David Gillespie – Page 2 – David Gillespie

April 10, 2024

Your Grandma Wouldn’t Eat This: The quiet disappearance of real food and the hijacking of our health

By David Gillespie | Big Fat Lies, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Have you ever looked closely at the ingredients in your so-called “food?” Odds are, your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize half of them as edible, let alone healthy. In an incredibly short span of time, we’ve outsourced our meals to corporations whose main goal isn’t our well-being – it’s profit. The history of how we got here is a shocking tale of backroom deals, twisted logic, and the slow death of real food.

The Rise of “Imitation”

In these days of regulation, it’s easy to forget how recently food was routinely adulterated. To stretch profits, milk was watered down, bread bulked up with sawdust, and you were lucky if your jam contained actual fruit. These practices weren’t just dishonest, they were dangerous.

The US took action first. In 1938, the FDA was given the power to create “standards of identity” for common foods. Think of them as legally binding recipes. If you wanted to sell jam, your product had to meet specific requirements for fruit content. This wasn’t about gourmet standards; it was about ensuring a baseline level of quality and preventing outright fraud.

By 1950, almost half of US food had a standardised recipe. This meant that if you wanted to make something resembling real food, but cheaper, you had to clearly label it “Imitation.” And that wasn’t a great marketing strategy.

The War on Fat and the Death of Standards

The food industry didn’t love this system, and their grumbles grew louder in the 1970s. The low-fat trend was taking off, spurred by groups like the American Heart Foundation in their ill conceived fight against saturated fat. The problem? Traditional food descriptions rarely included vegetable oils, and fat content was regulated.

What followed was a classic case of unintended consequences. After relentless lobbying, legislation changed in 1973. No longer did “fake” foods require the “Imitation” label – they just had to provide the same level of nutrients as the original. Calories and fat were exempt, opening a loophole you could drive a truck through. The stage was set for a massive shift in what lined our grocery shelves.

The Disappearance of Everyday Foods

Want blatant examples? That little carton of “Up&Go” markets itself as a healthy breakfast which describes itself as having “The protein, energy and fibre of 2 Weet-Bix and milk”. But look closely – it doesn’t contain a single Weet-Bix! Its primary ingredients are water, skim milk powder, sugar, and a disturbing list of chemicals. Sure, it might have similar protein to real food, but so would a sawdust and offal smoothie. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, designed to appeal to our desire for convenience and the illusion of health.

And how about those mayonnaise jars? If yours doesn’t list eggs and olive oil as the first ingredients, it isn’t mayonnaise – it’s a carefully concocted emulsion of sugar, water, and who-knows-what. The same goes for countless other products. Things we once took for granted have been quietly replaced with cheaper, cleverly engineered imitations.

The Health Fallout

We’re paying the price for this deception. Skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease aren’t just about eating too much – they’re about eating the wrong things. Our bodies weren’t designed to run on the seed oil and sugar infused highly processed, nutrient-poor concoctions that now pass for food. Mass-produced “food” is addictive, unsatisfying, and disastrous for our long-term health.

The Loss of Control

Bring back the “Imitation” label! It would be a wake-up call, exposing the sheer amount of factory-made substitutes we’re consuming. This change wouldn’t lead to perfectly healthy aisles overnight, but at least we’d have a fighting chance to make informed choices.

Sadly, that’s never going to happen. Too much money, too much power, stands in the way. That in itself reveals how far we’ve fallen. In less than one lifetime, we’ve surrendered control of our most basic need to profit-driven corporations.

Taking Back Our Kitchens

We don’t have to accept this. While we can’t undo a century of changes overnight, we can start reclaiming our kitchens. Make changes now:

Learn to read a label ruthlessly. If the ingredient list includes ‘vegetable oil’ or sugar, put it back.
Shop the perimeter of the store – that’s where real food usually hides.
Cook at home, even simple meals. It’s an act of rebellion against the industrial food system and the pervasive use of seed oils in everything.
Last but certainly not least, ditch the sugar, the poison lurking in everything, labelled or not.

This fight isn’t just about better health. It’s about reclaiming the very act of feeding ourselves and our families – an act too precious to outsource.

April 6, 2024

Emotional Manipulation in the Workplace: A Survival Guide for the Sane

By David Gillespie | Psychopaths | No Comments

The modern office, with its cubicles and passive-aggressive emails, is a Darwinian nightmare. Nowhere is this more evident than in the delicate art of emotional manipulation, a practice as commonplace in today’s workplaces as lukewarm coffee and pointless meetings.

From the whining victim to the psychopathic boss, every office has its share of emotional puppeteers. They guilt-trip you, gaslight you, and toy with your sanity, all in the noble pursuit of a fatter paycheck or a corner office. But fear not, there are ways to combat these cretins without resorting to throwing your stapler through the cubicle wall.

Spotting the Workplace Psychopath

These emotional parasites come in many noxious flavors, but the tell-tale signs are always there:

The Perpetual Victim: Their incompetence is everyone else’s fault. They whine and moan, transforming their every minor inconvenience into a Shakespearean tragedy designed to make you feel responsible for their failures.
The Tantrum Thrower: These emotional toddlers resort to theatrics, threats, and veiled hostility to bully others into doing their bidding. It’s like working with a spoiled brat who just discovered the word “no.”
The False Charmer: They heap on the praise and saccharine smiles, like a used-car salesman trying to unload a lemon. Beware: that flattery is a smokescreen for their relentless scheming.

