrP – taking a surgery in any part of the country then (to make the q easier) out of the patients seen in any given day how many of those appointments could have been avoided if patients were better educated on their health?

I understand that there is increasing workload but am trying to understand why. OK, that’s sounding a daft q but is it just as simple as too many older people needing ever more treating or what?

Or is it an education problem? Or can it not be simplified?

Probably can’t be simplified.
Put it this way…’probably’ about half of my ‘work’ is seeing patients. As in, face to face, hand on belly, finger up etc etc…
The other half is:
blood tests (both ones I ask for, and ones the hospital sends me)
referrals
reading letters (both ones I ask for, and ones the hospital sends me)
management stuff.
figuring out ways of leaping through pointless hoops to maintain practice income and sustainability.

I really don’t think the patients can be ‘blamed’ as such, but yes, the ageing population and lack of self care is also increasing the workload demand for ‘patienty stuff’.

Primary care is cheap in terms of provision of care.
Hospitals aren’t.
LOTS of ‘things’ (think of this as being tasks, reviews, tests etc) are being diverted away from hospital (because they are expensive to perform there), and to primary care (because we are cheap. And we are suckers.) We generally don’t get any extra funding for this.

It’s like you ordering a takeaway from Dominos. They make the pizza and provide the box, but then knock on the poor independent cafe next door and tell them to take it to you. It would be cruel to NOT deliver your pizza, so they do it. But they don’t get paid for it, and the cafe owner is tired from a long day at work so can’t muster the energy to say no. Plus the pizza is there and the dominos man has left, so he may as well…..

DrP