passionate obsession with Fair Play: CVD

 Preface

"Society is always taken by surprise by any new example of common sense." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wrote this book because I have a passionate obsession with Fair Play. I wrote this because of the suffering I see as a result of the lies and deception by a drug industry that has become too powerful for your own good.

I will show you that based on hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles (and I have used only a fraction of the articles available) and common sense, we are on the wrong path. Cholesterol is not the great killer it has been made out to be and the statin  drugs that treat cholesterol are not the great saviours they are touted to be. Based on all the latest independent studies there is absolutely no benefit, but even with the industry biased studies, the benefit, at best, of taking these drugs is around one percent absolute risk reduction-not the 20%, 30% or even 40% benefit the industry claims. These higher claims refer to relative risk, which is very different than actual or real risk reduction that you and I normally talk about. However, this is irrelevant as all the recent independent research shows no benefit at all. Far from what the industry would like you to believe, the side effects of these drugs outweigh any potential benefits and can include everything from mental decline and muscle wastage to diabetes in tens of thousands of people. Worst of all, patients believe that they are getting something that is going to reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke-and they are not. The false hopes promised by pharmaceutical companies often result in patients not taking any other steps that could actually save their lives (besides taking a pill that may or may not help at all). The dependence on a self-serving industry to deliver good health outcomes means interventions such as stress relief, exercise or promotion of dietary strategies are ignored; this does not serve the interests of the population.

We are literally lied to and deceived by the pharmaceutical industry, which has taken the reins of the medical industry. The pharmaceutical industry is so big and powerful that it controls not only the medical system but also the regulators who oversee it.

I would not write such scathing words and attacks on the medical industry if I were not 100% sure of what I am doing. The information I present to you in this book is supported by thousands of scientific journal articles researched and written by medical and health professionals. All it takes now is a quick visit to any Internet search engine, entering the term "cholesterol deception," (see the list at the back of the book) and you will see a list of eminent cardiologists, doctors, professors, health and medical researchers all supporting what I have written. I am not a "crackpot" professor locked up in a laboratory somewhere; I am a humanitarian-focused academic with a large public presence and reputation at stake.

There are still many medical professionals who will deny the validity of this information or at least try to ignore it. There are many reasons for this that I will cover throughout the book. After discussing this topic with a local GP, he agreed with me but was not willing to put his name up as a testimonial simply because he wanted to "stay below the radar." Many GPs I have talked with agree with me but are afraid of being singled out by the drug companies and the various medical boards and professional groups. What type of medical system have we created? If the doctors do not stand up to the pharmaceutical industry now they will, sooner rather than later, lose the respect of the public. GPs have a unique and respected place in our community but it will last only if they put their patients first. This book is not an attack on GPs, we have the best GPs in the world and I respect them and hold them in the highest esteem. This book is an attempt to help them break free from the pharmaceutical lies and deception.

It will become very clear as you read this book that some doctors, scientists and drug companies have not been acting in the best interests of their patients or the public- sometimes in ignorance, sometimes as a result of arrogance and sometimes because of vested interest. It is time we take control of our own health. 

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." -Rene Descarte

The Great Cholesterol Deception: The shocking truth about cardiovascular disease.

The Great Cholesterol Deception: 

 THE GREAT CHOLESTEROL DECEPTION: 

Chapter 1 - Introduction

The shocking truth about cardiovascular disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the U.S., Australia and other Western nations accounts for between 30% and 40% of all registered deaths each year. It is the single biggest killer.

However, since the advent of cholesterol- lowering drugs, cholesterol has become "public enemy number one" and has wrongly taken all the blame for the increase in CVD. There is widespread belief that the lower one's cholesterol, the healthier he or she will be. The world has become fixated on lowering cholesterol through medication.

Unfortunately this has led to a lot of misinformation and misdirection in treating the real illness. As a result, deaths from CVD continue to rise.

Have the experts lied to you?

This focus on medication to lower cholesterol can be dangerous or even deadly, particularly since the overwhelming evidence shows that CVD is a result of lifestyle and dietary choices that lead to inflammation. CVD is no longer considered a disorder of lipid (fat) accumulation, but rather a disease process characterized by low-grade inflammation of the vascular (artery) lining and an inappropriate wound healing of the blood vessels. It is similar to a low-grade wound on your skin that does not heal but it is on the inside. There is now extensive and rapidly   growing evidence that inflammation, which is what you get with every wound, plays a critical role in all stages of CVD, ¹,²,³,⁴, It is not a disease of cholesterol or cholesterol accumulation; it is a disease of inflammation. Treating cholesterol is treating the symptom.

CVD is an inflammatory illness linked with many inflammatory conditions including diabetes, psoriasis,Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, periodontal disease, sleep apnoea, and chronic kidney failure. The common link is inflammation.

One of my students recently remarked that when she was a trainee nurse in the cardiovascular ward, she could not believe the rates of chronic inflammatory diseases of patients there who suffered from not one, but multiple inflammatory diseases. We are living in the inflammation age. A person with CVD   very likely has underlying inflammation and, as a result, many other inflammation-related health problems, not just high cholesterol.

So, when treating CVD, one should also treat all these related diseases. However, as a culture we don't. Modern medicine has become one-dimensional and unable to look at the big, multi-dimensional picture. We treat cholesterol and we continue to get sicker. More people suffer and more people die from CVD and a raft of other inflammatory illnesses.

Only when we treat the inflammation and stress on the body do we treat the illness.

