More ADA lunacy

[mcsblues]

As if their dietary advice isn't bad enough...

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=5339842&section=news

"Think About Statins for Every Diabetic -Group
Thu 3 June, 2004 23:31

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost everyone with diabetes should consider taking a statin drug to lower cholesterol, even if they already have low cholesterol levels, the American Diabetes Association advised on Thursday.

Diabetes patients are at such high risk of heart disease that the statins almost certainly will do them some good, the group said in its latest treatment guidelines.

People with diabetes should all consider taking a daily aspirin, too, the new guidelines say.

"It may well be that everybody with diabetes should be on a statin," said Dr. Nathaniel Clark, vice-president for clinical affairs for the group.

"We know that statins lower low-density cholesterol but they may also have some other qualities that have not been tested," Clark said in a telephone interview.

An estimated 18 million Americans have diabetes, 90 to 95 percent of them type-2 diabetes. This once was called adult-onset diabetes but it is showing up in children more often now.

Type-1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease caused when the body mistakenly destroys insulin-producing pancreas cells.

Type-2 diabetes is strongly associated with being overweight and sedentary. It greatly raises the risk for heart disease, stroke and heart attack and can also lead to blindness and limb loss.

Clark said the Association decided to add statins to the guidelines after seeing the results of a British study, published earlier this year in the Lancet medical journal, that showed people who took statins had a one-third lower risk of stroke.

Their study included adults over the age of 40 whose total cholesterol levels were as low as 135 -- considered extremely low by most standards. Among normal healthy people, doctors do not usually consider giving drugs to lower cholesterol until total levels hit 200.

But Clark said diabetics are a special case.

"It is now a consensus that having diabetes is the equivalent in terms of cardiovascular risk of already having had a heart attack," Clark said.

"We are talking about what we would consider a high-risk group."

Statins are becoming more and more popular with doctors as study after study finds they can lower the risk of a range of heart conditions and may also help patients with multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.

Worldwide, 25 million people take statins, but up to 200 million could be eligible.

The drugs are not cheap, however. The United States already spending $12.5 billion on statin drugs, more than any other type of medicine, and the drugs can cause a rare type of side-effect called rhabdomyolysis, which damages muscles."

For a slightly more sane point of view;
http://www.theomnivore.com/statin_madness.html
http://www.theomnivore.com/Statins_still_useless_for_women.html

Cheers,

Malcolm

[GrlyGrl]

Hmmmmmm....payola? I wonder how much $$$ it cost the pharmaceutical companies to get the ADA to say that?

[Angeline]

Holy cr~p !!

That is just mind bogling. It's like saying to smokers....well smoke all you want, just take drugs to counter the negative effects of your addiction. It's crazy

[A_Team_Gal]

I agree with GrlyGrl. I think this is just a ploy by the drug companies to make more money. It has already been demonstrated that the drug companies are spending more of their resources on drugs that lower cholesterol because patients have to pay more for them and most will take them for the remainder of their lives.

Of course, I also wonder at people who will blindly take drugs without question, just because a doctor tells them to without offering any other sort of alternative.

[mcsblues]

I mentioned this to Anthony Colpo who tells me he is starting a new site devoted to this subject;

http://www.statinalert.org/

Cheers,

Malcolm

[Lisa N]

As a diabetic, I have to say that I'm already being pressured by my doctor to go on statins despite the fact that my last A1C was 5.3. Yes, my cholesterol levels are slightly elevated (220) as is my LDL but I have yet to be convinced that the potential benefit of going on a statin drug outweighs the potential detriments. I had a thallium stress test 18 months ago that revealed absolutely no problems (although they should have a doctor present when they presesnt you with the bill for that! :eek: ) and all my kidney function tests to date have been well within normal limits. I have a dilated eye exam yearly..no sign of problems.
I have an appointment next week and I have a feeling that it's going to wind up slightly confrontational. Last month he put me on an antihypertensive even though my blood pressure was 118/84 (he wants my diastolic closer to 70 he says) and it wound up dropping my BP to 96/68 and I felt like cr**. Needless to say, I don't feel that it's benefitting me. My BP has been like this since I was a teenager...it's normal for me! I'm starting to develop the opinion that even if these drugs might (and there's certainly no guarantees) get me a few more years of life, I'd rather live a possibly slightly shorter life feeling good than a slightly longer one feeling terrible. So far, every drug he's put me on with the exception of Metformin has made me feel terrible.
Besides...the only thing that studies have shown conclusively to date is that those who have the most birthdays tend to live the longest. ;)

[lakookoo]

I heard a report on statins on the radio the other day -- the results of some study in Europe -- and one of the study's authors basically said that it would be a Good Thing if statins were introduced into the drinking water supply, to dose everyone regardless of his or her health profile. And I don't think that he was totally joking ....

