Category — Articles - Health Politics
High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol–The Fallacies
Blood Pressure
The key to understanding the blood pressure issue is that blood pressure is a biological marker, a non-specific indicator, not a disease or an entity to treat. But what we have is the treatment of abstractions, numbers that mean very little by themselves. It’s similar to the way that the public education system “teaches to the test” — we have medicine treating to the test, by the numbers.
The reference range for what’s considered “normal” is arbitrarily defined and keeps narrowing so that just about every adult can fit into some category of hypertension or pre-hypertension and given drugs. The “diagnosis” of hypertension rarely even includes any understanding of causative factors which might indicate different treatments for each individual, but the drugs are usually given in a rather hit-or-miss fashion.
There are so many factors that can cause false high readings, so the measurement itself isn’t reliable even if we were to assume that the test might be meaningful. We’re not cookie-cutter people, and blood pressure naturally fluctuates throughout the day under normal circumstances, and is supposed to rise under stress. But the one snapshot reading while under the influence of white-coat syndrome doesn’t represent anything that can be interpreted meaningfully.
Killing the messenger by lowering blood pressure usually doesn’t accomplish anything, and creates iatrogenic disease. Although sometimes the messenger itself can become dangerous and needs to be dealt with while the source of the problem is also being addressed. When blood pressure drugs are used judiciously in this way, they can be useful, but the majority of blood pressure lowering drugs are given irrationally.
Cholesterol
“The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times.” –George Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher
The cholesterol deception is politically driven like the blood pressure issue, and the cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are among the most expensive drugs on the market. No wonder it’s so important to get everyone on them! The studies that the medical establishment have used to connect high cholesterol to heart disease were flawed, and there’s really no evidence that high cholesterol is a medical problem.
Cholesterol is actually needed for hormone production, brain and nervous system function, and low cholesterol is much more of a problem than high. Cholesterol is protective of the artery walls, and the notion that the buildup of plaque causes atherosclerosis is unfounded. There’s never been any correlation seen between high cholesterol levels, even the dreaded LDL, and athersclerosis.
There’s a hypothesis that atherosclerosis is infectious in origin and that LDL cholesterol helps to inhibit dangerous bacteria. I would look to the reason why the bacteria are there in the first place and not blame the bacteria necessarily, but it’s clear that LDL is no culprit.
So when blood pressure or cholesterol are thought to be high, first we need to look at whether it really is high enough to be a meaningful indication, or whether what we’re looking at is normal fluctuation. When blood pressure and cholesterol are elevated beyond normal fluctuations, this is really an indication of the body’s effort to maintain homeostasis in the face of certain underlying disturbances. So neither “hypertension” nor “hypercholesterolemia” are actual diseases, but rather they should be seen as signs of some underlying disease(s) or imbalance that need to be addressed. Bringing the numbers down without addressing the underlying cause is often unwarranted.
The problem with statin drugs
The cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, besides depleting needed cholesterol, deplete many other important nutrients. The main nutrient depletions are COQ10, essential fatty acids, folic acid and vit B12.
CoQ10 depletion weakens the heart muscle, and can lead to congestive heart failure, angina or myocardial infarction. CoQ10 improves the efficiency of the heart and reduces hypertension, so CoQ10 depletion could have a range of adverse cardiac effects, as well as weakness of other muscles.
CoQ10 deficiency can also lead to gum problems (and gum health can improve amazingly with CoQ10 supplementation!)
In addition to the CoQ10 depletion, the bile acids are also reduced, so that the fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, F, K) may not be able to function properly. Lowering of cholesterol could lead to deficiency symptoms of those vitamins as well.
The bottom line here is that statin drugs interfere with the metabolism of ALL fats. The essential fatty acids are necessary for so many hormonal functions, bone health, the nervous system, etc.. And fats in general are necessary for brain function - no wonder that so many people on statin drugs are declining in cognitive function.
If you’re on these drugs and you want to come off them, work with a skilled naturopathic or nutritional physician to do this safely and assess your individual needs. Professional support is advisable, but you can be part of the decision making process and ultimately make your own choices. There’s more to the issue than “The number is high; we need to put you on a drug!”
For more information:
Cholesterol and Health
The Benefits of Cholesterol
Cholesterol Myths
Why the Treatment of Hypertension Has Become Such a Deplorable Fiasco
June 6, 2008 No Comments
The bottom line on Gardasil
Excerpt from Dr. Tim O’Shea’s article, HPV - The First Cancer Vaccine
The first problem is that there are over 100 strains of HPV, only 30 of which are even theoretically linked with cervical cancer. In addition, HPV is present in at least half the normal population, almost never causing any disease or problems whatsoever. Indeed, HPV has never been proven as a pathogen for any disease.
All that has ever been shown is that HPV is sometimes present in cervical cancer tissue, but as we know it’s also present in half the normal population. There is a total lack of evidence that cervical cancer appears in women with HPV more often than in women without it. And yet this will be the focus of the vaccine: to pretend to eliminate this ubiquitous virus from the body.
The second enormous impediment to credibility is that the average age for cervical cancer is 50 years. But the plan is to mandate Gardasil to 12 years olds. And the manufacturer is only claiming efficacy for 5 years. So using their own statistics, this makes the vaccine worthless in the long run, because by the time most females need immunity, it will have worn off long ago.
The original phrase used by Merck to link HPV with cervical cancer was “there is a strong connection.” How that phrase got transformed to ‘is the cause of’ in the past two years is more a matter of marketing than of science.
Gardasil’s not been evaluated for carcinogenicity or impairment of fertility. That’s great. They want to vaccinate all American 12 year olds with a vaccine for cancer and they don’t even know for sure whether or not it causes cancer, or makes the recipients infertile. Yeah, sign my kid up for that one.
November 17, 2007 No Comments
“Health” care: the question no one is asking.
What all the commotion is about with Michael Moore and the “health care system” is about corporate medicine - Big Pharma-driven medicine, or what we call conventional medicine. (Make no mistake - “alternative medicine” has been coopted, so it’s not really much different). Conventional medicine is a system based on authority, whoever the authority happens to be.
July 28, 2007 1 Comment
Hype vs. Discernment
Marketing of “health” products:
Hype vs. personal discernment
Everywhere we’re reading about health alternatives, with the morass of information we’re exposed to these days and the enormous growth of the health food and supplement industries. As consumers, we’re accustomed to marketing hype in advertising. We may not buy the car just because it looked sexy on TV!
But what about soy protein shakes, energy bars, calcium supplements, green tea, antioxidant supplements, low-carb diets, and the latest herbal product for weight loss? How do we judge these lotions and potions, products and programs, and apply reason over the hypnotic trance of marketing hype?
The key distinction that needs to be made is that product marketing of herbal and nutritional supplements, diets, etc., is often NOT based on real principles of herbalism, nutrition, etc.
The herbal formulas you find in the health food store are largely NOT the same formulas that a trained clinical herbalist would recommend for you, given your particular pattern of imbalance. You may have been labeled with the same disease name as someone else (arthritis, hypertension, etc.), but the herbs and nutrients that you need may be quite different.
The nutritional supplements that are promoted as generally good for everyone may NOT be appropriate for you, given your constitutional type and the particular imbalances you have at particular time.
Many of the offerings from this vast health industry are products of marketing more than anything else. Many contain irrational combinations of nutrients and herbs based on pseudo-scientific studies. Some are actually health damaging products that no one should use (for example products containing soy). Some are decent quality products that have been cleverly marketed to appear spiffier than they really are, or promoted according to the “more is better” philosophy.
June 18, 2006 No Comments
