Newsmax
Health Alert
Statins To Be Pushed for Healthy People
Thursday, April 1, 2010 7:07 AM
By Sylvia Booth Hubbard
The manufacturer of Crestor is planning to expand the market for its cholesterol-lowering drug to healthy people who do not have high cholesterol and are at low risk for heart problems. But using the drugs simply as a preventive has some experts questioning their safety.
Although statins are acknowledged as saving thousands of lives each year, the risks may outweigh the benefits in people with no risk factors. A recent Scottish study found that those who take statins increase their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 9 percent — a risk doctors would deem acceptable in a patient with high cholesterol in danger of heart attack and stroke. But is the risk worth it in healthy adults? healthy adults
Researchers at the East Texas Medical Center found that 66 percent of patients developed heart problems similar to those that can lead to heart failure after taking the statin drug Lipitor for six months, probably due to the statin's side effect of depleting the body's store of CoQ10.
Another new study showed that the statin drug simvastatin gives a one-two punch to the immune system. Italian scientists found that simvastatin (sold under the names of Zocor and Simvacor) hinders the ability of the body's immune cells to kill pathogens, and increases the production of cytokines, which trigger and sustain inflammation.
"There's a multibillion-dollar industry ensuring that you hear all the good things about statins," said Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego. Golomb is concerned about the effects statins have on mood and memory. "It's common to find patients on the drugs who report trouble finding the right word or forgetting what task they are supposed to be doing," she told the Daily Mail.
Golomb also had patients who were irritable, hostile, and had homicidal impulses. Other patients had cognitive problems while taking statins. "After a couple of months of statin use, one top accountant could no longer balance a checkbook and was fired."
According to the Mayo Clinic, additional side effects of statins include muscle pain, liver damage, digestive problems, and rashes or flushing.
What will be the criteria for prescribing statins? Instead of cholesterol levels being the main guideline used to determine who should take them, a test that measures the level of inflammation in the body will be part of the new criteria. Inflammation, some experts believe, is one of the causes of cardiovascular problems.
The new criteria will add 6.5 million Americans as candidates for the drugs. They include men aged 50 and older and women aged 60 and older who have no obvious signs of heart disease, but have elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) and one additional cardiovascular risk factor including high blood pressure, low HDL, and smoking.
The FDA's decision was based on the recommendations of advisory panels, many of whose members had close ties to the drug industry as paid consultants. And the statin study which showed the benefits of the CRP was led by Dr. Paul Ridker, the inventor of the test, and funded by AstraZeneca, the maker of Crestor, which gained FDA approval in February.
AstraZeneca could see billions in profits from the decision. Although some statin drugs will soon lose patent protection — for example, Lipitor in 2011— Crestor, the drug the FDA has approved for expanded usage, will remain under patent until 2016. And even Ridker himself stands to gain since, according to The New York Times, he receives royalties from the CPR test.
Ridker believes in the validity of his test, which will indicate which patients need statins to help lower the infection he believes leads to cardiovascular disease. “We found a 55 percent reduction in heart attacks, 48 percent reduction in stroke, 45 percent reduction in angioplasty bypass surgery,” Ridker said recently.
But critics say statin results have been misleading. Heart attacks occurred in 0.38 percent of patients who took a sugar pill and in 0.17 percent of patients taking Crestor. Even though there was a 55 percent difference between the two groups, the results actually meant that 500 people would need to take Crestor (at a cost of $638,000) for a year to prevent a single heart attack.
“The benefit is vanishingly small,” Dr. Steven W. Seiden , a cardiologist in Rockville Centre, N.Y. told The New York Times. “It just turns a lot of healthy people into patients and commits them to a lifetime of medication.”
© 2010 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
About the same time I received the above health alert, I also received information from Dr. David Brownstein:
Hi, I'm Dr. David Brownstein, editor of Newsmax's monthly health letter, Natural Way to Health.
I'm writing today to warn you off of harmful cholesterol-lowering drugs and to share the excellent results I've been getting with my heart patients in my medical practice in West Bloomfield, Mich.