While I applaud his desire to help folks struggling with cardiac health issues, I am appalled by this sort of attitude. For me, this willingness to dose entire populations (not neccessarily entire cities, of course ;)) is eerily worrisome. Anyone remember the thalidomide tragedy, or any number of other well-meant treatments that turned out to be preventable nightmares for those involved? And let's not even mention George Orwell, and his dystopian vision of the future ...

[CindySue48]

"it would be a Good Thing if statins were introduced into the drinking water supply,"

I've been saying this was coming for a long time. It's like flouride, it benefits a large amount of people (or they think it does) so they give everyone a dose with every sip. Even tho it can cause problems with some, the good of the many may outweigh the effect on the few.

I figure in our lifetime we're going to see at least one serious proposal to add statins to drinking water. I think at this point statins are still too new to worry about this.....but once the patents start expiring, watch out!

[K Walt]

" I think at this point statins are still too new to worry about this.....but once the patents start expiring, watch out!

Heck, once the patents start expiring, there will be no money in statins, and therefore no reason to push the 'cholesterol' bogeyman. It will go away.

Only to replaced by some other blood value number that we can lower with some expensive drug taken for the rest of our lives.

[Aprilellen]

why try to fix something that isnt broken yet?alot of these doctors anymore are pill pushers take this pill and you will be well if that one doesnt work well find another to try on you and if by chance that causes something in your body to go bad we will give you this drug to help that problem.
what is this world coming to its to full of quick fixes...Aprilellen

[VickiR]

Has it even been conclusively shown that total cholesterol is a half-decent measure of coronary risk? Seems to me that there are other measures that work better, like total/HDL ratio, CRP, or homocysteine.

[Lisa N]

Has it even been conclusively shown that total cholesterol is a half-decent measure of coronary risk? Seems to me that there are other measures that work better, like total/HDL ratio, CRP, or homocysteine.

You're correct, VickiR. Total cholesterol has never been shown to be a good indicator of cardiac risk. Quite the oppposite, in fact, since more than half of those that have cardiac events have normal cholesterol levels (below 200). It's now thought that the ratios as well as triglyceride levels and c-reactive protein and homocysteine levels are better indicators but even those are not foolproof.
It seems that the more scientists try to prove the fat/cholesterol/heart disease theory, the more they come up scratching their heads but still maintain it must be valid.

[Angeline]

It seems that the more scientists try to prove the fat/cholesterol/heart disease theory, the more they come up scratching their heads but still maintain it must be valid.

I think there is too much invested in this theory ... reputations, careers, money, lives .... they will never let go of it unless unrefutable proof comes along that it's wrong.

[mcsblues]

I think there will be gradual change, in such small steps that these scientists never really admit they were wrong at all! :)

Take a look at the Harvard food pyramid - sure it is half baked and they still carry on about saturated fat (red meat has its own section!) but it is a slight improvement on the old Agriculture Deparment pyramid.

Cheers,

Malcolm

[VickiR]

Gee, do you think maybe the drug companies are invested in maintaining the old food pyramid???? Maybe wheat and corn producers, such as Kellogg et al, too?

Or am I just cynical?

[Grimalkin]

Gee, do you think maybe the drug companies are invested in maintaining the old food pyramid???? Maybe wheat and corn producers, such as Kellogg et al, too?

Or am I just cynical?

No, I think about this too. Whether or not they care about people's health, the simple fact is that there would be a huge economic shakeup if lots of people go low-carb. Grain products, especially processed ones, have high profit margins and are also heavily subsidized by the government. The sugar industry is enormous. And the pharmaceutical industry... well, they would lose so many statin and diabetes medication customers, it could be catastrophic to them, it could also really impact funding sources for medical research which would be a shame. I'm sure there are lots more repercussions than those that we may see someday.

[mcsblues]

Gee, do you think maybe the drug companies are invested in maintaining the old food pyramid???? Maybe wheat and corn producers, such as Kellogg et al, too?

Or am I just cynical?

