The Harcombe Diet

The origins of beliefs about cholesterol & heart disease

* This note examines two research questions with original references of the time: i) How was any connection between cholesterol and heart disease first made? ii) Does eating cholesterol raise blood ...
Zoë Harcombe

Seventh Day Adventist (vegetarian) diets & cancer

* Loma Linda University has studied Seventh Day Adventists (SDAs) over many decades. * A recent paper using data from the Adventists Health Study 2 (AHS-2) examined associations between vegetarian vs ...
The Harcombe Diet

Banana, nutrition data

Please note that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) all-foods database is not precise and some numbers don’t add up exactly. It is a good guide rather than a precision tool.
The Harcombe Diet

Diet & Weight

Introduction We recorded a podcast with Dr Gary Fettke, which aired on 19th May 2025 (Ref 1). This is the ...
The Harcombe Diet

DIAMOND diet trial for type 2 diabetes

Many thanks to Ellen Calteau Registered Dietician for this week’s note. Ellen is the Food Addiction Resources Operation Manager for the PHC charity. She spotted a pre-print paper announcing a protocol ...
The Harcombe Diet

SAGE conflicts of interest

* As late as March 11th, 2020, the UK government and medical officers issued practical and minimally disruptive advice to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. * On March 16th, the now infamous ...
The Harcombe Diet

A new look at statins, LDL-Cholesterol & CVD

* Most papers presenting the benefits of statins have been done by the Oxford Cholesterol Treatment Trialists (CTT) team. They tend to present benefits of statins in relative risk terms – with claims ...
The Harcombe Diet

How statin drugs really lower cholesterol & kill you one cell at a time

(Jump to the Executive Summary at the end if you don’t want the full monty). This is a review of a book written by James & Hannah Yoseph entitled How statin drugs really lower cholesterol: and kill ...
The Harcombe Diet

Keys six countries graph

An excellent presentation was posted on Youtube on 12 February 2017 (try this if the first link doesn’t work). Just 22 minutes long, it is well worth a watch. The speaker, Professor Salim Yusuf, is a ...
The Harcombe Diet

COVID-19 – do masks help?

* The official positions from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the US Surgeon General and the UK Deputy Chief Medical officer are similar – you don’t need ...
The Harcombe Diet

The Rice Diet

* This week's note was inspired by a newsletter about a presentation (by Denise Minger) about a diet used decades ago for the treatment of obesity and other health conditions. * The diet was called ...