Today, you'll learn what the cause is, and how to prevent it easily. But first you might want to know why this important information was kept from the public.
Sadly, it's because the drug companies couldn't patent a natural solution, but could make billions on cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins). Even though . . .
Cholesterol is not the culprit in heart disease. And taking statins won't prevent heart disease or heart attacks. And the proof of that is in the drug-companies own research . . .
In the ASCOT-LLA study that was used to promote Lipitor, 3 percent of the control group sustained heart attacks, while 2 percent of the Lipitor group did. The actual risk reduction was one percentage point, but Pfizer manipulated the math to report a 34 percent reduction.
Drug sales skyrocketed on this news, but do you see Pfizer's trick? The 2 percent figure is 34 percent less than 3 percent. If it had reported a one point reduction, Lipitor rightly would have been deemed a failure.
Also consider the JUPITOR study for Crestor. AstraZeneca used the same bad math to claim a 50 percent risk reduction, when the actual reduction was just 0.41 percent — essentially worthless!
Do you really want to hope you're the lucky "one in 200" who might benefit, while risking bad side effects like muscle destruction, headache, fatigue, irritability, memory loss, reduced sex drive, a weakened heart and increased risk for cancer?
Remember, when statin drugs lower cholesterol, they inhibit vitamin D production, which is important for cancer prevention. They also lower CoQ10, which is essential for heart health.
Here's a better approach to heart disease prevention, and unlike statin drugs, this one actually works . . . To prevent, stop, and reverse heart disease, all you need are three natural nutrients and the correct hormonal balance. The real cause of heart disease is a deficiency in vitamin C, combined with a shortage of two very important amino acids, etc.
(The following information is available on the internet)
In 1994
Linus Pauling alerts the world to the cause of heart disease: a chronic vitamin C deficiency. His unified theory of cardiovascular disease constitutes one of the greatest potential breakthroughs of modern science, yet this remarkable theory, and its intriguing claim that very low cost Lp(a) binding inhibitors will prevent and even dissolve arterial blockages, has been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry, the medical profession and the media.
The Only Patent for the Cure of Cardiovascular Disease
Pauling and Raths theory of CVD is so scientifically compelling and demonstrable that in 1994 they were granted the only US patent for the cure of cardiovascular disease. The non-prescription therapy advocated by Pauling and Rath has become know as the Pauling Therapy. The efficacy of the Pauling Therapy has been amply proven in thousands of cardiovascular patients who have been so fortunate to discover the remarkable treatment. The Pauling and Rath heart protocols in lower dosage levels will prevent cardiovascular disease and in higher dosages will actually reverse arterial plaque build up and reverse heart disease! Heart patients moving to the Pauling Therapy commonly avoid open-heart surgery and angioplasty. This is accomplished by dealing directly with the root causes of CVD and arterial plaque buildup. Almost without exception patients experience rapid recovery.
It's past time for each individual to do their own research! The greed of the "big pharma" is getting increasingly worse and we know that the FDA is not always looking after our best interest. The books mentioned below are a good beginning and then, please visit my ASH website. You'll find great information and a true story about ASH Founder Barney Folger.
Take some time to read Dr. Russell Blaylock's newsletter, Prevent a Heart Attack.
Vitamin C: The Real Story
In Vitamin C: The Real Story authors Steve Hickey, Ph.D., and Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., reveal the controversy behind this miracle. You'll discover:
How megadoses of Vitamin C have proved to be an effective antibiotic, anticancer agent, and a treatment for heart disease!
The vital role Vitamin C plays in protecting the brain and nervous system from stress.
Vitamin C is involved in breaking down cholesterol, lowering risk of gallstones.
Vitamin C is an antioxidant that fights free radicals, which can damage tissues and cause illness.
How Vitamin C even helps slow down aging.
People visiting a physician expect to receive clear, unbiased information about what ails them and how to treat it. More importantly, they need to know what they can do to prevent disease and how to make informed choices. But in many cases, doctors do not provide such information, and even doctors often are unable to evaluate the information to make the best decisions for patients.
