Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

In the run-up to the new year, Prof Patrick Holford of Teesside University has been promoting his “9-Day Liver Detox”. More on that later, but I thought it would be nice to start with some holistic health advice - advice that treats the whole person, instead of just targeting particular symptoms or organs in isolation. As Andrew Wadge (the FSA’s chief scientist) notes on his blog, if you have overindulged over the holidays there are better options than ‘detox’ pills and diets:

First, drink a glass or two of water (tap is fine, cheaper and more sustainable than bottled); second, get a little exercise - maybe a walk in the park - and third, enjoy some nice home-cooked food. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about ‘detoxing’ and most people seem to forget that we are born with a built-in detox mechanism. It’s called the liver. So my advice would be to ditch the detox diets and supplements and buy yourself something nice with the money you’ve saved.

Sounds fair enough to me. But, then, Holford offers an ‘alternative’ approach (more…)

A short break from Patrick Holford coverage (although I’ll come back to the good professor at the end of the post) to look at a much bigger fish - Google. Matt Cutts (prominent on Google’s anti-spam team) recently blogged about selling links that pass PageRank - and thus making search results less accurate. Matt uses the example of the potential damage caused by selling links on medical topics such as cancer. However, Google appears less concerned about selling adverts for unproven - potentially dangerous - cancer ‘cures’. Why does Google sell advertising to the snake oil pushers, and where does this fit in with Matt’s (well-justified) concerns about the pages that google are not paid to link to? (more…)

I’ve just read - on ArabianNews.com - that “Dr Patrick Holford, Britain’s best-selling author on nutritional health, has been drawing packed houses for his seminars at The Middle East Natural and Organics Expo which ended a three-day run at Dubai’s International Exhibition Centre yesterday (December 18).” According to Holford’s own CV, it’s not Dr Holford: the Teesside Professor of Mental Health and Nutrition does not have a doctorate and is not a medical doctor. Hopefully ArabianBusiness.com will be able to correct this mistake ASAP…

Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University and Head of Science and Education at Biocare frequently upbraids professionals and researchers for what he perceives as their lack of up-to-date research.

Holford’s 100%health newsletter for November 2007 is full of the usual inexactitudes and creative interpretations of quite straightforward research. He once again conflates allergies and intolerance and discusses IgG as if it is relevant to any such discussion. (more…)

Dr Crippen of NHS Blog Doc is alive and well; it is absurd that one should need to state this but a (hopefully) short-lived hoax is claiming that he is dead. Understandably there is some concern but Wat Tyler of Burning Our Money is a longstanding friend of Dr Crippen and he states unequivocally that there is no truth to this cruel story.

Like Mark Twain, the rumours of Dr Crippen’s death have been greatly exaggerated. [Update: Wat Tyler thinks that the Macca parallel is stronger]. (more…)

Another break from Patrick Holford coverage for an update on some Dore news: tribunal results, a vanishing research paper, and a wonderful quote. Firstly, the Dore research paper so ably fisked by Brainduck (and which, if you believe the research is good quality - I don’t - shows that Dore is not useful for a substantial proportion of (potential) clients) has now been removed from its previous location. Of course, I can’t know why - but would hope that Dore has realised the poor quality of the research, and is even now preparing to issue a retraction and a promise to do better next time.

Secondly, an employment tribunal considering a claim against Dore has found that a “woman born with deformities to her arms and legs after her mother took Thalidomide was subjected to harassment at work because of her disability.” Given that Dore claims to help people with various disabilities and specific learning difficulties, this behaviour is even less classy than it would be in most run-of-the-mill employers. (more…)

Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University and Head of Science and Education at Biocare may be still living out a boyish enthusiasm for the space race of his youth, or part of a tradition of thinking that adequate or appropriate nutrition for all is only possible with supplements. (more…)

Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University and Head of Science and Education at Biocare has an unerring sense for his endorsements (see, e.g., the qLink with the unconnected coil and the dLan that may enhance your exposure to EMR and YorkTest, the IgG food intolerance tests criticised by both the House of Lords and the ASA). Holford managed to procure some useful backing for the Food for the Brain project. One of the companies is Equazen. Equazen donated essential fat supplements to school projects. With an astonishing sense of inevitability, Equazen has just been criticised by the ASA and found to be unable to substantiate some of its advertising claims: e.g. “A Hi-EPA fish oil formula that may help maintain concentration levels and healthy brain development”. (more…)

As reported on HolfordWatch, Holford seemed very pleased by a Nutrition Journal article on multiple supplement users: Block et al: Usage patterns, health, and nutritional status of long-term multiple dietary supplement users: a cross-sectional study link [pdf]. We don’t think that the study is sufficiently good quality to justify the scale of Holford’s hyperbole - but, if one does view it as credible, it ‘proves’ that Holford is not taking enough supplements. Help him, please!  Nutritionism needs you! (more…)

Professors Patrick Holford and David Smith chose the Daily Record to announce their remarkable findings that Alzheimer’s Disease is preventable with just a “few simple diet and lifestyle changes”.

I may be new to Holford Watch but I am familiar with the Holford Test-Em Dose-Em style of Jeopardy. If the answer is, “Dose them with B vitamins” the question must have been, “What do you do after testing someone’s homocysteine levels?”.  And, what do you know, I think it has slipped its way into this article, masquerading as a “simple blood test”. (more…)