Your Defence Against the Darkness

Remember, you are not their therapist, babysitter, or emotional punching bag. Arm yourself against their toxic antics with these simple strategies:

Trust Your Instincts: If their behaviour makes you feel uncomfortable or suspicious, pay attention. Your gut is often wiser than your guilt-ridden conscience.
The Power of “No”: Learn to say it. Practice it in front of the mirror if you must. “No” is a potent weapon against manipulators, who thrive on agreeable sheep.
Don’t Feed the Beast: Emotional explosions and crocodile tears are meant to hook you. Disengage. A calm, rational response will short-circuit their histrionics.
Document with Bloody-Mindedness: Keep a record of questionable interactions – the gaslighting, the veiled insults, the sob stories. This isn’t petty, it’s self-defence.

A Final Word of Warning

Psychopathic manipulators erode office morale, destroy trust, and leave a trail of collateral damage in their wake. Don’t be a casualty in their war against sanity. Stand up for your right to a workplace where hard work and actual talent are what get you ahead, not a well-timed meltdown or expertly faked back pain.

March 29, 2024

The Hidden Ingredient: Vegetable Oil & the Cancer Crisis

By David Gillespie | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Has there been a rise in younger people getting cancer? In short, yes. And it’s a terrifying reality that Princess Kate’s recent diagnosis tragically underscores. The news that someone seemingly vibrant and healthy is battling cancer at just 42 is a stark reminder that this disease doesn’t respect age, fame, or fortune. Sadly, her experience mirrors a disturbing trend.

We’ve become accustomed to thinking of cancer as a disease of old age, something to worry about if we’re lucky enough to reach our later years. But the latest statistics paint a deeply disturbing picture. For those aged 25-49, cancer rates aren’t just creeping up, they’ve exploded in just two decades. This translates into over 300 diagnoses a day in Australia alone. But even that number hides the true horrors:

Kidney cancer: up by a mind-boggling 51%
Uterine cancer: a devastating 45% increase
Colorectal cancer: up by a shocking 42%
Even breast cancer, heavily researched and discussed, is impacting younger people more often.

These aren’t random fluctuations. This is a full-blown crisis unfolding right in front of us, stealing away parents, partners, and friends who should have decades ahead of them. Princess Kate’s battle puts a human face on these grim numbers, reminding us that no one is immune.

Yet, the standard health advice feels tragically out of touch. Quitting smoking, reducing drinking, and managing weight are important, but they don’t address the elephant in the room. Why this explosion in younger people, even among those who seemingly do everything ‘right’? Could our modern food supply hold a devastating answer?

Here’s where things get chilling: a massive eight-year controlled trial found that men who replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils experienced a twofold increase in cancer deaths. The study, considered the gold standard of medical evidence, assigned participants to either a standard diet or one where saturated fat was swapped for vegetable oils. While the vegetable oil group did have fewer heart-related deaths, overall mortality remained the same. The shocking twist? Cancers became the leading cause of death in the vegetable oil group, with nearly double the number of fatal diagnoses compared to the control group. Yet today, those same oils are pumped into nearly every processed food on the shelf. We’ve been sold a story that they’re “heart-healthy”, but a growing body of research suggests they might be anything but.

In fact, a recent re-analysis of decades-old data casts serious doubt on the very foundation of our modern dietary advice. For years, we’ve been told that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils lowers cholesterol and saves lives. But this study found the opposite: lowering cholesterol did not reduce deaths from heart disease, and in some cases, might even increase the risk. If the very basis of the “healthy” push towards vegetable oils is flawed, it raises urgent questions about their long-term safety.

The processed food industry, focused on maximizing profit over our wellbeing, won’t give us easy answers. They’ve spent decades and billions vilifying natural fats while pushing cheap, chemically-altered oils as the solution. It’s a classic tactic: create the problem, then sell us the ‘cure’ that only exacerbates the issue. This isn’t a conspiracy theory – it’s the cynical reality of a food system designed to enrich corporations, not nourish the population.

Could this be more than a tragic coincidence? Could our obsession with ultra-processed, factory-made “food” be fueling this cancer epidemic? It’s a question we can no longer ignore. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and to the memory of those lost to this disease far too soon. It’s time to demand a radical shift – food that truly heals, policies that prioritize our health over corporate greed, and research that dares to challenge long-held assumptions about what ‘healthy’ means. Our lives literally depend on it.

March 27, 2024

The Calorie Count Con

By David Gillespie | Sugar, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Tired of “eat this, not that” advice? Brace yourself for the UK government’s latest “solution”: calorie counts that won’t solve anything and might even make things worse.

This feel-good trend swept through the US and much of Australia over the last decade. Since 2011, many Australian jurisdictions have mandated kilojoule (calorie) counts on menus at chain restaurants. They tout it as a weapon against our obesity crisis, but haven’t the numbers on the scale budged? Nope.

Proof it doesn’t work? A recent Australian study found fast food calorie content hasn’t changed a bit since menus started showing them in New South Wales in 2013. Turns out, those labels do nothing to make the food healthier, they just shift our focus to the wrong problem.

