The Wrath of Con

I have often said to my patients that the whole campaign about cholesterol is the biggest scam in medicine. This gigantic scam was set up by the man pictured to the left - Donald Rumsfeld. You remember him, right? He also brought you aspartame, the artificial sweetener. Under his influence it seems every doctor and every health plan has a quota of statin drugs that they must sell to every person they can. In some HMO's the doctor -now called a 'provider'- receives a demerit if he or she fails to prescribe a statin drug to all of their patients whose cholesterol is said to be too high. What is too high? When I was in medical school too high was over 230. Over the years since then, the number has been dropped lower and lower until now 'too high' is above 200. There is talk of lowering it to 190! Why the consistent attempt to lower what 'too high' means? Every 10 point drop is equal to $1 billion in new drug sales per year, that's why! For the most part, for most people cholesterol is not a real problem. I did have a patient one time whose blood was a milky white color when we drew it - he had a cholesterol problem! You probably don't. You have a problem with a health care provider who is under the thumb of Big Pharma. He's not working for you, he's working for them - the HMO and Big Pharma. You better escape while you still can. Read the article below and see what the consequences are for those who take the dangerous and unnecessary statin drugs.

British Medical Journal Exposes Statin Scam(NaturalNews)

To hear Big Pharma tell it, statin drugs are "miracle" medicines that have prevented millions of heart attacks and strokes. But a recent study published in the British Medical Journal tells a completely different story: For every heart attack prevented by the drug, two or more people suffered liver damage, kidney failure, cataracts or extreme muscle weakness as a result of taking the drug.

Statin drugs, in other words, harm far more people than they help.

Julia Hippisley-Cox and Carol Coupland led the study which examined data from over two million patients, including over 225,000 patients who were new statin drug users.

They found that for every 10,000 women being treated with statins, there were only 271 fewer cases of heart disease.

And yet, at the same time, the statin drugs caused 74 cases of liver damage, 23 cases of acute kidney failure, 39 cases of extreme muscle weakness and 307 cases of cataracts.

Statin drugs, in other words, helped 271 people but harmed 443 people. This demonstrates how they are wreaking havoc with the health of those who take them, causing damage that far outweighs any benefit they might offer.

Big Pharma's highly deceptive advertising implies that statin drugs help everyone who takes them. So if 10,000 people took the drugs, we're promised, heart attacks would be prevented in all 10,000 people. That's the implied message in the drug ads, anyway.

But this is just a wild exaggeration and distortion of the facts. Most drugs don't work on most people, and statin drugs only "work" on about 2.7% of those who take them. Yet they cause serious damage in about 4.4% of those who take them.

So if you take statin drugs, your odds of benefiting from them is less than 3 out of 100. But your odds of being harmed by them are more than 4 out of 100. For 96 out of 100 people, statin drugs do nothing except make the drug companies rich and pollute the waterways every time you flush the toilet.

Statin drugs, then, are basically a crap shoot with your health.


Keep the pharma profits rolling
From the point of view of Big Pharma, they have the added benefit of causing other diseases that often result in yet more drugs or medical procedures being prescribed. Kidney dialysis makes big money for hospitals, by the way. It's a multi-billion-dollar business all by itself. Statin drugs are therefore a way for the sick-care industry to recruit new patients into kidney dialysis, knowing that some percentage of statin drug users are going to end up with full-blown kidney failure.

What's really interesting about all this is how easy it is to fool doctors into prescribing statin drugs. Doctors mistakenly think these are miracle drugs, but they're never read the research. They've been convinced by drug reps, misleading medical journal articles and Big Pharma advertising -- and they bought it!

Mainstream doctors, you see, are perhaps the most gullible people on the planet. They'll gladly prescribe a drug that harms more people than it helps -- by the millions -- because they can be almost effortlessly swayed into pushing poison pills through "science babble" language used by drug companies to promote their pills.

Doctors are literally walking around today thinking statin drugs are such miracle lifesavers that some doctors openly talked about dripping the drug into the public water supply! That's how convinced they are about the drug's benefits. They think everyone should be taking statins whether they need them or not!

It's downright loony. But that's characteristic of western medicine, isn't it? Proclaim your poison to be "miracle medicine" while utterly ignoring the truth that those drugs harm far more people than they help (and they simply don't work on more than 90% of people who take them).


The statin scam
Statin drugs are a scam, plain and simple, and the doctors who prescribe them are puppets used by Big Pharma to sell high-profit drugs to people who for the most part won't even benefit from them. That this research exposing the truth about statin drugs even appeared in the British Medical Journal is a minor miracle all by itself, by the way. But it does indicate that the wall of lies constructed about statins by Big Pharma is starting to crack.

If the truth about statins were openly known, the drugs wouldn't be prescribed to anyone, and drug companies would be sued for billions of dollars for their false advertising and marketing manipulations.

