Episodi
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Cardiologist Dr Scott Murray discusses what we can all do to reduce our risk of heart disease.
I think many of us are familiar with the idea that elevated levels of the so-called bad cholesterol - low density lipoprotein or LDL for short - have been linked to cardiovascular illness. (Although, in fact there is a group of scientists who argue that LDL levels are unconnected with heart disease.)
But Scott argues the picture is actually far more complicated than looking at just one factor and we need to be examining all the different elements that make up our cholesterol and fats. That means looking at our figures for total cholesterol, high density lipoproteins (HDL), LDL and triglycerides, not solely focussing on LDL to get an accurate picture of what is really going on in our bodies.
And there is one other factor that is often overlooked, but that Scott believes is an even bigger risk for heart disease and that is a high blood sugar level.
But as Scott reveals, the good news is that there is preventive action you can take.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Professor Sarah Berry discusses her research in personalised nutrition, which is uncovering the hugely varied effects different foods may have on one particular group or individual compared to others. This variability can be due to our genetics, metabolism or a number of other factors.
This may well have important implications for what, when and how we should eat.
For example, research is revealing that as we age, many of us have a worse tolerance for eating carbohydrates in the evening compared to earlier in the day. And while some blood markers have a strong genetic effect, many others can be heavily influenced and changed by lifestyle.
Professor Sarah Berry is a nutrition scientist based at King’s College, London University. She has particular research interests in individualised nutrition, food and fat structure, and the metabolic changes that happen after eating. She is also the chief scientist for the nutrition company Zoe.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Episodi mancanti?
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Dentist Dr Victoria Sampson argues that while the gut microbiome gets a huge amount of attention, funding and publicity, the oral microbiome gets almost entirely overlooked, yet it is essential to our health.
As she explains in this podcast, it has a close symbiotic relationship with our gut biome, so changing the composition of one affects the other. And perhaps most importantly of all, poor oral biome health is linked to a range of illnesses from heart disease and Alzheimer's to diabetes and arithitis.
Remarkably even our fertility can be affected by the health of our mouth. But the oral biome is usually disregarded as a possible cause or aggravating factor in all of these conditions.
So what can we all do to ensure that we have a healthy oral biome?
Dr Victoria Sampson is a co-founder of the Health Society.
In addition to all the standard dental services, the Health Society also offers oral diagnostic testing. And anyone wantting to join the waiting list for a new oral microbiome test which will shortly be available can do so here.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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This week's guest is Dave Feldman, who unusually for this podcast is not a doctor or a medical researcher, but actually a software engineer.
For a long time, there has been concern that those on a very low carb or ketogenic diet are pushing their cholesterol to very high levels. This is something that Dave experienced personally, when he noticed the amount of his so called bad cholesterol - the low density lipoprotein, known as LDL - shoot up on a keto diet.
And when he found others reporting similar findings, he decided to set up an organisation called the Citizen Science Foundation to fund research to find out exactly what was happening in the particular case of people like him - what he has labelled as lean mass hyper-responders - who are slim, metabolically healthy, but see their cholesterol levels rise substantially once they are on a ketogenic diet.
Perhaps surprisingly, the early results from this work, suggest that this group - contrary to what has been thought in the past - may not be endangering their health.
At the very least what this research clearly demonstrates is the large gaps in our current understanding of the role of cholesterol in metabolic health.
One illustration of this is an experiment carried out by one of Dave's colleagues, Nick Norwitz, who found that eating Oreo cookies while on a keto diet actually lowered his LDL cholesterol more than a statin, which I don’t think I need to add is not a recommended medical intervention!
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Oncologist Professor Robert Thomas, argues along with standard conventional cancer treatments - all of which he uses - that exercise and diet can play a pivotal role in improving cancer outcomes.
Robert says for the newer biological therapies which require a patient to have robust immunity, research is revealing that a healthier lifestyle and gut health, can improve the chances of responding well to these biological agents by 30-40%.