No less than four other Australian jurisdictions have fallen for the same empty promise. They insist this will magically fix our obesity crisis. But there’s one huge, inconvenient fact: calorie counts are useless when our broken appetites are the problem. So why are politicians so eager to embrace this idea?

Here’s the deal: most food provides a predictable amount of energy per gram. That’s why a calorie difference often just means more or less fat. Our bodies handle those calories just fine… until sugar enters the picture. Sugar hijacks our appetite hormones, making us crave more and more, regardless of calories. Slapping a number on a burger doesn’t fix that. Worse, it makes us feel like we’ve done something healthy when we haven’t.

Of course, science rarely stands in the way of flashy pronouncements. Which brings us to New York City, the pioneer of mandatory calorie counts. After years of this policy, guess what? A major study revealed absolutely no change in what people ordered. In fact, they stuffed themselves with even more calories once those numbers were staring them in the face! This complete failure should have sent governments scrambling for a different approach.

Instead, the copycat syndrome has kicked in. The US, most Australian states and now the UK have leapt on the bandwagon, desperate to look like they’re doing something, anything! And why not? It’s political theater at its best. Politicians get to feel virtuous, nutritionists feel ‘heard’ even if their advice is wrong, and food companies? They win twice. Calorie counts neatly focus our attention on fat, obscuring the true villain – the mountains of sugar they’re adding to everything – and they let them replace fat with even more sugar without blowing up the calorie count. A cynical strategy, but effective.

So here we are, the unwitting participants in a grand charade. A charade where we’ll keep getting fatter and sicker, armed with information that not only doesn’t help but gives us a false sense of control. But hey, at least we’ll know exactly how many calories are in that milkshake we shouldn’t be having… as if that’s ever stopped anyone. Bon appétit! After all, the worse this crisis gets, the better our leaders look for pretending to address it, while the food giants rake in the profits.

March 7, 2024

On Chickens, Cottonseed, and the Curious Case of Ashkenazi Ailments

By David Gillespie | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Jewish grandmothers. Those benevolent despots with the power to guilt-trip a scorpion into submission. Their cooking? Weaponized love in the form of brisket and blintzes, all bound together with liberal lashings of glistening schmaltz. Schmaltz, the rendered essence of a chicken’s corpulence, is the liquid gold of Ashkenazi cuisine. But schmaltz was a compromise forced on the Ashkenazi. There were no olive trees in northern Europe. Butter, that unctuous nectar of the Gentiles, was strictly off-limits to anyone trying to keep kosher. Lard – well, that’s a hard no, folks. Then there’s rendered beef fat. Good luck finding a reliable supply of that in the shtetls of 12th century Poland. So chicken fat it was.

But schmaltz, like any precious resource, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. And for the Jews who fled pogroms and poverty in Eastern Europe to the tenements of turn-of-the-century New York, those laws were positively draconian. Picture, if you will, a pious Yiddishe mama attempting to raise a brood of chickens in a cramped Brooklyn apartment. Imagine the clucking, the feathers, the stench of kosher poultry mingling with tenement squalor… It’s a scene out of Kafka on acid.

No chickens meant no schmaltz, and that meant a culinary crisis for the Ashkenazi. This culinary pickle is where the good folks at Procter & Gamble, purveyors of fine soaps and industrial lubricants, seized their moment. Those corporate Einsteins realised that their newly concocted Crisco– a greasy, white brick of cotten-seed oil – could play the part of ersatz schmaltz. It was odourless, shelf-stable, and more importantly, pareve (i.e., neither meat nor dairy, and thus kosher-friendly).

Crisco became the manna of the masses. Rabbis were recruited to bless it, Yiddish cookbooks sang its praises, and before you could say “Oy vey!”, Jewish households were frying, basting, and baking with industrial zeal. Crisco was the culinary equivalent of Esperanto – a neutral zone where tradition met convenience, where Old World tastebuds could assimilate into the American melting pot.

But fate, that fickle mistress, had other plans. While Ashkenazi Jews were deep-frying their latkes in Ohio, a seismic shift was taking place. Israel was born, and with it, a wave of Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean and North Africa crashed onto its shores. These sun-kissed Semites didn’t know schmaltz from schmutz. Their culinary tradition revolved around olives and their blessed oil, a world away from the pale ghettos of Europe.

And – bless their healthy hearts! – It seems that their seed oil free diet might hold the key to a rather puzzling paradox: why is testicular cancer so staggeringly common among Ashkenazi Jews, yet virtually unheard of among their Sephardic brethren? Scientists mumble about genetics and other such nonsense, but could the answer be staring us in the face? Could it be as simple as ersatz schmaltz vs. olive oil?

The irony, of course, is delicious. Just as Crisco solved one culinary dilemma for the Ashkenazi, it may have unwittingly created another far darker problem. It’s a lesson in unintended consequences, and a sobering reminder that even the most seemingly innocuous of dietary choices can have echoes down the generations.

December 21, 2023

What if parenting doesn’t change who your kids are?

By David Gillespie | Psychopaths, Teens | No Comments

In 2021, a group of researchers set out to determine whether parenting style had any effect on the personalities of their children. They wanted to know whether it mattered if you show physical affection, whether you are consistent, whether you are predictable, whether you are encouraging and attentive or whether you are more likely to be scolding and controlling. They were shocked to discover the answer was a resounding – no. When it came to the most well known and widely used model of personality type, parenting style made no real difference.

