About Me

Hello and welcome,

Want to know who Dr Joe is? Read on…

Hello, I am Dr Joseph Amagada, otherwise known as Dr Joe. For some reason people tend to make a hash of my last name. I don’t think I have the most tongue-twisting last name…ever.

I’ve seen worse. But somehow it doesn’t roll off the tongue easily, so it was better to just go with my first name. At least informally anyway and run with that. It’s just easier and less problematic.

Born in the countryside in the Beatles decade, I have always been a shy dude and still remain so till this day. Wasn’t that exposed until my teens when I hit the city and boy, was that an experience. I felt dizzy and was like a rabbit caught in headlights. Bizarrely, I walked towards the headlights rather than away from it.

Little wonder I needed glasses in my late thirties. All that photo-exposure must have done some damage to my eyesight.

I have lived in 3 countries, the last one and current one being good ol’ Great Britain, where I still reside and ply my trade today. It is a little rainy and cold but I love it all the same.

There aren’t many places where you can walk in to a medical facility, receive 1^st class care and walk out without spending a dime or waiving a health insurance card. Not many and that’s just the start.

Having lived in both the developing world and the developed world, I believe I have great insights into health and healthcare on both sides of the divide.

What are my qualifications?

I am a Medical Doctor first and foremost and also a Gynaecologist & Obstetrician on the specialization level.

I have a Medical degree and on the postgraduate end, I am a Member and also Fellow of The Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists of Great Britain. Here’s the official RCOG website.

So, I go with these letters after my name, MBBS (MD) & FRCOG. Not showing off but to let you into a window of my cerebral achievements. Seeing as our relationship is virtual at least at the moment anyway, you may want to have a peek into my credentials.

Something else I should add is; I am also a Member of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine.

Whilst we are on the subject of academic achievements (I’m not one to show off, as you already know) but I thought I should mention that I haven’t sat on my bum whilst others were pushing the frontiers of medicine and science.

I have made one or two contributions too myself. Below are some of my published work in peer-reviewed journals (I am the author, Amagada JO, in those publications):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14675992
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610310001627164

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19003669
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610802378264?journalCode=ijog20

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16147705
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610400025952

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203653
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610410001661110

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15203637
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610410001660959

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12521436
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014436102760298881

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12521487
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014436102320261258

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16698650
Full text available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01443610600559909?journalCode=ijog20

So how did I come about this blog?

Well, I had become fed up of the way conventional medicine goes about managing some disease conditions. No, I am not dissing conventional medicine altogether. Just making statement regarding the state of affairs.

The emphasis has been to prescribe more and more meds.

Don’t get me wrong, some conditions will not improve without a good old dollop of pharmaceutical pills and that’s fine. However, there are lots of medical conditions that could do with a different strategy outside of conventional pharmaceutical help.

Do not blame your doctor by the way. It’s how we were brought up in medicine and in any case he has 10 more patients waiting to be seen by him/her outside the consulting room anyway.

He/She hasn’t got a lot of time. So, prescribe, prescribe and prescribe some more is what we are trained to do, until we get the patient to the promised land. It doesn’t have to be like that all the time though.

Orthodox medicine missing a trick?

Take for instance, type 2 diabetes. We tell the patient upon making the diagnosis. Watch what you eat, avoid sugars and do some exercise without any specifics. 6 months to a year later, no improvement and what do we do?

Prescribe Metformin. In the event the patient blood sugars still not improving which happens in 8 out of 10 cases, the next step will be to add a sulfonylurea med like glibenclamide, gliclazide or some other medication that suits our fancy. Blood sugar profile still not behaving, up we slap on Insulin. There, that should do it.

Insulin will probably sort the blood glucose levels out but at a huge cost. Not necessarily financially but physical and emotional cost to the patient.

What conventional medicine has forgotten to do there is neglect the root cause of the problem – Insulin Resistance. In this instance, all conventional medicine does is treat the symptom NOT the disease.

The root cause is Insulin resistance. And you can’t fix insulin resistance with medications. You may temporarily fix blood sugar levels in the very very short term with Metformin but not for long.

But you can fix insulin resistance with a complete overhaul of a type 2 diabetic’s nutrition and cleverly targeted exercise regime. It might take a couple of weeks or even months but it can be done. You just need to know the nitty gritty and commit yourself to the task.

I can tell you that if you can fix the patient’s insulin resistance, he/she will not need the glibenclamide, the gliclazide, the metformin or the pharmaceutical insulin for that matter.

I have now come to the realization that Hippocrates was right when centuries ago he said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

Reality check

My personal realization came about when the threat of having a 3^rd medication prescribed for me was looming in the horizon for my metabolic syndrome. I told myself, there has to be another way. Ain’t going to start a 3^rd medication.

If anything I should be thinking of coming off these 2 meds not adding more.

That’s how my journey started and it turned out to be a journey of optimizing my health NOT with more Big Pharma stuff but with little strategies that include altering my nutrition amongst other things.

Subscribe to Not-So-New Thinking

Essentially I had opted to move my frame of mind in the direction of Lifestyle Medicine. Yep, I am now officially a Lifestyle Medical Doctor because I truly believe that certain simple lifestyle measures can halt, reverse or prevent a lot of the major diseases killing us in the Western world.

Measures that move patients from the perpetual cycle of prescriptions and yet more prescriptions making them just a little bit better but never healing them completely to a mindset of enabling them take control of their health and jumping off safely from the jaws of poly-pharmacy.

Do you know what’s weird? All of these is not new. The science behind these measures has been around for a good while yet. Only not taken seriously. Even better these measures are being refreshed with new research. Old ideas, polished with new research evidence.

So most of what you will read here is the product of my personal journey towards optimizing my health. Sharing that with you is a privilege. Hopefully you will pick up one or two nuggets that you can apply to your own personal circumstance. This blog represents my own little contribution to the democratization of information powered by internet technology.

WebMD does the hydra-headed bits of conventional medicine and I’ll do the parallel stuff over here. But don’t be fooled, you will learn practical health tips that will move the needle (no pun intended) in the Wellness direction for you.

What makes this website unique?

The emphasis of my posts are about metabolism as a starting point
The manipulation of nutrition to our advantage
I write in-depth once I decide to cover a topic. I don’t believe you should leave this blog without a clear understanding of what you came here for.

So here we are. Come with me on the journey as I share science-backed tips that have helped me optimize my health in this wonderful new world of ours.

Above all else…Stay healthy and Have fun!

Oh, have I told you, I now have a You Tube channel? Yes, I do.

Want to go there sometime? Here’s the link.
My Book…
And do remember, I have authored a book on managing high blood pressure with Lifestyle Approach titled: Fix Your High Blood Pressure In 90 Days or Less. You should get yourself a copy. I wrote it meaning quality is guaranteed. Get a copy on US Amazon here or UK Amazon here or on Amazon India here.

Warm Regards,

Dr Joe

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