He discusses his research using supplements which have shown significant benefit in the treatment of cancer patients.. One of which has also been shown to help those with long covid. Here are the links to the supplements discussed in the podcast:
https://yourgutplus.com/prostate-research/
https://yourphyto.com/scientific-study
The podcast receives no financial benefit or incentive from any of these products or companies.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Author and journalist Tom Mueller, after meeting whistleblowers working in the US dialysis industry seven years ago, decided to investigate further. Tom argues what he found is a cautionary tale not just about dialysis, but about the impact on healthcare of for profit medicine in general.
His book How to Make A Killing: Death, Dollars and the Business of Blood, contains one statistic that I found extraordinary. Although the US has one of the most sophisticated health care systems in the world, around 22% of US dialysis patients die each year, yet in Europe the figure is only 9-12%.
So what could possibly explain this?
How to Make A Killing: Death, Dollars and the Business of Blood by Tom Mueller is published by WW Norton and Company.
Before publiciation, Tom contacted organisations, both private and public, involved in the US dialysis industry about the material contained in his book, most did not respond but DaVita one the two companies responsible for 80% of US dialysis healthcare did.
It said that its company’s principles rendered many of Tom’s assumptions incorrect or downright impossible.
It states that patient welfare is paramount in its facilities: “The first consideration in every decision we make is patient safety….We are committed to providing a comfortable, therapeutic environment for all patients.”
Tom Mueller's work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere. Previous books include Crisis of Conscience, a cultural history of whistleblowing and fraud.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Investigative reporter Michael Moss has spent many years uncovering just what it is about processed and fast food that makes it so hard for many of us to resist.
This is the final podcast of three that I am doing in conjunction with the International Food addiction Consensus conference held on 17th May.
Michael says he now believes from his decades of research, that particular combinations of flavour, texture, fat, protein and carbohydrates can create food that has the potential to be addictive.
He argues the evidence is clear and believes the food industry is facing the same challenges the tobacco industry once faced, when it argued cigarettes were not addictive.
Michael Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He's a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. And he's written two best-selling books about processed and fast food, the most recent is Hooked: Food, Free Will And How The Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions (US title) published by Random House; Hooked: How Processed Food Became Addictive (UK title) published by Ebury Publishing.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke discusses how addictive substances like alcohol and drugs cause our dopamine levels to rocket, and reveals - perhaps surprisngly - that highly processed, high sugar food can also have a similar effect on our brains. This is the second podcast of three that I'm doing in conjunction with the International Food Addiction Consensus conference held in London on 17th May.
Anna argues we've transformed our world into a place of overwhelming abundance, where we're constantly bombarded by triggers - whether that's food, drugs, social media or other addictive substances that continually stimulate high dopamine release in our brains.
She believes we're becoming addicted to pleasures that make us sick. Anna reveals the neuroscience of food addiction; the impact of constant dopamine hits to our brains; the value of a month long dopamine fast; and what we can all do to lead healthier, more balanced lives.
Dr. Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Rob Lustig discusses whether it’s really possible to become addicted to food, and if it is, does that change how we view those who struggle in their relationship with food?
In our conversation, Rob argues that the phrase "food addiction" is a misnomer, and that the real issue is food additive addiction. He says all the medical evidence suggests that two additives drive this - sugar and caffeine. And while foodstuffs such as fat and salt may make our food more palatable or enticing, they are not in themselves addictive.
In a staggering figure, Rob reveals there are 600,000 foods in the American food supply and 74% of these contain sugar. Over half of all sugar in the US diet is found in processed foods. And frequently where America leads, the rest of the world follows...
This is the first podcast of three that I am doing in conjunction with the International Food addiction Consensus conference being held in London on the 17th May. Each will feature a different speaker from the conference.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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In the last few decades, there has been a huge increase in allergy and allergic reactions, but why? Just what has changed in our health and environment to bring this about? Consultant NHS allergist Dr Sophie Farooque discusses one of the biggest puzzles in medicine.
For example peanut allergies were almost unknown before the 1990s, but today it and other food allergies are much more common. Sophie reveals the best thing to do to stop a child developing a food allergy is - perhaps counter intuitively - to ensure that from an early age, they are exposed to a wide variety of foods, including potentially hypoallergenic ones.