The study used data from almost 4,000 students in 99 German schools who first undertook personality testing in year 5 and were then followed up for each of the next three years. Their parents also answered questionnaires designed to categorise their parenting style. The personality trait measure used was the Big Five model, the most widely accepted personality theory in psychology today.

The Big 5 personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (often remembered using the acronym OCEAN). Each trait represents a continuum between two extremes, such as introversion and extraversion.

Openness emphasises imagination and insight the most out of all five personality traits. People who score high on openness tend to be curious, creative, and adventurous. They enjoy trying new things and learning new skills. They also have a broad range of interests and are not afraid to express their opinions. People who score low on openness tend to be conventional, practical, and conservative. They prefer routine and familiarity over novelty and change. They may also be more sceptical and critical of new ideas.

Conscientiousness describes a person’s ability to regulate impulse control to engage in goal-directed behaviours. It measures elements such as control, inhibition, and persistence of behaviour. People who score high on conscientiousness are organized, disciplined, detail-oriented, thoughtful, and careful. They also have good impulse control, which allows them to complete tasks and achieve goals. People who score low on conscientiousness may struggle with impulse control, leading to difficulty in completing tasks and fulfilling goals. They tend to be more disorganized and may dislike too much structure. They may also engage in more impulsive and careless behaviour.

Extraversion represents a continuum between extreme extraversion and extreme introversion. It reflects how sociable, outgoing, energetic, and assertive a person is. People who score high on extraversion are friendly, talkative, enthusiastic, and enjoy being around others. They seek stimulation and excitement from social interactions. People who score low on extraversion are reserved, quiet, thoughtful, and prefer solitude or small groups of close friends. They seek depth and meaning from their experiences.

Agreeableness refers to how people tend to treat relationships with others. Unlike extraversion which consists of the pursuit of relationships, agreeableness focuses on people’s orientation and interactions with others. People who score high on agreeableness are kind, cooperative, compassionate, trusting, and helpful. They value harmony and avoid conflict at all costs. People who score low on agreeableness are suspicious, uncooperative, competitive, distrustful, and manipulative.

Neuroticism often involves sadness or emotional instability as well as anxiety or nervousness about various aspects of life such as health or work performance . People who score high on neuroticism experience negative emotions more frequently or intensely than those who score low on neuroticism . They also tend to be more sensitive to stressors , criticism , or rejection . People who score low on neuroticism are calm , confident , resilient , optimistic ,and emotionally stable.

Your position on the scale for each of these five main traits can help you figure out if you have other additional personality traits. These other traits are usually divided into two groups: positive personality traits and negative personality traits. Positive traits include being creative, friendly, co-operative, humble, optimistic, insightful and thorough. Negative traits include being aggressive, arrogant, deceptive, egotistical, intolerant and judgemental.

Using this model other researchers have found that most people fall into one of four personality types.

Average – the most frequent type, marked by high levels of extroversion – friendliness and enthusiasm – and neuroticism – nervousness and anxiety – and low levels of openness – not open to new experiences)
Self-centered – Self-Centered people score very high in extraversion and below average in openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. These are people you don’t want to hang out with.
Reserved – emotionally stable, but not open or neurotic. They are not particularly extraverted but are somewhat agreeable and conscientious.
Role models – low in neuroticism and high in all the other traits. These are people who are dependable and open to new ideas. They are good people to be in charge of things. Life is easier if you have more dealings with role models.

The parents were asked to rate their involvement in the child’s school on a 4 point scale with questions like “I have enough time and energy to get involved in my child’s school.” They also had to rate their level of structure and cultural stimulation with questions like “I make sure that my child does his homework at fixed times every day,” and “How often do you go to a museum with your child?” Lastly they were asked to rank their parental goals from 1 to 17 from a list that included “order and discipline”, “intellectual curiosity”, and “righteous and helpful behaviour”. The questionnaires also included controls for the parent’s socioeconomic status and where each of the parents rated in the Big 5 model themselves.

After the data was in and some serious maths was performed the results were, well, surprising. In short the relationship between parenting style and children’s personality types “were not statistically significantly different from zero.” Being a supermum (or dad), hugging the kids constantly, turning up to every parent teacher night, helping them with their homework, being encouraging, not scolding, would not change the type of kid you raised. If they were a self-centred brat at Year 5, they still were by the time they hit Year 8. And the same was equally true of parents who didn’t get involved with the school, didn’t encourage their kids to experience culture and had no particular parenting goals. The kid will be who they are going to be regardless of parenting style.

This study didn’t look at the extremes of parenting. There are definitely types of parenting which are more about chaos and neglect which would seriously affect the way a kid grows up, but even so, this study suggests that we are who we are wired to be from birth and whether our mum helps us with our homework or not is unlikely to change that.

October 21, 2023

From Benzedrine to Smartphones: Unraveling the Dopamine Dilemma in ADHD Medication Usage

By David Gillespie | Addiction, Mental Illness | No Comments

On the eve of the Great Depression, Dr Charles Bradley fresh out of his residency as a pediatrician took up the role of Medical Director at the Emma Pendleton Bradley Home for the treatment of children in Connecticut. The name wasn’t a coincidence. The Home had been established by a bequest from Bradley’s great uncle, George Bradley. George had made his fortune working with Alexander Graham Bell marketing the first telephones.