Until that happens, just remember this: Any doctor who recommends a statin drug is a con man drug pusher. If they don't have the honesty to research the truth about these drugs and stop prescribing them, they certainly cannot be trusted with your health. If they're pushing statin drugs on you, they're really just working for Big Pharma, not for you, and they're not interested in real science and the real impacts of drugs on patients.

It brings up another hugely important question in modern medicine: Why don't doctors have the capability to question the false beliefs of their own industry? As you might have guessed, that's the topic of another story altogether.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...


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The Fat Tax

A 'Fat Tax' on junk food?

Sounds like a good idea - until you actually read the article and think about what it may really mean. Over many years the idea has been propagandized to the general public that the problem in the diet is fat. Along with this came a heavy dose of anxiety and fear that somehow fat in the diet made you fat, caused heart disease, high blood pressure and everything bad. Cholesterol, a natural fatty substance which the body produces in abundance, in fact the most abundant single substance in the body, was pointed out as being particularly bad, and almost everybody was in need of drug therapy for it.

The health issues around fat are very complex to a degree, but are simplified once we include whole natural foods in the diet in the proper amounts. When we do that then the fat balance in the body is corrected and health is restored.

But most people don't know that. And whole natural foods are not all that easy to find if you don't know where to look. But refined food products loaded down with all the wrong fats, especially the artificial ones, and some of the right ones too, but in the wrong ratios.

So now into this confused mess comes the idea of a 'Fat Tax' which would penalize people for consuming foods rich in 'fat' regardless of whether the food itself is healthy or not. From this moronic point of view there would be no difference between the wonderfully healthy fat ratios in raw whole milk and the completely artificially concocted fats in a highly refined processed food product such as Snack Wells.

'Fat tax' could be levied on junk food
A "fat tax" could be levied on junk food and sugary drinks in a bid to reduce obesity and reduce the deficit.

The Food Standards Agency is planning to consult on whether taxing such foods would encourage people to make healthier choices.
In much the same way as tax is applied to alcohol and tobacco the most processed food are likely to be targeted.

It is possible however that 17.5 per cent tax could be levied on high fat food such as butter and cheese.
All food is currently exempt from VAT.
The FSA fears that the nations excessive consumption of saturated fat is leading to increased numbers of deaths through clogged arteries and heart disease.
The scheme has met with opposition from consumer groups.
Julian Hunt, of the Food and Drink Federation told the Daily Mail: "It may be a perfectly sensible issue to debate but such a regressive policy would nothing more than create lighter wallets for consumers."
However some research has claimed a fat tax could save up to 3,000 lives per year.
Last year the British Medical Association only narrowly voted against putting a fat tax on chocolate.
However, research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that any fat tax would have a negative affect on poorer families and have a greater impact on their food budget than on richer families.

The Truth About Fats in the Diet

For as long as most of us can remember we have been hearing about the danger of eating too much fat in the diet. We have been warned that this will cause heart disease, cancer, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Doctors in white lab coats, TV ads, magazine articles and health gurus alike have chorused these warning until most of us just take it for granted that it must be true. So we purchase the low fat or no fat foods in our super market thinking that we are doing something great for our health and wellness. I know one Sister who served bean soup that didn't quite taste right. When I inquired about her recipe, I found out that she did not use any cooking oil! She thought it was bad!

We have also been led to assume that animal fat is bad and vegetable fat (or oils) are good. Or that fat in the diet makes a person fat! All of these misconceptions and misunderstandings need to be cleared up. The following article from our good friend Dr Mercola sheds a great deal of light on the subject. While I don't think much of his special diet per se, in general, the information he gives out is very helpful.

Enjoy. Learn. Share.

Saturated Fat is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease
Posted by: Dr. Mercola

February 25 2010
The saturated fat found mainly in meat and dairy products has been regularly vilified by physicians and the media, but a new analysis of published studies finds no clear link between people's intake of saturated fat and their risk of developing heart disease.
In the new analysis, which combined the results of 21 previous studies, researchers found no clear evidence that higher saturated fat intakes led to higher risks of heart disease or stroke.
A number of studies have linked the so-called Western diet to greater heart disease risks; that diet pattern is defined as one high in red meats and saturated fats -- but it is also high in sweets and other refined carbohydrates like white bread.
Sources:
Reuters February 4, 2010
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition January 13, 2010 [Epub ahead of print]


