Losing weight on the diet? It won't last

More evidence of the futility of the obesity "war". The war is about control, not health. Controlling people gets a Leftist's rocks off

Scientists have come to a depressing conclusion for dieters: once you are fat, chances are you will stay so. They have found that while diets may help in the short term, the vast majority of dieters just put the weight back on afterwards.

Once people start to pile on the pounds in middle age their weight tends to continue "relentlessly upwards", according to a long-term study of 25,000 men and women.

Rather than concentrate efforts on diets, health campaigners should focus their efforts on stopping people getting fat in the first place, concluded the team from the Government-funded Medical Research Council.

Their work found that, while 12 million try a diet every year, only 10 per cent manage to lose a significant amount of weight. Of those that do, most will put it back on within a year.

They followed the lives of 5,362 men and women born in 1946, and 20,000 more born in 1958, who are part of the MRC's ongoing National Survey of Health and Development.

Rebecca Hardy, from the MRC, told The Sunday Times: "Both groups began increasing in weight in the 1980s and since then people have been increasing in mass all through life.

"For men it goes up steadily through life. For women it starts slowly and accelerates in the mid-thirties. Once people become overweight they continue relentlessly upwards. They hardly ever go back down. "A few lose weight but very few get back to normal. The best policy is to prevent people becoming overweight."

However, the team also said that while diets might not make much of an impact on the weighing scales, they often helped make people healthier by getting them to eat better foods and take more exercise.

About six in 10 adult Britons are either overweight or obese, a figure which is steadily rising.

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Can silk cure thrush?

This seems a remarkably silly study. Silk underwear was impregnated with antifungals and the reduction in thrush was attributed to the silk rather than the antifungals!

Ever wondered why Marilyn Monroe – wearing nothing but Chanel No 5 – preferred to sleep on silk sheets? Or why the mother of singer/actress Jane Birkin advised her: “When you’ve got nothing left… get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.”

New research suggests the sensuous fabric isn’t just practical shorthand for allure and intimacy, it also appears to be associated with healing qualities that range from easing the symptoms of the menopause, to anti-ageing, and, most recently, relieving recurrent thrush.

The study, a double-blind clinical trial at the University of Bologna, Italy, concluded that a new range of silk underwear dramatically reduced the itching and redness that can accompany persistent and recurrent vaginal thrush. This fungal infection is common, affecting three in four women at some point in their lives, and for one in 20 it will recur more than four times a year.

Typical treatment in persistent cases is with fluconazole (Diflucan), an anti-fungal agent.

The Bologna team asked half the women in its trial to try DermaSilk Intimo briefs, made from a special silk fabric developed by the Italian firm Alpretec.

The remaining 50 per cent wore cotton; neither group, nor their doctors, were told which fabric was being investigated, and the treated silk actually felt more like a cotton-type fabric than chic lingerie. After six months, about 90 per cent of the group wearing silk found their symptoms reduced, and recurrence of the infection was halved.

So how exactly could silk help? Candida albicans, the yeast that causes thrush, thrives in warm, moist conditions. The briefs are made from fibroin, a medical-grade silk that absorbs excess moisture.

It is also impregnated with an antimicrobial agent that kills a wide range of bacteria and fungi on contact, including C. albicans, and never loses its full activity even with regular washing. It should be pointed out that Alpretec funded the research, but the briefs are part of a clothing range that is now available on NHS prescription.

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