# 87: Dr No-Smoke • Food: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly • Happy women are Healthy women • Homeopathic Tip: Football fever

Dr No-Smoke:

This week I went to the popular press for health news. Starting with England's best-selling newspaper, The Sun, I was impressed to see that Sir Richard Doll was mentioned. Now Dr Doll together with a Dr Hill actually were the first to prove that smoking causes lung cancer. They did this some 40 years ago and this changed the image of the smoker forever.
Now Dr Doll had some more interesting and more optimistic news for smokers and ex-smokers. If you give up smoking at age 30, you can return to having the same risk of serious disease as a non-smoker. If you give up at 50 you can reduce your risk of illness by half. So whatever your age, it's always worth giving up. Thanks Dr Doll, for furnishing us with proof of this. Good to see you in the news again.

Food: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:

Next I turned to one of the most popular monthly magazines of all time, The Readers Digest. On the front cover was emblazoned 'Foods That Harm. Foods That Heal'. I turned to page for inspiration only to find that the whole article (and therefore the cover story itself) was no more than an advertisement for a Readers Digest book by that very name. It's available from Readers Digest for �28.95 and will not be reviewed in this column. Anyway the Digest was generous enough to give a few healing and harming foods away in the current addition.

So, Reader's Digest foods that Heal include: Asparagus, chilies, grapefruit, Kiwi fruit and mushrooms and sweet potatoes.

Foods that you should consume only in moderation include: Pickled food, mayonnaise and smoked meats.

Happy women are Healthy women:

Now here is some really good news for happily married women: You have stronger hearts than your lonely and unhappy sisters. Yahoo news reports a very interesting study conducted by the men and women in white coats in Sweden. They took 600 women aged 30 to 65 and studied the health of their hearts over a ten-year period. They found that women under stress in their marriages had more arteriosclerosis and narrowing of the coronary arteries than women who were happily married. The study also found that the women who were socially isolated were more likely to suffer from diabetes and obesity. So listen to me all you beautiful young things: being happily married seems to be one of the best things you can do for your health.

How does one stay happily married though. No space for the answer to that one. Until next week then�

Homeopathic tip of the week: Football fever

Last night England played Portugal in the quarter finals of Euro 2004. I guess you know the result by now.

If you are an England supporter:

• Ignatia: If you are tearful and a bit hysterical about the result. And especially indicated if you are sighing a lot!
• Natrum muriaticum: If you are very sad but keeping your grief and disappointment to yourself.
• Nux vomica: If you've just had an awful night drowning your sorrows.

If you are a Portugal supporter:

• Coffea: the remedy for 'ailments from excessive joy'. But how can joy make you sick. Well it can and sometimes it does. If you were overcome with joy last night and now feel a bit under the weather for no reason (if you are hung over, then Nux vomica is your remedy) you should try a few doses of Coffea. If you can't sleep because you are so happy, Coffea, is very much the homeopathic remedy of choice.

Dosage: All the homeopathic remedies above should be taken in strength 6c, one pill three to four times a day.