Dr. Mercola's Comments:
The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953 with Dr. Ancel Keys’ publication of a paper comparing fat intake and heart disease mortality, and the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued ever since.
The idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart became so ingrained in the medical and health community, anyone daring enough to question this dogma was automatically viewed as a quack, regardless of the evidence presented.
Instead, trans fats became all the rage and have since saturated the market.
But times are a-changing, and in many ways for the better.
Along with a new interest in reviewing the sanity of vaccinating against every microscopic foe under the sun, medical scientists have finally begun to take a hard look at the link between saturated fats and heart disease – only to find that there is none.
Additionally, by now many have realized that it’s the trans fat found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils that is the true villain, causing far more significant health problems than saturated fat ever could.
Yet Another Study Finds No Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease
Over the years, researchers have repeatedly failed to find the link between saturated fat and heart disease that Dr. Keys initially thought he had discovered, and this latest study is no exception.
When they pooled data from 21 studies that included nearly 348,000 adults, and surveyed their dietary habits and health events for anywhere from five to 23 years, they found no no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
Most likely, the studies that have linked the so-called “Western diet” to an increased heart disease risk simply confirm that sugar and refined carbohydrates are harmful to your heart health. Because although the Western diet is high in red and processed meats and saturated fats, it’s also alarmingly high in sugar and refined carbs like bread and pasta.
What I found most encouraging in this article was Dr. Eckel’s statement that “the thinking on diet and heart health is moving away from a focus on single nutrients and toward ‘dietary patterns’."
This is precisely the message that needs to get out. You simply cannot optimize your health while staring at individual ingredients or nutrients in your diet.
Whole foods – real food that has been minimally processed and manipulated – contain so many symbiotic micronutrients that work together to produce the end result. The moment you start taking these ingredients apart, you lose the overall nutritional value, and you change how the nutrients operate inside your body.
Take the Mediterranean diet, for example. It consists mainly of whole, fresh foods like fruits and vegetables, along with fish, whole grains and unsaturated fats like virgin olive oil.
This type of diet has repeatedly been found to help lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. And although it’s low in saturated fats, perhaps the most significant thing about the Mediterranean style diet is the absence of processed foods, which are loaded with sugars and dangerous trans fats.
So, essentially, a healthy diet is quite simply a natural diet of REAL foods. And that’s the type of “eating pattern” you’ll want to strive for, if you want to be optimally healthy.
Confusing the Facts About Saturated Fats
Part of the scientific confusion about saturated fats relates to the fact that your body is capable of synthesizing the saturated fats it needs from carbohydrates, and these saturated fats are principally the same ones present in dietary fats of animal origin.
However, and this is the key, not all saturated fatty acids are created equal.
There are subtle differences that have profound health implications, and if you avoid eating all saturated fats you will suffer serious health consequences. There are in fact more than a dozen different types of saturated fat, but you predominantly consume only three: stearic acid, palmitic acid and lauric acid.
It’s already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no effect on your cholesterol levels at all, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid.
The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise “good” cholesterol as much or more than “bad” cholesterol, you’re still actually lowering your risk of heart disease.
Yes, You DO Need Saturated Fat!
Foods containing saturated fats include:
Meat
Dairy products
Some oils
Tropical plants such as coconut and palm trees
These (saturated) fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet, and they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances.
When you eat fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.
Saturated fats are also:
The preferred fuel for your heart, and also used as a source of fuel during energy expenditure
Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid)
Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid)
Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)
The Link Between TRANS FAT and Heart Disease
Now, it is still clear that there is some association between fat and heart disease. The problem lies in the fact that most studies make no effort to differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat. Additionally, the other primary processed food that typically is associated with trans fat is sugar, specifically fructose.
What Ancel Keys, and other researchers have failed to do in their multivariate analysis is control for each of these two variables. If researchers were to more carefully evaluate the risks of heart disease by measuring the levels of fructose, trans and saturated fat, they would most likely find the true answer.
You see,fructose and trans fat known to increase your LDL levels, or "bad" cholesterol, while lowering your levels of HDL, known as "good" cholesterol, which, of course is the complete opposite of what you need in order to maintain good heart health. It can also cause major clogging of arteries, type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.
Your body needs some amount of saturated fat to stay healthy. It is virtually impossible to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet that has no saturated fat. What you don’t need, however, are trans fats and fructose in excess of 15 grams per day. Since the average adolescent is now consuming 75 grams of fructose per day, one can begin to understand why we have an obesity and heart disease epidemic.
Contradictory Results SUPPORT Nutritional Typing
Studies also clearly show that despite great compliance to low saturated fat diets, there is a wide difference in biological responses. The question is, what does this mean? Does it mean the studies are flawed? And if so, which ones?
Interestingly enough, perhaps they’re all “right,” because these contradictory results actually support nutritional typing, which predicts that one-third of people will do very well on low saturated fat diets (which supports the studies showing that they work), but another one-third of people need high saturated fat diets to stay healthy.
Healthy Fat Tips to Live By
Remember, you do need a certain amount of healthy fat, while at the same time you’ll want to avoid the unhealthy varieties.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply eliminate processed foods, which are high in all things detrimental to your health: sugar, carbs, and dangerous types of fats.
After that, these tips can help ensure you’re eating the right fats for your health:
Use organic butter (preferably made from raw milk) instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
Use coconut oil for cooking. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits. (Remember that olive oil should be used COLD, drizzled over salad or fish, for example, not to cook with.)
Following my nutrition plan will automatically reduce your modified fat intake, as it will teach you to focus on healthy whole foods instead of processed junk food.
To round out your healthy fat intake, be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.
Related Links:
The Truth About Saturated Fat
7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat
Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus