Well, after that in depth presentation by Peter I know what I am going to do!
Thanks to Peter Brukner - a Sports Medicine Doctor for presenting an informative "lesson" on the risks we face by getting fatter and the consequences. Also providing the actions we can take to avoid this.
How did he get to where he was? It all started where Peter, as a kid, had a huge love for sport (he wanted to be a cricketer for Australia), Sadly he realised that his talents did not measure up to his enthusiasm and thought he might make the switch to sports commentating. Seems that went done like a lead balloon with his Mum so off to Melbourne Medical School he went and got his degree. Initially he went into general practice but soon gravitated to his first love and took up sports medicine. This gave him a chance over the next almost 40 years to work across a number of sports - here is a list of those (might be some missing!)
1987 - started with Melbourne footy club (apparently, they hadn't won anything for 20 odd years but he turned them around!)
next stop Collingwood Footy club - (did I mention lead balloon before?)
After that he joined the Australian team at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 as a doctor and followed that as a team manager for the Athletics team at Sydney in 2000. He took the decision to stop travelling for a while and took a role as a boundary rider for ABC radio.
In 2010 he accompanied the Australian soccer team to the World Cup in South Africa. Post that he joined Liverpool FC as Head of Sports Medicine. Interesting anecdotes about the players - not least those about a certain Luis Suarez who seemed to have a Jeckyll and Hyde personality on and off the field!
2013 saw him return to his first love, cricket - he took on the lead medical role for the Australian Cricket team - he supported them through 50 tests. highlights included meeting the Queen (apparently not a fan of cricket!)
Finally back to AFL with Melbourne in 2020
So what about the topic of his presentation - getting fatter and sicker...
in 2012 Peter turned 60 (looking at him on Monday you would not have believed he was in his early 70's!) He had noticed that he had started to put on weight (evidenced by the photo he showed us) and also commented that his family had a history of Type 2 diabetes. So what did he decide to do - 4 things
- Get healthy
- have a low fat diet
- exercise regularly
- get his blood glucose down to normal levels
In face though he decided to experiment with what he called LCHF - Low Carb High Fat diet. He lost 13 KGs in 13 weeks and found increased energy and improved sleep.
Peter then gave us a good presentation of the goods and bads in diets, foods and no-nos. His presentation focussed mainly on significant reduction in Carbs and sugars (he called this the common denominator). a very interesting presentation and one which has given much food for thought (oooh is there a pun there somewhere?)
Thanks Peter for a very thought provoking presentation