WHAT DOCTORS WILL SAY IN THE FUTURE

DOCTORS ON THE TAKE FROM BIG PHARMA

I just came across this article (Thanks, Adam Kosloff) about the sad state of affairs going on with prescription drugs and the irresponsibility of the drug companies that manufacture them and the doctors that prescribe them.  Here is an excerpt:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

Dr. Angell cites the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital. She explains:

“Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose, and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.” 

Read the full article here.


It makes me want to just go live on an island.  Sigh.  Or better yet, I will devote some time to getting the truth out to all of those who cannot go live on an island.

THE LIPITOR PARADOX - FUNNY AND SCARY AT THE SAME TIME

THE MCGOVERN REPORT - HOW DID THIS ALL START? - TOM NAUGHTON

How did the government first start telling us how to eat? Let Tom Naughton explain this travesty in a most entertaining way!

2010 DIETARY GUIDELINES: SAME OLD $#@%

This from Tom Naughton, maker of the movie Fat Head:

I started reading the USDA’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines this week. For those of you who hoped the federal government would finally wise up and dump the high-carb/low-fat nonsense … come on, you didn’t really expect that, did you?

Did you honestly believe the government would put together a panel of so-called experts who would announce that the government has been wrong for the past 40 years? That the food pyramid was a disaster? That billions of taxpayer dollars are subsidizing the same foods that are making us fat and diabetic?

Of course not. The new guidelines are, if anything, a perfect example of something I’ve said in previous posts (which I believe I may have borrowed from Milton Friedman): when a government program produces disastrous results, those results are offered as proof that we need to do the same thing again … only bigger!

That’s mostly what the new guidelines are: the same old $#@%, only bigger. Bigger reductions in saturated fat, bigger reductions in salt, bigger reductions in cholesterol, and of course (this is a government committee, after all) lots of “calls to action” … otherwise known as BIG federal programs to convince us poor fools in the public to finally start heeding their advice.

Yup, these folks know who’s spreading the polyunsaturated margarine on their whole-wheat bread. Nothing pleases the high-ups in government quite like being told that the only way we’ll stop runaway diabetes and obesity is to expand the role of government. It would never occur to these doofuses to wonder how our grandparents and great-grandparents managed to stay lean and (mostly) free of diabetes without a bunch of federal programs guiding their dietary choices. I’m not sure how I would track this, but I’d be curious to see how many of the committee members, after telling the government exactly what it wanted to hear, end up with juicy government grants for their future research.

There are hundreds of pages (this is a government committee, after all), and I probably won’t read them all for fear of putting a fist through my monitor. But so far, I’ve read the summary and several key sections … including the “methodology” section that explained how rigorously they collected, examined, and considered all the relevant science before writing their recommendations.

That’s hogwash. They cherry-picked the research. I’ve already seen a dozen or sentences that begin with “Studies show a moderate association between …” and end with a recommendation based on those moderate associations. If you read this blog regularly, you know what I think of association studies.

These people had their minds made up before they began. I knew that would happen when the committee was populated with nothing but the same old anti-fat, anti-salt hysterics, even though some top-notch researchers who’ve studied the benefits of carbohydrate restriction were nominated.

In a nutshell, here are the key conclusions:

* We’re getting fatter because we eat too much and don’t exercise enough, so we need to eat less and exercise more.

* Heart disease and Type II diabetes are caused by saturated fat, so the recommended intake of saturated fat should be reduced from 10% of total calories to 7%.

* Cholesterol also causes heart disease, so the daily limit should be lowered from 300 mg to 200 mg for people at risk for heart disease or diabetes.

* Salt also causes heart disease by raising blood pressure, so we need to severely restrict our salt intake.

* Carbohydrates are fabulous as long as they come from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and they’re essential for energy, so they should make up 45-65% of our diets.

* We consume too much sugar and need to cut way back. (Hey, they got one right!)

See anything new there? Any shift in thinking? Any recognition that our obesity and diabetes rates began going up around the same time we were told to go on lowfat diets? Any indication that the committee, in their efforts to examine all the relevant science, read anything by Gary Taubes or Richard Feinman? Any indication that they even examined the diets of Americans 100 years ago, when diabetes and heart disease were rare?

Nope.

There’s far more nonsense in the official report than I can or should try to tackle in a single post, so I’ll keep reading and start writing posts on the topic next week.

(To read the full article and comments, right click here.)

WES BERTRAND AND KEVIN KOSKELLA OFFER YOU A ‘HEALTHY MIND, FIT BODY’

Jimmy Moore is sharing a great interview with the team behind the book, blog and podcast called “Healthy Mind, Fit Body” on this edition of The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show. They are Kevin Koskella and Wes Bertrand! Listen in to hear this mustn’t miss episode full of fantastic discussions about all things low-carb living, including a look at the so-called China Study about vegetarianism.

This is a great interview, and I was particularly interested in their comments about Conventional Wisdom concerning topics like saturated fats, whole grains, the USDA food pyramid and calories.

An important topic that was brought up was the necessity of becoming our own health advocates, and not just blindly accepting what we hear about health and nutrition on the evening news.

Diabetes was discussed, as was the attitude of the American Diabetes Association that tells people to continue to eat high carb and low fat, which studies have shown to be the cause of Type 2 Diabetes, and to just take enough insulin to compensate for their "mysterious" blood sugar spikes.  Is the ADA seriously looking for a cure, or are they just advocating the use of drugs to manage symptoms?

The guys also talked about The China Study, and the fallacies that are being promoted by its across-the-board acceptance by vegetarians and vegans.  One interesting point:  New vegans will say that they feel so good eating a vegan diet, that it must be good for them.  However, it was pointed out, if a person goes from eating the Standard American Diet (highly processed food, high fat and high carb), switching to a vegan way of eating will certainly bring health benefits.  It's the long term health benefits or detriments that must be seriously considered and investigated before embracing such a radical way of eating, one that goes against the way that human beings have eaten since the beginning of the human race, and, indeed were designed to eat.

To listen to the interview, right click here.

MAY 12, 2009 - A VISIT TO THE "REGULAR" DOC

I went to my GP the other day, because I have been having badly swollen ankles for two weeks. He looked at my ankles, agreed that they were swollen.

I asked him why I had swollen ankles. He said he had no idea - maybe it's been warm outside? - and wrote me a prescription for a diuretic. Underlying cause? Doesn't matter. Just treat the symptom. Next!

While I was there, he asked when the last time was that I had a blood panel done for cholesterol, sugar, etc. Since I didn't know, he ordered one, and I did it yesterday, and got back the results today.

My blood sugar was right in the middle of normal, so that's good. My HDL is higher than good, so that's good. My LDL is higher than bad, so that's bad. The doctor's advice?

"Stop eating fat. Stop eating cholesterol."

(heavy sigh)

I just thanked him and left. He wants to see me back in three months to see if my new low fat, high carb diet is helping my cholesterol. I think I need a new doctor!