His beloved only child Emma had contracted encephalitis – a type of brain tissue inflammation causing intense headaches and seizures – when she was just seven. George and his wife, employed round-the-clock carers for Emma at their summer home while they travelled the world seeking treatment without success. When George died, his will contained provision for the creation of the Home using his Rhode Island estate (pictured). It was to become the first facility in the United States expressly designed to treat children with neurological and mental health disorders. An express provision of the will required that parents not be charged unless they could afford it.

The Emma Pendleton Bradley Home treated a range of physical disabilities, but Charles Bradley focused on children with behavioral disorders. Those children usually came from distressed, often poor, families coping with serious drug or alcohol addiction and often extreme family violence. The Home had no shortage of patients in depression era New England. The children were highly reactive, oppositional, and refused to conform to ‘accepted social standards’ of behavior. The patients, whose hospitalization came as a relief to their families, were described as ‘inattentive, restless, rambunctious, and selfish.’

Bradley’s approach of getting the children away from their stressors and providing them with a stable home complete with access to extensive sporting facilities did have some success, but he was always on the lookout for ways to improve treatment.

In the mid thirties, American pharmaceutical company, Smith Kline and French (SKF – now GlaxoSmithKline) was scouting around for ways to increase revenue from its newly patented over the counter nasal decongestant Benzedrine. Benzedrine’s active ingredient was amphetamine, or what is today more commonly known as ‘speed’. SKF was keen to encourage trials to see if there was a bigger market for their drug than people with runny noses, so they offered free supplies to any doctor who agreed to conduct research. Speed worked as a decongestant because it constricted nasal mucus membranes. Bradley thought that membrane constricting effect might help with the intense headaches experienced by his patients because of a diagnostic procedure which replaced cerebral fluid with air to improve the quality of brain x-rays.

In 1937, Bradley commenced his study with 30 residents of the Home diagnosed with behavioral disorders. Throughout the three-week study, a nurse observed each child closely. During the first week, the children were not administered any drugs. In the second week, the children were given a dose of Benzedrine each morning. In the third and final week, the drug was withdrawn.

The drug did nothing for the headaches but had a miraculous effect on the children’s behaviour. It also seemed to instill in them a previously missing ‘drive to accomplish as much as possible.’ The kids were calmer, behaved better, were more focused and performed much better at school. The cognitive improvements reinforced the results SKF had obtained from a trial the preceding year at a New Jersey detention facility for delinquent boys. That trial had demonstrated verifiable improvements in standardized test scores.

Bradley expanded his trial to 100 children in 1941 and the results were undeniable. Amphetamine appeared to ‘cure’ behavioural disorders in children but only for as long as they were taking the drug. As soon as they stopped, the behaviour reverted. There was no residue effect. It was not so much a cure as a very effective daily treatment. Bradley felt it was a useful supplement to his primary approach, removing the sources of stress from the child’s surroundings, which his own data told him did produce long term effects.

SKF had been looking for a mass market for amphetamine. The New Jersey study suggested that market might be school kids looking to improve academic performance. But reports were starting to appear suggesting people were becoming addicted to Benzedrine with some suffering psychotic episodes as a result. People had begun to realise that they valued the Benzedrine’s stimulant effects more than a clear nose. They started prying open the inhaler and either eating or injecting the amphetamine. It was clear that selling amphetamine to school kids was not going to be the mass market they were after and selling them to Bradley’s hyperactive kids was even less appealing. Luckily for SKF’s bottom line, the Japanese brought the US into the Second World War on December 7, 1941.

By 1942, substantial orders were being placed with SKF by the US Military, as it became evident that amphetamine was highly beneficial against combat fatigue or what we now call PTSD. The drug dramatically altered the way soldiers performed their duties, instilling confidence and purpose in individuals who might have otherwise shown fear or anxiety. The US Military handed out Bennies (Benzidrine tablets) like lollipops and SKF made money hand over fist. Any thought of marketing amphetamine as a treatment for rambunctious kids faded into the background.

Amphetamine would not be used as a regular treatment for “misbehavior” until the 1950s, when psychiatrists began to focus on the specific behavioral disorder of that by then had been christened ‘hyperactivity.’ Bradley’s successor at the Home, Dr Maurice W. Laufer, rediscovered Bradley’s work and by 1956 the profession was again using amphetamine and related stimulant drugs, like the newly released Ritalin – named after the discoverer’s wife, Rita – to improve the behavior of hyperactive children.

The idea of giving stimulants to kids who were bouncing off the walls was certainly counterintuitive, and the doctors had no clue why the drugs calmed them down, but there was little doubt that they did. And so by the 1960s, amphetamine and its ilk became a mainstream treatment for hyperactivity.

Why were amphetamine and other stimulants so effective? The answer only become clear within the last few decades. Those drugs increase dopamine levels and dopamine helps us focus. It stops our brains jumping from thought to thought in the haphazard way that we now suspect drives hyperactivity.