And Sophie discusses how children with eczema are at increased risk of developing a cascade of other allergies, and what parents and doctors can do to minimise this risk.
She explains why if you are allergic to one cat you will probably be allergic to all, but why that’s not necessarily the case for dogs. It turns out that cat allergen is one of the most powerful allergens of all, and remarkably resilient. Amazingly, it has even been found in Antartica.
And for those parts of the world where it's the start of spring and many are starting to suffer from hay fever, she explains why she recommends nasal rinses and steroid sprays, but says patients should stay away from nasal decongestants and hay fever steroid injections.
The link below gives the BSACI's (British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology) advice on early weaning to avoid food allergy),and the BSACI website also contains lots of other information about allergies in general.
Preventing food allergy In your Baby
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Jason Fung argues that much of what we think we know about weight loss is simply wrong.
Jason says that the critical factor in losing weight is hormones - not calories. He believes calorie counting is an overly simplistic approach. And that actually dieting may be the worst thing you can do, because it slows your metabolic rate which actually makes it harder to reduce weight in the future.
Jason argues medical science reveals that we all have what is effectively a fat thermostat in our bodies that tries to keep our body within a particular weight range. Try to reduce weight below this and our metabolism will do its very best to sabotage our diet, making it harder for us to lose weight and easier for us to regain it.
If that’s the case, is there anyway we can reset this internal fat thermostat, so that we can lose weight? Or are we doomed forever to be caught in a vicious circle of dieting and weight gain?
Jason argues there is a solution. And it involves both changing what eat and when we eat.
Jason who is based in Toronto, Canada, is a kidney specialist and an expert on intermittent fasting. He believes that many of today’s chronic medical issues are related to diet and obesity. And says that a dietary problem needs a dietary solution. He is the author of a number of best selling books, the scientific editor of the Journal of Insulin Resistance, and the managing director of the nonprofit organization Public Health Collaboration (Canada).
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Beth Zupec–Kania is a dietician and nutritionist, who has spent over 30 years developing very low carb - otherwise known as ketogenic diets - to treat a range of both physical and mental health conditions. She has worked with many of the leading neurologists and psychiatrists pioneering this field.
I heard Beth speak at a conference Metabolic Psychiatry: Understanding How Modifying Metabolism Can Create Mental Health last November. I was very keen to get her on the podcast, because I’ve now done several episodes about the use of ketogenic diets to treat different illnesses. And so many people have asked me about the practicalities of following this dietary approach, so Beth seemed the perfect guest to discuss these issues.
She explains her particular keto strategy. Critical to this is transitioning slowly to avoid what is sometimes known as "keto flu"; the role of medium chain trigleride oils, MCT for short; and the inclusion of Beth's own specially designed smoothie recipe. The podcast will be making Beth's recipe available to all mailing list subscribers a week after the podcast has gone live.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Barbara Mintzes and Dr Joel Lexchin, have recently published a review paper on the weight loss drug Wegovy (generic name semaglutide). They discuss it and the new generation of similar obesity medications.
The hype surrounding this new class of drugs has been huge, but is it justified?
These pharmaceuticals are called glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists or GLP-1 for short. They work by stimulating cells in your intestines to release a natural hormone called GLP-1 that tricks your stomach and your brain into thinking you’ve just eaten a large meal.
Clearly, obesity is major problem in countries across the world, but as Barbara and Joel reveal although these drugs do achieve a significant weight loss, weight gain is common once the medication is stopped.
And like any drug there are side effects, common ones include headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, and constipation. Rare reported side effects include pancreatitis and increased heart rate. Currently, the European drug regulator, the EMA is reviewing data on the risks of thoughts of suicide and self-harm associated with GLP1 medicine. It is analysing around 150 reports. It expects to report on its findings this year.
So exactly what are the risks and the benefits of these drugs, and who should take them?
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Mark Horowitz discusses why psychiatric medication has turned out to be far harder to stop than any one expected.
For Mark, this is as much a personal as well as a professional interest. For as a patient, at one point he was taking five different psychiatric drugs. Ironically, although Mark was working in London at the Institute of Psychiatry, he found the mostly useful information about deprescribing came - not from the medical profession - but from peer support websites.
This experience has driven his research and interest in safely stopping psychiatric medication. He, along with Professor David Taylor, has just written a new handbook The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, providing step-by-step instructions on how to effectively stop all commonly used antidepressants, benzodiazepines, gabapentinoids and z-drugs.
One of the key findings from this work, is that it is essential to taper off the drugs much more slowly than patients have previously been advised. And perhaps most surprising of all, is how a small amount of medication can have a completely disproportionate effect. In some cases, a 1mg dose can have nearly half the effect of a 20 mg dose, which means patients may have to taper far more gradually as they move down to smaller and smaller amounts of a drug. A process that may need to take months or even years.
The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines, Gabapentinoids and Z-drugs (The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines Series) by Mark Horowitz and David Taylor, published by Wiley-Blackwell will be available from 15 February 2024.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede argues that the medical profession has completely underestimated the huge impact of diet on our mental health.
In her new book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, Georgia reveals improvements we can all make to our diet, and in particular, three different dietary approaches for those looking to improve their mental health.
She suggests that early results from a range of trials using this approach to treat conditions from bipolar disorder to schizophrenia, show a much great effect, in fact 6 to 10 times that seen in any comparative drug trial.
Georgia believes a metabolic evaluation should be standard practice for every patient seeking psychiatric help.
In her own practice, this approach has enabled her to reduce the medication many of her patients take and in some cases allowed them to come off all medication all together.
Ironically, the psychiatric drugs used to treat many of these mental health conditions, which Georgia argues can also be useful, can at the same time actually worsen metabolic health, which can then negatively impact brain health.
So just how does a psychiatrist - or indeed any doctor - balance the benefits and risks of treatment?
Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind by Georgia Ede is due to be published by Yellow Kite books on 30th January 2024.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Lisa Sanders, writes a column called Diagnosis in the New York Times magazine, which was the inspiration for the Fox medical drama House, M.D. .The show in which Hugh Laurie, playing Dr Gregory House, regularly managed to diagnose the most obscure of medical conditions.
But today Lisa has arguably a rather tougher challenge than Hugh Laurie ever faced, she’s recently become the Medical Director of Yale's Long Covid Multidisciplinary Care Center. Long Covid can affect multiple systems and organs in the body, and finding effective treatments so far has proved extremely difficult.
However, Lisa reveals several approaches that it does appear can help at least some patients.
She argues that we need to see long covid not as entirely new phenomenon, but in the context of many other post-acute infection syndromes such as ME/CFS or flu. Controversially, Lisa suggests that it needed enough doctors to get sick from long covid for the profession to start taking these syndromes more seriously.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Dr Robert Lufkin argues that modern medicine hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to the underlying causes of diseases, and has tended to treat symptoms instead.
And in a controversial new book Lies I taught at Medical school, How Conventional Medicine is Making You Sicker and What You Can Do to Save Your Own Life, published by BenBella books, as evidence for his claims, he points to the epidemics of chronic disease, we are now seeing in the industrialised world.
In the US in 2010, 16-21% of adults had two or more chronic diseases. Today, shockingly, the figure is 40%.
Rob explains what needs to change and why he believes medical teaching gets a number of pivotal facts so wrong.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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This is the second episode of a two parter about a new investigation into the drug thalidomide, so if you haven’t listened to part one, please do go back and listen to that first.
Thalidomide is one of the greatest medical catastrophes of the 20th century. It’s now thought to have been responsible for around 100,000 miscarriages and disabled children.
In this episode, journalist Jennifer Vanderbes reveals the second half of the story. The result of six years of research, resulting in her recent book: Wonder Drug: The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal.
After thalidomide’s launch in 1957 by the Germany company Chemie Grunenthal, four years on, doctors in a number of countries, are becoming increasingly concerned about the drug’s effects.
