Clean, Pure, High Quality Drugs
Drugs are reliable. Supplements are risky.
That's one of the primary arguments against the use of supplements.
Again and again we hear it from medical mainstreamers. Following their rock solid belief in conventional medicine, they tell us that we have no idea what we're REALLY getting in a supplement. After all, supplements aren't even regulated by the FDA.
But pharmaceuticals? They're regulated. They're pure. They're 100 percent dependable.
Oh really???
This past May, when Johnson & Johnson recalled 40 varieties of children's cold medicines due to bacteria contamination and other problems, the company closed the plant that manufactured the drugs.
Isolated incident? They wish.
Late last month, GlaxoSmithKline paid out $750 million to settle a criminal and civil complaint stemming from problems at a large manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico that produced many GSK products. The New York Times reports that the plant was "rife with contamination" for years.
At one time, about $5.5 billion worth of GSK products were manufactured there yearly, including Paxil, Avandia, Tagamet, and other best selling drugs. In addition to contamination, some lots of Paxil were actually missing the active ingredient. In other words, they were inadvertently making and selling placebo pills (at full price, of course!).
The lawsuit also reveals that an FDA inspection missed most of the problems at the plant. GSK promised to fix the problems that were caught, but then didn't follow through.
There's your good, solid FDA regulation and dependable drug purity--out the window!
In a statement from GSK, executives expressed regrets about violating good manufacturing practices.
I'll bet that's the least of their regrets.
Eight years ago they sent their quality manager, Cheryl D. Eckard, to Puerto Rico. After examining the plant with a team of quality control experts, Eckard reported multiple violations, including contamination in the water and air systems, and a lack of sterility of some intravenous drugs.
When Eckard pressed senior managers to recall certain lots of drugs, they not only ignored her, they fired her.
That turned out to be a $750 million blunder.
Eckard filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company. All the beans were spilled. The plant was closed in 2009. Eckard won her suit last month and will collect a $96 million award.
You know as well as I do that it likely doesn't stop at GSK and Johnson & Johnson. The industry that has a bad history for its marketing, research and business practices now adds manufacturing to the list.
For once, I'm thrilled to know supplements aren't regulated the way drugs are. Makes me feel so much better about taking them!
ANGIOPLASTY….Does It Work?
"The landscape of medical history is littered with procedures not in the patient's best interest."
That's not just me saying that. It's actually a quote by an official from a Michigan hospital talking about using balloon angioplasty to place a stent in an artery.
Your doctor will probably describe angioplasty as "routine." But when you consider the full range of this routine (including drugs you'll be required to take), you can't help but wonder if it's really in your best interest.
Perception vs. reality
First, let's look at a realistic assessment of the "benefits" in having a stent inserted in an artery.
You may be surprised by this 2009 New England Journal of Medicine study that followed nearly 2,400 patients. Half the subjects received drug therapy (statins, aspirin, beta- blockers, etc.), while half received drug therapy and angioplasty.
After five years, researchers found no significant difference in rates of death, heart attack, or other major events. And this research confirmed similar results of a 2007 Department of Veterans Affairs study.
No significant difference. Hmmm...
Unfortunately, that message hasn't trickled down to patients.
In a recent Annals of Internal Medicine study, researchers surveyed more than 150 angioplasty patients and 17 cardiologists.
Nearly 90 percent of the patients said they believed the procedure reduced their heart attack risk. And almost three-quarters said they believed they would have a heart attack within five years without the angioplasty.
Compare that with these striking responses from cardiologists...
More than 60 percent said they believed that angioplasty benefits were simply to relieve symptoms--nothing more. And most amazing: When given two hypothetical scenarios where angioplasty provided no benefits, more than 40 percent of the doctors said they would still go ahead with the procedure!
Vicious cycle
Relief of symptoms such as shortness of breath is an important benefit for some angioplasty patients. But it might be difficult to talk many of those patients into having the procedure if they knew their heart attack risk would remain unchanged.
And, even worse, that they would have new risks to consider...
These days, stents are "drug-eluting." That is, they're treated with a drug that reduces scarring and inflammation of the artery that's sometimes caused by stent insertion.
But drug-eluting stents sometimes cause blood clots.
Yes, you read that right--your stent that is being inserted specifically to reduce your risk of blood clots might actually CAUSE a blood clot!
But don't worry. Your doctor already knows that. And that's why he will prescribe a blood thinner like Plavix or Effient. Unfortunately, all blood-thinning drugs increase the risk of bleeding. In fact, Effient comes with a black box warning about the risk of death due to "unexplained or excessive bleeding."
So in the end, this "routine" procedure can turn out to be fairly complicated. And for many patients, it becomes down-right dangerous--and provides no real benefit.
If your doctor suggests angioplasty, ask why. Unless it's to relieve some serious symptoms, figure out if there's a better option for you, like one that actually decreases your chance of having a heart attack.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Two major milestones -- both very grim -- will probably be passed sometime this year.
If the numbers for the past decade continue their rate of trending upward, 2011 will become the first year that the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting Service (AERS) will record more than 100,000 deaths linked to patent drug use.
And milestone two: This may also be the first year AERS will record more than half a million serious patient outcomes. (These outcomes include death, hospitalization, disability, etc.)
But don't expect to hear this reported on the news, or even buried on page 15 of your hometown newspaper. I predict no major news outlet will touch it because the media can't survive without drug company advertising.
