1st November 2018 A raised blood pressure, as a clinical sign, has always rather perturbed me. At medical school we were always taught – and this has not changed as far as I know – that an underlying cause for high blood pressure will not be found in ninety per cent of patients. Ninety per […]
Central arterial blood pressure (What is it, don’t like it. Pay attention it could save your life) It is a pressure that is measured, almost exclusively, by placing a cuff around one arm – usually the left. The cuff is then inflated to a point whereby all blood flow is stopped. If you have placed […]
Although I am most interested in the medical madness surrounding cholesterol lowering and statins, I have long been interested in the parallel ‘Looking Glass’ world of blood pressure lowering. During a recent on-line discussion, someone recently sent me a link to study from two or three years ago which re-ignited my interest in this […]
29th December 2023 The underlying forces In the last few blogs, I have been writing about the proliferation of guidelines, targets, and regulatory work in the NHS. Hopefully I have managed to give you a sense of how much time and effort these pile on to everyday work. Time and effort which eats away at […]
8th December 2023 Nothing can simply be ‘good enough’. Before beginning this blog, I thought I would introduce you to the first two laws of regulation ‘regulation-omics’: I know that many of the things that are obliterating productivity in the NHS are happening in all health care services, everywhere. A couple of blogs back I […]
20th October 2023 (With lessons from, and for, all other health services around the world) The Quality and Outcomes Framework The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) was to be the glittering triumph of Evidence Based Medicine. Many of the commonest and most deadly diseases afflicting humanity would be picked up early, then treated. Almost entirely […]
1st May 2022 [Lessons must be learned] I love the phrase ‘lessons need to be learned’. It always makes me laugh when I hear it. Usually intoned with a voice of great seriousness by the leaders of an organisation found to have made disastrous errors. It is right up there with ‘safety is our number […]
25th April 2022 [Until it died] Once upon a time I was a member of the General Practitioners Committee. A sub-committee of the British Medical Association that represents GPs. This was during a time when the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) system was being rolled out. There is hardly anyone working in the NHS, including […]
21st March 2022 Someone once said to me that I really must despise the pharmaceutical industry. There are certainly times when this is true, and my anger with them is sharp … and hot. But yet, and yet, I know many people who work in the industry, and they all seem nice, concerned about the […]
6th December 2021 Here I am on vitamins again. I don’t wish to give the impression that all I care about is vitamins. However, I have been thinking about them recently for various reasons. The first thing to say is that I do find it slightly strange that we have substances which are absolutely essential […]
4th November 2021 And so, after only thirty short years of research, my book on heart disease is finally finished, and is published today. Up to now my books, and blogs, have mainly consisted of telling people what does not cause heart disease. Or to be slightly more accurate, cardiovascular disease. Hint, it is not […]
16th September 2021 Bridging the gap between cardiovascular disease and COVID19 [Where two diseases meet] Having announced that I will not discuss COVID19 anymore, I am about to do so – at least in part. Yes, you may now be thinking… how can we believe anything this man says? However, I do have an excuse […]
27th January 2021 This blog was published on RT-com, after much discussion and a few changes. It can be seen here It took a few days. The editors were concerned about the fact-checkers having a go at it and demanding retraction. We went back and forward. I assured them that all my quoted facts were […]
3rd November 2020 [By helping them to lose weight] If you want to avoid dying of COVID19, one of the most important things you can do, if you are overweight, is to shed the pounds ‘….in the first meta-analysis of its kind, published on 26 August in Obesity Reviews, an international team of researchers pooled […]
17th April 2020 The government’s disregard of care home residents – old, sick people, acutely vulnerable to COVID19 – has been scandalous. As a GP, I regularly visit care homes. At one I visit, they recently had eight residents who died in a week, probably from coronavirus. But there’s no testing, so who could possibly […]
15th April 2020 I have known Steve Bennett for a few years now. He became a convert to the high fat low carb world (primal living and eating) and has set up Primal Living to promote this dietary message to the world, using his considerable financial muscle to do so. In the midst of lockdown, […]
22nd March 2020 I thought I should do a quick update on COVID-19, as some interesting and important information has been published in Italy. Looking at deaths in various age groups, underlying conditions etc. It can be seen here https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-COVID-2019_20_marzo_eng.pdf Points of greatest importance Far more men are dying than women, with a ratio of […]
18th March 2020 I thought I should say something about the coronavirus for readers of this blog. I need to state that the situation is fast moving, facts are changing, and I am not asking anyone to go against any current medical advice. Here, I am simply providing advice that I believe, currently, may be […]
17th January 2020 I thought I should write a blog on coronary artery calcification (CAC), as it has become the latest hot topic. CAC scans, and CAC scoring are now increasingly popular, and the results are worrying lots of people who wonder what they mean, and exactly how worried they should be. I get many […]
11th December 2019 Several people have asked me to comment on a recent Lancet paper ‘Application of non-HDL cholesterol for population-based cardiovascular risk stratification: results from the Multinational Cardiovascular Risk Consortium.’ which made headlines around the world. Here – for example – from the BBC website: What did the researchers find? People should have their […]
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 