Reader's letters - April 12

Last October, a Sunday newspaper reported that a leading author of a study from a Czech Republic university supposedly discovered that baked potatoes put us at risk of coronary heart disease.

This comes years after choosing them as the healthier option.

We are told that traditional heart disease risk foods are based on ‘flawed data’.

Experts then go on to explain that cheese and dairy products are good for us butwe should keep off potatoes, wheat, cereals and rice – food we’ve been consuming for centuries.

One has to agree with John Dyson (Stop telling us what to eat, Wigan Post, April 6) when we are constantly told one thing about certain foods then years later so-called experts state what we’ve believed to be correct is actually wrong.

Only recently, another expert reported that we don’t consume enough salt and by lowering quantities we’re not getting enough!

So what’s next, smoking is a protective factor against heart disease? Or eat as much food containing saturated fat as we can because it doesn’t harm us after all?

We must surely come to the conclusion that this so-called expert advice on foods that could supposedly harm us or are good for us is piffle!

Clifford Chambers

Address supplied

Marathon challenge

Keeping physically active is vital to maintaining a healthy heart.

However, last week we revealed new statistics which showed that 2.6 million adults in the North West are failing to meet the recommended level of physical activity, significantly increasing their risk of heart disease and early death. The North West has the highest level of physical inactivity in the UK.

In the UK alone, physical inactivity causes one in ten premature deaths from coronary heart disease, and one in six deaths overall.

So it’s never been more important to get your heart pumping.

But getting active doesn’t have to be difficult. With the British Heart Foundation’s MyMarathon challenge, you can complete the 26.2 miles in your own time.

You decide the place and you decide the pace.

More than 30,000 people of all fitness levels took part in MyMarathon last year, raising over £1m for the BHF’s life saving heart research. Why not take on the challenge this May and help give your physical activity a boost?

Every pound raised could help us accelerate the right against heart disease, and make a real difference to the 843,600 people locally who are living with its burden.

You can sign up to MyMarathon by visiting bhf.org.uk/mymarathon where you will find helpful tips and advice on how to get started.

Dr Mike Knapton

Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation

Come on, Corbyn, do us all a favour

What have North Korea, China, Russia, Turkey and now the United Kingdom got in common?

We all live in one-party states.

So come on Jeremy Corbyn, do the decent thing.

Richard Tandy

Address supplied

Independence Day on March 29

Now that the Prime Minister has said Britain will leave the EU on March 29, 2019, can the Prime Minister and her Government now declare it a national Bank Holiday? It would be great to call it Independence Day.

P Rhodes via email