Have you ever struggled to get to sleep because your mind is racing? You jump from one thought to the next as an overwhelming sense of panic and urgency surges through your brain. Now imagine you have that feeling all the time. This is your brain telling you don’t have access to sufficient dopamine to allow you to focus. And this in turn leads to difficulties in concentration, impulsivity, restlessness, memory lapses. Managing time, emotions, and social interactions will be an ongoing challenge. When we are low on dopamine, we cannot remain focused on anything for more than a minute without our thoughts jumping the rails. If our brain came with a dashboard, at this point the ‘Low Focus’ light would be flashing red.

We need dopamine to stay focused. But the amount we need is determined by how frequently we are exposed to dopamine surges. Dopamine is the neurochemical which motivates us to run towards rewards and away from danger. But we develop resistance to it in highly rewarding or dangerous environments.

The kids being admitted to Dr Bradley’s Home were growing up in high danger surroundings. They were stressed by family alcoholism, poverty and abuse. They were receiving constant dopamine hits and their brain’s coping mechanism was to develop resistance to dopamine. This lowered the degree to which constant stress would affect them, but it also impaired their ability to focus.

Normal levels of dopamine were no longer enough for those kids. They were acclimatized to an environment where dopamine was constantly being spiked by stress. To just feel normal, they needed large amounts of dopamine. To the outside world that looked like the ‘rambunctious’ children Bradley encountered. They couldn’t focus. They had poor impulse control. They were reactive and irritable. And they couldn’t stay on task – any task.

He didn’t know it at the time, but when Bradley gave those kids amphetamine, what he was actually doing was providing them with dopamine stimulators. He could have achieved the same results with cocaine (popular with the British military), methamphetamine (popular with the German military) or heroin. For as long as the drug was in their systems (about 4 hours) the kids’ dopamine levels were boosted and they could behave and focus like other kids.

It wasn’t a cure for anything. In fact it could actually make the problem worse over time because the dopamine hits from the drugs would just increase the dopamine resistance. This is why people became addicted to Benzadrine. But Bradley’s trials did show that the drug could be used as a temporary treatment as long as the underlying cause, chronic stress, was being addressed.

The ‘rambunctious’ kids Bradley was treating would today be diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According to data revealed this week by the health department, over the past five years the number of Australians receiving prescriptions for ADHD medications has more than doubled. A total of 3.2 million prescriptions were dispensed in Australia during 2022. This represents a massive rise over the 1.4 million prescriptions written in 2018.

Surely modern-day Australia is not so much more stressful than the Great Depression or the Second World War. Why do we suddenly need to prescribe massive amounts of stimulants? The answer is that dopamine stimulants are both a cause and a treatment. Dopamine resistance is not only created by chronic stress. Chronic exposure to dopamine stimulants does the trick too. This is what was causing the addiction and psychosis among the Benzedrine sniffers. Modern day Australia is not as stressful a place as Depression era Australia but it does have unprecedented access to stimulants.

We can no longer buy amphetamine over the counter, but every time we smoke a cigarette, have a drink, or consume some of the less legal stimulants like speed, meth, heroin or opioids, we are stimulating dopamine and adding to our dopamine resistance. But we can also do it without ingesting anything. Every time we place a bet, watch porn, play an online game or interact with social media we are doing it too.

No, most of us probably aren’t the victim of the chronic stressors suffered by Dr Bradley’s Depression era kids, but we are likely to be getting even more dopamine hits in a typical day. And we are likely to be getting them from the phone we carry around in our pocket. The reason ADHD medication usage is exploding is that many, many more of us need the dopamine hit it provides, just to let us feel normal. The only way we can focus at all is when we have continuous access to high levels of dopamine stimulation. Ironically, as Dr Bradley observed at the dawn of the ADHD drug revolution, that is not a cure for anything if we don’t also address the underlying problem.

In Dr Bradley’s day the long term fix was to remove the chaos from the kids’ environment so as to allow their dopamine system time to reset. In our day it is that, plus removing the cloud of dopamine stimulants pouring from everybody’s phone. Our dependence on stimulant medication is a warning. The number of us now needing it just to live a normal life is accelerating wildly. But it will not cure anything, it just gets us through the day. If want a different outcome, we need to start acknowledging the cause of dopamine resistance and immediately acting to stop it. It’s time for phones to become once again, well, just phones.

September 30, 2023

Yes sugar really does make kids hyper, but not for the reasons you think

By David Gillespie | Addiction, Sugar, Teens | No Comments

I really thought we had moved on from the kind of codswallop I noticed being recycled in the paper last weekend. But apparently not.

In a feeble attempt to encourage higher levels of sugar consumption someone had the hoary old ‘sugar doesn’t make kids hyper’ story dusted off and wheeled out. It is, no doubt, stored next to the ‘chocolate is good for you’ piece that gets regurgitated every Easter.

The article looks at the science and concludes its not the sugar making your kids crazy it’s the food colouring or it’s parents telling the kids they will go nuts and the kids obliging or it’s that it’s an exciting event like a birthday party. In short it’s anything but the sugar.

Dietitian Miriam Raleigh is worried a mistaken belief that sugar makes kids hyper may lead to parents, gasp, limiting their children’s sugar intake. The article even goes on to suggest that doing so may result in the child developing an eating disorder. Miriam decides the solution is to eat sugar in moderation, a phrase that means exactly nothing. Or more precisely and conveniently, means you eat as much as you think is moderate.