Modern medicine has failed

The best way to describe the medical field's obsession with cholesterol is as a decades- old failing protocol, hanging by a thread and looking for more science or another change in the cholesterol theory to justify it. The whole basis of using statin drugs to lower cholesterol in the body is a chameleon theory. It keeps changing to suit the argument. There is no evidence that cholesterol causes heart attack or stroke even if you include HDL, LDL, VLDL or any thing else. There is just no science to support it. But it keeps changing to suit the pharmaceutical market place and keep its sales up for just another year or two to make a bit more money. Modern medicine has focused too much on the economics of health care and has lost sight of the real goal: to prevent and reverse illness.

The promotion of a drug-dependent cure for high cholesterol by multinational pharmaceutical companies has done nothing to stem the pain and suffering caused by chronic illness. Medical institutions have failed miserably to turn around chronic illness despite billions of dollars spent each year.

As a result, our population is over-medicated, our health system is financially strained and no one is actually healthier. The tragedy is that CVD is a totally preventable illness. The promotion of a drug-dependent cure is the real global epidemic.

A few people make lot of money

One would think the medical institutes, with billions of dollars, would have already figured out that their approach to CVD does not work. It is time we told the medical institutes to stop wasting their money and resources in feeble attempts to keep the pharmaceutical industry alive. The challenge for each doctor is to open his or her mind to a different way of thinking, one that could save the life of a patient. Isn't that worthwhile?

Unfortunately, illness has become one of the most profitable businesses of the 21st century. Too many big companies earn too much money on chronic illness to have any interest in disease prevention. Profit is made from treating an illness that is not cured. In Australia, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme has risen by 10% each year since its inception, with no decrease in chronic illness. This is not sustainable and, worse, not working.

The whole system is flawed, starting from the philosophy of modern drug use to research right through to regulation and administering drugs. The pharmaceutical industry now defines much of the medical profession's practice. We have a compromised medical research and academic community that has become dependent on industry money for its existence.

In the chapters that follow, I will show you how the pharmaceutical industry's financial and marketing influence extends to federal regulatory agencies, professional organizations, medical journals, continuing medical education, scientific researchers, media experts and even consumer advocacy organisations.

The power exercised by the pharmaceutical industry has created conflicts of interest that have undermined the credibility of medical research and education. As a simple example, a quick visit to any medical journal website will more than likely come up with an advertisement for a drug. This excessive power has, in fact, undermined ethics. It has even undermined the credibility of the front-line GPs who see the patients. As a whole, GPs have become the retail arm of the pharmaceutical industry.

Looking at the moon through a microscope

Unfortunately, the information presented here is seen only by those who want to see it. Most health professionals do not scan the medical journals to find problems with the drugs they are recommending. In fact, it is human nature to surround oneself with things that will support one's belief system. Such fact-finding efforts would be a serious blow to the heart specialists who have been led to believe that these drugs are really beneficial. Medical professionals specialising in heart disease remain narrowly focused on lowering patients' cholesterol with a disregard to the morbidity and mortality at the other end of the spectrum. They are looking at the moon through a microscope, rather than looking at the big picture. They look at only one little spec and ignore the huge multidimensional, interrelated picture of health and wellbeing. The medical profession, pharmaceutical industry and the general public are consequently still sheltered from this view.

If we don't treat the illness itself, we will need more drugs

By not treating the illness, we get into a vicious cycle of prescription drug dependence, in which people begin with one drug then another, then one to manage the side effects of the first and, within a few years, may be on three, four, five or even more drugs. One person I know started on statins to lower cholesterol and is now on seven pharmaceutical drugs, half of them to manage the side effects of the other drugs. Many people are now on multiple drugs and have never felt worse. It is likely that all they had in the beginning was normal cholesterol. They have gone from being normal to being caught in a cycle of pharmaceutical drug addiction because they trusted their doctors who put the fear of fire and brimstone in them if they did not take the drug. Fortunately many of these people come off their drugs when we show them the facts and they find a doctor who understands what good health means. There are also many doctors who refuse to use these drugs.

It is time for the medicine industry to stop wasting money and resources on useless research and to adopt common sense strategies that will save lives. If this does not happen, then it is likely that the front-line doctors, the  general practitioners (GPs), will be dragged through the courts until it does change. GPs have a responsibility to give their patients the best treatment possible. If these drugs are not working, as I show in this book and in the scientific literature, and GPs advise patients that the drugs will reduce their risk by more than one percent, then GPs open themselves up to legal action if a patient has a heart attack or stroke. If, on the other hand, a GP advises her patient that these drugs have only a one percent benefit at absolutely best and explains the side effects, the patient is not likely to take the drugs-not when he or she can get much better risk reductions from simple lifestyle and dietary changes for less money and with no side effects.

There is hope

In the final chapter of this book, I will provide simple strategies, backed by science, for patients to reduce their risk of CVD without a strain on personal incomes or taxpayer budgets. The strategies are based on common sense and will have a 100% success rate of improving your health and reducing your risk of CVD without any drugs or negative side effects. Compare this to the zero or one percent offered by taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. All it takes is a willingness to change the way we think about these diseases.

In 1990, Dr Dean Ornish, a Harvard- trained physician, made medical history by showing that a combination of diet and other lifestyle changes could actually reverse artery blockages. His findings were published in The Lancet, one of the world's most respected medical journals. Every risk factor was reduced; even LDL cholesterol fell by 40%. After a year, each participant had an angiogram. Blockages in the arteries of the heart as well as blockages in the coronary arteries, which nourish the heart muscle itself, had actually begun to shrink. The arteries were opening again. This and other studies like it since should be celebrated every day as a cure for cardiovascular disease.

Since then, we have come a long way in nutritional and lifestyle science and can achieve even better results. That is why at the end of the book, I will give you some simple advice on what you can do to improve your health and really reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke.

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