Nevertheless, it's a newsworthy national disgrace, shared by our frighteningly inept FDA.
For some perspective, consider this: In 2000, AERS deaths totaled well under 20,000, and serious outcomes numbered less than 154,000.
20,000? That's completely unacceptable! But between 2000 and 2010, the total deaths number 452,000.
And that brings us to grim milestone number three: From 2000 through 2011, the number of deaths reported as adverse events will probably total more than half a million.
That's the population of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Completely unacceptable and mostly avoidable.
It's time for the FDA to step back, review these numbers and recognize what the fast-tracking, over-prescribing, drugs-at-all-costs mentality is doing to the people it is supposed to be protecting. Or that number will surely jump exponentially in the next decade too.
The following excerpts are taken from an article by Jenny Thompson at Health Science Institute
Supplement Can Reverse Diabetic Damage
In the wake of the Avandia scandal, I've been searching the planet for a better, safer and more effective way to reverse the damage caused by diabetes.
And you're not going to believe where I found it: Right in Big Pharma's backyard!
It's called benfotiamine -- and while it's sold as a prescription "drug" overseas, it's really just a synthetic derivative of ordinary vitamin B1, a.k.a., thiamine.
There's just one big difference between the two: While thiamine is water soluble, benfotiamine is fat soluble -- and that allows your body to absorb it five times more efficiently.
The result: a diabetes repair kit that puts the other Big Pharma drugs to shame.
Benfotiamine takes excess blood sugar and puts it to work -- restoring balance by allowing your blood cells to use the glucose instead of becoming overrun with the stuff.
But that's not even close to all it does. It can actually reverse the damage caused by high blood sugar, including kidney and nerve damage.
It's like getting your life back.
Now, if Big Pharma would just start selling this stuff here in the United States, I'd give the devil his due -- and say this is a rare case of a drug that works (even if it is just a synthetic vitamin).
But they wouldn't dare -- because the U.S. happens to be the world's most lucrative diabetes market, and benfotiamine is so safe, effective and inexpensive that it would wipe out that multibillion-dollar industry overnight.
Now, I can practically hear what you're thinking at this point: If it's that good, why haven't I heard of it?
Trust me -- it is that good. And while you may not have heard of it, researchers have. It's been studied for decades now -- and the science behind it is rock solid.
In fact, if this was a movie, I could make a poster filled with glowing blurbs -- like this one from the journal Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews: "an inexpensive approach to the prevention and/or treatment of diabetic complications."
Or maybe this one, from Pharmacological Research: "effective for the treatment of diabetic neuropathy, nephropathy and retinopathy."
Circulation: Heart Failure: "protects from diabetes mellitus-induced cardiac dysfunction" and "merits attention for application in clinical practice."
Even in other languages, the results are the same -- this was in Serbian Archives for the Whole Medicine last year: "significant subjective and objective improvement" and "a good starting choice" for diabetic polyneuropathy.
I didn't cherry-pick these, by the way. You can look it up yourself if you want -- and you'll find that the glowing research isn't limited to diabetes. Other studies have found that benfotiamine may help treat or lower the risk of everything from Alzheimer's disease to heart problems.
The only problem is getting it. It's hard to find, and there's no way to be sure of what you're getting when you do find it.
At some point, U.S. consumers will start to demand benfotiamine -- especially when word gets out over how effective it is overseas -- and you'll see every diabetic taking it.
My prediction: It'll be game over for Big Pharma's diabetes drugs when that does happen.
The only question is, will it be too late for you?
A Low-Salt Diet Is Deadly
"The Great Salt Speech" isn't just bad advice -- it's a deadly lie, and a new study proves it.
You know the speech I'm talking about. It's the one doctors deliver in their Most Serious Voice right after taking your blood pressure, sentencing you to bland low-sodium meals for the rest of your life.
But as I've said before, a low-salt diet won't lower blood pressure OR protect your heart -- and now, the latest research shows it can actually boost the odds of any early death by more than 500 percent!
Researchers from the University of Leuven in Belgium tracked 3,861 people 60 years old and younger for a median of nearly 8 years, and found absolutely no link at all between sodium and blood pressure levels.
Repeat: No link at all between sodium and blood pressure levels.
Overall, they found a 4.1 percent rate of death from heart-related conditions among those with the lowest intake, 1.9 percent among those with moderate intake, and 0.8 percent among those with the highest.
That means patients with the lowest salt intakes were more than five times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those with the highest, according to the new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Now, this might fly in the face of everything you've heard in your doctor's office... but it's perfectly consistent with the studies I've been telling you about.
One Dutch study last year found that seniors with the lowest salt consumption had the highest risk of bone breaks and an early death. Even worse, these weren’t patients with dramatically deficient levels of sodium — they were just a little on the low side. The researchers called it “mild” hyponatremia during their presentation at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting.
Even one of the authors of the new study says that in his 25 years of research on salt, "it was almost impossible to find an association between blood-pressure and 24-hour sodium excretion."
Tell THAT to your doc next time he opens his trap about sodium and blood pressure.
Until next time, stay healthy and happy
JD Roma
The information on this blog is provided for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical care, and medical advice and services are not being offered. If you have, or suspect you have, a health problem you should consult your physician (preferably a Naturopath).
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