Patients have become discouraged and often disregard the advice of conventional experts and supplement their diet with Vitamin C and other antioxidants. Often with better results! A sign that medicine has gone astray and is refusing, unable, or unwilling to respond rationally to the evidence.
Vitamin C Helps Prevent Heart Disease
Vitamin C is critical for a healthy heart. People need not be dying from coronary heart disease or strokes because evidence suggests that an adequate intake of Vitamin C and other antioxidants would prevent and possibly eliminate these fatal conditions.
Higher intakes of Vitamin C are linked to a reduced risk of cancer in many organs, including the mouth, stomach, and lungs. In many studies, increased Vitamin C intake associates with lower cataracts in the eye.
Health AlertStatins To Be Pushed for Healthy People
Thursday, April 1, 2010 7:07 AM
By Sylvia Booth Hubbard
The manufacturer of Crestor is planning to expand the market for its cholesterol-lowering drug to healthy people who do not have high cholesterol and are at low risk for heart problems. But using the drugs simply as a preventive has some experts questioning their safety.
Although statins are acknowledged as saving thousands of lives each year, the risks may outweigh the benefits in people with no risk factors. A recent Scottish study found that those who take statins increase their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 9 percent — a risk doctors would deem acceptable in a patient with high cholesterol in danger of heart attack and stroke. But is the risk worth it in healthy adults? healthy adults
Researchers at the East Texas Medical Center found that 66 percent of patients developed heart problems similar to those that can lead to heart failure after taking the statin drug Lipitor for six months, probably due to the statin's side effect of depleting the body's store of CoQ10.
Another new study showed that the statin drug simvastatin gives a one-two punch to the immune system. Italian scientists found that simvastatin (sold under the names of Zocor and Simvacor) hinders the ability of the body's immune cells to kill pathogens, and increases the production of cytokines, which trigger and sustain inflammation.
"There's a multibillion-dollar industry ensuring that you hear all the good things about statins," said Dr. Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego. Golomb is concerned about the effects statins have on mood and memory. "It's common to find patients on the drugs who report trouble finding the right word or forgetting what task they are supposed to be doing," she told the Daily Mail.
Golomb also had patients who were irritable, hostile, and had homicidal impulses. Other patients had cognitive problems while taking statins. "After a couple of months of statin use, one top accountant could no longer balance a checkbook and was fired."
According to the Mayo Clinic, additional side effects of statins include muscle pain, liver damage, digestive problems, and rashes or flushing.
What will be the criteria for prescribing statins? Instead of cholesterol levels being the main guideline used to determine who should take them, a test that measures the level of inflammation in the body will be part of the new criteria. Inflammation, some experts believe, is one of the causes of cardiovascular problems.
The new criteria will add 6.5 million Americans as candidates for the drugs. They include men aged 50 and older and women aged 60 and older who have no obvious signs of heart disease, but have elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) and one additional cardiovascular risk factor including high blood pressure, low HDL, and smoking.
The FDA's decision was based on the recommendations of advisory panels, many of whose members had close ties to the drug industry as paid consultants. And the statin study which showed the benefits of the CRP was led by Dr. Paul Ridker, the inventor of the test, and funded by AstraZeneca, the maker of Crestor, which gained FDA approval in February.
AstraZeneca could see billions in profits from the decision. Although some statin drugs will soon lose patent protection — for example, Lipitor in 2011— Crestor, the drug the FDA has approved for expanded usage, will remain under patent until 2016. And even Ridker himself stands to gain since, according to The New York Times, he receives royalties from the CPR test.
Ridker believes in the validity of his test, which will indicate which patients need statins to help lower the infection he believes leads to cardiovascular disease. “We found a 55 percent reduction in heart attacks, 48 percent reduction in stroke, 45 percent reduction in angioplasty bypass surgery,” Ridker said recently.
But critics say statin results have been misleading. Heart attacks occurred in 0.38 percent of patients who took a sugar pill and in 0.17 percent of patients taking Crestor. Even though there was a 55 percent difference between the two groups, the results actually meant that 500 people would need to take Crestor (at a cost of $638,000) for a year to prevent a single heart attack.
“The benefit is vanishingly small,” Dr. Steven W. Seiden , a cardiologist in Rockville Centre, N.Y. told The New York Times. “It just turns a lot of healthy people into patients and commits them to a lifetime of medication.”
© 2010 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
About the same time I received the above health alert, I also received information from Dr. David Brownstein:
Hi, I'm Dr. David Brownstein, editor of Newsmax's monthly health letter, Natural Way to Health.
I'm writing today to warn you off of harmful cholesterol-lowering drugs and to share the excellent results I've been getting with my heart patients in my medical practice in West Bloomfield, Mich.
Today, you'll learn what the cause is, and how to prevent it easily. But first you might want to know why this important information was kept from the public.
Sadly, it's because the drug companies couldn't patent a natural solution, but could make billions on cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins). Even though . . .
Cholesterol is not the culprit in heart disease. And taking statins won't prevent heart disease or heart attacks. And the proof of that is in the drug-companies own research . . .
In the ASCOT-LLA study that was used to promote Lipitor, 3 percent of the control group sustained heart attacks, while 2 percent of the Lipitor group did. The actual risk reduction was one percentage point, but Pfizer manipulated the math to report a 34 percent reduction.
Drug sales skyrocketed on this news, but do you see Pfizer's trick? The 2 percent figure is 34 percent less than 3 percent. If it had reported a one point reduction, Lipitor rightly would have been deemed a failure.
Also consider the JUPITOR study for Crestor. AstraZeneca used the same bad math to claim a 50 percent risk reduction, when the actual reduction was just 0.41 percent — essentially worthless!
Do you really want to hope you're the lucky "one in 200" who might benefit, while risking bad side effects like muscle destruction, headache, fatigue, irritability, memory loss, reduced sex drive, a weakened heart and increased risk for cancer?
Remember, when statin drugs lower cholesterol, they inhibit vitamin D production, which is important for cancer prevention. They also lower CoQ10, which is essential for heart health.
Here's a better approach to heart disease prevention, and unlike statin drugs, this one actually works . . . To prevent, stop, and reverse heart disease, all you need are three natural nutrients and the correct hormonal balance. The real cause of heart disease is a deficiency in vitamin C, combined with a shortage of two very important amino acids, etc.
(The following information is available on the internet)
In 1994
Linus Pauling alerts the world to the cause of heart disease: a chronic vitamin C deficiency. His unified theory of cardiovascular disease constitutes one of the greatest potential breakthroughs of modern science, yet this remarkable theory, and its intriguing claim that very low cost Lp(a) binding inhibitors will prevent and even dissolve arterial blockages, has been ignored by the pharmaceutical industry, the medical profession and the media.
The Only Patent for the Cure of Cardiovascular Disease
Pauling and Raths theory of CVD is so scientifically compelling and demonstrable that in 1994 they were granted the only US patent for the cure of cardiovascular disease. The non-prescription therapy advocated by Pauling and Rath has become know as the Pauling Therapy. The efficacy of the Pauling Therapy has been amply proven in thousands of cardiovascular patients who have been so fortunate to discover the remarkable treatment. The Pauling and Rath heart protocols in lower dosage levels will prevent cardiovascular disease and in higher dosages will actually reverse arterial plaque build up and reverse heart disease! Heart patients moving to the Pauling Therapy commonly avoid open-heart surgery and angioplasty. This is accomplished by dealing directly with the root causes of CVD and arterial plaque buildup. Almost without exception patients experience rapid recovery.
It's past time for each individual to do their own research! The greed of the "big pharma" is getting increasingly worse and we know that the FDA is not always looking after our best interest. The books mentioned below are a good beginning and then, please visit my ASH website. You'll find great information and a true story about ASH Founder Barney Folger.
Take some time to read Dr. Russell Blaylock's newsletter, Prevent a Heart Attack.
Vitamin C: The Real Story
In Vitamin C: The Real Story authors Steve Hickey, Ph.D., and Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., reveal the controversy behind this miracle. You'll discover:
How megadoses of Vitamin C have proved to be an effective antibiotic, anticancer agent, and a treatment for heart disease!
The vital role Vitamin C plays in protecting the brain and nervous system from stress.
Vitamin C is involved in breaking down cholesterol, lowering risk of gallstones.
Vitamin C is an antioxidant that fights free radicals, which can damage tissues and cause illness.
How Vitamin C even helps slow down aging.
People visiting a physician expect to receive clear, unbiased information about what ails them and how to treat it. More importantly, they need to know what they can do to prevent disease and how to make informed choices. But in many cases, doctors do not provide such information, and even doctors often are unable to evaluate the information to make the best decisions for patients.
Patients have become discouraged and often disregard the advice of conventional experts and supplement their diet with Vitamin C and other antioxidants. Often with better results! A sign that medicine has gone astray and is refusing, unable, or unwilling to respond rationally to the evidence.
Vitamin C Helps Prevent Heart Disease
Vitamin C is critical for a healthy heart. People need not be dying from coronary heart disease or strokes because evidence suggests that an adequate intake of Vitamin C and other antioxidants would prevent and possibly eliminate these fatal conditions.
Higher intakes of Vitamin C are linked to a reduced risk of cancer in many organs, including the mouth, stomach, and lungs. In many studies, increased Vitamin C intake associates with lower cataracts in the eye.
Now you can discover for yourself the amazing powers of Vitamin C. You'll discover the real reasons behind conventional medicine's rejection of Vitamin C and meet the pioneers of Vitamin C research who faced great resistance from the medical community when presenting their amazing results.
According to Thomas E. Levy, MD JD, a Board Certified Cardiologist, plaque formation is the body’s way of reinforcing and protecting weakened arterial walls. Attempting to stop plaque formation without correcting the cause of the weakened arterial walls can be as counter-productive as trying to prevent scabs from forming over a flesh wound. As long as the body senses a weakness or breach in integrity, it will continue to correct the problem. With a flesh wound the result is a scab; in an artery, the result is plaque.
Organized medicine prefers that we believe our health is genetically predetermined. If we believe we are powerless to correct health problems on our own, organized medicine can sell us drugs and surgeries to allegedly overcome our presumed genetic weaknesses. We have seen how altering lifelong eating and drinking habits, incorporating exercise into daily activities and developing a more positive attitude toward life can dramatically improve conditions presumed to be genetically "hard wired" into our bodies.
Advanced Scientific Health offers the formula, No Fool I to avoid the risk of heart disease (and more)...please check it out!
Jackie Whalen
ash_now@yahoo.com
http://www.ashnow.com/999751
DISCLAIMER: This information is for educational purposes only, and not intended to replace the orthodox physician-patient relationship. If you are sick, you are advised to consult a physician, and together, along with your newly gained knowledge, work toward the resolution of your illness.
According to Thomas E. Levy, MD JD, a Board Certified Cardiologist, plaque formation is the body’s way of reinforcing and protecting weakened arterial walls. Attempting to stop plaque formation without correcting the cause of the weakened arterial walls can be as counter-productive as trying to prevent scabs from forming over a flesh wound. As long as the body senses a weakness or breach in integrity, it will continue to correct the problem. With a flesh wound the result is a scab; in an artery, the result is plaque.
Organized medicine prefers that we believe our health is genetically predetermined. If we believe we are powerless to correct health problems on our own, organized medicine can sell us drugs and surgeries to allegedly overcome our presumed genetic weaknesses. We have seen how altering lifelong eating and drinking habits, incorporating exercise into daily activities and developing a more positive attitude toward life can dramatically improve conditions presumed to be genetically "hard wired" into our bodies.
Advanced Scientific Health offers the formula, No Fool I to avoid the risk of heart disease (and more)...please check it out!
Jackie Whalen
ash_now@yahoo.com
http://www.ashnow.com/999751
DISCLAIMER: This information is for educational purposes only, and not intended to replace the orthodox physician-patient relationship. If you are sick, you are advised to consult a physician, and together, along with your newly gained knowledge, work toward the resolution of your illness.
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