In Australia obstetrician, Dr William McBride, having delivered several disabled babies in mothers who were given thalidomide, starts to conduct animal experiments and becomes convinced the drug is linked to the disabilities he is seeing.
While in Germany, geneticist Dr Widukund Lenz's analysis of babies whose mothers have taken thalidomide, produces what he believes is a clear evidence that the drug is very far from safe. The devastating disabilities being caused in new born babies, include a shortening or absence of limbs; hands and feet that don’t fully form; and damage to ears, eyes, brain, skeleton and internal organs.
So the pressure to take the drug off the market grows.
And in the States, further children will be harmed as unbeknownst to the FDA, the drug has been dispensed by over one thousand doctors. This is despite the fact that it has not been approved for use, a development which will add further heartbreak to the tragedy. In total, Vanderbes estimates that five million doses of thalidomide were distributed in America.
Jennifer Vanderbes Wonder Drug: The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal is published by Harper Collins.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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It was one of the greatest medical tragedies of the 20th century.
In 1957, a new wonder drug was launched in Germany. It was marketed as an astonishingly safe sedative. Tragically, this could not have been further from the truth. For this was the drug thalidomide, and it would end up being responsible for around 100,000 miscarriages and disabled children.
This week’s guest, journalist Jennifer Vanderbes, in a forensic six year investigation has uncovered compelling and shocking new information about warnings that went unheeded, test results that were misrepresented, and uncovered scores of potential victims who have never before been recognised as harmed by the drug.
One of the heroines of this narrative is a dogged and committed FDA reviewer Dr Frances Kelsey, who sceptical of the drug never approved it for US use. However, as Vanderbes reveals in her new book: Wonder Drug The Hidden Victims of America’s Secret Thalidomide Scandal, published by Harper Collins, although the drug was never sold in the states, the medication was sent out to 1,200 doctors to be used in what were termed clinical trials. These physicians then passed on thalidomide to other colleagues.
But the FDA later described these not as a clinical trials - but a marketing scheme. Which as Jennifer reveals, means, tragically, there are also American babies born with birth defects likely to have been caused by thalidomide.
Had early safety signals been acted on or investigated, thousands of families and babies could have been spared unbelievable heartbreak.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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Kim Witczak's life was changed for ever one tragic day in 2003 when her husband Woody killed himself. Several weeks earlier, Woody, who did not have a history of depression or mental illness, had been prescribed the SSRI anti-depressant drug Zoloft (generic name sertraline) for his insomnia. Kim sued the drug company Pfizer for wrongful death, later settling out of court. Pfizer did not admit liability.
Since Woody’s death 20 years ago, Kim has become a committed advocate for safer medication. She campaigned for stronger safety warnings to be put on SSRI drugs. And in 2004 and 2006, labelling in the US was changed to include a black box warning on antidepressants regarding the risk of suicidality in young adults.
Today Kim, as a consumer representative, sits on the (Food and Drug Administration (FDA) psychopharmacologic advisory board committee, which recommends whether a new drug should be approved or not.
She argues that safety is not given a high enough priority by the FDA and explains why she thinks the system is failing. Kim says that for the sake of both patients and doctors it's essential this changes.
Kim is the co-founder of Woodymatters, a non-profit dedicated to advocating for a stronger FDA and drug safety system She is on the board of directors of National Physicians Alliance and MISSD (Medication Induced Suicide Prevention in Memory of Stewart Dolin). And Kim is also an active member of the DC-based Patient, Consumer, and Public Health Coalition that aims to ensure that the voice of non-conflicted patients and consumers is represented in healthcare and FDA related legislative issues.
The host of the podcast, Liz Tucker is an award winning medical journalist and former BBC producer and director. You can follow Liz on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lizctucker and read her Substack newsletter about the podcast at https://liztucker.substack.com
If you would like to support this podcast you can do so via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/WhatYourGPDoesntTellYou or via PayPal at https://www.whatyourgpdoesnttellyou.com/support/
What Your GP Doesn’t Tell You has been selected by Feedspot as one of the top 20 UK Medical Podcasts https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_medical_podcasts/
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