Well certainly not cynical as far as agriculture and food producers are concerned considering their influence in constructing the original pyramid. (see this bit from Harvard magazine's "The Way We Eat Now";

"U.S. government agencies' attempts to deal with obesity during the last three decades—encouraging people to eat less fat and more carbohydrates, for example—actually may have exacerbated the problem. Take the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Guide Pyramid, first promulgated in 1992. The pyramid's diagram of dietary recommendations is a familiar sight on cereal boxes—hardly a coincidence, since the guidelines suggest six to 11 servings daily from the "bread, cereal, rice, and pasta" group. The USDA recommends eating more of these starches than any other category of food. Unfortunately, such starches are nearly all high-glycemic carbohydrates, which drive obesity, hyperinsulinemia, and Type II diabetes. "At best, the USDA pyramid offers wishy-washy, scientifically unfounded advice on an absolutely vital topic—what to eat," writes Willett in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. "At worst, the misinformation contributes to overweight, poor health, and unnecessary early deaths."

Note that the pyramid comes from the Department of Agriculture, not from an agency charged with promoting health, like the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The USDA essentially promotes and regulates commerce, and its pyramid (currently under revision; expect a new version in 2005) was the focus of intensive lobbying and political struggle by agribusinesses in the meat, sugar, dairy, and cereal industries, among others."

http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/050465.html

It would be interesting to see how drug companies could justify even being at the negotiating table when the new pyramid is debated, but that is not to say that their money and influence could not be used in other ways.

Cheers,

Malcolm

[woodpecker]

From Bottom Line's Daily Health News: (June 7, 2004)

METABOLIC SYNDROME

Doctors have discovered a whole new way to identify risk for heart disease and stroke. Rather than looking at individual risk factors, they have identified five core measures that, when viewed as a group, act as a significant indicator of future risk. If you have at least three of the five problems, you have "metabolic syndrome."

Components of the syndrome are elevated blood pressure, large waist circumference, elevated triglycerides, low HDL (the "good" cholesterol) count and elevated blood sugar level.

In a sense, metabolic syndrome is having a little bit wrong with a number of things. The bar for diagnosis of a syndrome risk factor is set lower than it is for a diagnosis of the actual disease.

For example, a fasting blood sugar level greater than 110 mg/dl is a syndrome risk factor, but a diabetes diagnosis requires a level of 126 mg/dl or higher. To be a syndrome risk factor, high blood pressure is 130 over 85 or higher... for a diagnosis of high blood pressure, the reading must be 140 over 90 or higher.

New research has shown that metabolic syndrome -- once called "syndrome X" -- is a significant risk for heart disease and stroke. Research on the Framingham Heart Study at Boston University School of Medicine showed that women who have the syndrome more than double their risk for stroke and men with it have a 78% greater risk for stroke compared with those who do not have the syndrome. The researchers presented their findings at the American Stroke Association's International Conference earlier this year.

I asked Ralph L. Sacco, MD, MS, professor of neurology and public health at Columbia University and a spokesperson for the American Stroke Association, about the implications of this study. He explained that no one is yet exactly sure why having the syndrome increases heart disease and stroke risk.

Dr. Sacco feels, however, that this research may hold the key to future treatment. Although a person with the syndrome has lower individual measures for disease, having them clustered in a group like this might warrant more aggressive treatment, starting earlier.

For the moment, Dr. Sacco points out that it is never too late for people to focus on prevention by eating a healthy diet, exercising and keeping their weight in the correct range. If that doesn't prevent metabolic syndrome, he says, talk to your doctor about possible medications that will help keep the measures down.

[VickiR]

I'm pretty sure my mom has at least three of those! Isn't there a book out on Syndrome X aka metabolic syndrome? I remember seeing it years ago and looking at the recommended diet. It looked a lot like the way I eat now.

Mom right now is focussing on eating less carbs, and higher quality carbs.

[woodpecker]

Fluorided Water:

There is a growing chorus of voices against fluridated water. Last month Hawaii was the first state to ban it, joining many cities and municipalites across North America (e.g., Montreal and Vancouver in Canada). In Canada, Dr. Harvey Limeback, Head Preventative Dentistry at U of T and former Director of Canadian Association for Dental Research is on record against it (see site http://www.fluoridealert.org/limeback.htm.) I'd say fluoridated water has 10 more years in North America before it is gone. It's gone in most of Europe already.

[mio1996]

Yeah, the whole idea that drugs should be forced on the public is deplorable. What kind of morons are our medical schools awarding degrees to?