Orthopaedic Surgeon Dr Gary Fettke frustrated by the increasing number of diabetic patients' limbs  he was having to amputate, started prescibing low sugar diets to these patients. But then found himself sanctioned by the Australian medical board for giving nutritional advice. Fettke was told: "there's nothing associated with your medical training that makes you an expert, or authority on the field of nutrition, diabetes or cancer, you're not allowed to make any recommendations to your patients on nutrition". It would take nearly five years for the decision to be reversed. Fettke's belief ..read more

Dr Richard K. Burt,  a world leading pioneer who performed America’s first hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) to treat multiple sclerosis, discusses how he developed this innovative procedure and its future in the treatment of MS. While the treatment is only suitable for certain MS patients it can be life changing. The US’s National MS Society says there is growing evidence that HSCT may be highly effective for people with relapsing remitting MS who meet very specific characteristics. The society adds it can greatly reduce and potentially even end MS disease activity in some. But t ..read more

Dr Shilpa Ravella, a transplant gastroenterologist, argues that inflammation may be a common factor in many of the diseases we face today from heart disease to cancer. While our bodies' inflammatory response is essential in fighting off infections and viruses,  in her recently published book A Silent Fire: The Story of Inflammation, Diet and Disease,  Shilpa claims many of us are suffering from hidden low inflammation which may be at the root of many illnesses and reveals simple lifestyle changes we can make to reverse this. And one of the many surprising facts she reveals is that mo ..read more

Dr David Healy was one of the first psychiatrists to suggest that while in some cases the antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs may help prevent suicide, in other very rare cases, they might actually increase the suicide risk. So how does a doctor balance that risk? David also discusses the evidence from healthy volunteer trials, these are small trials that take place before the major trials and regulators can be unaware of these trials' results yet they often contain important information about a drug's potential side effects. And he also discusses the problems of sexual dysfunction that some peopl ..read more

Dr Michael Holick is a pioneer in vitamin D science and has spent a lifetime researching and exploring what he believes are its potentially life-changing benefits. He argues that across the world guidelines for the amount of vitamin D we need are simply too low. And that many of us, even those  living in a hot climate, will not be able to get enough vitamin D from sunlight alone. Dr Horlick contends that not only do we need vitamin D for bone health, we also need it for many other critical functions too. Without a sufficient amount, he says our immune system can’t operate effectively, and ..read more

Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr Georgia Ede is pioneering the use of low carb -  otherwise known as ketogenic - diets to help treat a range of mental illness from major depression to schizophrenia. An approach she believes could revolutionise psychiatric care in the future. She spent a decade treating patients with the standard approaches of medication and psychotherapy but became increasingly frustrated that she was not seeing the results she had hoped. So began to explore nutritional options and has now treated hundreds of patients using this approach. A recently published paper on whic ..read more

Dr Robert Lustig  argues sugar is fuelling an epidemic of chronic and metabolic disease, from diabetes and strokes, to cancer and heart disease costing hundreds of thousands of lives. He says in a view that some have seen as controversial that we need to see sugar not just as empty calories,  but as a chronic, addictive toxin. In this podcast, Rob reveals just what sugar does to our bodies. And he claims that while modern medicine has been highly effective in treating acute illness, it has failed in its treatment of chronic conditions, only able to treat the symptoms rather than curi ..read more

Welcome to Season Two of What Your GP Doesn't Tell You This week’s story is so extraordinary that the best selling spy writer John Le Carré used it as the inspiration for one of his novels. And indeed if it was a work of fiction it would be dismissed as too fantastical or improbable. To tell this remarkable tale, I am talking to whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri, who became concerned during a  trial about the effectiveness of a drug that she was using to treat thalassemia – an inherited form of anaemia. Nancy was threatened with legal action by the drug company Apotex - who were part fundin ..read more

Journalist Gabrielle Jackson reveals how the  research for her book Pain and Prejudice uncovered just how little medical science understands the female body. Astonishingly, it turns out that most of what we know about human biology comes from the study of men, male animals and male cell lines. Up until the 1990s, women were largely excluded from medical trials. The result of this is that there are many drugs in use today that were never trialled on women. And in fact, eight out of ten drugs that were taken off the market by the  US Food and Drug Administration between 1997 and 2000 ..read more

Dr Eric Topol, one of the world’s leading cardiologists, reveals how the smartphone has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and create far more targeted treatment for patients. Eric, who has been listed as one of the top ten cited researchers in all of medicine and has been voted the number one most influential physician-leader in the United States, explains the huge range of tests that phones can now carry out, from assessing kidney function to controlling asthma. And with technical attachments, phones can also do full body ultrasound scans, skin, eye and eye tests. All in real time and ..read more