So, are we wrong to demonise sugar for its effect on kids? Of course we’re not. It is very bad for them. It causes tooth decay, obesity, type 2 diabetes and kidney disease (at least and its benefits are, well, nothing. So whether it causes hyperactivity is really neither here nor there. Even so, it does.

Sugar is addictive. Like all addictive substances, we crave the dopamine hit it delivers. Each hit increases our tolerance for dopamine until we just can’t focus or function without those dopamine hits. When we have less dopamine than our addicted brain thinks we need, we struggle to focus and we become hyperactive, symptoms that look a lot like ADHD.

Does sugar make our kids more hyperactive immediately after consumption? No. If anything, it is likely to calm them down as they get the dopamine hit they have been craving. Does it create symptoms that look a lot like ADHD in the longer term? Yes, because the dopamine acclimatisation makes us dopamine deficient in between sugar hits. And when we are dopamine deficient, we struggle to hold a coherent thought in our head for even a few seconds. We acquire the attention span of the proverbial gnat and the meditative practices of a Mexican jumping bean.

If we add other sources of dopamine into the mix like gaming or social media, then we can significantly accelerate the effect of sugar. You can probably induce ADHD like symptoms in half the time if the kid is sucking down sugar while shooting his friends on Fortnite.

So no matter how many times you see this sugar is really not that bad chestnut recycled in the local paper, remember just one thing, its nonsense. Sugar is very bad for children (and adults) and it also makes them hyper. And no amount of moderation by dietitians or marketing by the sugar industry will change that.

March 18, 2023

Seed Oil Deception: The Untold Story of How ‘Heart-Healthy’ Oils Can Harm Your Body

By David Gillespie | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | 5 Comments

In a world where our choices dictate our health, a silent epidemic has been brewing – one that has gone largely unnoticed. It’s a story of the hidden dangers lurking in the most unsuspecting places, where the heroes and villains are anything but clear-cut. This is the story of seed oils and the biochemistry that connects them to the nefarious world of smoking and alcohol.

At the heart of this tale are yeast – single-celled organisms that make up the fungus kingdom. These microscopic creatures have mastered the art of survival, thriving by producing ethanol, a toxic byproduct that eliminates their competition. Ethanol, the same ingredient found in hand sanitizers and disinfectants, is also present in rotting fruits and vegetables, and it fuels our alcoholic beverages.

As humans, we’ve evolved defense mechanisms to deal with ethanol, starting with ADH, an enzyme that converts ethanol into acetaldehyde – a substance 30 times more toxic. But why would our bodies make such a counterintuitive move? The answer lies in time. By turning ethanol into acetaldehyde, we buy ourselves precious moments to convert the toxic substance into harmless acetic acid.

This delicate dance between ethanol and acetaldehyde has consequences. When acetaldehyde lingers in our system, it brings hangovers, nausea, and more severe health issues. Some people, particularly those of Northeast Asian descent, possess a genetic mutation that makes them more susceptible to the dangers of acetaldehyde. This “Asian Flush” may deter alcoholism but puts them at a higher risk for liver damage, dementia, and cancer.

The villainous aldehydes don’t stop at acetaldehyde. Our bodies also encounter acrolein, a cancer-causing compound produced when plants burn, such as in cigarette smoke. And then there’s 4-HNE, a lethal aldehyde derived from omega-6 polyunsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds, and legumes.

In the past, our consumption of omega-6 fats was limited. But with the rise of seed oils in the 19th and 20th centuries, we now consume over ten times the ancestral amounts. These oils, marketed as heart-healthy and endorsed by dietitians, have infiltrated our food supply.

From margarine to mayonnaise and even restaurant fryers, seed oils are inescapable. Our bodies create 4-HNE from these oils, but we also consume it directly when we cook with them, inhaling and ingesting a double dose of the toxic compound.

Like its aldehyde cousins, 4-HNE wreaks havoc on our DNA and proteins, leading to an array of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease, and cancer. In a sinister twist, 4-HNE even undermines our genetic defenses against cancer.

While smoking and alcohol consumption are not marketed as healthy choices, seed oils have been cloaked in a veil of “heart-healthy” propaganda. The dangers of aldehydes produced by these oils far outweigh those from alcohol and smoking. The science behind this may be new, but it’s not so new that our health authorities should be unaware.

As this story unfolds, it’s clear that we can no longer afford to ignore the hidden dangers of seed oils. It’s time to reevaluate our relationship with these omnipresent substances and reconsider the choices we make in the name of health.

February 12, 2022

Aldehydes cause cancer. So why are health experts telling us to consume them?

By David Gillespie | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | One Comment

No-one would suggest smoking or drinking are good for us. But recently scientists have discovered the biochemistry of how they cause harm has a lot in common with seed oils. The difference is you get a choice about how and when you drink or smoke, but seed oils are now an inseparable component of the food supply and we are being actively encouraged to consume them. Never before have so many been harmed by so few for so much money.

Yeast are single cell organisms which are part of the fungus kingdom. Like all organisms, their job is to win the replication game. Yeast win by killing the competition with their waste. When they turn sugars into energy a by-product is ethanol, a substance which is lethal to most organisms. This is why it is a primary ingredient in Hand Sanitizer and disinfectants used to eliminate bacteria and viruses. Ethanol is also found in rotting fruit and vegetables and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.

Fruit is a naturally rich source of sugar, so as it rots, yeast produce more and more ethanol. Any animal that eats overripe or rotting fruit needs to have evolved a defence mechanism against poisonous ethanol. In humans that defensive mechanism starts with ADH (Alcohol dehydrogenase), a group of enzymes which diffuse alcohol.

The ADH oxidizes ethanol into acetaldehyde, a Class 1 Carcinogen. At first glance this is not the smartest thing to do. Acetaldehyde is up to 30 times more toxic than ethanol. But we do it to buy time. The body diffuses an acutely toxic substance, ethanol, by turning it into a substance which while more toxic, takes longer to do harm. All being well, we use that extra time to oxidise the acetaldehyde to relatively harmless acetic acid (the primary ingredient in vinegar). We do that using ALDH (Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase) enzymes.

Acetaldehyde is the part of the process responsible for the consequences of alcohol abuse such as hangovers, nausea and ultimately liver damage and cancer. The longer it remains in our system, the worse and longer lasting those effects will be. We can however only process so much acetaldehyde at a time, so front loading the system by binge drinking means it stays with us for longer and does more harm.

For some people acetaldehyde can be even more dangerous. Up to 80% of people of Northeast Asian descent possess a mutation of ALDH which is less effective at diffusing Acetaldehyde. This causes a condition nicknamed the “Asian Flush”. Their face goes red, they become nauseous, and their heart and respiration rates increase. That reaction is sure to put you off the booze and the research shows people affected by Asian Flush are less likely to become alcoholics.

A similar logic is used with the drug Antabuse (disulfiram) which impairs ALDH, effectively causing Asian flush in people not otherwise affected. It makes people less keen on drinking and is sold as a treatment for alcoholism.

The downside to Asian Flush and Antabuse induced Asian Flush is that it happens because it is slowing down the disposal of an extraordinarily toxic aldehyde. So while they are less likely to become alcoholics, these people are more likely to suffer the consequences of aldehyde exposure such as liver damage, dementia, and cancer.

Acetaldehyde is not the only aldehyde we are likely to encounter and it is not the only one that ALDH can deal with. It also diffuses Acrolein, one of the primary cancer-causing aldehydes created when plants are burned. We are most likely to encounter acrolein in cigarette smoke but most smoke contains it. Even more importantly ALDH removes one of the most lethal carcinogenic aldehydes, 4-HNE.

4-Hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), first discovered in 1991, is created from omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Nuts, seeds and legumes and the meat of animals that eat those things are the primary sources of omega-6 fats in the ancestral human diet. Just as with limited ancestral alcohol and smoke exposure, our ALDH system has evolved to deal with the relatively small amounts of 4-HNE created by eating those foods.

But the modern diet contains a vast new source of those fats which dwarfs ancestral quantities, seed oils. The invention and introduction of mass produced, cheap seed oils during the 19^th and 20^th centuries has resulted in the average person increasing their consumption of omega-6 fats more than 10 fold, well beyond any evolutionary limit.

Seed oils are extracted from seeds (such as Canola/Rapeseed, Sunflower, Safflower, Grape, Corn, Almond, Cotton, Hemp and Sesame) or legumes (such as Soy and Peanuts). They all have one thing in common – very high levels of omega-6 fat. They are marketed as heart healthy vegetable oils and have received Dietitians’ seal of approval. This is why, since the 1990’s almost everything on the supermarket shelves contains it. And why everything cooked in a fryer in a restaurant or a burger ‘restaurant’ or a fish and chip shop is fried in it (although Maccas resisted Heart Foundation pressure until 2004 and KFC held out until 2012). Even the humble take-away sandwich is swimming in the stuff. It is in the margarine smeared on the canola filled bread and the primary ingredient of the mayonnaise or most other dressings.

Our body creates 4-HNE from the seed oils we eat. But that isn’t the only source. We directly consume it as well. 4-HNE is produced when food containing seed oils is cooked. If we are nearby when it is cooking, we will inhale it directly. And if we then eat that food we are, in effect, receiving a double dose.

Just like acetaldehyde and acrolein, 4-HNE is dangerous because, when it exceeds our ability to remove it, it reacts with DNA and proteins that are critical components of our cells. Accumulate enough damaged DNA or proteins and those cells begin to malfunction or die. This is why 4-HNE has (so far) been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, Stroke, Type II Diabetes, Liver disease and almost every form of cancer. It is so diabolical that when created or consumed in excess, it even alters the parts of our DNA which defend us against cancer. It not only causes the attack but also disables the defence.

Messaging around smoking and the consumption of alcohol is clear. They are not sold as health foods. And it is up to us to choose how much of these substances we are exposed to. ‘Heart Healthy’ Vegetable (really seed) oils are significantly more dangerous and yet have been relentlessly promoted by our peak health bodies ensuring they are everywhere in our food chain

Aldehydes produced by drinking and smoking are dangerous, but they are insignificant compared to those produced by consuming ‘heart healthy’ oils. The science on this is new but it is not so new that those we trust with our health should not be aware of it. And yet, they continue to behave like sales agents for the seed oil industry. This must stop now.